word home, flaying me open until I stand before him broken, damaged, and unloved. I start to spiral, my madness rushing through me...
“You were not the perfect soldier, too driven by emotions. And those others could not even think for themselves. I realised where I went wrong. I needed to start with babies with souls and minds of their own. Take the strongest of our kind and mate them, breed them until we had soldiers. Raise them as ours to follow us.” He looks at Dawn then and I slump when not under his gaze. “But you...you were a hope. A daydream. I did not think it would actually work, but here you stand. And how magnificent you are!” He grins, pride on his face. “You are what I was searching for all those years. They were all failed experiments, but you? You are true power, I filled you with it. Enough to kill any man, human or otherwise. Pulled directly from the oldest of us, the gods, and injected into you as an embryo. You bonded with it—” He shakes his head, staring down at my mate like she’s his world...he used to watch us like that.
It was all a lie.
“Gods?” she repeats, confused and angry, her fists clenched at her sides.
“Old relics of a world past, creatures best forgotten. They turned their backs on this world and retreated. The very first of us. I found a few of the first seven, the original gods. I took their power, harvested it!”
“And put it in me,” she whispers, watching him in horror. “What am I?”
“I don’t know!” He laughs. “Nothing we have ever seen before! You have the exact untrained and unknown magic that made them...but now it’s more. So much more, and you are magnificent!” he cries, and steps towards her. “Think of everything we could do! We do not need the council, any council, they can’t rule us.”
“You mean me,” she spits. “You are nothing, just an angel. You call your son fallen, an experiment, an abomination, but you are the same. You’re fucked up, so fucked up.” She shakes her head. “Even if I didn’t hate you for what you did to me, I would loathe you for what you did to my mate!” she screams at him, and power launches through the room, tossing everyone back as it spins faster and faster with her at the center of the storm.
“Mate? Interesting,” Gabriel mutters. “What else can you do?” he questions, looking around at the evident power.
“You want to know?” she queries, her tone deadly, quiet, and I know she’s going to explode. “I’ll show you!” she roars. “You will never hurt him or anyone again!”
I know she means me. She’s angry on my behalf, and love for her fills me at that, pushing back some of the darkness. The woman who loves me despite everything, who wants to protect me from my own father, from my own mind.
With her last word, pure, unfiltered power flows from her, like she’s a conduit, to do her bidding, but it’s too much. Too powerful. “Dawn!” I yell as she screams in agony. I can feel it searing her, killing her. “Vasculo, stop it!”
Everyone else fades away—my anger, my betrayal, Gabriel, Amos. Nothing matters but my mate.
Dawn.
“Little Monster, that’s enough, they will pay!” Nos tries to gain her attention, laying his hand on her arm, and I watch it start to burn. He winces in pain but holds on. “I am here, Little Monster, I can feel you, so lost, so alone...you never are.” He looks at me then and I know.
She needs me.
Stepping forward, I struggle against the power, but when I get close enough, I lay my hand on her too. My knees almost buckle from the pain, not just my own at the fire racing across my hand that’s touching her, but at the pain inside her. Coming from her…she is lost. Alone in the middle of all that power. It’s controlling her, not the other way around, wanting to do her bidding, but it’s too much for her alone. She’s curled into a ball inside, cut off from everyone, unable to even feel our minds.
Locked away.
This is what she feared even if she never voiced it. She feared that the power was too strong. That she couldn’t control what she was and one day would hurt someone, but she should have realised that she’s never alone, we are here. We are hers, made for this. For