Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Xander’s fierce expression let me know he also realized we were royally screwed.
With Sheshem gone, my whole plan had fallen apart. I needed that chaotic element to give me the opportunity to strike Aten down. Now he was more powerful than before and definitely pissed.
Wait… a chaotic element.
I had been overlooking the biggest chaotic distraction I had.
“Xander, I need you to give into your god-likeness.”
Chapter 35
The Beast
“What?” There’s no way she said what I thought she said.
“I need you to change,” Miranda reiterated.
She was saying the words, but none of them made any sense.
“I need you to change and distract Aten.” She motioned with her hands for me to hurry up.
“I can’t do that, Miranda. You don’t know what you’re asking.” I won’t risk it. I won’t become the monster. With myshattered brain, who knew what I would do if I gave into my power. I hadn’t since I was revived, and I had no intention of abandoning Miranda in a critical moment that could get her killed. For crying out loud, I could be the one to hurt her or worse.
The thought alone instantly made me blanch.
“Xander, I trust you.” Miranda's pleading eyes bore into me as she asked the impossible.
A dry scoff escaped me. “Well that’s a fucking first.”
I’ve asked her a dozen times if she trusted me and the answer had always been no, and that’s how it should be.
“Xander.” My name snapped out of her mouth as she pleaded with me. “I trust you,” she repeated in earnest, taking my hand in hers and squeezing it. “I always have. But I need you to trust yourself. Do it.”
I splayed my hands open to show her I couldn’t give her this. “Miranda, I don’t know what I would do if I let that much power rush into my broken mind.”
Something in her face softened and her fingers slid up the side of my jaw. “You’ll be perfect. Just as you are. You are perfect.”
What she’s saying doesn’t make any sense. It’s all wrong. She can’t mean that. I’m the furthest thing from perfect. I’m a mess—a tangle of power, crazy, and usually out of control with lust for her. But there is something in her soft touch that tells me she means every word.
And if there is one thing about Miranda I know for certain, she doesn’t bullshit.
I closed my eyes and reached inward to the part of me I’d been holding at bay for weeks, the part that had been trying to claw its way out. There were barriers there, walls I’d fashioned to stay in control after what I observed in Miranda.
It was not with a deafening roar or a battle cry, but with a sigh that I let them all come down and the inner power flooded me.
My body elongated, the sensation akin to stretching muscles I never knew I had. My skin turned a deep, iridescent blue, reminiscent of the darkest depths of the sea.
As I yielded to the power I had suppressed for so long, the transformation overtook me like a tidal wave crashing over a ship, dragging it down into ocean depths that never end.
Veins of glowing aquamarine light traced across my form, illuminating me from within as if I had become one with the bioluminescent creatures of the deep. My eyes morphed into deep pools of water, swirling with untold power and ancient secrets, reflecting the vastness of the ocean itself.
I was losing myself and I might never come up for air again. A distant, weak cry of fear begged me to come back to my senses—there was something worth remembering. Then it was gone.
A cascade of waterspouts erupted from my back, each one writhing and twisting like a living entity, a manifestation of my tumultuous psyche. The massive, fluid appendages undulated like the tails of whales and the tentacles of a kraken, a testament to the primordial forces that made up my essence. With each movement water seemed to materialize out of thin air, swirling around me in a mesmerizing dance, responding to the call of my reclaimed power. The air crackled with the energy of a storm unleashed, my presence commanding the very essence of all waters in this earthly realm.
The only thing I was aware of was the burning entity before me that threatened everything.
