by Abby Blake
“Fortunately, Hannah offered her a place to stay.”
Benjamin smiled briefly. If the situation wasn’t so damn serious, it would almost be funny. It was impossible to remember what had attracted Dyson to Cassandra in the first place, but he remembered very clearly why they’d broken up several decades ago. Around him, the woman had no emotional fortitude. In the brief time they’d been together, Cassandra had taken to crying whenever she had a situation she couldn’t handle. For months, Dyson had stepped in and taken over, dealing with anything and everything that came Cassandra’s way. In the end, he’d left her in the hopes that she’d learn to behave like an adult, rather than the clinging child she’d acted. Despite nearly being as old as Dyson, their relationship hadn’t even progressed in a physical way because he’d ended up taking on the role of big brother rather than partner and lover. In fact, their history together could barely be considered a relationship at all.
When she’d been promoted, he’d actually thought she’d found her backbone and grown into a confident woman. Judging by the way things had worked out, that hadn’t been the case at all.
“Go home to your family,” Benjamin said in a tone that made it clear that wasn’t a suggestion. Dyson nodded and turned to the door. “Oh and, Dyson, nice work today.”
Dyson nodded again. It wasn’t often that Benjamin offered praise. They were all well-trained, experienced soldiers who knew their own worth, but occasionally, it was good to get an acknowledgement of a job well done. Considering the emotional toll the night had taken on him, Dyson was grateful for Benjamin’s brief words.
He let himself in the front door of his, Kristen’s, and Angus’s home and breathed in the unique scent of his woman. Dyson wasn’t the least bit surprised to find Angus lying wide awake with Kristen asleep in his arms.
“Welcome home,” Angus whispered with a grin. But his smile faltered when the smell of Cassandra’s perfume caught his attention. “Please tell me you weren’t required to go that far undercover.”
His words were spoken with a half smile, but Dyson could sense the hostility behind them. He had no intentions of cheating on Kristen—not ever—not even as part of an assignment.
“No,” he said, shaking his head, grateful for Angus’s willingness to at least let him explain. “Cassandra Lipton ran into some trouble. It seems she held herself together long enough to find me and dissolve into tears.”
“I suggest you go have a shower before you wake up Kristen,” Angus whispered quietly.
“Too late,” their woman said sleepily. “But Angus is right about the shower. That perfume really doesn’t suit you.”
“Hi, sweetheart,” Dyson said without stepping closer. “I promise you, it’s not what it seems.”
Kristen woke up fully, her eyes zeroing in on his even in the dimly lit room. “Dyson,” she said as she climbed out of bed and stepped into his arms. She hugged him hard for a moment before leaning back to look at his face. “I know that your job occasionally involves rescuing damsels in distress, and I know that both you and Angus will do what you need to get the job done. But I also trust you to know where that line is drawn. I know you love me and that you won’t hurt me like that.”
Dyson held his woman close and marveled at her amazing heart. This was why he’d fallen in love with her. She was his perfect match and he vowed to never do anything that would hurt her. He cuddled her for a moment longer, content to be home after such a tumultuous assignment. When she started to laugh softly, he tilted backward to try and see her face.
“I’m sorry, but that perfume really is awful. Do you think if I stepped into the shower, you might follow me?”
He grinned as his love for this woman grew exponentially. “Always,” he whispered. “Always.”
* * * *
Dex DeKardoin returned to his palace chambers and wondered if the PLA were following his movements, too. It seemed unlikely, but it probably wasn’t worth taking any chances. He needed to act quickly and decisively. He needed to find the people who’d set his wife up, and then he needed to shut them down.
He could feel the wards surrounding the PLA building, so he slipped to Cantor Robinson’s home and decided to do a little investigative work of his own.
“Get up,” he growled menacingly. Cantor roused slightly—certainly not the reaction Dex had expected from a trained assassin—and cracked his eyes open just a bit.
“What do you want?” he asked tiredly.
“I want to know what’s going on.” It seemed even more urgent now than it did just a few minutes ago. The man who ran the PLA should have been more alert, even this time of the night. He hadn’t even engaged the wards on his own home before he’d fallen asleep.
“Can you come back tomorrow?” the man asked as he rolled onto his stomach and seemed to go back to sleep.
Bewildered by Cantor’s complete lack of self-protective instincts, Dex took a step back and reassessed the situation. Emmallina had told him that all of the assassins who’d been captured and miniaturized were suffering from the withdrawal symptoms of fireweed. A full-sized pixie wouldn’t suffer the same symptoms, but they would show other signs of fireweed addiction—one of which was extremes in mood. When a pixie was taking fireweed, they were bursting with energy during the day, but slept like the dead at night, and their moods were greatly enhanced—happy was ecstatic and sad was suicidal. Considering the fact that Cantor had barely been able to contain his glee when Dex had signed the assassination order against his own wife, Dex was fairly certain the man was on the stuff. Whether it was voluntarily or not remained to be seen.
Dex dragged the man from his bed, dumping him unceremoniously on the ground. “Get up!” he yelled, tapping his foot in annoyance. The man moved angrily, but his energy level barely let him move into a sitting position. “What is her name?”
“Vict—” Cantor started to say, but cut himself off quickly.
“Is she the one who ordered that my wife be followed?’
The man shrugged. “Not really,” he mumbled sleepily. “It was my order.” He lifted a hand to rub at his eyes the way a sleepy young child would do. “But she was right to suggest it. The queen is a traitor to her people. She deserves to die.”
It took all of Dex’s control not to kick the man, but beating on someone clearly incapable of defending himself wasn’t really Dex’s style.
“Where is Victoria now?” Dex asked.
“Why would I know that? She comes and goes as she pleases. It’s not like we’re married.”
“You’re sleeping with her?” Dex asked, unable to keep the surprise from his voice.
He heard the gun discharge and felt the demon shot hit him between the shoulder blades almost at the same time. The white-hot burn spread outward rapidly, heat scorching his insides as he tried not to lose consciousness.
“Yes, he’s sleeping with me,” a female voice said from behind Dex. “And you, little king, have outlived your usefulness.”
He managed to get a look at the woman’s face as his knees gave out. He had no doubt that Victoria would know how to kill a pixie, but he had to try and escape. He fell through a slip path, his hope fading as his body started to collapse into ashes and the heat reached his brain. If the witch was able to follow his slip path, he knew these were his last moments.
Chapter Twelve
Angus stood back from the table in the conference room and did a quick head count. All five Oracle’s receptacles were here, each with both of their husbands. Add that to the three werewolves, three vampires, and the teenage dragon-shifter sitting in the corner wearing headphones, and he literally stood in a room with twenty-three of the twenty-five current residents of Sugarvale. The only two people missing were Kristen and Dyson.
They were still lying in bed. Angus had no doubt Dyson was awake at this very moment, guarding their woman, but after the situation report Benjamin had just given them, Angus knew the man needed sleep. He wanted this meeting to be over quickly.
“
You think Victoria and Tory are the same person?” Kali asked even as she shook her head. “Somehow, that just doesn’t feel right.”
“It’s the only explanation that fits,” Ava said, tilting her head the way she and the other Oracle’s receptacles seemed to do when they were trying to interpret things that they “knew.”
“But Kali’s right,” Lilly said, looking confused. “They are the same person, but they’re not. I’m not sure how to explain it.”
“Tory is the only one who could manipulate the Ruling Body into promoting Cassandra. Anyone who’s met Cassandra would know she’s not capable of doing the job,” West said. “I spoke to the witch for quite a while before I came here. She admitted that many of her ‘orders’ had been suggestions from Tory. The problem is that even Tory’s orders contradicted one another.”
“So what are we dealing with?” Ronan asked the entire group. He turned to Eric. “Can witches develop a split personality disorder the way some humans do?”
“I’ve never heard of it,” Eric said on his usual considered tone, “but it’s not necessarily out of the realms of possibility. Some of the magic witches and warlocks use taps into the darkest parts of their psyche, but it’s more likely that they would go insane, maybe even homicidal, rather than develop the complexity of a split personality disorder.”
Darian and Jed, the two warlocks in the room, nodded their agreement. Eric was about to say something else, but he was interrupted by Lilly.
“Shit!” she exclaimed. “Drop the shield.”
The other women nodded, and a moment later Lilly grabbed ahold of Devlin and Jed and blinked out of the room.
“Where?” Benjamin began to ask the remaining Oracle’s receptacles, but the three people reappeared a moment later. This time with a pile of ashes at their feet.
“Did you get them all?” Devlin asked as everybody moved back just a little. Considering how crowded the meeting room was, they didn’t go far.
“Who is it?” Angus asked, recognizing the ashes of a pixie recently incinerated by a demon shot.
“Dex DeKardoin,” Kali said. “I’ll go get Emmallina.” Kali blinked from the room alone, much to the annoyance of both of her husbands. Angus tried not to chuckle. At least with Kristen being completely human, he would never have to worry about her putting herself at risk. She was his and Dyson’s to protect, and protect her they would.
Dex was already well on his way to re-forming when Lilly and Emmallina blinked into the room. The pixie queen looked momentarily unsettled by the human version of slip travel, but quickly moved to her husband’s side.
“Lil,” Jed said very quietly. “It’s not that I disagree with saving the pixie king, but is it really wise to keep bringing pixies inside the town limits? I’m starting to get a kind of Trojan-horse feeling.”
“It’s okay,” Lilly replied just as quietly. “Dex and Emmallina are allies.”
* * * *
Dex wasn’t really prepared to re-form in the middle of a room full of people he’d once thought of as his enemies. It certainly didn’t help that he was naked. He accepted the coat someone handed him, and then tried to maintain his dignity as the waistband touched the floor and the sleeves swallowed his arms completely. He took a deep breath, smiling gratefully as Emmallina appeared in the room and ran into his embrace. Being royalty, they didn’t ordinarily show affection in public, but this wasn’t exactly an ordinary situation.
“How did I get here?” he asked, trying to moderate his voice so that it showed only mild curiosity and not the freaked-out feeling behind it.
“It doesn’t matter,” Benjamin said dismissively. It was obvious he would protect his operatives even from the people they rescued. “What matters is how the king of the pixies ended up a pile of dust in need of rescue.”
He wanted to bristle at the suggestion that he’d needed rescuing, but since it was essentially the truth, he decided to not draw attention to it. “Victoria,” he said simply. It went against every instinctive behavior he’d learned over the centuries, but Dex knew he needed to start trusting someone. Emmallina trusted these people—being the Oracle for humans and vampires meant she was uniquely qualified to make that call—so he would, too. “I went to the home of the head of the PLA. Victoria arrived as I was interrogating the man who is clearly under the influence of fireweed. She fired off a demon shot before I had time to react.”
“Did you see her face?” Benjamin asked.
“I did,” Dex said with a nod. “It was very quick but enough to confirm that Tory and Victoria are the same person. I’ve dealt with the Judiciaries often enough to know what Tory looks like.”
Emmallina shook her head quickly. “No more,” she said urgently. “Connistanterina said Victoria was the Oracle for pixies and demons. She knows everything you say and do, where you go, who you talk to.”
Dex went to open his mouth, but Emmallina shook her head again.
“Jennifer,” Emmallina said, suddenly sounding very casual. “Is there a place where my husband and I can rest? Regenerating from incineration can be very tiring.”
“Of course,” Jennifer said as she led them from the meeting room and into what seemed to be a type of day-sleeping area one might find in a busy human hospital or fire station. She indicated for them to take any bed they wanted, and then turned to leave. “I hope you have pleasant dreams.”
As the young werewolf closed the door, Dex finally understood what Emmallina was planning. With a sigh of relief, he climbed onto the bed, gathered his wife close, and tried to go to sleep quickly.
* * * *
“Jason,” Angus said quickly as the implications of Emmallina’s words sank in. The Oracle for pixies and demons would know all about the conversation Dyson had shared with Jason. Victoria had been brazen enough to try and kill the king of the pixies. She wouldn’t think twice about murdering a PUP squad operative who thought he was following orders. Jason trusted the woman. There was no way he would see a hit coming.
Benjamin shook his head slightly, but the look he gave Angus suggested that there was something neither he nor Dyson knew. Hopefully, that meant Jason was safe. From everything Dyson had told him, the young warlock was as much a victim of Victoria’s machinations as everyone else.
“Oh, crap. The fucking idiots went and did it.”
Kali’s exclamation had all eyes turning to her. “Nukes?” Ronan asked his wife urgently.
“Yes,” Ava confirmed. “Why would they think they need two?”
“We need to evacuate the town,” Angus said, his mind already turning to think over the safest locations to hide Kristen.
“No,” Hannah said in her usual calm voice. “This ends here.”
“How?” several of the men asked at once.
“First we need to disable those nukes and then we need to reduce the size of the shield. Angus, can you bring Dyson and Kristen into this building, please?” Angus was half out the door before Kali finished speaking.
He ran to their home, his heart pounding as fear pulsed through his veins. He’d never really minded the possibility that he could die in the line of duty, but to lose Kristen in a war that she had nothing to do with was completely unthinkable. He didn’t slow down as he approached the front door, practically ramming it with his shoulder when he didn’t turn the handle quickly enough. Dyson was there in an instant, Kristen held tightly behind him.
“We need to go,” Angus said quickly as Dyson lifted Kristen in his arms and followed without question. He led them into the meeting room, unwilling to leave Kristen even only a room away. She’d avoided the other women living in Sugarvale, but she was about to get to meet them whether she wanted to or not.
Kali, Ava, Hannah, Amber, and Lilly all turned in their direction and smiled at Kristen. Clearly embarrassed, Kristen gave them all a half wave and asked Dyson to put her down. But the moment he placed her on her feet, her knees gave out, and he lifted her back into his arms. The room suddenly filled with angry curses, and it took a
moment to realize that all of the Oracle’s receptacles had lost consciousness the same time as Kristen had.
Chapter Thirteen
Dex held his wife close in both his dream and in real life. After the heartache of thinking he’d lost her, it felt miraculous to be this content. Even with everything else going on, the one unassailable truth was that he loved his wife and she loved him. Whatever evidence the PLA had supposedly amassed against her didn’t mean a damn thing in the light of that revelation.
He held her for what felt like hours in the dreamscape but was probably less than a few minutes in real life. At first he put it down to the virtual world they inhabited, but it bothered him enough that he finally had to ask.
“Are you shorter inside your dreams?”
“Actually,” Emmallina said with a nervous sort of laugh, “I’m shorter in real life now as well.”
“How? Why?”
“Remember the cure I told you about for Conni? It worked, but every female in your immediate family is now a few inches shorter.”
“But Conni is okay?”
“She will be,” Emmallina said, her determination to make it so very clear in her voice. “Dr. Eric is working with the warlocks from PUP Squad Alpha to find a way to remove the fireweed effect from her DNA permanently, but for the moment, she is out of danger of dying. Now that she is no longer miniature in size, she is not suffering withdrawals from the fireweed.”
“But she’s essentially back on the drug now?”
“Unfortunately, yes, but hopefully not for long. Benjamin provided handcuffs that will stop her from traveling via her own slip path. Your mother is sitting with her. If there is an emergency, she will slip back to the palace and take care of her until we join her.”
“How did my mother take it? She couldn’t really afford to get any shorter. She’s already the shortest person I know.” Dex knew his mother’s generous heart would have overruled any concern over her own welfare, but it wasn’t something he wanted any of the women in his life going through again.
