With a new-found conviction that he would only save Ashleaf by including everyone, he kept aiming the earth-vibration in Alexandra’s direction until could he actually feel her reaching back toward him.
Something was happening.
Something good.
He pressed harder and now he could feel her telepathic frequency through the door.
So close. Almost there.
He put on one last, strong effort and the moment he connected with Alexandra, a white light exploded all around him and the stasis spell dissolved.
He whirled toward the door and jerked it open.
“Thank the Goddess you’re alive,” she shouted. “I could feel you were almost gone!”
He’d never been so grateful to see anyone in his entire life as Alexandra, and behind her the remaining fae leadership.
He moved swiftly and caught her up in a gigantic hug, whirling her in a circle until she was slapping at his arms. “Put me down! Your woman is near death, idiot.”
He almost took off, but he remembered his hard-earned lesson. Turning to her, he said, “Please, you must come with me. All of you.”
Alexandra looked almost thunderstruck. “Of course we will, and you are learning at last.”
“I hope to the Goddess I am.”
As he took to the skies, the fae with him, he contacted Zane, pathing, Get all our forces, including the Troll Brigade over to the entrance to the colony. Margetta and her army are about to attack.
~ ~ ~
Willow wept.
Her body and soul felt ripped into two pieces. One part of her craved the heinous vampire that drank her down and the other tried to find some way out.
Axton hurt her where he sucked heavily at her neck. He was strong like Malik and held her trapped in his arms. She still couldn’t move because of the stasis. She found it hard to breathe.
She tried to access her vine-power, thinking she could bring the vines close and tie him up. But the vines merely hovered a few inches away, apparently torn to act because she was equally torn.
So her vine power was of no use and each drop of blood Axton took powered him more and more, while draining her of strength.
And still she craved him as a blood rose to his mastyr status, needing to bond with him.
As she reached the point of having to choose between death or bonding with a madman, she wondered how she’d gotten into such a terrible predicament. Until now, she and Malik had stuck close to each other in order to keep this very thing from happening.
But Malik had left because of his need to get back to his men.
And she’d let him go.
Now she was here, unable to move and hardly able to breathe and so close to surrendering to her cravings for Axton, that she trembled head-to foot.
As her tears flowed, however, what began to rise up within her was a kind of rage she’d never experienced before, or perhaps never allowed herself to feel.
Throughout most of her life, everything that happened outside of her control had dictated her path, swallowing up her will and her belief in self-direction.
But why was she always at the mercy of the willfulness of others or of events she couldn’t control like the deaths of her parents or the arrival of a supernatural gift she’d never asked for?
Maybe the fault lay within her, and just maybe she’d accepted things far too easily and given up her right to vote. She thought about what was within her control: the vines, her ability to connect with the earth, her telepathy, and her connection with Malik and the five powerful fae.
She’d tried reaching out to Malik, but he hadn’t responded to her efforts.