by Angel Payne
Until now.
Making it really goddamned tempting to rush over and throw my arms around the woman in affection and pride…
If only her daughter wasn’t the new priority on my plate. In all the most alarming and demanding versions of both “priority” and “plate.”
Because Laurel’s outrage has resulted in a leap of Faline’s hackles. And a fast, ferocious hiss off the woman’s lips. And enough of a resulting pounce out at Laurel to spring a shit ton of latches on Emma’s control.
And like a goddamned sap gawking at a slow-mo reel of the Mission Impossible fuse, I watch this situation instantly transform from a shit fest into a train wreck.
“Back off, Faline.” Emma rips her hand away from mine and copies the woman’s advance. “Now.”
Faline backpedals but not without leveling a withering glare. “Come now, querida. Is that any way for a bride to speak to one of her guests?”
“Now isn’t that funny…querida.” Laurel steps up next to her daughter, switching one of the cake cutters into her opposite grip so she brandishes them like a mom-tastic Valkyrie. “Because I have nearly every name on Emmalina’s guest list memorized by now, and nowhere do I recall your name on it. And you’d think I’d remember something like ‘Faline the Fashion Failure.’”
Before Faline can get over swallowing her tongue, my wife is on fire again. “And just to make things clear—no way, in this dimension or any other, will you ever be my guest.”
And again I’m caught between what my spirit yearns to do and what my brain is ordering me to do. Spinning Emma back around and kissing her senseless because of her fine, sassy stand-up to the bitch? Or yanking her back and ditching the kiss in favor of tucking her close because she’s now the shade of impending daybreak?
Pay the fuck attention to your brain, asshole.
“Beautifully done, baby.” I spin her in, but she squirms against me. She’s pissed as fuck and it’s sexy as hell, but giving full rein to my raging libido is not a goddamned option right now. “But now you have to stand the hell down.”
“Ohhhh, pendejo,” sneers the witch who still goads with her hands on her hips and her dress gaping wider. “Why ruin all of your bride’s fun? It is her party too—and now she wants to stand the hell up!”
I spike a glower over the top of Emma’s head. “Shut the hell up, Faline.”
“You will have to come and make me, Alpha Two. Right here, before your friends and family, you will need to come and make me.”
Emma doesn’t make the moment any easier. At every new jeer from the bitch on high, she struggles against me. Her inner fire is palpable and damn near irresistible as she uses her whole body to beg me for freedom. To be cut loose to fight the monster refusing to let us live in peace. Who’s stolen even this day of joy from us.
I bore my glare deeper into the woman’s elegant features. Yes, her bone structure is eternally noble, with the kind of handsome nose and full mouth one would imagine a queen of old to possess—but that’s where any sane person would stop their admiration. Faline’s anger at the universe would have made her this haggard even if she’d aligned herself with Pixar instead of the Scorpios. Luckily for the world, Elastigirl and Nemo are safe.
“You’re enjoying this,” I utter between ragged breaths of new understanding. “Aren’t you? Every minute of chaos. Every second of upheaval.” When her only reaction is a tight but satisfied smirk, I grate, “Why, goddamnit? Just…fucking…why?”
As I spew the last of it, Emma feels the exhausted drain in my body and capitalizes on her chance for freedom. I choose to let her go, knowing I might need to reclaim the hold any second—but of course, with the terrific but horrific timing they always seem to possess, the two event photographers come skidding up just as Emma turns, her skin pulsating an even brighter shade of gold. At the same second, she lets out a full scream at Faline.
“Answer him, you bitch!”
At once, Faline laughs. When she realizes she’s the sole idiot at the party who has, she snaps back into her trademark mix of sultry fury and calculated vengeance. “Why?” The woman turns her palms up, as if getting ready to wield a pair of knives.
My blood ignites because I almost believe she will.
“You idiotas tristes. Why the hell not? And because I can, missss-ter and missss-usss Richards.” She performs an elaborate bow during her drawn-out denigration, her dark hair tumbling into her face. “Because God forbid I do not come and pay homage to the fucking king and queen, right? Because their day has to be perfect. Because they’re so perfect.”
Emma advances on the woman by a step. Again, I let her—until I see exactly what the photographers are capturing with their lenses. At this point, even if I electric-bounced us out of here, half her jig would officially be up. There’s such a thing as saying “the bride glowed,” but then there’s having to reconcile that to “the bride glowed like she had gossamer skin laid over bones made of LED lights.” But there’s still a chance to spin this right. We can tell the photographers that she’s somehow “reflecting” off of me in the afterglow of my Bolt burst from the dance floor. Yeah. That just might work…
“You done with your moment yet, Faline?” But then there’s the fact that she appears more like an angel now more than ever, even in her full-blown rage. Her lacy train swishes behind her; her hair is a messy gold braid around her luminous face. I swear to God, she’s never been more exasperating and stunning in the same damn moment. “Is that what you need here? The moment of glory you never got in your sorry life?”
And that’s the moment I become the king of at least one thing tonight. Double-taking. What the living hell is Emma really doing—besides antagonizing Faline in ways the woman didn’t anticipate? Fuck. That I didn’t anticipate.
“Velvet.” I warn it through gritted teeth while pushing close to her again. “This isn’t shutting her down and getting her out of here.”
“No shit.” Emma wrenches me off, her gaze not wavering from Faline’s wide-eyed glare. “But it is giving her the truth about herself, damn it—maybe something somebody should have done a long time ago.”
Faline pulls herself up, twisting her hands inward. It looks like she’s gathering a queen’s robe around herself now, though I’m still not convinced the daggers-from-nowhere thing isn’t a possibility. “Oh, I know my truth, amiga. And believe me, it is more than what you think you know after Angelique’s adorable little Freud-isms about my ‘childhood’ and my ‘troubled parents.’”
“Yeah?” Emma retorts. “Well, they have medication for that kind of shit too.”
Faline raises her head. Higher. Angles it to the point where she continues to look at my wife but does it now from along the bridge of her nose. “I do not need medicine, little Emmalina Richards.”
The knowing lilt of her concluding smile is like a hot poker in my woman’s eyes. I have no damn idea why she’s jamming more bees down Emma’s figurative underwear, but the aggravation and anger on the air are like a sloppy honeycomb from those damn insects, and it’s sticking to everything and everyone. If Fa-Fa doesn’t get the message and quit with the imaginary robes, the regal gloat, and the cryptic verbal runaround, I’ll let my temper dash an end-run around my logic and pulse her ass all the way out to the main gate.
Except—goddamnit—that my gorgeous, outrageous, furious wife has already decided to beat me to the punch.
No. Not decided.
Her system isn’t giving her any choice.
I know because I’ve been there. Letting the rage take over the blood cells. Letting the rage turn into a perfect, consuming fire…
A bright, inescapable flare.
“No,” she snarls, her voice already a scorch of sound—as she lifts her taut arms and spreads her beautiful fingers—with the white-hot webs already weaving their way across the tips. “You just want everything else, Faline, no matter whom you hurt to get it!”
The nets sizzle even brighter. Ignite even hotter.
A colle
ctive gasp vibrates through the whole crowd around us—family, friends, photographers—though none of them is as loud or freaked as Laurel Crist.
“Emmalina?” She sags, braced on one side by Lydia and the other by Todd. “Oh, holy mother of pearl. Emmalina?”
“Emma.” My version of it is low and determined, aimed at the back of her neck beneath her right ear. She’s breathing like a frantic rabbit and poised like an avenging angel. My angel.
Which means I have to fight for her. To get through to her, despite her psyche feeling like the tunnels of hell and her blood burning like a thousand suns—in her case, pretty damn literally. And if I can’t do that, then I’ll fucking be here for her.
No matter what the hell happens.
Even as she brings her hands toward each other, poising them like readying to tangle a pair of spider webs, except for one huge difference. Her webs are on fire. And she’s aiming both those fires at Faline Garand’s throat.
“Mother,” she finally intones. “You’d better get back. You’d all better get back. This witch isn’t getting away from me alive.”
Laurel gives the dictate all the attention of a passing dust mote. “What on earth are you talking about?” she snaps, even rushing forward by two more steps. The woman’s as boldly stubborn as her daughter, especially when goaded by a chuckle as vile as Faline’s. But while Laurel finally heeds intuition and stops, Faline’s clearly only getting started with her laugh. I’m not one fucking bit surprised, and I start priming my reflexes to be ready for anything…
Except for what the bitch actually does.
Swooping forward by one deliberate step—but then immediately retreating.
Only she doesn’t pull back emptyhanded.
She’s lunged out to secure her own wedding day gift—and has taken advantage of everyone’s shock to seize it with mind-jarring speed.
A living prize.
The terror-stricken form of Laurel Crist.
“Holy shit,” I snarl.
“Mom? Mom!” Lydia shrieks behind us.
There’s not a sound from my wife, who’s honed every solar-powered cell of her body into sizzling solar rays aimed at the space around Faline, to no avail. The bitch, and the sleeve of air around her and Laurel, is impenetrable. Though I funnel full-powered lightning blasts to my fingers and join them to Emma’s beams, neither of us are able to put the smallest dent or crack in that goddamned force field.
Faline takes in our efforts as if watching mosquitos smash against bug lights—right before she curls another serene smile while possessively stroking the hollow of Laurel’s throat.
“What was that again, querida?” she croons, staring Emma down. “About me not getting away?”
Protective fury wells up through me. Bursts through my palms, which crackle with heat I’ve never allowed to spill out before. I slam my arms hard skyward, ignoring the air I’m bending, the party lights I’m exploding, and even the dishes I’m decimating. A bellow blazes out of me, churning with a hatred too long bottled, “Fuck. You!”
But the witch doesn’t hear me.
She doesn’t hear…because she’s gone.
Vanished like a wicked star. Evaporated like a lethal poison. Completely gone from the spot in which she was just standing.
And she’s taken my wife’s mother with her.
Chapter One
Emma
I’ve been Mrs. Reece Richards for less than eight hours, and I’ve already lied to my husband.
Even worse? I’m pretty damn sure he knows it.
Reece…we’re going to be okay. Reece, even this is going to be okay.
But during the ten minutes since the words left my mouth, I know I didn’t mean them. Couldn’t mean them. No matter how deep the love that pushed them up from my heart and spurted them out of my mouth. I’d whispered the lie, wanting so desperately to drive the anguish from his eyes, the torment from his posture, and the violence that had been shooting out of his fingertips. The bright-blue bolts that he’d carved into the side of a towering rock face, having already torn out a four-foot-by-twenty-foot swath of rock before I’d arrived.
I was certain Reece was set on taking out more. Enough to take him out.
He was ready to let half a mountain of granite, shale, silt, and Zuma Volcanics tumble down on him rather than face his own rage, guilt, and regret.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Velvet.
I hadn’t filled in the rest of that for him, knowing I didn’t have to. Like so many times before, our minds simply know each other—despite the clenching heartache that union brings.
Faline Garand didn’t just sneak into our wedding reception like a damn thief in the night. She escaped the exact same way—and took a “wedding favor” with her.
My mother.
One second, Mom was right there, turning into the champion I never knew I had in her. Fierce. Fiery. Hell, even—gah—funny at moments. But most of all, standing up to Faline with badass vigor that would’ve been eye-popping to watch even without the knowledge of the Consortium’s queen bitch capabilities.
But the next moment, learning all about Faline’s evil antics firsthand.
Because she was gone.
Vanished, along with her captor, from thin air.
Taken.
But where?
Nearly seven hours after that horror, we still have no clear answer. I feel it in every molecule of energy thrumming off my husband before he even reenters the sprawling ranch house at the center of the hilltop estate where we became husband and wife a few hours ago. I feel every shred of his frustration in the reverberations from his stomps as he crosses the polished wood floor, each pound a new match on the fire already fused to the inside of me. I see it affecting everything around him as he comes through the room, pulsing the intensity of the bulbs in the wall sconces and making tassels on the throw pillows stand on end. Most clearly, it’s evident in the furious clenches of all his muscles—as he clearly holds himself back from a sound self-flogging.
Noble idiot.
Beautiful ox.
Beloved husband.
And yeah, the guy who blatantly reads my mind as he comes closer, his expression darkening as the full impact from my mind hits him.
I really don’t think this is going to turn out okay. Or that any of this is “fine,” or will be for a long time to come. Maybe not ever.
The instant I finally bonded with my mom, even for just a couple of minutes, was the second I lost her.
Because Faline had finally been a good little wedding crasher and disappeared from our sight. From the ranch grounds completely. And now, the security patrols finally tell us, from anywhere within a ten-mile radius of this place.
Damn it.
Damn her.
“Anything?” The request comes from Lydia, rushing in, her white-knuckled grasp locked around Sawyer Foley’s hand. I peer past the messy tumble of blond waves that tease at the guy’s shoulder to the TV monitor carrying a live newsfeed from the gate at the end of the ranch’s main road. Not a surprise, considering the events that went down at the reception. It’s one thing to ask a wedding guest to keep their cell phone politely stowed; it’s another to ask the same thing when the bride is exposing herself as the world’s newest electric superhero.
But I don’t feel one shade of “super” right now, especially as I watch thick tears invade my sister’s plea. I’m damn grateful for Sawyer, who grips ’Dia’s hand a little tighter, subconsciously preparing his woman for the grim update.
“I’m sorry.” Reece stops at the top of the three descending steps into the living room. Drags a hand through his thick black-brown waves while glowering at the monitor currently broadcasting a replay of me from the reception, my hands at Faline’s neck. “Not a fucking thing,” he adds. “These canyons are treacherous to try to search at night. The teams are doing their best. Your dad is safely home and will be in touch to tell me if they—she—shows up there.”
But as he glances to Foley and then t
o me, the message underlying the statement is obvious. He’s not pushing the search into the canyon. There’s no point. Faline didn’t simply road runner it out into Malibu freaking Canyon at night. She really did get away by disappearing in front of our eyes. If the feat was just a magic trick, then it was a damn good one—meaning she likely had someone waiting in a car out at the main road ready to take them and hide them away. Someplace not close, that’s for certain.
And if it wasn’t a magic trick?
That’s a little more complicated.
And terrifying.
The possibility that Faline has a Consortium power we don’t know about yet…if she actually proved that teleportation isn’t just for the United Federation of Planets anymore…
Shit, shit, shit.
I can’t bear to think about it—but I have to. And force myself to. Tension racks my entire form, and I tremble uncontrollably from the second Reece reaches me. I let him feel every tremor despite the stress still tangibly claiming him. His breath erupts like stuttering static into my hair as he dips his head and folds me against his big body.
And just like that, I’m home. Back in the smoky, masculine scent of him and the gripping, consuming strength of him—fortitude that couldn’t be more direly needed, especially as I work to gather air and get out all the shitty words. Shitty but necessary.
“They could be anywhere, couldn’t they?”
Reece doesn’t relent his hold. Without words, he drops one defined nod.
“Reece.”
I wait for him to drag away, obeying my behest for direct eye contact. As soon as I take in the silver tempests in his focused but turbulent stare, I stammer, “Even…Spain?”
Spain.
The Consortium’s ultimate home. Where they permanently keep the hive, their most advanced and powerful lab, made up of their hexagon-shaped “experimentation chambers.”
And the cells for hundreds of human test victims.
A complex we still haven’t been able to find.
