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

He nodded, though his eyes were still very dull. Even with his permission I didn’t like it. Closing my eyes, I searched for the shroud of the Ley dimension. I was so weak that it took ages. Longer than it had ever taken me since I had first learned to grasp the sight in my early years at the Academy. But muscle memory had me succeeding in the end. It was such a hollow victory.

Feathering the magic fumes I had left across the glowing pink ball of Noah’s soul, I chipped off pieces of his essence and felt him bristle. A growl filled my ears, and Max’s head turned slowly towards the sound.

“Max,” I cooed. “Don’t worry about Noah. I’m okay.”

With the last of the strength left in me, I used the blood alchemy to transmute Noah’s strength into my own. With the boost, I layered magic into the blood barrier and watched it thicken around the mating link. Little by little, the blood smoothed out the sharpness that the link had become until it was a ball of light again. I blatantly ignored the tendril of brown that snapped and withered inside my soul tether.

Max shook his head at the sudden blunting of sensation. Noah and Max both growled softly at the same time. Max sniffed at the air, and I knew for certain he scented necromantic magic. “Hey,” I said. He glanced down at me, his eyes unfocused. “I’m right here. I’m fine.”

His hold on Ivan released. The vampire doubled over onto his knees and took a big, gulping breath. Behind Max’s back, Charles moved with a stealth that should not have been possible for someone his size. I kept talking.

“You don’t want to hurt anyone. In fact, you’re probably feeling really tired from all that roaring, huh?”

Max sank into a crouch beside me. Half-mad from the pull of the mating link, he was still gentle when he brushed the back of his hand against my cheek. I tried not to react when Charles’s fist drew back, even though I wanted to scream. Knowing it was for his own good did nothing to soothe me that Max would get hurt.

Charles’s fist was a fraction of an inch away from Max’s face when Max pivoted and smashed his paw into his brother’s sternum, sending him crashing into the sand. My temporary hold on Max dislodged. He stalked over to where Charles was coughing up blood and punched Charles in the head. The other supernaturals tried to hold him back but they had trouble getting close.

It was a long shot anyway. Max was too wired right now. With his back turned to me, I grabbed a hold of his dark red speckled aura with my alchemy and turned his aggression into fatigue.

His eyelids grew heavy. His leg slipped out from underneath him. Not waiting for another chance, the elite guards sprang into action. I turned my head away as Angus snapped silver cuffs around Max’s limbs.

“It’s just for precaution,” Jacqueline said beside my ear. The last thing I saw was her smiling face before the strength left me and I blacked out.

30

In my dreams, I sat cross-legged in a gilded cage. Sprawled beside me, with its head in my lap, was a golden-tanned lion. Its pelt was thick and rough against my skin as I ran my fingers along its back. The lion let out a contented purr. Its spine grew tense as I heard the sound of claws clicking on marble. The darkness surrounding us gave birth to another enormous lion with hairs streaked in midnight blue and rich, rose pink.

The beast circled around us, stalking endlessly. Every time I moved, or the caged lion did, the beast would snap its jaws at us. When I reached out to take hold of the golden bars, the beast whirled on me, its blackened eyes on fire with a kind of madness that turned protection into captivity.

Startled by that thought, I grabbed hold of the lock on the cage and rattled it with all my might. Suddenly I was so desperate to be out of the cage that I didn’t care if it upset the beast. The thing turned on me, its mouth opening and blasting me with a metaphysical roar that filled me with the beating heart of its motivation: fear.

Something latched onto my arm. I glanced down to find the lion with its mouth clamped gently around my elbow. It tugged me away from the lock. In its eyes, I saw the reflection of the pearlescent-white light of the mating link. I was trapped both inside and out by a promise I had not yet made.

When I tried to pull away from the lion’s hold, it clamped down tighter. Meanwhile, the beast was growing ever more agitated by my attempt to escape. The aura around it morphed from that golden-streaked blue and pink into something black and poisoned. Its stunning mane became bedraggled and gnarled, its claws sharpened to fine points that bit into the marble and hacked chips out of it. Where the lion had once been a formidable presence that protected, it was now a twisted, angry shield that would allow nothing in and nothing out. And in doing so, it was being warped by a poisonous sense of duty.

Is this how you wish to spend eternity, I rationalised, trapped in a cage that is meant to be love? You know what he is. You saw what he was like. He can’t tell the difference. And in the end, it will kill him.

This time, when the lion’s anguished cry filled my ears, it wasn’t because some unknown threat had lanced him through the heart with a silver blade. It was because when I tried to get out of the cage once more, the lion inside with me leaped out first and clamped its jaw