Panic drove me backward.

The back of my head hit the glass hard before I dropped low, using my lack of height to swiftly rotate away from the spot. Scrambling, I managed to avoid the initial swing of the shears—or so I thought.

Pain raked hot over my left shoulder blade as my feet were abruptly knocked out from underneath me. I found myself belly down on the greenhouse floor, eating a face full of dirt with the air knocked from my lungs.

"My, my." A bare foot came down on my back to squash my shaky attempt to stand. "How very easy you are to cut," the she-devvi crooned.

Her long, uneven hair brushed my shoulders when she bent over me, her breath visibly sinking like vapor coming off dry ice to linger among the crushed flowers. Her heel twisted to widen the wound. I could feel the warmth of blood. I let out a whimper when she eased up and the bleeding gap pulsed.

"Hush, little rabbit. It won't hurt for much longer," Bettihemae soothed, bending close. "I promise." Her mouth lowered to where the red stained my back, her breath cold. "Though it'll hurt a hell of a lot more before it stops."

Oh my god! Her saliva burns! My scream came out strangled when her tongue met with my back, licking the wound.

"Mmm, tastes like Pixy Stix," she said through my scream. "The salt enzyme in my saliva that heals isn't as soothing as a freshwater's, is it? Though I imagine Alexander was a gentleman the evening he took care of you. Probably healed your injuries with swabs and injections when he could have simply licked your wounds away."

Her long fingers tugged on the silk scarf.

"Although the other has gotten a taste of you already. Hasn't he?" The knot loosened with a rough tug, and she chuckled when the material fell away, exposing the pink marks. "I'll have to place my bet on him being the one that fucks you first."

With a sudden blur of color and air, I was on top of Bettihemae, my teeth bared and a hand about her throat as I pushed her to the ground. I couldn't remember the moment I moved, nor did I know where the tremendous strength pulsing iron-hot through my limbs had come from, but it made no difference. I was pissed. I didn't care if she was having "hormonal issues." The foul language was just plain rude.

She had no right to talk to me like that. Especially when I'd never done anything to deserve it. Well, except maybe bring disgrace upon her head, however inadvertently. It was hardly my fault that her betrothed's interest had turned toward me, a female of questionable blood, making him choose to ignore her, the full blood.

I let out a gasp when the room blurred again, and I was no longer kneeling over Bettihemae. Rather, we were now on the other side of the greenhouse, pressed to the wall beside the portico entrance. The glass here was a mirrored wall of black. I was bleeding from a new spot, the soft area between my collarbone and my throat, clawed where she'd grabbed on to me.

"Don't even think you can best me, half-breed." She spat down from her grander height, a hand on my chest pinning me to the glass. The building let out a low groan and the glass wall to our right shook. My gaze focused on the portico, my eyes somehow still transformed this entire time.

Oh so not good! I despaired as yellow fog oozed inside. Sheeshoe! My cloak was on the other side, leaving my aura exposed.

"My goodness! How brightly your aura blazes whenever you are in pain," Bettihemae cooed. She turned to watch the yellow fog while it gathered, taking on a bulky, hazy shape.

And I was glowing.

Shocked, I blinked away from the slowly forming Sheeshoe to stare down at myself with my spectral sight. The bright haze coming from my skin was making it hard to see. My heart was hammering so hard that my chest ached. Was it possible to get so worked up that my aura would become visible to me? No. I remembered. A devvi wasn't supposed to be able to see their own aura. Micah said as much during my sight lesson.

Bettihemae's attention returned to me after a prolonged study of Sheeshoe. "It is a good thing for you my sweet Sheeshoe has already eaten."

The smoky animal rose to what seemed to be its tallest stature on all fours, almost half the height of the glass Pantheon. Like a giant bear. She could tell by its appearance that it had fed? I twisted in her grip, but my surge of inhuman strength was gone. I was back to plain, weak me.

"You know, on second thought, you are incredibly soft," she noted, scrutinizing the marks on my neck from Micah's touch. "Too delicate. I am going to have to withdraw my previous prediction. With skin as tender as rose petals, it is going to be awfully hard for you to be mated with a lightning devvi. Alex will win by default."

"Go to hell," I hissed, my ire emboldening me since the scissors seemed to be missing, though the she-devvi herself wasn't any less volatile. The fresh blood trailing down my shoulder was from being nicked by her sharp-as-razors fingernails when she'd pushed me up against the glass wall.

"Hell is for humans!" She swept fingertips through the red seeping down my front and flicked her wrist to send blood droplets flying through the ghostly bear shape of Sheeshoe, aggravating it even more. "Heaven is for humans as well."

I let out a yelp when she grabbed my arm to whirl me away from the glass. Sheeshoe reared up as the force of her thrust sent me flying straight for the creature.

"You won't even belong anywhere after you die, Aurora!"

A startled sound rose from the umbra, echoing through the greenhouse, and in the next instant I was face down on the ground, both arms wrapped around myself as I shook. Sheeshoe had struck me, batting me aside with a great paw when Bettihemae threw me into it.

Though physically, I didn't think anything was broken, my core vibrated with the power that had been left by the strike, making me dizzy. I eased myself upright and blinked down in surprise when my silk shirt didn't follow. There was a shower of powdery residue on the ground. The camisole had disintegrated?

I sucked in a breath and then another, reaching for the steel beam to my right as I rose on unsteady legs. My shorts were becoming incredibly loose. My underwear seemed to be missing as well. And my shoes...? I managed to angle a shaky leg so I could see the bottom of a foot. The soles were gone. Crumbled away to leave my feet exposed. Ah, poor new shoes. Ruined.

Then I remembered, Sheeshoe was a corrosive umbra. And in the act of striking me, I had been filled with the ability to erode. Similar to how I could fill myself with a controlled pull of electricity from Micah. Although nothing about this was under my control.

My center silently rang with the animal's power to break down matter, and as long as my body held onto it, whatever I was touching was affected—ah crap!

I jerked my hand away from the steel beam when the smell of hot metal rose and its smooth surface became rough under my palm. I wrapped an arm across my breasts when the back of my bra suddenly snapped apart. Dizziness increasing, I toppled over into the lilies, their white heads swaying a foot above me as I gasped for air and stared at the rusted handprint I'd left on the beam.

I don't want to be like this! The flowers became a blur of white intermingled with the glow of my aura as I broke out into heavy sobs. The full-blood female laughed as the packed earth crumbled from my falling tears.

I rolled over in the flowers and let out another gasping sob. I was pretty much naked by now, holding little scraps of disintegrating fabric to my body as I wept and called out for my mom. I wanted my dead mother. Despite the newfound knowledge that I was in my twenties, I was reduced to the whimpered mumblings of an eight-year-old: Mom would make everything better, make the bad stuff go away.

The sound of glass shattering made me flinch. With a heated snarl and a flash of ash mane, Bettihemae's incessant laughter came to an abrupt halt. It must be after eleven o'clock. I caught another glimpse of Micah, his body crackling with electricity, alight with complete outrage. His fury transformed him, his usual gentle wildness taking on a lethal edge.

I gazed upon the deadly wrath of my sky lion and saw it made him all the more beautiful to me. All the more desirable. The majesty in a merciless storm—my merciless storm. A stirring between my two souls, like feathers rubbing against feathers, had my eyes closing, and I realized, despite the situation we were in, that I desired to take him as a lover. I did not make this decision consciously, rather, one of the souls in me had decided it wanted to take the storm as its mate.

Letting out an unearthly roar, my would-be lover wielded a bronze staff as he went after the she-devvi, its one end topped with a ball of lightning, twisting and bright. Concern bubbled up when another glass pane shattered.

I sat up and brushed flowers aside to yell, begging,"Micah! Don't kill her!"