The Redemption Saga Box Set

by Kristen Banet

  They had needed this argument, Sawyer knew. Sure, they could have talked it out and everything would have been fine but this…this was purely for them. A reminder that sometimes, things didn’t change so much. They still had the passion and temper in them that always made their friendship interesting, and now it would make their possible relationship interesting.

  “Do you mean it?” she asked, smiling at him.

  “I do,” Zander responded. “Be with whoever you want, Sawyer. If you don’t want me, just tell me. Don’t ignore me, or throw me away without a reason, though. Don’t play me. I’ve only ever wanted to settle down with you, and I couldn’t…”

  “I won’t” Sawyer whispered, moving to kiss him. “I’m sorry I made you feel like I would ever do that to you. I just needed more time, truly. I needed to realize that…”

  “That you’re good enough? Always,” Zander growled before deepening the kiss. “You’ll always be good enough and more. Too good for me.”

  “Sure.” Sawyer chuckled. “Denial for everyone.” It was joke and thankfully got a laugh out of Zander and another kiss for her.

  “Let’s get off this mat and clean up,” Zander groaned after they finally needed to breathe again. “And try and get dressed before someone finally comes to check on us.”

  They cleaned up quickly. Sawyer didn’t bother putting her underwear back on, just slid her sweats up. She took a minute to really relish the sight of Zander wiping and mopping the mats in the nude. Beautiful and bad Zander. Those were the two words she would use for her redhead punk. He had enough ink that it seemed criminal, and those piercings had done wonders for her.

  “Enjoying the view?” Zander teased as he went for his shorts. She sighed as he pulled them on.

  “I was,” she admitted. “Let’s find something to eat. It’s lunch time, right?”

  “Yeah,” Zander chuckled, finding his phone to check.

  They wandered upstairs and found Vincent and Jasper mumbling over some papers. Elijah was kicked back, his boots on the table, as he took a bite of a sandwich. Sawyer stole it and took a bite for herself.

  “Well, good afternoon to you, too, little lady,” Elijah chuckled. “Now, give me my fucking sandwich back.”

  “Go make me one,” Sawyer said after swallowing the bite she took. She gave a pause and smiled down at him. “Please.”

  “I got it,” Zander called, wandering into the kitchen. Elijah looked towards the kitchen and back at Sawyer, raising an eyebrow. She shrugged at the cowboy. There wasn’t anything to say.

  “Have that argument?” Vincent asked, looking up with a smile.

  “Yup.” Sawyer pulled out a chair and sat down. “So… what’s next?”

  “You like that question,” Elijah noted, pulling his feet off the table, “and nothing. Same as last time, we chill.”

  “Not quite.” Vincent sighed. “It’s nothing serious and might not be for a couple of weeks, but the IMPO might call us up to New York for a review.”

  “Seriously?” Zander groaned indignantly as he walked back in and dropped a boxed salad in front of Sawyer.

  “This is not a sandwich,” she pointed out to him.

  “I know you like salads more,” Zander mumbled, sitting down next to Jasper. She watched a blush creep up his neck.

  That was kind of sweet, actually.

  “Thanks,” Sawyer chuckled. “I didn’t know we had salad makings.”

  “While we were gone, Ms. Estella Helen came back around and stocked up the fridge. We left her a note with stuff you like,” Elijah chuckled. “She’ll be coming back now that we’re a little more settled with you around. I’m tired of doing all the laundry.”

  “Good to know,” Sawyer muttered half distracted as she took a bite of her salad. “So, what’s a review?”

  “After cases, we’ll get called up to New York sometimes just to catch up with the higher ups, see how we’re doing. We, as you’ve learned, deal with some rough stuff,” Jasper educated her. “Vincent and I realized it’s been three cases since we got called up to do it, and now we have you.”

  “They’ll call, it’s only a matter of time,” Vincent cut in. “They will want to know how you did and felt during the case. It’s part good and bad, since it really is for our health that they do it, but they will also be looking at you to make sure you’re not going to go rogue after this.”

  “So, it’s part ‘am I okay’ and part ‘am I still a bad guy’?” Sawyer frowned,

  “Yeah,” Vincent mumbled, looking down. “And it actually comes at a pretty bad time.”

  “Oh?” Sawyer raised an eyebrow.

  “If they learn you’ve slept with, are sleeping with, or will sleep with us, they will remove you from the team,” Jasper reminded her softly.

  Sawyer felt her heart take a large thump then stop for a moment.

  Well, that is a problem.

  “A problem for tomorrow,” Elijah said to her. She must have spoken out loud, since his hazel eyes were pinning her to her chair. “Or the day after, since I might want to be your problem tomorrow. And we can keep a secret.” He threw a wink in at the end that made her smile.

  “Pervert,” she teased.

  “Always.” Elijah chuckled.

  “Where’s Quinn?” she asked, dropping the subject of Elijah’s perversion before it escalated.

  “He always hangs in the woods for a few days when we get home. He needs to really reconnect with his land and get comfortable again,” Elijah told her, not pressing the flirtation.

  “Good to know. I’ll stay out of his space, then.” Sawyer groaned as she stood up. The post-sex soreness was setting in. “I’m going to shower and take a nap, or study or something.”

  They gave her a myriad of affirmatives and goodbyes. She moved slowly and when she got to the bathroom, she used the door instead of wasting her magic. Play time for having her magic back was over. She could spare a moment to use the door. No rush.

  When the shower was done, she went upstairs and looked at her box of photos.

  She couldn’t wait to add some from this new chapter of her life. She wanted all of them to join the ranks of everything else she had ever held dear to her heart. She needed to get new photos of Jasper and Zander. She needed to get any photos of Quinn, Elijah, Vincent.

  She couldn’t wait to get started.

  26

  Quinn

  Quinn sat on the floor of the lean-to as Shade and Scout ran the property and re-marked the boundary, like they did every time they had been away. His brothers would go out and make sure no large predators that didn’t belong had snuck in and caused any problems.

  He poured over the notebooks he’d been using to take notes over the last few weeks. His handwriting was improving, he knew that. He could see it. And he enjoyed the texts Sawyer had given him, except he knew when things were wrong.

  They were wrong a lot. He tried to not let it bother him.

  He should tell Sawyer about how the books were wrong. She might laugh about it.

  Sawyer. She occupied his thoughts too much now. He looked up from his notebooks towards the house. He couldn’t see it, but he knew exactly what direction it was in. He could imagine her in there, walking around in sweatpants that were too big and a sports bra. He could nearly taste the sexual attraction his team mates felt for her and that he felt for her.

  He wanted. He wanted to push her to the forest floor and take her in the grass. Against a tree. In her bed, and he normally disliked sleeping in beds. He wanted to do all of it with her, at her command, for her pleasure.

  He had heard the whispers of the team during the case, stuff about Sawyer and what they wanted. Vincent, Zander, and Jasper had made a deal that Elijah was a part of. Elijah was going to tell him about it soon, Quinn knew. Elijah didn’t keep secrets from Quinn, but the case had them busy; and they knew not to bother Quinn when they got home.

  Quinn couldn’t handle so much time dealing with people. The people they dealt with on cases made it w
orse. They were… so wrong. So different from what he knew and understood. So, whenever they got home from a case, he would come out here to his lean-to, no matter the weather, and get back in touch with his land and the way of things he was used to.

  He could wait to know the details of this deal until he was feeling up for the human attention. Right now, he wanted his woods, his brothers… and the books.

  They reminded him of Sawyer.

  As night fell, he lay down next to Shade, Scout against his back.

  That was when he felt it.

  A ripple of power from the south. Far, far to the south.

  He could barely feel it. He was just strong enough to recognize it and decipher it.

  A Druid had just unleashed her magic to her full power. They all felt the same, the Druids. But he was strong enough and knew enough to recognize it when he felt it. And this… this was power, everything that marked them as so much more than he was. He was probably the only Magi on Earth who would realize what that ripple had been. Regular Magi would have to be much closer to the Druid to feel it, and they wouldn’t understand what it was.

  A second ripple came, and that had Quinn standing up slowly. He narrowed his eyes to the south and waited.

  A third ripple never came.

  That concerned him, but it also wasn’t his business. He avoided Druids. He was marked, not only as claimed by his mother, but also as an enemy to them.

  And for good reason.

  He would only deal with whatever that was if he was asked. And he hoped no one realized he was there and would ask. He hoped it was nothing. He didn’t want to go south and see why two Druids were unleashing their power like that.

  He would much rather stay in his strange position in the modern world than go back to the world of Druids.

  A Nature of Conflict

  The Redemption Saga

  Copyright © 2018 by Kristen Banet

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Created with Vellum

  Some in the world will want you to fail.

  Some will want you to fall.

  Some won’t let you keep moving,

  On this journey to something better.

  Fight back.

  Fight hard.

  And remember,

  You are not alone.

  1

  Sawyer

  It was a nightmare, and Sawyer recognized it as it began. It was too dark, something that had never bothered her before. She wondered for only a second which scene her mind would replay this time.

  When Axel took a swing at her, she blocked it and swung back - wild, uncontrolled, untrained. Her hand slammed into his magic shield, something he always kept carefully wrapped around himself once their relationship turned sour and began to rot.

  A backhanded blow cracked across her cheek, flinging her to the floor. She was eighteen. She knew how to kill, but she didn’t know how to take a hit, defend herself. So much had changed.

  Despair began to take over as the nightmare spiraled out of control. She couldn’t get away. She wasn’t strong enough to defeat Axel; she never had been. She always got it worse when she tried to fight back.

  “Fight back,” someone ordered, his tone hard, resolved. “Actually fight back. You’re in control here. You have the power.”

  Sawyer looked away from Axel, grunting as he kicked her ribs. She saw Jasper standing nearby, looking horrified but not interfering. This was their deal. He was going to teach her to take control of her subconscious mind, change the outcomes of her nightmares.

  Seeing him made her remember this was just another nightmare, another lie her past was making up in her head. In her head. She could win here. She could fight.

  She grabbed Axel’s foot before it came down a second time and twisted his ankle hard, listening to it snap. Axel screamed and fell back. She jumped over him and swung down several times, his shield finally cracking under the onslaught, finally shattering until she could connect with his face.

  “Wake up,” Jasper commanded. “You won.”

  She was pulled out of her nightmare in the blink of an eye.

  Sawyer groaned as she woke up, rolling to the edge of her bed to get up and instead running into a body between her and freedom from the confines of her comforter. She pushed herself up and looked down, annoyed with the pale chest between her and her desk.

  “Fuck,” she mumbled, seeing Zander’s flame-red hair, the freckles that covered his face and chest. The tattoos that made his body intriguing – the ones he hadn’t had when life separated them years before.

  She’d forgotten that he’d ended up in her bed the night before. They had argued. Again. Over something petty, she remembered, something stupid. She didn’t remember exactly what that had been, but their arguments tended to end in her bedroom or his, forgotten on the floor with the discarded clothing.

  The sex was always fantastic, at least.

  She moved to the other side of the bed and left that way, hoping not to wake him up. She didn’t need him worrying about her nightmares. This was between her and Jasper, regardless of how the other guys felt about that. They all wanted to help. Elijah wanted to cuddle her through it - an excuse to have physical contact in a bed. Quinn wanted to watch over her, and that was just Quinn. Zander…well, maybe that was what they had argued about, now that she thought about it. She still didn’t remember.

  Vincent just wanted her sane.

  Easier said than done.

  She found sweatpants and a tank top, pulling them on before staggering sleepily to her desk and collapsing into the chair. She reached blindly for the journal Jasper had given her to record every instance of a dream or nightmare she had. She flipped the journal open and groaned as she began to search for a pencil. She heard her door open and close softly. She didn’t need to look for who it was. She could feel his magic enter the room.

  “Here,” Jasper whispered gently, holding out a writing utensil of some sort.

  She snatched it and rubbed her eyes. “Good morning,” she mumbled, beginning to recount everything of her nightmare on the page. Every detail remembered, every feeling.

  “Good morning,” he replied. “It’s four in the morning. You almost made it through the night.”

  “Oh goodie,” she grumbled, scratching down her thoughts. “Work out in an hour.”

  “That’s right.” He chuckled and grabbed the second chair.

  She didn’t like that there was more furniture in her bedroom now. Between the extra chair at her desk, the two couches they had brought up, the TV, and the weapon safe, there was too much goddamn furniture. They had made her room into a place where they could come up, sit down, and bother the piss out of her. She half hated it.

  “We’ve been doing this for two weeks,” Sawyer declared impatiently, slamming the journal closed when she was finished. She knew Jasper was going to want to read it, but she hadn’t let him yet. “Making it through the night is not a milestone.”

  “Yeah, it is.” Jasper sighed and shook his head. “You can’t give up now.”

  “I always need you to remind me to fight. It’s getting annoying.”

  “One day, you won’t need the reminder.”

  “And then what?” Sawyer snapped. She was in a shitty mood. She didn’t know why, really. This wasn’t the first time he had come up to talk to her in the aftermath of another nightmare. They had started right after they got back from Texas, and two weeks later, she was losing her patience.

  “Then you start winning on your
own. Then Axel stops being a threat in your subconscious.”

  “I’m literally beating the nightmares back.” Sawyer snorted, rolling her eyes to the ceiling and staring up at it.

  “It works,” Jasper said, shrugging. “I did my research, contacted a few other dream walkers. For your specific case, keeping your privacy intact meant this was the best option. The other idea is a therapist.”

  “Oh, yeah. That’s never going to fucking happen,” Sawyer muttered, turning a glare on Jasper.

  “I know, which is why we’re going with this.”

  A groan from the bed silenced any response Sawyer was thinking of making. She glanced to Zander in the bed as he rolled and buried his face into a pillow.

  “I’m amazed you don’t find this weird,” she whispered, keeping her voice low so they didn’t wake up the temperamental redhead.

  “I do and don’t,” Jasper offered. “I don’t find it weird that you are sleeping with him, Vincent, and…well, not me. We aren’t there yet, but we’re in a thing now and have kissed. What I find weird is being in the room while he’s there in your bed, sleeping. It’s like I’m invading any privacy you two might want. I do it too often.”

  “You aren’t a problem,” she promised softly. “We argued yesterday.”

  “I know. Everyone knows. You two make it well-known when there’s something wrong.”

  “I don’t remember what we argued about.”

  “He slapped your ass as you left the entertainment room. You punched him in the gut for it,” Jasper reminded her.

  She heaved a sigh and rubbed her face. A snicker from Jasper told her that he found it funny. She wondered who else was probably laughing at them over it. “For fuck’s sake,” she mumbled.