The Alpha's Temptation

Tania thought that since it was just a stem, she would be able to snap it, but she was surprised when she touched the black tendril. It vibrated with strange power and shot up her leg. She could feel its vibrations right up to her chest. Something inside her swirled with disgust.

"Tania!" Eltanin shouted as he tried to yank the weed from her leg, but the more he tried, the more the tendril tightened around her leg, digging into her flesh. Pain surged through her leg rapidly. She found herself rooted to the spot and she looked angrily at the weed. On the inside she knew that if she didn't get out of the weed soon, she was going to be trapped in it forever. Glenn came forward and he too tried to yank the weed but the stem thickened, hissing as it crawled towards her thighs.

"Leave it," she ordered. "The more you will try to pull it out, the more it is going to grow."

"It will entwine all around you!" Eltanin rasped, panicky as hell and berating himself for not being able to protect her. Perhaps he should have lifted her and walked inside the ruins.

Tania wanted to weed to break apart. "Please leave it. I am thinking of a spell for it."

"But Tania—"

"Trust me," she clenched her jaw. "Step away."

Reluctantly, Eltanin and Glenn stepped away from her. The weed hissed, turning its head towards them and then slowed down. Tania gave it a sharp glare and chanted, "Trenca aras!"

There was a moment of inactivity when the black tendril stopped growing abruptly as if confused. All at once with a low keening noise, the stem dislodged itself and fell limp on her feet. Tania kicked it away and the weed shrank, withering and burning. She exhaled heavily and then looked triumphantly at the two men who were standing there looking at her with awe. Her lips curled up because she was actually impressed by herself. "Give me your hands," she said.

Eltanin growled when Glenn too extended his hand. Glenn immediately retreated his hand. Tania stopped an urge to roll her eyes. "I am going to cast an invisibility spell on all of us," she said. "That way the weeds won't be able to sense our presence."

To say that the men weren't impressed was an understatement.

"You can cast spells?" Glenn said, not asked. What was this slave girl? Was she so powerful? And if she were, then he was awed.

Eltanin's lips curved in a smug smile as his chest filled with pride. Tania was becoming stronger than what she was and he liked that she was able to cast such complicated spells. Then he motioned Glenn to give his hand in hers under his careful scrutiny. As soon as Tania held their hands, she let out a silent spell. Something tingled across from her to them through her hands. The tingle traveled all the way to their shoulders and went deeper. Air whooshed out of their lungs and they gasped. They felt as if they were now bound to Tania in locked doors.

Glenn removed his hand away from her, still wide-eyed. "Are we invisible?" he asked, his question, rhetoric because he could feel it.

"Yes, it is," she let out a soft reply. "And I have also come to know some of your secrets."

Eltanin rubbed his chest with a smile because he wanted her to know her secrets, while Glenn cringed. The girl whom he coveted at the beginning of the journey was turning out to be dangerous. He decided to maintain his distance from her.

Tania stifled a laugh when she read Glenn's expression of horror. It was a small joke that she played on them and loved it. When she left their hands, soft white lights circled on their fingers.

As they traversed the winding path avoiding the thorny black weeds and overhead branches that hung from the trees, Tania's nostrils twitched with the smell of rot. It was as if many dead bodies had been piled in a place and left to decay. The scent choked her to the level that water ran out of her eyes. Whatever evil was in there, it surely violated a temple to this extent.

The three came to stand right in front of the steps that led inside the derelict temple ruins. The steps were broken. A few meters away there they saw a skeleton of a man, or perhaps a woman. Covered in tattered and rotten clothes, the skeleton stared in the blank space through its empty eye sockets.

"That was one of the princes who had come to bury the book," Eltanin muttered. "He couldn't make it out of the ruins."

"Oh, God!" Tania gasped as she clutched Eltanin's arms.

"But there could be more such skeletons inside because way too many foolish men had tried to plunder the wealth hidden in its womb."

After that Eltanin just shoved her behind him and walked ahead. They slowly climbed up the stairs with her following him on heels. As for Glenn, even though he was under the influence of an invisibility spell and with a powerful king like Eltanin, he stifled an urge to turn and run away. The only thing that made him go ahead was that he was under an invisibility spell. Who would remove it if he ran away? He would have to live invisible throughout his life then?

When they reached the main door of the temple, Eltanin pushed it open and darkness flowed out like blood trickling in water, drop by drop. The door groaned open and then hung on its hinges. Eltanin was about to enter when Tania stopped him. "Wait!" she warned him. Then she rounded past him and sensed the air in front of her with her fingers. She had smelled a thick coppery magic. Bright sparks crackled in a pattern. "I knew it!" she muttered. She chanted a spell silently and then blew it on her palm. Blue lights rose from her palm in the form of wisps. She flung it towards the space in the front. The blue lights slammed against the magic that barred entry of the visitors. They all sparkled and crackled and soon with a light gush of air, the magic disintegrated.

While Glenn was practically falling on Eltanin's back, Tania took the lead.

"We must go back," Glenn squeaked. He clenched his jaw to the level that it ached.

"You should stay close to us, Glenn, because if you stray apart, how will we find you," Tania chuckled. She was feeling excited with her new venture because she had never been out in the open for so long and she had never had a chance to use her abilities. But with Eltanin, things were different. She loved the way he was letting her read all the arcanas and loved how he trusted her with the extraction of Yunabi arcana. If he never believed in her, she would have never trusted herself.

The ruins were covered with dense tangled and gnarled roots of the overhead oaks that looked thousands of years old. "Llum spagada!" she whispered, fling her palm forward. A lambent yellow light orb emerged in front of them from her palm.