Ascended (War of the Covens 3)

“Caia, don’t.” He shook his head angrily. “You must know how bad I feel about kicking you out. But you should’ve told me about Reuben. I’m supposed to protect my pack, and I didn’t know one of them was being blackmailed!”

“In order to protect the rest of you,” she argued.

“Yeah, but you are the pack, Caia! What is the point of preaching about looking out for one another and me protecting you all when I couldn’t even protect my own mate?”

Caia exhaled wearily. “I did what I had to do.”

“Is that our relationship from now on? Doing what we have to do to the detriment of our mating?”

“I had to lie, and you didn’t trust me … that’s not the mating, Lucien, that’s us!”

He shook his head as if he could dispel the accusation. “No! I only said I was kicking you out because I thought you would see how crazy you were being and change your mind.”

Suddenly, all the resentment she hadn’t even known had been there bubbled up to the surface. Caia grabbed a cushion off the sofa and threw it at him with all her might. It bounced off his chest, and he stared at her, incredulous.

“Didn’t you even stop to think? Didn’t you wonder why I was so adamant about killing the Septum? Me? Killing innocent people?” She gestured wildly. “Did that make sense to you?”

“No!” he yelled back like a child. “I knew something was up, but what the hell was I supposed to do? Run after you and leave my pack to deal with six deaths all by themselves?”

She grimaced and shifted away from him. “No,” she mumbled and picked at the thread on a throw over the sofa.

After a minute of silence, Lucien dropped down onto a chair. “So you didn’t kill the Septum.” It wasn’t a question. Clearly, Vil had told Lucien the little she had explained and hopefully left out the rest.

“I couldn’t. There was a little girl … anyway, we worked out something else.”

“Worked out what?”

“I can’t tell you.”

His jaw clenched. “Can’t or won’t?”

Ignoring his look of betrayal, she sighed. “Can’t.”

He glared at her. “I can’t believe you’re being like this. Fine. Keep your secrets. But tell me one thing … are you going after Marita?”

That much she could be honest about. “Somebody has to do it.”

Lucien launched to his feet. “But why does it have to be my mate?”

Caia chuckled humorlessly. “Oh gods, Lucien, I don’t know. But if I don’t do this, things are going to get really bad. And it’s not like I’m going into this alone. I have Saffron and Reuben.”

He stiffened and his face turned a mottled red. “Is he here? Has he actually dared to come here?”

Yes, Reuben had acted ruthlessly, but Caia couldn’t handle a disagreement between him and Lucien right now. “It is his hotel.”

With a bellowing curse, Lucien blew past her and out the door. She heard him running along the corridor at an insane speed. Oh dear goddess! He was going to attack the vampyre who couldn’t die! Swearing under her breath, Caia took off after him, scaling the stair railings to try to catch up with him.

As it was, when she barreled into the dining room, Reuben towered over Lucien, his large hand wrapped around Lucien’s thick neck. The flashing glints of red in his eyes told her he was mesmerizing Lucien, keeping him still as he choked the life from him, Lucien’s face turning a terrible purple as they all stood struck dumb by the sight of their Alpha on his knees.

Caia felt a rush of sickness. “Reuben … STOP IT!” she screamed, but he merely tightened his hold. Suddenly, Magnus leapt at the vampyre only to be backhanded as if he were a fly.

“REUBEN!” she screamed again as Ella followed Magnus’s footsteps. Lucien’s eyes were closing and terror took hold of her energy; her energy took hold of her, sneering at her hopelessness and flowing out in a stream toward the vampyre. To her utter surprise, it hit and Reuben was blasted across the room with enough intensity to send him crashing through the windows and outside into the cold. For a moment, she was stunned that her magik had actually worked on Reuben, and fleetingly she wondered if he’d been lying all along about being impervious to it.

But somehow … she didn’t think so. A trickle of sweat slid down the side of his face.

Hacking coughs shook Caia from her thoughts, and she rushed to Lucien who was being helped up by Draven. Her hands fluttered over him, checking to make sure he was all right, and she breathed a sigh of relief as his normal color returned. He appeared dazed and pushed her hands away as if she were irritating him.

“Well, that was a surprise.”

Caia looked up to see Reuben clambering back inside through the window he’d just been thrown out of. He brushed off pieces of glass and grinned unrepentantly. “Looks like I’m not impervious to you, Caia. Although, I have to say that a blast like that would have killed a lesser man. My feelings are hurt.”