Page 18

~Mia Snow~

Sixteen Years Ago

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.

I shoved my hand through my hair. “What was the source of this latest meltdown?”

It was the worst one she’d had thus far.

Actually wounding Lucian? A member of our family? Her Papa? It was beyond.

“She became frustrated when she had trouble drawing at her desk in her playroom. It escalated quickly and she began destroying her art supplies, melting her crayons with her magic, then crushing her furniture to kindling as well. When I tried to intervene and have her take a breath and remove herself from the situation, she turned her power on me.”

I shuddered at Lucian’s report.

Before we could get into it further, Jaxon rounded the corridor with Ariana attached to his hip. She was pulling at his white tank, all worked up.

“Now, Daddy,” she was insisting.

“Look,” he said, gazing at me for a moment, before I focused on Ariana twisting around to see me standing there.

“Mama!” she cried, pushing herself from Jaxon’s hold and rushing over to me. She hugged my legs, but didn’t let me pick her up, because she was focused on something else, and she stepped back and looked up at me, asking, “Can you conjure me art stuff? I need more.”

“And why is that?” I asked, obviously already knowing the answer thanks to Lucian and Ryker.

She stomped her foot. “They’re stupid. I need better ones.”

“Do you have any supplies left?”

“Some, yeah. But I told you, they’re stupid, Mama!” She pointed her finger at Lucian. “I told Papa. He didn’t care.”

“That’s not true now, is it?”

“I… maybe. Pops didn’t care.”

“Is that the truth, Ariana?”

She stomped her other foot. “Doesn’t matter, Mama! I need more! You’re gonna draw with me tonight. You promised!”

“I did promise, that’s very true. But because you destroyed lots of your special art supplies, we’ll have to do it with what’s left, make do with what we have.”

“I want more!” she yelled, clenching her fists.

“I said ‘no’, Ariana.”

“Mama!” she shrieked. “More!”

Jaxon crouched down beside her and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Take a deep breath.”

“No!”

She pushed away from him and her silver fire erupted on her palm, headed straight for the corridor wall.

Ryker instinctively went to react, but his power was most definitely drained from healing that Celestial wound, because he couldn’t call it in time, and her magic blew through the wall, taking a mammoth chunk out of it, the force of it even reverberating through the house, too.

Ariana screeched and went to do it again, but I snatched her hand and called my magic forth at full force.

She pushed against it, but I held firm, keeping it at bay.

Her eyes went wide.

It was the first time I’d ever challenged her power.

I hadn’t wanted it to come to his.

But it was clear now that it had to.

The stronger she grew, though, the more impossible it would become for me to be able to manage it.

She’d transcend my abilities all too soon.

She’d transcend us all.

The devastation would be unimaginable.

We couldn’t allow it.

We had to find a way to prevent that from ever coming to pass.

I blinked back to the immediate moment, a heavy sigh escaping me as I stood in the living room of Ariana’s secret place, taking everything in.

The place was stripped of any adornments, belongings, or creature comforts.

It had me grimacing. It hadn’t been intended as a home in which to live her life after she graduated Maven Academy. It was a place where she could essentially cease to exist. To give up. To disappear.

From the supernatural world, yes.

But also from us. From her family.

The fact that it had come to this… it pained me beyond words.

In trying to protect her, we’d almost broken her.

“How did you find this place?”

I turned toward the living room archway to see the dragon striding on in, a great deal of power rolling off him. His eyes narrowed on me with what seemed to be a mixture of animosity and distrust.

I wasn’t surprised, given what Lucian and I had imparted to him and Kai in Meforian Forest.

“You needn’t worry, this place isn’t trackable by any magical means. However, the Celestial object—the Echo Coin—that Cassius gave to Ariana is.”

“You mean, the leash he gave her?”

That was a very animal way of looking at it. But it was to be expected from him, as a dragon. So was the brashness coming off him. I was very familiar with animal instincts like that from Jaxon, with him being part Alpha wolf. There were definite similarities that they shared.

“It’s a shame that both times we’ve interacted have been under less than stellar circumstances.”

He flinched at that, likely expecting me to escalate or at least reprimand the lack of respect he was putting out there.

I wasn’t here to condemn anything like that, nor to interfere in my daughter’s relationship with the three of them.

Although Jaxon hadn’t taken well to it, because his animal instincts had been leading the way—and dialed to the extreme when he’d learned of their relationship because Ariana had been kidnapped at the time—I wasn’t looking at it through the same lens.

And Jaxon would come around for the good of our daughter.

Just like Lucian had after seeing a lot of good qualities in the two of them during our talk in the forest that night.

A lot of good for Ariana, too, how much they cared about her, how much they were fighting for her.

And Ryker? Well, he was very laid back when it came to this sort of thing.

“She’s a force of nature,” he stated suddenly. Although this time it was less brash and also tinged with noticeable upset. “She—the real her—can’t be tamed by anyone or anything. Nor should she ever be. She’s a fucking goddess. Not a despicable servant to those robotic automatons.”

“I’m delighted that you see Ariana that way.

Those words from one with very strong animal instincts are even more profound.

There is a certain in-built need to own and conquer.

The fact that you don’t view your relationship with her that way says a great deal.

” I smiled. “It truly demonstrates how deeply you care for her, respect her, and value her agency.”

He actually offered me something then, telling me, “She taught me that.”

“Is that so?”

He nodded. “She showed me how to be that for her, she made me want to be that for her.”

It was clear to me in that moment just how deep this ran for him.

He was absolutely and unequivocally in love with my daughter.

“And her? Does she understand the primal aspect of your nature?”

He tensed up again, clearly protective of his connection with her, perhaps worried about interference. But then I saw something spark in his eyes, and he spoke, “You know how that is with Jaxon, him being not just a wolf, but an Alpha wolf.”

“I’m very familiar with it, yes.”

And it was complicated, something I couldn’t help but wonder if Ariana needed some assistance with navigating.