RHYS X NYX.

“Because I will it so.”

I can see her roll her eyes, her insolence is…refreshing.

“sleep, I’ll still be here.”

“I can’t,” she replies voice husky and drowsy, it shouldn’t stir me up but it does.

“try, I’ll help.”

“m’kay.”

I smile as she finally sleeps her mind relaxing with her making it easier to sift through.

It is an invasion of her privacy but who’s here to stop me, except my familiar who still can’t even see me, it is also the easiest way to try and uncover why she’s so much like the wretched woman and yet nothing like her at all.

“master…”

Nyx calls out and I freeze in the process of releasing my power into the girl, did I slip up? How can he see me?

“you are here aren’t you? I can feel you, the pit in my heart isn’t so crippling anymore.”

I turn to look at him, I had been elated when he had shown up in Bright, and then came the question of why he was even there.

After observing him for a couple of days, I realised he was here for the girl, and it had made me more suspicious before I stalked her too and realised she wasn’t just a simple girl here for the mate trials.

Nyx’s voice jolts me from my wandering thoughts.

“Did I disappoint you so that you can’t even speak to me master?” ah fuck me, he’s using that voice.

“I told you to stop calling me that.” I give in replying out loud.

He sucks in a breath rushing to the sound of my voice almost knocking me down.

“show yourself.”

He never did learn some respect despite interventions from everyone, especially his parents, it was stupid to think my absence had changed him, the little bastard still called me master to mock me and my status.

“you can’t see me, I have little energy to remain corporeal, I’d rather save it for later.”

He goes to answer when we both hear someone coming and freeze.

Nyx scoots closer to the opening and I find myself reaching out trying to decipher what was approaching the cell.

An engulfing feeling of evil and violence covers the entire area and it moves closer to where we are with each step.

This wasn’t good, Nyx agrees with me for he rushes to the slumbering girl yelling her awake.

This wasn’t good, I wasn’t strong enough to handle what was on the other side of that damn door.

I try reaching the depths of my power but it’s like grasping at straws.

I watch painfully as everything unfolds before me the Bright princess smacks both Mahina and Nyx around, intending to kill, but she doesn’t look like the girl I had been seeing around, she’s positively bloodthirsty and reeking of evil.

Desperate and desolate I do something I had given up on doing since everything happened, I reach into that dark recessed part of me, pleading …with him, my beast.

Come out! I haven’t asked for your help since you decided to give up and leave us to rot here, but now I will, she doesn’t deserve to die like this, they don’t.

I feel it sit up and take notice only to shrug and move back.

she’s fucking ours you egotistic baby, you are going to let her die?

I yell, which in hindsight wasn’t smart because technically I was yelling at myself and two it would only make him more stubborn.

I watch as the girl moves for the final blow taking my mate from me and the little power I had tears away from me smacking into her.

She’s flung across the room and I fall next to the girl the urge to cradle her and keep her safe overwhelming me.

Before I can say anything, twin sharp pains engulf me from my back, she had stabbed me! I feel Rhian finally rising from his bored state and taking notice, he never could stand it when I got hurt.

Whatever was going to happen now with him finally awake I didn’t want the girl to see, he seems to agree with me as he speaks to the girl asking her to close her eyes, I watch as we pick Nyx and place her on the girl before he shoves me out completely turning to the princess.

All this goes through my head as I lie down in the girl’s room trying to catch some rest, not that Nyx is letting me. The moment everyone left this morning to train for the ceremony, I tried hashing everything out with him again, as I had been doing since we arrived here.

He blames himself for everything that happened, and his poor excuse of a family thought to punish him for something that wasn’t his fault, he had barely hatched at the time for crying out loud, I was the one supposed to protect him and not vice versa.

“so are you going to claim her, it’s painfully clear who she is.”

“Oh, fates Nixon, I don’t have the energy to even think about all that.”

“well, someone else does…”

I go to ask him what he meant by that when I feel it, an indescribable pleasure that keeps building and building, with no relief, I flinch as Rhian roars in my head, a mixture of anger and frustration.

When the feeling finally recedes, I’m left mind reeling and body taut with need and confusion.

What was that?

“that was clearly your mate getti…”

I slap a hand on his mouth before he gets to finish because I hear the elevator ding signalling that someone was approaching.

Nyx disappears in a flash and I move from the bed to go lean on the window, if I looked in the mirror I’m sure my eyes would be glowing, clearly, Rhian was as curious about all this as we were.

The women’s exclamation when they finally realise what Nyx has been forcing down my throat is sort of comical.

So, the boy was also her mate, Rhian wasn’t happy about that, and neither was I to be honest.

I would deny it till I was Blue in the face but I was grateful for everything that had happened because my beast deigned to show up again…after going MIA since killing the Bright princess.

I speak to the girl in her mind trying to ease her confusion but Nyx the bastard interrupts and I have to stop him before he spills everything.

I muzzle him sifting from the room in the next second before he wrestles himself from my grasp.

“why are you fighting this Rhysand, you’ve been waiting for this all your life!”

As would any healthy sane male, having a mate was like an answer to a question you never thought you had, but now, I thought it a weakness, one that can be exploited by your enemies, case in point the shackles Dar was in right now.

The woman used his mate bond and his undying devotion to Meagan to start a feud that would break bonds and hearts across the mage community.

I won’t put myself through that, and neither would I let my mate go through what they went through.

“I cannot have a mate, not yet,” I say nodding my head sagely trying to ignore Rhian throwing a fit before he disappears like he always does, he agrees with me, but it doesn’t mean he likes it, tough luck dude.