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Instead, Jay sat down at the piano and played song after song until he heard the nest room door close three hours ago.

And now? The tea is still sitting on the corner of the piano, gently placed on a white paper napkin, with a single “x” written in blue-green ballpoint pen.

He saw it all in his mind’s eye—he knows now that he has been grieving.

“Oh god. I’m sorry,” he gasps out as the crushing pain of grief burns in his chest, and Nix is there to catch him against his own heart as Jay sobs.

Nix doesn’t say anything but holds him tighter as he cries for his parents—not for the man his father had become in the last decade, but maybe more for the father he could have been. And for his mother, with her small smile, whose last words to him had been, “I’m proud of you, Jamie.”

Most of all, Jay finally lets himself cry for himself—and the boy he’d been.

Keep Reading: Eternal Light - Chapter One (Grayson)

Grayson is officially a magic user, a brand-new Apprentice to the Guild.

He never imagined a world where he’d be the first Were magic user in hundreds of years. Sure, he’s always been intuitive, and his dreams have never beennormal, but he figured that’s all they were—dreams.

Then, in the last few months, they started becoming sharper and more frequent. Not just vague impressions, but vivid glimpses, pieces out of time, a hand reaching for his, the soft press of lips, those blue-glowing eyes.

They’d bled into his art and his designs, an outlet for something that often felt like déjà vu.

The turmoil of the last few days—months, really—has crashed over him like a tsunami, one thing after another, crackling under his skin and pressing at the edges of his vision. A tension in his muscles, a pressure behind his eyes. A surge of instincts, anger, protection, dominance had been building just beneath the surface.

When he first heard about his daughters, he’d thought maybe all the changes to his personality were just because of the miracle of them—hoped it was. Until he’d stood before Luminary Nimue in the library and then at her home.

If he is honest with himself, until then, he has been so deep in denial about the changes unraveling inside him that he wouldn’t have been surprised to see Cleopatra float by.

It’s magic. A glowing, free-flowing, massive river of power.

And now that he’s tasted what it means to access magic voluntarily? He cannot get enough. It flows through every cell in his body, and he finds himself drawing on it just to feel it sing.

The world knows from experience that power is addictive—that it can easily be twisted into corruption and evil. And when you add magic to the mix? It becomes a temptation nearly impossible to resist.

It’s something magical adolescents are trained to manage, and at twenty-five, he’s well behind the curve. He has to be careful, the episode at the hospital showed him exactly what happens when the wolf and magic run rampant. He will not be responsible for harming Nix just to feed this new, growing addiction.

Grayson doesn’t like to think about what might have happened if they hadn’t found Miranda in the MRI suite—it’s almost as if it was fate.

That is, if fate delivered its messages with a three-million-dollar, explosively destructive calling card.

Huh. Maybe that’s exactly how Fate sent their missives.

Even within such a short time, Nimue has been key in helping Grayson navigate his entry into the magic world. It could easily have been a shit-show of epic proportions, as magic users who cross state lines must declare their intent beforehand and must either be licensed or travel with a guardian. Grayson violated so many laws that it could have easily sparked a major jurisdictional dispute between states, especially with the still-smoking MRI machine and the near-altercation in the Archive.

In a generous offer, Luminary Nimue has vouched for his intentions and taken on responsibility for his training. She has also claimed him as her Apprentice until he can connect with a suitably trained one in Nashville. Finn—and his copious amounts of research and an incognito browser—says it’s unprecedented. That someone so well respected would place her reputation and her livelihood on the line to help a stranger is beyond anything Grayson could have expected or hoped for.

Although she says she has no worries—that she can see, has seen—who he is at heart.

Grayson wishes he had the same level of confidence in himselfthat she does.

As soon as Nimue can arrange it, he’ll have an appointment to see the Guild’s Master of Novices in Clearwater to be officially assessed and set a plan for his training.

Is it possible to be both anxious and excited? It must be, because he’d still been awake in the nest when Jay and Nix had finally come to bed an hour ago, reeking of sadness and pain. As one, the pack had rolled into their grieving leader, siphoning off some of his surplus emotion.

Losing a parent is one of the hardest things, but to lose them both in the most violent of ways, after a lifetime of anger and hatred? That must be even harder. Harder to reconcile the regrets and the grief.

For a moment, Grayson wished he could ease his beloved leader’s pain, as Nix’s emotions fill their conjoined soul, and through him, Grayson can feel Jay’s as well.

He imagines that he might be able to soothe Jay’s pain.