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Things calmed down after that, and we all started eating away again, enjoying our meal and each other’s company.

It was pleasant, warm, and more than I’d ever hoped for when I’d been cast out from the only thing I’d ever known.

Now there wasthis.

There wasthem.

22

~Nyx~

Kai and Vorzyr had proven to be a devastatingly destructive and dangerous combination.

They fueled the dark intensity in one another to a chaotic degree.

I hadn’t just observed that in their continued interactions or growing closeness, I’dfeltit from them that night a few days ago.

Them torturing my bullies had really brought it home to me just how volatile they could be when together while they were both in an emotional state.

I mean, I knew Kai had the capability of being destructive and fucking brutal.

When we’d first started at the Academy, I’d been bullied then, and Kai had gone after those responsible, setting their entire dorm room on fire and even skinning the culprits alive with his magic. But he’d been careful about it. There had still been a lot of control in play for him. He’d hidden all traces of him being there and he’d even disguised his magical signature. So when the Faculty had found the injured students, who they’d managed to save from death, they’d had no idea that it was Kai.Following that, he’d even somehow had them transferred out of the Academy merely two days later.

Kai only brought out that destructive side for two reasons—when those he cared about were in danger,orwhen his power and control were threatened.

Initially, going after these current bullies had been about his love for me, before I’d felt it evolve into something else after the trauma of the Celestial infection weakening him and nearly fucking killing him had impacted him.

His relationship to his power was a complicated thing.

We’d actually first become friends when his parents had taken me in because Kai had been entranced with my hybrid nature, my special abilities of both sorcerer and Incubus. But that had gradually evolved into actual friendship, a deep friendship, when he’d grown to trust me enough where he’d allowed himself to care. He didn’t do that easily, because it risked things becoming out of his control when feelings became a factor.

That was why it was all the more astonishing that he’d made an exception for Vorzyr.

I guess he’d seen something in him.

I had a sneaking suspicion that it was more than that, because he’d been willing to go against him in his obsessive battle for Ariana, right up until he’d walked in on me with Vorzyr and realized what that connection I’d been able to establish with him had meant to me. He’d softened after that and moved from battle to alliance. Andthenwhat he’d seen in him had pushed them closer than mere allies.

But the problem was that their approaches to threats and other things of that nature aligned too much. With Kai, I was the dissenting force when he wanted to go in too much of a destructive route. I reeled him in. Most of the time. It wasn’t a perfect system.

Fortunately, although I hadn’t been enough to counter both of them where this kind of harsh and brutal action was concerned, Ariana was in the picture now—and only being pulled in more so with every passing day, to be honest.

Yum.

Our first sexual interaction together had been playing on my mind a lot.

I crawled onto the bed and stroked Ariana’s face, before then leaning in and nibbling at her ear, her throat. “What do you say, Halo? Wanna play with me, too?”

A thrill rolled through me as her eyes lit up and she turned into my touch, her answer undeniable. She wanted it. She wanted me. Even more than that, she was so open, so receptive, so needy. And I was right there with her on that. Kai was already lost to it, looking so incredibly hot with that dark, lustful look in his eyes. He was in that mode of playing dirty, erotic games, and there was nothing that got me off more. Well, until she’d joined the playtime. Now it had ramped up several levels, just like that time where Kai and Vorzyr had played with me together that night.

And then the other night had happened, usallcoming together for the first time as a foursome in Meforian Forest, followed by our restaurant date afterward.

Damn,it had been the best. And it had stayed with me.

It had stayed with us all.

I loved the comradery, how much closer we were all growing together.

It was comfort, friendship, adoration, fun, and a whole lot of eroticism.