Bloodline Alchemy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 6), Lan Chan [free ebook reader for android TXT] 📗

legs was limp. There was literal smoke wafting from the tips of the hair around his mane. And he was going to come back for more.

“No!” I screamed in my memory and perhaps in the here and now because Andrei’s hand was suddenly clamped around my forearms. Something gripped me by the throat as I watched in horror as Max flung himself in harm’s way. It happened just as it had the first time. His front paws connected with the soul gate first. They dragged an invisible line of damage down its side for a fraction of a second before it delivered a metaphysical slap that sent him barrelling back the way he’d come.

Just like the first time, something inside my rapidly beating chest sank its hooks in deeply. The seed of it had planted the day of the Unity Games. While Max fought to reach me inside the soul circle, it blossomed into something both beautiful and horrifying. Something I had tried my hardest to avoid even as an invisible tether seemed intent on lashing us together: a shifter mating link.

The image in front of me changed to the landscape that now shared top billing with Lex and Kai’s disappearances as my worst nightmare. A patina of green shades blotted out the horizon making me convinced that we were in some kind of field. Cold bled into my breath and through my chest. Every inhale felt like it was impaling shards of ice into my heart.

The world around me froze as the enormous lion came into view. Max’s mane and the hairs along his spine were decorated in that weird pattern of colour that now branded him with Lex’s and my magic. Midnight blue and rich pink interspersed with the gold of his natural colouring. Unhurriedly, he paced into the centre of my field of vision. I swallowed, my hands cupping my mouth as I tried to squeeze my eyes shut to spare myself the pain. It never worked. Wide-eyed like I had surgical implements holding my eyelids open, all I could do was stand there as mist began to converge around Max.

He turned in one direction and then another, trying to find the source of the evil. His confusion, the uncertainty of fighting a foe he couldn’t see, punctured through me. With all my might, I tried to find the source of my voice. Pain burst around my lips as my fingers carved bloody trails into my skin when I tried to pry my mouth open. It was all in vain. Against the backdrop of darkened mist, a silver spine appeared as if held up by a wraith. It spun once mid-air and then stabbed Max right through the heart. And I was forced to watch, petrified as the muscles in his forearms twitched. Bile and spit foamed at his mouth, dripping and pooling along with the blood soaking the front of his chest. The life bled from him.

Panic wailed in my mind. It snapped my senses back into place, causing me to yank my hand back from Cordelia. My breath came in ragged waves, the dim of the candle-lit bar suddenly oppressive. I couldn’t breathe. Tears spilled down my cheeks.

“What the hell was that?” Andrei bit out. Turning towards him because of the incessant tug of his hand, I saw that all the colour had bleached from his already-pale face. “Was that what I think it was?”

Oh heck! He’d been touching me. Across the table, Eugenia was petting her sister’s hair. They’d been in physical contact as well. No! This couldn’t be happening. “Dee?” Eugenia pressed her hand against her sister’s ruddy cheeks. “Dee? Wake up.”

Eyes whiter than glacial snow, Cordelia’s chin lifted. She stared right at me, knowing but unseeing. Her ruby lips parted. I knew what she would say even before her mouth opened. I’d heard it three times now from three different diviners. I’d seen it a hundred times when I closed my eyes no matter how many sleep spells I dosed myself with.

“If you accept the mating link. He will die,” she said before she slumped over.

4

Eugenia caught her sister on the downward spiral. Her wide eyes were all for me. “You’ve established a mating link with him?”

The air was still too thin. Her innocuous question was a reflection of the accusations I threw at myself after every nightmare. You mated with him? Even when you knew it would kill him. Weak, stupid, selfish, Sophie. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

She surveyed me. “Why don’t you seem surprised by the premonition?”

I swallowed. “I’ve heard it before.”

Andrei wasn’t to be ignored. He let the knife clatter on the table. Where I had expected humour or eye-rolling, he pinched the bridge of his nose instead. “I’m assuming he has no idea, otherwise you’d never have gotten away from Seraphina.”

I waved the hand adorned with Gabriel’s Key in front of his face. “Excuse me! I can go wherever I want!”

He snorted. “As if! He’s an alpha shifter. If he had any inkling of a link, he’d have given up that desperate attempt to keep the Reserve in check to find you.”

On the night of the malachim attack, Durin had been hurt. From the snippet I’d managed to obtain while on the run, the clan alphas had also been affected. Now Max was temporary alpha of the Reserve and was fighting to hold it together for them all.

After the malachim attack, Seraphina’s forces had been stretched thin. The nature of the malachim meant that they were only subject to the limitations of the Nephilim. They were capable of teleporting and were only killable when corporeal. Both angel and demon blades could hurt them. And as Basil discovered, blood bound them to this dimension. To reduce the area of their patrols, all the supernatural cities had been knitted together for protection and to reduce the need for Nephilim resources.

Keeping the Reserve functioning would be taking up all of Max’s time. But I knew what Andrei said was