by Ava Benton
“I don’t need you to protect me.”
Keira turned around, and my heart ached at the pain on her face. “What are you saying?”
“You heard me. I don’t need you right now. You can be whoever it is you are. You don’t need to look after me—we’re not kids anymore.”
A crashing noise from down the widest tunnel of them all, the one we had entered through, took all of our attention. Even the witches seemed surprised, throwing worried glances at each other before falling into fight stances.
“What’s happening?” Keira asked.
Selene drew a deep breath as she squared her shoulders. “It seems we have additional company.”
“How did we not know they were coming?” Iris demanded as the sound of pounding feet grew louder.
“Remember: when the connection to the clan disintegrated, we lost the ability to track their presence,” Selene explained, stepping out in front of her witches as more of them poured into the room. “The only reason we were able to sense Keira’s presence was her blood ties to us.”
“You don’t have to worry,” Keira whispered over her shoulder. “They’ll protect you.”
I was too busy trying not to pee myself to be mad at her, even though I didn’t know for sure why I was. “Who?”
“Tamhas’s family.”
That didn’t comfort me. Something told me we were about to get into even bigger trouble.
9
Alan
The dark tunnel opened into a wide, round room lined with torches.
And full of Blood Moon Priestesses.
I spotted Selene and went straight to her. “Where are they?” I demanded, snarling at the sight of her. Time had been good to her, but then it would be. I was certain she hadn’t aged a day in appearance in at least two centuries.
How dare she stand there, looking calm and peaceful without a hair out of place, while holding two women hostage in her godforsaken cave?
“You cannot see them?” she asked. Her voice rang out loud and clear over the entrance of my team, who entered the room behind me. I got the sense she was laughing at me, as the Priestesses tended to do to anyone who did not share their powers.
As though I had no powers of my own.
“If you’ve placed a spell on them, you know I cannot.” I glanced around, ensuring every one of the witches was covered by at least one dragon. “Bring them out, reveal them, whatever you need to do.”
“You know I cannot let her go,” Selene murmured. “You know it is impossible. She is one of us.”
“Like hell!” Tamhas bellowed. “She is my mate, not one of your Priestesses.”
“Your mate?” For once, Selene appeared surprised. As though there was something she wasn’t clever enough to foresee.
“Yes. His mate. You were not aware?”
“We hardly had time to discuss such matters,” she informed me. “You interrupted us before I could inquire after her personal life.”
“Where is she?” Tamhas demanded.
I sensed his desire to lunge for the Priestess, to hurt her if need be, and I hoped he could gather his wits in time to avoid such foolishness. We might well have been dragons and powerful in our own right, but Selene was by far the most talented and powerful Priestess in generations.
I doubted her powers had subsided over the decades. If anything, they’d strengthened.
“How dare you enter our home and demand anything from us?” I recognized Iris. She hadn’t changed much, always looking to start a fight.
I recognized all of them, in fact—including Hecate, whose eyes I remembered not to look into. She would certainly be of a mind to silence or freeze all of us.
“This does not need to devolve into a fight,” I reminded everyone around me. “We have not come here to attack you. We’ve merely come to retrieve Keira and Emelie.”
“You cannot have either of them,” Selene announced. How she could make such a statement while hardly batting an eyelash was far beyond me.
“Do you truly wish for things to come to a head between us?” I asked. “After what you’ve done to our clan?”
She blinked. For once, something threw her off-balance. “What are you referring to? You are the reason we were forced deeper than ever into hiding. We’ve had to protect ourselves all these years, because of you.”
It was my turn to blink. “What do you mean?”
We stared at each other for a long, tense moment, sizing up the other’s intentions. If there was one thing I remembered clearest about Selene, it was her sense of fairness. She would not make up untruths simply to legitimize the grudge against our clan.
My shoulders fell, my body relaxing. “It seems we have more than a few topics to discuss. What is the purpose of this? I’m willing to stand down and promise no shifting against your coven so long as you at least bring Keira and Emelie to us. We will work everything else out, I’m certain. We’re both civilized and reasonable.”
She pursed her lips in thought, and I knew what she was doing to me. She could read energies, impressions. I merely needed her to see and understand the motivation behind my words. I meant her no harm.
We only wanted what was ours. Even if that meant Emelie, too.
She held up both hands—I tensed, fearing she was about to cast a spell to harm us. Instead, it was a signal to her coven, as all of them backed down from the fighting stances they’d taken when we entered.
“You cannot mean this,” Iris hissed.
“I wish to hear them out,” Selene announced.
The tension in the room ebbed away as all of us relaxed, even if not all of us wanted to or felt it a wise decision.
When she nodded, the torchlight went brighter—and at the same time, Keira appeared along the wall to my left. She’d been standing there all along, blocked by a spell which had rendered her invisible to us. I should have known.
Tamhas ran to her, enfolding her in a tight embrace which she returned.
Beside them stood a girl with longish dark hair, whose petite frame seemed overwhelmed by the oversized sweater and baggy pants she wore. Both forearms were loaded with bracelets, including the one which Keira had found in the woods.
I had the immediate impression that she wished to hide herself. It made sense in relation to what Tamhas had already told me about her.
Our eyes met.
My dragon roared in recognition of something it had never seen before. My human consciousness rejected the notion out of hand, declaring it impossible.
The dragon knew better.
It was the dragon who moved my feet in her direction, who led me to take her hands in mine. “Emelie?” I asked, staring into her tear-filled gray eyes.
“Yes.”
“I am Alan. Are you well? Have they harmed you in any way?”
“You ought to know better than to ask such a question,” Selene called out, easily able to hear me.
I ignored her in favor of focusing on Emelie. “Are you well?”
“Extremely confused, but nobody has hurt me.” She looked over my shoulder, to Tamhas and Keira. The two of them were still lost in each other and would be for at least another few minutes. “What’s happening here? I wish somebody would tell me.”
“You don’t know?”
“I know she’s a witch,” she whispered, nodding to Keira. “I know she’s one of them.”
“A Priestess,” I murmured. “Though, in essence, there is not much of a difference.”
“What’s happening here?” Her eyes searched mine, her forehead creasing in a worried frown—then, she withdrew her hands from mine. “Wait. I forgot.”
“Forgot what?” I took a step closer to her, which she responded to by stepping further away from me.
“She wouldn’t tell me who you are. She didn’t get the chance. But I know there’s something weird about you, too, because you have something to do with them.”
“You have no reason to fear us.” I nearly said me, but stopped myself in time.
&n
bsp; “I’ll make that decision for myself.” She folded her arms, tucking her hands underneath.
My heart sank. I merely wanted her to trust me. The last thing I wanted was to harm her.
“Well?” Selene asked. “If there is so much for us to discuss, we had better get to it. I believe more than enough years have passed.”
The clan looked to me for guidance. The coven looked to me for explanation.
My dragon wanted nothing but Emelie. She was our mate, now and always.
That would have to wait.
So would the confusion that I felt at the strength of my emotions.
“Is there somewhere we can sit?” I asked.
I should have known a massive table would appear, long enough for all of us to have a seat at each of the many chairs which appeared along with it. It had been a long time since we’d been in the presence of the coven.
“Sit by me,” I advised Emelie.
I had to. Because if I didn’t my dragon wouldn’t have given me a moment’s peace. Id’ not have been able to participate in the conversation because everything would be drowned out by his roars.
My dragon wanted her with us at all times, and not merely to ensure her safety.
She looked skeptical but took a chair to my right nonetheless. Tamhas sat to my left, with Keira beside him.
Anyone with eyes could see how it pained Keira that her lifelong friend no longer trusted her. That pain reflected itself in Emelie’s eyes.
Selene sat opposite me, her coven seated to either side.
Iris’s eyes blazed with furious light as she sat by Selene’s right hand, and that fury was directed at me. As though I needed something else with which to concern myself.
“All right,” Selene said, bringing the room to silence as only she could. “Let us begin.”
10
Emelie
What the hell was going on? It seemed like all I had were more questions. Not once yet had anyone given me an answer—at least, not one that helped me understand what was going on all around me, who these people were.
I watched Alan from the corner of my eye as he folded his hands on the surface of the table. The table which had just magically appeared out of nowhere. I would never get used to it, no matter how many times one of them pulled something out of thin air.
He was impressive, at least physically. His entire family was. Tall, broad-shouldered, thick with muscle from head to toe. What were they, a bunch of bodybuilders or fitness models?
Oh, yes. A bunch of fitness models who lived together in a secret commune in the mountains. That made a ton of sense.
Something told me the truth made no more sense than that did.
“Are you certain she should be seated on that side of the table?” Electra nodded to Keira. “She belongs here, with us.”
“She belongs with me,” Tamhas snarled.
He was a fiery one, that Tamhas. No wonder the two of them had hit it off so well. I leaned in to see past Alan and noticed Keira trying to quiet Tamhas down. He shut his mouth but didn’t look any happier.
“Where Keira seats herself at this time is the least of our concerns,” Alan announced. I had to give him credit, the witches didn’t seem to intimidate him at all. If anything, they quieted down when he spoke just the way they did for Selene, and he didn’t have powers like hers.
I winced at the thought. For all I knew, he did have those powers. Maybe that was why Keira wouldn’t tell me anything about them.
“What is it you feel our coven has done to you?” Selene asked.
She got right down to it, didn’t she?
I looked at Alan.
Everyone did.
He clenched his teeth so hard, I wondered how they didn’t shatter. “You surely must have heard of the incident our clan experienced months ago.”
Selene shook her head. “Remember, when our connection broke, we lost the ability to maintain knowledge of your doings.”
He let out a laugh that sounded more like a bark. “How am I to believe that? You were the only connection we had to the rest of the world at that time, before humans and others began infiltrating our clan.”
Again with the word human. Damn it, were any of these people like me? I shrank away from him, but that ended up moving me closer to a girl with red hair who looked a lot like him. I wondered if they were brother and sister.
I was surrounded by them. Whoever they were. Whatever they were.
Selene looked both ways, up and down her side of the table.
The witches shrugged, shook their heads. If they were acting, they were very skilled at it. Even I believed they had nothing to do with whatever Alan was talking about.
“All right, then,” Alan growled. “If that is the game you wish to play, so be it. We were kidnapped by a group of so-called doctors and their mercenaries in order for tests to be performed upon us. How could you have missed the fact that helicopters landed not far from here? Did you not hear the gunfire?”
Selene’s eyes went wide. “I had no idea. We are rather far beneath the ground here, and well into the cave. As you know, seeing as how you entered through the same tunnel we use.”
“You mean to tell us you had no knowledge whatsoever?” he asked.
“That is precisely what I mean. What reason would we have to bring your presence to the attention of outsiders? We have no contact with that world. We need nothing from them.”
I could attest to that, and I had only been with them for less than a day. Anything they needed, they could create for themselves. What a life.
“We rarely ever venture from the cave,” Iris spat. She had a massive chip on her shoulder.
“And why is that?” the girl next to me asked.
“You’ve put us in grave danger, while you had the ability to walk away from us and live in safety.”
“What does that mean?” Alan asked. “We were unaware of your continued existence until Keira found us—even then, she appeared to be an outlier. She had no knowledge of the coven or her place therein. We only recognized her thanks to the mark on the back of her neck.”
Selene and Iris exchanged a look which I already recognized, since Iris was the type who always needed to be reminded to shut up.
Then Selene spoke. “What Iris refers to is the protection which your clan once provided us. The lack thereof left us with no choice but to retreat deeper into the shadows, so to speak. While we never flaunted our existence, we felt safe enough to move among humans without notice. Now…”
“You cannot hold Alan or the rest of the clan responsible for the decisions my husband made.” Toward the end of the table sat a woman I hadn’t noticed before. Older, but still beautiful, with shining, gray-streaked hair I would’ve killed for. It gave her character.
“Bonnie,” Selene smiled. “You know very well the warm relationship I shared with Gavin prior to his betrayal. But it was a betrayal, no matter how one looks at it.”
“Betrayal? None of us betrayed you,” Tamhas insisted.
Selene locked eyes with Alan. “You know. I can see it. I do not believe any of the others know. Not even Bonnie.”
“What does she mean?” Bonnie leaned forward to look down the table at Alan.
“Alan?” The redhead beside me asked.
I suddenly felt sorry for him. He reminded me of an animal in a corner. A very large animal, granted, and one I wouldn’t dare goad into a fight. But still.
His chiseled jaw worked, like he was fighting with himself over what to say next. The place went so silent, I could hear water dripping somewhere in the cave.
“Alan?” Selene prompted. “You do know. There is no sense in lying. Perhaps this has been a secret for far too long. In a situation such as this, what is needed is honesty and understanding.”
“I assume all of you know?” he asked, his head moving from side to side as he looked at the witches.
“Naturally,” Callie murmured.
“She was our High Priestess,” Iris snarled. “We did n
ot lose her without understanding why, and how your so-called leader refused to extend the same painful, yet necessary, justice to her counterpart in your clan.”
Well. Just when I thought I couldn’t be more confused, they threw a curveball like that one at me. I looked from side to side, and the same look of confusion was repeated again and again.
Except for Alan, of course. He knew exactly what Iris was accusing him of.
“Alan?” Tamhas elbowed him. “Tell us. What does she mean?”
Alan sighed. His shoulders fell. “He never told me who fathered the babe. I swear it. That was the one aspect of the story which he refused to share.”
“The babe?” the girl to my right whispered.
Alan nodded. “Yes. The babe Demeter carried.”
“We banished her for it,” Selene whispered. “My own daughter. My child. I had no choice; it was the law, part of the very fabric of our existence. Daughter of the High Priestess, heiress to the coven, and she left us in shame. While carrying a child.”
A soft gasp rose up over my side of the table.
This reaction seemed to please Iris. She must have decided to rub salt in the wound by continuing. “And yet, in spite of knowing this, and in spite of the guilt of one of his clan’s members, Gavin refused to bring forward the man who was responsible for the child.”
“Oh, no. This cannot be true.” Bonnie looked at Alan. “Is this the truth? Alan? Did my husband do this?”
He looked to Selene, his face a blank mask. She might have been able to read his thoughts, but the rest of us couldn’t. “Yes,” he admitted. “He shielded the clan member who fathered the child. He explained the incident and cited it as the reason why the clan and the coven split from each other, but he would not reveal the clan member’s name even to me. Even after so many years.”
“He was a hypocrite who admitted the fault of one of his clan members, yet protected them from receiving proper punishment. It was a blatant slap in the face to all of us, to the relationship both sides had benefitted from for centuries,” Selene whispered. She nearly vibrated with energy—heartbroken, furious, dangerous energy.
