Chapter 15
Olivia had picked up a few new tricks since I’d been gone.
There weren’t any classes on how to be a Light Mage, so she was learning it on the fly.
She’d taught herself how to mess with other people’s memories, which was how she’d gotten in good with the Dean in the first place and wiped my slate clean—for now, anyway.
She’d also touched on the gift of foresight that few mages ever gathered enough power to be able to do. Hendrik had endured a few visions for the sake of his clan, but I knew that came with a buttload of Blood Duty sacrifices and some illegal fights in the Monster Arena.
Olivia, though, had more than enough power at her disposal since she’d regained her soul, she could feed on herself again.
She claimed that she had more than enough power to go around before she endangered herself, but I made her promise not to have any more visions or use significant magic that would put further strain on her.
If she lost her soul again after she’d just gotten it back, I’d kill her myself.
The vision wasn’t as helpful as I would have hoped. Olivia saw multiple futures, some where we all burned up in Hellfire and others where I died at a demon’s hands—not comforting.
But there was one vision where we got out of this alive. She backtracked from there, finding us together teaching classes, which meant I needed to mentor with her—gross.
The final vision she came across that spurred everything into action contained a vampire, a young woman who wasn’t wearing a uniform, and blood.
It all made my head hurt and I decided the best way to deal with it all was to get some much-deserved rest, so I curled up under the sheets of my bed in the freshman dorms that had started to feel like home.
It felt nice to sleep in my own bed, despite not having my Virtues with me. Only because I felt them in my head anyway, ever-present and in tune with my current mood.
While I drifted off to sleep, I indulged by walking through the mate-circle bonds, envisioning it as a long road with a rope that I played through my fingers.
I veered down a path that filled me up with my wolf’s emotions.
He lived in the present and didn’t worry about the future, and that was something about him that I loved.
His animalistic side had a tendency of taking over wanting to play, to bite, and to mate until the moon set and the sun came up.
Logan was thinking of me, too, and he was tempted to patter in through his secret entrance by the window as his wolf, but he had his own pack to deal with.
Even though they couldn’t remember him, their instincts recognized him as their Alpha.
He wouldn’t admit it to me, but he’d missed them and I was glad he had a chance to just be a wolf again among his own kind, even if it was temporary.
I didn’t know what our lives would look like when this was all over and my brain wouldn’t let me think ahead that far.
Survive the end of the world first—then we’d deal with the rest.
I’d learned my survival mindset from my Hunter. Thinking of him took me down a new path, one where a shadow fell over my feet and screams of his victims echoed in the distance, but I wasn’t afraid. This was my Hunter’s mind, one just as dark as my own.
Dante was used to playing it solo, but getting back to his Hunter’s lair underneath the Monster Arena was going to prove difficult.
I felt him in the dark rummaging through Kaito’s office over in the Counselor building for an answer to our predicament, any weakness of the Dean’s that could be exploited, but I doubted he’d find anything—and so did he.
He just needed to keep busy, keep moving, and that was a sentiment I understood.
I brushed his mind with encouragement, to remind him he wasn’t alone, while I drifted off into a deeper sleep and continued to explore my connection to my mates.
Sunlight hit my face as I went down a new path.
I licked my lips, tasting the sweet addiction that sprinkled the air when I thought of my demigod.
Orion had returned to the Demis and was welcomed back, especially by Ally.
I should have felt a spike of jealousy, but the way Orion hugged her was the way a brother hugged a sister.
He was proud of her, of all of them, for learning how to shine without his starlight to guide them.
They were all growing up and Orion was glad that they would be okay when it would be time to leave.
Satisfied, I ventured onward in search of Hendrik and Kaito, only to slam right into a wall.
Damn Dark Mage.
I spread my fingers over the smooth, onyx barrier, sensing Hendrik on the other side. I felt the shift in the air as he took note of my presence.
Rapping my knuckles on the barrier, I attempted to get his attention. “Hendrik? You okay over there?”
Silence.
“Okay… I guess you don’t want to talk right now. Go ahead and get your sulking over with, because I’m going to be checking again on you later!”
A slight breeze carrying the scent of roses and blood was the only indicator that he’d heard me.
“Stubborn bastard,” I grumbled as I ran my fingers along the wall.
I understood maybe he needed his space right now, and I’d give it to him, just not forever because whether he liked it or not, he was my mate and I cared about him.
The Dark Mage had lost his role in his clan and I knew how important his mages were to him.
Unlike Logan, the only family he’d ever had wouldn’t innately recognize his hierarchy in the group, much less the sacrifices he’d already made for them over the years.
And if they’d learned to move on without him, they might have decided they didn’t need him as a leader whether they believed his story or not.
I decided that’s probably what bothered him the most.
Moving down the final path that turned to a dusty road, I searched for my Japanese Mentor. I wandered deeper into the fog that curled around my ankles and ran a cold chill up my legs.
Deafening silence closed in around me, making me feel closed off from my mate-circle as I delved deeper into the unnatural void, but Kaito had to be around here somewhere.
A frown tugged at my lips as I searched for his familiar heat and mystery that had been ever-present in the mate-bond.
Now that I knew what Kaito was, I knew what to look for.
His powers stemmed from the same eternal sorrow that created a permanent knot in my stomach.
Hell’s powers stemmed from the weight of sin itself, the suffering it brought on those who fell into its trap and all the emotions that came with it.
Learning how to use that power made me go into places of myself that I wasn’t entirely comfortable exploring, but with my mate-circle as my anchor, it didn’t matter how far I sank, I’d never have to fear hitting rock bottom because they would always pull me out again.
That’s what I had to do for my mates now. Kaito, in particular. The martyr had gotten himself captured and he’d better not get himself killed, or I’d find him in Hell and resurrect him so that I could kill him myself.
Still, I wandered the dark fog of my dreams looking for him. After I turned into a particularly dark corner, I felt a surge of all of my Virtues tugging in the back of my mind warning me not to continue, but it bothered me that Kaito was somewhere I couldn’t reach. I had to see where he was hiding.
“Who are you?” asked a male voice with a sexy low rumble to it that made me jump.
“Who’s there?” I asked the black fog, turning around in a circle as it swirled around my ankles.
A looming presence in the distance made me freeze as a warning chill ran up my spine. The connection to the rest of my mates thinned and strained against the overpowering aura coming from this… creature.
Long, bat-like wings spread from the male and he stepped through the fog, revealing a wickedly gorgeous demon face and red eyes that danced with the fires of Hell itself.
Power emanated from him and banished the fog around our feet. He tilted his head in a predatory way as his gaze ran over me.
Realizing I was completely naked—because my dreams loved to play cruel jokes on me—I covered myself as best as I could with my hands. “Who are you?” I countered. “Some kind of dream-peeping demon?”
He chuckled and the sound went straight through my body, vibrating in my chest like I’d wandered too close to one of those bass speakers at a concert. “You’re the one who summoned me, Lilith.”
I flinched at the way he said my name, as if he knew exactly who and what I was. “My name’s Lily,” I countered.
He smirked, taking a step closer. I tried to back up but my ass ran into a wall that hadn’t been there a moment before. It wasn’t like Henrik’s barrier. This one radiated heat and spread immediate warmth through my body that made me relax despite the demon closing in on me.
He kept on his approach, slowly caging me in with his broad wings as his arms boxed me in from either side.
A screech sounded as the talons on the ends of the arches scratched along the wall behind me, working as an unspoken threat that any wrong move would result in certain death.
“I don’t want to know who you are, Lilith, I know enough already,” he said his voice silky smooth in ways that made me tremble beneath him.
“I want to know who you think you are. I am a demon of rage.” He ran his fingers up my chest and closed them around my neck.
I swallowed hard before he blocked my airway. “And you, Lilith, test my patience.”
My thoughts raced as black dots began to sprinkle around my vision. I didn’t know how this demon managed to paralyze me so easily. Maybe it was because it was a dream, or maybe I just didn’t expect one of my Virtues to seriously hurt me—because I had no doubt who this demon was.
“Cole,” I said his name, managing to rasp it from his strangling grasp.