by Amy Lane
Of anybody on the planet, I should know that grief could turn violent.
Andres came in and visited for an hour before he and Orson started back for the city. I was glad to see him, very glad, but the strain of that morning—of the tension with Green, of my confusion about the thing with Nolan Fields—all must have shown on my face.
Before he left, he took me aside, separating me from Green and Bracken fairly smoothly. They had formed some sort of compact to not let me beyond their touch since Hallow and the others had returned.
“You’re not looking well, little Goddess,” Andres said softly, tilting my chin up to look into his soothing brown eyes. “And you keep shivering.”
“Bracken’s still mad at me,” I said huskily. “And Green… Green has a space in him….” I shook my head. Of all things, I didn’t want the person I’d become in order to be worthy of them to get between us.
Andres nodded. “Is there a thing you would have done differently, Corinne Carol-Anne?”
I looked at him in surprise and blinked slowly. “No,” I said after a moment. I couldn’t think of a single thing I hadn’t agonized over. I couldn’t think of a single decision that I hadn’t made a commitment to honor in some way, shape, or form long in advance of the time it had to be made.
Andres smiled, the beauty of it still shocking. “Then you are the person they love. They simply need to learn to live with you as you have made yourself.”
“What if I’m not….” My voice faltered. Oh Goddess. And wasn’t this my biggest fear.
But Andres wouldn’t even let me voice it. “Enough, little Goddess. How could they not love you? It was their love that was the making of you. Go.” He kissed my cheek like a brother. “Sit with them, be with your people. Have peace. I have faith we will have other moments—your Bracken will certainly see to it.”
He shooed me away, and shortly after that they left. Once again, a few words from Andres had put my world into some semblance of order. It was like his superpower or something.
Marcus tiptoed down the hall from the darkling about an hour after Andres and Orson left, specifically to catch me knitting in the common room. Green had been next to me, watching Bourne Identity—I guess we all have our comfort movies—and he rubbed my knee and stood up discreetly to let Marcus take his place.
It hit me then that I had done the same thing for him on many occasions, and I felt a horrible, keening sorrow in my chest that I took pains to mask from Marcus. He had enough on his mind.
“How’s he doing?” I asked, hoping the answer was better than I thought.
Marcus shrugged, turning away. “Better than if he’d been here,” he told me.
I shrugged. It helped, but not much.
“Better than we’d be if we’d seen you going through it,” he said more firmly, making sure I met his eyes.
I inclined my head. “You called it, brother—he’s not the hard-ass he wants us to think he is. Is there anything I can do to help?”
Marcus looked up with hopeful eyes. “Could you… he’s fed for real, but Cory—would you mind being dessert?”
Not even a little bit.
Bracken followed me into their room. I don’t know how he heard, but Green had disappeared and suddenly Bracken was at my heels. I was reassured that he was there—he was still a little angry, but nothing between us had changed like it had between me and Green.
Phillip didn’t need much of my blood. A brief sting at my wrist, a slight pull, a swallow, and he fell to his knees, resting his head on the bed. His face, which had been taut and controlled as we walked in, and stretched so tightly along his high cheekbones and chin that it looked like his skull would split through his skin, was suddenly slack and peaceful under the onslaught of scarlet tears.
Marcus’s relief was profound as he moved in to shelter his sobbing lover, and as Bracken and I backed discreetly out—much as Green had earlier—I said, “I don’t think he’d cried.”
Bracken nodded, then swept me up rather breathlessly in his arms. “Balance, beloved. You know that. Something’s got to give, even if it’s a vampire’s broken heart.”
And oh, how those words haunted me, even as Bracken kissed me with love and forgiveness and then passion.
They haunted me as I lay pinned under Bracken’s weight, feeling him still trembling inside of me, and I wondered… wondered at the thing that had changed between me and Green.
Because now, smoothing Bracken’s shoulders, knowing Green’s hand was gentling the tender curve of his back, I felt it changing between me and Bracken too.
Green: Bowing to the Will of the Queen
VOYEURISM WAS not a sin to the sidhe, and Green loved to watch his beloved make love—especially to as beautiful a sidhe as Bracken Brine Granite op Crocken Green.
Sometimes they bickered even as he was inside her, dragging his body over every tender, sensitized place in her body, and sometimes she looked at Bracken with a variation of the same big-eyed, worshipful gaze that she turned up at Green. There was something wilder in the gaze she turned at Bracken, and something serene and peaceful in the look that she gave Green, but the heart of the look, the adoration, the awe, the need—that was still the same.
Tonight, she was worshipful—and just as demanding, just as in need of being filled as she had been with Green.
Her legs were wrapped around Bracken’s hips, and he was struggling to be careful—if anyone knew how large and unwieldy his amazing body was, it was Bracken—but she wasn’t letting him.
“Gaaaauuughhh…,” he panted, “you’re killing me—”
“Then fuck me, dammit!” she begged.
“I won’t hurt you—”
“You hurt me by holding back!”
Green closed his eyes and then opened them, because he had to. He had to see the moment when Bracken gave in, see the moment when he gave… everything.
Brack looked surprised as his hips started pumping at nearly supernatural speed and his pulse started to pound in his temple. He was gasping for air like an Olympic swimmer, and every muscle in his body was straining, straining to give her everything—every last bit of will, of soul—anything in his spirit that could assuage the ache of what she’d done, of what she now knew she was.
Green was relieved. He was glad to know he wasn’t the only one to be shocked that here he was, an ages-old sidhe, sacrificing his will to a very young, very willful human woman—who had no idea what she had just done.
Bracken groaned and came. In the aftermath he still held himself up above her, looking into her eyes for some proof, some assurance that what had just happened had not been his imagination—some reaction from his due’ane saying that everything he’d spent into her body hadn’t been for sport.
The look she turned back up to him in the moonlight was the same wild, worshipful look that Green had seen her turn toward him a thousand times, and Green put his hand on the small of Bracken’s back to comfort his brother and give him the reassurance that she didn’t know how to give.
The touch worked. Bracken collapsed on her and whuffled in her ear, just to make her laugh. They shared quiet whispers in the dark for a while, and Green closed his eyes and let their contentment wash over him along with the scent of their lovemaking and the animal warmth of their happiness.
Goddess knew that contentment wouldn’t last long.
Green also knew the moment she fell asleep. Bracken asked her about the ache in her chest after Gretchen’s death, and in the long space of time it took her to formulate an answer, her eyes closed and her breathing grew even, and then she was out.
That was the moment Green opened his eyes and put his hand under the supersized T-shirt she was wearing. His fingers skated the slickness of her thighs, the still quivering flesh of her mound, and then splayed, palm down, on the softness of her abdomen right above her womb.
“Brack…,” he whispered and nodded to his hand, indicating that Bracken should do the same.
“What?” Brack looked back at
him with those liquid-dark, unfathomable, shadow-colored eyes, and then….
Bracken wasn’t always quick, but he was nothing if not dependable.
“Fuck!” The oath was vicious, and Green frowned at him.
“Don’t get angry, brother, or she’ll get cold”—she was already beginning to shiver—“and wake up, or we’ll miss it.”
Bracken closed his eyes, obviously mastering his emotions, then met Green’s wise, calm gaze and nodded. “She’s so small,” he said softly, sliding his hand under her shirt until it rested next to and a little on top of Green’s. “How will she carry…?”
His eyes closed as he felt it—the tiny life already dividing, a little magic bundle of cells and will and predestination, becoming… simply becoming under the flesh that was under his hand.
And then, oh…. Green shivered with the delicious, powerful, cosmically amazing tingle of what happened next, and he was happy to find that this time was just as magical, just as sacred to him as when it had happened with his own seed earlier that afternoon.
Bracken’s breath caught, and he threw back his head until his pale face was shining in the moonlight streaming through the window. When the shiver passed through his body, he let out a sob.
“Twins,” he realized, meeting Green’s eyes again briefly before resting the agonized joy of his gaze on their beloved’s face. She looked so serene in sleep, so much like a child herself, not at all like a woman who threatened to crack their world to the core simply by taking her lovers into her body.
“How on earth will she carry our children?” Bracken whispered, mostly to himself but a little to Green.
“She overpowered our wills, brother,” Green told him, interlacing their fingers as they sat feeling the miracle of creation under their fingertips. “That’s our birth control right there, and she just… just asked us to abandon it.”
“I know how we knocked her up, Green,” Bracken replied with an impatient hiss. “That’s not what I was asking.”
Green’s hand tightened on Bracken’s—his little brother, the last sidhe-sized child who had been raised at the hill, and his partner in keeping their beloved happy, healthy, and alive. “And I’m telling you, Bracken Brine. You know how she got my will to break?”
Brack shook his head.
“She promised me she would live.”
Bracken’s bright eyes met Green’s, and he lowered his cheek to Cory’s T-shirt to wipe the tears off. “So by the sheer force of her will, then, right?”
Green nodded and moved his hand so he could stroke Bracken’s hair. Bracken lowered his head onto Cory’s stomach and wept there, much as Green had—in elation, in fear, in conflict. Green knew… oh Goddess, he knew the scalding thrill heaving its way through Bracken’s tightened chest and throat right now. It had burned through Green as well.
“Her will is pretty formidable,” Green whispered. “There’s our hope, mate. Have some faith in that.”
“I guess if I need something to believe in….”
Green said it with him.
“It’s her.”
Cory: A Brand New Game
YOU CAN miss a lot when you’re gone for a week.
Two weeks after… after our return from Redding, I sat in the living room looking at Leah the werepanther in silent horror, wondering why in the fuck she hadn’t chosen to go to Green or Teague about this.
Okay, scratch that. Why she hadn’t chosen to go to Green or Katy.
The werewolves were back and happily ensconced in their little house out in the yard. Green had made sure it got finished while they were away, and they had been happy to move in.
There had been an adventure in between, though. Bracken, Nicky, and I had been called to Monterey in a helicopter in the middle of Teague’s recovery, and I’d gotten to host some more crappy decisions. I think the upshot was that Teague’s question of bonding had been resolved—and that was great. But I’d been exhausted since we’d gotten back, and I was wondering if maybe I needed more than a week at a time away from making life-altering decisions.
So the werewolves were back and Teague was an alpha, Katy was a woman—why would Leah think I was such a good candidate for true werecreature confessions, the piss-your-leader-off version?
“Leah, you’re pregnant?” I still couldn’t see how that worked.
“Yeah. It’s Tommy’s… or maybe Danny’s—you know, the two Avians who’ve wanted each other for, like, ever?”
“You bonded,” I asked, feeling dumb.
“Well, yes. The three of us together—that’s when I got pregnant. You know that’s how it works.”
I nodded blankly. Yeah, I knew. Green had been trying to fix them up with a sylph—one who wanted to be independent and wanted to be a woman when she chose her gender in mating—to see if maybe a three-way binding would keep them from self-destructing when they bound to each other.
“I thought they were going to wait—”
“But they didn’t click with any of those people!” Leah explained patiently, and I just looked at her with my mouth opening and closing like a fish.
“But there’s no guarantee that you can carry their child!” I protested. That was the crux of it, wasn’t it?
“But see?” Leah crowed. “That’s the beauty of it! Human women carry Avian children all the time, but the kids are still shape-changers. With any luck, I’ll be able to carry their baby to term—and the next one too! And they can fuck each other’s brains out, and I’ll….” Her voice dropped. Leah was… well, in a hill full of creatures who thrived on sex and had no shame, she was one of the few who actually stood out for her promiscuity. None of us judged her. Sex was a lot of things to Leah, but a gift of undying, monogamous love was not among them.
“I’ll have a home,” she said at last, looking at me. “I’ll have people who don’t want me for sex—or, any more than once a month—but who care about me. I can fuck anything that moves”—her lips twisted up—“and I have, but… but now I’ll have a little family inside my big one, you see?”
My indignation toned itself down a little. I guess of all of us, I was the last person to complain about someone who needed an unconventional family. But still….
“Oh Goddess, Leah,” I groaned and flopped backward on the couch. I wasn’t feeling well. In my entire life, I had never been the bizarre combination of queasy, exhausted, and starving as I had been in the last week. I was so tired that I had actually fallen asleep in the helicopter on the way to Monterey to save Jack and Katy’s asses. I’d never been in a helicopter—you’d think the novelty value alone would have kept me on my toes, right?
With an effort I pulled my mind off a nap and put it where it belonged—on someone else’s problems.
“The key word here is luck,” I said, feeling like the world’s biggest hypocrite. “You’re betting everything, including Danny and Tommy’s lives, on the luck of the Goddess.” I sat up and put a comforting hand on her knee. “That’s an awful responsibility, Leah, for someone who doesn’t know whose bed she’s going to wake up in tomorrow.”
The Goddess was going to strike me down through the roof for saying this, I just knew it. Somewhere in the hill, I was sure I could hear Nicky—who had enjoyed his week at Eric’s very much, but who had been glad to get back in time for the kick-werewolf-ass action in Monterey—laughing his tail feathers off.
“Well, yeah, Lady Cory,” Leah said, trying to look happy in spite of her hurt. “But isn’t that just faith? You of all people should know that sometimes faith’s all you got.”
I thought of Green and Bracken, who had been especially attentive in the last two weeks, and of Nicky, who had given up his family to be near us. I’d had faith in all of them, and they’d put up with my shit and insecurities and, especially, forgiven me for my risks, and my faith in our family had been rewarded.
I smiled gamely at Leah and reached out to hug her. “Congratulations, sweetheart,” I said huskily, the weight of all the things that could go wrong with
this event weighing heavily behind my eyes. “Make sure you see Green and Grace. They might be able to help things go well, right?”
Leah laughed, her bright brown eyes sparkling. I had to admit, pregnancy made her look fantastic—her long dark hair was especially glossy, and her oval-shaped, olive-toned face was soft and glowing. “Thank you, Lady Cory. It’s so good to know you’re not mad.”
How could I be mad? If this whole thing went south, how much would my saying “I told you this was fucked up” actually help things? I figured the deck was stacked against them enough, and Leah needed to know the unconditional love of the hill was still with her.
“Never,” I told her honestly. She laughed and ran off, I imagined to tell Danny and Tommy that they could move into the hill if they wanted. Now that they had bonded, they could—like Leah—fuck anything that moved, and it wouldn’t change their balance.
Of course, the only lovers they’d ever really wanted were each other.
I sighed and thought about telling her that maybe we could give them the werewolves’ old room, but it seemed like too much effort for the moment. I’d catch her later, I guessed, but that didn’t stop my complete envy over her spring and vitality. I seriously thought about curling up on the couch for yet another nap.
In my defense, I had been up late the night before. Not to feed Phillip—although he was far from okay right now, I’d seen some signs of normalcy between him and Marcus, and that gave me hope. The other night I’d heard him tell Marcus to either grow breasts and lactate or to cut the cord and let him be, so he was at least to the point where he wanted to act like it was all good. We’d let him. We’d been there.
So Phillip wasn’t the reason I was up, and neither was Tanya, who had moved in with the Avians but who still visited us when she could. She and Mario hadn’t made anything permanent—at least her boobs were still as small as mine—but… but the way they looked at each other seemed to be a lock.
No, this particular sleep hangover had been Sam, who had called to let us know that his mother had gone into rehab—and he needed a place to stay. I’d spent two hours on the phone, arranging transportation and schooling and finding a family who lived outside the hill itself to house him. He told us that his “buzz” was not excited about living on the hill, but that someone nearby would be great. I had no problem with that—the thought of one more spot of chaos under our roof gave me the heebie-jeebies. We’d promised—and like Green said, it wasn’t the massive measure of the promise, it was just how it was kept.
