Bloodline Alchemy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 6) Lan Chan (uplifting novels .TXT) 📖

was no longer the dull red of a supernatural but a glowing brightness. I gasped as my vision became saturated in white light, reminiscent of the brightness of seraphim wings. His essence was unlike anything I had ever felt before. Just a tiny trickle and the pack link became a solid thread. Without hesitation, I dispersed it into Lizzie. Her shallow breath immediately evened out. With each second that ticked by, I watched the skin that had been hastily stitched together knitting itself closed. First the fragile skin around her throat and then the patch that held her internal organs in place.

In the cage, red eyes laced with white snapped open.

For the first time, Durin seemed to recognise that I was stealing his power source. His claws gouged holes in the cement as he tried to take a running start in the cage. Though I flinched on the inside when he slammed his massive body against the door, I gritted my teeth and held on to the link.

Had something not dragged my sight inwards, Lizzie might have already been healed. I glanced at the aura throbbing inside my mind. The mating link was trying to draw my attention to what was happening inside me. Every speck of power I stole from Durin was making me lose a part of myself. The soul tether was now a solid, dull brown.

Panic had me severing all connection. The sudden snap of magic and the retracting pack link made Lizzie cry out. I sank to the floor as nausea gripped me and made the thing inside Durin rattle with apprehension.

I heard the sound of urgent voices, but all I could focus on was the choking feeling of my soul trying to come apart from the fabric of the Ley dimension.

The last thing I saw before darkness rolled over me were Max’s frantic eyes as he called out my name.

26

I woke to the sound of hushed voices. Not so hushed when I regained consciousness and the argument the inner circle was having escalated into snaps and snarls. “Doesn’t matter what the outcome is,” I heard Anastasia grit out. “She shouldn’t have been allowed in there! She’s compromised us. Rotting us from the inside.”

Blinking, I found myself looking up at the ceiling of my room at the Thompsons’. Downstairs, the inner circle seemed to be having some kind of meeting. Or an argument in this case.

“She saved my daughter’s life,” came Amy’s unbending reply.

There was a moment of silence. “I understand that–” Anastasia began.

“No, you obviously don’t.”

My head was already pounding. The last thing I needed was to be bitched about while I was trying to get some rest.

“Shut up!” I screamed. It was actually quieter than the normal level of my voice, but their hearing caught it nonetheless. Stomping footsteps thudded up the staircase. To my dismay, the figure that popped his head into the room first wasn’t Max. It was Jeremiah. Not giving any thought to the fact that I was small and vulnerable, he crashed into the room and came straight for me.

I shrieked and tried to get away but found myself gripped in the smothering hug of a bear in human form. It was a miracle my innards didn’t burst from me. Max stalked up and grabbed Jeremiah’s shoulder. “She can’t breathe.”

Though he could tell that there was nothing sexual in it, Max’s nostrils flared at the fact that Jeremiah was touching me at all. Jeremiah released me, his dark eyes swimming.

“Thank you,” he said, bowing his head. “I don’t know what I would have done if we lost Lizzie.”

“How is she?” I whispered.

Unable to find his words all of a sudden, Jeremiah only nodded. He ran a big palm through his buzz-cut hair, tugging it as though in the throes of another nightmare. Max gripped his shoulder harder, his claws unsheathing a little. The shock brought Jeremiah back to the present.

“She’s recovering.”

“How did it even happen?”

“We were supposed to stay overnight in Rivia.” His hands threaded together, going white-knuckled within seconds. “It’s been so long since we’ve seen anything outside these fields. She wouldn’t leave Rosie at home. The alarm went off in the middle of the night. We went to her room to get her and saw...”

It was easy enough to piece the rest of it together. The malachim’s gift of invading minds would take time to penetrate the shifters’ natural shields. But Rosie was an animal of the earth dimension. She had probably gone mad instantly and attacked Lizzie, who was too young and probably too shocked to consider fighting off her beloved pet.

When I placed my hand on his arm, he didn’t flinch. “We gave her some more of that elixir you made,” he said.

That stopped me dead. “You went through my stuff?”

The pinch of my expression had him stalling. “Noah said it would be alright...”

“Noah is going to get his neck wrung.”

A chuckle from the doorway. Noah leaned against the doorjamb. “You always were possessive about your things.”

“Especially when people steal them!” I hissed.

“I stopped you from performing spells.”

“They were stuffed dolls,” I reminded him. “Not voodoo.”

“How was I supposed to know?”

Free of Jeremiah’s grip, I leaned back against the headboard and groaned. “Can you take your meeting somewhere else? I’ve had just about as much of shifters as I can take for a lifetime.”

When it was only Max left, I bundled up the blankets around me to create a barrier between us. When he sat down on the bed, the look in his eyes said he knew exactly what I was doing but he would let it slide on account of my vulnerability.

I sank my head onto my knees. “I don’t even know what to say.”

His face was granite. “There’s nothing to say.”

That was the truth. If I breathed a word of what I’d seen, the threat to the Reserve would be immense. With everything that was happening at the moment, if the other species truly knew how weak the alphas were, they would roll