by Cassi Carver
He sat up, his eyes searching hers. “Because of what you saw tonight with Abbey?”
“Yes, but not just that.”
“She gave us her blessing from the first day, mistress. She knows my seed might help you mature. I thought learning resistance would make you more resilient in the face of temptation, but I see now that it’s not good for a Demiáre female to go with her needs unmet.”
“It sounds like Aiden finally got to you.”
“Aiden isn’t here now. It’s just you and me.”
“You mean, you and me…and Abbey. I know you care for her, and I don’t think I’m liberated enough to share you with my best friend.” And she cared about Jaxon too much to use him as a substitute for the man she really wanted.
“What I have with Abbey is different. She’s not as strong as you. She needs me in ways you never will.”
“Do you love her?”
He paused for a long time, his gaze riveted to Kara’s comforter. Finally, he met her eyes. “Even if I did, that wouldn’t change what I feel for you.”
“What do you feel?”
“Protectiveness. Warmth. Loyalty. Gratitude.” He smiled. “And I love the way you smell. Especially tonight.” He smoothed a hand down Kara’s thigh. “Let me serve you.”
Kara’s skin lit up like a Christmas tree, and the valley between her legs pulsed in time with her racing heart. “Go back where you belong. You said yourself, Abbey needs you.”
His hand tightened on her knee. “I belong with you. You are my lady, and I won’t fail you again.”
She pulled her gaze away from the hard facets of his abs and the trail of dark hair disappearing under his boxers. He was her friend, her roommate, for Pete’s sake. “Fail me? Is that what this is about? Do you think it’s your fault I fell into the black-wing’s arms? That if you’d taken care of my ‘needs’, I wouldn’t have kissed him?”
His shoulders sank. “It’s possible.”
“It had nothing to do with you.” How could she explain to him how it felt to touch Julian again after believing he was gone forever? “They tell me it couldn’t be Julian, but you know the crazy thing…I might be willing to take that chance just to hold him one more time.”
“Do you hear what you’re saying? He threatened your life and took the form of your bondmate! I don’t want you on the same continent as that scheming impostor.”
“I don’t expect you to understand. I’m not planning to let him hurt me, but I have to know for sure before I can let him go.”
“Heaven help you. If you go down that road, mistress, I can’t protect you—not from a black-wing.”
She leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to his temple. “I love you, Jaxon. Your friendship is worth more to me than your protection ever will be.”
“I made a vow to you. I won’t go back on it now.”
“I can’t tell you how thankful I am for all you’ve done for me. But it’s time for you to follow your heart.” She cupped his cheek and pressed her forehead to his. “I release you.”
“No, mistress.” He rejected what she was saying with a weighty breath and a shake of his head. “You can’t.”
“But I do. I don’t have to be your mistress to be your friend. You’ll always have a place in my life.”
He nodded and stood, but his heart seemed heavy. “And you will always have a place in mine.”
Kara narrowed her eyes and grinned. “Now go. Abbey’s probably tossing and turning in that big bed all alone. And do me a favor…”
He turned to her expectantly. “Anything.”
“Next time you come through that door, have some clothes on. A body like that needs to be covered for the sake of female sanity.”
Jaxon laughed softly and posed by the door, every inch of his thick thighs and sculpted pecs on display. “You don’t know what you’re missing,” he teased.
Kara threw a pillow at him right before he slipped out the door, then she fell back into bed with a groan. “I have an idea.”
Chapter Six
The messenger’s heart raced, but he focused on diffusing his energy and fading into the background, leaving as small a ripple as possible in Brakken’s kingdom.
Even hand-chosen by the captain of the Mercury warriors, he wasn’t sure his powers were strong enough to deliver the news without alerting the royal guards. Royal guards, he mused, what a fancy name for creatures that were little more than flesh-eating monsters.
He cast out his awareness, probing ever so carefully until he found Lord Gavin. Then, just a wisp of imagination, the messenger followed the trail of the lord’s essence to a small square room no more than eight feet by eight feet—a seemingly impenetrable stronghold, where the king must have woven the walls of iron will.
The messenger’s body flowed over the structure, testing, trying every crack and fissure for a way through. How much effort had Brakken put into constructing this place, and why? Was it to keep someone like him out, or to keep his son in?
With a silent growl, he flattened his essence to the planes of the room when the winged dogs passed by. Each of the three guards sported two heads, enormous mouths and eyes covering their bodies from the tops of their muzzles to the tips of their barbed tails. Their coats bent like short stubs of wheat, but they were hot to the touch, scorching like fire. Whether Brakken had conjured them from mastiffs on the surface was unclear, but they now bore little resemblance to their mortal cousins.
He calmed his thrumming pulse. I am mist. I am nothing but the shadow of passing clouds.
But he almost made the mistake of releasing an audible breath when the beasts continued on. If he was discovered, he couldn’t flash quickly enough to evade guards that moved faster than thought.
He twisted over the room, searching for any gap in the façade, any lapse of Brakken’s concentration long enough to allow entry. And then he found it!
Thinner than a forgotten memory, he filtered through and emerged again on the other side of the barrier. The room was so much larger once inside, a dozen or more of the square structures could have fit inside it.
He knew Lord Gavin was a prisoner here, and he had prepared himself for the sight of whatever torture Brakken had devised for his son. So when the massive collection of silken pillows and blankets before him writhed with tangled limbs and the scent of ripe females assailed him, it took a moment before he could find his lord.
And then, there he was, his body barely visible under the crush of naked females. He was surrounded, some atop him, rocking their hips to and fro, some rubbing their breasts against his face as they pleasured themselves with their fingers, and others still looked on from an arm’s breadth away, bringing each other to orgasm while awaiting their turns at Gavin.
The messenger was dazed, his senses on overload, his body screaming for attention, but he tamped down his desire as his essence materialized over his lord’s ear. “Come home as quickly as you can, my lord. A black-wing has invaded your lady’s city.”
Kara called in sick to work at the Hoolecha Inn. After a year of begging and scheming for more regular hours, it was a damn shame to lose a full Saturday shift, but she needed time to prepare for meeting Claudius Sellers. Of course, her preparation so far included sitting at her kitchen table squeezing the hell out of lumps of clay while visions of Julian went round and round in her head. At least there was something to be said for being alone with one’s thoughts.
After an hour-long conversation over breakfast earlier that morning, she finally convinced Abbey to let Jaxon drive her to the cabin. The driving part was what convinced Jaxon. Kara was pretty sure he’d throw her under a bus if he had the chance to sit behind the wheel and toot the horn. It was almost abusive, the way Lace hadn’t let him learn to drive when the automobile had been invented. At least, that’s how he described her behavior now that he was a liberated man, trading wings and weapons for a ride on the trolley and a night at the movies.
When she’d confided in him about the witch summons, he�
�d been pissed and threatened not to go to the cabin, but she promised him she would call him as soon as it was over and tell him what they said, so long as he promised not to tell Abbey. And when she’d asked him to take her mother’s journal with him to see if he could make any progress on the translations, it was a done deal. She’d given him more temptation than he could resist—Abbey, driving and dying languages.
She glanced at her watch and removed her clay-flecked apron. It was almost five o’clock, and Tray would be here any minute. She’d been thankful when he offered to drive her so she didn’t have to pay for a cab. Sure, she had the refurbished scooter now, but since she couldn’t take it on the freeway, it wasn’t going to get her to her destination.
She grabbed her purse and made her way down to the street, relieved to see him parked by the curb. She got in and closed the door behind her. “Thank you for doing this, Tray. I can’t believe you had the night off. That’s my first lucky break this week.”
He smiled. “I don’t mind. It beats sitting at home.”
Kara pulled the summons from her purse and glanced at the address on the back of the page where she’d scribbled notes. “I looked up the directions online. You want ’em?”
“Nah. After you told me the address, I punched it into my phone.” He glanced her way and whistled low. “Look at you, Kare-bear. I never get to see you dressed up.”
Kara returned the summons to her purse, then shifted to face him, her thighs sticking to the leather seat. “This is the interview suit I told you about. It’s the only thing I own that would do for the occasion.”
He laughed. “Maybe I’ll take you to get some dinner afterward. It’ll help my reputation to be seen out again with a beautiful woman.”
“Pleeease don’t tell me you’re picking up on me. I can always call a cab.”
Tray grimaced. “Of course not. I was just being nice. I thought we were friends.”
“Sorry. I’m just being stupid. Of course we’re friends. The first round is on me.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He merged onto the freeway.
“So, where are your directions taking us, Officer Oaks?”
“East. Aerial maps don’t show anything out there but trees. Maybe they hold meetings under the stars or some other stupid witch crap.”
Kara nodded. “Probably.”
“Are you scared?” he asked.
“I told you, it’s going to be fine. Piece of cake.” She’d come to the conclusion during her time with the clay that morning that she was worrying for nothing. Compared to having a black-wing in her city, a little witch politics wasn’t even a blip on the oh-shit radar.
“Have you ever met anyone in Abbey’s circle?” Tray asked.
“Sure. I even went to school with a witch named Sage. She and Abbey were tight before I got transferred in. I think she blamed me for her spending less time with Abbey as we grew. When we were older, I got invited to parties and stuff with Abbey, so I met witches there. And of course, her boyfriend before you was a witch.”
“Really? I don’t remember her mentioning that.”
“Well, he wasn’t around for long. Two years is her record.” Kara winked.
“Do you think she ever loved me?”
Kara rested her hands in her lap and looked out the window. “I know she did. Her experimentation had nothing to do with you.”
“So why did she leave? Why now, when I want to be there for her the most?”
“To be fair, Tray, you’d already broken up with her when she was attacked. She didn’t really leave you.”
“But none of that made a difference after the fire, after I thought I’d lost her. I would have forgiven everything.”
“You don’t know how bad it’s been. Jaxon is the only one she lets see her cuts. She doesn’t even like to show them to me. I think it’s because he found her that way, and she trusts him.”
“She used to trust me.”
The conversation devolved from there, until Kara was vowing to go online that very night to see what it would take to trade her scooter in for something freeway legal.
They pulled off the interstate a few miles past Jamul and parked in a dirt field. Kara turned to him. “I don’t understand why it worked out that way, but you have to move on. You are a great guy, and hot—in a human sort of way. You’ll find someone else.”
Inspiration lit his eyes. “Yeah…maybe that would make her jealous.”
Kara moaned through her smile and patted him on the cheek. “You’re hopeless. You know that? Stay in the car. You weren’t invited, and I don’t think we want to piss them off.”
“Be careful. Call if you need me.” He patted the holster under his arm. He was the type of cop who probably showered with his gun.
“Thanks.”
Kara got out and walked to the middle of the clearing. There weren’t any people, but several vehicles were parked in a line along the rusty barbed-wire fence. Some were expensive, and some looked like they wouldn’t beat Kara in a footrace. She looked around but couldn’t make out much until something caught her eye in the distance. She squinted, thinking she spied rocks piled against the mountain.
She approached the strange structure—a portal of some kind—took a deep breath and walked on through. When nothing happened, she almost laughed. That was easy.
The passageway was carved in the earth, running straight into the mountain. It was lit by torches, dancing and sputtering in old sconces along the wall. A few feet inside the tunnel was a woven basket with a sign above it. The words, No weapons beyond this point, were burned into a wooden plaque, and a line was drawn in the dirt there, as if a child had run his finger through the dust.
“Screw that,” Kara grumbled. “There’s no way I’m going in there unarmed.” She didn’t expect trouble, but she wasn’t an idiot.
She stepped forward, and suddenly, it felt as if electric ribbons were whipping through the air, cutting her to shreds. She stumbled back and fell to her knees in the reddish-brown dirt. “Okay, okay. Shit.”
Any more voltage and they might as well have tasered her ass.
She pulled the knives from her waist and thigh strap and plopped them in the basket. It felt like giving a bully her lunch money. Then she eased a toe back over the line, and when it seemed like she wasn’t going to get fried, she proceeded down the hall.
“Hello?” she called, rubbing her arms to see if she could abate the sting left behind by the ward.
As she walked, she noticed strange symbols on the walls, written with what looked like red paint. The way they shifted in the firelight was creepy. Kara snorted. Torches and caves were too theatrical for her taste. Demiáre could fly, and they still enjoyed modern conveniences when they were available. This place screamed, We’re scary witches, be afraid! But as much as it irked her, the ambiance worked. Once the portal leading outside was out of view, she had to force herself to put one foot in front of the other to continue down the dimly lit path.
No less than fifty yards in, she came to a three-way split in the tunnel and paused to consider her options. “Now this is just rude.”
Focusing all of her energy on her hearing, she detected the resonance of low voices coming from somewhere deep in the mountain. Maybe some of the tunnels connected, because it sounded like they could be coming from anywhere.
“I’d suggest you go left,” someone said, and Kara jumped.
She glanced down the passageway to the left and saw a woman a few yards in, leaning against the wall. “Sage,” she spat. “What are you doing here?”
“Playing tour guide.” Sage straightened up and ran a hand over her black locks to smooth them. She wore a thin black tank top that showed off the canvas of her skin. It was like the tattoo artist had needed the money and decided to cover enough of her to meet his mortgage. The multihued tail of some sort of serpent or dragon wound around her throat like a jeweled necklace.
Kara arched a brow. “Not much of a welcome committee.”
“May
be I should have let you try another path. If you miss your appointment…whuac.” She drew a finger across her neck, as though slitting her own throat. “But I didn’t want to miss your meeting with Claudius or hearing your excuses. You know, I’d never met one of the Fallen before you.”
Kara glared in her direction. “No, I didn’t know that.”
Sage stepped into the middle of the path that she’d said Kara should take. “It was disappointing, really. I mean, what can you do, Kara? You can’t fly. You can’t do spells. At least it explains why you never did fit in with Abbey’s friends.”
It wasn’t only Sage’s attitude that bothered Kara…the sweaty smells in the tunnel were all wrong. Her lips peeled back in a low growl. “Thanks for the directions. Now step aside and let me get on with it.” Bitch.
Sage laughed. “Oh, that’s classic! Did you really just growl at me? I thought it was figurative. I didn’t know you all could really do an imitation of a pissed lapdog. I guess the wings are what threw me. Have you ever tried to caw?”
Kara’s teeth clenched together. She had to relax her jaw to get the words out. “Listen, I’m here to see Claudius Sellers, not talk you through your wing envy.”
Sage’s eyes narrowed. “Envy? I don’t think so. I don’t envy the Fallen. I would feel sorry for you if you didn’t deserve all the shit coming your way. You were never good enough for Abbey. You were always trash, and all the guys at our school knew it. Derek screwed you just to see if you put out, but it was me he took to the prom. From what I hear, spreading your legs is still your only talent.”
Kara couldn’t stop the rumble in her chest. She hated thinking back on the worst four years of her life. Even after all this time, Sage’s sharp words stung like poison-tipped darts in her veins. A part of her wanted to defend herself, explain that she probably couldn’t keep a boyfriend in school because those guys were the wrong fucking species. But she didn’t owe Sage crap, much less an explanation.
“Why are you such a bitch? Is it really because Abbey chose me over you when we were girls? Have you ever considered getting a life?” Her blood pounded so hard through her temples, she was proud she could even put sentences together.
