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

I could do to help him made the words that came out of my mouth razor-sharp. I wasn’t sure which one of us the abrasiveness was directed at. “Why don’t you spend a little less time worrying about me and Sophie, and a little more time focusing on Cassi–”

His fist came at my head. Releasing him to avoid the impact, I countered his swing with a knee to the gut. His stomach muscles flexed, scattering the pain of contact, if not keeping him from being completely winded. While he was distracted, I grabbed him by the back of the neck and shoved him face down into the carpet. Distantly, I was aware of a blur of bodies and mumbling voices on either side of us. It would be a grave mistake to get side-tracked at the moment.

Even though the mention of Cassie had leached some of the fight out of him, he was still a lion shifter. It was the fact that he didn’t try and get out of the submissive hold that caused my heart to stampede in my chest. On his worst day, my brother would never go down without a fight. He might not win, but he would take out a few arms and legs and pass out before giving up.

Right now, he lay prone beneath the restraining hold, a low growl rumbling in his chest. For his sake, I hauled him to his feet and threw him back into the broken shell of the office. He landed on two feet, proving that the scuffle was more play than fight.

“No more,” I said. “Another incident and I’ll take the demon blade.”

Attention at last. He reared back as though I’d decked him. “You try it and–”

“I’ll do more than try.” Stepping up to him so we were eye-to-eye, I gave him a hard stare. A year ago, I’d have had to turn my head down to pin him with my dominance. Today, at least physically, we were equals. The alpha in me urged me to wallop some sense into him. The big brother in me clasped his shoulder, frowning at the chaotic emotions I saw reflected in his challenging gaze.

“We just need to hold the line,” I told him, not believing my own words for a second.

He huffed out a breath. “Bullshit.” He tried to shrug me off, but I held firm. “What the hell is the point in this? Sitting here with our tails between our legs when we should be storming the gates of Hell?”

I’d asked myself the same question. That niggling voice inside me that sounded exactly like Kai showed me the many reasons why we couldn’t throw our lives away in glorious suicide. Without us, there would be nobody to defend the vulnerable.

“Okay,” I said, feeling the conviction slamming back into place even though the lion fought against it. “Let’s go hunting. Who should we ask to raise Dani when we’re both dead?” I paused a second to let reality sink in. “Actually, never mind. Let’s take her with us. She’ll be dead anyway when the malachim return and there’s nothing in between them and her. How long do you think Edward’s little growl will hold them off?”

His top lip quivered even as his head sank. “You don’t know–”

“I do know, Chuck. If you’d get your head out of your ass for two seconds, you’d realise it too.”

He raised a brow in disdain. “Oh yeah? Shut up or put up, is that what you’re saying?”

“I’m saying we need to get our house in order before we go off trying to huff and puff and blow everything else down.”

If there were a wall in front of him, he would have punched it. “Things are never going to be the same again. Durin is in a pack-linked coma. The alphas are barely holding it in place to keep him alive. Dad–”

It was my turn to snarl. The hypocrisy of it was not lost on either of us. I might talk a lot of shit about holding it together, but we both knew I was a sliver away from losing it too. Because if Durin went down, he would take the alphas, including Dad, with him. Then the Reserve would go crumbling after.

“And you want us to just sit by?” Charles hissed.

“I’m asking you not to be a thorn is my damned side so I can do my job.”

“And what job is that, exactly? Because if you want to talk about duty, you’d get on top of Stacey and get it over with.”

The lion came roaring to the surface of my thoughts as my vision became saturated in gold. He was only still breathing because my lion scented him as blood. Otherwise, there would be a corpse in front of me. I took a long, heated breath and drew the snapping animal back. What pissed me off the most was that he was right. The shit-eating grin that lit up his face told me he knew it too.

“We need a new alpha mating link,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact. It grated all the same. “If Durin’s breaks, there will be chaos.” I swallowed, not trusting myself to speak. “Having said that, if you force me to be nice to some vapid, self-serving bitch one more time, I’ll gut her where she stands.”

In his eyes, I saw the truth of it. As a dominant shifter himself, it was anathema to his instincts to hurt a weaker member of the pack. But Kai and I had both asked a lot of him. More than any shifter teenager could handle. It was a miracle Chanelle hadn’t been hung from a branch by her own entrails. I suspected it wasn’t loyalty to us that had stayed his hand.

I had asked Sophie to mate with me. The timing and circumstances couldn’t have been worse. But the sentiment? I’d never been surer of anything in my life. There was no mating link between us. We’d spent enough time together and it should have