Awakened

take care of the grass barrier. Dragon, exact your revenge on the Raven Mocker. And you, Kalona, you I order to be banished from my side as you were before. Nothing has changed between us.” As she spoke, Stevie Rae watched her pull from the shadows all around them, and from her own body, the slithering black tentacles that seemed to always be near her now.
    Stevie Rae readied herself. It was going to be awful, but she was dang sure not backing down, and that meant she was gonna have to stand up to Darkness again.
    But just as she felt the first tug of pain and chill, and the drain Darkness caused within the earth, the winged immortal raised one hand slightly, and said, “Halt! I’ve long allied with Darkness. Obey my command. This is not your battle. Begone !”
    “No!” Neferet shrieked as the sticky threads, invisible to almost everyone present, began to slither away to be reabsorbed into the shadows from whence they came. Neferet turned on Kalona. “Foolish creature! What are you doing? I ordered you to leave. You must obey my command! I am High Priestess here!”
    “I am not under your control! Nor have I ever been.” Kalona’s smile was victorious and he looked so magnificent for a moment Stevie Rae’s breath caught at the sight of him.
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Neferet recovered quickly. “It is I who was under your control.”
    Kalona glanced around the school grounds, taking in the wide-eyed fledglings and the vampyres who were either armed against him or frozen somewhere between their desire to run from him and their desire to adore him. “Ah, children of Nyx, like me, many of you have stopped listening to your Goddess. When will you learn?”
    Then the winged immortal looked to his right. Rephaim was standing there, silently watching his father.
    “It is true you have Imprinted with the Red One?”
    “Yes, Father. It is.”
    “And you saved her life? More than once?”
    “As she has saved mine in turn, more than once. It was she who truly healed me from the fall. It was she who filled the terrible wound Darkness ripped within me later, after I faced the white bull for her.” Rephaim’s eyes found Stevie Rae’s. “As payment for freeing her from Darkness, she touched me with the power of Light she wields, that of the earth.”
    “I didn’t do that as payment. I did that because I couldn’t stand to see you hurtin’,” said Stevie Rae.
    Slowly, as if it were difficult for him, Kalona lifted his hand and rested it on his son’s shoulder. “You know she can never love you as a woman loves a man? You will forever desire something she cannot, will not, give you.”
    “Father, what she gives me is more than I have ever known before.”
    Stevie Rae saw pain twist Kalona’s face, if only for an instant. “I have given you love as my son, my favorite son,” he said so softly she had to strain to hear him.
    Rephaim hesitated and when he answered his father, Stevie Rae could hear the raw honesty in his voice, and the heartache the admission cost him. “Perhaps in another world, another life, that might have been true. In this one you gave me power and discipline and anger, but you did not give me love. Never love.”
    Kalona’s eyes flashed, but Stevie Rae thought she saw more pain than anger within their amber depths. “Then in this world, in this life, I shall give you one more thing: choice. Choose, Rephaim. Choose between the father you have served and followed faithfully for eons and the power that service has afforded you, and the love of this vampyre High Priestess, who will never be completely yours because she will always, always be horrified by the monster within you.”
    Rephaim’s eyes found hers. She saw the question in them and answered it before he could ask it aloud.
    “I don’t see a monster when I look at you—not outside, not inside. So I’m not horrified by you. I love you, Rephaim.”
    Rephaim closed his eyes for a moment, and she felt a quiver of unease. He was good—Stevie Rae believed that, but to choose her over his father would change the course of his life forever. He was part immortal, and forever could be a literal thing for him. Maybe he couldn’t—maybe he wouldn’t—maybe he—
    “Father—” Stevie Rae opened her eyes the second she heard Rephaim’s voice. He was speaking to Kalona, but he was still looking at her. “I choose Stevie Rae, and the path of the Goddess.”
    Her gaze darted to Kalona in time to see the