Andromeda's Reign

by K. S. Haigwood

  “Do we get to choose where we go?”

  “We get to choose up to five places we’d like to go, but there’s no guarantee we will be placed at any of them,” I said.

  “Who is it up to? Do we have a shifter government?”

  I laughed. “No. They are more like a panel. The only decisions they make are about the Shift and legal stuff, like matings. There are eleven of them, and they call themselves the Council. Believe it or not, they are all human, at least the ones here in the United States are.”

  “Oh…” She got quiet, and I had a sinking feeling that she was thinking about Phoenix, and if he and his clan would stay in Alabama. As much as I hated to admit it and as much as I wanted him out of Andra’s life, we needed his clan as our allies more than ever now. The vampires did a Shift of their own, but it was done a little differently, from what I’d heard. Regardless, I was almost certain I would be able to talk him into moving with us to our new location.

  “We’ll talk to Phoenix,” I said. “Don’t worry about it right now. I’m sure he knew our Shift was coming up soon. He’s been around long enough to know as much about us as we do. I’m sure it won’t be hard to convince him to make the move, too, since you formed an alliance with his clan. He won’t want to deal with a new Alpha in Montgomery.”

  She was silent for a long moment, long enough that I was about to question her about her thoughts, but then she finally spoke. “Maybe he will consider it.”

  My brow furrowed at the indifference in her voice, but I hadn’t heard her conversation with the vampire. Was she having second thoughts about her feelings for him? Deciding to let her make up her mind about that without any interference from me for now, I shrugged, even though she couldn’t see it, with how dark it was in my room with the lights off. “I figured since he was trying to make the situation between us easier on me, that I could compromise a little, too. Besides, we need his clan on our side. Bigger numbers mean more protection for you.”

  “Ace?”

  “Yeah, baby?”

  “Who are you hiding me from?”

  Shit! I did not want to have this conversation now. She was almost half naked and had made it clear that she wanted me. If I finished the story tonight, she would put her shirt back on and go to her room. I couldn’t lie to her, though. I suspected she already knew she was in danger. She just didn’t know how much or the reason why.

  I sighed long and hard. “If I tell you who I’m hiding you from, will you wait until another time to ask me why? I won’t lie to you, Andra. You’re not going to like what you hear, but I don’t want our night to be ruined.”

  “Yes,” she said, quietly.

  “Justice.”

  “I figured you would say that,” she said. “And I can guess why, but I won’t do it tonight.”

  Relief washed through me as I exhaled. “Thank you.”

  “I have another question,” she said.

  I hesitated. “Okay…”

  “Where did the brooch that you gave me come from?”

  Another sigh of relief passed through my lips, and then I chuckled. “It was my mother’s brooch.”

  “I figured you would say that, too. I had a dream about it. A beautiful woman handed it to a teenage boy who looked a whole lot like you.”

  “That was one of my memories, Andra. It wasn’t a dream. I see your memories in my dreams sometimes. That’s when I saw the one about you fighting with your parents when you made the decision not to attend Julliard and get married instead.”

  “What was her name?” Andra said.

  “MaeLynn Wagner was her stage name up until she married my father—”

  “MaeLynn Keller,” Andra said as she gasped. “I’ve been so ignorant! She is the one—”

  I chuckled. “That your grandfather was in love with, yes, I know. I knew that already from your memories, but I wanted you to see my memories and figure it out for yourself. I don’t have very many happy memories of my past, either, but she was definitely in most of the good ones I did have. You are in all the rest of my happy ones.” A sense of awe engulfed me, and I knew that she was happy I’d said that. “And, yes, this night will be added to my very short stack of happy memories, too.” I smiled. “Let’s finish the game, so we can play a different one.”

  She giggled. “Okay, I’m ready.” There was a long pause, and then she said, “The way I see it, I got three choices. One, I can shoot him. Two, I can kick the crap out of him. Or three, I can leave you. Well, all that’s no good. You see, ‘cause none of those options get me you.”

  Wasn’t that ironic? Sounded just like something I would say to her, but I knew the movie. I’m not a total hard-ass, not all the time, anyway. I happen to love chick-flicks, and not only had I seen this particular movie half a dozen times, I had read the book as well. Of course, the book was better. “The Notebook,” I said, and she groaned.

  “Your turn,” she said, defeated.

  “Wait,” I said, “there’s something I gotta know.”

  “What?”

  “Does Ryan Gosling have a great mouth, too?”

  She giggled. “It’s an okay mouth.”

  “Not as great as mine, eh?”

  She laughed. “Not even close. You have the prettiest mouth I’ve ever seen on a guy, Ace.”

  Wait… What? “Pretty?” I said, insulted.

  I could tell she was stifling another giggle. “Um… yeah, you do.”

  I frowned as I said, “There is nothing pretty on my body, Andra.”

  She only busted out with laughter as a response to that.

  “Pretty,” I said as I shook my head in disbelief. She could have just said it was great. Damn! “Okay, what other guy on TV has a pretty mouth? He better not be a sissy, either.”

  Her titters died down a little. “I can name five off the top of my head.”

  “Mouth fetish,” I muttered. “Let’s hear them.”

  “Val Kilmer, Theo James, James Marsden, William Levy and Tom Hardy. And I’ll even throw in an extra one, just because I can’t leave out Henry Cavill. I have a fetish for everything on that man’s body.”

  “All sissies,” I said, and she laughed.

  “None of them are sissies! Tom was super masculine as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, and Henry…” she sighed, “… Well, I’ll just say that he makes a great Superman.”

  I rolled my unseeing eyes. Most girls wanted a prince in shining armor. Mine wanted bad boys, superheroes and vampires with pretty mouths. I grinned as an idea came to me. “He got a real purty mouth, ain’t he?”

  She was silent, knowing this was another quote, but I could feel from her emotions that she was worried. If she’d even seen it, she couldn’t remember the name of it. Score! “That was a quote, huh?”

  I grinned. “Yep.”

  “Shit,” she breathed. “Delirious?”

  I laughed. “Close. It’s Deliverance, and now you get to lose your pants.”

  My cell phone shrieked from my pocket, but I ignored it as I advanced on her. It stopped after a few rings, but immediately started again as I pushed Andra to her back on the floor.

  Giggling, she said, “Maybe you should get that. It may be important. My pants can wait.”

  I flicked the button free with my thumb and slowly pulled down the zipper. “Nothing is more important than this,” I said, my chest heaving in anticipation. Gripping the denim on each side of her hips, I began to slide them down.

  It was quite possible the first game would stop here and the second game would start. That was my plan anyway.

  Muffled noises of shouting and boots hitting the floor hard came from out in the hall, and then someone was pounding on my door.

  My head shot up just as Slade shouted, “Ace!” Andra went totally still in my hands.

  Fuck! “Somebody better be dying, dead or missing,” I said through gritted teeth.

  I heard the door open and the faint click as the light was switched on.

  Andra gasped as she scrambl
ed to her knees and ducked behind me to hide her half-naked body.

  “The human girl is gone,” Slade said.

  My brain skipped over a jumble of words that I couldn’t seem to force out, but when my pretty mouth opened, something did come out after all. “What the fuck?”

  Chapter 33

  Friday, February 6th 2015 3:39 a.m. PST

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  Andromeda

  Anxiety swarmed Andra to the point that she thought she might throw up. Ace reached behind him and touched her arm, letting his fingers slide down until their fingers were interlocked.

  “Give us a minute, Slade,” Ace said in a much calmer voice. “We’ll get dressed and meet everyone downstairs.”

  Slade’s accusing eyes were on Andra as he nodded, and then he turned and walked back out the door.

  “Oh, God!” she thought as a panicked sob caught in her throat. “Do they think I let her go?”

  Ace quickly turned and pulled her into a tight hug. “Shhh… Nobody thinks you let her go, Andra. Calm down, baby.”

  She sighed against Ace’s chest as he kissed the top of her head. “You didn’t see the look in Slade’s eyes, Ace. I think they do.”

  “Well, I know you didn’t, and that’s all that matters,” he said as he pulled away then moved his foot around on the floor in a sweeping arc motion. When the side of his foot bumped the sole of one of his boots, he raised his leg and pushed his foot inside, but immediately took it back out and slid his other foot in that boot before searching for the other. “We’ll get to the bottom of it soon. Find your shirt and put it on.”

  Her shirt was draped over the headboard post on his side, so she got to her feet and did as he told her. They would figure this out together. At least Ace believed it wasn’t her fault the girl had gone missing. Had someone from the party found the basement and helped her escape? She thought Ace and Slade were the only two who had keys to the cells.

  “Ready?” Ace said as she pulled the shirt over her head and tied her hair at the nape of her neck with a ponytail holder. He was holding out his hand for her, both boots found and put on his feet, when she looked up at him.

  “Yeah.” She slid her hand in his and walked with him to the door.

  Ace quickly crossed the hall, putting his hand on the far wall to guide him, and then he took the lead. It wasn’t until she heard the number five being spoken in her head that she realized he was counting each step he made until his hand landed on the banister of the staircase. He’d left his mind wide open to her. He started his count over at one, until he reached the top of the stairs, and then started at one again as he led the way down the eighteen steps of the grand staircase. Seven of his steps later, they were standing in the archway of the living room, and she was impressed.

  Everyone was here, including Clay, Embyr, Rainey, Déus and Katrista. Andra was glad they had stayed to visit with Clay longer.

  “Your chair is vacant,” Slade said, and Ace easily took the three steps down into the living room, pulling Andra behind him and counting in his head as he walked across the room to the empty chair.

  Ace’s hand reached out, and he touched the arm of the chair. After he sat, he patted his thigh, encouraging her to use his lap as a seat. She smiled a little as she took the offer, then he wrapped an arm around her middle, pulling her closer, protectively, lovingly.

  “First off,” Ace said as he opened the meeting, “I’m blind. With how fast word travels around here, I’m sure most—or all—of you knew that already. We don’t know how long it’s going to last, but I won’t let my handicap affect how I run things. Second, before any of you start pointing fingers, I want you to know that I can see Andra’s memories and she had nothing to do with the human girl escaping. She would never do that. I trust her and so should all of you.”

  Andra watched as Slade took a step forward. “I’m sure it wasn’t intentional, Ace, but Andra has been the only one allowed to see her. If I hadn’t noticed that the basement door was open, nobody would have known that the human escaped until Andra took her more food in the morning.”

  Ace stiffened beneath her. “How do you think she could have escaped, Slade? You and I hold the only two keys to the cells.”

  Bringing his hands up to rest on his hips, Slade shook his head as a sigh left his mouth. “It looked like she may have made something to pick the lock out of an aluminum can and some parts out of one of those electronic reading devices… a Kindle, maybe.”

  “Oh, no!” Andra gasped in horror as her hand shot up to cover her mouth. She felt Ace shift under her and knew that he was trying to see her reaction through his blind eyes. Her hand moved up to her forehead as she struggled to think of a way to fix this. That was why the girl had been eyeing the Sprite cans, not that she was thirsty, but because she knew she would be able to break her way out after she was left alone. “It’s all my fault. I never would have given—”

  Ace let his hand fall from her waist to her thigh, and then gently squeezed it. “What’s done is done. What we need to be worried about now is finding her and getting her locked back up. Andra thinks she may be a slayer.”

  Clay cleared his throat. “Then I think you need to be more concerned about her knowing the location of the house and coming back with slayer friends. From what Slade told me a few minutes ago, she is a very skilled fighter, lethal even. I’m sure she didn’t learn those tricks on the street. Slade said she had silver blades, so she knows what your weakness is. If she had friends with her the night Rogan died, there are probably more; could be a lot more.”

  Ace leaned his head back against the headrest of the chair and blew out a weighted breath. “I’m open to suggestions about what we should do next. Obviously, I won’t be able to go out looking for them, not until this blind spell wears off. We can’t wait that long to find her. This needs to be taken care of soon… now.”

  “I found some of her hair in the cell,” Clay said. “I can do a location spell to find out the general vicinity of where she is. It will get us within half a block of her. All I’ll need is a silver necklace to tie her hair to, a candle and a map of the city. We’ll find her if she went into the city after she left here.”

  Ace frowned. “Silver necklaces are pretty hard to come by around here, Clay. We’re sort of allergic to that particular metal.”

  Embyr reached to the back of her neck and unclasped her necklace. “Here, use mine.”

  “Will a tourist map of the city work?” Slade said. “Or do you need—”

  “That should work fine,” Clay said as he took the necklace from his sister. “The more detailed it is, the better the chances are of pinpointing her exact location.” He then pulled a napkin from his pocket and unfolded it, revealing a few gold strands of hair. He began to wrap the hair around the silver as Slade ran out of the room to find a map and a candle.

  Relieved there was a plan taking shape, Andra linked her fingers with Ace’s and brought his hand up to her mouth, pressing a soft kiss to his index finger. Grunting, he squirmed a bit in the seat, and then she felt his hardness under her thigh. She hadn’t meant for the kiss to be sexual, but she realized that it usually only took her looking at him for that bulge in his jeans to grow larger.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered as she quickly dropped their joined hands to her leg.

  Reaching out to her with his other hand, he found her chin with his fingers and turned her face so that she was looking in his beautiful, amber eyes. If she hadn’t already known that he couldn’t see, she would have sworn that he could see her. It felt like he was looking right through to her very soul, the soul that now belonged to him. “Don’t ever apologize for the effect you have on me,” he whispered.

  A sudden heat swept through her as her gaze fell to look at his lips. Her mouth watered as the urge to kiss him overwhelmed her, but now wasn’t the time to be making out. Not only were they in a room full of people, but they could possibly be in a lot of danger.

  The hand that was cupped arou
nd her chin moved along her jaw and slid around to the back of her neck. Gently, Ace pulled with his fingers until her ear was in front of his mouth, and then his whispered words feathered across her neck. “I’ll send a crew out to find the girl, and then I will take you somewhere nice and private so I can fulfill that particular fantasy that is going on in your mind right now.”

  Andra nearly came right then and there. She had to bite her lower lip to keep the moan from pressing past her lips. How on earth could just the promise of a kiss get her so worked up?

  “Anybody else have a sudden craving for cinnamon rolls and a vanilla latte?” Sinna said on a snicker, but Andra kept her attention on her pounding heart, her spinning head and the man who had her wound around his little finger.

  “I could go for some,” Nikon said, and then a low growl rumbled up Ace’s throat. Andra’s eyebrows drew in as she looked at Ace. His head was turned, and his unfocused eyes were locked on someone in the crowd. She was just about to look and see what had him so agitated, when Clay shouted.

  “Found her!” Clay said, and Andra’s head snapped over to see that while half the people in the room were looking at Clay dangling a necklace over a map, the other half were silently watching the show between her and Ace, all with huge grins on their faces. She blushed, and tried to pretend that she wasn’t as turned on as she had ever been in her life, but she figured she was failing miserably at it. She’d never been good at acting.

  Her fears were confirmed when Ace leaned up enough to whisper something else in her ear. “The smell of your arousal is intoxicating me, Andra.” He paused as her eyes slammed shut, and then he quietly muttered, “Vanilla bean and cinnamon, with maybe a hint of ginger spice. Mmm… simply mouth-watering.”

  The thought of every person in the room smelling how much she was turned on made her neck and face flame, like a damn inferno. The embarrassment alone should have been enough to crush her libido, but the fact that everyone knew how much this man wanted her only seemed to arouse her even more. She pressed her thighs together to relieve the ache, while simultaneously wondering what the hell was wrong with her lately.