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He shuddered and dropped his chin, but his words were soft in the link. ‘I know. I love you, too.’

‘Then that’s all we need.’

Still holding his struggling mother, he turned his head to look at me, and my heart broke at the grief in his eyes. ‘Exactly. But now… that’s the thing left to be scared of: loss. Of you, beautiful.’

The jolt of that hit me so hard, I sucked in a breath like I’d been punched.

He stared at me, but kept feeding that power. I didn’t know how he did it. Didn’t know if his mother understood what he was doing, though she struggled and writhed like a snake, cursing and hissing as that power expanded in my veins.

I groaned. There was so much. How had he contained it all? It bubbled and roared like a raging river cutting through the canyon bed. My heart began to race. My skin hummed. It felt as if my hair would catch alight.

I babbled to Koa, clung to Voski’s arm, but the more he gave, the less I could move. My body was overwhelmed. And so was my mate.

So many tangled emotions. So many conflicting instincts.

He held my gaze and pleaded with me. And I knew he was right. I had to find a way to finish this, to strike at the heart of this serpent. And the only answer was love. But how to love such ugliness?

Yet, I wanted to do this for him.

With our eyes locked and hearts clinging, I nodded, and instead of resisting that flood, I opened my heart and embraced it.

Not the death. Not the darkness. I wanted none of that. But the power? I could take the weight of it. I would take it from him, hold it away, so it no longer tormented him. I would carry it until…

But there was no until. Because the moment I surrendered to taking it for him, I saw it in my mind.

The answer. He only lost power when he feared their control, and so grasped at the darkness. The moment he stopped they couldn’t touch him. Or me. Not with their power. It was repelled.

I almost laughed at the simplicity.

The tools had been there all along.

Keep loving.

Remember love.

Do not fear.

Breckon trying to bind me and the power turning back on him.

His mother trying to bind him when he was motivated by love for me, and being flattened by it.

I would have hugged Voski and told him how smart he was, how good. But in that moment, his mother spat a curse.

“You weaken? Why? What are you—”

She cut herself off as her expression of confusion morphed into horror. She blinked once, then snapped her head toward me, still fighting, trying to force Voski off as her lips peeled back from her teeth and she cursed. “No!”

Voski must have feared she’d find a way to intervene—I groaned and slumped back, sitting down hard as my body began to shake with the flood of power coursing through me. But I took it. I grabbed for it, I welcomed it, grasping for it, spooling it in, urging him, faster.

Then, just when it seemed my ribs might pop from the swelling within my chest, the power expanding in my veins, the flood from him began to ease.

The final trickle flowed into me. I still arched with the electric jolt of the accumulating power when Voski slumped.

I dug my fingers into the earth because it felt as if I might be borne away on the wind of the torrent of this power. Voski’s grip on his mother remained, but his arms, carved marble with the tension of holding her and fighting the power, began to tremble.

He swayed.

‘You can do this, Grace. I know you can. I need you… we all do.’