by Hettie Ivers
Alcaeus
When a text message came in on Avery’s phone addressed to “Chaos” from Raul, thanking me for my many “love notes” and telling me to get my ass to a specified address in San Francisco because Avery’s life was in danger, I thanked all that was holy, even as I feared the worst.
Kai, Remy, and I teleported to the restaurant to find patrons in a panic over humans who were in critical condition, and to see my mate, Avery—who was sandwiched in between Raul and Weenie Gabe on a bench seat at a back table of the restaurant—with Gabriel’s hand wrapped around her throat.
“Who is she? What happened to her scent?” Gabriel growled at Raul. “Why are they here unless she’s someone important?”
I was a blink away from shifting as I rushed to her—human witnesses be damned—when Raul beat me to it, roaring in anger as he lost his skin to his wolf form while simultaneously throwing a blast of magic at Gabe that knocked him off of Avery and onto the floor.
“Holy shit,” Remy muttered beside me.
Raul regained his human form and conjured new clothing onto himself so quickly I might’ve questioned later whether or not I’d actually seen him shift at all if Remy hadn’t been standing next to me at the time to corroborate it.
I had Avery in my arms a second later. “You’re okay, you’re okay,” I told her. Her hands were holding her throat, and she was coughing and gasping for air. “Let me see, honey. It’s okay. Get Kai,” I ordered Remy as I carried Avery away from Raul and Gabe.
“Kai’s a little busy with a head injury right now.”
“My husband’s not breathing! Where’s the ambulance?” an older woman was squealing behind me.
“I got it,” Remy announced, rushing off to help.
“Where the hell did that come from?” Gabriel demanded of Raul in a low, angry voice. “You’ve been concealing more powers from me now, too? On top of everything else? Don’t think I don’t know you’ve been forming alliances behind my—”
“You threatened my woman!” Raul thundered back. “And she just became my fiancé tonight,” Raul proclaimed, pointing his finger at Avery in my arms. “I have protective instincts that are beyond my ability to control where she’s concerned.”
What? Raul’s words carried the scent of truth. As I looked at Avery’s hands around her neck, I saw for the first time the enormous diamond engagement ring she was wearing.
“You said you just met her,” Gabe countered.
They were both dead as far as I was concerned.
I stopped listening to their bickering as Avery ceased coughing and swallowed experimentally, wincing as she did so. “I’m okay,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “I’m fine. Put me down.”
Hell, no, was that happening. She smelled terrified and distressed. And like Raul.
But she still smelled like me, too—although it was faint. Avery was mine. She had marked me. Nothing Raul said and no ring on her finger changed that fact.
I bent my head and kissed her forehead, then her eyes, and then all over her face. Her arms reached up around my neck and her fingers sank into my hair, pulling me closer as my lips claimed hers at last.
She claimed mine right back, drawing my tongue deep into her mouth as she moaned and squirmed in my arms and curled against me, yanking on the roots of my hair to draw me closer. The scent of her arousal hit me, calming my wolf’s pressing need to kill Raul and Gabriel.
Cheers erupted all around us. I thought they were for me and Avery at first, until I realized that Remy had successfully cleared the elderly man’s windpipe when I heard wheezing noises and his wife sob, “You saved him. Thank you! Oh, dear Lord, thank you.”
“Anytime, ma’am,” Remy responded.
“Then why is your fiancé kissing Alcaeus?” Weenie Gabe’s voice further grated the haze of my Avery bubble.
“Because we’re fighting over her,” Raul returned. “Obviously. You saw me kissing her ten minutes ago when you came in. She’s confused.”
My mouth froze against Avery’s at the truth I heard in Raul’s words.
Unlike his sister, Milena, Raul had always been an excellent liar. He’d learned early on back when he’d been a human pack member with us how to bob and weave and dance around truths, knowing the wolves around him would scent his lies. Raul’s powers had obviously grown considerably over the years if he was able to disobey his Alpha, Gabriel, to the point of openly attacking him in defense of Avery’s life. While it was possible he’d also learned from Gabriel how to mask the scent of his lies—as many of us werelocks could manage to do on occasion, depending on the lie—I had a bad feeling he was telling the truth about kissing Avery.
It was confirmed when Avery started to shake in my arms and moved to hide her face against my neck, barely smothering a snort as her body was racked by a sudden attack of giggles.
I felt Lessa try to tap my mind, and I forcefully blocked her. God, my sister had the worst timing. I’d been trying to tap Lessa’s mind for the past hour, and I’d been blocked. I’d stopped trying when she’d finally shot me a frantic, cryptic message through our mind connection to leave her alone because she needed all of her focus for a crisis she was managing.
Avery had quickly gotten her ill-timed fit of amusement under control, when I turned to Raul and Gabriel and declared, “She’s not confused, Raul. Avery marked me. We’re mates. You have no claim on her.”
“Who the hell’s Avery?” Gabe asked, setting Avery’s body shaking anew against my chest as she buried her face in my shoulder.
“Avery is Cynthia’s other name, but she prefers that I know her as Cynthia,” Raul had the gall to say to his own Alpha. Once again not a lie, although not quite the truth.
Another round of applause and cheering erupted throughout the restaurant as Kai declared the woman with the head injury to be in stable condition.
“She should still go to the hospital for monitoring,” Kai told them. “Make sure an ambulance is on its way.”
The restaurant staff was thanking Kai, and someone started to ask him what had been in the intravenous push he’d given the woman, but Kai ignored everyone, striding straight over to me and announcing, “We’re leaving.” He glared at Raul. “It’s your mess to clean up from here. See that you do.”
“Wait.” Avery pushed away from my chest, trying to wriggle down, out of my arms. I held fast. “Chaos, stop; let me down. I’ll go with you, I promise.” Instinctively, my arms tightened around her, despite her reassuring words. “For serious, I want to go with you. But not if you don’t let me down this minute.”
Reluctantly, I set her on her feet. But I refused to allow her to move outside the circle of my arms as she turned to face Raul and Gabriel.
She raised her chin, smoothed her hair back, and righted her clothing. “Raul, pumpkin, you know I like you. But I realized tonight after your boss with the chlorine-shock eyes attempted to strangle me that he’s clearly stressed about that big account you two are closing this week. I think you need to head to the office to work on that with him asap.”
Raul covered his mouth with his fist and nodded, while Gabriel’s “chlorine-shock” eyes glowed blue fire, directing such unmasked violence at my mate that I yanked her closer, pressing her back flush against my front, and barely restrained myself from moving her behind me to shield her from the evil intent in his creepy glare.
“Sooo …” Avery proceeded, unperturbed—either oblivious or uncaring as to what nature of monster she was taunting. “I’m just gonna hold onto this ring for a little while longer while I consider your offer, mmkay?” She held her left hand up and wiggled her fingers, showing off the offensive rock Raul had apparently gifted her. “’Cause I think I might need to fuck this one”—she jerked her thumb back at me—“a few more times before the Final Rose Ceremony.”
Avery
“Chlorine-shock eyes,” a male voice said with a chuckle, right next to my ear, startling me. “I’m using that from now on.”
I turned to find a werel
ock with brown hair and gorgeous, deep-set green eyes standing directly beside me. He had the kind of bone structure and enviable features that could make a girl jealous at first glance, but unlike Gabe’s, this guy’s features were assembled in a way that still made him look masculine. It was something in the harder set of his jaw, perhaps, or the subtle hint of “you don’t want to fuck with me” that his eyes projected.
“I’m Remy,” he introduced himself. “Alcaeus and I are stepbrothers.”
Chaos had thrust me behind his back in some hero-complex protective gesture, and he was now holding me against him with one muscled arm wound behind him, shackled around my waist, while he and Kai argued with Raul and Gabriel in Portuguese. Didn’t make much logical sense to me—considering Gabriel could probably cause me to choke to death on my own tongue if he wanted to—whether I was standing in front of or behind Alcaeus. But I decided I’d point that out to Chaos later, when he and his wolf were in a more receptive mood.
“You must be Avery,” Remy surmised with a smile. He held his hand out to me, and I shook it. His grip was warm and firm, and he held onto my hand a few extra seconds too long—as if he were trying to absorb information about me through our palm connection. “Or is it Cynthia? Or perhaps Blythe? Franchesca, Holly, Paris, Charlotte, Gertrude—”
“You’re so funny.” I yanked my hand from his.
Damn. Apparently Raul’s little shower rescue had resulted in a lot more snooping into my past by Kai and company. This was bad news—potentially disastrous—depending on where they’d sourced their intel. In my head, I went back over the names he’d just rattled off and realized that he had, in fact, said Holly. Not good news at all.
“Are they really arguing over who’s going to Jedi mind trick all of these people?” I asked.
Remy looked surprised. “You speak Portuguese?”
“No, I just know men.”
He chuckled. “I have a feeling it’ll end up falling to me, anyway. That sort of task usually does. I’ve spent a great many years researching and dissecting the human brain and psyche.”
Interesting. And unnerving. Not sure if that was something I’d be so quick to brag about. What did that research and dissection entail when you were a werelock, I wondered?
“Wow. You really don’t have a scent,” Remy observed aloud. His brow wrinkled as his eyes assessed me in a manner that made me feel as if my life story was scribbled in permanent ink all over my face. “You just might be Al’s mate after all,” he concluded slowly, “if he can truly scent you when the rest of us can’t. Tell me, has anyone else ever been able to scent you before Al?”
“He goes by Chaos,” I said in retort. “He prefers Chaos as a nickname.”
Whoa. Where the hell had that come from? I didn’t even know if that was true, and I’d just insisted on it to his own brother.
“Oh?” Remy raised one brow and grinned wide, exposing perfect, white teeth. “Good to know. I wish he’d told me that one hundred and fifty-three years ago when we first met.” He shrugged. “Although … I can’t say that I ever would’ve agreed to call him that.”
Yep … he hated me. I’d just bombed out with the first family member of Chaos’s that I’d met.
I gave myself a mental shake. What the hell was I thinking? Of course he should hate me! And why should I care? Alcaeus’s family and entire pack were my enemies, as Raul had said. It’s not like our mate bond was real and we were going to live happily ever after together.
And even if it was real and Alcaeus wasn’t my enemy, over my dead body would my daughter and I ever become another “rescue case” for Alcaeus to indulge his ego and hero complex over.
“What did you say to upset her, Remy?” Alcaeus barked suddenly, releasing me just long enough to turn around to face us before mashing me up against his front.
“Nothing,” Remy insisted, taken aback.
“She’s upset, and you were the only one talking to her just now.”
He could sense when I was upset? But I wasn’t upset. Well … maybe a tiny bit—although my reasons were irrational.
“I called you ‘Al,’ and she told me you preferred ‘Chaos’ as a nickname,” Remy said.
“I am not calling you Chaos,” Kai halted his banter in Portuguese to interject. “Ever. Don’t even think to ask it of me.”
“Chaos,” Raul threw up the shaka hand signal to Alcaeus, prompting both Gabriel and Kai to roll their eyes. “Take care of my girl, ’kay? I’ll see you at the Final Rose Ceremony,” he taunted, piggybacking on my earlier joke.
With that, Gabriel and Raul vanished, just as I started cracking up and Alcaeus looked ready to lunge at Raul. Surfer-boy werelock was growing on me.
But I still had to find a way to kill him.
“Remy, you got this, right?” Alcaeus told more than asked his stepbrother.
“Of course,” Remy responded. He turned to me. “See? What did I tell you?”
Kai was transporting Alcaeus and me back to Denver Star Trek-style when something odd happened with the process. Having only been teleported a handful of times, I wasn’t exactly a qualified judge of how it was supposed to go, of course, but even I knew that something had gone wrong when instead of a fluid reentry, it was so violent I felt like my innards had rematerialized a fraction of a second before the rest of me had.
The next big tip-off that something had gone terribly awry was the fact that we’d rematerialized in the woods somewhere. Not in Denver. I was pretty sure we were nowhere near Colorado—or even within the United States anymore.
I fell to my hands and knees atop the leaf litter, seriously on the verge of blowing chunks. There was an awful pressure in my head. Having all those shots with Raul was definitely not the brightest decision.
“What in God’s name was that, Kai?” Alcaeus demanded. “Are you trying to kill Avery?”
Chaos rushed over to me and knelt at my side. But when he tried to do that face-cupping move on me, I shook my head and pushed him away. We had a smokin’ hot chemistry thing going that I didn’t want to wreck by projectile-vomiting in his face this early in the hooking-up stage.
“It’s not my fault. I don’t know what the fuck happened!” The alarm I heard in Kai’s voice was not reassuring. “Some force of magic pulled us way off course. I couldn’t control it.”
“Oh, no …” Alcaeus murmured. “Kai—you know where we are?”
“Yes.”
“This is bad.”
“I know it’s bad!” Kai growled. His heart was galloping. For the first time, I scented fear from Kai.
“Where are we?” I took deep breaths, trying to get my nausea under control.
“The Hoia Baciu Forest,” Chaos said.
“Where?”
“It’s an ancient forest in Romania that—”
“I know where it is!” I screeched as panic gripped me. I also knew that it was one of the most legendary haunted forests and timeless wonders of the world, renowned for magnetic anomalies and paranormal activity that scientists had tried and failed to explain. How had we been blown this far off course?
Adrenaline pushed my nausea down as I sat back onto my heels and took in my surroundings. I’d always wanted to see the vegetation of the Hoia Baciu Forest—during daylight hours. The trees were as I’d seen them in photographs—bizarrely shaped and creepy-looking as fuck. They were of a strange, twisted wood so strong that reportedly it could not be cut with an ax, and the trunks frequently displayed char marks that scientists could not explain. Electronic equipment malfunctioned and failed within the forest, which was also often referred to as the “Romanian Bermuda Triangle.”
I knew that the main magnetic, paranormal “hub” within the dark forest was a circular area three hundred meters wide where vegetation would not grow. Countless scientists from around the globe had sampled and studied the soil from this famous “dead zone” and had found no reason for the absence of growth.
The forest was known for everything from ghost and UFO sightings
to talking wind and moving balls of light. I recalled reading how people had experienced severe migraines and nausea from being in the forest, and had emerged with unexplainable burn marks and rashes on their skin. Forest travelers had reported being attacked by unseen forces—clawed at and thrown to the ground. There were countless stories of people getting lost and losing track of time and their hold on reality while inside the forest—legends of those who had ventured into these woods and had never returned.
Kai had crouched to the ground and was holding his head in his hands now, muttering curse words and mumbling in Portuguese. Then he began rocking back and forth on his heels, groaning “no” over and over, before falling into a repeated chant of one name: Maribel.
I wondered if it was the same Maribel that Raul had told me about. Raul had said that the undead werelock who’d struck the deal with Lupe had been a member of the Reinoso pack.
Alcaeus’s scent had grown beyond anxious as he observed Kai’s breakdown.
Shit. We’d crash-teleported into the most frightening forest on the planet at night, and our only ride out appeared to be inoperable.
Alcaeus left my side to squat down next to his Beta. “Kai, talk to me. What happened? Was it a vision that threw you off? Was it Maribel? Did you see her?”
“No.” Kai shook his bent head. “It wasn’t a vision of her that pulled us off course. I never see her anymore when I teleport—not once these past ten years have I seen her.”
His voice cracked with emotion, but I couldn’t tell from the way he said it if not seeing her was a misery or a relief to him.
“It was magic,” Kai insisted. “A magnetic force powered by dark magic. I’m pretty certain Gabriel was behind it. He must’ve drawn on the magnetic energy of the forest dead zone to magnify the effect.”
Note to self: Never teleport again.
Kai covered his face with his hands and sobbed, “I can see Maribel’s memories, Al. Her final ones—when she tried to teleport back to the wreckage in Madrid that last time.”
