by Mary Calmes
“Warders do what?”
“The same thing as a sentinel. We all fight creatures, demons, but the sentinel is the oldest, has seen the most action, and so is in charge.”
I absorbed what he’d said, added it to things I knew, facts, trivia, names. Every city had a sentinel; a man who made sure that creatures like verdant demons didn’t get me. Okay.
“Jules?” My eyes flicked to Ryan. “Can I talk to you now?”
“Are you all right?” I asked, and even I could hear the worry in my voice.
His eyes locked on mine, but he didn’t move. He looked like he was in pain.
“Come here,” I demanded.
“Julian, I—”
“Now.”
He rushed across the room to me. When he was close enough, I grabbed him and pulled him into my arms. I hugged him tight, letting out a deep breath.
“Christ, I thought those guys were gonna kill you,” I said, leaning back to look at his face. “Why didn’t you tell me you’re like a ninja or something?” The gasp of air, the stunned look on his face. I had to smile. “Now I get the swords and the weird herbs and your Jeep all beat to shit all the time. Can’t paint your baby if it’s just gonna get scratched up.”
“God, Julian, you’re amazing.”
“I need a second to process this, okay?”
“You’re not frightened?”
“I don’t know what I am yet,” I confessed, feeling Ryan’s warm hands slide over my back. “You gotta let me think.”
“Jules.”
“Wait.”
“Julian, you—”
“Wait,” I snapped, before chuckling at how absurd everything was. “We’ll talk as soon as we’re alone.”
I heard his quick intake of breath. “You’re not sending me away?”
“Why would I wanna do that?” I scowled automatically, turning to face the men, tucking Ryan behind me. It was stupid, considering he was fresh from having subdued four men, but he brought out every protective instinct I had. He belonged to me. “Put your hands back on me so I know you’re there.”
He didn’t just touch me; he leaned into me, pressing against my back, his arms wrapping around me tight. I felt his stubbled cheek between my shoulder blades and the shudder that tore through him.
“Listen to me, Julian Nash.”
My eyes returned to the man who rose and rose from the coffee table, huge, easily seven feet tall, dark green eyes staring at me.
“I am Jael Ezran, and as I said, these are my men. We hunt and kill things that if I told you about, you would think I was nuts.”
I tracked him with my eyes, watching as he walked around the couch only to stop a couple of feet away.
“A sentinel”—he put his hand on his heart—“that’s me, has a team of five warders who hunt with him, or sometimes on their own, in teams. Normally, things like the creatures you saw earlier would not come to the home of a warder, as our homes are sealed, but your house, as it is not Rindahl’s—Ryan’s—house, it is not sealed. He is not supposed to remain overnight anywhere but his own home, but I suspect he was distracted by the discovery of your new bond and so neglected his own safety as well as yours.”
“Our bond? You lost me.”
He nodded, gave me a slight smile. “Every sentinel, every warder, has to have a hearth: a home, a channel for safety, peace, love, whatever you want to call it. A warder must have a hearth or eventually they die. We have found over the centuries that all power and no hearth will kill a warder. There has to be balance between the emotional and the physical. Without balance, there’s chaos within. Do you understand?”
“I don’t think so,” I told him honestly.
“All right,” he sighed, “think of it like this. I fight evil. I kill horrible vicious things, but to do that, I have to be prepared. I have to be ready physically, emotionally, and mentally to take life every single day.”
I realized suddenly how he looked tired but determined at the same time.
“I can train myself, as well as my men, to be strong physically and be focused mentally, but the heart—that’s not in my power to do for anyone but myself.”
“’Course,” I agreed. I was mostly following. I wasn’t sure why I was receiving the explanation, but if he felt the need for the exposition, I would hear him out.
He nodded, rubbing at his thick dirty-blond hair. “We all protect each other. We are all dependent for our very survival on one another. If one of us is distracted and their thoughts are on what they want or need instead of on the fight… someone could die.”
It made sense. Men in battle had to be focused on the task at hand. “I don’t understand why you’re tell—”
“My men protect me and each other, and to do that, they need a balance in their lives. For a warder, their hearth—home—is vital and necessary.” I stayed quiet not wanting to interrupt. “A hearth makes a home for the warder. There are very few men or women that can be a hearth to a warder as the warder’s energy drains the life force of most humans.”
“So what you’re saying is that the bad has to be offset by the good, by the love of the hearth.”
His smile made his laugh lines crinkle and elicited a heavy sigh. “Usually after the first time a warder and a human share a bed, the warder wakes to find their partner withered, years burned away in a single moment of shared bliss.”
“It ages people, sleeping, having sex with a warder.”
“Yes.”
Which was why Ryan had so thoroughly looked me over after the first night we made love: he had been checking to make sure he hadn’t hurt me.
“If the warder leaves, then the partner will recover their years, given time, but if the warder remains, even out of love, the woman, or man, will die.”
“Sounds like a succubus.”
“There are both female and male warders, so stories of incubus and succubus, a night hag, all of these myths can be attributed in some way to warders.”
“What if the warder chooses to stay with the person they love, but they just never have sex again?”
“Just their presence alone would drain their partner once they’re joined for the first time.”
I flashed him a grin. “It’s a helluva excuse to sleep around: gotta look for your hearth and all. It’s not a one-night stand, it’s just research.” His eyes narrowed, and I chuckled. “Sorry, go on.”
“You’re very odd.”
Pot to kettle in my opinion, but I shut up since he was much bigger than me and a whole hell of a lot scarier. “But what does any of this have to do with me?”
“Don’t you know?”
Before I could respond, Ryan tugged on my hand, prodding me to follow him. “C’mon,” he urged, pulling me after him out of the living room and into my bedroom. He shoved me down hard on the bed.
Looking up at him, I saw all the emotions swimming across his face, and his jaw muscles were cording hard. “So? I guess the other night, when I held you down, you really—”
“No,” he cut me off, sounding pained, his eyes a mess. “Don’t look at me like I’m scary.”
“But you are.”
“Not to you.”
I was having so much trouble wrapping my brain around him as a monster killer. He looked the same, like Ryan.
“I need, I want—you have to be the… the one who says, who does.”
I wasn’t stupid; it just took me a second because my day had been a little weird. “Why would you submit to me? Why would you want to?”
“Because then I have no power, and I can just be.” So he didn’t have to think if he was surrendering up all his control to me. He just had to feel. “Don’t send me away,” he whispered. “Please, Jules. I just”—he took a sharp breath—“realized it was you.”
And I understood. He had always liked me, but something had changed, and he had really seen me for the first time.
“I’m sorry I was stupid. My instincts have been wrong before, and I’ve hurt people. I don’t trust
myself like I should. Jael hates it.”
He had to be ready on a moment’s notice to make a life or death decision and not wonder if what he was doing was right or wrong. If I were Jael, I would have been just as frustrated.
“Please don’t send me away.”
I stared up into his beautiful eyes. “Ry—”
“I want to be the one you take. I need to be the guy you dominate and hold down. Don’t,” he almost yelled, and I heard the panic in his voice. “Don’t let it be anybody else.”
He was trembling, and it sunk into me then, that for him, this was much more than us deciding whether we were going to keep seeing each other. He had bigger concerns.
Wounded eyes locked on mine. “I’m so sorry for all this. I never thought I would be tracked. I’m not as valuable as the others.”
But Jael hadn’t mentioned any hierarchy; he had said his warders, like they were all equal. I was betting that Ryan’s enemies saw them all the same way.
“Is it really Ryan, or do you prefer Rindahl?”
He cleared his throat. “When I was made a warder at fifteen I was given that name. I hate it. It’s not who I am. Ryan, Ry… that’s who I am.”
The age stuck in my head. “Where are your parents?”
“I never had any; my mother died in childbirth and there’s no father listed anywhere. Her last name was Dean, and she told a nurse she wanted to name me Ryan before she went into labor. It’s the story I was told. I don’t even know if it’s true or not.”
“And the others?”
“We’re all the family any of us have. Jael said that’s how it’s always been.”
“That’s why you all need a hearth to come home to.”
He nodded. “I want to come home to you, Julian, if you let me.”
I opened my arms for him. “Come here.”
The tears in his eyes came fast, welling up as he dove down into my arms, face buried in the hollow of my throat.
My fingers sank into his thick blond mane as I felt his mouth open on the side of my neck. “So how does it work, reality talk show host by day, scary kick-ass warder by night? When the hell do you sleep?”
He smiled. I felt it as he kissed my skin. “I don’t wanna sleep. I wanna make love to you. Please, Julian.”
“Tell me.”
“Okay, yeah.” He nibbled down the side of my neck to my collarbone. “I live two complete and separate lives that need to be connected. That’s the part Jael left out, the connection. If you’re not grounded in the real world, the day-to-day existence of a regular man, you lose your mind. I’ve seen it happen to a lot of warders over the years.”
“So this team is not your original one.”
“No.”
“Because sometimes a warder just freaks out,” I clarified.
“Yes.”
“And you avoid that by having your hearth make a home for you, provide a life for you that has nothing to do with hunting and killing creatures of the night.”
He snickered at my wording. “Exactly.”
“So you really do need a hearth.”
He leaned back to look up at me. “I need you, Julian.”
“It’s like Buffy.”
The scowl was instant and dark. “I’m sorry?”
“You’re like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ya know, Buffy. She patrols. She kills things. She’s hot. She wears cute clothes… you’re Buffy.”
He exhaled fast. “I will give you a half a second to—”
“And the guys are like the Scooby Gang,” I teased, patting his ass. “Huh, honey?”
His growl was loud as I dissolved in a fit of relieved laughter. He sat up, yanked the pillow out from under my head, and smacked me hard across the face with it.
“You shit!” he yelled. “Here I am thinkin’ you’re making a life and death decision for me, and you’ve already decided that you’re gonna keep me! What the fuck?”
I could not have stopped laughing if my life depended on it.
He came back down on top of me, pinning me to the bed, his mouth sealing over mine, breathing me in and kissing me hungrily. I rolled him to his back and broke the kiss, sitting up, straddling his hips. His eyes were heavy-lidded as he gazed up at me.
“We get along, I think.”
He ran his hands up and down my thighs. “We more than get along.”
“You realize that between the two of us, you’re the domestic god, right? Not me.”
“It’s not about cooking or cleaning or anything else but having a home, Jules. It’s being with you, knowing that you know everything about me and want me anyway. It’s acceptance and unconditional lo—safety,” he finished haltingly.
I smiled down at him. “Nice save. You can say ‘love’. I won’t freak out.” He trembled beneath me. “I think I could fall in love with you pretty easy.”
“Julian, God, my body is… I need—”
“Whaddya need?” I asked, bending to brush my lips across his.
He wriggled under me, the whimper of want sending a pulse of heat straight to my slowly filling cock. “God, you feel good.”
“You too,” I said, shifting over his groin until he caught his breath.
“Your legs are so hard,” he marveled, his fingers digging into my thighs.
“So is there a secret handshake or some scary ritual? Do you hafta drink my blood or something?” I asked him.
“What’re you talking about?”
“Becoming your hearth, what’s the process of that?”
“You say: Ryan, I agree to be your hearth.”
“That’s it? That’s really anticlimactic.”
“You want pageantry?”
“Maybe not quite that big, but something.”
His smile was radiant. “You are so great. Do you have any idea how great you are?”
I grunted. “So listen, I want to go with you.” He was distracted, biting his bottom lip, reaching up for my neck. I brushed his hands away. “Promise I can come. I want to see you do it so I know what it’s like for you. I want to know.”
“Mmmm,” he breathed out, hands on my thighs again. “Kiss me.”
“Ry—swear.”
He took a quivering breath. “You know you’ve got a lot of clothes on.” His voice was husky and deep. “Maybe you should take some of them off.”
“You want me to be your hearth, right?”
“Your skin makes me crazy.”
“Do you?”
“Oh, yes,” he barely got out. His eyes glazed, the pupils dilated and round.
The way he was looking at me, I wouldn’t be able to be logical too much longer. The man burned me up, and we had been together too short a time to be anywhere near sated with each other. I felt my body start to heat. “Ry—”
“Nice piece,” a voice said from behind me.
Whirling around, I was off Ryan and standing beside the bed seconds later. I had not heard the door open, so I was surprised to see the man in the black Armani suit and the Prada boots standing in my bedroom. He was tall, with white blond hair and ice blue eyes. He looked as though he had been carved out of porcelain.
“Get the hell out of my home!” Ryan barked at him, rolling up off the bed, growling.
“It’s not your home,” came the crisp accent, not English, something else. “It belongs to the stud. If it was yours, I, along with everyone else, wouldn’t have been able to get in here, now would I? Jael was right; you’re acting really stupid.”
“What the fuck do you want?” Ryan hissed at him, walking around in front of me, shielding me even though I was bigger than he was.
He smirked, fiddling with his silver cufflinks. “Jael said I had to go out with you tonight. He wants to make certain you don’t neglect your duties.”
Ryan scowled at him. “That’s bullshit. You’re the only one who doesn’t trust me. I’m supposed to have Jackson this week, not you.”
“Jackson’s too trusting. He would just expect you to give him backup, and then he’d end up
dead.”
Ryan moved fast and had the other man pinned to the far wall with a spectral movement of speed. One moment he was beside me, the second he had his fellow warder pounded against the brick. “I would never jeopardize any of your lives, even yours, Malic!”
The eyes lifted to rest on Ryan’s face. “Even mine?”
He stepped back only to move the bigger man off the wall and ram him back into it again. Malic smiled instead of crying out. It should have hurt. The force exhibited, how the wall shuddered from the impact, it would have cracked my ribs, broken things inside my body.
“Are you seriously considering taking your hearth with you to kill verdant demons tonight? Is that wise?”
“I’m not his hearth yet,” I corrected him.
“Oh, the fuck you’re not.” He dismissed me as Ryan stepped away from him, turning his back on him to cross the room. “You’re accepting of us being warders, seeing creatures get sucked into small black holes didn’t flip you out, and you like fucking Ryan—I can still feel the heat in this room. Tell me, Julian Nash, how are you not his hearth?”
I had no answer. He was a snotty, snarky asshole, and also completely correct. The idea of being Ryan Dean’s touchstone was a hundred percent appealing. I liked to matter. I wanted to matter, and I had a chance to really mean something to a man I found intoxicating. I very much wanted to sign on for the hearth gig.
“You’re right.”
Ryan’s head snapped up, and his eyes met mine. “You mean it?”
I smiled at him. “Yeah, come live with me. It’s what Cash is expecting, anyway.”
He took a step forward. “But your whole life will change.”
“I like change, keeps your life from getting stagnant. And besides, once you live here, you can make the apartment safe, right? I own it, so seal it up or whatever. Later, when we find a house, you can seal up the new one too.”
“Julian, I—”
“Being a warder’s just one part of you. It’s not all you are. I like the rest of you a helluva lot, always have. We can work out the new avenging angel of the night part.”
He leaped at me, and I was laughing as I grabbed him. He wasn’t that much smaller than me, and trying to hold him and still keep my balance proved much too difficult. We fell back onto the bed, a tangle of arms and legs.
