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“I didn’t.” He shook his head. “I tried everything I could. I even tried using your sisters.”

“My sisters? Lexine was six when I was born. What could she have done?”

His eyes misted over. “Before you were born, magic imbued your sisters. They were bursting at the seams with it.”

Rowan leaned back in her chair. “What?”

“Lexine brought a bird back from the verge of death. Its neck had snapped when it fell out of its nest. It was barely a hatchling. Axel could lift boulders three times the size of her and at least 300 times her own weight. Zeva was fluently speaking 5 different languages at a year and a half old.”

“I was still getting over the shock of learning that I had a full grown granddaughter, much less 3 great-granddaughters, when your father introduced me to them. I think he just needed someone to watch them while him and your mother grieved. Lilith had been in their lives for so long that they knew her as Auntie Lilith. They didn’t have a great support system at that point. It was so early in his rule and the royals were not fans of his queen.”

“Well, when I met them, I had a mad idea. Like blood, one of these girls had to have a good enough match for a magical transfusion.”

Horror swept through Rowan. Magical transfusions were rare because the cost on the donor was too high. Whatever they gave, they never got back.

“You took their magic?”

“Not all of it.”

“They’re shades of what they had the potential of being?”

“Do you really think your sisters are less than just because they don’t have more magic available to them?”

“No.” She didn’t. But she could only imagine the world if her three brilliant sisters had had more power.

“I thought it was what saved you. I was wrong. Uzziel gave me a vision of what had been happening just out of my sight. She was there that day. Saw your potential, the similar way in which magic responded to you. She fused herself to you. Took in your sister’s energies and properly deposited them where they belonged. I didn’t feel her once while she worked.”

Her heart slammed in her chest.

A vision of a field full of bloody bodies and the sharp scent of burning flesh slammed into her. It was so similar to what the staff showed her.

Nausea crawled up her throat as she caught the barest scent of rotting meat before it faded.

“What am I?”

“You appear to be an ultimate siphon of magic. We knew you were different since that day your tantrum burnt the forest down.”

Rowan’s eyes fluttered closed. “We? As in everyone, including Lex, Zev and Axel?”

He gripped the corner of the counter. No denial or affirmation.

“Was the Coven, right? Am I too dangerous to be trusted? Do you now accept that Alessandro is my mate because he mightstand a chance at controlling me? In case I let the power get to my head?”

“You already have him wrapped around your finger, Rowan. No one can control you, but you. But maybe he can make you feel less alone.”

The word she hated most in the world.

Because for so long, she had indeed felt it.

Her succubus limbs marked her as differing from all of her family physically. Her magic widened that gap. She knew they loved her, that she could count on them for anything. Anything but to feel like she belonged.

It was why Louisa and Kin had become so important to her. They each understood the loneliness that came with their power. Each of them was an outlier.

An image of Alessandro slid into the forefront of her mind at this thought. The biggest outlier in the whole damn planet. A god who pretended he was still just a dragon.

One day, he would be unable to pretend any longer. One day, he would leave her. Gods couldn’t survive on the mortal plane. This, more than anything, kept her from sinking into that desire he ignited in her, and she wasn’t talking about that passion side of it. She’d enjoy that for as long as she could. She was talking about her desire to trust him with her insecurities, vulnerabilities—her entire fucking heart.

If he left her now, she would fall apart for a couple of months, maybe years, but she’d recover.