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  “Is this a fucking thing?” Gritt demanded, gesturing between Hyde and I. “Are all three of you guys a fucking thing with my godsdamned mate?”

  “Yep,” they all answered simultaneously. My mouth popped open in surprise before a grin took its place.

  Gritt closed his eyes in frustration and rubbed his temples like he had a headache, grumbling something I couldn’t catch.

  “So,” Hyde began, ignoring the shifter. “I’ve called you all here—”

  “You didn’t call us here,” Render interrupted, wiping my blood from his face.

  “Ahem. I’ve called you all here because Headmaster Torne needs us. Something about testing Dev’s Void powers on prisoners. Should be fun!”

  My stomach plummeted. “I think our ideas of fun are very different, Hyde,” I said before biting on my lip. Headmaster Torne warned me that he was going to take a more active role in my studies, but I wasn’t prepared for it to be this soon.

  “Wait, what? Does this mean she’s ready to switch back my brother’s animal?” Gritt asked, hope dripping from every syllable.

  “I don’t think I’m ready for that,” I stuttered, and Quade reached out and squeezed my hand.

  “Headmaster Torne will have more information for you. Right now we need to get to the portal. We were supposed to be there fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Hyde! Why didn’t you say anything?” I asked before playfully slapping his arm.

  “And miss this sexual tension? No, thank you. Now come on,” he said while dancing toward the exit and tugging me behind him. The other three paragons looked around at one another with a mix of expressions before falling into step behind us.

  “Keep up, would you? You three are slower than most corpses I’ve resurrected,” Hyde called back to them.

  “Damn necromancer,” Gritt grumbled. I just laughed. At least they were fighting with each other and not with me.

  I guess when you had to practice sucking powers from one supernatural to another, you did it during a council cocktail party.

  We were in a large, open room, separated by a wall of blue magic and social classes. On the side I was on, I stood in front of four supernatural prisoners wearing bright yellow jumpsuits and fearful expressions. There were three males and one female. Two elementals, a vamp, and a shifter.

  On the other side of the magical wall stood the council members and Headmaster Torne, all of them sipping on potion-infused cocktails and popping finger foods into their mouths as they mingled. Mingled. Like they were getting ready for the godsdamned curtain call and me to put on a show. They were even dressed up like they’d anticipated a night out at the theater. I wanted to throw up. At least my paragons had the decency to look nervous for me, keeping to themselves off to the side.

  “Y-You’re the Void,” the female shifter said, drawing my attention to our side of the room. Her brown hair was wild and so tangled that it was one huge matted mess, and she had scratch marks all up and down her arms.

  “I am,” I nodded, my eyes flicking over the chains that held her down.

  All four of the prisoners were in identical metal chairs, magicked chains secured around their wrists and ankles. They looked hollowed and haunted, too pale to be healthy, and their eyes darted around the room like rodents searching for an escape.

  “What are you going to do to us?” the male vampire asked, his fangs huge, making him look more like a saber-toothed tiger than a man. They must be keeping him starving in that prison. His fangs dripped with drool and unused venom, looking painfully swollen.

  I picked at my clothes, pulling on a loose thread at my thigh. “I’m, uhh, going to try to switch your powers.”

  “What?” one of the elemental males snapped. “What do you mean you’re going to try to switch our fucking powers?”

  My mouth went dry at the animosity I saw in his weathered and scarred face. He had burn marks all over his hands and arms, like his fire element had gotten out of control. I wondered if that had something to do with why he’d been imprisoned.

  “I—”

  Judge Braxton clapped on the other side of the room, cutting me off. Everyone’s eyes swiveled over to him, and his troupe of tittering council members lowered their glasses and stopped talking long enough to listen. “Alright, let’s get started.” He nodded at a thin, gangly looking man in a suit, and at the signal, the man stepped forward and cleared his throat, pulling out a tablet in his hand and swiping away. “I, Secretary Grannon, call this council meeting to a start. Judge Braxton overseeing, and all council members present, say aye.” At his droning words, all the council members spoke. “Aye.”

  The secretary went on. “We are gathered today to witness the progress of the Void, Devicka Cainson, to do a preliminary trial of switching powers between four supernaturals. Prisoners to be tested on were selected from the Ashtomb Supernatural Prison. One female puma shifter. One male vampire. One fire elemental. And one air elemental. Practice trial will begin now.”

  I scanned the room with my eyes, taking in everyone’s expression before pausing when my eyes landed on my mother. She had her head tilted back in amusement, red fingernails clutching her glass as she stood there and whispered to another elemental. I wanted to close the distance between us, a deeper part of me aching for her to even look my way. I felt like a circus animal on display for bored spectators. My eyes flickered back to the secretary just as he stopped talking his robotic spiel. His beady eyes rose up to regard me, lifting the tablet with him, and I realized with a jolt that he was recording me. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, totally dried up, while my palms were slick with sweat.

  My paragons watched from the other side of the barrier, their expressions solemn, and the headmaster stood with them, his face betraying his keen interest. Banner was also there, and as soon as the judge gave the order for me to begin, the neutralizer slipped over the magical line, coming onto my side of the room. He stepped in front of me, taking my hands in his. Immediately, his cool magic washed over me, calming my frayed Void that was punching me from the inside, wanting to destroy whatever was causing me this anxiety.

  “You can do this, Miss Cainson,” he told me quietly, his tone sure and steady. I looked into his dark eyes, trying to ground myself. “You’ve learned control. Remember what I said. You control your power.”

  “My power doesn’t control me,” I finished the mantra, my voice barely above a murmur. I heard a low growl, and my eyes distractedly flickered over to Gritt, who was being held back by Render and Quade. Territorial asshole.

  Banner nodded and stepped back, drawing me back to him. Our hands dropped, and I started anxiously massaging my wrists. “You can do this,” he assured me, his eyes lingering on my twitchy movements. His words didn’t make me feel any more sure of myself.

  Turning back to face the prisoners, I gave them an apologetic look as my hand came up to my amulet. “I’m so sorry.”

  The fire elemental strained against his chains. “Wait a fucking minute—”

  I dropped my amulet to the ground, and smoke streamed out of me. I controlled it, ignoring the shouts and the curses and the threats that were thrown my way. I couldn’t look at the female shifter’s wide, frightened eyes. I couldn’t listen to the elemental threatening to kill me. All I could do was focus on my smoke and direct it toward them by staying in control.

  When I had it wrapped around the fire and water elemental, I stepped closer toward the two males. The air elemental was older, with gray hair and sallow cheeks. He watched it all silently, his arms straining against the cuffs and chains. My smoke enveloped him like a churning storm cloud while it did the same thing to the fire elemental. I stepped between them and pressed my fingers against their hands to have better control. Both of them jumped at the contact, but my black smoke blocked their view of me.

  “What are you doing? Don’t fucking touch me, Void!” the fire elemental screamed.

  I clenched my jaw and kept my focus, pushing his yells out of my mind. I fel
t my Void feeding, sucking their powers into me. It was painful, and entered me like shards of sharp ice instead of smooth, sweet honey like when I fed from my paragons. My Void didn’t like it. It didn’t want to feed. But I had no choice.

  As I kept taking in their powers, I felt them growing weak, and I knew that I had to figure out how to recreate the switching that I’d done before. Closing my eyes, I focused on the endless pit of my power, trying to remember how it had felt with the shifter and the vampire from the council. When my power stumbled slightly, my eyes flew open, and I saw the black smoke flickering with the shades of blue like before.

  It was working!

  My heart leapt, and I tried to push. Tried to pull. Tried to take one in and then filter it back out. I tried and tried and fucking tried. My hands shook. Sweat rivulets ran down my temples and soaked my shirt at the back. Black dots filtered in my vision.

  But the blue smoke flickered some more, and then I felt it—felt myself failing.

  The sensation slipped away, but I scrambled for purchase on my power, trying to redirect it. I controlled my power, I reminded myself. I pushed it out once more, grabbing hold of the elemental powers again. It felt like trying to peel an old sticker off; it was stubborn and stuck, not wanting to separate. I ripped through the power with force, and pain racked through my entire body.

  Black dots appeared in my vision, blocking out the blue, misty smoke around me. With my whole body shaking, I funnelled the powers through me and fed it back into the prisoners I touched. It was like fire blazing through dry land, consuming, burning, hurting. Their screams filled my ears, joining with my own. We were a trio of pain and screams inside the blue darkness until I couldn’t hold it anymore.

  I fell the rest of the way down, breaking contact with the elementals. A vacuum of nullity grabbed me by the neck and pulled me down, forcing me into bleak unconsciousness. The last thought I had as my head hit the hard floor was this fucking sucks.

  Chapter 22

  “She’s not waking up!” a voice growled to my right. I wanted to open my eyes, but it felt like I was stuck behind a wall, clawing at brick and getting nowhere.

  “Strip her down, she needs skin-on-skin contact, now,” another voice rang out. It sounded urgent, like knives against my soul. My awareness was like a rock dropped in water, sinking with no end in sight. I tried to move just a millimeter, focusing on my pinky finger, but I couldn’t even feel that. It was like I didn’t even have a body. I knew my heavy limbs were shaking and flailing as my clothes were stripped from my body, but it was an out-of-body sensation. “Get the fuck out of here before I snap your neck, neutralizer. She needs to feed.”

  “I don’t think it’s safe in her conditi—” a door slammed shut like thunder, cutting off Banner’s voice.

  I moaned, and all the commotion in the room went stagnant. I was surprised the sound even escaped my cage of a chest.

  “Devicka?” Gritt’s voice asked.

  I could almost feel his lips against the bridge of my ear, but the Void was like a cape around my body, blocking sensations, keeping me buried in the nothingness. I’d never slipped this far before, never lost myself to the hunger. The world tilted as I moved. I hovered somewhere between feeling two warm bodies on either side of me, and questioning my sanity.

  “Her amulet is gone, but nothing is happening. Where is her fucking Void?” an echo of a voice asked. It hit me like a feverish slash of syllables.

  “She used too much power switching those elementals,” someone said.

  A hot tongue lapped at my neck. “Come on, baby,” that voice pleaded. “Start feeding.” I wanted to feed. I could feel that need building within me, but it was like my power didn’t trust me anymore. It knew what it wanted, and it definitely didn’t want those criminals the council was force-feeding me.

  The next instant, I felt teeth sink into my thigh, and venom flooded me, the first real feeling I’d sensed since sinking under.

  “What the fuck are you doing? Now is not the time to feed!” someone screamed beside me, a charming voice, warm like honey.

  I wanted to argue, to say that I wanted him to keep feeding, but all I could muster was a moan filled with pleasure. The sound escaped lips that didn’t feel like mine. The pulling sensation of blood immediately stopped, and I wanted to whimper at the loss of sensation. No. No, I want more.

  “Did you see that?” a voice asked. I loved that voice.

  “Some smoke came out of her mouth when she moaned. Do that again.”

  Teeth plunged into my plush skin again. I felt a slow, rolling pleasure wash over me. It was blunted and dull, but I focused on it, coaxing the pleasant feeling to come closer.

  “It’s working!” an excited voice clipped.

  Lips landed on mine, hot moisture breaking apart my mouth and snaking inside, the kiss granting more mobility as I responded. Once again, I found myself wanting to beg for more, to beg for it all. But there was a vast blankness separating me from my motor skills. It took a few moments of pulsing venom to fill my veins before my powers flickered like a dying candle. The venom coaxed it to life until it became a blazing, sizzling ember.

  My thighs were pressed open by two strong hands, and a growl met me at my core, vibrating me with a fever I wanted to build up. “Don’t stop,” I pleaded into the mouth still kissing mine, not sure if I said it out loud or if I was still screaming with silence.

  If they stopped, I’d slip back into oblivion, and I was terrified of that. All I had was them, and I knew, in that instant, that they were the only ones who could pull me back out of the darkness. So long as they kept making me feel, then I wouldn’t disappear.

  When a hand brushed against my breast, I felt it like a rake over a fire, and my body tried to press into the touch. “Look. She’s reacting to it,” a voice said. “Keep touching her.”

  More hands skated across my skin, and only where they touched could I feel again. “Her smoke is coming out.”

  “Her feeding always feels good for me and for her,” I heard the gruff shifter say.

  “So the Void responds to pleasure,” another replied.

  “Then let’s make her feel more.”

  Hands wrapped around my throat, holding me in place as my body jerked. A tongue flicked across my clit. A hand palmed my breast. A grunt hit my ears. Yes. More. I needed more. And they gave it to me.

  I could feel it all now. Every brush of a hand or lick of a tongue. Every hot mouth skimming over me. “It’s working.”

  I could sense that I was feeding, drawing on powers and raw sex, sensations hitting me wave after wave until finally, slowly, my eyes fully opened. I looked up and realized it was Hyde kissing me. His silver eyes met mine, and he sighed before sucking on my bottom lip and teasing the edge of my tongue. I felt needed in a way I’d never felt before. My eyes rolled back as another swipe of a skilled tongue moved up against my sex. Smoke was everywhere, and I was feeding from all four paragons, life and awareness pumping back into me.

  Hyde went to kiss my throat, and I looked down to see Quade’s tongue flicking across my pointed peak. When he saw me looking, he wrapped his mouth around my nipple as my smoke enveloped him, caressing his tanned skin. The feel of cool ice hit me with a shocking, powerful, blast. He moaned from the Void pull, his powers heightening his touch with the icy sensations on my breast. When I shivered, he smiled and blew heat against me next, thawing me with a sweltering blow of his breath.

  Fangs sunk into my thigh, and I looked down to see both Gritt and Render between my legs. The rapture was hitting me full force now. I could feel everything. Gritt was stroking my clit with his tongue as Render pulled blood from the artery in my inner thigh, flooding me with his venom. Their tongues were so close they could have touched. I almost wanted them to.

  “Fuck,” I croaked while writhing. This was the most raw, erotic, instinctual thing I’d ever experienced.

  All four paragons were working to pull at the Void, and I started to feed like a starving woman.
It was like nothing I’d ever felt before. The smoke caressed their skin, brushed along lips, dipped lower to stroke their throbbing cocks. Render sat up after sealing the wound on my thigh and lightly shoved Gritt away.

  “If I don’t get inside of her right now, I’m going to fucking burst,” he moaned before aligning his pelvis with mine, pressing against my core before looking me in the eye, wordlessly asking my permission.

  “Please,” I pleaded with a throaty gasp.

  It was all he needed. Within an instant, he was thrusting inside of me with one harsh, slicing movement. My eyes widened, and my mouth opened in a soundless whimper. He was so big I felt like I’d break in half. I winced at first, but then found a steady rhythm as he began to move inside of me, building that perfect friction.

  Out of my peripheral, I watched smoke caress Gritt’s cock, like it was my hand gripping him, stroking him up and down. Quade was kissing all of my skin, pausing to hiss as I pulled at his power with steady gulps. It looked like he was about to come. Twisting my head to the other side, I was greeted with Hyde’s cock staring right at me. He’d moved for me to taste him, and I licked my lips greedily.

  “Fuck my mouth, Hyde,” I ordered, while lifting up slightly to drag my tongue across his head, tasting the salty precum that had collected there.

  He pushed past my teeth and bumped the back of my throat with a moan while stroking my hair. “Gods, so fucking good, Devi,” Hyde grunted. The Void poured from my mouth as he pumped into me, coating his skin with teasing embraces.