by R. A. Boyd
“How do you do it?” Jace asked Simon as they walked through the woods near their houses.
“What do you mean?” Simon pulled his sweat-soaked shirt away from the skin of his chest and fanned it, letting the crisp air cool off his skin.
The cold air reminded him of how Charlie’s entire body shivered after he chewed up a few pieces of ice and then tasted every inch of her beautiful body. He chuckled as he thought of how fast her ass had come off the bed when he’d pushed his tongue, and a small chunk of ice, into her sex. She came so hard he had to pull her back toward his mouth to keep her from smashing her head against the headboard of the bed. She’d done it three times. He worried she might have a concussion.
“Please stop,” Jace begged as they both jumped over a felled tree. “I will punch you in the nads if you get a stiffy while you’re walking out here with me. Alone. In the woods.”
Simon barked out a laugh and did his best to get his hormones under control. Charlie was an aphrodisiac to him. “Sorry. And hell, don’t ask me how I do it. All I want is to run home and just look at her do whatever it is she’s doing. I don’t understand how you’ve managed to stay away from Emma. You may think she rejected you, double check that by the way, but I can’t fathom how you’ve kept your distance. I’d have to be put down if Charlie turned me away. That or start punching people in the throat.”
Jace sniffed and stopped walking. “I’ve been considering it. Being put down.”
Unable to speak from the shock in his chest, Simon punched Jace in the arm and started walking again. “Get that shit out of your mind. Pony the fuck up and go talk to her. What did you do after you saw she’d left you?”
With a dismissive shrug, Jace leaned against a tree and shook his head. “I spent the night at the hotel, hoping she would come back. I thought maybe she went to pick up her kid, who is fucking adorable by the way. And did you hear what I just said? Adorable. I don’t say stuff like that.” He slapped away a falling leaf that flittered into his face from one of the trees. He crossed one leg over the other. He shook his head and took a deep breath. “It’s so quiet out here, man. Not like it is in my head. I can’t think straight. I just want Emma.”
Frustrated at the situation, Simon held out his hand to help pull his brother to standing. Jace had connected with Emma years ago. She had been in love with Jace, but his idiot brother pushed her away. He wanted to save her. She wanted children and he couldn’t give them to her, but Emma hadn’t cared one bit. She’d mentioned adoption and IVF. All she wanted was Jace.
Was this some sort of sick payback taken against him? No, that wasn’t her. Simon may not have known her nearly as well as his brother or Audra, but he knew deep in his bones she didn’t have a cruel bone in her body. Unless something happened in their time apart that made her change.
Simon shrugged and started walking again. “Go. Talk to her. Find out what happened.”
“And if she refuses me again?”
“Well, that would be fucked up.” Simon noticed a patch of flowers growing next to a tree. Bending down to move the reeds of weeds that grew around them, he picked up a handful of Crested Iris flowers. The light lavender petals with white and yellow accents made him think of Charlie’s pajamas from last night.
He pushed the flowers toward Jace, but his brother frowned at him. “I don’t want them.”
“They’re not for you, genius. They’re for Charlie.” She might like them. He wasn’t sure if she liked flowers or not. He needed to find out. “You see these flowers, Jace?”
Jace uttered a curse and rolled his eyes. “Please stop before I impale myself on this branch,” he said as he pointed at a branch jutting out from the side of a downed tree. “I don’t need your flower comparisons.”
“Just shut up,” he said, shoving Jace in the back of the head. “Now, these flowers bloom when it’s cold as all get up out here in Maryland. Snow, rain, or sunshine, these bastards are always here every April. That’s like having a mate.”
“I don’t even—”
“Shut up. These flowers are endangered, and damn-it, I probably shouldn’t have picked them.” He hadn’t thought of that until he started his spiel. “There aren’t too many of them around here anymore, but when they do take root, they are creepers and can take over an entire area if they’re left alone. It’s just like us finding out mates. The Creator wouldn’t have done this to you, first off. We were made a promise. But just like this flower popping up in the snow, sometimes caring for someone is hard and doesn’t seem like it’s going to work. Once it does, it completely takes over. I never thought I’d find Charlie, and I did something really fucked up to keep myself sane until I found her. And what I did stopped working before I found her. I thought I was going to have to be put down. But then there she was, telling me she would stab me in my thigh if I sat down at her table.”
“Fucking poetic,” Jace said, walking faster and farther away from Simon.
“And Emma is yours,” Simon called out. “Maybe she wants you to pay for what you did to her, ‘cause you did break her heart. And maybe it’s what you deserved. And now you need to fight for your mate, try to show her that you’re different. Maybe she thinks the only reason you called her was to get your grace and your beast back. And she was nice enough to give that to you and then walk away because she thought you still didn’t want her. Imagine it, after years of you avoiding, her you show up and tell her you need her to do something for you to make you whole again. She was nice enough to give it to you, but also wanted to keep her heart safe because she thought you’d break her again.”
Jace stopped walking. His shoulders heaved under heavy breaths as Simon got closer to him. He shook his head, and when he turned to face Simon, his eyes were bright with his beast.
“I didn’t think of it like that,” Jace whispered.
Simon sauntered over to his brother and shoved him in the back of the head again. “Of course you didn’t. You thought you would jump back into her life and everything would come up roses. Well, life ain’t roses. It’s these damned Iris cristata flowers that have to fight to make it,” he said, shoving one of them at Jace. “Did you even apologize for what you did to her back then?”
Jace ran his free hand up to his face, the other holding the flower, and pulled a handful of his hair. “No,” he croaked out. “I didn’t.” Helplessly, he looked around the floor of the woods. He swallowed hard and squeezed the flower in his hand. “I think I fucked up.”
“I tried to push Charlie away from me a few days ago. Tried to intimidate her so I could go pick a fight with someone to help me make it better the only way I knew how. But she didn’t let me. That short, sexy as hell, clumsy woman shut me straight down.” He snickered and kicked a pine cone, sending it flying through the air until it smashed against a tree. “Don’t give up. If she bit you to help you out, it means she still gives a damn. She could have told you to go fuck yourself. She’s got a kid now. Another man broke her heart and left the both of them. You think she wants to go through that again?”
“No. She wouldn’t,” Jace admitted as he stepped over a patch of artificial flowers planted in Cole’s backyard. Audra put them there as a welcome home present for when he came back from visiting the other Ghosts. “Just so you know,” he said, quickly changing the subject. “We weren’t able to get anything from the guy we had. He’s just a flunky that was supposed to come here to New Rose and check us out. Him and the one you killed wanted to climb higher in the ranks of the Rogue clan by bringing one of us in. Jax and Damon are trying to figure out what to do with him. Willow is brewing up a potion to make him forget the last few days.”
The idea of killing him flittered through Simon’s mind, but he shoved it away. At least he tried to. Getting rid of all the rogue clan wasn’t an easy fix. Paranormal folk and humans alike would look at them as if they were all murders. The alpha and omega would come up with something.
“What do you think about Ronin?” Simon asked. Relief flooded his
system when he saw his house come into view. Charlie was in there.
Jace picked up a rock and chucked it into the woods. “I don’t know. This is all screwed up. He wouldn’t hurt us.”
“You forget what he did to Audra and Gabe. And the people he murdered.”
“No, I didn’t forget. He wouldn’t hurt us if he were in his right mind.”
“Well, he’s not.” Simon could hear the venom in his voice. “He scared our sisters. He scared my mate. He hurt Cass. We need to catch him and put him back down until he’s ready. More importantly, we need to find who woke him and set him against us.” A rumble sounded off in his chest as he looked out over their houses. “Our territory isn’t safe anymore. We need to fix that.”
Jace blinked slowly and started walking toward the community hall. “I will agree with you on that. Thanks for my flower,” he said over his shoulder, a lighthearted grin in his words.
Simon lifted his hand and gave him the finger, hoping he could see it in his peripheral vision.
“I saw that,” Jace tossed back at him.
“You were supposed to.”
Jace stopped walking but didn’t turn around. “She makes you better. I like her.” He broke into a light jog.
Simon watched as he opened the doors of the hall and went in. He hoped like hell everything would work out for him and Emma. Only the Creator knew what would happen if she turned him away. Being put down may not be enough if she did. After a while, Jace would probably beg for death.
He pushed the thoughts out of his head and walked up the six steps that led to his house. If Miri wasn’t back by nightfall, would get Willow to do some kind of spell to bring her back. Unease snaked through his chest at the thought of someone hurting her to get to his soul. They’d all be screwed if the wrong person got hold of it.
That wouldn’t happen. Miri would be careful, and soon his soul would be back in his body where it belonged. What would it be like after all these years? He hoped that when the time came, he would be able to deal with the grief he tried to leave behind.
Opening the front door, he toed off his sneakers and left them on a small rug next to the entrance. “Charlie,” he called out. Nothing.
Maybe she went out to find one of his sisters to pass the time. He hoped like hell she didn’t go into town. It wasn’t safe for her. Ronin was on the loose. Simon wouldn’t rest easy with Charlie out of his sight until his brother was taken in again.
Pulling his shirt over his head, he walked to the kitchen to get a glass of water and was halted by the sound of a low hum. She was here after all. All he wanted to do now, other than getting his soul back so he could sink his cock into his mate’s wet heat, was take a shower and spend more time with Charlie.
As he pushed open the swinging door to the kitchen, a pair of feet sticking out just beyond the counter stopped him cold. Fear unlike he’d ever known clogged his lungs, making him dizzy. Simon moved faster than he could remember and rounded the counter. Charlie was under the table, knees pulled up to her stomach with her arms wrapped around her middle. Shoving the table so hard it banged against the island, Simon slid to his knees and pulled her head into his lap.
“Baby,” he said, gently turning her head so he could look into her eyes. “What happened? Charlie?” His voice was a shaky whisper.
“It’s so big.” She spoke in a dreamy tone. “She told me to give it to you.” A sob clawed up her throat, and Simon felt the edge of panic in her voice break something deep in his body.
She wasn’t bleeding. She didn’t smell sick. Something was wrong with his mate, and there was no one around to kill to make it better.
His body burned with dread as he looked down at her. They just found each other. But she was human, and humans died every day. Heart attacks, strokes, aneurysms.
The air whooshed out of his lungs as he watched her. He scooped her body into his lap and tucked her head into the bend of his neck. She needed a doctor.
Cradling her like a baby, he picked her up and started walking toward the door. “Jax,” he yelled as his bare feet padded on the hardwood planks of the living room floor. “God damn-it. Damon. Cass!” Cass’s name came out as a cry. He wasn’t even ashamed. He needed someone to help him get her to a hospital. “Where the fuck is everybody!” he roared.
The cold ground beneath his feet did nothing to cool the lava burning inside him. The birds stopped their morning songs and the sun wasn’t shining as bright as it was just a few minutes ago. Death would be his only out if anything happened to her.
A sudden hatred overtook him. What if he was being punished for giving away his soul? Would the Creator loathe him to the point of vengeance that his mate would be taken from him after only a short amount of time? That bullshit he’d just gave Jace had come back to haunt him. He’d given up his soul, and now Charlie would pay with her life.
He could hear her heart strumming in her chest. Please don’t let her be in pain. She kept humming a familiar sound that scared him to no end. He pulled her away from him to check her. Anguish ripped through his heart as he watched tears stream down from the corners of her eyes to her lovely ebony cheeks. Her beautiful silver hair was still wet from her shower.
Charlie was angelic.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him, her pupils small as pinpoints. A slow smile crept over her full lips. “I need to give it back,” she whispered. Her face crumpled, and more tears fell. “She led them away from it. From us.”
Her warm tears fell against his bare chest. The rhythm of her heart slowed in her chest. If Charlie’s heartbeat stopped its beautiful tempo, Simon would will his own to stop its pointless beating. If she ended, life would be useless.
“Who gave you something?” he asked.
“Miri.”
Miri had come back.
Before Simon had a chance to ask what Miri had done, Damon, Cass, and Audra came running from the hall.
“What happened?” Cass asked. Her wide eyes glistened with unshed tears and horror as she drew closer. Standing up on her tiptoes, she placed the back of her hand on Charlie’s forehead and looked up at him. “Ronin? Did he do this?” A low snarl ripped through Cass’s mouth as her eyes blazed gold. Her eyes roamed the wooded area around them as she bared her teeth, dominance pouring from her in waves of fury.
No. Miri had done something to her; had given her something that weighed her down, and Charlie was fighting to pull herself back from whatever current was dragging her under.
Charlie curled her arms around his neck and pulled herself up. He waited for her to tell him something, anything that could help.
“No. I don’t think it was Ronin. I don’t know. I came home and… the hell?” His voice hitched higher and he stopped midsentence as Charlie sank her teeth into his shoulder.
She kept humming that song as she dug her teeth deeper, grinding them against the rigid bone in his shoulder. Gripping the back of her head and pressing her closer, he fell to his knees and gave in to the drunk feeling her bite had brought him. His cock hardened in his pants and he swayed slightly. He groaned and threw his head back, giving her all the access she needed to whatever part of his body she wanted.
Heat engulfed his body as her teeth released him.
“Umm,” Audra said, her voice unsure. “Do you need to take this back in your own house? I’m into porn just like everyone, but I don’t want to see this.”
Simon was blind to everything but Charlie. When she finally angled her head so he could look into her eyes, he froze. A crimson, sluggish smile tugged at the corners of her lips like she knew something he didn’t. A secret hid behind her knowing gaze that held him prisoner. Unable to speak while she trapped him within her gaze, he smiled and nuzzled his nose against hers.
“What did you do?” he asked.
Whatever had taken Charlie over released her from its grip. Her heart beat faster in her chest and her breaths evened out. “I gave it back to you. She gave it to me, and now they’re yours again.” She slid fro
m his arms and moved back, waiting for something to happen.
Cass pulled Charlie up from the ground and checked her again. “Is this some kind of kinky game?” Her melodic voice was pissed and relieved. “Dang-it, you two. You scared the crap out of me. I was adding another person to my kill list. You suck. Wait. You just bit him.”
“Yeah,” Charlie said, licking the blood away from her lips. She stumbled, but Damon caught her before she fell. Backing away from Simon, she smiled and nodded. “I did.”
Simon gulped and clutched the spot where his mate laid claim to him. Power pulsed all through his body as the beast opened its eyes for the first time in millennia. His skin tingled as energy, his grace, spread throughout every cell inside him. His beast surged back to life and roared in his head, calling out to the earth to welcome him back. Something else was here, too. It pulsed and electrified his entire being, calming a piece of him that had been enraged for so, so long.
His soul.
The light of his soul seared him from the inside out, and he welcomed the pain of its return. Every emotion he’d been missing filled his body, and his beast surrendered to them. His saber-tooth was inside of him, expanding, pulsating, pushing against his skin for release. The two dueling entities fought to decide which sensation would take him over: pain from his beast ready to shred through his skin, or the life-affirming warmth that emanated from his soul and grace.
Simon threw his head back and roared a sound that echoed through the woods and hills of New Rose. The feral growl started a breaking that shattered his body into millions of pieces, scattering his once human skin, reforming, and shifting it into something bigger than the world. A pain-filled sigh blew from his lips as he fell to the ground. Puffs of dirt blew in his face as he panted, waiting for his beast to finally force its way through to the daylight.
“Is this what’s supposed to happen?” Charlie asked. Worry tainted her voice as she watched him change into the creature that once offered him solace. “Did I do it wrong?”
