Void(92)

Grumbling, I stepped back into the room, only to see feathers floating in the air from the torn mattress and pillows. The bed was now lacking its four posters, the chandelier had shattered on the floor, and the vampire and lion were still going at it.

“Knock knock!” I heard from the other side of the bedroom door. Hyde breezed inside the room, not even batting a silver eye at the scene in front of him. He was holding coffee in one hand and a brown sack in the other. When he spotted me over by the closet, he walked over, stepping over pieces of plaster after Render was thrown into the wall. “Brought you breakfast, sweetie,” Hyde sung while handing everything over to me. I wanted to take a moment to sink into his thoughtfulness, but I didn’t get to enjoy the nice gesture, because the fighting paragons had me distracted.

When Gritt tried to swipe his giant paw at Render, he hit the armoire instead, making the top half of it splinter off and go flying in our direction. I screamed and ducked, but Hyde caught the large chunk of wood before it could hit me in the face. He set it on the ground and sat down on the velvet cushion to watch the guys fighting like this was the best entertainment he’d had in weeks.

I looked down at him incredulously as he laced his fingers behind his head and rested against the wall, one ankle crossed over the other and a smile on his face.

“What are you doing? Help me stop them!”

He looked up at me. “Why would I do that? You might as well get used to this. Shifters are territorial as fuck.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “This is not my life.”

“What’s going on?”

I looked up to see Quade saunter in next, looking cool and collected in khaki slacks and a gray-blue shirt. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, but the stubble looked damn good on him. When Render flashed over to slam Gritt against the wall where Quade was standing, the elemental threw up his hand, making a massive wall of ice appear in front of him. The fighting supers crashed into it, but it didn’t slow them down at all. They were up and across the room, fighting again in a second. I couldn’t even see Render move, he kept flashing so fast. Gritt suddenly shifted again, changing from his lion animal to a Peregrine Falcon. His bird started dive bombing the vampire with ridiculously impossible speeds. At least now I knew what animal number two was.

Quade strolled over to Hyde and me, snapping his fingers to make a chair of plushy snow appear beside where Hyde was sitting. He yanked a rug over the snow pile and then sat down, spreading his legs out in front of him.

I blinked down at them. “Are you guys for real right now?”

Quade looked at me nonplussed. “What?”

Huffing out a sigh, I turned my attention back to the shifter and vampire who were successfully destroying the bedroom. “Stop fighting right now!” I screeched. I hated when they fought. It was like I was right back in the cafeteria, and it made me uneasy. When they fought, anxiety churned inside of me, making me buckle with nervous panic.

The knowledge that they could get hurt was almost paralyzing to me. I had to stop them, but they weren’t listening. No one ever fucking listened to me. I was feared, hated, ignored. No one ever asked if I wanted to be a Void. No one ever asked if I’d meant to take away my mother’s powers. No one asked if I wanted to be exiled, or if I wanted to be the council’s tool. No one asked if I wanted to come to this academy and be mocked and despised by my peers. And fate didn’t fucking ask if I wanted to be mated to paragon assholes who hadn’t even wanted me around in the beginning.

I felt something bubbling up within me. Anger. Uncertainty. Fear. Panic. I was so godsdamned sick of my life being decided for me. Of everyone acting around me without any care or thought about how I felt. They were my mates, and they weren’t hearing me. And every time they took a swipe at each other, it was like they were landing the blows on me.

The Void became a tangle of turmoil inside of me. Smoke started to pour from my mouth. Enough was enough. The darker parts of my mind whispered in a seductive tone. Take control. Take it now. Make them stop.

Uncontrollable, my power shot out of me, my smoke filling the room entirely and wrapping around all four paragons. Some people saw red when they got out of control. Me? I saw black. Black smoke clouded my vision, and all I could think was make them stop, make them stop, make them stop.

“Shit!” Quade yelled as my smoke surrounded the room.

Gritt and Render immediately stopped fighting to turn and look at me and the mass of stormy power I’d unleashed. I felt every ounce of power bleeding from me, and it wasn’t until Gritt shifted back into his human form that I tried to painstakingly tug the Void back.

“Can I have my amulet, please?” I asked through clenched teeth, beads of sweat rolling down my skin.

Hyde hurriedly stood up and fished it out of his pocket before tossing it to me. My fingers shook with the barely contained rage bubbling from within as I clasped it firmly around my neck. Something felt off. The Void had never raged this hard, had never fought me with such heat and destruction, had never taken over like that so quickly. My memories of last night flickered through my mind. It was like the Void had sucked me inside of it. My body wasn’t mine anymore, and it had something to do with these paragon bonds.

“Why were you fighting?” Quade asked while brushing snow, feathers, and splintered wood from his pants. He was apparently taking on the role of mediator now, and I was more than willing to let him. I didn’t trust myself not to lash out again.