And behind me, something ancient unfurls.
The First Mother.
My ancestor awakens through my veins.
Her shadow manifests behind me, towering and terrible, made of darkness, blood, and power so old it makes the foundations of the building groan. I can’t see her, but I feel her presence as a second skin, her will flowing through me, amplifying my Voice until it could shatter mountains.
Through the crimson-gold haze of my vision, I see Crave’s eyes widen further. Not with fear. With recognition. With the terrifying understanding of exactly what I’m becoming.
What I already am.
The realization slams into my chest.
I could kill them all.
Right now.
With a word.
Every supernatural being in this room, frozen and helpless, their lives hanging by the thread of my self-control.
One command.
One slip.
One moment of letting the Voice take full control, and I could stop every heart, boil every drop of blood, unmake reality itself if I wanted to.
The power is intoxicating.
And that terrifies me more than anything.
“No,” I gasp, the word breaking the terrible silence. “No, no, no—”
And I release them, feeling Lilith being pulled back within me.
The darkness taking over the room lifts as the compulsion shatters with a deafening crack, the sound of glass exploding inside my skull as Lilith takes up residency back inside me. Rogue catches himself against the wall. Scorch drops to one knee, flames reigniting around him in protective instinct. Oracle’s phoenix fire bursts back to life so violently that he briefly turns into a column of living flame.
And the effort of releasing that much power, of pulling back from the edge of becoming what Lilith was, it costs me.
My knees buckle.
The world tilts sideways.
Warmth floods down my face, and I taste copper, blood, pouring from my nose in twin streams. My vision blurs, the crimson-gold fading to gray at the edges.
I’m falling.
But Crave catches me before I hit the floor. Vampire speed blurs him into place, his arms locking around me, dragging me against his chest with desperate, inhuman precision.
A rush of his emotions slams into me through the connection—terror, awe, fury, pride, love, so powerful and tangled it crashes through my ribs and steals the breath from my lungs. The intensity of it settles in my chest, sharp and overwhelming, my heart can’t decide whether to break or expand to hold all of him.
“You could have killed us all,” he whispers against my hair, the tremor clear in his voice—the fear, the understanding of how close I came to losing control completely.
“But I didn’t.” My voice comes out weak, thready, but determined. I force my eyes to focus on his face, on those silver eyes that have seen a thousand years of darkness. “I’m learning control, Crave. I pulled her back. I chosenotto hurt anyone.” My hand finds his chest, pressing against where his heart would beat if he still had one. “Let me help you.Please.Let me fight beside you.”
He holds my gaze for a long, loaded beat, his internal struggle rolling into me, instinct demanding I be shielded, hidden, kept safe at any cost, battling against the truth he doesn’t want to admit.
I’m powerful.
