I half-expected more AFata to be there waiting on us, an attack imminent. But the second I landed, I allowed my magic to diffuse around us. It was a second that could have gotten us injured if that was the AFata’s intent. Seemed like it wasn’t, because there were more people in the office than before, but they were waiting on us.
“You’ve reached your decision?” I asked softly.
“We have,” Carlos uttered, his tone firm. “We’ll join you if you start a war.”
My lips twitched, but I controlled my smile. “I’m glad to hear it. The AFata will be the first to know if the Fae want my blood.” I sucked down a breath, then to Seph, murmured, “I think it’s time we spoke with your father, don’t you?”
His eyes caught mine. “You sure about this?”
My tone was cheerful as I declared, “Nope, but we’ve got to start somewhere, and if the Assembly wants me enough to send a battalion of Fae out to grab me, then I think we’ll save them the bother by going to them first, don’t you?”
I sensed his unease and understood it. He didn’t like or trust his father, and dealing with the Assembly was like putting your hand in a pool of piranhas and expecting not to get bitten.
Still, we had to make a move before I had another battalion stored away in the closet space I was making in the ether, along with the original set of warriors and the lodestone, and I wasn’t afraid to play white to their black in this particular game of chess.
Their queen was mine, and they didn’t even know it, but they would soon.
Eight
Seph
“Father.”
Noa’s brow was furrowed as he stared at me. “You’ve been ignoring my calls.”
Nonchalantly, I shrugged as I set the comm unit on the scarred Formica table in the kitchen of the family finca. As predicted, the tarantula had gone walkabout so my focus wasn’t on the glass box my mate had fashioned for her new pet—just the thought made me want to puke. Sol, I’d always hated spiders. The prospect of the damn thing walking around the kitchen didn’t make me happy either. I leaned on Gaia’s mercy and prayed it had left through the open kitchen window.
Barely refraining from shuddering, and cutting a look at the window with hope, I mumbled, “My phone remained in Honolulu while I was elsewhere.” Funny how his rebuke meant nothing to me now when, days before, it would have crushed me.
Looked like Riel wasn’t the only one whose powers were getting to their head.
“How unapologetic you sound,” he murmured, his annoyance evident. That was something Riel and I appeared to have in common—the ability to piss off our parents.
“I’m not calling to apologize,” I told him bluntly. “A lot has happened—”
“I know. A Virgo bond that has come to fruition as well as a battalion seeking entry into Cuba and subsequently vanishing.” He pursed his lips, his gaze taking in the changes in my nature. Maybe I was a little less servile than usual, and maybe he was right—the Virgo bond had changed me in numerous ways. My bond with my family was no longer the epicenter of my life. He sighed when he saw exactly how unapologetic I was, then muttered, “I assume the missing battalion had something to do with you?”
I dipped my chin, but I was surprised at the lack of ire in his voice. Especially considering my brothers were in that battalion… “Kind of.” For a second, I wondered what the general had leaked to the Assembly, and subsequently, my father, then I shrugged it off when Riel snorted, shoved me out of the way, and moved to take the central focus of the comm unit.
“Hello Noa,” she chirped cheerfully, and I had to shake my head in amusement at her rude greeting.
My father narrowed his eyes at her. “Hello, Gabriella.” Then his eyes narrowed even farther until he was practically squinting at her. “You look different.”
My lips twitched at that definite understatement. “A lot has happened since last we spoke, father.”
“Indeed,” he intoned grimly, his gaze still drifting over the many changes in my mate’s appearance.
“I’m Riel,” she stated on a huff at his prolonged stare. “Things got a little complicated on the name front when we found out my grandmother isn’t actually dead. So, she’s Gabriella and I’m Riel.”
My father’s face blanched. “Gabriella lives?” Then his mouth tightened. “This isn’t possible. I sensed her passing.”
“You sensed my interference,” Linford interrupted, popping up behind Riel to utter those words.
“Linford!” My father gaped at his old troupe brother like a koi seeking food at the surface of a pond. Did it make me a mean bastard if I enjoyed seeing his discomposure? After a lifetime of pristine perfection, witnessing him acting this way made me feel like he was human and not the robot I’d always thought him. “Impossible! You’re older than I!”
“Our granddaughter touched a lodestone.” Noa’s hiss told me what he thought about that. “This is one of her abilities.”
My father shook his head. “This isn’t possible.”
“Oh, it is. Very possible,” was Riel’s happy reply, and though I knew the cheerfulness was fake, I could definitely sense her amusement. My father was set in his ways, ultratraditional and ultraconservative. Riel, being the pain in the ass that she was, probably appreciated blowing his mind.
“She used her gift on us both, Noa,” Gabriella murmured softly, stepping into the screen too.
The way he looked at her was all the evidence I needed to see—he still loved her.
I wanted to ask him what the Sol he’d been playing at by consorting with my mother, by refusing the Virgo bond in favor of a dynastic match, but he’d made his mistakes and I hadn’t been foolish enough to follow in his footsteps.
“Gabriella,” he breathed, his heart in her name.
“Hola, Noa,” she replied softly.
“Good Gaia, it’s been a lifetime since I last saw you in the flesh.” He swallowed thickly. “I’ve missed you.”
“And I’ve missed you.” She blew out a breath. “I missed you all, but the ache becomes bearable with time, doesn’t it?”
“Not for me.” Noa firmed his chin. “When you died, I thought I was—” He shook his head. “But you didn’t die.” He cut Linford a look. “You always were a sly bastard with those machinations you could pull.”
Linford shrugged. “It’s a gift.”
“I’d like to know how you did it, dammit,” Noa grumbled.
“I can implant suggestions and erase memories, you know that, Noa,” Linford retorted. “I waited on a funeral—Silke vil der Hunst had just died and you’d attended that day. A little erasing here and a little suggesting there, it was no longer Silke’s funeral but Gabriella’s.”
Mouth flattening into a sneer, my father rasped, “I’d kill you for that.”
“But you wouldn’t survive the duel.” Linford smirked at him. “There are advantages to having a talented granddaughter. Perhaps, if you’re kind to her, she’ll treat you thusly.”
Noa glowered at his troupe brother, but he surprised me by not jumping on the offer and grabbing it with both hands. When I studied his face in the screen though, I saw his focus was on Gabriella. The yearning there was enough to make me uncomfortable.
No man should see his father’s response to another woman and feel no guilt or regret on his mother’s behalf. But I didn’t. I just felt sorrow for the wasted life my father had without Gabriella at his side.
But then, when I thought about it, really thought about it, I realized everything happened for a reason.
Had my father not married my mother, I’d be tied by blood to Riel, and that blew my mind.
Kismet, whether I liked it or not, had made the move for a reason, and my parents’ misery was just a casualty in its ever-moving, ever-changing path.
“Noa,” Riel called, drawing my father’s attention to her. It didn’t take a miracle worker to see that she was feeling sorrow for the broken Virgo pair, so I curled my arm over her stomach and hauled her into me. The bond
between us was still unsealed, and I felt it like a raw, gaping wound in my soul, but survival mattered more than that.
Maybe the Virgo bond, the rabid beast that took up a great chunk of space in my head, had some semblance of self, had some understanding of the consequences of our actions because even though I wanted to fuck her raw, have her Claim me, I knew we needed to act first.
What would her Claim even mean if she died hours or days later?
“Yes, Riel,” Noa murmured eventually.
“I need to speak with the Assembly.”
His scowl was instantaneous. “Why?”
“I have something they want, and they have something I want.” She smiled. “I won’t cause too much trouble.”
Daniel snorted at that, and I shot him a thunderous look over my shoulder—just in time to see Matt punch him in the arm in a silent warning to shut up.
Noa rolled his eyes. “You’re Gabriella’s blood. You were born trouble. What kind of war are you bringing to the Assembly’s doorstep, Riel? We are family now… Would you leave kin out in the dark?”
I grunted. “She’s left her Virgo out in the dark, Father. None of us truly know her game plan.”
Noa cut me a look. “That must be killing you.”
Baring my teeth at him, I retorted, “It is.”
Riel’s hand covered mine on her waist and she squeezed gently. “I’m not doing it to be difficult. I’m not being secretive or purposely trying to hide anything from you—”
“No? Then what are you doing?”
She blew out a breath. “Following my gut.”
A short, poignant pause followed that statement. “Indeed,” my father answered bluntly. “I’m not sure whether I should be more terrified or not.”
“Have faith, Noa,” Gabriella stated. “Her power makes her unstable, but the boys are balancing her.”
My brows lifted at that, and I felt Riel’s tension at her grandmother’s words. “I’m unstable?” she blurted out.
Gabriella shot her a look. “Incredibly.”
She huffed. “Thanks.”
With a small smile gracing her lips, Gabriella murmured, “Will you help us?”
“What reason do I give to call a session?” Noa asked instead of replying.
Riel grinned. “That’s the easy part.”
“It is?”
“Tell them you have someone in your custody who can share information on the warriors’ whereabouts.”
My father stiffened. “You know where they are?”
“Well, no, but I know they’re with the meteor they were so angry they missed.”
Frowning, Noa shook his head. “Is that supposed to make sense?”
Gabriella chuckled. “Probably not, Noa. But you have your reason. Will you help us?”
He stared at her. “Was there any doubt?”
Well, Sol yeah there was doubt. I’d doubted he’d help period. But apparently, where Gabriella was concerned, nothing was too much, and as a Virgo, I could understand that even if, as a son, I was pissed.
“How long will it take for the Assemblymen to gather?” Riel questioned.
“It will be in the morning, at the latest.” He shot me a look. “I’ll notify you of the Assembly’s location.”
Considering that was a secret known only to the Assembly and their aides, I knew he was bestowing an honor on us… if I’d given a damn about that, of course.
“Thank you, Father,” I told him formally.
He dipped his chin, but his gaze was still on Gabriella, to the point that I backed off, drawing Riel with me.
As my father and her grandparents spoke, she twisted in my arms and lifted hers to twine around my neck.
“It’s time, Seph,” she murmured, a twinkle in her eye that had me forgetting about the others in the room.
“It is?” I rasped in surprise. Sol, I’d been waiting for this since the battalion and AFata had bludgeoned their way into my Claiming, shit, since way before then, but I’d thought there’d be other tasks to fulfil, something else to interrupt…
“You’re mine,” she breathed, invading my thoughts, “and it’s time I showed you that.”
❖
Riel
It was weird.
Shit was going to hit the fan soon, and yet, there was a lightness to my heart. A buoyancy which told me that I was on the right path.
Sure, I didn’t know how I was on this path, but it didn’t matter. I was taking steps in the right direction, and I had the right people at my side.
My Virgo included.
I grinned back at him as I tugged him down the narrow, low hall and down into one of the two tiny bedrooms on the property.
As I glanced around the grim interior, I had to admit, and not for the first time since visiting the finca, that it made my home back in Miami look glamorous—which was really saying something.
Shoving thoughts of the family home aside, because now really wasn’t the time for that, I squealed as I launched myself onto the bed and with starfish arms and legs, bounced once, twice, and a third time.
“Sexy, Riel. Sexy,” Seph commented, but I heard the laughter in his voice and tilted my head forward to grin at him.
“You know it’s true.”
“Anything that makes your tits jiggle like that has to be sexy,” he retorted, folding his arms as he hitched his shoulder and leaned against the doorjamb.
Sexy was him at that moment.
Sol, he looked like walking sin. His cornflower blue eyes seemed to glimmer gold as he stared at me, and the sharp angles of his cheekbones and jaw were like stone even as they made up a face that could be described as pretty.
His lush mouth was tipped up at the edges in a smile, and the way the corners of his eyes crinkled just made me feel connected to him.
It was such a private, knowing look. One that we wouldn’t have shared not even a month ago. So much had happened in such a short space of time, yet here we were in a room that neither of us had known existed, a gazillion miles away from Eight Wings, and walking down a completely different route to the one he, and the rest of my Virgo, had been on at the beginning of the semester.
A part of me, the human female part, wanted to know if he had regrets. With each step I took down this path, I was leading us further and further away from the Academy, and yet… he was still here. Looking at me like that. Standing there as though he had all the time in the world when I knew, point blank, it had to be eating at him that he hadn’t been Claimed.
The other part of me, the one that wasn’t a human female with issues, recognized that something big was going to go down when my third and final Virgo was Claimed, and the way my heart raced in anticipation was enough to have me crooking my finger at him and beckoning him close.
When he cocked a brow at me, I bit my lip. “You know what you’re inviting, don’t you?”
I smiled at him. “You?”
“I’m not going to stop until you Claim me,” he rasped. “So, be very sure that’s how you want the evening to end.”
He jerked forward when Daniel shoved him deeper into the room. “There’s a line out here just waiting to get in, dumbass.”
Seph grunted as he stepped deeper inside with Dan and Matt following him. Matt shut the door behind him, closing me into this tight space with my males.
Ugh. They were so gorgeous together. One so pretty, the other so handsome, and the final one so frickin’ fine that I had a whole trio of hunks to salivate over.
I must have been a very good girl in a past life.
With another nibble of my bottom lip, I cast a spell and dispersed with my clothes. Sure, I wasn’t exactly playing hard to get, but Seph had been waiting all day! We’d been in negotiations for hours, he’d even met my family, all while my Claim was burning its way into Dan and Matt’s systems while he was out in the cold.
Well, no longer.
I was about to make it up to my final Virgo and then some.
He sucked in a breath at the sight of
me on the white cotton sheets that covered the bed. There was no comforter now, just a sheet, and with the lackadaisical fan that spread sticky hot air around the room, there was a sultriness to the moment that I knew I’d never forget.
As he willed his clothes away, he climbed onto the bed and crawled toward me. The move was pure predator. If I’d had somewhere to go other than the headboard, I’d have let him chase me, would have played. But now wasn’t the time.
A switch had been flipped in his head, and the Virgo in him was out and ready to party.
Good thing I was down for a wild night too.
He didn’t stop until he crawled over me, until his face was hovering above mine, until his body covered me. His hands rested on either side of my head, and he waited there, almost in a plank pose, as he hovered above me, looking down at me as though I were the sun and the moon to him.
Sol, maybe I was. I knew he was that to me.
When he sucked in a deep breath and closed his eyes, I knew he was savoring my scent. Licking my lips at the sight, I cast a quick look at my other Virgo and saw they were standing sentinel at the door. Their hungry eyes were watching every move we made, and I knew, with anyone else, it would have felt super creepy to have them watching, but this? They were keeping guard. They were protecting this moment, Seph’s right to take me and have me make him mine.
My smile was shaky when he opened his eyes and looked at me, his heart buried deep in them. It was too soon for love, that much was obvious. We were still learning one another, still getting to know each other’s quirks. And yet, it was close. So close. I could feel it hovering in the near distance, almost like it was waiting for me to reach out and grab it.
Weirdly enough, I was hesitant to do so. Something like this couldn’t be grabbed. It took time and patience. For the moment, the Claim was enough for me. It didn’t matter how much time I had left on this realm, it would be enough. They would always be more than I ever expected, and that was the truth.
The Ascended: The Eight Wings Collection Page 51
