She stared into my eyes, her green tinged with blue today, which she’d definitely inherited from Lienda. Our mother had eyes the color of the ocean, shifting and changing. “I’m not afraid, Jess. I don’t want to be half a supernatural anymore, I want to be everything that I was born to be.”

I gave her a nod, before stepping back and letting the sorcerer capture her full attention again. I wasn’t going to argue. Besides, hopefully in the next few days when the king either rose or didn’t, the Four would have no more reason to hunt dragon marked. The whole point was to prevent the rise of the king.

Although … since the marked were supposed to be his personal army, probably the Four would never stop hunting us. Oh well, we’d just have to kill them. It was on my to-do list anyway.

Louis placed both hands on Mischa’s chest, over her heart, the same as he’d done to cloak my energy back in Stratford.

“You’re power is still very much locked away,” he said as he lifted one hand. He seemed to be pulling something, lowering and raising that free hand, almost like he was unthreading energy which was wrapped around Mischa. “It’s different than Jessa’s. Even when you were babies I felt the difference, but it’s still very strong.”

I was worried about Mischa, my insides crawling at the thought of something going wrong for her. To distract myself, while Louis did his sorcerer thing, I dug a little deeper into what he’d just noted.

“Have you ever felt the energy of other marked?” I had been wondering if mine or Mischa’s power was like the others.

“Only my brother’s, and I think the mystics are different again.”

Maximus turned his head as if he scented something. I focused on the direction he was facing and straight away I was hit with vampire. Cardia, his female was moving toward us. Maximus’ eyes started to glow, her presence was awakening him. He paused for a second to wink at me, then he marched away. No male worthy of the title of mate would make his female come all the way to him, he was going to meet her halfway. He disappeared behind a few buildings, but within moments was back, vampiress tucked snugly under his arm. He looked happy, relaxed; his mate had a calming effect on the beast inside.

“Do you look that blissed-out around me?” I said, wiggling my eyebrows at Braxton.

He reached out and traced a single fingertip from the top of my cheekbone all the way down to rest against my bottom lip.