The final exercise Raphael called a full resonance.
"Both of us," he explained. "You project, I amplify. Our bloodline connection allows it....the sa power running through both of us, doubled. This is how your mother and grandfather used to train."
He positioned himself across from her in the center of the cleared floor, the brothers pushed back along the walls. "When I amplify your projection, the output will be....significant. Prepare for that. The estate will feel it."
"What should I project?" Eve asked.
Raphael smiled....an expression she was learning to love because it was her father’s smile, her family’s smile. "Project exactly what you feel in this mont. Don’t choose. Don’t perform. Just feel, and let it out."
Eve looked at him....her uncle, her teacher, her last blood family....and let herself feel.
She loved him. She hadn’t said it yet, hadn’t had the chance or the right mont or the courage. But the love was there....had been building since the mont she’d run across the sitting room and crashed into him, since she’d read her parents’ journal with tears streaming down her face, since he’d placed his hands on Margaret’s chest and given her daughter more ti.
She loved this complicated, ancient, impossible man who had given up decades of his life to a shadow existence for her sake.
She let that love expand.
And Raphael’s hands ca up, his own power rising to et hers, and the amplification hit like.....
Like detonation.
The wave of emotion....love, specifically, in its purest and most overwhelming form.....expanded from the center of the training room in a pulse that was visible. Actually, physically visible: a ring of light, green and gold combined, her power and his bloodline resonance woven together into sothing that was entirely new and entirely ancient at the sa ti.
It moved through the walls.
Through the estate.
Into the grounds, through the wards, past the periter.
In the kitchen, three pack mbers stopped mid-conversation and looked at each other with expressions of confused, sudden warmth. In the gardens, two wolves on patrol halted simultaneously, their shifted forms lifting their heads like they were scenting sothing on the air that made their hearts ache in the best possible way. In the guest wing, Maya sat up from her rest and pressed her hand to her chest, tears tracking down her face for reasons she couldn’t na.
In the east wing, Elena set down the book she’d been reading and sat very still for a mont, her eyes bright.
In Damian’s office, where he’d retreated montarily to take a call, the phone fell from Damian’s hand. He looked at the wall as if he could see through it to the training room, his expression stripped of every defense.
Back in the training room, the light faded slowly, like a tide going out.
Eve beca aware gradually that she was on her knees.
She didn’t rember going to her knees.....her legs had simply given way at so point during the wave, and she was kneeling on the training room floor with her hands pressed flat against it, breathing like she’d just surfaced from deep water.
Raphael crouched in front of her, both hands on her shoulders, steady and grounding. His own breathing was slightly uneven....she’d taken sothing from him in the amplification, drawn on his reserves more than he’d perhaps anticipated.
"Evangeline," he said. "Look at ."
She looked at him. His amber eyes were brilliant, lit from within with sothing that was equal parts pride and sothing that looked very much like the mirror of what she’d just projected.
"That," he said quietly, "was extraordinary."
Eve laughed....a breathless, exhausted, exhilarated sound that bounced off the training room walls. "I can’t stand up."
"That’s acceptable," Raphael said. "Give it a mont."
From the observation area, all three brothers were on their feet. Damian had co back.....must have felt the wave from wherever he’d been and returned....and all three of them were watching Eve with expressions that she could feel through the mate bond: profound, overwhelming love reflecting back at her like mirrors.
She’d projected love and she’d hit every target in range.
Including them.
"The entire estate felt that," Damon said, his voice rougher than usual.
"Yes," Raphael confird, helping Eve to her feet as her legs found their reliability again. "That was the point."
"She projected to that range with no targeting?" Silas asked, moving toward Eve with his hands already reaching to steady her.
"She projected to that range with her my amplifying," Raphael corrected. "Without amplification, her natural range is approximately a quarter of that. Which is still...." He looked at Eve with clear pride. ".....considerably beyond what should be possible at her stage of developnt."
Eve leaned into Silas’s steadying presence, feeling the mate bond settle warmly around her like a second skin. Her body was wrung out....the magical equivalent of sprinting a full marathon with no training.....but underneath the exhaustion was sothing that felt like expansion. Like she was larger, sohow, than she’d been this morning.
"I’m getting stronger," she said, and it wasn’t quite a question.
"Exponentially," Raphael confird. He looked genuinely awed, despite his best efforts at professional composure. "Your mother’s power, your father’s discipline, twenty years of unconscious developnt....it’s all compounding. Every session unlocks more of what was already there."
He looked at her with steady, honest eyes. "At this rate, Evangeline, by the ti the Court arrives....." He paused. "They are not going to know what to do with you."
Eve stood on steadied legs in the center of the training room, her mates around her, her uncle watching her with pride, her power settling back into her like the sea settling after a storm.
She was tired. She was wrung out. She could have slept for a week.
But underneath all of it, bright and certain as anything she’d ever felt:
She was ready.
Or she was going to be.
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