by Eva Chase
“He made it sound as if we’ve been running amuck, ruining everything for them. Of course he didn’t mention all the times they’ve intruded on us or lashed out without any real provocation. That attack on the lands near my estate? They made a couple of huffy comments and then less than a day later came at us pouring down rage for not realizing they changed their minds.”
“Hey.” I tugged him back as the other alphas went ahead of us into the dining hall. “You know I don’t think your kin—our kin—deserved what happened to them there, right? I’m not saying the fae have always been right. They sure as hell should have left my mother alone. But of course the stories they pass on to each other always make them sound like the victims. Everything’s a mess right now. But maybe if we untangle it, we can find a way to both be stronger for it.”
West’s mouth twisted. His frustration showed in every inch of his body, from the flare in his eyes to the tension in his limbs. But as I held his gaze, his shoulders came down. He swallowed audibly and leaned close to me, his cheek brushing mine.
“You know I don’t mean any of this venting as an attack on you, don’t you?” he said, his throaty voice going abruptly gentle. “I don’t believe in the fae, but I believe in you.”
“I know,” I said. “And good. Because that’s all I need.”
I touched the side of his face, and he turned his head to kiss me. Just briefly, but with enough hunger to leave me wishing we didn’t have a whole bunch of company waiting for us to join them for lunch. My mate tasted more delectable than any feast that could be waiting in there.
West made a frustrated sound as if he were thinking the same thing. “I didn’t think I could want you more than I already did,” he murmured. “But now that I can have you… You have no idea how much I’d love to carry you to my bed and keep you there for at least an entire day.”
An eager shiver tingled through me. “That sounds like an excellent plan for after all this is done,” I said.
He grinned. “I’m counting on it, then.”
The other alphas were already grabbing food from the bowls and platters laid down the length of the long table. A tang in the air told me deviled eggs and beet salad were among the offerings. Kylie was sitting on the other side of the chair that had been reserved for me, next to the rest of the kin who’d joined us. Somehow I wasn’t surprised to see Felix had claimed the spot across from her.
“Are you really going to eat all of that?” she was saying with wide eyes as I took my seat. Felix’s plate was heaped with enough food to form a mountain.
The fox shifter brandished his fork and licked his lips. “You’d better believe it. Gotta fuel these muscles, you know.” He flexed a lean bicep.
Kylie giggled—her flirty giggle, not her dismissive one. She leaned her chin onto her folded hands as she looked at him with lowered eyelids. “Well, I can’t argue with the importance of that.”
I raised an eyebrow at them as I reached for the eggs. “You two are getting along well.”
“Felix made it very clear that he’s sorry he ever doubted my awesomeness,” Kylie said, smiling. “And it turns out he’s come here to do maintenance on the house before, so he knows where all the fun stuff is.”
“I hope you don’t mind me giving your friend a little tour, dragon shifter,” Felix said to me. “I’ve got to admit I’m getting a little addicted to spending time with her.” He winked at Kylie.
“Better than having you at each other’s throats,” I said. Although I had the feeling maybe there had been a little necking going on, of the happier sort. It was good that Kylie was enjoying herself rather than stressing about missions I didn’t think it was wise to bring her along for. Funny how she’d ended up getting that enjoyment from the one guy who’d doubted her when she first arrived.
Kylie’s phone chimed. And chimed again. She fished it out of her pocket to check the messages, her brow knitting. After she’d typed in a couple of texts and read through the replies, she glanced over at me and the alphas.
“You know that brother of an acquaintance I have who works for the security equipment company? They had an order come through early this morning for a bunch of armored trucks. All different spots around the country—but including the cities you said the vampires have a major presence in. They’re supposed to be delivered tonight. That seems like more than just a coincidence, don’t you think?”
My shoulders tensed. “It does. An armored truck could drive through a bonfire, couldn’t it?”
“Maybe even break through our gates,” Nate said, his face darkening.
“What about your dragon fire?” Kylie said. “I’ve seen the way you can melt things. You could still take them down, right?”
“Only where I am. If they’re coming at us in those from all over…” I set down my fork. A chill had flooded me, so intense I didn’t think I could swallow another bite.
I might be able to protect one estate, but the others… We couldn’t evacuate everyone. What would we tell the other kin? To just flee and hide wherever they could?
“We’ll figure something out,” Felix said, looking at Kylie rather than me. He couldn’t have faked the worry—not just for us shifters, but also for her—that was shining in his eyes. “We’ve never let the bloodsuckers get the better of us before.”
Kylie gave him a soft smile, reaching across the table to clasp his hand. I watched them, a slow warmth spreading through me, easing back the chill. It was amazing the way these two who’d spent their first encounter making evil eyes at each other were now taking comfort in each other’s presence.
That was how things went sometimes, wasn’t it? Look at how West and I had been cuddled together just a few minutes ago. He and I had hardly gotten off on the right foot either. And now the thought of him being taken from my side was physically painful. All that gruffness and criticism had softened as he’d seen who I was and who I could be.
So much angst and hurt could be avoided if you just took the chance to get to know someone.
That thought settled with an unexpected strength in my mind. Saving our kin wasn’t all on me and the alphas. I hadn’t given our other option everything I had. I had to try, before we lost everything. We couldn’t understand how the fae saw us—and they couldn’t understand why we feared them, or why I was willing to consider trusting them again. But maybe if I could let them know us, if I could show them…
I pushed my chair back. Everyone glanced up. “Ren?” Nate said.
I waved off their attention. “I just thought of something I need to do. I’m not leaving the house. I’ll be back soon, I think.”
I hurried from the dining hall to the far end of the house, to the door of the records room. The light glowed on as I scrambled down the steps. The two main crystal tablets I’d listened to lay on the table where I’d left them: the one that detailed how dragon shifters and fae had worked together, and the one that explained how we’d fallen apart, from our perspective.
A slanted perspective, I knew. Mirabel had sounded so certain that the fae were in the wrong. But she’d gone into her meeting with the monarch already expecting her suspicions to be justified. Maybe even wanting them to be. If I could show today’s fae that I understood our history—
I couldn’t bring them down here. I knew that much. If the room wouldn’t even admit my alphas, non-shifters had to be out of the question. But maybe… Maybe I could bring that proof to the fae.
I could give instead of asking to take.
My arms trembled as I headed back up the steps, the tablets clutched to my chest. For a second I thought the room might block me from leaving with them. But I stepped out into the thinner air of the hall without any restriction.
For all I knew the fae wouldn’t be able to make any use of these anyway. They were precious historical records. If I was wrong to take them from the room, if they were lost somehow…
I looked down the hall. In my mind’s eye I saw myself as a little girl, scampering through this house. Never th
inking anyone would want to hurt me or my family. Never worrying about who might be coming down the road.
That was what I wanted for my children. They deserved to grow up without this fear hanging over them. If this was what it took to end the threats we faced once and for all, then I’d take that risk. For them, and all the other shifter children not yet born.
I carried the tablets down the hall to the dining room. When I reached the doorway, I cleared my throat. My mates and Kylie and the gathered kin stopped their tense conversations to look over at me.
“It wasn’t enough to talk to the local fae,” I said. “I need to speak with the monarch. Now, before the vampires have another chance to attack. The jet is still here. Can we fly to your estate, Aaron?”
The avian alpha stood up. “We can,” he said. “Are you sure? We can lock this house up as tightly as possible, but the vampires who scouted the place out last night will probably be back.”
My gut tightened, but I nodded anyway. “If they damage the property, we’ll just have to rebuild when we’re done with them. If they come back with help, it’s probably better if we’re not here anyway. There aren’t enough of us to really defend the place.”
Aaron’s gaze settled on the tablets in my arms, but he didn’t ask. West got up beside him, motioning to his kin.
“You heard the dragon shifter. Let’s move!”
The sun was still high over the trees as the jet came into view of the avian estate. I watched the property expand beneath us, my face nearly pressed to the glass.
The last time we’d parlayed with the fae monarch, it had taken us a little more than an hour to reach the fae monarch’s chosen meeting place, on neutral ground between her territory and Aaron’s. Aaron had called one of his kin to reach out to her immediately as we’d packed up at the dragon shifter estate, but I didn’t even know if she would agree to see me.
The last time we’d met, I’d spilled the truth-seeking flames her people had helped create down over her and forced her to admit a lot more than she’d have wanted to. All things we deserved to know, but I couldn’t imagine she was feeling particularly happy with me or my alphas at the moment.
“We have time,” Aaron assured me from the seat behind mine. “The sun won’t set for hours yet.”
“I don’t know how long we’ll have to wait for her,” I said.
As soon as the words fell from my mouth, the wrongness of them stuck me. We. That didn’t feel right.
A heavy certainty settled over me. I looked down at the tablets, the crystalline memories meant just for me. With etchings of fae and dragon. It had always been the dragon shifters the fae had dealt with when they’d made their alliance with our kind. They’d seen my mother as their greatest threat… but they’d also once seen the women like her as their greatest allies.
The plane touched down with a jolt and a rattling of its wheels. I was out of my seat the moment it jerked to a halt. “A car should already be waiting for us to take us most of the way there,” Aaron said as we all hurried down the steps. “We can—”
“Wait.” I raised my hand to hold him and the other alphas back. Kylie glanced at me curiously, but I motioned for her to go on with the rest of the kin. My mates gathered around me.
“What’s up, princess?” Marco asked.
I dragged in a breath. “I think I need to go alone. Just me and the monarch. And if she brings reinforcements, fine. She has to see that I trust her. She needs to know how much I want this to work.”
West bristled, as I’d known he would. “No. Sparks, it’s too dangerous. She tried to have you killed the last time.”
“Not her,” I reminded him. “Some other fae, who acted without her knowing. Not discouraging something like that is different from giving an order. And she swore not to let anything like that happen again.”
“I trust your judgment, Ren,” Nate said. “But I don’t like the sounds of this either. We could come along to the meeting place, but hang back from the actual spot, farther down the path.”
I shook my head. “That’ll look like an empty gesture. Aaron, I need one of your kin to drive me out there, and I’ll make the rest of the trip alone. I’ll fly, in my dragon form, from the road—they won’t find it easy to lay any traps that way. If this attempt is going to work, I can tell this is how I need to do it.”
Even Marco was frowning. West’s face had completely clouded. It itched at me, seeing how worried they were. Feeling it in niggling threads through our mate bond. But my certainty rang deeper.
“I’ve come a long way since that first meeting,” I added. “I can handle this. You all know I can.”
West let out a sharp huff. “You have. And we do. Just…” He met my gaze searchingly, with so much concern and affection in his eyes it made my heart ache. “Be careful of the fae. And come back as quickly as you can.”
If even West agreed, there wasn’t much the other alphas could say. My hand clenched around the straps of the bag that held the tablets. “I will. I promise. Now where’s that car?”
Chapter 18
Aaron
I rested my hands on the sun-warmed railing of the balcony and looked down over the courtyard. It was as crowded with my kin as it had been when I’d arrived with Serenity at my side just a couple of weeks ago. But now the energy around the estate was fraught, not celebratory.
Everyone knew the vampires would be back for another battle tonight. More firewood had been heaped on top of the ashes of last night’s protective ring. My guards were stalking warily along the walls and wheeling overhead, keeping watch even well before the sun set.
We hadn’t told anyone about the armored trucks yet. I didn’t want to start a panic until I found out the results of Serenity’s last-ditch plan.
Footsteps tapped against the floor behind me. My sister came up to the railing, leaning her elbows on it as she considered the crowd.
“We held our own the last two nights. They haven’t won yet.”
“No,” I said. “But it’s been a near thing. If they manage to gain one more advantage…”
Alice’s mouth flattened. “Everyone who’s able bodied is ready to defend the walls. The scouts along all the roads will alert us as soon as the bloodsuckers show their faces. We’ve got extra tanks of gasoline; everyone’s carrying a lighter…” She paused. “But yeah. I don’t know how long we can keep doing this. Especially if the vamps up the ante.”
“Well, all we can hope for then is that we manage to up the ante right back at them.”
“Yeah.” She glanced in the direction Serenity had gone. “Do you really think the fae might agree to help us?”
A question I’d asked myself so many times in the last day. “I think Serenity will do everything she can to convince them. Maybe it’ll be easier for her to see a way to mend the damage that’s been done between us… She has information none of us had before, other than the past dragon shifters—and she’s looking at the problem with fresh eyes, without decades of prejudices already built up.”
“There are prejudices and then there’s just sound judgment,” Alice said. “I guess the more important question is, do you really think we can trust the fae if they do offer to lend a hand?”
That was a subject I’d been puzzling over too. I rubbed my mouth. “I don’t know. Serenity has proven herself to be a good judge of character so far.”
“But she’s still learning.”
“Yes. She is.”
I didn’t need to say more. I knew my sister could decipher the tangle of my emotions. Serenity was on her way out there right now to face the fae monarch, the strongest of those flighty but powerful beings, on her own. Our dragon shifter was so powerful, and becoming more so every day, but if the monarch found a way to break the treaty she’d sworn to… I didn’t know if I’d ever see my mate again.
“Should we prepare for them?” Alice said cautiously. “The fae, I mean.”
“How so?”
“Come here.”
I followed h
er down through the house and into the dim garage out back. A truck had come in with several tanks of gasoline. A thick chemical odor rose off them. Alice tipped her head to it, folding her arms over her chest.
“We have more than enough,” she said. “We could send these out with a few of our people if we thought they might be more useful… elsewhere.”
I studied her expression. “Elsewhere like where?”
“The fae rely on their home ground to survive, right? On their chosen plants or whatever. We could have a team ready near the monarch’s territory in case the situation looks like it’s about to turn sour. Ready to burn that whole forest down if that’s what it takes to give us some leverage.”
That’s what I’d suspected she was getting at. My chest tightened. Was that what we were going to be reduced to? Preparing to destroy people we were hoping would become our allies, before we’d even tried to work together?
Would it be stupid of me to say no and leave my own people that much more vulnerable?
“When did you become such a pessimist?” I asked, delaying the need to answer the real question.
Alice gave me a crooked smile. “When I realized there’s no way in hell we’re fending off an army of vampires and a contingent of fae at the same time.”
Clearly. I eyed the truck, focusing on the rhythm of my breath. Trying to find a solid path through all the uncertainty around me. I was the one who’d always advocated for listening to reason over our animal instincts, wasn’t I? And this desire to defend against a threat that hadn’t even arisen yet—that was all animal fear. I felt it with a sharp prickle down my spine.
That was my answer then.
“No,” I said, my heart thumping a little harder as I said the word. “We can’t enter a new alliance already on the verge of burning their homes to the ground.”
“Aaron,” my sister said, but I cut her off with a shake of my head.
