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.

The burning pain is focused on my hands, chest, and head just behind my ear. Thank fuck it’s not all over my body like it was on my sixteenth birthday. I pant shallowly and let out a relieved whimper when I feel the white-hot waves begin to recede.

The pain disappears completely, and I know it’s left behind more than just its memory. I take deep breaths and feel my clenched muscles start to unlock. I sit up in bed. The sheets pool at my waist and my tank top clings to my clammy skin.

I scan my hands for what I know will be there. On both of my ring fingers--where there was previously only an eight-pointed star rune--I now have five new runes. They stretch down to the base of my finger taking up the whole width.

I pull the neck of my tank top down and find a smaller set of runes on my sternum nestled between my breasts. I stare at it for a second before I push my breasts together and all but the star rune disappears inside the line my cleavage.

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.

“Holy shit, are you okay? Why are you on the floor?”

Valen puts his hand over his eyes to shield them from the light I just turned on.

“What the fuck!” I shriek, as panic grips me and I scramble away from him in a backward crab walk.

On Valen’s ring finger is a set of black runes. They start with an eight-point star on the skin below his fingernail and mark his whole finger to its base. I run my gaze over his other hand, resting palm down on the floor, and see the same runes on his other ring finger.

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?

As he stretches his arms to me, I catch the line of runes on his sternum centered between his defined pecs. I scramble back further away from him and clip my shoulder painfully on the door frame.

“I’m so sorry!” I cry out.

“Vinna, no, shit! What are you talking about?”

Valen leans toward me, and I’m on my feet and running away from him before he can get up off the ground. A few steps out of the bathroom doorway, I slam into an unyielding wall of muscle. I bounce off of Sabin, and he grabs my shoulders to keep me from tumbling to the ground.

Sabin takes in my terrified expression and immediately moves me behind him as he assesses our surroundings, looking for the cause of my fear. Valen comes running from the bathroom towards us, and Sabin tenses.

“What the fuck is going on?” he growls at Valen.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out!” Valen snaps back and reaches for me again.

My bedroom door whooshes open, and three more tousled pajama-clad bodies stomp into the room. Did they all move into Lachlan’s house and I didn’t notice? What are they doing here this late at night? 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.

What the fuck is going on?

I stare at them horrified. Ryker moves toward me, but I quickly back away shaking my head at him. What the fuck is happening? I don’t know how, but I know somehow this is my fault. Did I do this to them? Did my magic do this to them? But why? Fucking hell, what is wrong with me?

“Nothing’s wrong with you. This isn’t your fault.”

I open my mouth to argue with Ryker but stop confused.

I didn’t say that out loud.

My eyes widen in shock and their looks mirror mine.

Can you hear me? I ask in my head, and my knees wobble when they all chorus “yes.”

“Can you hear us?” Bastien asks me, and the room grows quiet while I search for their voices inside my head.

“I only hear me."

In shock, I run my finger over the runes on the side of my head again. Maybe it only works from me to you? Can you hear everything I’m thinking? Oh god, this could be really bad for me. Are they going to know everything I think about them? After a couple of seconds of them staring at me blankly, I make the connection.

“Bastien run your finger over the runes behind your ear.”

He does and then looks at me, obviously waiting for an explanation. I don’t say anything else, I just wait.

“Okay... I guess she’s not going to tell me the point of doing that. Look at her face, stay focused on her face. It’s cool that she’s in her underwear, no big deal. Fuck, that body though, I want those incredible legs wrapped around me… Nope, NO, don’t be that guy! Just keep looking at her face until she tells you what the hell is going on. That drop-dead sexy, gorgeous face. Why is Val smiling at me like that?”

A blush creeps up Bastien’s neck when he realizes we can hear what he’s thinking. His smile is sheepish for all of two seconds, until suddenly an image of me straddling his lap while we kiss and I grind against him, pops into my head.

“Bastien, stop!” I frantically shout at him, and he touches his runes turning the mental link off.

He gives me a wink and an unapologetic saucy smile. Sounds of amusement and Sabin’s huff of exasperation bounce off the walls of my room. I exhale a shuttered breath, my gaze flicking from one shirtless body to the next. How the fuck has my magic connected us, and why?

I quickly scan every exposed inch of their bodies, as I search for any other visible runes, but I can only see the same runes that showed up on me tonight. I wade through the onslaught of possibilities as to how this happened, when something clicks, and my shocked and horrified gaze finds Valen.

“Oh fuck, it was that pulse of magic.”

He looks at me confused.

“When I…when we…”

I motion from him to me. My eyes flit like a hummingbird around the group, embarrassment keeping them from landing anywhere.

“That purple magic that we felt, I think it did this," I gesture to the bed.

I look back to Valen and understanding dawns on his face. Four heads immediately snap from the bed to Valen.

“Wait, did you two…?” Knox’s voice trails off.

“None of your business,” snaps out of Valen’s mouth, at the same I shout “NO!” and heads swivel back and forth between us in confusion.

“We fooled around, that’s all. We stopped before…”

I was about to say before things went too far, but judging by the runes now marked on their bodies, I’d say things clearly went plenty far.

“Either way it’s not really any of your business," Valen claims again, stepping toward me.

Sabin steps into his path. “None of our business? How is this-” Sabin points to the runes on his chest. “None of our fucking business? I asked you guys to slow down, to use more than your dicks to think about what you were doing. Now look at what’s fucking happened!”

“I wasn’t thinking with my dick, and if you’d stop being scared shitless of getting hurt maybe you’d finally admit that there’s more to all of this than just that!” Valen seethes at Sabin.

“Fucking relax Sabin, it’s obvious that they had no idea this would happen, look how panicked Vinna is,” Knox defends.

Five sets of eyes find their way to me, but I’m staring at Sabin.

“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.

“I have no idea what I did, but I swear I’ll figure out a way to fix it.”

I drop my face into my hands, unable to look at him anymore. I feel awful. I had no idea that this forced connection was even in the realm of possibility, or I would have never done anything that would have forced it on them like this. Sabin warned me that I didn’t know what my magic could do, but I thought what I wanted was more important than his concerns.

Fingers wrap around my wrists and gently try to pull my hands from my face. I keep them firmly in place unable to look any of them in the eye anymore. A hand brushes through my hair and someone leans down to my ear.

“Look at us, Vinna," Ryker whispers. “Don’t hide from us, don’t withdraw again.”

His lips gently kiss the new runes on my fingers, and an involuntary shiver of pleasure radiates through me. Ryker pulls me to him, and I give in and drop my hands from my face. His chest is pressed against mine, and I find myself automatically and effortlessly begin to match his breathing.

“We don’t blame you, so don’t blame yourself. No one is mad," Ryker tells me, and I automatically glance to Sabin.

“He’s right, I’m just shocked," Sabin grumbles.

“I don’t know what the big deal is, I think this is fucking awesome.” Knox offers.

I look over at Knox taken aback by his excitement. I really shouldn’t be surprised by his sentiments. He’s the king of rolling with the punches, and when it comes to me, Knox always sees the silver lining.

“What? We can hear each other’s thoughts when we want to. That ups our badass factor by a fucking shit ton. We’re paladin, how much better are we going to be as a coven with this ability?”

A couple grunts of agreement sound off from the other guys.

“I fucking love the upgrade Vinna, so don’t stress,” Knox exclaims, and shoots me a supportive smile and a quick wink.

I look around to the other guys gauging their reactions to Knox’s comments, and oddly their nods and smiles seem to agree with what he’s saying. I take a fortifying breath and step out of Ryker’s arms. Exhausted, I plop into a chair and wait as the guys all do the same. A sigh of relief and acceptance flows from everyone as they sit down.

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.

“Want to use your runes and let us in on what you’re thinking, Bruiser?”

I look at Bastien and give him a small smile.

“I was just trying to sort through how I feel about this. On the one hand, I feel terrible, like I’ve forced this on you whether you want it or not.” I look from Bastien to the rest of them. “On the other hand, I love my runes. It feels right in a way that I can’t explain, that you have them too,” I look down at my hands and trace the runes on my fingers with my eyes. “But that makes me feel really selfish and shitty, which brings everything full circle back to feeling terrible.”

“You weren’t alone in this, something about our being together triggered this. That means I am just as much to blame in all of this as you seem to think you are.” Valen leans toward me. “I can tell you that I don’t feel violated or upset in any way, and I wouldn’t change anything about how I got the runes.”

Valen grins brazenly at me. Our entwined tongues and the feel of his skin against mine, quickly flashes through my mind, heat seeps into my gaze at the recollection. Knox clears his throat, and I blink away the desire I’m feeling to look at him.

“I think, for scientific purposes of course, that it’s important to recreate whatever it was you were doing when the magic was triggered. It would help us to better understand how, and maybe why, this happened, and hey if we end up with more cool abilities I’d put that in the plus column. With that said, I would like to personally volunteer.”

Knox stares at all of us straight-faced and then raises his hand like he’s waiting to be called on. Bastien is the first to release his guffaw of laughter, and he’s quickly joined by the other guys.

“What? It’s for science,” Knox defends, trying to fight off the laughter that’s breaking through his faux-innocent façade.

His eager and heated eyes lock onto mine but a smirk finally breaks through, and we both join the others in slap-happy laughter.

Out of nowhere, Bastien shouts, “I volunteer as tribute!” in a dramatic rendition that would make Katniss Everdeen proud, and we all fall back into hysterics.

I lean back into my comfy chair, as I come down from the laugh high. I catch Sabin and Ryker both sneak a few glances at my new position which is giving them a peek between my legs. I probably shouldn’t mess around, given everything that’s happening right now, but I can’t pass up the opportunity to fuck with Sabin.

I spread my legs a little wider, teasingly, and Ryker immediately looks up at me knowing he’s been caught. He smiles and gives me a cheeky wink, and I chuckle. My laugh seems to snap Sabin out of his focused attention on my underwear-clad crotch.

“Captain Cockblock, I didn’t know you had it in you,” I tease, enjoying the deep shade of red that consumes his cheeks at getting caught perving out.

Sabin shakes his head abashed, but when our eyes connect again, the longing I find there has me choking on my amusement. A dimpled smile sneaks across Sabin’s face at my shocked reaction to his desire. Whoa, where the hell did that come from?