Burned

by Dean Murray

  "Ulrich is playing a very risky game. I wouldn't put it past Puppeteer to decide that he needs to be taken out regardless, and when that happens the last thing he and Shawn are going to want is for me to doubt their true loyalty."

  That made Vicki mad, but I'd known it would even before I'd said it. There was no gold thread connecting her and me—Ulrich might have officially cut her loose and told her to play the part of one of my people, but she was still Shawn's woman—would always be his. I'd said what I'd said because I wanted her to pass that message on to Ulrich and Shawn.

  Vicki saw Jaclyn and Isaac approaching, and used that as a reason to leave. I nodded a greeting.

  "Are the two of you ready to swear fealty to me?"

  Jaclyn didn't even wait for the words to fade away before she shook her head. "I'll be joining Isaac's group. He's got plenty of experience running a team with disparate power levels while keeping them under the Coun'hij's radar."

  I should have known better. Jaclyn didn't have a thread connecting her to me. There was no loyalty there. Isaac on the other hand was connected to me by a thin filament of gold.

  "I'm surprised, Isaac. I know that our history isn't without hiccups, but you of all people know how dangerous things are going to get if we continue to operate as separate groups. You've got Heath in your court, and Jaclyn too apparently, but there is only so much the two of them can do if Kaleb or one of the others decides that he wants your heads on a platter."

  Isaac shifted uncomfortably. "I'm sorry, Alec. If it were strictly up to me, I'd fold my people into your organization and back your play, but it's not just my call. I owe it to my people to see things through with them, and a lot of them don't like the way that you used them as some kind of metaphysical power source to heal James and Taggart. Your people walked away without so much as a bruise, while many of my people are going to be limping for days. They don't think it's fair."

  A hundred responses whipped through my mind, but in the end I just nodded. "There is a reason that they weren't healed, Isaac. It's just the other side of the reason that you were healed. If you ever change your mind there is a place for you in my organization along with whoever you want to bring along."

  I could smell James and Taggart standing just inside of my RV, but they saw Adri approaching at the same time that I did, and apparently decided to give us at least the illusion of privacy.

  "I came to see Taggart—I wanted to make sure that he's okay."

  "He's fine. The backlash from having his wounds healed put him down for a while, but he's awake now and none the worse for wear. Please feel free to go inside and check on him."

  She turned to go and then stopped. "That wasn't you I saw inside the RV with Brindi, was it?"

  "No more than it was you that I saw making out with Tristan in your room. That creature…that dark angel…played all of us for fools. It knew that you were headed out, so it lured Tristan to your room and waited for me to come by."

  She stood there in silence for several seconds, refusing to meet my gaze. "I suppose that you think I overreacted."

  Yes. If I was going to be entirely honest, I did think that she'd behaved rashly. That wasn't what she needed to hear though.

  "You had your reasons. To some extent, both of us played directly into that thing's hands. If I hadn't disappeared for more than an hour then it never would have had a chance to implement the second half of its plan. Luckily we were able to right things in time to expose the creature and then get here and defeat the Coun'hij's forces."

  "That sounds like a polite way of avoiding my question."

  "I'm not sure what you want out of me, Adri."

  "I want an apology. That would be a good starting point."

  "An apology for something that I didn't actually do?"

  She'd been unhappy before, but now she was furious. I could smell the anger coming off of her in waves.

  "An apology for creating a situation in which such a transparently obvious ploy could drive a wedge between us. I shouldn't have had any reason to doubt your loyalty, Alec. I should have known that you were faithful to me, but I didn't. I didn't know because you've made that nearly impossible by keeping me in the dark. You've got Brindi sleeping in the same room as you, you're driving off minutes before we're supposed to come under attack, and then to top it all off, it turns out you had another girl hidden inside your bedroom for the last twenty-four hours. Anyone would have thought exactly what I thought when I saw Brindi lying on top of you like that."

  My beast was starting to act up, and for once where Adri was concerned, I wasn't completely inclined to rein it back in.

  "You're free to think whatever you want to think, Adri. I've explained the fact that there are certain secrets that I have to keep, certain obligations that I assumed when I stepped up to lead this cell of the rebellion. Those obligations aren't going to go away regardless of how you might feel about them.

  "You had every right to be hurt by what you saw—I was definitely hurt by what I saw—but you didn't have the right to split our forces in half while we were in the middle of hostile territory. You probably didn't have the right to risk your people, and you certainly didn't have the right to risk the lives of my people."

  "You left! When you thought you saw me there with Tristan, you left. By doing that you put everyone depending on you in more danger than they would have been if you'd stayed."

  We were standing only inches away from each other now, practically yelling at each other as we each refused to back down.

  "I already acknowledged my mistake there, Adri. The difference though is that I didn't split our coalition wide open. I left our people without my ability, but still protected by Heath, Grayson, Taggart, and Vicki. No, I take that back. The real difference is that you've refused to take one iota of responsibility for anything that's happened.

  "You want to throw stones? Fine, I'll throw stones. You've led Tristan on for weeks. I could see it in the way he looked at you in Minnesota, and based on how quick he was to jump into bed with the creature when he thought it was you, nothing has changed there. I get that you've been through a lot lately, but that doesn't excuse your errors in judgment. You're not the only one hurting right now. Your parents are dead, but at least they died being the people that you loved and respected. My parents tried to sell my little sister off as some kind of sex slave.

  "You've ignored all of the people who died in an effort to help you out—simply by making this all about you at every single step. At this point my biggest regret is the fact that I was willing to throw my life away and reinforce your bad behavior. This is no more my fault than it is yours, and the fact that you're unwilling to even acknowledge that possibility tells me that you're not worthy of the sacrifices that it's taken to get you here."

  She looked like I'd hit her. Her lips were parted, stuck between shock and indignation, but I didn't wait around to see what she was going to say. I turned, fully intending on leaving, until I felt her hand on my arm.

  "Wait, Alec. I…I'm not going to pretend that I'm happy about what you just said, but maybe there is something to it. I…I'm sorry for coming out of the gate swinging. I'll try to do better—to be better—but you have to understand how hard this is for me. Knowing that Brindi is there with you every hour of every day is killing me. I want to get past this and have things go back to the way that they were, but I don't think that I can do that while she's still part of your life."

  Her words hung in the air between us, and I knew that there wasn't any going back. I stretched out my newfound sight, taking in the golden threads leading away from me in all directions. There were more of them now than there'd been a few hours ago, but they were still precious few in the face of what I knew was coming for us.

  I touched the one that led inside the RV to Brindi with the faintest tendril of thought and confirmed something that I'd started suspecting just recently. The threads were designed for conducting energy, but the flow wasn't as one-directional as it had seemed dur
ing the battle. Energy was flowing inwards from some threads and outwards along others.

  Brindi was one of the ones selflessly giving of her energy—painfully weak as it was—sacrificing so that energy could be fed into someone else. She didn't do it for that other person, she did it for me. It was something below the level of conscious control for either of us, a soft, calm power that I knew had to be related to James' sudden manifestation of an ability where Mallory had always said none would ever exist.

  Brindi was part of that—a critical part of it. Without her energy—and without her willingness to serve as a reservoir—any number of fights might have gone very differently—with a catastrophic result.

  "I would like to stop by and see Tristan if he'll agree to meet with me, Adri."

  "Don't try to turn this around on me! This is about Brindi, not Tristan."

  I continued on as though I hadn't heard her. "I owe him an apology. I'm not okay with the way that he behaved, but I shouldn't have reacted the way that I did. Please let him know that is the reason that I would be stopping by. He's welcome to have whoever he would like there to watch his back if he's concerned about his safety. It's too bad really. In a lot of ways he and Brindi both got the raw end of this deal. They both got to taste the thing they'd been hoping for and then found out that it was nothing more than an illusion."

  I started walking away from her, and this time Adri didn't try to restrain me.

  "That's it? Brindi's more important to you than I am? You do realize that you're proving exactly what I've suspected all along, right? Are you really going to throw everything away?"

  That made me pause, and once again I traced each of the threads leading out from my center. There was no thread leading to Vicki, no thread leading to Jaclyn, no thread leading to Shawn, and most heartbreakingly, there was no thread leading to Adri.

  "I'm sorry, Adri, but loyalty deserves to be rewarded. It's not like you think it is, but I can't explain it beyond that. I'm not forcing Brindi to leave—not after everything she's done for me."

  I heard her turn and run away, but I didn't try to stop her. I'd made my decision. Taggart and James met me at the top of the stairs, and I could see the conflict inside of Taggart's eyes. I reached up and clasped him on the shoulder.

  "Go and be there for her. That is where you need to be—and not just for her sake. I'm going to need allies, and you are uniquely placed to be the voice of reason in Isaac's inner circle, to say the things that he can't say."

  "I won't be a double agent."

  I nodded. "I wouldn't ask it of you. To be honest, after the last two days, I want nothing less than to become the next king, but that is the only way that our people have a chance of surviving in a world where things like that dark angel are feeding on us. I need loyalty, Taggart. More than bodies or abilities, hybrids or wolves, I need people who believe in me, who believe in what I'm trying to do. You can help with that."

  He nodded hesitantly, like his conscious mind wasn't quite prepared to accept the implications of what I was saying, like he wasn't ready for the knowledge his subconscious was already trying to tell him, and then he left.

  I turned to James and bowed my head in a gesture that few dominants ever would have granted one of their submissives.

  "I'm sorry about your mother, James. I never meant for her to die…I—"

  He stopped me. "She did what she felt like she had to do, Alec. I know what you did—I felt it. I could get all indignant about the fact that you transformed me in the middle of a battle, but the truth was that we were all dead men. It was just a matter of time before Brandon was going to kill us—we all knew it—but you changed that. You gave me the power I needed to stand against him."

  That surprised me. James had never been the most intuitive of my friends. "How much do you know?"

  "Enough—enough to realize just how dangerous it would be for the full nature of your gift to become common knowledge—enough to know what you tried to do for my mother after you healed Taggart and me. You have my allegiance, Alec, but what are you going to do if the packs continue to refuse to recognize you as their leader?"

  I looked over to Brindi, still sleeping the peaceful sleep of a child, and I smiled. "I will find the support I need elsewhere."

  —The Story Continues—

  Curious how all of the pieces of the Reflection Universe fit together? Check out the Reflections Reading Order Diagram on my blog.

  Publisher's Note:

  If you've enjoyed this book, please consider signing up for the author's mailing list. By signing up you'll receive $10.00 worth of free books. We'll be offering a special discount to existing fans for the first week each new book is live, so signing up for his mailing list will mean that you'll always know about new releases with plenty of time to take advantage of the new release discount.

  Author's Note:

  I hope you've enjoyed Burned, and that you feel like both your time and money were well spent when it came to experiencing the next chapter in Alec and Adri's story. Please consider taking a moment to leave a review on Bound if you haven't already so that your fellow readers can make the most informed decision possible when evaluating the Dark Reflections books!

  Acknowledgments:

  I continue to rely on an outstanding group of people to help me bring these books to market. RJ Locksley and Amy Jirsa-Smith, my editors, both did a phenomenal job working over the initial manuscript, and thanks to their tireless efforts, the draft that went to my advance readers was much cleaner than I could have possibly managed on my own. Thank you, RJ and Amy!

  My advance readers continue to do yeoman work in catching items which either slip past my editors, or which I introduce while trying to fix something my editors flagged as being wrong. Additionally, they often keep me from accidentally letting characters do impossible things like enter the same building twice without ever exiting it. A big round of thanks to Heather, Mei, Janelle, Jenine, Mom, Dad, Matthew, Shalese, Lachele, Mark, Mimi, Kim, and Merissa !

  My readers collectively deserve a heart-felt expression of thanks for continuing to trust me with their time and money in the hopes that I'll be able to deliver an experience that will leave them wanting still more Alec & Adri (thank you all!) but I also need to express a special, separate thanks to my Launch Team for being so willing to make extra efforts to spread the word about my books. You're too numerous to list out separately here, but you know who you are (and I do too)—so thank you one and all!

  Lastly, as she always does, my wife Katie deserves special mention in a paragraph all by herself. In 2014 we released 7 novels, which was a herculean undertaking, but heading into 2015, we resolved to try and do even better than that. We both knew it was going to mean more time spent in front of the computer writing, but it's also meant a lot more work for Katie as she's continued to serve as my first reader and cover artist. Without Katie none of this could happen, and I'm more grateful than words can express for her unwavering support. Thank you Katie!

  About the Author:

  Dean Murray discovered the joys of reading at a young age and unknowingly ingested large doses of romance along with his science fiction and fantasy. By the time he realized what had happened it was too late to reverse the process and he spent his formative years (while his peers were still convinced that girls had cooties) trying to convince one specific girl to be his girlfriend to no avail.

  As fate would have it, he's incredibly grateful that he failed in his attempts in second grade because it meant that he was able to eventually find his real happily ever after with his wife Katie to whom he's been happily married for more than six years.

  Dean is the author of several dozen published novels (and a host of short stories), which collectively have more than half a million copies in circulation, and he's currently writing six books a year in an effort to create the perfect, larger than life romance story—which he's pretty sure involves either vampire, werewolves, fairies or shape shifters.

  You can find a co
mplete list of Dean's work and keep up to speed on his current projects at DeanWrites.com. If you want to interact with readers who love the series as much as you do, please consider checking out the Reflections Facebook page or Dean's Forum.

  Other Books by Dean Murray

  Reborn

  True love never dies.

  In just a few days a new arrival at Selene's high school will turn her entire world upside down. She's never met anyone so attractive—or so mysterious—before this, but Jace's unyielding insistence that they've known each other for decades can't be denied—not given how familiar he feels to her.

  In the hidden world of gods and fairies what you don't know can get you killed faster than anything else and only those you love have any chance of saving you.

  The Greater Darkness

  (Writing as Eldon Murphy)

  Something powerful is stirring in the darkness. Something so ancient that even creatures who've been alive for hundreds of years have long since discounted this new threat as nothing more than myth.

  Normal humans will be caught in the crossfire, but then that's always the way of things. Geoffrey has no memory of his past life or any idea how to survive in the violent, dangerous world in which he's trapped. Despite his best efforts, he's about to find himself in the middle of a conflict that threatens to sweep away everything, and everyone he's been fighting so hard to protect.

  Broken

  Sometimes love finds you when you aren't looking for it.

  The accident that forced Adri and her mother to move to a new high school also cost Adri her dad and sister. Adri just wants to blend in and buy herself time to grieve, but two of the most popular, gorgeous guys in school are about to take an inexplicable interest in her.