by Selena Scott
The truth filtered down on all of them. They thought of everything they could do on Herta if the shifter part of their contingent weren’t always in pain and struggling. They thought of what they could do on Herta with Griff there. Silence filtered through the group, punctuated only by the soft, milk-drunk snores of baby Mateo in Kain’s arms.
“Oh!” Matt said, standing up again. “I forgot about the other thing. Remember that hunter I tested a while back? The unconscious one?”
Some of them vaguely nodded, still shocked from his original news.
“Well, I can’t say for sure if other hunters are like him. Because I’ve only tested the one. But I made a weapon that definitely would have knocked him on his ass. And hopefully other hunters as well. But I don’t think it’ll harm you guys.”
They looked up as Matt held out a small twist of paper in his hand.
“That looks like a snapper,” Kain said, leaning forward. He was referring to the little firecrackers that kids could throw at the ground to make a spark and a pop.
“Yeah. They work that way, too. They make a cloud of dust. And they don’t harm me or Inka.”
“You tested this on my sister?” Ansel asked, deadpan.
“You tested this on your wife?” Ruby asked at the same moment, utterly incredulous.
“She volunteered,” Matt insisted, his ears pink.
“He was so excited about it. And I’m a good healer!” Inka insisted.
“If it works, it’ll be a coup. You think it’ll kill?” That was John Alec.
“I think it’ll knock unconscious with maybe a chance of brain damage?” Matt guessed.
“How many did you make?” Valentina asked.
Matt’s ears went pink again. “Well, I had to make the mixture in a large quantity. So, how many do you think we have at home, Mariposa?”
“Um,” Inka guessed. “Maybe a thousand?”
Milla threw her head back and laughed. “Atta boy, Matty.” She jumped to her feet. “You guys, this is incredible. We have like a billion new weapons and ways to fight and ways to get shifters on our side. I mean, fuck yes. We’re about to kick some Hertian ass.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The next few weeks were filled with tactical plans, maps, arguments, agreements, and sparring, sparring, sparring. Milla and John Alec dragged back three very angry hunters from Herta and Matt’s weapons were practiced on them many times. Needless to say, they worked.
Griff and Alayna practiced, too. The first time they went through the portal together was exhilarating and exhausting at once. Exhilarating because Griff didn’t pass out in a pained heap and exhausting because they’d been up the entire night before ‘charging up’.
It was the morning of Ansel and Ruby’s wedding and Alayna was just sitting up in Griff’s bed and stretching her arms over her head. She grinned, unsurprised, when two sleepy-rough hands caught her around the middle and dragged her back under the covers.
“I still can’t get over waking up with you,” Griff murmured into her hair.
“We never got to do that on Herta.”
“We never got to do a million things on Herta. Like kiss in public. Or spend a day at the beach. Or dance. I want to do all that crap with you.”
She nodded solemnly. “I want to do all that crap, too.”
Griff rolled to his back and scrubbed his hand over his face. “You know I was thinking that whoa-my-God.”
He hadn’t noticed Alayna sliding under the covers but he definitely felt himself get swallowed all the way down to the back of her throat.
“Baby, fuck, warn a guy.” He tried to fight his way up to his elbows, but she swallowed again and he found himself falling back to the bed. She worked that tongue of hers up one side and down the other and it wasn’t long before he was holding her head over top of the covers and fucking himself into her.
Flames licked down his spine as he whipped the blanket off of them. He gasped at the sight of her taking him so deep, her eyes hooded, her hair sticking to her cheek and tumbling over the top of her head, her neck a long, bare line.
He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her off of him, rolling her onto her back and pressing his cock between her legs. She opened, wrapping her legs around his waist and he speared, deep. Her back arched off the bed as he bit at her bottom lip.
“Alayna,” he panted her name into her hair, touched her wherever he could.
She gasped and used all her strength to roll them so that Griff’s head was off one side of the mattress while she rode him. Air huffed out of him and the tendons stood out on his neck.
She loved when he was like this. When he was more animal than man. When he was just completely gone for her. He wasn’t like this with anyone else but her and it was their secret. Alayna would never get enough of it.
Alayna felt her heart trying to beat itself into overdrive as she looked down at him and she couldn’t stop it. Her healing gift wasn’t something she could ever turn off, and it was always at play when they touched. But right now, with the taste of him in her mouth and his body all stretched out in front of her, she could feel her gift reaching out to him. It was searching him for pain. Trying to heal him. And when her gift found nothing to heal, only happiness, pleasure, desire, the only thing it could do was bind their pleasures together.
It had happened before but never like this. She could feel his pleasure. The grating, uphill, silk and steel, teeth-gritting, eye-blinding ecstasy that pumped through his body, concentrated between his legs.
His pleasure braided with hers as she worked him even harder, lifting up off of him and taking him back down all the way.
Griff’s eyes popped open as he lifted his head. Suddenly he sat straight up, his hands on her hips and his nose half an inch from hers.
“I can feel—” he tried, then shook his head. “I can feel—”
“I know,” she whispered. “I feel it, too. My gift is doing something. It’s showing me your pleasure, too.”
“And I can feel yours.” He speared his hips upward and they both cried out. Because they could feel it both ways. The pleasure of giving and the pleasure of receiving all at once.
He slammed his eyes closed and laid her back on the bed, so that their chests pressed and their legs tangled. Griff pressed his cheek against hers and went palm to palm with her. He needed to touch her everywhere. To feel her everywhere. And he needed her to feel it, too.
He pumped himself into her and she pumped her hips right back. He kicked her ankles out even further and rode, rode, rode her. He knew exactly when her orgasm was coming because he could feel it at the base of his own spine, mixing with his.
He thought he said her name, he thought that she said his. And then there were more words.
“Love.”
“Baby.”
“So good.”
“Forever.”
“Never been like this.”
And he wasn’t sure who said what, only that his life was catching fire from the outside in, like paper in a room full of matches. All he could do was grip her tight, suck that bottom lip, and burn into oblivion.
***
“He looks handsome,” Valentina said into Alayna’s ear from the front row of the wedding ceremony. Alayna didn’t have to ask who she was talking about. He sure did.
Griff had just come out to give her a quick kiss on the mouth before he disappeared again. He wore a sharp, navy suit with his hair slicked and his beard perfect. And yum.
He looked impossibly handsome. But then, so did all of them. Milla and Inka stood on one side of the altar in floor-length crimson dresses. Matt stood in the middle, Ansel, Kain, and John Alec stood on the other side.
The wedding was in Ansel and Ruby’s giant backyard and it was just the very end of fall, the colors were still bright and the sun a gorgeous weak presence, peeking through steel gray clouds. All of it couldn’t have been more perfect.
Ruby had asked over and over if Valentina and Alayna wanted to be last-minute additions to
the wedding line-up, but the Hertian girls, not really understanding all the fuss with Earth weddings, had staunchly refused, opting instead to sit together.
Alayna knew that Valentina felt as if she’d dodged a bullet. But Alayna kind of wished she’d said yes. She’d have liked to stand up there next to Griff in the long red dress that Milla and Inka were wearing.
But sitting here in her gold, shimmery formal dress, with perfect makeup and her hair blow dried to a brutal shine, a ring on each finger and a baby in her arms, Alayna found she had no regrets.
“Yes, he does look handsome,” Alayna whispered back, reaching over Valentina’s arm to put Mateo’s pacifier back in. “So does yours.”
Kain did look handsome. He also looked like a troublemaker as he leaned forward and whispered something in Ansel’s ear that had Ansel shaking his head with laughter and swatting his brother away.
Alayna studied the group, and was about to ask why Matt was standing in the middle of everyone when the music changed and the whole crowd rose. There weren’t so many people. Maybe sixty or seventy, all clients and friends of Ruby and Ansel’s, but everyone was looking back and beaming.
Alayna craned her head and gasped.
Ruby looked gorgeous. Utterly gorgeous. Her dress was sweepingly romantic, had red stones at the neckline and extended feet and feet out behind her. Her auburn hair was in lazy curls over her shoulders and halfway up into a fancy knot. But none of it beat the smile on her face.
Alayna brushed a tear from her eye as she realized that that was where Griff had just disappeared to. To Ruby’s side. He held her arm and solemnly walked her down the aisle to Ansel. She could see the tear that leaked out of the corner of his eye and it only made her love him more. Her perfect, tough softy.
He kissed Ruby’s cheek when he handed her off to Ansel and then went to stand in front of Milla. He was Ruby’s man of honor.
The ceremony was brief and even with the microphone, no one but Ruby heard Ansel’s quiet, clench-jawed vows. But Alayna didn’t think that mattered. They were meant to be private anyways.
When Matt pronounced them married, the two of them turned, their hands in the air and Alayna gasped again. She’d never seen Ansel look that happy.
It was a few hours later when Alayna finally got a moment alone with Griff. Ironically, it was on the middle of a crowded dance floor. Griff had tugged Alayna out there and pressed her all along the length of him. In her tall, tall heels she was almost eye to eye.
“You look like royalty right now,” he told her, a little sparkle in his eye.
“I always look like royalty,” she said to him, looking down her nose in an admittedly regal way.
He laughed. “You know, that’s the one thing your father got right, Princess. That you deserved to lead Herta. He wanted the people to follow you. Like they would an Empress.”
Her smile dimmed. They’d been talking about her father more and more lately, but the bitter taste in her mouth still remained. It was a strange hollow sting in her chest not to love him, not to miss him, not to be sorry that he was dead. But she was the way she was and she couldn’t change it.
“I would never have led the people. Not when he stole the throne, terrorized the masses, incarcerated shifters. I never would have worn whatever crown he put on my head.” She gave Griff a sharp look. “No matter how pretty it was.”
Griff chuckled and spun her lightly around before settling her back into his chest. “But what about what all of them want us to do?”
She looked toward his family, scattered around the dance floor and around the tables. “To be the Griffin with you?”
He nodded. “To try and make a difference on Herta?”
She shrugged, as if it didn’t matter to her, though he knew how much it really did. “I’ll try anything once.”
He laughed and was glad the song changed to a slower tune as he led her around the dance floor. She was graceful and gorgeous in gold. Her hair was a cascading strawberry swing in every direction. She’d told him that she wanted to get it trimmed but he loved it the way it was. The ends wild and light and reminding him that she wasn’t from Earth. She was Hertian and neither of them should ever forget it.
“You’ll try anything once, huh?”
She nodded, her forehead against his chin. He couldn’t see her face, but he could picture it exactly. Her square jaw and shadowed cheeks, her eyes would be even more lazily hooded than normal right now, in pleasure and relaxation. Her lips would be pulled into a pout. Because, let’s face it, it was Alayna.
Holding her tightly, more tightly than was common for dancing cheek to cheek, he ducked his head to whisper in her ear. “You’d even try marrying me?”
She immediately tipped her head back, her dark eyes swallowing him down in long, slow gulps.
He jammed his hand into one of the pockets of his suit coat and pulled out a gold ring with a round diamond on his pinky finger.
“Marry me, Alayna.”
Her eyes widened further than he’d ever seen him before. “Like this? An Earth wedding?”
He shrugged, pretending like his heart wasn’t clanging like a can getting kicked down the road. “Or a Hertian one. I couldn’t care less. Just as long as you’re there and I’m there and in the end we’re married.”
Her head tipped further. “And you want to be married to me for your whole life?”
He laughed. “Yes.”
“Because I’ve heard about this thing that happens on Earth called divorce.”
He laughed again. “Alayna, you’re killing me.” He lowered his forehead to hers. “Let’s get married on Herta then, where there’s no such thing as divorce. And you’ll have to kill me to get out of this thing.”
She looked affronted, as if she found the idea rude and distasteful. “I’d never kill you.” Her look softened and she gulped hard. He’d never seen her look this vulnerable before. Not even when they were kids, handing over the keys to their hearts. “You’re the other half of me, Griff. My heart is already married to your heart.”
He gulped, too; there were words, so many of them, but they were currently at a full stop in his throat.
“But, yes,” her reserved, hooded look came back. She tossed all that shiny hair to one side. “It would be nice to have a wedding.”
He laughed, choppy and nervy. “So that’s a yes, then?”
“That’s more than one yes. That’s a yes every day for the rest of my life.”
He dipped her back and kissed the absolute hell out of her for everyone to see. When he righted her again, he could feel the bright, thrilled smiles of the people he loved the most in his life.
“Here.” He held his pinky finger out to her and she spotted the shiny diamond. And the many colored gems that lined the band.
“Ah!” Her mouth dropped open. “That’s for me?”
He nodded, her delight filling him up like a helium balloon. “Yes, it’s an Earth tradition.”
He picked up her left hand and laughed, yet again, when he had to remove not one, but two other rings from her ring finger. The girl really loved her shiny things.
***
Alayna sagged back against Griff as they panted into one another’s mouths. He’d taken her from behind, her hands planted against the wall of his bedroom. And now that he thought about it, he probably should have done a less energy-draining position, considering they were about to waltz into Herta to kick off all this madness.
It was ten days after the wedding and there were no more excuses. The knives were sharpened, the arrows counted. The extra food stores were packed, the sleeping bags and the compasses. Every little tool and invention of Matt’s were duplicated and distributed to each person.
And now it was here. The day they marched off to war.
Griff had never felt better. He could feel Alayna’s gift snapping over his skin like electricity, healing and warming him. All her warm skin stretched out against him and her ring sparkled on her hand against the wall. He’d moonwalk i
nto Herta if he could.
“What are you smiling about?” she asked as she slipped into her cargo pants and wool socks, eyeing her hiking boots with mild distaste.
“Nothing. Just that I would go anywhere with you and be happier than I was without you. Even back into Herta.”
They trudged through the woods to Ansel and Ruby’s house. Griff went immediately to his red-eyed sister, who was passing out last-minute muffins and hugs and crying silently.
After much discussion, it had been decided that Ansel was going to stay behind. So were Inka, Matt, and Ruby. There needed to be people on this side for any shifters they sent home. Also, Ansel had his new family to think about.
So it was John Alec and Milla, Valentina and Kain, and Alayna and Griff who were heading into Herta that morning, searching for the rebel group of shifters.
“You two all ‘charged up’?” Kain asked with that silly grin on his face.
“Yes,” Alayna deadpanned. “Jealous?”
Kain laughed and tossed an arm around her neck. “I did a little charging of my own.”
Valentina ignored him and went over to hug Matt, hard. “You take care of yourself, okay? And your kids. And Inks.”
Matt nodded, hugging the little woman and letting his eyes slip over to his wife.
“Should we?” he mouthed at Inka.
She looked confused for all of one second before her face lit up with understanding. “Oh! Yeah! Everybody!”
The group turned and looked at her.
“I’m pregnant again.”
“Again?!” That was Griff.
“You were JUST pregnant like two months ago.” That was Milla.
“I’m so happy for you!” Ruby.
“Matt, jeez, man. For a nerd you sure have a hell of a sex drive.” Kain, of course.
Matt, ears pink, merely shrugged. “She’s fertile. I’m virile. It’s, ah, the way it works.”
Inka was passed around for hugs and kisses and all of them tried very hard not to think about the fact that the six warriors about to head into Herta were likely not going to be there for the birth of Ruby’s baby, or Inka’s.
