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Something was wrong.

As soon as I stepped into our home, I felt it.

A worrying energy. A destabilization. Upset.

I went to seek out my little girl as I always did when I returned home from my work with the Covens.

But before I could, Ryker stumbled out of one of the living rooms.

He cursed and then Lucian was there in the next moment with a burst of vampire speed, grasping his arm and steadying him, keeping him upright.

“You require rest. More than a mere ten minutes that you just took in there,” Lucian told him, stroking his cheek with the pad of his thumb.

“I’m fine. It just took a lot out of me to heal that wound. I just need another few moments.”

“You drained your power to heal me. I told you I could have waited for Cornelius.”

“He’s away in the Light Fae Realm strengthening diplomatic relations for me as part of his Inter-Realm Ambassador role that I’ve created in the Guardian Movement. It would have taken hours before he returned to this plane. Mostly because you wouldn’t let me frame it as an emergency.”

“It wasn’t. I could have waited. You holding it at bay with your defensive magic and stopping it from spreading gave us hours. The work Cornelius is doing is essential to the health of the supernatural world. You creating that role was inspired, and I know how important it is to you. If we’d called Cornelius back here while we was in the middle of talks with Kalen, King of the Light Fae, and his Advisory Assembly it would have risked projecting weakness and destabilization.”

Before they could get into it further, I made my presence known.

“What’s happened?” I asked, even forgoing my usual greeting embrace that I engaged in with all of them when I arrived home every night. Urgency was taking me over and leading the way.

Because I already had a good inkling of what had happened.

Requiring my father to heal a wound… it could only mean one thing.

Lucian had been afflicted with a Celestial wound.

They both spun toward me.

I saw Lucian move to speak, to answer me, but then he hesitated, which had me tensing all the more, because that really wasn’t like him. He was straight to the point.

He and Ryker exchanged a look.

And then it occurred to me. “Ry, you’re supposed to be at the Unity Council for the Quarterly Summit.”

“Lucian had to call me back here.”

“Why? What happened with Ariana?” I eyed Lucian. “She obviously hurt you.”

“She is fine.”

“And you?”

“Also fine, beauty.”

“You sustaining a Celestial wound at her hands is certainly not fine.”

“There was an incident, yes,” Ryker told me. “But she’s well, like Lucian said. I managed to stop her from doing any more damage and then we both calmed her down. We also brought in some backup to keep her that way until you got home so we could discuss what we want to do in the long-run when something like this crops up.”

“Backup?”

“Jaxon,” Lucian said. “He’s outside in the gardens right now in wolf form playing with her.”

“Her favorite thing to do,” Ryker added.