Black Orchid (Svatura)

by Abigail Owen

Adelaide tipped her head. “Why?”

  Nate grinned. “You wouldn’t look at me. You were painfully shy then. It took me about a week before I finally discovered they were green.”

  “Like Mom’s and Lila’s.”

  He nodded.

  Nate smiled at the memories now flashing through his mind like an old-fashioned movie. “I managed to get you to laugh, although I don’t remember what I said, and you finally looked at me. I think I was determined to make you laugh every day after that.”

  Adelaide gave him a warm smile, but as he watched, the clouds returned. “I wish I could remember,” she whispered.

  Nate reached over and took her hand. “Not yet. Not if it means feeling any pain.” He flipped her hand over and started tracing the lines crisscrossing her palm. “Do you—”

  “Do I think we have a chance to fix whatever is broken between us?”

  Nate nodded, but didn’t look up.

  Adelaide sighed. “I don’t know. I could try. See if what I did to break Ariel’s bond with Maddox’s wolf pack will work in reverse for us. But I just tried something similar with Griffin, and it did nothing.”

  Nate looked up. “Do you want to try?”

  Adelaide licked her lips, drawing Nate’s regard. He held his breath waiting for her answer, not sure if it was important because his guilt was driving him to fix things or because over these last weeks, she’d come to mean more to him than simply a friend. And the insane urge to kiss her was an entirely separate complication.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Do you?”

  Nate could see an answering desire in Adelaide’s gaze. Desire for him. But also hope. She’d told him that because of her memory issues, she only knew him as she did now. The past wasn’t clouding this issue for her. She wanted the man he was now. Warts and all. The question was, could he move on from the past he still remembered?

  God, he hoped so.

  “Yes,” he murmured. But then he jumped up and moved to the window. He gazed out into the darkness for a moment. “But we shouldn’t.”

  Nate glanced back over his shoulder and caught Adelaide’s crestfallen look. “It’s not that I don’t want to. But what if your family is in the middle of a fight right now? We need to be ready to help.”

  Adelaide said nothing for a moment. She held his gaze, searching, delving deeply into his soul. Whatever she saw there was what she’d needed to see. Suddenly she smiled, and the sight took Nate’s breath.

  “They’re our family,” she gently reminded him.

  “And as I said, I can’t just sit here and wait for news – bad, good, or otherwise. I’ll go crazy. What I do… we can stop easily if we need to.”

  Nate debated for a moment. He worried about Maddox’s warning. Something had to be going on. He prayed he’d gotten Griffin the message in time. But still, Adelaide was right that just waiting and worrying didn’t help anyone.

  “All right,” he murmured as he crossed the room to sit back down beside her.

  Chapter 28

  Griffin hoped like hell that Nate’s warning had come in time. Or that perhaps Maddox was just testing Nate’s loyalty and nothing was happening to Selene and the Vyusher. He had Charlotte take them directly to the limestone caverns near Austin, Texas, that had once been Maddox’s base of operations. Maddox had abandoned it after the fight last year. But Selene had wanted to do one last pass through before having Darius, a Vyusher with the ability to control earth and rocks, fill it in so that Maddox could never use it again.

  Charlotte had dropped them into the heart of the main chamber of the complex. Risky, given the fact that Griffin was still hiding his wolf form from the majority of the Vyusher. But Desmond brought them all in under his stifling cloak of invisibility. A handy skill that the Vyusher leader had but eerie because it felt like being suffocated.

  They fell smack into the middle of chaos.

  Damn! Two things were instantly obvious: Maddox hadn’t been bluffing… and Nate’s warning had come too late.

  Griffin had no idea how long Maddox’s forces had been there or how long the fight had been raging. Wolves and humans filled the space along with a cacophony of sound and the metallic smell of blood. So much was happening, he had difficulty identifying his own people.

  “Shit,” Desmond breathed before quickly sprinting off to help his brethren, taking his power with him and leaving Griffin and Charlotte exposed.

  Griffin looked at Charlotte. “Get people out of here. I’ve got to find Selene.”

  She nodded and disappeared without question.

  Griffin immediately opened his mind. “Selene?” he called as he started to stalk through the insanity looking for his te’sorthene.

  “Selene!” he yelled louder as he searched more and more frantically for her mind. “Answer me!”

  “I’m here,” came the faint answer. “Busy.”

  Griffin latched on to her location and took off at a sprint. He caught a flash of her long silvery hair through the throngs of bodies across the room. He was plowing his way through the hordes when suddenly a large, mottled brown wolf blocked his path and growled menacingly.

  Griffin wanted to howl his frustration. Instead, he took his shield and formed it like a battering ram in front of him, slamming the wolf back. He spotted Selene standing off to the side. He could tell from her concentration that she was trying to turn off powers and neutralize the fighting all over the room. But she had to be careful to do it one at a time and could only apply this skill of hers when she could see a power in use.

  Where the hell were her guards? In battle Selene was supposed to be surrounded by wolves meant to keep her safe while she applied her unique gift. But no one was near her that Griffin could tell.

  A flash of movement across the room caught his eye. A massive grey wolf was running on a trajectory to intercept Selene. And he was going to get there before Griffin.

  Stopping his run, Griffin formed the shield like a brick wall and slammed it up in the attacker’s path. And then something happened that’d never happened before – the wolf careened right through the shield, head first.

  Griffin grunted as the wall he’d built crumbled under the force of the blow. The wolf didn’t seem remotely fazed, and it just kept running as if the shield hadn’t even been there at all.

  “Charlotte! Get Selene!” Griffin yelled as he took off running again. He wasn’t going to get to her in time.

  Griffin did the only thing he could think of…. He started putting up wall after wall of his shield in front of the wolf. Maybe he could slow him down a little. The thing went through every obstacle as though it barely existed, his momentum only slightly slowing.

  “Charlotte!” he yelled.

  When she didn’t appear at Selene’s side, Griffin called, “Selene, take off. Now!”

  “I can’t! I’m working to keep about thirty different powers turned off here. I’ll lose someone if I try to add my falcon morph to the mix.”

  Griffin’s muscles burned as he pushed himself to reach her first. But it was hopeless. God, no. Not her!

  Just before the grey wolf rammed into Selene, another wolf jumped into his path and took the brunt of the hit. The two animals rolled, snapping and snarling. Vicious growls ripped from their throats as they fought.

  Selene turned to face them. Griffin, now only about twenty feet away, could see the fuchsia glow of her eyes as she tried to apply her gift to yet more of Maddox’s forces. But before she could stop him, the grey wolf ripped through the jugular of her would-be protector. Blood sprayed from the wound.

  “Oren!” Selene screamed.

  Griffin’s mind was filled with piercing pain as he felt her mental anguish. But her screaming quickly turned to a roar of such force, every creature in the room stopped and howled as their sensitive ears registered the agony.

  Looking up, Griffin saw Selene’s body wavering, trying to morph. He leapt the rest of the distance separating them. Tackling her to the ground, he sent out a call to every being in
the room. “Get out now if you want to live.”

  Griffin growled his frustration. Unable to shift out of his wolf form, he couldn’t take his te’sorthene in his arms. He couldn’t sooth her or hold her. She lay on the cold stone floor and curled in on herself. Her body shivered, wracked with spasms.

  Griffin stood over her on all fours. Reaching down, he nuzzled her neck. “Look at me,” he said softly. When she did, fear ripped through him. The fuchsia-colored glow in Selene’s eyes was too much of the dragon and not enough of the woman.

  “Charlotte!” he called, hoping to hell that she came this time. “Get me to our family. Now.”

  He looked away from Selene for a moment and realized that every being in the room was hastily clearing out. They’d all seen what an out-of-control dragon could do, and no one was going to risk being there when she went nuclear.

  Charlotte suddenly appeared at his side, and, with a touch, they were back at the castle. “Ellie!” Griffin yelled for his sister. “Bring everyone. Selene’s dragon is—”

  Before he could finish the call, his entire family surrounded him. Hands lay upon him and Selene as they all concentrated at once. Griffin didn’t know how long they stood there, working in tandem, applying every power in their arsenal until, gradually, her body calmed and the shaking subsided.

  Everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief when Selene took a deep breath and opened her eyes. And then her face crumpled.

  “Oren,” she sobbed.

  Chapter 29

  “Okay. Just stay still,” Adelaide said to Nate.

  She scrunched her face as she concentrated on her attempt to repair their relationship bond. Nate could see the flutter of her pulse at her neck as she expended a great amount of effort to fix what he’d broken.

  “I’d show you what I’m doing, but I can’t concentrate on both things at once,” she said.

  As Nate watched, she sat back slightly. He could tell when she accessed her power to see relationships because the hand he was still holding started to tremble slightly.

  “You sure you can do this?” he asked, concern lacing his words. “Last time I had to hold you through the night before you calmed down.”

  She rolled her eyes. “That was after several big revelations if you remember. I’m okay.” She reached out and appeared to grab hold of something mid-air and hissed.

  “What? Does it hurt?” Nate asked.

  “No,” she said, through gritted teeth. “It feels ice cold and tingles.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “No idea.” She pulled her other hand from his grasp and reached out toward him. He watched as she waved around futilely in empty space for a good minute.

  Adelaide let out a deep breath, a small frown of concentration beetling her brows. Finally, she made a grab in the air. “Got it!”

  Suddenly a warm, tingling sensation fluttered from his heart and spread throughout his body. “I know,” he said in a choked voice.

  “You can feel it?”

  Nate nodded, speechless. What had started just as a tingling was now growing into something more powerful. Unable to resist any longer, Nate dropped to his knees on the floor in front of Adelaide and placed his hands on her thighs, needing to touch her, his gaze glued to her face.

  A flush bloomed in her cheeks. “You’re… mmmm…” She gave a little moan as he started to move his thumbs in little circles. “You’re distracting me,” she said in a hoarse whisper.

  Nate forced his hands off her. “Sorry. I just—” He shook his head.

  He couldn’t put into words what he was feeling. Desire was riding him hard, but more than that, he felt this electric connection with her.

  “I know,” she said. “I feel it too.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Just let me—”

  “Adelaide,” he groaned.

  “It’s not working,” she gasped. Tears started to slip down her cheeks. “I can’t… I can’t.”

  Nate couldn’t stand watching her struggle for another second. He stopped resisting the need inside him and reached up between her outstretched arms. With all the tenderness he possessed, he gently laid his hands on either side of her face, wiping away the tears with the pads of his thumbs.

  “Let go,” he whispered.

  “No,” she gritted, biting her lip.

  “Adelaide,” he said, quietly. Her eyes opened and refocused on him. “It’s not meant to be.”

  Her face crumpled as her hands released the lines she’d been holding. Sharp and terrible pain like nothing he’d ever felt before ripped through him, competing equally with desire and want. But he had only one thought –soothing her pain.

  Nate brought her face down to his and laid his lips across hers in a kiss that was both desperate and reverent.

  And healing.

  He opened his eyes and looked up to see Greasy Dave standing at the window, fury written across his face.

  Nate jerked away from Adelaide and was out the door and around by the window before Dave could even move. Taking Dave’s head in his hands, he knocked it hard against the side of the house. Dave crumpled into a heap on the floor.

  “Shit!” Nate muttered. What the hell was he going to do about this?

  “Nate?” Adelaide asked as she walked toward him on the veranda. “What was that about—” Her eyes widened when she saw the prone form before him.

  “Shit,” she said, echoing his earlier sentiment. “That one of Maddox’s?”

  “Yeah,” Nate muttered, watching her carefully. He saw the moment she recognized the man on the floor.

  She suddenly paused and looked a little closer. Then she slowly lifted her eyes, a painful kind of disappointment shadowing them.

  “Is that—?”

  “The guy I pretended to kill to save you and worm my way into your life?” he cut her off to ask. “The answer is yes.”

  Adelaide nodded slowly, as if absorbing that information.

  “Is he dead this time?” she asked.

  “Adelaide, I’m sorry—”

  She held up a hand to stop him. “Don’t. That was before. Is he dead?”

  Nate blew out a frustrated breath but squatted and felt for Dave’s pulse. “No. Just out cold.”

  Suddenly Adelaide gasped and stumbled back a few steps. “What?” she said.

  “What?” he asked.

  Adelaide said nothing, and he moved to stand directly in front of her. He was about to ask “what” again, when she laid a single fingertip over his lips.

  “Griffin,” she mouthed.

  The word was as effective as an instant ice bath. He waited patiently while Adelaide focused on the conversation happening inside her head. The longer it took, the more worried Nate became. It had to be pretty bad. Good news never took this much time to share.

  The longer the wait, the more Adelaide seemed to fold in on herself. Her mouth pulled down in a frown, her arms wrapped across her belly, her shoulders slumped. Finally, she looked up at him, misery pinching her lips tight. “There was an attack,” she said.

  Nate nodded. He’d come to that conclusion just watching her reactions. “Is everyone okay?”

  Adelaide shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “Oren is dead. Maggie’s been captured.”

  “Shit,” Nate bit out the expletive again. He’d known, dammit. Maddox had given him a clue. If he hadn’t bothered with finding Sheila, he could’ve prevented more, saved them. Nate clenched his teeth so hard his jaw ached. Images of Selene’s old friend and mentor, Oren, and of Maggie, the sweet wolf shifter who referred to herself as a living megaphone, popped into his head. He remembered vaguely that he’d really liked both of them.

  “Charlotte is bringing Griffin and Desmond here,” Adelaide said, interrupting his silent self-flogging. Her tone, flat and emotionless, worried him even more.

  “When?”

  “Right now.”

  Chapter 30

  They left Dave lying unconscious outside and went inside to meet their visitors. A
delaide walked to the other side of the room, far away from him. Nate watched her closely. Something was wrong. She kept her back to him.

  “Nate? When did Maddox tell you to keep me away from my family?”

  Nate felt everything inside him freeze. So that was it. They suspected that he’d withheld the information until the last minute on purpose. Bitterness twisted his lips. He couldn’t really blame them for their qualms.

  Before he could say anything, Charlotte, Griffin, and Desmond suddenly appeared in the room with them.

  “Answer the question.” Griffin’s voice came across loud and clear in Nate’s mind.

  Slowly, Nate rose to his feet. He gave Griffin a steady look. “Maddox told me today, when I reported to him. I went to find Sheila before coming here. If I’d come here first, maybe you could’ve done something to prevent this.” He waved a hand ineffectually in the air.

  Nate opened his mind, doing nothing to try to resist as Griffin combed through the memories. He watched Adelaide, who still had her back to him. Silently, he willed her to turn around, to look at him with the faith that had been there only a little while ago.

  Adelaide’s shoulders suddenly straightened, and she glanced first at Griffin and then over her shoulder at Nate. She flinched a little when she met his gaze.

  “You’re going to take me with you,” Desmond said.

  Nate frowned. “What good would that do?” he asked.

  “I’m going in there to find Maggie and bring her home,” Desmond all but growled.

  Huh. Was that a new development? Or did he just not remember Desmond and Maggie were together? Nate shook his head. “I get that, but you’ll never make it.”

  Desmond shot him a grim smile. “I guess you’ve forgotten that I can turn invisible. I’ll make it.”

  Now that it was mentioned, Nate did vaguely recall that fact. He paused, thinking through the powers he was aware of at the base. None that he knew of would catch Desmond easily— it would have to be accidental. Sheila was a powerful tracker. She could find him, but Nate could warn her. One of the telepaths maybe, but only if he or she ended up in a room alone with him and were listening for a spy.