* * * *
Aliah sat up and looked around but everything felt…
Wrong.
Different.
For starters, she was no longer trapped in that goddamned world where she’d been.
Unfortunately, the female wolf who’d taken her baby wasn’t tossed through, too, even though Aliah had sensed her there. Sensed her close.
She held her hands up and let out a startled cry to see man’s hands there.
Sure enough, unfastening the jeans she wore revealed she had a penis and balls.
“Oh, hey. Look at that.”
It was a brief distraction. Okay, she was out and back on Earth, but not in her own body.
At that point, she didn’t fucking care.
Nowhere around here was there any sign of wolves.
She climbed down from the rock pile and found the guy’s gear and started looking through it. No ID, but the GPS showed his track through the woods.
Duh, wallet.
She found a wallet in the back pocket of the jeans and nearly dropped it when she opened it.
Fuuuck.
Somewhere, she thought she heard a man screaming, demanding to be released, then realized it was inside her.
Rather, she was inside him and in control.
Carl Shupe.
Her husband’s cousin.
“Well hello, Carl,” she muttered, sliding the wallet back into his—her pocket. “Funny thing just happened. Looks like I’m in control now.”
Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.
* * * *
The three women sat in the middle of the field, facing each other. From about thirty feet away, a group of a dozen cattle grazed and occasionally lifted their heads to watch the women.
“I feel really stupid doing this,” Mai muttered. “You know that, right?”
“Shh,” Lina said. “Just sit there and try to feel.”
From where he lay nearby, Jasper had his head up and silently watched them.
Elain suspected that she wouldn’t be able to get rid of her four-legged shadow—not that she wanted to—if she wasn’t safely inside the house or with her guys. She’d noticed the only time Jasper willingly left her side was if any of her men were with her, or she was with Ryan, whom the dog absolutely loved. And if he wasn’t shadowing her, he was shadowing the kids.
Elain wanted to know what happened to his previous owner, though.
They were taking a break from trying to see more about the nuclear vision to work on their powers. After more talking with Callie, they decided to help Mai focus on some of the more tangible aspects that didn’t involve lightning.
Callie had the ability to manipulate earth and wind, sort of like an elemental earth dragon. Jan had started helping Mai but they hadn’t made much progress. She could make a leaf move with wind, but that was about it.
Today, they were going to focus on earth.
Mai finally let out a sigh. “I just want a darn molehill—” A terrified squeak cut her off as a small mound of dirt about three inches tall erupted in front of her.
“Was that me?” she whispered.
Lina let out a hoot. “You did it! You made a molehill out of a mountain of effort!”
Elain snorted. “I don’t think that’s helping.”
“Fuckin’ A, it is. This is great!”
“Not very helpful, though,” Mai said, her voice sounding shaky.
“It’ll be helpful when you can do like what Callie did,” Elain said, “and make a massive dirt monster appear out of nothing.”
“Oh. True.”
“Okay, I think that’s enough practice for today,” Elain said, climbing to her feet. “Always stop on a good note.” She looked down. “Right, Jasper?”
He chuffed, wagging his tail.
Back at the house, Elain’s men were taking care of Connor, who was doing a great job already of sitting up by himself and starting to roll over and commando crawl, and Ellie, who was gnawing on a baby cookie.
Elain did her best not to lose sight of this. That she had a family to love and care for, twins on the way, and that she couldn’t let their quest to stop a nuclear explosion overshadow everything else in her life.
Because the only way they would solve that problem in time was if she maintained balance.
She went in to go grab a shower and Brodey followed her. “Mind if I join you?”
“Not at all.” She suspected it’d end up with her soaped up and being sweetly mauled by him, but she didn’t mind.
That’s why she wasn’t ready for what he said next. “If you need to Seer Says me, I get it, but I need to know something. There were some pictures on your phone. I saw them looking through pics I took of Ellie’s birth, but then they were gone. One was of a birth certificate. It looked like maybe for a boy.”
Shit.
She refused to turn around. She also didn’t speak.
He finally made her turn around and look at him. “It was a Maine birth certificate, that much I know.”
Shit. Shit shitshitshitshit!
“When we were heading to that cockatrice hunt that we never got to because of Brighton, Kitty told me she’d stumbled across a police report for a missing person, a woman about that woman’s age, the one who took Lacey. And she had a baby.”
Ice water ran through Elain’s veins.
She stared at him.
“Did she abduct a wolf baby? Was she the cockatrice Ortega meant who killed Connor’s birth parents?”
Elain wanted to burst into tears of relief.
She cupped her hands against his cheeks and kissed him. “Seer Says,” she whispered. “Connor’s birth parents need to remain a secret lost to the past. That’s for his protection and ours. You can’t tell anyone any of that, even Ain and Cail.”
“Edict me,” he immediately said.
It felt like she was waiting for her heart to start beating again. She kissed him once more. “Brodey, you cannot tell anyone about seeing that birth certificate, or about any suppositions you have about Connor’s birth parents, other than what we’ve already told people.”
He nodded, smiling. “Thank you, babe. I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to spy. I used your phone to film everything, and I was looking at it, and—”
She kissed him. “Connor is our son, and Connor is a wolf.”
Neither statement a lie, because he was their son, and he was a wolf.
As far as anyone knew.
An omission wasn’t a lie.
Loophole.
He placed his hands on her tummy. “I love you. So fucking much.”
“Love you, too, sweetie.”
He wrapped his arms around her and they stood under the spray.
* * * *
Ryan stood, drink in hand, and stared out his windows. He didn’t bother turning when he felt the presence behind him.
“You’re not holding out, are you?” she asked.
He turned. Baba Yaga the matron stood there.
“Information? No. I’m using every bit they give me and working all my contacts. You?”
She went to pour herself a drink. “He won’t let me out, will he?”
Ryan froze. “What?”
“You know who I’m talking about.” She lifted the glass to her lips and stared at him over the rim. “I’m not of The Firm. Not really. I don’t want to be, either.”
“He does his best, you know. He loves you.”
“Here, let me assuage my paternal guilt by plucking you from obscurity and ensuring you have no chance for a normal life whatsoever. Oh, and making certain that you aren’t around to help prevent your brother from getting killed. And that countless eons and generations of people will hate you. Gee, he couldn’t have gotten me a gift card from Bed, Bath, and Beyond. No, not Hades.”
“Was that what this was all about? Engineering a long-term exit strategy for yourself?”
“Not exactly. Well, yes, sort of, but the nuclear thing put a crimp in my plans. I suppose I can’t l
eave until that’s handled.”
“Leave to where? I control where that pendant can take you.”
“Perhaps into the Ether.” She held her glass up and waved it in the air. “Away. Permanently.”
Ryan strove for patience. After a long breath, he quietly said, “He will not allow that and you know it. He loves you.”
“Bullshit. Hades knows nothing about love.”
“If the most powerful archdemon besides myself couldn’t figure out how to kill himself, what makes you think you could?”
“I won’t have to,” she said. “I already have.” She guzzled the drink and carried the glass back into the kitchen, setting it in the sink. “Now, I just have to wait and be patient.” She disappeared.
Fuck.
Ryan’s head dropped as he stared at the floor for a moment. By all rights, he should be reporting this to his father and send Hades out to talk to her. Let the man do his own dirty work.
He was only her half-brother, and she wasn’t very fond of him to start with. Why should keeping her alive fall upon his shoulders?
This wasn’t like Will. They weren’t soul-bound.
He understood her pain all too well, having lived through it himself.
But there came a time when, sometimes, he had to let people make choices for themselves. It wasn’t like she hadn’t fulfilled her destiny. Even Lacey had told him that.
Perhaps it would be kindest to let Jadwiga’s tortured soul finally find peace. Return to the Ether and start anew.
He finished his drink and, after a moment’s hesitation, decided to pour himself another.
If nothing else, it helped him not think about the things Elain had revealed to him in her vision that night they chatted in her yard. A vision confirmed by Lacey.
A baby.
His baby.
Impossible.
His baby had died with Chloe, his soul mate, so many eons ago, when she was murdered by Boorman.
The fucking animal who’d created these blasted cockatrice to start with.
If nothing else, before Ryan took his last breath and his soul returned to the Ether, he would have his vengeance.
THE END
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tymber Dalton lives in the Tampa Bay region of Florida with her husband (aka “The World’s Best Husband™”) and too many pets. Active in the BDSM lifestyle, the two-time EPIC winner is also the bestselling author of over ninety-five books, including The Reluctant Dom, The Denim Dom, Cardinal’s Rule, the Suncoast Society series, the Love Slave for Two series, the Triple Trouble series, the Coffeeshop Coven series, the Good Will Ghost Hunting series, the Drunk Monkeys series, and many more.
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By the Embers Dies the Fire Page 24
