by Scott, Helen
The feeling was unbelievable. I could never describe it in a way that seemed satisfactory to me, but as she fed I could only think about one thing: how we almost lost her. Sure, Merlin said that she would have still been alive in there somewhere until the Lady could snuff out the rest of her existence, but just the memory of her looking at us with foreign eyes, eyes that held none of the emotions or tenderness we were used to, was enough to make my heart constrict in my chest.
If I hadn’t been there or acted quickly enough, then what would have happened? She would be gone and the world would be heading to hell in a handbasket.
The sensation of time pulling on me, the pressure I felt in my head and behind my eyes when I used my abilities, it all seemed like it was designed to discourage time walkers from doing their job. When I’d used it in that moment, it had felt twice as difficult, like the Lady herself was fighting me, even though she hadn’t been.
Once we’d ‘landed’ back in that hotel room, I couldn’t contain my nerves, my fear that it hadn’t worked and the Lady had won. Time walkers never talked about it with outsiders, but there were instances where those who weren’t powerful enough could cause a boomerang effect. They’d try to shift time and succeed, but only for a few moments, like they couldn’t get the new reality to stick and just ended up being snapped back to the one they had been trying to avoid, which usually resulted in someone’s death.
I’d held my breath those first few minutes, terrified that I hadn’t been strong enough to save us, to save her. Sometimes, when my emotions got more intense than usual, I still felt that way, like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Even now, on the plane with my mate feeding from me and showering me with the sensation of being loved through our bond, I was on edge.
Marcella pulled back after a while, and I definitely felt the loss of the amount of blood she had taken, but it didn’t matter, I didn’t care. Just like she’d done for Darius, I would have given her every last drop of my blood if that was what she needed.
I realized as I looked at her that it was only my somber thoughts that had prevented me from nutting in my pants just like Barc had. Usually it was the other way around. I was always down to fuck, and usually not that serious, but having a mate had changed me and my priorities.
She regarded me warily, her eyes capturing mine as though she was trying to discern some hidden truth. Eventually, she quietly said, “Nothing is going to happen to me. You saved me, and now I’m supposed to be a Mother, whether I’m ready for what that means or not. And you know what? Even if I’m not ready, I know I can handle it because I have you by my side. You are my rock, just like I am yours. Don’t forget that, and don’t ever think I’m not grateful for what you did or that you’re not strong enough to do it again, because I am, and I know you are if you need to be.”
Her words touched something deep within me, something I wasn’t even aware had been hurting. It was like a sunburn I had just scratched, it hurt like hell because the dull ache of pain was there all the time, but drawing attention to it was like asking for even more pain. I hadn’t realized how scared I had been this whole time, not just when the Lady had taken her over, but that the Lady would take her away from us again, or maybe even that Merlin would take her from us instead. They were the strongest beings in existence, and I knew they could destroy us all with a snap of their fingers if they wanted to. Thankfully, Merlin didn’t seem interested in that at all, just in stopping the Lady.
Emotion welled up inside me, a sensation I wasn’t exactly used to, but I poured it all down the bond to Marcella. “I love you, Chella,” I told her quietly, as I touched my forehead to hers.
Her jewel-like eyes seemed to glitter even more as she drank me in. She returned the overwhelming emotions just as readily as I had sent them, and it was like being bathed in cool water on a hot day, the perfect sensation I never wanted to stop. “I love you, too,” she replied, before sneaking a quick kiss when I wasn’t expecting it.
“What are you two, in a romance novel or something?” Raven teased, sounding disgusted as he punched my bicep.
“And what would you know about romance novels?” Marcella challenged, pinning Raven with her calculating stare as she raised an eyebrow.
“We all know you’re a secret softy,” Keiran added quietly, with a grin I was still getting used to seeing on his face. I wasn’t the only one Marcella had changed.
“Cade and I are the gruff ones, we aren’t soft, and you all should know that by now,” Raven declared with a distinctly grumpy tone, as he crossed his arms over his chest.
Before any of us could respond, the stewardess brought out a tray of crackers, meats, fruits, and cheeses for us to snack on. The conversation paused for a moment, and Raven took the opportunity to grab a handful of grapes, tossing them into his mouth one at a time.
Marcella glared at him for a moment before saying, “You are a softy, and you don’t need to pretend otherwise around us.”
“Wasn’t aware the flight was going to be a group therapy session,” Raven groused, before tossing another grape into his mouth and crunching down on the purple fruit.
My mate popped up off my lap, which made me want to growl and snarl at the mind walker for making her leave me. The look she gave me before she walked away was the only thing that stopped me. It was full of heat and unspoken promises of what she’d do to me later, and dammit if that didn’t shut me up.
She sank down onto Raven’s lap, and I heard the two of them muttering back and forth about emotions and needs, and then before I could blink she was feeding from him—Darius must have really done a number on her for her to take as much as she had from Barclay and me and still want more. I could see Gideon and Keiran watching with thinly veiled jealousy and lust.
The answer to all this latent tension and need was simple: an orgy. A big, juicy one like we had in Boston, except this time with Darius as well, even if he was a stuck-up asshole most of the time, he needed in just as much as the rest of us.
It was like this trip to England had exacerbated the wedge that the Lady had driven into our little group, and we needed to reconnect both physically and emotionally to heal the damage the bitch had done.
I sighed and sat back as the plane hummed around us. What we wanted or needed, and what was going to happen, were most likely two different things, but as I looked from brother to brother—Darius included in that statement, the douche—I knew we had to make reconnecting a priority if we wanted to overcome the problems that were before us. We needed to function as a team, and we couldn’t do that if we felt splintered.
Marcella lifted her head and turned to face me, wiping a stray droplet of blood from her lips while Raven’s arms came around her waist and held her to him. I had no doubt my brother was sporting just as much of a boner as Barclay and I were. Pants were tented all over the place thanks to our little minx.
“Cabin crew, prepare for landing,” the pilot announced over the intercom system.
It didn’t feel like we had been in the air long enough, but then, with how time was passing at the speed of light, we never really did get a chance to get to grips with anything.
In barely no time at all, we’d flown to England, found Merlin, and now here we were, back home again.
We all moved to take proper seats instead of lounging about all over the place, which also meant that Marcella had to leave Raven’s lap, and apparently neither of them were happy about it. She slid over into the seat next to him and twined her fingers with his. Whatever had been eating at Raven, she’d sensed it, just like she had with me, and our mate was doing the best she could to soothe our hurts and make the pain and fear stop.
If I could have loved her more, then at that moment, I would.
Chella, for all her flaws, was perfect for us.
7
Keiran
“Elizabeth’s asleep,” I whispered to my waiting brothers, as, four hours later, I walked into the ether to find the one I sought.
The compound
was large, and the house that was at its center was shielded by dogs, human guards, and all kinds of talents that Gideon had identified as druid, but were unlike anything he’d ever seen before—goddamn ancients and their unusual abilities.
Having informed the others of Elizabeth’s status, I heard their hum at my words as I allowed myself to travel through the neural network that was the dreamscape.
I subsisted in a misty world on that level, jumping from subconscious to subconscious as though I were a frog leaping from lily pad to lily pad.
When I’d found Elizabeth’s dreamscape once more, I allowed myself to free fall into it this time, choosing those first few moments to discern what her poison of choice was.
Everyone had them.
Dreams were inherently personal, unique to everyone. A layman might think they could analyze theirs, but the method of such analysis was flawed. It failed to take into account just how individual our dreams were.
It was like a book or a movie. Two people could read the exact same words or watch the same film, yet they’d have completely distinctive interpretations of it.
Why would this be any different?
I’d already examined Elizabeth’s dreamscape, but her addiction and subsequent withdrawal had altered hers to the point that it was like looking at another person’s. That was how individual dreams could be—they depended on our state of mind, our physical being too.
No dream encyclopedia would ever be able to ‘translate’ a dream like I could, not when the number of variables was infinite.
The sensation of Marcella tugging at our bond had me cringing because I knew what it meant.
Did I love that she could leapfrog onto our gifts? Not really. It came as a relief when it meant she could do things we’d never have begun to imagine being possible, but on the regular, it was like scraping my nails down a blackboard and expecting to like the colorful tune that erupted as a result.
When she was there, beside me, I looped my arm around her shoulder and hugged her close to my side.
While I didn’t love her ease of being able to hijack my powers, I did love her. And mostly, I loved her intelligence.
Like now, I’d never really told her how it worked, how I drove through dreams like a retired couple would cruise down Route 66 on a Harley… but she knew, instinctively, that the first few minutes were for monitoring.
For judging.
Elizabeth’s dream was still faintly laced with the chemicals that were withdrawing from her body. I could scent them in her subconscious, but could also discern them from the vivid colors and skewed images.
That she was still in the claws of her addiction was evident and very concerning.
If we were to use her as a means to an end, we’d need her control to be better than it currently was, because now? It sucked. And that was being generous.
“What’s wrong with her?” Marcella whispered, as we eyed Elizabeth who stared at herself in a mirror. Track marks dotted her inner elbows and blood poured down her forearms. Her shirt and thin body looked bruised and battered, and her throat was littered with bite marks.
There was such a hint of realism to the look that I knew Elizabeth hadn’t been as much of a player as we’d thought. She’d definitely been a victim of her pursang lover, whose blood she’d been using to manufacture and distribute Kronos as a sideline. The tear marks at her throat were bad enough that Marcella was cupping her own, her thumb stroking the tender flesh over and over as though appreciating the silky, uninjured skin.
But as concerning as the image Elizabeth had of herself was, it was nothing in comparison to her face, which was where the chemical compounds still lacing her body fucked with things.
Her mouth was sewn up with huge stitches. Each one that had been torn through her upper and bottom lip had a huge, nasty ass red hole that was green with oozing pus that poured down her chin. The sight was beyond disturbing, and I had to assume it was indicative of the secrets Elizabeth felt she was keeping.
It was certainly a sight I wouldn’t be forgetting any time soon. Not that it was the most disturbing. I’d been around a long time, after all. I’d seen the nightmares of monsters and killers that went above and beyond Elizabeth’s pay grade.
Her eyes were drenched with tears, and I had to admit, her pitiful state touched me. It reminded me of when we’d stored her in the basement with the others in her drug ring, because even as we’d tortured them, none except for the one Marcella had ‘desiccated’ had appeared as badly tormented as Elizabeth was at this moment in time.
“Time to entice her,” Marcella murmured, tilting her head so she could whisper the words into my ear.
I nodded, then gently began manipulating the dream.
Feeling Marcella’s touch upon every minute gesture I made was bizarre. It was like she was shadowing each move I made, feeling it, tasting it, remembering it.
The thought disturbed me.
Was that what she was doing with all the powers we had?
Learning to shadow them?
So she could what?
Bring them into the light?
My heart began to thud in my chest as I morphed the mirror in front of Elizabeth, turning it into a wall so she could no longer see her reflection. Gradually, I covered her body with a thicker sweater, and as it shielded the wounds on her arms, I watched her snuggle into the soft fabric’s warm embrace so she wasn’t a trembling wreck anymore.
Then, I gently urged her to curl up on a daybed I conjured. In a pool of sunlight, it looked like heaven for a woman who was cold inside and out.
She did as I bid. Almost like a cat, she cuddled into the nice, jewel-hued pillows that were piled high around the daybed, and closed her eyes.
The tenor of the dream morphed from dark blues and blacks to golds and reds—warmth, feelings of home, and acceptance.
“They mustn’t be accepting her,” Marcella murmured, reading my mind—well, to a certain degree.
“I’m not sure they can reject her,” I countered, knowing full well that Marcella could have been wicked as sin and I wouldn’t have turned my back on her except… I winced. “They’ll try to change her.”
She cut me a look, her eyes rounding as she stared at me. “In what way?”
“What they dislike, they’ll try to improve.”
Her brow puckered. “As you would have done to me?”
“It depends. If you were manufacturing drugs and were getting high on the regular? Yeah,” I answered with a faint laugh. “I think we’d try to get you clean and to turn your mind to another job.”
Nose crinkling, she mumbled, “Touché.”
My lips twitched. “Change doesn’t have to be bad.”
“Doesn’t it?” she questioned, brows arching. “I mean, let’s face it, all we’ve had recently is change. I’d like for things to stagnate for a while. It would be more restful.”
I dipped my chin and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You, my love, were not born to be restful.”
Her eyelashes brushed against my chin, and for a second, I just enjoyed our proximity.
“Why did that scare you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You were thinking about my shadowing your gifts. I heard you. It scared you. Your pulse soared.”
It was a nuisance how well she could read our minds.
“Because it resonated. You can craft the shadows and forge the light, have spirit animals as your tools, but what could be more powerful? A Mother who can shadow all the other Sires’ traits?”
Her eyes widened. “Shit.”
“Yeah. Shit.” My lips curved at her statement though. “It’s handy, really.”
“What is?”
I tapped her chin with my finger. “If you can contain all that magic, then what use does the universe have for the other Sires? And that, love, is why my pulse soared.”
She gulped and nodded. “Let’s think about that later, yeah?”
“I wasn’t going to drop the subject, Chella. J
ust postpone the discussion.” I sucked down a breath. “Trouble is, we’re reacting now, no means of acting on our own.”
“I’m tired of being a pawn,” she whispered, and I couldn’t stop myself from leaning down, brushing a kiss to her forehead once more, and replying, “Me too.”
With a shaky sigh, she nodded, then tilting her head, she pressed a quick kiss to my lips. With her gaze caught in mine, we allowed Elizabeth to rest as we got lost in the other’s eyes.
For me, Marcella meant love and home, safety and my personal haven. When she looked at me the way she did, I knew she felt the same for me, but more. Somehow, everything I felt, she turbocharged it. She stole my breath from me, making my heart race with just how much she could feel for me, how much I meant to her.
There were so many odd things about this woman, my mate, my Sixth, and now we knew why.
She wasn’t just a woman, my mate, or my Sixth.
She’d been born to be something else, and we were born to reign at her side.
Fuck…
“We should deal with Elizabeth before she never wants to leave her dream,” Marcella whispered gruffly, her voice deeper than I’d heard it before.
“That’s true. It’s happened before,” I told her, and watched her eyes round.
“Seriously? You can make people never want to leave their dream?”
“I trapped Winterborn in a dream,” I retorted. “Why couldn’t I make people want to stay?”
Her mouth rounded, but I could sense she was impressed, and I found myself amused by how I wanted to preen at that.
The others were far more emotional than me. Even Cade and Raven, who’d insist they had black, shriveled flesh where their hearts should be, emoted more than I did.
They felt so much because they were of the world, of Earth.
Me?
This was my true home.
The dreamscape.
Sometimes I never wanted to leave—
“Don’t you dare trap yourself here,” Marcella growled, making me jump.
