Chapter 11
Alanna
Time blurs in the warehouse, marked only by the rhythm of my training, the healing welt on my ankle, and the growing pile of books I’ve devoured. It’s been two weeks of living under Kade’s watchful eye.
He’s a demanding teacher. He doesn’t offer much praise, only clipped instructions and brusque corrections.
“Rein it in,” he’ll grunt, or “Focus, Librarian. Don’t think, feel.
” He pushes me, hard, but there’s an undeniable effectiveness to his methods.
He makes me repeat exercises until the tremor in my hands is from exhaustion, not fear.
And the rare moments when he does praise me?
I know it’s earned. There’s no coddling, no participation trophy. It makes it all the sweeter.
At first, I was terrified of attracting the creature again, but Kade reassured me that he set up a lure far away, in the wilderness where no one would get hurt.
As long as I didn’t totally lose control again, he said the “honey pot” should keep it distracted for a while.
And when he thinks I’m not looking, I’ve seen him checking and re-checking the wards around the warehouse.
I feel safer, knowing nothing is getting in here on his watch.
Without the looming threat of the monster, I’ve been getting better. Slowly.
I learned to coax a small, steady glow from the mark on my forearm, a soft, iridescent light that pulses with my breath.
After a few days, I managed to levitate a pen an inch off the table for a full ten seconds before it drifted back down.
It’s not much, certainly not enough to fight an echo-beast, but it’s something.
It’s control. And the Cognitive Resonance—that’s the truly incredible part.
When Kade holds a text, or even just points to a section, the whispers from the books are clearer now, less a jumble of sound and more like distinct voices, offering insights I wouldn’t have found in a lifetime of conventional research.
It’s exhilarating, petrifying, and utterly addictive, all at once.
Our training sessions have fallen into a comfortable routine—a mix of intense focus, frustrating mishaps, and Kade’s dry commentary.
Today, I’m working on controlling the light itself. I’ve become adept at making it glow, but now Kade’s trying to get me to move it.
“Don’t just hold it,” he rumbles from where he’s observing me, leaning against a wooden support pillar. “Be precise. Send it from your palm to the table.” He takes a slow sip from his mug.
I glare at the iridescent sphere hovering over my hand. Precise. Right. Focusing, I push with my mind. It flickers and vanishes.
“Again.”
Irritated, I summon the light again, but this time, I shove.
There’s a burst of power, and the sphere launches like a cannonball, vastly overshooting the table.
Simultaneously, Kade’s mug is ripped from his hand, trailing an arc of coffee as it flies across the room. It shatters against the concrete wall.
There’s a dazed silence, broken only by the drip—drip—drip of coffee running down the wall. I stare, mortified. Kade is frozen, his hand still in the air where his mug used to be. He slowly lowers it, wipes a stray drop from his cheek, and turns to me with a completely deadpan expression.
“Too much.”
My cheeks heat. “Right,” is all I say, but inside, I flinch.
Too much. Story of my life. Even my magic is too much, too chaotic, too unmanageable.
I was too much for my father, and now I’m too much for this new, terrifying power.
I want to be normal, but all I seem to do is overwhelm.
And until I can get a grip on this, I’m stuck here, lying to my friends, my job, my family, and answering to Kade, who obviously doesn’t want me here either.
I grit my teeth, forcing down the frustration. I’ll just have to practice more, learn more, until my magic, at least, is no longer “too much.”
***
A few days later, after I manage to move the sphere with enough precision to meet Kade’s exacting standards, he finally nods. Not a smile, never a smile, but a definite, approving nod.
“All right, Librarian,” he says, his voice holding a new, almost grudging acceptance. “You’re not going to blow up the building just by thinking about it anymore. Barely. It’s enough.”
I look up, dropping my focus from the light and causing it to wink out. “Enough for what?”
He pushes off where he was leaning against the pillar, his favorite spot to watch while I train. “Enough for the library. We go now.”
My heart gives a surprised leap. The library. The thought of being surrounded by books again, real books with answers, is an injection of pure joy.
I glance down at the oversized, comfortable sweats—Kade’s sweats—that have become my uniform in this strange new reality of training and confinement. They are fine for the warehouse, but I don’t want to wear them out anywhere. They’re absolutely huge on me.
I cross to the corner where my duffel bag sits—the one he brought after I was here for a few days, coming back from one of his patrols.
“Figured you’d need things,” was all he’d said.
Inside, I’d found a haphazard collection of my own things: shorts and jeans, some T-shirts, a cozy sweater.
It was a gruff, practical kindness I’m beginning to realize is just him.
Just like the way he insists I take his bed—a massive nest of furs (seriously, who has furs in this day and age?) that smells overwhelmingly like him—while he sleeps on a worn green couch that’s clearly too small for him, his feet hanging off the end.
Grateful, I duck into the bathroom and quickly change into a pair of my own shorts and a soft plain tee. It’s good to be in my own skin again, even if I’m not the same person I was when I last wore them.
And just like that, we’re in his old pickup truck.
Kade’s driving, his body full of that familiar tension he always seems to hold.
He seems extra uncomfortable right now, so I’m showing incredible restraint and refraining from asking any questions.
His eyes face forward, straight ahead on the winding country roads we’re on, the city sprawl left behind us.
I glance at him furtively, unable to stop myself from lingering on the rugged lines of his profile: the pronounced jawline shadowed by stubble, his chestnut hair pulled back into its messy bun, and the corded strength of his forearms visible as they grip the steering wheel.
Training isn’t the only thing that’s consumed my thoughts these past weeks.
It’s him. His presence fills every corner of the warehouse, magnetic and overwhelming, distracting me from my training and my research.
The smell of woodsmoke and pine, his smell, has started doing strange things to my pulse.
But in such confined quarters, there’s no escaping it.
And when he touches me during training, when his skin meets mine, the world narrows to that single point of contact and everything else fades to nothing.
I can’t help myself; I feel possessed by this overwhelming want, something wicked and wanton I’ve never felt before.
But it’s clear he doesn’t feel the same.
His behavior is a maddening puzzle, a constant push and pull that screams he wants nothing to do with me.
One moment he’s patient, almost tender, murmuring coveted praise when I finally manage to lift the pen or hear what the books are whispering.
The next, he’s across the room, shoulders rigid with tension, speaking to me in clipped, professional tones that feel like ice water on heated skin.
Mostly, he keeps his distance, unless I come to him. Which I’m trying not to do, since he clearly doesn’t like it. But then he’s always watching me, arms crossed, expression unreadable, with that intense, focused attention that presses into my skin almost like a touch.
When I falter, he’s there, moving with a speed that belies his casual posture.
His hand on my arm, guiding my focus, his fingers brushing mine as he demonstrates.
Each touch is brief, fleeting, yet it leaves a searing imprint on my skin, a heat that lingers long after he pulls away.
His voice, when he instructs me, is low, a rumble that vibrates through me, and sometimes, just sometimes, I catch a flicker in his expression—a flash of something raw, something that mirrors the inconvenient ache in my own chest. But when I meet his eyes, when I try to close this distance between us, he turns away like the sight of me causes him physical pain.
It’s a familiar pattern, this retreat. A cold echo of a lesson learned long ago: when you’re too much, people leave.
Once, I pushed myself too hard and collapsed. He caught me, of course. And when I awoke, he looked so shaken, I thought something truly terrible had happened. But then the unaffected mask came back over his features, making me question whether I had seen it in the first place.
Whatever I may think I see, he makes it clear he doesn’t want me here, doesn’t want this. His gruffness, his constant efforts to keep physical and emotional distance, his ongoing discomfort. I am just a magical burden he needs to “contain.”
And it makes the powerful, undeniable attraction I feel for him even harder to grapple with. Why can’t I stop wanting someone who so clearly doesn’t want me?
But now isn’t the time to dwell on all of this.
We’re going to a library on magic. I push the confusing tangle of emotions away, focusing instead on the landscape outside the truck window.
The busy tangle of urban streets has given way to the quieter embrace of winding country roads, skyscrapers and the cityscape usurped by fields and tall trees.
I shift in my seat, unable to contain my anticipation.
This draws Kade’s attention, and he glances at me with a hint of a smile. “Excited, are we?”
“Ohmigod, yes.”