The Lost and the Chosen (The Lost Sentinel, #1)

by Ivy Asher

“What’s wrong?” I ask, and my adrenaline rises in response to her sudden distress. She looks away from the newcomers and back to me. “Do you care if we leave?” I study her for a beat. It’s obvious she feels bad for asking. “No, that’s cool, are you okay?” “Yeah, I’ll explain in the car.” Mave hesitantly swims toward the shore, and I follow. Her demeanor visibly changes, she’s hardening and fortifying, but I don’t know why. Every ounce of laughter and happiness that was just in her eyes has been shuttered away, replaced by a cold ferocity.

I pause at the set of gray-blue eyes that are trained on me.

Enoch—Elder Cleary’s son

“Want to explain to me what you’re doing?” I ask evenly. “It’s a game, right, Tru? As soon as he says when, we stop,” the asshole to my left explains with a laugh.

“They know our pack is easy prey because we won’t fight back.” I look at her with confusion. “Our alpha works with the casters’ Elders Council. Two of the guys in that group are the sons of elders. If we fight back, we could jeopardize our alpha’s working relationship with the council, which would be really bad for the pack. We’ve been ordered not to engage any of them for any reason.”

“Now your turn.” “My turn to what?” “Explain what in the name of terminator happened back there?”

I love how assertive the twins are. They both exude this confidence and comfort with who they are, and they don’t hesitate to take what they want.

“I thought you said you weren’t going to avoid us anymore,” Bastien asks, his playful smile turning a little sad.

Sabin runs a hand over his face. “Vinna, shifters are more than capable of defending themselves. You should know this after seeing what they can do at the fights. Don’t get involved in their feuds.” I stare at Sabin, irritated, and wish I could take the smile I gave him earlier, back.

“So tell me about your magic,” I prompt the room in an effort to distract myself from how good Ryker feels against me. “Do you have an idea of what kind of magic you think you have?” Ryker asks with excitement in his voice.

“For most of us, calling our magic and directing it is a visual thing. We picture what we want to accomplish, and we weave that intent with the magic itself and then send it out to do what we want. All the branches have limitations and possibilities, and you learn what they are over time,” Valen explains. “Spell magic, however, works very differently than the other branches,” Knox tells me. “I have to know about the potential and the properties for anything in the world that could be used as an ingredient. I have to know how to combine those things to get what I want, and I shape the intent of the spell through words and processes, not visualization.

“So Ryker heals, and Knox spells, what do you guys have?” “I have Elemental magic,” Sabin tells me. Valen raises his hand slightly. “I have offensive magic.” “And I have defensive magic,” Bastien finishes with a wink.

He grabs on to my waist and lifts me to sit on the edge of the pool table. I squeak in surprise, and he chuckles. His eyes are filled with laughter, and his smile is devastatingly gorgeous. Ryker cups my face gently in both of his hands and leans into me. His lips are centimeters away,

Ryker=2nd kiss

No one, including Sabin, says anything. Bastien gives me a quick wink, and that’s the only acknowledgment I get from any of them about what Ryker and I were obviously doing downstairs. Their lack of reaction feels natural and complicated all at the same time.

The soft, steady touch of fingertips across the runes on the back of my thigh turns me on, and my magic starts to wake up alongside me. There must be something with these guys touching my runes, I ponder sleepily. That’d be the only thing that would explain the magical current and heat I suddenly feel building in my chest. It happens every time I’m intimate with these guys, and the only overlap is them touching or kissing my runes.

“Vinna, it’s okay, I’m trying to help you. You just need to ground your magic.” He steps closer despite my protests, and another crackle of magic blinks up my body, lighting up the darkness in my room. “You’re like a living plasma ball,” Valen comments absently, as he watches magic flicker and flash across my skin like lightning.

“Are you grounding it? Will this stop soon?” I ask, feeling a lot less panicked and a lot more turned on. “I can’t ground it. It’s not an overload of magic. It’s something else…your magic is doing something to mine,” Valen confesses, and another erotic moan escapes his lips.

His gaze traps mine, and he leans down. He waits a hair’s breadth away from me, silently asking me if what he’s doing is okay. I close the distance, and he hungrily kisses me.

Valen=3rd kiss

I prepare to explain that all of us need to talk and discuss a lot of things before any of us take that step, but he makes the need to justify myself unnecessary. “No sex, got it. Can I do other things?” His quick acquiescence makes me smile.

Searing pain pulls me from peaceful oblivion. It steals my breath, and I clench my jaw against the strangled scream that rises in my throat. I don’t panic, this brutal pain and I have met before, and I know it will stop, as quickly and mysteriously as it started.

I throw my covers off and drag my tired feet to the bathroom in search of a mirror so I can look behind my ear where I know new runes have etched themselves. I flick the light on and squeal in shock when I find Valen on the floor, leaning against the wall, grimacing in pain.

I cover my mouth with both hands trying to hold in the shocked gasp attempting to escape. What the hell, how does he have runes? Valen reaches for me, confused by my reaction. Has he not seen them? Fuck, is he going to be mad?

Sabin blocks Valen from moving past him to get to me. He turns to say something to Valen, and I see black runes marring the skin behind the back of his ear. Sabin has matching symbols on his fingers, and they’re the same symbols on me, on Valen. I look to the other guys…they all have them. I run a shaky finger over the skin behind my ear, no doubt where I’ll find my own matching set of ebony runes.

I didn’t say that out loud. My eyes widen in shock, and their looks mirror mine.

“I’m sorry,” I choke out as guilt strangles me. Sabin doesn’t want a relationship with me. He’s made it clear he doesn’t want any of them to have a relationship with me, and now I’ve somehow marked them. Worse, I’ve marked him. I’ve forced some kind of a connection he doesn’t want. Despair bubbles up inside of me.

Alright, now that my emotional breakdown is on pause, it’s time to sort out what the hell we do now. It’s reassuring to know that they don’t seem to think this is a bad thing. They’re definitely taking it better than I did when my runes showed up. I was completely panicked and terrified in the beginning. It took some time, but now I love them. Everything that they do, everything that I am because of them, I can’t imagine a me without the runes.

“Obviously we need to talk about the runes, but I also think we need to talk about what’s happening between all of us.”

“I think we just found out what these runes do,” Sabin announces, gesturing to the marks between his pecs. I look at him curiously. “I can feel you, Vinna. I think we all just felt what you were feeling.” Sabin looks around for confirmation, and the other boys agree.

“I know this is new, but I think it’s safe to say that none of us have ever felt the way that we feel about you. That’s a little scary, but it’s also incredibly exciting, and just like Valen said, it feels right for all of us,” Ryker adds.

“I mean, we’re what...dating...a couple? No, that wouldn’t be right, we’d be a sextuple.” I look at each of them, trying to fight some of the nerves I’m feeling. “There are five of you and one of me, which is a great start to a romance novel or a wet dream, but in reality, it’s all so much more complicated than that.” I fidget in my chair. “Relationships between two people can be hard, so how the hell does it work with six of us?”

“Compeer?” I ask. “That’s what we call each other. You’d be our mate, and we’d be each other’s compeers,” Knox clarifies.

We’ve all grown up around this, but none of us have actually been in a relationship like this before. We’re probably not going to get things perfect right from the start. Like Bastien said, we have to be straight up and quick to explain what we need and want from each other, and eventually we’ll figure out what works best for us.”

all of our runes start to glow a deep orange. The guys all look at their hands and chests and then at each other, surprise and questions are written all over their faces. My magic starts to burn inside me, demanding my immediate attention and action. I’m off the chair in a flash as I follow the warning of my instincts. “They’re trying to get in,” I whisper.

“We’ll go get the paladin, they’ll know what to do,” he tells me, at the same time someone else asks, “Who’s trying to get in?”

I realize then that the magic I fed into the barrier the first time I crossed it with Lachlan and his coven, not only strengthened it but connected me to it. I’m not the magical version of duct tape, I grumble to my magic. But apparently, it doesn’t agree. I can feel each move against the protective barrier as if it were against my body directly.

Magic swells up inside me in response, and a fierce possessiveness overcomes me as I think about anything breaking through and hurting what’s mine. A feral growl rumbles in my chest, and I bellow a challenging roar at anything that would fuck with me. Whoa, where the hell did that come from?

It’s been a couple of days since I magically marked the guys and we had an attack on the barrier that surrounds the paladin’s home. They’ve deduced that it was a group of ten to fifteen somethings that attempted to break in, but no one seems to be able to agree on what those somethings might have been.

We haven’t found one matching rune in all of Lachlan’s sources. There are zero mentions of any casters having runes on their bodies, and a whole lot of nada when it comes to information about the connection the guys and I now have. My magic just keeps upping the ante on my freak factor, and I feel like all of the paladin are watching me, waiting for the next crazy thing my magic is going to do. The itch of eyes on me is constant, and it’s making me grouchy.

It looks like we’ve got a new case coming in. Some unusual lamia activity that needs to be looked into.” “Is that connected to what happened here the other night?” I ask. “Doubt it.” He’s already walking away before I can ask him more about it, but a tingle of suspicion crawls up my spine.

“He started it, Captain,” I declare, and then salute him. Sabin rolls his eyes. “I’m not here as acting hall monitor.” He rubs his hand over the nape of his neck. “I actually wanted to ask if you’d hang with me for a bit?” he offers cryptically.

“Aren’t you quite the handsome devil?” I duck a peek to confirm that handsome is an appropriate descriptor, and he lets out a snort of agreement. I chuckle and start to run my fingers up and down both sides of his neck. He brings his head down level with my chest and leans into me. “Oh, you like that do you, some good scratches.” The clop of hooves fills the air, and Sabin reappears outside the door, leading another horse. “It’s good to know your spell affects males of all species and not just casters,” Sabin teases me, gesturing to the horse cuddles I’m currently receiving. I wag my brows. “Careful, Captain, or you might be next.”

Sabin shrugs. “Some people save up for a car or something like that, but I saved up for these guys. I bought Darcy first when I was twenty, and then Bennet a year later. I’ve always loved animals in general but especially horses, and I always knew I wanted a pair.”

“Well, Vinna Aylin, I’m twenty-six, same as the other guys, but you know that already. I’m a Paladin Conscript, but you know that, too.” He smiles at me cheekily. “What you may not know is that I’ll be the first in my family line to become a paladin.”

How do your parents feel about that?” “They were surprised at first, but they’ve always been supportive. I think they were more shocked when my reading showed that I had strong Elemental magic instead of Spell magic like they assumed I would have.”

“I thought covens were made up of casters with different magic, for balance or something like that?” “No, only paladin covens are built that way. Outside of the paladin, casters can build covens however they want to. Covens like my family’s aren’t rare at all.”

“If your coven isn’t paladin, what do they do?” I ask. I’ve only really been exposed to ways of the paladin so far. I’ve visited in town. I haven’t given much thought to the various types of magic that other people have and what they might do with that magic.

“When it comes to Spell magic, I’d compare it to cooking. Some nons can cook, some can’t, and then you have your master chefs. The ones who are so talented and innovative that people will pay anything to consume their creations. Spell magic is like that.”

“So what about you? What was non-life like? What did you want to be when you grew up?” Sabin asks me. Darcy slows down to a walk, and I pat the side of his neck appreciatively. “It probably sounds weird, but I never really thought about it when I was younger. I was quiet and skittish, and honestly just trying to stay out of Beth’s path as much as possible. We moved around a lot, so I never really got my feet underneath me. “I had Laiken until she learned that things went better for her with Beth when she stayed away from me. That was pretty much how it went until Beth kicked me out. I met Talon a couple of weeks later, and then everything changed for me.” “How’d you meet?”

We follow a narrow path through the trees, riding side-by-side, and it feels intimate and secluded. Sabin seems so completely in his element out here. It’s surprising to see how relaxed and happy he is.

I giggle, and it’s ten percent hysterical and ninety percent amused excitement. Next thing I know, Sabin’s mouth is on mine. His lips slowly and hesitantly caress my own, and he nips and nibbles, coaxing me to respond

Sabin is kiss 4

“I wasn’t planning on kissing you. I just wanted to talk to you, to get to know you better. That was my only goal with all of this.” He gestures to the horses. “But I was just so fucking relieved you were okay. Then you were smiling and laughing and just so damn beautiful. I just didn’t want to stop myself anymore. I didn’t want to hold back. I’m sorry.”