Page 184 of Claimed

She wrenches one of her hands free of my grip and puts it to my face again. More images surge into my brain.

“Maybe we could try to be a family again… maybe you could help me not succumb to the darkness. There’s so, so much light in you. Such beautiful light…”

The images she’s casting into my brain now are of my father. As he is now, embracing her as she is now instead of when she was young. Instead of Carrie. Everything around them is hazy. No. It’s coming into focus. Carrie is a blurred image to the side, in tears, looking on at me where I stand with a bundle in my arms that I know is one of my children. The images are suddenly upscaling and I see it all clearly. Metallic silver and copper sparks arc like fireworks around the bundle in my arms before lighting the baby up so his outline is the silver, copper, and red flames, shrapnel bits blasting in every direction, burning to layers of ash that look as intricate as lace as it floats to the ground. And there’s no baby. My arms are empty and Soleil is now copper and mercury colored as my father burns to the samefloating ash. Stacy is there off to the side with another baby and that baby bursts into red flames and evaporates before Stacy melts into nothing and Soleil is red flames, silver and copper. I shake the visuals off and focus.

Two. Two babies.

I strain hard to listen and suddenly hear the sound of both heartbeats in addition to my mate’s own heart in this room, just four feet away. Stacy is carryingtwobabies. I now distinctly smell them both. Soleil would siphon magic from them both. She wouldn’t want to. But then she would want to because it would be all she could think of doing. And she’d scheme to have my father back. That’s what she’s obsessed with – dark magic and my father.

“You see the light in me? That same light you tried to take from me when I was a baby? That you’ll eventually try to take from my children?”

Her expression drops.

I growl and half shift, baring my teeth. Soleil snatches her hand back, face changing to fear. No. To remorse.

I pull my wolf back. “I see what you’re about,” I tell her. “I saw all those old memories but I see what you’re about. What you’ll always be about.”

She flinches. “Maybe you could fix me. You and Erica. Two powerful Young witches. You could extract the darkness. You could cast a protection spell over me.”

“It won’t work. Not for long.”

Her expression drops and I know she knows this is true. It devastates her.

I half shift again and grab her throat and hold it. And I feel. I feel, I register, and I fuckingknow. This isn’t me pulling withRonnie’s gift to know what she’s done. This is more than that. It’s also Vivica’s gift to see things that might come. If she walks away, she’ll eventually plot to have my father back at the peril of Carrie, the only mother I recognize. The only mother I want. And to gain even more magic. From me. My coven. From my children. She’s even had visions of taking it from Halla Starling, who is witch and shifter as well.

“You’re full of remorse right now, now that you’re whole again. The second that necklace left your skin, you were overcome with decades of suppressed emotion.”

“Yes,” she whispers brokenly and I feel her swallow move down her throat against my hand.

“Deep in your core, you wish you could be the girl you were that wanted a family, that fell hard for Graydon. You want to believe with the naivety of that girl you once were that you’ll do better this time with a second chance.”

“Yes,” she repeats. Tears stream down her cheeks.

“The bond was severed for him, but not for you.”

“Yes.”

“You’ll try hard to resist the pull, the impossible to ignore tugging and whispering to you that you want to play. Youneedto play. You deserve it.”

She winces and tries to back up. But I don’t release her.

“It wants you Soleil. That magic wants you as much as a lover, as much as Graydon used to want you – which you think you crave more than magic itself – but it will never, fucking ever, release its grip on you. That’s what dark magic is.”

There’s a beat of honesty – as long as a heartbeat or maybe two – where her eyes register with knowledge that I’m speaking the truth. Her reaction lets me know with razor-sharp precision thatshe knows I’m absolutely right. She’ll do it again if she walks out of here with her magic. This is why I was feeling sooffcoming in. She took it back from me when I was walking in here. It was her first order of business, taking back what was hers. And I further know that in the three decades since she was able to practice magic, she has been no stranger to it. She’s studied it. She’s taught it to other witches. She’s become a full-time coach and scholar, gone to such lengths that she knew if she could get to the day after I mated when I’d come into her magic, she could set in motion several potential plans that might help her win it back. This woman is unscrupulous and beyond dangerous.

“You harmed my mom,” I accuse.

“She stepped in and got my life! Mine!” she defends.

“You threatened my wife. You are a threat to everything I care about, including my sons and daughters.”

She swallows again and I see emotion in her face, agony, bitterness. This woman’s emotions are a bitter, sour brew of regrets, self-loathing, envy, and addiction.

A new voice rings in my mind. Not the voice of the woman in front of me. The voice of the woman my father loved. The woman she was before dark magic burrowed into the nucleus of Soleil Young.

The voice says, “I can’t have my family back, and now that I have my magic back… it won’t be better. It won’t be enough. I no longer have to long for my magic but I’ll still long for more. More magic. More to be who I used to be. Young. Hopeful. Good. The woman who protectively cradled her belly while she grew the most beautiful being that she could fathom – a product of her love with Gray. Please know that I am so, so proud of you. Of the man you are. The leader. The mate. Of the father you’ll be, the coven leader and witch you’ll be. Everything I hoped for. More.But I hate myself. I loathe myself for what I became. It’s so ugly inside me…”

She cradles my face lovingly. “I’ll choose death before I allow you to fasten that chain again. I can’t. I won’t.”

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