by Jamie Magee
“If you do,” Adair said. “Before the words leave my lips again, I’m putting a clause in there that all parties must be aware of the other at all times, no timeouts.”
He winced at her flat joke.
“Too soon?”
“It will never not be.” He looked right at her. “I don’t deserve to ask if you want this back, if you can see us as we were again. But knowing your answer sure as hell will help me make sense of a lot of things.”
Adair’s gaze trickled over him, not sure she was reading him right but daring to give it in stab in the dark.
“If I say no, you have no liabilities, you can become who you need to be to have your vengeance on Chalice.” He went to speak but she talked over him. “And by all accounts, that time is near, and it doesn’t take very long to kill someone. So tell me, Judge. Who are you going to be once it’s over? What happens then?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, “but I think you will be better off not finding out.”
“You want me to go? Walk away like I planned days ago?” she asked sharply.
No, he was sure if they were over, she’d be with Scorpio. Yes it would burn, but at least he could watch over her. There was no way in hell he’d let her leave. Even sacrifice had its limits.
“Walk away? You just figured out your father is the fucking president of this dynasty and you would walk away without one backward glance?”
There it was again, a bone-deep loyalty to his Club, more than she could ever understand but was wise enough to respect.
“You’re missing the point. We’re fucked. I know we are. Five years doesn’t feel like five seconds to me. I sense the span of time. I changed, and we’re going to have to figure out if we still make sense.” Adair said as she did her best to keep her emotions at bay.
“We make sense.”
She furrowed her brow.
“Finley saw us coming, remember?” he asked with a wry lift of his brow.
A smile twitched on her lips, and it must have been a red flag waving before a bull because in the next breath, he was above her, his lips were on hers, and their kiss was as rich as it was before as if they hadn’t stop to repair a fraction of the damage between them.
Feeling his body rock into hers shot a fire of bliss through her, one she had to admit had never occurred with anyone else, but she knew it was coming—the ripping, burning, pain.
Enduring it seemed best, a rite of passage, maybe.
No matter how strong her mind was, the very thought of the pain she’d lived through caused a tear to drizzle down her cheek. It should have never been noticed, not as engaged as he was, but the dry thrust into her and his hand squeezing her chest halted. He’d noticed.
This time he didn’t slide away. He lingered above her, bracing most of his weight on his arms.
His thumb traced her cheek. “I don’t understand what this means.”
“I can handle it,” she said, moving her hands across his chest, building a friction like a boxer jumping in place ready to jump in the ring and take a punishment.
“It’s too soon, tonight was too much,” he said as he started to move to her side so he could at least hold her, but her legs braced around him.
“I just—I won’t ever be this way again,” she said clutching his shirt, his chest. “The scars must have been deep, or something was in the magic.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked as confusion struck him.
“Y—you may have seen me pull someone to me over the years, but you clearly didn’t stick around.”
His look was incredulous.
“It hurt. Sahara desert, even if we remedy that inside, it burns, it rips. I can’t breathe, and death seems like a vacation I’d do anything to reach.”
His weight fell onto her a bit as he adjusted the length of his body next her.
“I—I just wanted to be held those times. I thought if I drank enough, smoked enough, cast the right spell, I could get through the pain and find a way...not feel empty.”
His hand slid down her thighs, then up. The tips of his fingers skirted under the rim of her short shorts, then against her panties.
“I think whatever spell King used made my skin sensitive, but I don’t think it’s going to stop the pain if I have release.”
Judge’s eyes were solemn, but he twitched a smile as his fingertip ran across the silk barrier of her panties and she squirmed. Not in a painful way, but in the way she always had in the past when she knew her resistance would be short lived.
“You don’t remember,” his gruff voice finally said.
Her eyes rapidly searched his for the memory he thought she should have but didn’t. “Did you do more than watch me sleep all these years?”
He drew his head back, clearly insulted. “Not all these years.”
She reached to stop his hand from his caress, for several reasons, one of which was he was invoking a response in her body, and it was pushing her to the point of distraction.
“You called out to me,” he said as his hand moved up her stomach. “I thought you were waking, but then...” his eyes trickled down her. “You started to move, and you called me. I kept saying your name, but you kept to your task,” he revealed with a lifted brow. “Before I knew it, I was sucked into the erotic dream with you.”
She was speechless.
“You were not in pain. Every vampire sense I had was on high alert. Pain and discomfort were the furthest from your mind.”
“Oh my God,” Adair breathed, completely mortified. She did remember having a dream about him before she woke up. It didn’t strike her as odd because in the past, her mind had often inserted him into her dreams.
“Did I—?”
She could have sworn there was a confident blush dusting his cheeks. “A few times.”
“A few! What exactly did we do?”
His hand brushed between her thighs. “I kissed you.”
His words alone were making her melt.
“I don’t understand,” she pushed herself up, her mind was racing. “Do you think it’s temporary? Or fixed? Or it was the spell?”
She rushed to the window looking in every direction. She wasn’t thrilled to let anyone know she had this issue, but asking King what exactly his spell did would ease her mind.
Judge came up behind her. His body hovered so close to hers she could feel his breath drizzle down her shoulder. “This scares you?”
She turned to face him. “I lost part of mind and all sexual desire. I drifted. No power except from what I drew from dreams.” Her eyes watered. “I feel like a death sentence has been lifted.” She clenched his chest. “I feel like we can make at least one thing right.”
His hand fell on hers. “We are more than this.”
He’d left her speechless, and before she found words to say to him, the thunder of bikes roared into her courtyard.
Her heart was hammering, real fear came to her.
Judge’s expression wasn’t helping. There was no welcome to be had, only defense.
“Stay in my arms,” he commanded so quietly she barely heard him. But then she understood, if this was bad, he was going to move them far away.
***
Shade’s opinion on what was best for Gwinn seemed to change as rapidly, and as sharply, as the pair of them fighting and making up.
They had spent hours walking all around the massive pool they found, waiting for the magic, or energy, or whatever the hell she had him chase all through the swamp for hours, to come back.
It didn’t.
It’d vanished.
The secret, nightly, enchanting path had ended and would not return until the next, leaving only questions in its wake.
Gwinn scoured the beach and made him recount the night Finley died over and over. She wanted to know where the car was going or if anyone bothered to notice if Finley ran in a particular direction.
All were questions he didn’t have answers to, which pissed him off, which pissed her off.
The best he could do was “agree” with her assumptions. But that is all they were. There was no way to know if Finley ran toward the water or the woods, or if she was running along the water until she reached the woods—or hell, if this is just where Talley finally made her crash and he was the one doing the dragging in no particular direction.
Shade could also agree, at length, that it was odd that his place, Akan’s appearance, the haunting pool, and where Finley died could possibly have a common link.
Gwinn didn’t like the “at length” agreement, which thrust them into a silent treatment argument that lasted all the way until he returned to the swamp house to get his kut.
One look at the blade that had taken is mortal life, and the crown jewels upon it, had him pushing Gwinn against the wall and ripping her shorts down. Without ceremony or caress, he slammed home, a hard and brash need engulfing him.
Gwinn’s cry was near silent, but her body didn’t tense. Somehow her hands rested on his head that was bowed to her shoulder.
The slightest touch from her changed him again. It awoke him. He realized he was claiming mindless pleasure to escape darkness and the cold past he felt lurking deep inside. But this time, they weren’t someone else’s memories haunting him. They were his.
He went to withdraw, to fall at her feet, to kiss away all the pain he knew he brought her, but she held him in place. Her ankles locked behind his back, her thighs squeezed into his sides and she stared into his lavender swirls—she entranced him. Made him aware of her. Of the good, of the bad, of the balance.
When he moved again his thrust was just as sharp, but the violence was gone, the selfish need was gone. This was them working through the constant vulgar inclines and falls of life.
She claimed his lips right as she felt his body tremble with his release. She breathed in his exaltation, but she breathed in more too—this sacred energy between them.
He dropped to his knees the moment their lips parted, his forehead resting on her stomach, his breath like a waterfall falling over the heat of her. His hand lifted and slowly moved against her tender, hot flesh.
Gwinn’s eyes slammed closed. She braced her head against the wall feeling the building volcano of her soul churn, then all at once there was an explosion.
Her legs gave way and she slid down the wall. She heard him murmuring, as one hand wrung every ounce of her desire out of her and the other pulled her around him.
“I’ve always loved you, Gwinn. I know I have.”
When she could move her arms again, she wrapped them around his neck and he rocked them back and forth as if they had just found each other. As if they had just escaped the gallows.
She held his face, searching his eyes, and whispered the same. She had been looking for him. She loved him.
That was hours ago, and Shade had some hope they had crossed another massive threshold. She was his. It was more than a title. More than body. It was soul.
But now here he was, riveted with ignorant jealously once again.
Not only was he trapped in a haunted house with witches slash Escorts slash wolves—he only truly knew how to deal with the latter that surrounded him.
Before they left for the Boneyard, Gwinn had called Bastion. He had done something to mask their arrival. Because even though the lot was calm, there were still people out and about, and not one of them looked up at them when they flew through the gates.
Shade held a vote and was a member of the core of the Club. His arrival, or that of any of the immortal Sons, warranted acknowledgment. Not to mention the fact he now had two swords across his back making him look like some era-confused biker.
Yet, no one spared a glance as they rode toward the Victorian home.
All that Shade might have overlooked, but then, feet before they reached the home—every light flickered on and off, and the windows and doors slammed open and shut as if in applause.
He’d be a liar if he said it didn’t raise his hackles, but when he figured no one outside seemed to see it, he was beyond unnerved.
Inside, in this hidden library, Bastion was waiting.
And now for hours, as he had prowled in this doorless, windowless room feeling like caged lion, he had decided Gwinn spent too much time here.
He was sure of it. Her and the boy were in sync, finishing each others sentences and reaching for the same book as if they had the same thought at the same time—and then from time to time, they would both look up at him as if they saw or thought the same thing.
No. She did not need to be alone with a wolf slash witch for hours on end locked in this room where anything could happen. It didn’t matter that he was barely eighteen. He was a wolf.
What really rubbed Shade the wrong way was when he heard, “We should call King or have you seen Dagen? When Cashton comes back he might know.”
Hearing all of this made him a jealous fool and made him feel like nothing but a sadistic warrior.
Then, all at once, his pace stopped short. It had to; otherwise, he would have walked right through a haunt.
She was barely there. Shade could see everything behind her. Her dark hair flowed effortlessly on an absent wind.
Her knowing eyes were like coal and peered up at him from her ivory visage.
She only reached his mid chest, just a tad smaller than Gwinn, but far more frail. At first, he narrowed his eyes to question if she was a child, but then she lifted her chin, elegantly squared her shoulders, and bowed her chest every so slightly, and he knew she wasn’t.
If he had any doubt, when she began to float around him, it faded. Her hand that he could sense but not feel skirted across his chest then flowed to his arm as she circled behind him, apparently inspecting him like a treasure. He sensed her touch move across his shoulders, halting on the scar that marked when his mortal life ended. When she emerged at his other side, he was staring forward, stone cold, but he felt her stare.
When she was before him again, she lifted one of his arms, then the other, again, like he was material—or she was looking for damage, one of the two.
Gwinn and Bastion were oblivious to it all. Their backs were to him as they crouched over the two swords, trying to match the text to words in their books.
The haunt grinned in slow appreciation. Then without hesitation, she reached to where the blade had pierced through his heart.
Her touch seized him, his breath stopped, and he lost his grip on reality.
He was fighting. Something horrible, or wonderful, had just happened. He had been in disguise, dressed as a kinsman, sent to destroy the king’s daughter and her peasant lover.
They’d escaped into a wave of light, something Shade couldn’t understand but expected. He didn’t cause the light, but he stopped a sword from driving center mass into the young girl with long raven hair and emerald eyes. He’d stopped another slash that would have ended the life of the blue-eyed peasant the girl had fallen for.
All hell broke loose after that. Swords were turned on swords, then all at once, he was captured. Not slayed, but captured, and drug by his feet to a throne.
Shade saw himself sneer, pleased to see the condition of the king. Though he was fit, he was aged—not young and pristine, not the greatness Shade had seen him as before.
The queen beseeched the king for Shade’s release, using her grief as a weapon. When her tactics and magic failed, she was pulled away by others, and rendered powerless.
Then the sharp words came—the accusations that the mortals could not hear. Shade was alone with the king. Shade’s infraction was un-repairable, and he knew it. Everything had gone perfectly. The rage in the king’s eyes and the future that would come to pass was reward enough for Shade.
Until the moment he saw her, Gwinn, dragged in by her hair at the hand of Xavier. Shade was enraged and fought to defend her but was held in place by a force he could not see—but expected to face when bringing the fall of kings.
The look in Gwinn’s eyes spoke a million words. She had done her p
art, setting the passage for the souls that must cross, and he had ensured births would come. Their task was complete, but it seemed their lives were as well. They could not break free from the binds of power around them nor rush to their home where they could not be touched.
Yet her gaze said you will find me, and it told him where. There was only one place to go—to the end of the path when the course would be set and war was all that was left to be had.
Shade shook his head denying her request, and promising her he’d figure out how to get them free. They’d escape.
That was when he felt the blade, from the back, and he saw Xavier do the same to Gwinn. They fell, each reaching for the other as their blood crept across the stone floor, pooling together.
Then she came, this haunt before him now. Looking just as ghostly but more tangible. “Please forgive my love, he knows not yet how to be a great man. You will teach him, you all shall.”
A power he could not see lifted Shade. Gwinn was gone, and he demanded to know where she was, but the woman was silent. She led him, and he followed, and before he knew it, darkness was around him, and he couldn’t remember what he was supposed to do. That was when he heard Evanthe’s voice...
~
Shade’s wide gaze snapped to Gwinn to ensure she was safe, that he could reach her within a breath, and the vision was nothing more than a nightmare he had already conquered.
His head was spinning and the walls were moving—who in the hell were those people? Where in the hell did he come from?
Then he realized the wall was moving—the passage had opened.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Reveca’s ever-calm voice echoed into the room causing both Gwinn and Bastion to turn and notice the haunt for the first time. “Get away from him! Shit, Windsome, you’ve scared the fuck out of him!” Reveca scorned, coming to his side.
“You’re all right, mate,” Cash said as he patted him on the back.
Windsome grinned up at Cashton, his gaze narrowed as if he heard her speak, but she hadn’t made a sound.
Reveca stepped before them all and stood face to face with a woman who was at one time her dearest friend—a woman she helped find death, a reign in the Veil so she could find her ancestors, so she could understand the prophecy her family had predicted.
