by Kailin Gow
Briony swallowed. She knew what Josh meant. “Nonsense. If you want this to work, then we have to work together.” She looked Josh in the eyes. “I’m not afraid of you, Josh or any of the wolves here.”
“You should be,” Josh whispered, his voice so husky and low, it made her shiver a little.
Briony shook her head. “When I choose my ‘mate’, it’ll be by my own choosing and not because I’m coerced into it by some pheromones.” Briony could think of one easy way to get Josh to back off. “Josh, what would Brian think if he knew you were suddenly going after me, too, not that I don’t think you and Brian are attractive, but I’m already sorta trying to figure out how I feel about Kevin and Fallon right now.”
Josh shook his head. “He’s lucky he’s my brother. But I thought you weren’t interested in him?”
“I’m not interested in you either. Besides, you know it would hurt him either way.”
“That’s true.” Josh smiled to himself. “Now, if only all the brothers enamored of you could be so understanding. Speaking of which…”
There was a knock at the door. Kevin opened it without waiting for an answer. He looked at the two of them standing so close with confusion, but he didn’t comment on it.
“Briony, Fallon has gone back to the diner to warn the Preservation Society. I thought you’d want to go too.”
Briony nodded. She looked back to Josh. “I have to go, but I haven’t forgotten. When the time comes, I’ll be at the gate.”
“I look forward to it.”
Kevin reached out to put his arm around Briony. For a moment, Josh’s expression changed, hardening. Josh slid closer to Kevin, until they were just inches apart. Briony could feel the tension between them. It was like two dogs squaring up to fight, each waiting for the other to move first. Almost exactly like that, given what they were.
Except that there was one difference. Kevin stared straight at Josh instead, his face expressionless. He had the self-control not to react when Josh pushed close to him.
Briony put a hand on Josh’s arm. “Josh, thank you for your hospitality. I’m very grateful for your care of Jake.” She smiled at him then and leaned in to kiss him on the cheek. Then she whispered, “If you try that again with Kevin, then the deal’s off.”
Josh looked at Briony then. His expression softened. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s an alpha male thing.”
Alpha male thing or not, it seemed that the damage was done, and Briony certainly wasn’t going to accept that the whole thing was simply a routine challenge over authority. Kevin was looking from her to Josh and back, and it was clear that he wasn’t happy. Briony was willing to bet that was exactly the reaction Josh had been looking for.
Chapter 11
They went out from the werewolves’ home, and it seemed that Kevin in particular was in a hurry. He seemed like he could hardly wait to get out of there before he transformed into his wolf form, nuzzling against Briony urgently so that she would clamber onto his back. She did so, getting the best grip that she could on his fur and holding on as Kevin started to run.
That was just as well, because Kevin ran the way he had only run before when they had been fleeing from danger. Branches of the trees around them whipped past Briony, so that she had to duck low, pressed tight against Kevin’s back to avoid the foliage around her. Kevin ran so fast that the trees around Briony faded into a blur as they headed back in the direction of town.
They didn’t run all the way to Wicked, though. Instead, Kevin stopped in the trees part way there, slowing to a halt so rapidly that Briony almost fell from his back. She slid off him instead, looking around to see what threat might have made Kevin stop like that.
“What is it?” Briony asked Kevin. The werewolf changed back into his human form, and as usual with the transformation, his clothes were in disarray. His shirt, in fact, was so badly torn that Kevin simply pulled the remains from him, leaving him bare chested in the cold of the woods. Briony stared at him transfixed.
“Kevin…”
She didn’t finish that because Kevin chose that moment to pull Briony to him and kiss her fiercely. The press of his lips against hers wasn’t just hungry, it was almost harsh. It was as though Kevin wanted to claim every corner of Briony’s mouth as his. When he pulled back from her, Kevin’s expression was dark with anger. She had not seen him like this before.
“That’s so you remember which werewolf you’re with, Briony,” he breathed. “So you remember which one would go to the ends of the Earth, and beyond, for you.”
Was that what this was about? But that made no sense…unless Kevin was equally affected by the scent she was giving off to alpha males. It was as though now that she was a queen like queen bees, she naturally gives off a scent to the strongest males to mate. Briony sighed. It was another reminder of how she was not entirely human.
“Kevin,” Briony said, holding Kevin tight and leaning into his chest, “don’t be jealous of Josh, please. There’s nothing there. I’m certainly not attracted to him, and he’s just acting on some kind of instinct.”
“I know,” Kevin said. He paused, cupping Briony’s chin and looking down at her with almost total intensity. “I know how you feel about me. I can taste it in your kiss, but I just don’t want you to forget it. Whatever Josh feels, I feel even more. I’ve loved you since the first date at the lake. I will not let any man or wolf take you away from me.”
He leaned in for another fierce kiss, which went on for a while. He crushed her against him, and she was exploring his chest with her hands. He was as perfect of a male specimen as any man can be. Through it, Briony could feel Kevin’s desire for her. She was pressed tightly against the muscles of his chest, and she could feel the deep, instinctual need for him welling up in her. In that moment, Briony wanted to go further than just kissing him. So much further. Every inch of her body wanted him in an almost animal explosion of desire.
Was that just her love for him, or was it something else? Briony loved Kevin. She was sure of that. Yet she also loved Fallon, caring about each of the brothers in a slightly different way. Was this sudden strong need for more of Kevin because he was her alpha male, the one strong enough to be a mate for her as Palisor’s queen?
Kevin pulled back, holding Briony by the shoulders. “Whatever deal you and Josh have, whatever you were agreeing to in there, think it through.”
Briony understood then. Kevin really thought that she had agreed to…
“Kevin, I haven’t agreed to anything romantic. I’ve just agreed to… well, I promised not to say anything, but it really isn’t anything like that. Josh is just planning something that might help to get Marcus and his vampires out of Wicked.”
“If you promise me that’s all it is, then I’ll believe you,” Kevin said.
Briony nodded. “I promise.”
She thought for a moment. Getting Marcus and his vampires out of Wicked was important, but something was nagging at her, an instinctual feeling that she had to follow, like eating and sleeping. It wasn’t going to let her rest until she did it.
“Kevin,” she said, “I know getting to the diner is important, but I think first we need to go back to the Edge Inn.”
“If you think it’s important,” Kevin said.
Briony started to nod, but then paused. “I think it is which I can’t explain, but honestly, part of me just wants to see it again. It’s the closest thing to home I’ve got right now.”
Kevin nodded and smiled. “I guess I can understand that, and we probably have time. To be honest, I was in such a hurry to get you away from Josh that I made everything seem more urgent than I should. I think I even left a few things there I should pick up.”
Briony laughed, kissing Kevin on the lips tenderly before letting go. “I wish I could go so much further with you than this,” she whispered, running a hand down Kevin’s chest. “It would be so easy to…”
She trailed off, looking at the muscles of Kevin’s body and swallowing at the thought of ev
erything they could do. If she was going to choose a mate just purely base on the physical…
“Briony,” Kevin said, and his eyes were soft with love, “I know, and you don’t have to apologize for it. I’ll wait, and you’ll see. Someday you’ll see that I’m the one for you, Briony. I love you, and I can’t even tell you how much I do because the words won’t be enough. I’m going to be there for you instead, regardless of what happens.”
“I know,” Briony said. She closed her eyes, trying to banish the image of Kevin’s body from her mind, and the musky wood scent of his. It wasn’t easy. “We… we should get going.”
When she opened her eyes again, Kevin was in his wolf form. Briony clambered onto his back once again. This run was slower, more sedate, and Briony was grateful for that. It gave her time to think about what it would be like to head back to the inn, to see her home again after spending time so impossibly far away from it. It would be, Briony suspected, both a relief and a poignant moment.
They arrived at the inn soon enough, and Briony got out her key to the door, only to see it hanging open. Kevin moved in front of her without a word as they headed inside. The inn was a mess. Briony had seen it like this once before, when Pietre had come in and destroyed much of it to make a point. This looked more systematic though, as though someone had been searching for something. The trail of destruction wasn’t everywhere for one thing. Instead, it led straight to Briony’s room, where everything was in disarray. The bed had been upended, drawers were strewn around the room, and Briony’s closet lay in pieces.
Marcus, it had to be. Who else would be there searching for something? Who else would rip up the floorboards in one corner of the room, or punch a hole in the wall to allow him to check behind the surface of it. Marcus had been there, searching for the scepter. Why would he think it was there? Well, as the home of both a princess of Palisor and her hugtandalfer great aunt, where else would it be?
Did that mean that Marcus had found what he was looking for? No, somehow Briony was sure that she would know if he had. They would all know. That kind of power in Marcus’ hands would be only too obvious. Besides, she could feel that the scepter was safe. She could feel it as surely as she felt the ground beneath her feet.
If Briony could feel that much of it, did that mean that she could find it? She didn’t know, but she had to try. Briony focused on the feeling, trying to get a better sense of it, trying to put a location to it, or at least a direction. Briony half shut her eyes and walked until she was at the window to her room, looking down at the trees around the Edge Inn. Out there. The scepter was somewhere out there.
“Kevin, come with me,” Briony said, hurrying downstairs.
“Where are we going?” the werewolf asked.
“I’m not sure yet. It’s here though. It’s close.”
Briony went outside, and it was like there was some kind of invisible string pulling at her heart. She knew exactly which way she had to go, and she knew that she had to do it right away. So she did. She ran over to the trees, following the call she could feel inside her to the base of one of the trees near the inn.
Briony went back to the inn, searching around in the garage until she came up with a shovel.
“Briony, what are you doing?” Kevin demanded.
“Trust me. I know what I’m doing.” At least, Briony hoped that she did. She went back to the tree and attacked the ground around the base of it with her shovel. It was tough going. The cold had made the ground harder, and the roots of the tree made every shovelful of soil a fight. After a minute or two Kevin took over, his muscles gleaming with sweat as he dug down beneath the tree.
“Briony, I’m not sure that… hold on, what was that?”
Kevin brought the shovel down, and Briony heard the dull thud of it hitting something hard. Kevin knelt down by the hole he’d dug and pulled out a box. It wasn’t anything special to look like. It was just a wooden box, about three feet long by two across. It had a rusty iron lock that protested and then gave way as Kevin put his strength against it.
The interior of the box was empty except for a black duffle bag closed with a padlock. Somehow, Briony felt like she knew that bag.
“I think… I think this was my mother’s,” she said. Just the thought of her mother made tears well up in her eyes. She would have been still so young when she buried this. Probably at the time the whole family came for their first visit to Wicked.. And now… now she was dead, along with the man Briony had known as her father, both turned as vampires and then destroyed.
“Are you okay?” Kevin asked.
Briony wiped the tears from her eyes before nodding. There would be enough time for tears later. Right now, assuming that the pulsing feeling in her mind was correct, it looked like she had found the one thing that would allow her to finally deal with the threat posed by Palisor’s vampires.
It was then that the laughter rang out. It wasn’t particularly unpleasant laughter. It wasn’t some villainous cackle. It was just the pleasant laughter of someone who had been pleasantly surprised, the sound bouncing from tree to tree as it went around them. Yet it was enough that Briony shivered in anticipation of what might be about to happen. She knew that laugh, and she knew the depths to which its owner would sink. Apparently so did Kevin, because the werewolf looked around warily, holding the shovel like a weapon.
Briony wasn’t about to just stand there and wait. The brief joy of discovering the bag, which would give her more insight into a mother who fell in love with a hugtandalfer king, was shattered like a fleeting dream. With an edge and strength within her, she kept her voice firm and steady. “Come out here Pietre. We know it’s you, so stop hiding in the shadow realms of yours or wherever you came from. Come here where we can see you.”
Chapter 12
Pietre stepped out of the shadows from around him, stretching them and pulling them from him so that he seemed to step out of thin air. He had done it several times before around Briony though, and so the trick was not one that was going to startle or amaze her. In fact right then, he didn’t seem like such a terrifying presence to Briony. Not even when several of his vampires dropped from the surrounding trees to stand beside him like some glowering guard of honor.
“What do you want, Pietre?” Briony demanded, vexed by the Master vampire’s untimely appearance. She should have known that wherever she went in Wicked, there he would be, waiting for her with his band of ethereal, but deadly vampires, until he got what he wanted. She took in a sharp intake of breath before letting out a sigh that came as much from the exertion of the last hour or so as from weariness at the vampire’s presence. “I’m too tired to start fighting.”
“So is your wolf, it seems,” Pietre pointed out, with a glance across to Kevin. Briony had to admit that he did look pretty tired after his efforts, both running to the inn and digging for the bag. Sweat ran from him, and he seemed breathless. “It would be a shame if he were to be hurt fighting us, wouldn’t it?”
“Why don’t you say what you’re going to say?” Kevin snarled, taking a step forward. Briony put out an arm to stop him from charging at the vampires, but she needn’t have bothered. Kevin was either too tired for that, or he simply had more sense.
Pietre just smiled at the obvious threat. “Just hand over the bag and none of us need to fight. No one needs to be hurt. No one needs to be killed.”
Briony shook her head automatically. She knew without looking that the scepter was in this bag. She could feel it through the cloth of the thing. There was no way that she could allow an item like that to fall into the hands of Pietre. For one thing, it had been the last request of her father King Waltham that she protect the scepter. Briony knew that she could not ignore that. Especially not given the damage that kind of power could cause in the wrong hands.
“You know I’m not going to hand it over,” Briony said, “and I’m not afraid of you now, Pietre. I’m a lot more dangerous than I was.”
“Really?” Pietre raised an eyebrow. “How
much more dangerous, I wonder? As dangerous as the delectable Sophie?”
“It’s Sophia to you,” Briony said, wanting to cringe at how Pietre called her aunt ‘delectable’. “You don’t deserve to call her by Sophie, after all you’ve done to her, and my family.” Briony felt sharp stings of tears wanting to flow down her cheeks. Seeing Aunt Sophie’s inn destroyed and recovering her mother’s treasured bag, made her more emotional than she wanted. She took another breath, straightening her back. She wasn’t going to let this vampire ruin everything she was destined to be. It was her inheritance as King Waltham’s daughter at stake, as well as Wicked’s and Palisor’s. “I’m not afraid of you,” Briony said.
“Perhaps we should put it to the test.”
“Perhaps you should.” Even as Briony said it, she felt something welling up inside her, in a feeling that had last come to her when Archer the dragon had given her the knowledge she needed to heal Kevin, back in Palisor. Now though, she wasn’t thinking of healing. Instead, she found herself thinking of the glowing ball of fire her stepbrother Vigor had been able to produce when fighting. Vigor had used that piece of magic several times to burn vampires he could not reach with his sword. Just in thinking of it, Briony found that she could see how to do it, as clearly as if she had been practicing it for years. It was simply a question of focus. Focus, and tapping into the innate power of her kind. She squeezed the power tight in her, and the fire appeared in her hand as she held it out.
If Pietre was scared by that, he didn’t show it. Instead he laughed. “A new trick, but not an insurmountable one, and you have revealed it too early.”
“Well,” Briony said steadily, “I haven’t got all day. So are you going to play with pine cones all day in the woods or are we going to fight?”
