by Leela Ash
Caily’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“Yes darling.”
“I want to see the gnomes,” Tom declared, bouncing up and down on his toes beside Marissa’s chair in an excess of excitement. His hair fell into his eyes making him look so cute it was almost heartbreaking. If Luke had been with her all these years, they would probably have had a little boy in addition to Caily or another perfect little girl, she thought wistfully.
She looked at her daughter now and felt gratitude fill her heart. She had almost lost her that stormy night. But her abilities had ensured she had recovered with amazing speed and been discharged that same night. Then she’d had to go home and watch from an upstairs window as Luke forced her mother to pay him to go away. He hadn’t wanted her baby any more than he had wanted Sandra Quinn’s. But he hadn’t had a problem wanting money.
“Please, Aunt Marissa, I love gnomes,” Tom pleaded some more, jerking her back to the present.
Marissa rolled her eyes as she chucked him underneath the chin, “You’re such a guy aren’t you?”
Drake rose to his feet, “Come on kids, let’s go out to the garden.”
Megan rose too, “It’s okay, I’ll take them.”
Everyone stared in surprise. Megan was having a difficult time with her pregnancy and had been maintaining distance from people.
Jack’s eyes darkened with concern and his deep voice rumbled as he offered to take Megan and the kids. That was settled and as all four of them left the room, Marissa’s eyes misted. They looked just like a family.
She blinked furiously and the tears vanished. She turned around to find Bo watching her with a knowing look in his eyes and she glared a warning at him. He continued to watch her steadily and she remembered what she had been about to tell them about Jeanine’s pregnancy.
As though on cue, Jeanine cupped a hand to her stomach and grimaced.
Marissa looked round at all of them, “Megan seems to be perfectly fine. Her pregnancy isn’t bothering her overly much.”
Grunts of assent.
With a sigh, she went in. “I am worried about Jeanine.”
Everyone froze.
“No please, don’t be alarmed. I mean I’m hardly an obstetrician but looking at her as a doctor and shifter, I can tell she is having a hard time with the pregnancy. We need to help her.”
“How?” Bo demanded.
“When Nana was alive she taught me something about a special compass. She says it can help bodies of human women adapt to carrying shifter babies.”
“Wow, a compass? Bo, go get one out of my drawer,” Joshua directed.
Jeanine looked so relieved she might cry and Marissa realized shakily that Jeanine had been suffering a lot more than she had let on.
“No. It’s a special compass,” Marissa insisted.
Every head in the room whipped back to her.
“She said the properties of that compass could help the woman’s body adjust,” she finished.
“Grandma never mentioned this,” Jeanine protested.
“Yeah, she kept most of her witch side hidden from you almost till the end, remember? She also encouraged me to keep my shifter side hidden. She didn’t think you could handle it then.”
Jeanine made a face.
“Where is this special compass?” Luke asked.
“It was hidden in the Melina Caves a thousand years ago,” Marissa replied. “I still need to do some more research to know where it is now, because it could have been moved.”
Joshua nodded, “You need our library. You will never find a more equipped library on shifter history than mine.”
She grinned. “I know that Joshua.”
The library was so huge, her entire house could easily fit into it, Marissa thought with a grin, as she looked around. Joshua Cox’s house was a mansion with an antique appeal. Thousands of books lined the shelves from ground to roof and the books were arranged in sections according to topics. Marissa had no idea where to begin.
Joshua seemed to have read her thoughts because he quietly said, “I’ll get one of the boys to help. It would be much faster that way,” he added and left the library just as quietly.
She randomly picked one book from the shelf nearest to her and caressed the hard cover of the ancient tome, lost in thought.
The library had a surprisingly clean, musky scent that somehow reminded her of Luke, she thought.
As though she had conjured him with her thoughts, he entered the room just then, looking ruggedly handsome with his windswept coal black hair and his eyes of molten gold.
“Marissa.”
The book slid from her grasp in her surprise, fell onto the floor and opened to a center page of what could best be described as colorful, ancient erotica. Her eyes widened in alarm even as her cheeks heated. The drawings were so colorful and depicted men and women wrapped sinuously around each other in different seductive poses. Some of the images were downright explicit and so real that she could almost hear the strangled moans of the women in the picture.
Luke made a choked sound low in his throat and her gaze flew up to his.
“Luke, this is not what it looks like.”
He lifted suddenly sleepy eyes from the pages to hers, “Honey, if you wanted wild, torrid lovemaking, all you had to do was grab me. You don’t have to research it.”
Her hands fisted as anger sent a fresh wave of color to her cheeks.
Luke chuckled and chucked her under the chin, “You’re cute.”
His slight touch was not romantic or intimate in the least but for some reason, her entire body shivered in reaction. Her nipples budded into tight points beneath her shirt and her pupils dilated while her lips parted slightly in unconscious invitation.
Luke’s gaze dropped in disbelief to her nipples and then rose to fasten on her lips. With a groan like a man in torture, he bent forward and pressed his lips against hers in a series of toe-curling kisses.
The kisses made both of them groan in unison as pent-up emotions found expression. He walked her backwards with their mouths still melded, until her back pressed against a bookshelf. One large masculine hand insinuated itself beneath her shirt and she moaned as she held him close.
His thumb began to graze her nipple, as he deepened the kiss. He lifted the shirt and bent his head to roughly lap one nipple with his velvety tongue. Marissa’s breath hissed out of her as wetness pooled between her thighs in a dizzying rush.
He grabbed her and hauled her even closer as he raised his head and once more melded their lips together. Her shirt came back down over her breasts and she mourned the loss of his clever lips at her breast.
Marissa’s hand delved beneath Luke’s shirt and started its own journey towards his nipples. She grinned against his lips enjoying the hitching of his breath and his low moans.
One of Luke’s hands wandered between the juncture of her thighs and began to grind against her pussy through the soft material of her tailored pants. It was his turn to grin when she mewled and began to tremble all the more in his arms.
The door burst open behind them just then with a loud crash and they both jumped apart.
Joshua and Drake stood in the doorway, their faces twin expressions of surprise. Luke and Marissa hastily disentangled from each other and fumbled to straighten their clothes.
“Uh, Joshua, uh, we were just—We were just—” Marissa stammered.
“Um, just discussing which books to use in the research,” Luke supplied.
Joshua looked from one to the other, his faded blue eyes twinkling with mirth and joy.
“It’s okay you two.”
Drake snorted, “Research my foot.”
Marissa gave him a baleful glare, “You say one word about this to anyone and I’ll sic my mum on you.”
Drake swallowed and lapsed into horrified silence. Sara Stanley wasn’t a shifter but she knew all about the shifter community because her daughter was a shifter and her husband had been a shifter too. While she would never reveal the
ir secrets to the humans, she was feared by every shifter in a thousand mile radius. She was, quite simply, a waspish tyrant and she made no bones about it.
Luke chuckled at the expression on Drake’s face even though he truly didn’t feel like laughing. What was wrong with him? One minute alone with Marissa and he lost all sense of time and place; one look into her pale eyes and he lost himself and forgot everything.
As he carried a huge book from one of the shelves Joshua had indicated, he sighed to himself. He already knew he loved her. But could he make himself forgive her?
Marissa sneezed as she picked up a dusty book and her ash-blonde hair fell into her eyes. Luke’s gaze caressed her tenderly.
How could you love someone so much and yet hate them?
Marissa was soon absorbed in flipping pages.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Drake grumbled.
“The location of the special compass from the Melina caves.”
“Do we have a picture?” Luke asked looking up at her.
Joshua obligingly handed over a picture he had found in one of the old books.
Hours later, her fingers were aching and her head pounding when she spied a small notation one the side of one of the ancient scrolls and she squealed. Joshua, Drake and Luke rushed over to her so fast it was a wonder they didn’t topple her from her chair.
She pointed out the little notation with shaky fingers and they all read with wide, disbelieving eyes what the first shifter had written as he lay dying at the hands of his wife, the first witch;
And on the 98th Solstice, Agand and I ferried the special compass from the Melina Caves to the Cave of the Birthing Dragons; the one place forever barred to witches. Now my vengeance is complete: only a dragon or one of dragon birth may retrieve it and not my loving wife or her hateful kind.
All eyes turned to Drake. No one noticed the Archstone warrior crouched low at the window. The man backed away from the house, turned into his shifter form of hyena and bounding into the forest.
Drake whispered, “This means I have to get it. And if he placed it in the Cave of the Birthing Dragons it means it does help with child-bearing because there is no place more fertile than the Cave of Birthing Dragons.”
“Fertile?” Marissa echoed.
“Any woman can get pregnant there, even if she has no womb,” Drake supplied.
Marissa’s eyes rounded as she digested that information thinking just how the medical world could utilize that place to solve millions of infertility cases world over.
Luke slapped a hand onto his brother’s shoulder, “No Drake. We have to get it.”
Joshua beamed at them in approval.
“What does he mean by ‘of dragon birth,’ Drake?” Marissa asked again.
“In ancient times some rogue dragons mated with witches. Dragons and witches have always been the worst of enemies throughout history and their union forbidden because their children are always shifters with the ability to take on any shape at all. They are so hideous and bloodthirsty that they are called The Cursed. Luckily, they have all been killed.” Drake announced, rising to his feet.
“And Drake is the last dragon and he is not about to mate with a witch and birth any more evil spawn, so we’re good,” Bo announced as he entered the library carrying a tray of drinks for all of them.
Drake laughed as he took a drink for himself but Marissa noticed that he couldn’t meet any of their gazes. What was he hiding?
“We know the location of the compass now, by the way,” Joshua informed Bo, and Marissa watched as dawning joy spread across the other man’s face.
“Do you know what this means?” Luke laughed, clearly delighted. “Jeanine is gonna be fine.” He threw back his head, laughing some more, clearly delighted.
Marissa captured the moment in her mind’s eye. She was almost breathless with suffocating tenderness for him.
With a shaky indrawn breath, she finally admitted to herself what she had been trying to deny for so long. She loved him, she thought silently. He could make her laugh and cry in one breath. He could make her heart beat faster and he could shake her entire world without even trying. He had shielded her with his body from the poisoned arrows when the Archstone Warriors had attacked. But she couldn’t forget that all those years ago he had left her without any shield. He had the unmitigated gall to blackmail her mother for money. In a detached way she understood: he had been a young struggling artist so maybe be hadn’t thought he had a choice. He might have seen a baby as a responsibility he wasn’t ready for, which was probably why he had walked away.
In the eight years that had passed since, he must have matured some; become more the man she had thought he was all those years ago.
But now he was genuinely happy for Jeanine; happy that they had found a way to save her and save her baby.
He was deliciously handsome and gentle and kind and yet he could be cold and cruel and unfeeling.
How could you love someone so much and yet hate them?
12.
“The caves are hidden deep in this forest,” Luke said tapping a spot on the map spread out on the ground in front of them. “And this is where we are right now.”
Derek, Bo, and Drake followed his tracing finger with their eyes.
“But that’s through a marshy area within the forest infested with Mukachoos,” Bo protested.
Mukachoos were small, squirrel-like creatures with huge teeth that fed only on shifters.
Luke nodded, “I can see that. We have two options; either Drake takes on his dragon form and flies us over there, or we move in our shifter form.”
Bo cursed under his breath, “Drake would be very visible to anyone looking up at the sky. And I’m willing to bet that Nabradia has been keeping an eye on us.”
“I haven’t perceived her scent in a while though,” Derek mused. “Not even when she came to our house and shot Kelly. Strange.”
Derek had the ability to perceive a person’s scent from a mile away and recognize it anywhere else.
“A person’s scent never changes,” Bo pointed out.
“Exactly. Which leads me to wonder if we’re really dealing with Nabradia or someone else,” Derek said, finally voicing what had been troubling him for some days. “I mean, she came with a fucking pistol. Nabradia would wand her way through any fight even if it was a fight with Kels.”
“Dude, what have you been smoking? Who would dare disguise themselves as the Queen of the Salem Witches? Nabradia would tear them limb from limb,” Luke reminded him.
“Plus, that is one hell of a disguise, if it is one,” Drake opined.
“Fine, how do we get to the caves?” Derek asked, his tone clipped as he rose to his full height.
“I say Drake flies us there. Getting the exact cave would be hard enough because it is a mountainous terrain with lots of caves. If we want to be in and out before nightfall, we got to shake a leg,” Bo announced.
No one could fault him for wanting them to move as fast as possible. Jeanine’s health and that of her baby depended on it.
It was decided then. Drake shifted a few feet away to a small clearing and raised his arms to the side. His legs got bigger, his hands shifted in length and size, his face elongated and scaly flesh replaced his smooth skin. In mere seconds, his shifting was complete and he stood before them in his dragon form, huge and magnificent. His scales were green and black and glistened in the sunlight as though they had been burnished with oil.
Without a word, all three of them clambered onto his back and sat waiting for him to fly. Drake didn’t move; he seemed to be waiting for something too.
“What’s wrong?’’ Derek asked.
Drake tossed his head and then changed back to his human form without warning. All three brothers rolled off his back and hit their backsides on the hard ground with muffled howls.
“What the hell?” Bo yelled.
Drake grinned at them. “A dragon is a rare being; it’s not a pack mule. You’ve all gotten so u
sed to flying on my back that no one even oohs, or aahs at the privilege? So there.”
Luke growled, “This is not the time for show offs. If you wanna impress anyone, get Megan, Jeanine and Kelly to come along for a ride. They’ll be suitably impressed to stroke your gigantic ego.”
Drake laughed at that one then morphed back into a dragon again. They all climbed back on, but he was pleased to note that this time they clutched his scales a little fearfully rather than seating confidently.
Drake rose into the sky easily, soaring with the grace and speed of an eagle, his wings cutting through the wind cleanly. The Cave of the Birthing Dragons was hidden high up in a mountainous terrain and would ordinarily take close to three days by foot. Luke couldn’t help hoping they would be there and back in a matter of hours. He desperately needed to rush over to the Coyana Waters to supervise what was happening over there.
Liar, his subconscious taunted. You just want to see Marissa.
They arrived there just before sundown.
The brothers looked around, observing the absolutely beautiful landscape of the area.
“Good thing Jack isn’t here. He’s so obsessed with landscapes, he would probably want to remain here,” Drake chuckled.
“Let’s get to work,” Bo growled, brushing past them and striding towards the cave.
“The compass we want looks like an actual compass,” Luke reminded them.
Drake was the first through the doors of the cave. He paused at the entrance, feeling the indescribable magic of ancient years grab his body and begin to surge through him.
A thin film appeared behind him and sealed the mouth of the cave, smacking Luke in the face as he started to follow him in.
“Drake!” Luke yelled in alarm.
Derek and Bo ran up beside him and tried to hit the film; it was rock hard.
A sharp ray of light hit Drake from head to toe and began to zing through him.
Luke yelled, flinging himself against the glass again to break it in. It didn’t budge. He bent his head and shifted into his wolf form; he was a midnight black wolf with golden eyes. He threw back his head and howled at the sun, the sky and everything in sight. Then he bounded around the back of the cave seeking desperately for any other entrance. He didn’t see any opening until he turned full circle to the front of the caves.
