“Nikolai drove him off,” Aria stated flatly. “He said Demeti escaped through a gate.”
Cara’s brows rose almost to her hairline. “Nikolai? That’s his name? Hedrove him off?” The woman’s mouth pulled straight, and she shook her head. “That explains some of what I saw. And the damage.”
Damage? Lucas stared at her, but Aria went rigid beside him and responded. “Not all of that damage was from Nikolai.”
“What damage?” Lucas asked. “I thought he just drove off Demeti and killed some of his Dires.”
The bright-blue eyes flashed between them before Cara answered. “The forest around the building was decimated for a considerable distance in each direction.”
“Decimated? Like, burned?” Lucas struggled to understand.
Cara shook her head. “The energy was sucked from every living thing in that area.”
Ice traveled down Lucas’s spine. He barely heard Aria’s automatic protest.
“That wasn’t Nikolai’s fault. He said part of it was Demeti.”
Lucas’s stomach twisted into a knot, but he kept his focus on the Watcher. “What is Nikolai, exactly? Demeti went after him, saying he was something called a Bellati. But I don’t think he was expecting what he found.”
Cara hesitated, her lips tightening before answering. “My species, the Liberi, are able to not only sense life energy, but manipulate it. But while our females heal, the males evolved for a different purpose. The name Bellati means warrior.”
She raised a hand to one of her braids, and the crystals tinkled as she pushed it back over her shoulder. “At one time, the Bellatis traveled the realms, protecting the life balance from those who would exploit it.” She sighed. “The temperament of a Bellati requires careful handling and training. After a major incident where they lost control, the decision was made to confine them to our home realm.”
The word “confine” twisted Lucas’s stomach into a knot. “So Nikolai is an escaped Bellati?” he pressed. “But he said he was born in the human realm.”
For a moment, he thought Cara wouldn’t answer. But then she said, “His mother went there while she was pregnant. We’d assumed her unborn infant had died with her, but we were wrong.”
That reply only raised more questions, but Lucas left it for now. “So you want to take Nikolai back to your home realm?”
Cara nodded. “He needs to be placed where he can do no harm.”
Beside him, Aria stirred. “He only did what he had to do to save us.”
The Watcher measured Aria with her steady gaze. “Nikolai is unstructured and untrained. He is a very powerful young Liberi. And he wields extremely dangerous capabilities.” Her fingers interlocked on the table. “You two traveled with him. He interceded to save you from Demeti. I need you to speak to him and convince him that the best thing would be to come to us. We can take him back home and see that he receives the training he requires.”
“You want to confine him like you do the others,” Aria accused, her amber eyes glowing.
The tips of Cara’s fingers turned white. “There may be others, like this Demeti, who would like to exploit the power Nikolai represents. And our Elders believe he can do too much damage if loose in the realms.”
As Lucas listened, his mind raced. Why was Cara here, talking to them, instead of chasing Nikolai down out in the forest with the others? If the Watchers were as powerful as he’d been told, this made little sense. His nimble brain added up the facts and spat out an answer.
“You can’t stop him, can you?”
The blue eyes flared so brightly he blinked.
Then she sighed. “No,” she said. “We can’t.”
* * *
Aria stared at Cara, and her gut twisted into a knot.
“It is not just a matter of who is stronger,” the Watcher continued. “If we engage in a battle with Nikolai, he could drain this entire realm dry, and everything would die.”
Everything would die.Each word was like a blow. Did Nikolai really have that much power? She thought back to what she’d witnessed.
The answer screamed at her.Yes. He did.
From that perspective, Cara’s strategy made sense. But the thought of Nikolai being taken away—“Once you give him the training he needs, would he be free?”
