Isaac’s jaw came unhinged as he beheld the mountain of computers—desktop, laptop and netbook—stacked on a table in one corner. Speakers, keyboards, mice and tools filled bins ringing the perimeter of the dust-proof environment I had created for him to work his magic. Boxes full of circuits and thingamabobs stacked in one corner. And one of the precious few gas-powered generators, small as it might be, sat in a place of honor under the desk.
“Hmm.” I pressed two fingers against the underside of his jaw. “He appears to have a pulse…”
His hand closed over my wrist. “You did this for me?”
“Someone has to bring the world back online.” I winked. “I nominate you for the job.”
“You’re amazing,” he breathed, eyes glazing over as he scanned each precious component. “How did I get so lucky?”
“You haven’t gotten lucky yet.” I dropped a slow kiss to his collarbone. “But I could be persuaded.”
Isaac slid his fingers underneath the hem of my shirt, spreading his fingers wide across my ribs. “Allow me to demonstrate exactly how much I missed you.”
A gasping breath shuddered from my lungs as he traced his way higher until his thumbs brushed over my nipples. “Show me.”
And so he did. Over and over. Until I had no doubt that love this deep, telegraphed with trembling fingers and reverent kisses, meant not only were soul mates far more substantial than warg urban legend, but that I had found mine.
The Epilogues
Cam
The tent Graeson had been calling home since the rift sucked me into Faerie didn’t smell like him. The sleeping bag that must have come standard in each one hadn’t been unrolled, and none of the supplies had been touched. He hadn’t stayed here longer than required to change into the new clothes someone had supplied in his size, and it made my heart ache to know that if I trudged back out to that rock, if I pulled on my inner she-wolf then as I was now, the area would be saturated with his scent.
His strong arms wrapped around me from behind and pulled me flush against his chest. “I missed you.”
I leaned into his strength and glanced up at him. “I missed you more. I’d forgotten how much Theo and Isaac bicker. I was ready to truss them up and sacrifice them to the Morrigan myself.” Laughter rumbled through him into me, and I smiled at the small accomplishment. “How bad did it get?”
I had a right to know how fragile the eggshells were under my feet.
“I talked to Dell about taking over,” he admitted. “She doesn’t want to be alpha, but that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t make a good one.”
“You were worried about becoming Bessemer.” Poisoning his pack, his dream, was his second biggest fear. Right below losing me the way he had lost Marie. “You would never let that happen.”
“No, I wouldn’t.” His stubble rasped against my temple. “That’s why I was lining up a successor.”
“You would have survived this if Thierry hadn’t found a way to get us home.” I turned in his arms so I could drink in the warm hazel of his eyes. “You’re stronger than you realize.”
“You underestimate the hold you have on me, Ellis.” He cupped my face between his palms. “The wolf damn near lost his mind when you vanished and we couldn’t follow. Dell was all that held us together, all that held me together.”
“Situations like this are why we have a beta, and a gamma.” I slid my arms around his waist. “All of us stumble. All of us fall. As long as one of us is still standing to offer a hand up, the rest doesn’t matter.”
That was how family worked, how packs worked, how we worked.
Pride gleamed in his eyes, and he sank his long fingers in my hair. “God, you’re perfect.”
“No.” I kissed his wrist. “You’re delusional. That happens when you run on fumes for days on end.”
“The wolf was guarding the rock.” With a grimace, he admitted, “He got…fixated.”
Having lost a twin sister, I got it. I really did. I had done the same thing. Sat in the place where I last saw her and wasted away as guilt ate at me. Time had healed me. I believed, deep in my heart, it would have patched him up too. He was too good an alpha to let the wolf indulge its instincts to lie down in that dried blood smear until getting up was no longer an option.
“How about I give him something else to fixate on?” I pressed forward until I brushed my lips over his chapped ones and moaned with pleasure at his taste. “How much time do you think we have before they come looking for us again?”
Vause, being a magistrate, got what she wanted when she wanted it, and it sounded like what she wanted right now was me. Any hopes I had for a simpler life in Butler as the alpha female of Lorimar had vanished in a puff of smoke upon hearing her summons. New peace accords would have to be drafted to encompass all the factions left to coexist here on Earth, and that meant Graeson and I would have to resume our roles as mediators for the wargs and earthborn fae. Meaning Dell and Zed had their work cut out for them too.
“Five minutes.” Graeson smiled into the kiss. “Ten if we shift and make a run for it.”
“We should have stayed in the woods,” I grumbled. “We’re alphas. We could have ordered Nathalie and Aisha to return to their rounds.”
“It wouldn’t have helped.” His fingers tightened. “Once Dell escorted the others into camp, the pack would have come hunting if we hadn’t followed.” He gazed down at me. “They missed you too. They’ll want the same assurances that you’re safe and whole.” Gold flashed in his eyes, his feral side rising. “Though I haven’t performed a full examination yet. Maybe I ought to, just to be on the safe side.”
I pursed my lips in consideration. “How thorough will this examination be?”
“Very.”
“You’re a bad influence on me.” I toyed with the hem of my shirt, tugging it up to expose my navel in a tease that promised more. “What will the conclave think of such irresponsible behavior?”
“Hang the conclave,” he growled with conviction. “You don’t belong to them. You belong to me.”
Warmth speared my heart, and heat sizzled through my veins. “I love you, Cord Graeson.”
“Love you too.” Hunger turned his eyes golden. “Camille Ellis.”
No matter how much things had changed, as long as Cord was here, all was right with my world.
Thierry
I didn’t have to wait long to hear the rustle of feathers or scent woodsmoke and fae male. I stood on the edge of the lake and gazed out over the expanse of rippling waves, unable to resist drawing the comparison between the water’s unease and the same sense of cascading disturbances wracking this world.
“I heard you had returned,” Rook purred. “You’re as lovely as ever, wife.”
“Ex-wife.” I throttled the grin that wanted to form before I gave him encouragement to keep being outrageous. “Didn’t you ever play pirates as a kid? Ex marks the spot. I’m the ex, and this is the spot where it all changed.”
“Perhaps change is what was needed,” he mused. “Perhaps change is inevitable.”
“Is that your messed-up way of telling me this isn’t my fault?” I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jeans. “Or is that your equally messed-up way of telling me it’s not Dad’s fault either?”
The former king rolled a shoulder.
“What will you do now?” I squinted in his direction. “The realms are sealed, and your throne is waaaay out there somewhere.”
“I never wanted the crown or the throne.” Even his sighs managed to sound lyrical. “I wanted power to enact change.” A breeze whipped long strands of inky-black hair around his heartbreakingly beautiful face. “I wanted to be loved, and there was only one person in the worlds capable of that. Now I have her. What else is there but to bask in the afterglow?”
“Put away your pole, and stop fishing for compliments.” I chuckled. “You’re gorgeous, you’re smart, and you’ve got a decent heart buried somewhere down deep, deep, deep inside.” I crossed to him and did a
dangerous thing. I touched his arm, a sign that somewhere down deep, deep, deep inside I did still care for him. “You’re not unlovable, Rook.”
His cool fingers covered mine, and we returned our gazes to the lake. “You couldn’t love me.”
“This again?” I rolled my eyes. “You never cared about me one way or the other except what I could do for you. That’s not love. That’s not how it works. You have to open your heart, expose your vulnerabilities. You have to be willing to look like a total idiot and sound like one too. You’ll make mistakes, and you’ll get hurt, but if you screw up enough—you just might find the person meant for you.”
“You believe such a person exists?”
The stark hope in his question almost crushed me. “Yes,” I said softly. “I do.”
“Branwen and the Bloodless return to Florida tomorrow. Bháin and I will accompany them.” He kept his tone light. “Whatever will you do without me?”
“I already have my next assignment.” I mimed zipping my lips. “Top secret.”
This time it was his turn to chuckle. “Isn’t it always with the conclave?”
“These days? Yeah.” I sighed. “But once upon a time, I was just a girl bounty-hunting her way through life. I would like to be that girl again.”
“Perhaps there’s hope for both of us yet,” he surmised. “This is a brave new world, after all.”
Put it that way, and the future looked downright bright. “You might be—”
Rook crashed his mouth into mine, his gaze fixated over my shoulder. I mashed my lips together before his tongue got involved, and then I heard it. His mocking laughter. And the bellow of murderous rage shaking birds from the forest at our backs.
“Until we meet again,” Rook said against my lips. “Farewell, wife.”
Shaw bulldozed through the brush onto the shore, chest pumping, eyes white as snowfall, skin pale as moonlight. Wild eyes latched on to me, and the razor tips of his claws made a clacking sound as if he couldn’t wait to get his hands on me.
Hero that I was, I stood tall before the raging beast as he charged me…
Okay, that’s a lie. I giggled like a lightweight drunk on too much champagne and bolted for the woods. I might have faked a stumble to let him get closer, and fine, I took my time climbing over a fallen tree when I could have leapt it. But the end result was Shaw clamping his arms around my torso and hauling me flush against all that hot, male skin. His lure spiked the air until even breathing made my skin itch.
I gasped when his teeth sank into the tender skin of my throat and melted for him as he growled “Mine” and dared me to disagree.
“Yours,” I agreed, arching my neck. “As long as you remember you’re mine too.”
Shaw traded his bite for a gentle nuzzle across the already healing wound. “Always.”
Always sounded almost perfect, but I didn’t plan on finishing with him any time soon. “Forever.”
“Forever,” he agreed.
And then he made me believe it.
Theo
Theo didn’t wait around long enough for his brother to reemerge from the tent where his mate had dragged him with a tempting smile that promised all sorts of wicked things. The happy couple would no doubt be occupied with a sweaty reunion for a few hours, and that was fine. Except he didn’t have a few hours to spare. Not when the first person to greet him in camp was his contact. And not when the man would shadow him until he passed on Theo’s marching orders. Because that was what Pax did. He was the conclave’s little drummer boy, and Theo stepped to his beat.
Three miles past the last grungy white tent, in a field burnt to cinders, the banshee fell in step beside him.
“So, you made it back in one piece.” He cut Theo a hard look from underneath shaggy blond hair that obscured the ruined half of his mouth. “I thought you might have cut and run.”
“I thought about it,” Theo admitted. “Faerie’s beautiful country. Deadly. But it has its charms.”
“Your brother’s mate was here, though.” Pax released a low whistle. “Talk about beautiful, deadly and charming.”
“Don’t talk about my sister like that.” Sure, he teased Isaac about Dell, that’s what brothers did, but Pax wasn’t his brother. He wasn’t even his friend. He was the guy who showed up seconds before shit hit the fan. “Dell is family.”
And family meant everything to Gemini. To him.
“Touchy,” Pax grumbled. “Here.” He jabbed Theo in the side with a folder. “Got a job for you.”
The second Theo cracked open the file, he wished he had the luxury of slamming it closed and refusing the gig. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” A heart-shaped face stared up at him from a candid photo snapped in a no-name bar in the middle of no-damn-where. Lavender contacts offset her periwinkle hair color. Both had been navy the last time he saw her. And those lips… Painted with sour-apple gloss he could still taste if he focused hard enough. “Why does the conclave want her?”
“You know her?” Pax whooped with laughter when he caught sight of Theo’s face. “It’s like that, huh?”
No. It wasn’t like anything at all. He couldn’t afford it to be. “Why?”
“She was latent.” He reached over and flipped a few pages before tapping a highlighted paragraph. “Thanks to the magic surge, she’s not latent anymore.”
Ice spread in a crackling sheet over his heart as he read her dossier. “This doesn’t mention what her powers are or why the conclave wants her.”
“They can’t figure out her powers, dumbass. Keep reading.”
Theo skimmed the entire file. Twice. It didn’t make any more sense the second time around. “This says she’s wanted in connection with eleven murders, three of which are magistrates.” A relieved laugh broke up the tightness in his chest. “Sam wouldn’t swat a fly. She didn’t kill those people.” The more he thought about it, the more he convinced himself it was all a mistake. A big mistake. Like the one he was going to make when he took this case and went back to check on her while wearing another man’s face so she wouldn’t recognize his. “Few latents know about our culture. How could she know who the magistrates are? Even if she did, why would she kill them? It’s an automatic death sentence.”
Hence the reason he was being dispatched.
“They don’t send guys like us after innocents.” Pax gentled his voice, but it didn’t soften the blow. “You can’t save her, Cahill.”
Sam had been human the last time he saw her. That must have been three years ago. One look at her frail body hooked up to all those machines surrounding her hospital bed, breathing for her, and he did them both a favor. He left. Walked straight out of the hospital and right out of her life while she still had one.
But it looked like his grand, self-sacrificing gesture had blown up in his face.
There was no way in hell Samantha Adams had murdered those people.
Now all Theo had to do was prove it before his defiance got them both killed.
What’s Next?
The first novel in my new urban fantasy series, The Foundling, will be released by Piatkus on October 17, 2017. You can read more about Bayou Born here.
How to Save an Undead Life, the first book in The Beginner’s Guide to Necromancy series, will release later this summer. I just saw the cover for the first book, and it’s gorgeous. I can’t wait to share it with you all.
If you’d like to be notified when these titles become available, join my new release newsletter.
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About the Author
Hailey Edwards writes about questionable applications of otherwise perfectly good magic, the transformative power of love, the family you choose for yourself, and blowing stuff up. Not necessarily all at once. That could get messy. She lives in Alabama with her husband, their daughter, and a herd of dachs
hunds.
@HaileyEdwards
AuthorHaileyEdwards
www.HaileyEdwards.net
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Over the Moon (Gemini Book 6) Page 22
