She felt ridiculous in the white corset top and white, petticoat-style short skirt, but it was the white thigh highs and white platforms that really had her feeling uncomfortable. At least the wings were easily forgotten. They were small, white feather wings that barely spanned the width of her shoulders.
Izzy smiled as her sisters and the men who made them so happy came through the line. Eppie and Samuel were in togas. Marie and Marko’s costumes got them a shake of Izzy’s head. Marie was dressed in a skimpy lioness costume, while Marko dressed as a lion tamer.
Izzy led them to a table Ben had let her reserve for them. Ana, one of the waitresses, took their orders as Izzy sat down with her family. She was mostly done with her part of the evening. The decorating was done, the bartenders were on fire, the servers looked great as they made their way through the crowd with the dollar Jell-O shots, and the menu was altered and ready for the night, Ben was mingling in the crowd, and the band was live.
“It looks great in here, Iz,” Eppie told her as she surveyed the decorations and the crowd.
“Thanks, I’m glad you guys could make it.”
“Well, we’ve missed you. Are you planning to start coming to family dinners again?”
“I think so.” Izzy smiled at her sister. “I just needed some time. The last month has been really complicated.”
“We’re pretty smart,” Eppie said, her hand gesturing between herself and Marie. “You can tell us about it.”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I did tell you, and mostly what went on isn’t my secret to tell.”
“Wait, there are secrets now?” Marie piped in after taking a long draw on the straw of her Long Island.
Marko laughed. “Let’s go get some more drinks,” he said to Samuel. “Looks like the sisters might need a minute.”
Samuel nodded, dropped a kiss to Eppie’s temple, and the two men sauntered off.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Izzy said, trying to wave the comment off.
“Well, I want to know what happened. You didn’t give many details, so tell us what happened with Bain.”
Marie and Eppie both leaned in closer to Izzy so they could hear her over the band.
Izzy sighed. She was going to have to give up a few details, or they weren’t going to leave her alone.
“It feels complicated to me, but I guess it’s actually pretty simple. I met this amazing, though arrogant man, things got hot and heavy too quickly, we came back from the trip we took—the one when I missed the first family dinner night—he dropped me off, and he left. The truth is, I don’t have any details to give. I don’t have any answers to what happened.”
“So, what did he say?” Eppie asked. “I mean, really, from what I heard, he stood his ground with Dad, and he couldn’t take his eyes off you that night at dinner.”
“And how hot and heavy was it?” Marie asked. Izzy glared at her. “Right, sorry, open wound.” Marie waved the question off, returning her lips to the pink straw in her drink.
“He said it was over, that I wouldn’t get to see him again, and that it was fun.”
Pity shone from both Marie and Eppie’s eyes.
“Fun was a poor choice of words on his part.”
Izzy felt cold fear run down her spine as she spun to the voice behind her. Her eyes widened as they fell upon the Light Fae leader and a very handsome man who stood beside her, not one of the brothers, but an intimidatingly gorgeous man, whose long, black hair and stunning diamond eyes seemed to scrutinize every inch of her.
“Rowan, what are you doing here?” Izzy asked. Her sisters were finally silent as they watched the two intruders carefully.
That cold fear Izzy felt wasn’t because of seeing Rowan; it was the why of her presence that scared Izzy. Was Bain okay?
“We need to talk,” Rowan said simply.
“Is he okay? I just saw Kale the other night. He said he was… fine.” She stumbled over the word a little. Kale hadn’t actually used the word fine, but he was physically fine as far as what Kale had told her.
“Ah, again, I believe Kale has made the same mistake Bain did. Fine is a poor choice in words.”
“Uh, Iz, you gonna introduce us?” Marie asked.
“What? Oh yeah sure, um… Rowan, these are my sisters, Marie and Eppie. Ladies, this is Rowan.”
“And who is Kale?” Eppie asked. She looked to the man standing next to Rowan. “Or more importantly, who is this?”
Izzy shook her head and turned back to Rowan with an expectant look on her face. She had no idea who this guy was.
“Izzy, this is Makyle. He’s here to speak with you about Bain. Is there somewhere we can talk privately?”
Izzy took one more look at the man standing next to Rowan, and then turned to her sisters. “I’ll be back in a few.”
“Izzy, what’s going on?” Eppie’s eyes were a little wide, a testament to the discomfort she was suddenly feeling over the situation.
“I don’t know exactly, but Rowan is Bain’s sister and I trust her, so I’m going to go talk with them.”
“You barely know her,” Eppie whispered.
“And dude looks a little scary,” Marie added in her own whisper.
Izzy shook her head. “It’ll be fine.”
She walked off, leaving her sisters to glare at her back as she moved to the back of the bar. She passed Sally and asked if she could use her office real quick. Sally nodded, and Izzy led Rowan and Makyle into the small, plain square of an office.
She had no idea what she was walking into, but that was how everything that involved the Fae worked. She had to go off faith and instinct, and her instinct was telling her she was going to want to hear them out.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“So what’s going on?” Izzy asked as soon as she shut the office door.
“We’ve come to talk to you about Bain.” Rowan smiled softly.
Izzy nodded and smiled back. Yes, she knew that much.
“I want to help fix what happened between the two of you. Makyle is one of the Immortal Four, and he has come to make you an offer.”
Makyle sized up Izzy. He gazed, studying her. “You’ve fallen in love with an Immortal, and one of the Immortal warriors has fallen in love with you—a mortal human.”
Okay, first, weren’t all human’s mortal? she thought fleetingly, and second, this guy didn’t waste any time getting to the point, but he was not entirely correct.
“Not exactly,” Izzy corrected. “I fell in love. He had fun.”
“Izzy, I know what happened. Bain told me what he said to you, and that just isn’t the truth. He misses you; he’s been either sulking around or reckless when he’s not holed up in his room. Kale can barely get him to come out.”
Izzy’s eyes locked on Rowan. “Reckless how?” she asked.
“The influx of Fae activity in your world has kept the brothers very busy.” She waved a hand. “It’s not important, what is important is that he misses and loves you.”
“He never said he loved me, never even said he cared about me. He said I had needed protection and now that I don’t need that protection anymore, I wouldn’t be seeing him again.”
“But you knew better, you knew he didn’t really see your time together as merely fun.” Rowan needed Izzy to acknowledge the truth of what she and Bain had shared.
“What do you want from me, Rowan? Do I love your brother? Absolutely, I fell hard and fast for that arrogant jerk, but I kind of started to see him as my arrogant jerk. Did I think he loved me or at least cared about me? Of course I did. If I had thought it was just about having a little fun, I wouldn’t have let my heart or body into any of those situations.”
“There’s so much you don’t know, but I know he wants to tell you,” Rowan said, her eyes asking Izzy to just believe this, to take it on faith and if need be, to really search her heart.
“I’m sorry, Rowan, I don’t have the patience for this, and my family is waiting on me, so what is it you two want from me?
”
Makyle smiled. “I like her, she’s feisty. No wonder Bain… well, moving on. I’m here to make you an offer. The needs of the warriors are always a high priority for Rowan, myself, my brothers, and my sisters. But as you can imagine, it’s not easy to have a Fae—an Immortal Fae for that matter—to fall for a human.”
Izzy was listening, but she didn’t want someone else attempting to convince her of Bain’s intentions and reasons for turning his back on her. However, this was one of the leaders of the Underworld speaking to her, so she bit her tongue and continued to listen.
“It has some to do with your lack of magic, but in this case, your mortality is the bigger issue. It’s messy and devastating. So it is, of course, frowned upon. And because of your mortality, lack of magic, and the appearance of the Light Fae leading family, the night Bain brought you back home ended in a distasteful outcome.”
Distasteful? Izzy had narrowed eyes pinned on Makyle. What was he saying exactly? Did Bain think less of her because she was a human, non-magical mortal?
“So, I’m here to try and fix at least one of those problems, while Rowan has already dealt with the others.”
Izzy’s gaze darted to Rowan.
“What’s he talking about? Bain has an issue with my mortality and me not being magical, and your family has an issue with me being human? Is that what you’re here to tell me?”
“No,” Rowan said softly. “I am here to explain that Bain didn’t care that you were human, mortal, or non-magical. He left things the way he did that night because someone else cared about those things. He was given an ultimatum that really gave him no choice at all but to walk away from you. I have since dealt with that issue, and Makyle is here to help with the mortality issue.”
“Mortality issue?” Izzy asked softly.
“You must understand, Izzy, that while Bain doesn’t care that you are mortal right now, he will eventually and so will you… if you want a future with each other.”
“I don’t understand,” Izzy admitted, her patience wavering.
“I’m here to offer you Immortality, Isabelle Moreno,” Makyle stated.
Chapter Forty
Izzy stared at Makyle. Immortality? Did she really want immortality? She wasn’t sure. Rowan and Makyle had laid a lot on her.
Segregation, superiority, racism, and sexism were all in human history. Unfortunately, they all weren’t ancient history; they were still valid issues in her world. So she supposed from what she knew of the Fae and how much they seemed to have in common with the human race, it made sense that they could suffer from the same short sightedness that brought these issues on.
“Who was it?” she asked Rowan.
“Excuse me?” Rowan tilted her head with confusion.
“Who was it that had all these issues with who, or more precisely, what I am?”
Rowan’s head dropped slightly. “Lady Esperanza.”
Just as Izzy had figured. Bain seemed to have a very close relationship with his mother. How would it work if she didn’t approve of Izzy?
“What was the ultimatum?” Izzy asked.
Rowan shook her head. “That will be for Bain to tell you. If you choose to take Makyle up on his offer, Bain will have all the time in the world to tell you.”
“I don’t know,” Izzy said honestly “I don’t know if I want immortality… I want to talk to Bain.”
Rowan nodded. Her eyes drifted up to the left, she was quiet for a few minutes, and then smiled. “He’ll be here shortly.”
“What did you just do?” Izzy questioned.
“I asked Cree to bring him here. They’re out patrolling tonight not too far from here. I asked Cree to explain what was happening.”
“I don’t even know what’s happening. What does it mean if I say yes? What about my family?”
“Your family cannot know about this,” Makyle said simply.
“So what, in a few years when they notice I’m not aging, I have to just… disappear?”
Izzy couldn’t even fathom the idea of leaving her family. Her parents still had a lot of years left in them. A lot of years she wanted to be there to share with them. Then there was her grandmother, who was on the downward slope of her life. She was strong and healthy, but the woman was eighty-two years old. And what about her sisters and her niece and nephew? She only had two as of right now, but Marie was born to be a mom and someday she would be. Would Izzy even get the chance to meet them?
She had too many ties that bound her to this life—ties she loved and would never sacrifice. Her heart would never forgive her for giving up a chance to be with Bain. She wasn’t sure she would ever love someone else, but she would never forgive herself if she lost precious years with her family.
“No,” Izzy finally whispered. “Tell him not to come. I love him, I do. But I can’t give up my family.” Her voice cracked with pain.
The words stung as Izzy said them. All she had wanted these past weeks was to see him, but if she saw that gorgeous face, she wouldn’t be strong enough to do what had to be done. If she spoke to him, she wouldn’t be able to say no to Makyle’s offer and she would eventually come to resent herself and possibly Bain, because she had willingly given up her family for him.
Rowan let out a satisfied sigh that cut off Izzy’s rambling, aching, and confused thoughts.
Why was she smiling? This was not a happy moment.
“You don’t have to,” Rowan assured her. “I have a plan for that. They can’t know about your immortality, but you can live out the next fifty years with them as a part of your life.”
“How?” Izzy questioned.
It would be a little obvious that something wasn’t right if she continued to look twenty-nine when she was supposed to be seventy-nine.
“Darnell is a unique kind of Fae, and he has agreed to cast glamours every few years on you and Bain. So that when you come to the Human World to see your family, it will look like you two are aging at a normal human rate. So you see, you can be with your family too. All you have to do is agree to let Makyle make you immortal.”
So far, it was all sounding too good to be true. “How would you make me immortal?” Izzy asked Makyle.
“The same way I made Rowan immortal, or how my sisters made the brothers immortal.”
Izzy tilted her head. “With your blood?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so. You and I will become very close. The first few years you will need to feed every week, but slowly, as time goes on, you will need less and less of my blood. All you have to do is say yes, and I will give you this.”
“Why, just to keep Bain happy?”
“I will do this because Rowan has asked me to, and it is important now more than ever that we do all we can to keep the Immortal brother’s focused and content.”
Content, they wanted her to immortalize herself to keep Bain… content?
“And what would be expected of me?” She posed this question to Rowan.
“To love my brother. There are no strings attached to this offer, Isabelle.”
Izzy was quiet as she pondered the offer.
“Does Bain want me forever?” Izzy finally asked Rowan, a crack in her voice as she did.
Rowan smiled. “You can ask him yourself. He and Cree just arrived.”
Izzy wasted no time bolting from the office, passing the bar and scanning the crowd. It didn’t take long to locate the tall, handsome, blond with the violet eyes who’d stolen her heart, standing next to the even taller, glacial-eyed, man with the one unruly strand of black hair falling in his face. They had the best costumes in the bar. Both of their wings were still out, but tucked in nicely, whitish-gold next to midnight black.
Izzy had stopped once she saw him. She held the back of probably the one empty chair in the whole place, her knees threatening to give out on her.
The room was crowded, and Bain couldn’t locate Izzy right away. Of course, he had no idea what she would be wearing. In this crowd of costumes, she could have been anyone. Her sce
nt was what found him first, and he swore he could single out her heartbeat then.
He caught sight of his angel near the bar, a chair seeming to hold her up. Her eyes were glued on him and even from the forty some odd feet away, he could see the sheen to her eyes. They sparkled, and not just because they were those fiery, beautiful blue eyes, they held tears. Bain strode forward, nearly knocking people over as he did.
Izzy found the strength in her legs to move towards Bain as he started towards her. Izzy didn’t care about the people around her, not even her sisters, whose table she hurried right past. Her arms flung out and wrapped around Bain’s neck as he wrapped his arms around her waist and wasted no time dropping his lips to hers.
They were like two high school students kissing in the middle of a party, but Izzy really didn’t care and it seemed neither did Bain.
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I’m so sorry,” he murmured against her lips.
Izzy was crying now, unashamed of her tears, of the weakness other may have seen in them.
“Sweetheart, please don’t cry. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not crying because of what happened. I’m crying because I didn’t think I would ever get to see you again, and now you’re here.”
Bain kissed Izzy again. It was soft, deep, and longer then was probably appropriate. His tongue twisted and teased hers. She shivered thinking of all the wickedly pleasurable things his tongue could do to her. He knew how to kiss her thoughts and worries away.
When they finally came back up for air, Izzy had to ask. She needed to know what pain Esperanza had caused him, because of her. “What did she threaten you with?”
Bain pulled back and shook his head. “We can talk about it later… Rowan said you needed to talk to me before you would give Makyle an answer.”
Izzy pulled him back to her, burying her face in the crook of his neck just below his ear and whispered, “You have to promise you will tell me what happened. What she did to you.”
Immortal Blood Page 17
