by Lia Davis
Voss stared at him, wide eyed. "Are you all choked up?"
"No," Kane said. "I have a frog in my throat."
"Vampires don't get frogs in their throats," I said dryly. "Nobody would judge the big bad Vampire King for having an emotion." I grinned at him when he looked in the mirror at me. I was mildly concerned he wouldn't realize we were teasing him as we would each other.
It was a good step for all three of us. A slight relief to the tension.
Jillian rolled her head so she faced me, and she smiled, still asleep.
"She likes us getting along," I murmured.
"Hell, I do, too," Voss said. "It's easier."
I brushed her hair out of her face and kissed her nose, then her forehead. "It won't always be easy."
"Enough somber talk," Kane said. "We have enough of that. Now that we know about Trinity, what can we do?"
"I would think we start with your council," I replied. "They couldn't possibly know."
"Maybe a joint council meeting would be better." Kane tapped the steering wheel, but he worked his jaw as if angry. "It's time we forced them to work together."
Voss nodded, but warned, "That could go south."
I agreed. Having both of them in one room could open up a whole other jar of bullshit. "If we let everyone know ahead of time it's a joint meeting and how important it is, they'll be on their best behavior. I think it can be done."
When we got to the house, Voss ran to find Graham, Kane got on the phone with his council—The Blood—and I carried Jillian to her bed. We really needed her awake, but she was out like she'd been drugged.
After I took off her shoes and covered her up, I stayed with her for a few minutes, tuning in to her. She was restless at first, but she soon calmed and entered a deep, peaceful sleep. Only then did I feel like I could leave her side.
I found Graham, Voss, and Kane in the kitchen. The smell of coffee filled the air. After grabbing a cup of the rich brew, I joined them at the table.
Graham narrowed his gaze on me. "What the hell happened to my daughter?"
Voss laughed. "I told you, Graham, she's okay."
"I'm asking Quin." His face was hard. He picked me, all those years ago, to take care of his daughter. And now she laid in bed, so exhausted she couldn't wake up.
"She took it too far," I said simply. "I couldn't stop her, and you wouldn't have been able to, either."
"You’re supposed to care for her." He wanted an explanation.
I held his stare and pushed down all my emotions. "Graham, she's okay. She's recuperating. You know her as well as I do, when she gets something in her head there's no stopping her. She went in too deep. We all tried to get her to pull back, but she wouldn’t until she saw who was leading the group of attackers."
He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. "You're right, but I expected you to intervene before it came to this."
"Honestly, none of us knew she could get to this point. We've never come up on a scene so fresh. She described it as watching a movie, it was so clear." I frowned and studied my coffee.
Kane cleared his throat. "The Blood is meeting us and the Pack Council at your meeting hall in an hour. We need to get her up."
Graham's face darkened. "Why does she need to be there?"
"Graham, she saw Trinity," Kane said.
Graham blinked, but otherwise didn't react. "We can't tell them that?"
Kane sat back in his chair and shrugged. He had a cup in front of him and I wondered if it was coffee in there. "The Blood will have to take her word for what she saw. That's the only proof we have. It will be better coming from her."
"We’ll go get the meeting started," I said. "Kane, Graham and me. Then Voss, you bring her at the last minute to testify."
"What if I can't wake her up?" he asked.
"Carry her over. We'll show them what state she's in for her efforts," Graham said harshly. He downed the rest of his coffee and rose. "I'm going to the hall."
I gave him a short nod. "We'll be right there."
After he left, we stared at each other. "Man, you get the short end of the stick," Kane said with a laugh. "We were all there, but her passing out was your fault."
"I told you in the car, he picked me, and he took it seriously." I smiled at them. "I do, too. I think he knew, that day when I saw her, that she was my mate. Somehow he knew my entire perspective had changed."
"How would he know that?" Kane asked.
It was my turn to chuckle. "You know how Jilly can see an imprint of the past?"
Kane nodded.
"Her dad can catch small bits of what people are thinking or feeling. It helps him judge intent. I'd say he was able to pick up on what I was feeling."
"That's unnerving. Can he do it all the time?" Kane asked.
"Yes. And if he'd picked up anything less than devotion for Jillian from you, you wouldn't be here right now," Voss answered.
Kane cocked his head to the side. "She's up."
I heard it moments after he did. "Good. Let's go."
2
Jillian
I woke suddenly, confused about how I was in my bedroom. My mind was still in that house, reeling from the realization that Trinity had murdered two of her own coven members in cold blood.
A growl rumbled from my chest. The bitch would pay for betraying her own people.
However, in that moment, the toilet called to me, so I attended to that before anything else. When I walked out of the bathroom, my guys were in the room.
"How are you?" Quin rushed forward.
I shrugged. "Worn out. I feel like I could sleep for a decade." I rubbed my eyes. "And my brain feels foggy."
"Do you remember everything that happened at the Belvert house?" Kane was at my side next, with a hand on my back.
"Every minute," I said wryly. "I kind of wish I couldn't."
Voss gave me a sad smile. "Well, we hate to spring this on you, especially when you're feeling worn down, but you have to testify in about forty-five minutes to the combined councils." He smiled sympathetically. "Sorry, Jill."
"Well, shit." I needed to get ready. I returned to the bathroom. "How'd you get them to agree to meet so quickly? It was quickly, wasn't it? How long was I out?"
Suddenly I had no idea how much time had passed, which was weird.
"Only about an hour," Quin said from the doorway. "You just needed to recharge."
I nodded and studied my face in the mirror. I was pale, washed out. Running a brush through my hair would do, though. No need to be fancy to tell them about gruesome murders.
After a quick change of clothes—I was still in the workout clothes I'd thrown on before breakfast—I was ready. "Let's go."
Their eyes had stayed on me as I changed. Quin's cheeks flared red when I stripped down to my bra and panties in front of all three of them. He was the only one I hadn't slept with yet. Things had been so crazy that we hadn't had time.
My wolf was tired of waiting. He was hers and she meant to have him. Or, let his wolf have her, more like.
Being a female alpha was a bit strange in some ways. I was alpha in all ways, but when it came to sex, my wolf allowed herself to be dominated. By giving them permission to take control, she showed trust while still calling the shots.
We both knew if we didn't want to be claimed, it wouldn’t happen. We were too strong for that shit.
The guys surrounded me as we made our way to Quin’s Range Rover. I opted for the backseat with Voss so I could use him as a pillow. Although, I wouldn’t get much more sleep. The pack hall was a ten-minute drive through the curvy mountain roads.
Most of the homes in the country community were made up of shifters or vampires. Because of the treaty, we'd stayed away from one another's homes and land, but by living so close to one another, the youth had been better at coexisting than the elders. If we didn't sort something out fast, the individual members of both of our races would take matters into their own hands.
The hall was full, not s
urprising. Pack Council meetings were almost always a matter of public knowledge and rarely closed. We saw no reason to close this one. Everyone needed to know what we faced.
"There's a lot more vampires here than I imagined," I said after we walked into the back of the hall. It was divided, wolves on the left and vamps on the right. "Well, at least they're all in one room. We'll work on intermingling them later."
"Never thought I'd see such a thing," a woman's voice behind me said.
Quin groaned, but I nearly came out of my skin with excitement. "Sissy! What are you doing here?"
She cackled. "Jilly, you little brat, what have you done now?"
Sissy was Quin's aunt and had helped raise him after his parents died. I laughed and hugged her. "I'm always causing trouble, you know that, Sissy."
She'd become my aunt as much as or more than Quin's after he started training to be my sentry. We'd always been together, eventually they'd even trained and taught us together.
Neither of us were allowed to go to public school like some of the other pack members' kids. Sissy taught me until I was ready for high school. But then, she’d said she was hopeless with teenagers. Plus, Quin was in his twenties by that time and serious about his sentry duties.
After my mom died, Quin and I spent more and more time with Sissy. Quin's grandma died a year or two after my mom, and Dad was always busy with pack business. Quin wouldn't let them hire anyone to take care of us. He’d said I was his responsibility. So, Sissy stepped in.
Once I was old enough to start my own training, I joined Quin in the gym every day. I wouldn’t let anyone else train me. But, because he was older and stronger, I sparred with someone my own age. That was when Angel and I became the best of friends. She’d just started the sentry program and was perfect for me to train with.
Everyone knew Angel and I trusted Quin—he was my sentry after all—but out of propriety due to Quin’s age, someone had to be present when we were alone together. Pack rules, since Quin was thirteen years older than me.
Sissy featured more prominently in our lives then. She sat in the corner of the gym and knitted or read while we beat the crap out of each other.
I hadn't seen her as much as I would've liked since I came of age. We had a few dinners together and usually only saw each other at pack events. She'd been out of town when we’d had our spur of the moment mating announcement party, thank goodness. I'd been relieved I hadn't had to look out for her, too.
Not that she'd need it. Sissy was a badass. She'd trained Quin before he joined the Sentries. When she'd be sitting in the corner of the gym knitting, she was constantly calling out criticisms or encouragement.
"Sis," Quin said, giving her a big hug. "You here to meddle?"
She laughed, a booming, room-brightening guffaw. "Hell, yes, son." Her expression softened as she squeezed him. "I'm so glad this fool came to her senses," she said quietly. I heard her, but nobody else was close enough to make out her words over the low buzz of the voices in the room.
"Hey, now." I poked at her side and gave a fake pout.
"Oh, you know you were a fool." Her facial expression challenged me to disagree. "You could've been happily mated to my nephew since you were a teenager."
I crossed my arms and didn’t stop my irritation from leaking in my tone. "I didn't come of age until I was eighteen, Sissy. That was just three years ago."
Sissy was unfazed by my annoyance. "Oh, hell.” She waved my protests away. “If it's a true mating, and yours is, things have a way of coming together. I should have seen it. We could've worked something out so you two didn't have to be miserable away from each other."
"But you did," I said. "I wasn't miserable. He was always nearby. I didn't start feeling the pull until I came of age."
Quin snorted. "I felt it. I was miserable." He leaned forward and popped a kiss on my mouth. "You were worth the wait."
I let out a soft moan and leaned into the kiss. Just then my father stood at the front of the room. "Can we get started?"
"Knock 'em dead, kid." Sissy pushed me forward.
Quin and I joined Kane, Voss, and my dad at the table on the low stage in the front of the hall. A microphone sat on the table. Dad nodded at Kane and he took it.
"Hel-." He stopped and cringed when his voice came out with a squeal. The sound man in the back of the room pointed at him to continue. "Hello. Many of you know me, but some don't. My name is Kane Webb. I’m mated to the Lycan High Princess, Jillian Grey."
Some of the wolves actually didn't know that, and it caused a murmur of voices to rise up across the room as many of them whispered to their neighbors.
Kane held up a hand. "I know, I know. It shocked us, too. But I think everyone in here has experienced the intensity of a fated mate, by either having one or being around as it happened. They're not quite so rare that we don't all know someone that's found their perfect mate." He shrugged. "When I figured it out, I fought it for a few years. She hadn't scented me, yet, or seen me, so she didn't know."
"Kane," I hissed. "Why are you telling them all this?" The details weren’t necessary.
He lowered the mic. "Trust me," he said over his shoulder.
I settled back and smiled at the crowd, utterly mortified.
"My council—The Blood—dethroned me when they found out I was choosing to heed my mating call, as if I could do anything else. As my mother has been called back to Hell, they opted to put my first lieutenant in charge as the new Queen of the Vampires." He shrugged, as if to say he didn’t understand their decision.
"With horrible timing, the attacks on the pack and the coven also started, and Jillian and I crossed paths while trying to solve them. But first…” Kane paused and chuckled. “We had to deal with the mating call." I couldn't see his front, but the crowd burst out laughing, so I had to assume he'd made some sort of wink or eyebrow wiggle. My face flamed red. I was going to kill him. Remove his head. Rip out his heart!
"Once we had that under control, we compared notes on the attacks. We came to the conclusion that it was an outside force, someone attacking both of us.” He paused for dramatic effect. “We have a common enemy."
The crowd murmured again. Some of the tension eased in the room, which calmed my own. Kane continued. "Some of you know, Jillian's lineage has an extra little something. Like a sixth sense. It manifests differently in each member of her family. I'll let her tell you about hers, but it helped us figure out who was leading the attacks on us."
His voice got deeper with a slight growl as he spoke his next words. "This group of humans are good at what they do, very good. They'd have to be to mount such successful attacks on both pack and coven. I mean, we're all pretty badass, right?"
The crowd laughed and nodded. I studied the wolves. They loved him. So many of them had smiles on their faces.
The Blood and the Pack Council sat in the front row on their respective sides. None of them were smiling. In fact, none showed any emotion the whole time Kane spoke.
Kane glanced back at me then to Voss, Quin, and my Dad before he went on. "In our investigations, we discovered the attackers are a human militia group called the Red Night. They're frequently hired to do contract jobs for the human government. As far as both the pack and coven's best hackers can find, this job wasn't contracted by the human government."
"We went this morning to investigate an attack on my coven. We arrived at a very secure facility and found evidence that there was no way the Red Night could've accomplished this attack without inside help."
The vampires erupted in growls and shouts. The thought of one of their own having a hand in the deaths of a beloved and ancient vampire couple infuriated them.
Kane held up a hand and they instantly quieted. "At this point, I'm going to let Jillian take over and tell you what happened. She has the firsthand account of it." He gave a small head bow. "Thank you for listening. I look forward to getting to know all of you in the coming years."
I stood and smoothed out my slacks. K
ane handed me the microphone and kissed my cheek. "Good luck," he said.
Walking around the table, I greeted the crowd. "Hello, everyone," I said softly. My voice bounced around the hall, echoing back at me. "For the benefit of those that don't know me, I'm Jillian Grey, heir to the lycan throne."
Sissy smiled at me and waved like a lunatic. I winked at her. "It's been a rough morning, so bear with me." I sat on the table facing the crowd. I just wasn't a stand at attention sort of girl. Plus, I was tired as fuck.
"I do have a special power, of sorts. I can tune in to what I call a sixth sense. When I turn it on, I can see an imprint of the past. Normally, it's a combination of things I can see and things I can feel. Sometimes I can tell you what happened because I just know. Sometimes I see a ghost of the living creatures involved in the incident. The more gruesome and upsetting, the stronger I can see it.” I shrugged and waved my free hand to tell them I didn’t know how it worked. “It's got something to do with emotions. When emotions are heightened, it leaves an imprint behind."
"How are you not overwhelmed all the time?" someone shouted from the crowd.
"Good question. I can turn it off, for one. Sort of like closing my eyes. I just keep those internal eyes closed most of the time. When I am seeing these imprints, I get exhausted quickly and easily." I stifled a yawn.
"So, this morning," I continued, "we got word of another attack. We immediately left to go to the scene. When we got there, we discovered that since it was a home with advanced security features, the coven authorities had been quickly dispatched to the scene, and we were only a couple of hours past the actual event. I've never been to such a fresh scene."
I sucked in a shuddering breath and whispered, "It was bad. I'm not going to share the gruesome details. Nobody should have to live through that."
I straightened my spine and said what I needed to say. "But, because it was so fresh, I was able to see it clearer than I have have seen a scene before. I followed the attackers into the house, down the stairs, and at the end, when the militia broke into the Belvert's bedroom, I was able to see who was leading them." I looked back at my mates for strength. This was not going to go over well. I allowed emotion to make my voice heavy. "The leader took off her mask right before she sliced Mr. Belvert's head off and ripped Ms. Belvert's heart out of her chest."
