Darkness lurks beneath the surface of society, something that has been growing and devouring the innocent for decades. Luna Aurion stumbles on a human farm under the streets of a supposedly peaceful human city, but before she can report back, she is...
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It had been nearly two weeks since they'd started looking for her aunt Luna, and though they'd gotten a few leads and followed them, ultimately it had all been fruitless. The best information they had gotten was about the berries Damien had found near the door, and they were isolating where they grew. That information was supposed to be encouraging, but instead it just damped Meredith's mood. Plants grew everywhere, and they were going to need more to save Luna.
Unlike Damien who could just go without sleep when he wanted to work really hard, Meredith was human. She had to take breaks from digging through obscure evidence in Paul's caves and raging at the men who'd taken her aunt. Break, though, she'd learned, was a subjective word. The Shades didn't take breaks, and as Meredith Shade–even if she hadn't fully decided on the name–her down time was split between her mate nearly killing her in training and then fucking her just as mercilessly every dawn and dusk. Neither of those things she complained much about.
Right now, it was training.
Mer circled Rush out in the flat field behind his castle, the dusk light edging everything with a golden shimmer. This was when both she and the vampires were at her prime. It wasn't real enough if it didn't bruise and ache for a few days, and so they fought at their best. Rush was the sort of brutal that he wouldn't even let one of the mages heal her until she fully felt what it was like to lose, to have a vampire win. She couldn't say she liked it, but she also didn't hate it. Everything had consequences, and they both needed to grow stronger. With Rush now the leader of the Shades and her as his mate with just as much power to throw around, they had to rise together.
Or they would fall.
The first move was his, and he slid his fingers across a small spell to snatch the light. Just like that, her vision blackened to a void, and she knew she had seconds to counter or he'd slam her into the dirt again. Drawing on her light magic, she rubbed her hands together and cast them out before her to release spores. It was a spell she'd hybridized from a mix of Copse and Aurion spells. Most spells didn't fully utilize her power unless she modified them and this was one of her secret weapons she'd been hiding from Rush. If he knew all her spells, the fights weren't fair, so they spent time apart now as much as together to hone themselves.
The spores pushed back his darkness, but he was no longer in the space she'd left him. She spun around to face his magic, and he jumped back, not having expected her to follow his movements. A smirk climbed her lips as she brandished her blades, one of darkness, one of light.
"Can't sneak up on me, vampire," Mer whispered as she rubbed her blades together. The screech of magic as the blades ground together had Rush covering his ears, and she ran her hand over the darkness to cloak her within Rush's magic. He wasn't the only one who could use his dark field.
Of course, he also had super hearing.
Snakes burst at her feet, and she yelped and ran her light blade around her legs to behead them. They just had to be snakes. Like kittens hadn't been feasible? A puppy? Wolves? Anything but them. Well maybe not spiders. Snakes and spiders gave her the heebie-jeebies. It was too much movement and sound, and she dropped to the ground and rolled as Rush roared above her and came crashing down with an earth-shattering punch into the dirt. Before she could even stand, he was over her with his fangs bared, and it was now or never on those spores.
