by L M Adams
I’m saying goodbye just in case, with my tongue, with my lips. I never have been very good at saying those kinds of things to people. Just ask Lucien. The only goodbye I’d given him was the engagement ring on his bed the night I left.
I pull back and gather my courage. He nods and I turn, walking out into the hallway.
I pause my march to the first floor and crack the door to the guestroom. Peter isn’t there. Fuck. Everything just got infinitely more difficult. They could be holding him hostage. Reapers bring in their prey by any means…
I’m glad I didn’t take the easy route and just leave with Jack.
I move on to Minx’s room and crack her door. She’s not there. I feel a little less worried about her, however. She is hardly ever here at night anyway. If anyone can fight off a Reaper, it’s Minx. Even I’m a little afraid of her.
I make my way down the stairs, Jack close on my heels.
Tabari is sitting in the chair at the wall across from me, near the archway to the kitchen. Minx is curled up in his lap.
She’s purring loudly, enjoying the scratch-fest that Tabari is lavishing her with. He doesn’t seem to mind getting cat hair on the obscenely expensive black silk suit he’s wearing.
The shirt beneath the suit, open at the collar, frames his smooth, milk white skin perfectly. The shirt is the perfect shade of blue-green and makes his eyes absolutely glow with power. Wolf eyes.
Tabari is my brother in love, my oldest friend. And if he’s here, killing me isn’t on the menu tonight. He’s a Reaper, but he’s Magi first, a studier and practitioner of our high magic. He would have been the Master of Magic to my Reaper team.
Power crackles around him even now. He’s part wolf, part elf, one of the high fae.
I smile seeing him and he leaps to his feet, displacing Minx to the floor. She howls with a sound of kitty indignation.
“Jae!” He rushes forward hugging me tight.
“I have missed you, sister,” he whispers close to my ear, heavy with emotion.
“And I you, brother of my heart.” I hug him back tightly. I’ve missed him so much.
He was the only one I said goodbye to on that night. He is the only one I told the whole sordid truth of what she had done to me. He helped me escape the Kindred after hearing the tale.
“How are you?” He asks, pulling back holding my head in his hands gently.
“Well, I’m not sure how I am.” I answer pulling back from his embrace and turning to face Lucien.
His golden eyes are tight at the corners. I guess something is irritating the beast.
He’s standing by the front door, his face molded like cold stone. Well he’s never been one for emotions. Except in bed. The man is an avenging god in bed, all heat, all dominant, all male, and pure beast. He’s a child of the gods, more demigod than daemon and he fucks like one.
Six-foot-six inches of death. His skin is so pure and deep brown. Fluid and pulled tight over taut muscles, he may be the only man I’ve ever seen bigger than Big Mike. His dredlocked hair hangs midway down his back, an inch or two longer than I remember it.
On my eighteenth birthday, when I got the news that we’d be paired to mate, I went a little crazy. I’m allowed to pick another to spend my life with as a chosen consort, yes. But I still would have to breed our contribution to the cause. The Elders decreed it so.
Lucien will always be my Kindred mate, nothing will ever change that.
However, I took the news very badly. My head reeled from the thought of having to give myself to him. I stomped right to his chambers that night, barging in and yelling at him.
“Like hell I’ll fuck you. If I never have a lover in my life, so be it! But I won’t be with you!”
My virgin blood belonged to him to bind us together in preparation for the coupling when I would become pregnant. Women are not allowed to let anyone other than our Kindred mate take our virgin blood. It is our law.
I never thought I’d hate the Kindred and their rules more than I did that night. I came to find out how very wrong I was.
I’d slammed the door in his face and stomped back to my room. He’d caught me in the hallway, spinning me and yanking him to me all in one movement. The heat of his anger and desire poured over me.
“Remember you said this, Jaevia Knightley. And know if you take another man to bed before me, I’ll kill him. I will be your first, or you will leave a trail of dead bodies and blood behind you.” He kissed me with the taste of his threat still on his lips.
It was our very first kiss and he punished me with his mouth and lips and tongue. Long and hard. When he finally let me ago, I stepped back and slapped him, the sound ricocheted off the stone walls of the hallway. I was angrier at myself for liking the kiss than I was at him for taking it.
I couldn’t deny my attraction to him, even then. The beginning of the war between Lucien and Jaevia began that night and raged on for years.
I’d lost the war, but I’d won many battles before conceding.
Seems as if the war between Lucien and Jaevia part two will begin tonight.
“We aren’t here to harm you, baby sister.” Tabari whispers.
“You know I’d wipe the floor with the Beast if he ever hurt a pretty hair on your head,” Tabari promises me.
Magic crackles from Tabari again, enough to lift the ends of his pure blond hair. Power fills his eyes as he turns them on Lucien. The smell of ozone and a mighty storm coming. Magic always smells like this, Tabari always smells like this.
I remember a time when he smelled of autumn woods, wolf pelt and fresh cut fruit. He uses too much magic and the smell of ozone clings to him now.
It’s hard to imagine Tabari as a young boy with the magic of the wolf mother and the elves in his blood. He’s always seemed a little older to me, a little more mature. As if he was born with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He has an old soul as my Mother would say.
“Put it away, Tabari. I’m not going to hurt my future wife and mother of my child. Although I’m not beyond putting her over my knee for her extended vacation and her taking up with a vampire!” Lucien responds. Jack shifts behind me.
“So we are still living in our delusions I see!” I yell harshly. “Wife? Mother of your child? Vacation?” My voice rising higher after each non-rhetorical question.
“Don’t upset her, Lucien. We are here as friends. Although I’m not sure how you got an invitation since you want to act like a beast.”
“Because I am her mate, it is my right to come and visit her. And what do I find? Her, my future wife, covered in blood and sex with a vampire slave.” Lucien says, voice tight.
Ok so we are pretending I’m still Lucien’s mate, and that my escape into the night and living in the fringes of Baltimore is a vacation. I don’t like this game.
“I’m not on vacation; I’m not your mate and his name is Jack!” I shout angrily at Lucien. He irritates me on so many levels.
“Well if you’re not on vacation, then you’re rogue and I’m charged to bring in all rogues no matter the cost. And I don’t give a fuck what a slave’s name is!” Lucien shouts back at me, taking a step forward. I have my blade in my hand before I even think about it. Jack pushes past me going straight for Lucien.
“Enough!” Tabari’s voice booms out with the power of thunder.
My heart thumps slowly in my chest I can’t move a muscle, or I can, but it feels like I’m trying to move in thick syrup. It takes so much to even twitch my hand. Jack seems to be having the same problem; he’s caught in mid-step. Lucien’s face is twisted ready to meet Jack’s attack but he cannot move either.
“We have a message. We are not here to bring you back, little sister. Now, I’m going to release you all. Lucien and Jack, take your conversation outside. The cat would not appreciate you fucking up her house. Jae, you will sit on the sofa and you will act civil. I know it’s hard to do with the Beast around. But those two need to come to some sort of understanding because… sorry to inform yo
u, but we are here to stay!”
I seethe with anger inside, hot blinding anger, anger at no one thing, just the entire world. I know Tabari won’t release us until I calm myself until the smell of citrus dissipates. Only with the training she had forced upon me am I able to bottle down the anger inside. Her slaves were not allowed any emotion she hadn’t given permission to feel; her favorite emotion to give permission for, despair.
I watch as Lucien and Jack walk from the living room, I’m still trapped by Tabari’s magic. I hear the back door open and slam; like shit they are going to have a ‘conversation.’
Just like that, I can move again. I start to follow them to keep them apart.
“No Jae, let them have a moment. No harm will come to either of them.”
I huff. I don’t really care about Lucien, but Jack doesn’t deserve to be hurt. Why didn’t he leave? I told him to leave. Goddess save me from heroes and idiots.
I look at Tabari trying to decide if I should risk his wrath and go chase them down, or do as he says.
He has a pleasant smile on his face but his eyes still glow with power. If the man doesn’t want me to go outside, then I won’t be going outside, damn bully. I stomp to the sofa and sit.
“Where’s Peter?” I ask.
“In the dining room sleeping. He will not wake until I wish it so.” Tabari says softly.
I strain my hearing as I hear a fight break out in the yard. I stiffen to move from my seat.
“It will be fine. Lucien needs to learn that your vampire is not weak. Jack needs to learn the price of his choice. Neither will come to any real harm. I promise you little sister.” He comes around and sits on the sofa beside me, turned a little to face me.
Tabari is a pretty man; it’s the only way I can think to describe him. He would look like a woman except for the bit of square chin and his body, which is lightly muscled. He looks as if the elf parts and wolf parts had a war, and the elf won, but the wolf managed to leave its mark anyway. With the eyes and the chin and muscle. Pure blood elves, light or dark, are willowy creatures.
“How do you know, brother?” I ask him.
“Because I’m the most powerful Magi of our generation, I am all seeing and all knowing.” He cracks a smile. He’s been saying that for years. I laugh hearing it again.
It’s a joke and yet very true. He is the most powerful Magi in hundreds of years. He is also the brother of my heart, and will always be so. If he says to trust him about something, then I trust him. He’s the only person in all the worlds I have that kind of faith in.
But hasn’t he earned it? Again and again he has.
“Why are you two here, Bari?” I ask, using his childhood nickname that never really caught on, like he’s always been too old for nicknames. I lean back on the sofa, starting to relax.
“It’s time for you to come home, or at least accept a post as the Grigori in Baltimore,” he says simply.
My mouth hangs open in shock and disbelief. Usually Grigori positions are reserved for older Reapers after their fighting days are over, but they have too much wisdom and too many contacts to be no use to the Kindred.
The Grigori Stations are a network of Kindred, somewhat like satellite offices to a corporation. Watching and reporting the movements and changes of the supernaturals in a specific area. Baltimore doesn’t have one. It’s one of the main reasons I’d headed here.
I don’t understand, I was never made a Reaper, not really, and I damn sure have done nothing to deserve a position as Grigori.
“I ran away. You know that, you helped me for Goddess’ sake.” I hiss at him.
Minx takes that moment to jump into my lap. My hand reaches down to scratch her behind the ears without thought.
“I remember you telling me goodbye that you needed some time away. Which is understandable after what you endured that’s what I remember and that’s what I told the Elder Council after you left. They would have hunted you otherwise. I told them I had contact with you and could find you whenever need be.”
I look down at my ankle. “The gem? You didn’t spell it to hide me?” I can’t help the hurt and betrayal I feel.
“Of course I spelled it, and yes, it hides what you are and where you are, as I promised. But a Magi can always trace his own magic, Jae. I kept your whereabouts secret.” His eyes tighten a little.
Yes, he kept my secret at a price to himself.
“What did they...” I start to ask.
“It’s of no concern. You needed me. I’ll never forget the promise we made one another all those years ago, sister of my heart.” He says softly.
I nod my head.
We’d taken an actual oath in a Moon Goddess temple back home. The oath is as binding as anything could be. Yes, we were young when we did it. Maybe we didn’t understand what it would mean as we got older. But here we are nonetheless.
“They let it go with some pressure from my parents and yours. I figured to give you a year or two and then convince you to come back into the fold. But the sands of fate shifted. I knew a time would come that you would need us again, and that we would need you. I’ve been waiting for a shift, Lucien and I have been waiting in the human world for a sign, something to tell me it was time. The seers felt a new wolf being born outside of the order of things, something you did. You decided to make a wolf. The Elders sent out missives. The Amarok had to tell them about what was done, he had no choice. They wanted us to bring you back. I gave them this option. To let Lucien and I come to you, help you become a Grigori. That you’ve made ties to this world and could be a great help. No one wants the Baltimore post anyway,” Tabari says gently, taking my hand into his.
Yeah, no one wants the post because it’s too many types of supernaturals living together here, it’s just a fucking headache, and the weather is shitty.
I don’t feel betrayed by Big Mike. No, I feel betrayed; I just refuse to feel hurt about it. Sure, he couldn’t risk his entire pack to keep me safe, but the man couldn’t have sent me a text to warn me?
“So, you’re not here to bring me back for a trial?” I ask in a whisper. I can’t go back they might give me to her again.
“You don’t have to go back. I spoke with the Elders. They agreed to give you this position with the understanding you’d abide by our laws. That you’d take up with Lucien and live with him as your mate at least until you give birth to his child.” The manipulating bastards. I stand up and look down him, scattering Minx from my lap.
“But I can’t have a child for another fifty years! I’m stuck with him for the next fifty years?!” I can’t help the whine in my voice.
“They trust me and they trust Lucien to keep an eye on you. That was their price for elevating you to a full Reaper and then to Grigori.” He sighs.
“To be honest, they don’t really want you to come home and they can’t really kill you. Your father is too powerful, not to mention you have a half-tamed sun god as your mate. Let’s put the past behind us, you won’t get another offer like this sister and all you just have to listen to our guidance…” I start to object, “…for a time.”
“Because they trust you two to control me?!”
“What do you expect Jae? You ran off, we’ve had to work very hard and do many things to keep you from being declared a rogue. This is fair and this is a good deal!”
“What else, Tabari? What else did you promise them?” I ask my voice cracking with emotion.
Will my life ever stop being shit? Because I know they have promised the Elders something of great value. Something more than me, there’s nothing special about me. Except I’m part succubus and there aren’t many succubae strains left, it’s a hard strain to breed. Still there are others.
“That’s all they want officially. Unofficially, your parents miss you. They want you to at least come to visit them. I promised I would convince you to visit at least.”
“That’s all?” I know he’s hiding something from me.
“By the sun and moon, it’s all the E
lder Council wants from you, as far as I know.” He answers with a sigh.
I’m about to push him for more information when I hear the back door open. I turn and watch as first Jack comes through the door with a bloody nose and an eye already showing signs of swelling. Lucien is behind him with a bloody lip. He’s limping slightly. Well good, the boys are back in town.
Chapter Thirteen
No rest for the wicked.
Tabari stands and goes back to the chair against the wall, across from the stairs. I turn on the sofa and look to Tabari he nods his head.
I go to Jack first. Lucien’s stance tightens I guess because I don’t choose him. Oh fucking well, suck it up Beast.
“I’m fine, Jae. Really,” Jack says as I push him to the sofa. “Don’t make a fuss.”
“Shut up, Jack. Let me do this at least, stupid vampire.”
I go to the kitchen to get ice for Jack’s eye. I take a peek into the dining room. Peter is sitting in a chair; his head laying on the table. His breathing is even. The wolf within him is asleep.
I see no reason to awaken him. Tomorrow will be soon enough to push him further. I grab a dish towel and push the leaver to the ice machine, gathering ice and wrapping it in the towel.
I walk back into the living room. Lucien is standing by the front door again staring daggers at Jack.
“We aren’t going to have a problem are we, Lucien?” I ask, my voice deadly low. “He’s mine, you had no right to touch him.”
I lean over Jack, holding the ice to his eye. He looks up at me with a smile.
“Really Jae, I’m fine. We just had a conversation.”
I hear the exasperated sigh come from the front door. “Really Jaevia. He’s a slave. I’m your mate. I’ll beat him if I want.”
“Looks like he beats back,” chimes in ever-helpful Tabari.
“Don’t touch him again Lucien. I mean it. Don’t touch him again.” I turn to look at Lucien again, rage burning in my eyes, citrus fills the room.
I’m angry again. Really, the man gets under my skin like no one else.
“Fine! I won’t touch him again, mate.” He shouts back at me slurring the word mate.
