by R. A. Boyd
Same for her sisters. Would they take on the longevity of the Ghosts or live like the other shifters? She would give anything to ask someone who actually had answers. Part of the curse was not knowing a damned thing and that was one of the most dreadful parts of it all. The Creator was a genius at handing out punishment.
“We’ll miss you too,” Riley said. She looked up toward the long stairway and frowned. She tsked her teeth and took a deep breath that shook her chest. “I wonder what’s taking the boys so long. They should have come down by now.”
Audra lifted her head, listening to her brother’s talk to someone outside of the community hall. They were giving someone shit about a safe trip and snack stops. Simon had packed a lunch bag full of her favorite munchie foods. Simon- heart of gold, when he actually bothered to use the dried-up thing, and dumb as a brick when it came to his safety.
Willow looked over at Audra and smiled. “They’re talking to Zeke about the trip. A few of them want to come with you but it’s best if they don’t.”
“Yeah,” Audra said, rubbing her arm. “It’s best if we just say good-bye now. I need you to do me a favor. Restrain me so that my family can hug me before I go. I don’t trust myself enough to… Just restrain me. It’s better that way.”
Willow nodded and gave Audra a tight lipped smile. Her eyes softened and in that moment Audra knew that they would be friends one day. “We can do that.”
The sound of voices floated closer as people started walking down the steps. Audra could hear their footfalls. Jax, Damon, Teague, Aiden, Simon, Jace, Cole, and someone she didn’t know. Willow’s angel buddy Zeke.
It was time. This was it.
“Well, you lunatic,” Audra said low. “You got us good and screwed into a long-time nap. Told you I’d never let you win. They are going to drain you of all the crazy you’ve been building up. I. Win.”
You win? I’ve got a nice trick up my sleeve for you.
“You don’t have sleeves!”
We’re not going to sleep. Nope. I know something you don’t know, Beastie sang in Audra’s head.
When Audra looked up, Jax and Damon were standing next to her sisters and Willow, watching her have a conversation they couldn’t hear the other side of.
She shrugged and walked to the door. “No point in hiding it anymore. I’ve been listening to this bitch bitch for the last few decades.”
“Why didn’t you let me help?” Damon asked. He sounded hurt and pain shown in his hazel eyes. “How have you been blocking me from knowing she was talking to you?”
Damon may have been the emotional support and residential empath for this clan just like the good Omega he was, but no one could have helped her through this.
Audra cleared her throat, trying to figure out a way to give him some kind of answer. He would beat himself up for this for a long time. She couldn’t let that happen. He was her brother and had helped her more than he could possibly imagine, just by being there for her.
“I wasn’t trying to hide anything from you, Damon. She was blocking you out. Hell, I think she was awake long before she started talking to me.” She got close enough to the bars to let him put his hand through and touch her face. “She’s strong. But I was stronger. Don’t you dare guilt yourself over this. If you’ve ever loved me you would not do that to yourself. Promise me.”
Damon ran his large hand over his face, and before he could say another word Cass was there. She stood beside him and rubbed his shoulders, telling him to promise Audra anything and to follow through.
Cass looked at Audra and nodded, giving her a silent promise that she would help him get through this.
A slight movement caught Audra’s attention behind Cass and Damon, and Audra gave a wide smile that she could feel right up to her ears.
“You must be Zeke,” she said, giving the sexy as fuck fallen angel witch her full attention.
She’d never seen him before. Hell no, she hadn’t. She would have remembered that.
His copper skin glowed bright as his whiskey brown eyes studied her. Wide shoulders were incased in a maroon colored shirt that stretched across his chest and biceps. Tribal ink ran down his right arm giving him that bad boy biker look she fuckin’ loved, and he had on three necklaces— one leather and two silver. Audra could just barely make out protection runes on the jewelry. Dark pants covered his thick, muscular thighs, and those black ass-kicker boot sealed the deal. Something was different about him. Every angel, fallen or not, had a brightness that shone through them. He had it, but it was different. Oohh, but that face.
He had that sensual scruff on his face. She would rub herself against that scruff like a cat in heat if he’d give her the chance.
He smiled as if he could read her naughty thoughts, and she smiled back hoping to hell he didn’t know what she was thinking.
“Fuck, Audra,” Simon said as he stood off near the stairs where she couldn’t see him. “Get a hold of yourself. Your perviness is filling this entire space.”
“Simon, you freaking cock-blocker, shut your face before I shut it for you.”
“You’re in a cell,” Simon replied. He sounded bored. Or annoyed. “You can’t do shit.”
“You willing to bet your intestines on that, Simon?” She looked back at Zeke as he leaned against the wall. “I apologize for my salacious intentions. It was inappropriate.”
Zeke’s full lips raised up in a cocky grin. “No need to apologize.”
That deep voice glided through the bars of her cell and hit her right in the lady bits. It was velvet and hip thrusts all wrapped up in a man’s voice.
Audra reached her hand through the bars of the cell. “Come on. Don’t be rude. Properly introduce yourself to me like Willow did.”
He looked at her hand but didn’t move. “I have a feeling you are stronger than you look. You may have been nice to my sister but I can feel the insanity pouring from that cell like lava. No offence—”
“Offense taken,” Audra said, backing away from the door.
“— but you’re too sporadic. I can feel it. I can see it all around your aura.”
What the hell? Did he think he could catch her crazy if he touched her? She was crazy but damn-it she wasn’t that crazy. Was she?
Audra started laughing like lunatic. She bent over and held her stomach, laughing harder than she had in a long time. He seemed to relax, and as soon as he did Audra went solemn and lurched at the door of the cell, banging it with her shoulder. She let out a monstrous growl that shook her cell.
Zeke didn’t even flinch. Riley and Willow did, even most of her brothers jumped, but Cass and Zeke watched her. Cass was worried for her, but with the lazy smile that played at Zeke’s lips, she could tell he was more entertained than anything.
“Zeke,” Audra said, letting the ‘K’ in his name sound strong through her mouth. “Don’t be fucking rude. I apologized for letting my libido get the better of me for a few moments. If I’m going to entrust myself to you and your sister you should at least be cordial enough to accept my apology and shake my hand.”
He belted out a laugh and shifted from one foot to the other.
“You think you might catch my brand of crazy, Zeke? Just by touching my hand?” Audra asked. She shrugged and smiled at him. “Well I’m so fucking awesome, even if I am contagious you need to catch a case of me cutie. I’m worth it.”
That did it!
Slow and deliberate, Zeke shook his head from side to side and started walking toward her.
Audra reached her arm through the bars and allowed his large hand to engulf her small one. Long, thick fingers met hers and the warmth that was Zeke worked its way up her arm and through her body, surrounding her like her favorite blanket.
Her heart pounded in her chest like it was waking from a long slumber, like it needed to remind her that it was still there to pump blood through her veins and arteries to keep her alive. A dam broke inside her, freeing the heat that now surged through her entire body.
“No,” she whis
pered, shaking her head and wrenching her hand from his. She could feel his reluctance to let her go. “No. Please no. Get him out of here.”
Tears streamed down Audra’s face and her throat pressed closed with her soundless sobs. She slapped her hand over her eyes, trying to push away the urge to cry. This couldn’t be happening. Not like this. Never like this.
The shuffling of feet as they all started to scramble around screamed in her head, and the voices of her family got farther and farther away as she closed in on herself.
What’s happening, Audra?
Are you in pain?
Did he hurt you?
Questions flew at her from her family, stinging her skin like darts on a target. She couldn’t answer them. Not while pain and hope and misery and joy pummeled her dying heart.
“Get him out of here!” she roared.
Audra flung herself on the bed and pushed her face into the soft pillow, hoping she could disappear so they couldn’t see her. So he couldn’t see her.
Bam! cried Beastie. My farewell present to you.
Pain and fury clutched at her heart as her lungs stopped working. She curled in on herself, pulling her knees up under her stomach as she laid face down on the bed. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Not like this.
It was supposed to be fireworks and rainbows, passionate electricity and love at first site. But this was tainted. This was shame. He was supposed to come after she woke up, after the madness had been leached from her mind. Not now, when she was at her worst.
Beastie growled in satisfaction. A final ‘fuck you’ before Audra could have her tamed.
Here goes our mate, Audra. That sexy thang gets to see us in all our raging glory. And he wants nothing to do with us. He doesn’t even want to touch you because he fears me. Thank you ladies and gentleman, and good night!
Chapter 2
Zeke fought for air as the tiny woman held her forearm to his throat, cutting off all circulation. His vision was starting to dim from the lack of oxygen. She’d dragged him up the stone steps and pinned him against a wall in the storage area that led to the kitchen.
“You’ve got about two seconds to tell me what you did to her before I rip your fucking throat out,” the small woman said calmly.
She was much shorter than him but she’d managed to pull him down to her height and shoved him up against the wall. He gazed into her brown eyes as they bled to a soft amber color.
“Cass,” Jax, the Alpha of the Ghost shifters said. “Baby, let him go.”
“Not until he talks,” she said, pushing harder against his larynx.
If she kept this up she would crush his windpipe. It wouldn’t kill him but it would hurt like a bastard until the angel healing could fix what she’d destroyed.
“He can’t talk until you let him breathe,” Jax said.
Why the hell didn’t he just pull her off of him? He was the alpha of this clan for fuck sake. Wasn’t he in charge?
In a show of surrender, Zeke stopped pulling at her arm and pushing her shoulders. Instead he held his hands up and hoped to the Creator that he wouldn’t pass out before he could explain himself. He would have used his magic to get her off of him, but he lacked the ability to think straight or push a spell past his lips. Lack of oxygen could really do that to a person. If he really wanted to he could use his gift of telepathy on her to make her stop, but he had the feeling that if he pushed at her mind too hard and she realized what he was doing, she just might try to kill him. This one was strong. Stronger than she knew.
“Please,” he managed to whisper through the pain and pressure. “Let me…”
That was it. He couldn’t talk anymore. He was going under into that sweet sleep of being shoved into unconsciousness by a full figured woman who was at least ten inches shorter than him. Willow was probably laughing her ass off.
“Fine,” Cass said as she let him go. “Catch your breath and start talking, and if I don’t like what you have to say you’ll be crying again to catch your breath.”
Zeke grabbed his throat and gasped, welcoming the delicious feel of the cool air as it labored to get passed the damaged soft tissue of his throat.
“I wasn’t crying,” he wheezed.
“Check your face for tears, Pretty Boy,” she replied, crossing her arms in front of her full chest.
He truly disliked this woman.
Why? Willow asked, her voice echoing through his head.
All of their coven had the gift of telepathy. They could talk to one another from where ever they were. Through walls, state lines, and dimensions. One of the first things they all learned after they’d chosen to fall from grace and joined the coven was to control their thoughts. You didn’t want your brethren to know what you were thinking and feeling all the time.
Why? Willow asked again. She is the third in the Alpha Triad. She thinks you hurt her sister. Zeke met Willow’s eyes, lifted his hand and then gave her the finger for not helping him. What did happen, brother?
Zeke shook his head hard and then shut down the link between them. He wasn’t sharing shit until he figured this out himself. He had an idea of what had just went down between him and the crazy woman they’d come to collect, but he’d be damned if he thought for one moment he would be bullied into it.
Audra may not have a choice in this, but he did.
Zeke had been tethered to insanity before. He swore he would never allow it to happen again. Even though most of them didn’t trust him, the Coven of the Fallen had been his salvation when he had been freed. He wouldn’t fall prey to the darkness again.
But Audra had just done something to him. Her touch had roused him, made him remember the pure elation of everything he’d felt before he had fallen from grace. Her touch was the soft breeze that tickled his nose after he’d been freed from his prison.
The Creator was cruel. If anyone knew what Zeke had been through, it was the Creator. And now, in spite of everything he’d suffered, he was being called to be with everything he hated in this world and about himself.
Audra was deceiving. She was much shorter than him, standing a little over five feet tall. Her smooth, mocha skin shown like the stars shined within her, and her eyes were so brown they were almost bronze. Long, satin-like chocolate hair cascaded behind her. Audra was beauty in human skin.
But the madness that coursed through her body was palpable. It radiated from her in thorny tendrils that tainted her aura. At least what he could see of it. The core of her aura was white, which was normal for angel borne, but the rest was a mass of colors that were dim and muted. They swirled around her as if threatening that little ball of light that still existed within her. What bothered him most was the small piece of her that was missing.
Zeke hadn’t noticed it when he’d first seen her. When she took notice of him and looked like he was her favorite ride at the amusement park, the light around that missing piece inside her pulsed as if it were reaching out and waiting for him to fill it.
“Times up,” Cass said, bringing him from his thoughts. “What went down between you and Audra?” She shook her head and gave him a teeth-baring grin that was anything but friendly. “I have a hunch.”
“You do?” someone asked from the kitchen.
“Shut up, Simon,” Cass snapped. She turned her attention back to Zeke and put her hand on his shirt, smoothing it out like she hadn’t been the one to damn near rip the material from his torso. “I have a hunch, Zeke. It could just be me grasping at air because I don’t want my sister to go. But you’re going to clear that up for me. For us.”
Zeke looked around at the people who stood watching. A few had stayed down with Audra to try and calm her. She was still crying, pleading with them to make him go away.
He cleared his throat and could taste blood on his tongue. The Third in the Ghost shifter Triad aimed to get answers from him. Shit, he wouldn’t tell them a damn thing. Not until he figured this out.
“I didn’t do anything but shake her hand, just like she wanted
me to,” Zeke said. His voice was raspy as if he’d tried to drink a shot of sand. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”
“Lie,” Cass said. She shoved her hands in her pockets and took a step away from him. “You’re lying to me right now. You know exactly what just happened. Is she yours?”
With that single question everything went quiet. The people standing around watching them, the few that had stayed downstairs with Audra. It was like a collective hush had fallen over everyone here.
The Alpha and Omega of their clan, Jax and Damon, came and stood next to Cass. The one with the yellow eyes looked at him, and Zeke could tell the moment the realization of what his woman had just said dawned on him.
Damon put his arm around Cass’s shoulders and brought her closer to him so that her back was pressed against his front. “Zeke,” he said, rubbing his cheek against his mate’s hair. “You really need to tell us what’s going on and if she’s right. Did you feel it?”
Slow and deliberate, Zeke shook his head back and forth. He’d be good and God-damned if he allowed them to force this on him. “I don’t know—”
“Lie,” Cass repeated. Her face crumpled as she watched him, heartbreak evident in her eyes. “Look. I know this sounds crazy. Heck, just a few months ago I was walking around in a haze trying to cope. When Jax and Damon told me I was their mate, part of me didn’t want to believe them. But you know what? A bigger part of me knew it. I knew it. And something tells me you know too.”
Zeke rubbed his palm over one of his necklaces. It was a rune of protection, and it wasn’t working. Audra had pretty much ripped his heart from his chest with just one touch, and the short and evil Cass had nearly choked him to death. He was going to kick his Willow’s ass for giving him a shitty protection rune.
Yup, he knew what he felt when he touched Audra, but he’d fight it until it killed him. He’d been down this road before. Time in a darkened cell with other people succumbing to madness was still something that haunted him. He wouldn’t let Audra bring him down in her descent.
Running his fingers through is hair, he grabbed a handful and pulled. “I can’t be with her. She’s too sporadic. She’s crazy. You don’t understand. I can only make her worse.”
