Reign of Rebels

by D. D. Miers

  “Daddy saw you off? That seems to be a step in the right direction, doesn’t it?”

  I snuggled into the robe and shot him a look. “There was something about our conversation that isn’t sitting well with me. Something is wrong, and we need to decide how we’re going to deal with it, together.”

  Together meant with Grayson, who as pack alpha, had to okay anything I wanted to use the pack for. It also meant possibly meeting with Tryst and his new allies, the goblins, and if we thought shit was really about to hit the fan, possibly the Fae of the underground.

  We'd been taking in Fae refugees at a mind-blowing rate, enough that I was afraid to ask Niall how many had shown up while I was in Fairy. But they were my responsibility, and a huge point of contention between the pack and me, since I kept bringing Fae into a space that until my arrival, had only ever been for the shifters of the city.

  “So, Niall, before I get chewed out by Gray again, how many newcomers do I have to apologize for this…” My words caught in my throat as something large, brown, and furry shot into my periphery an instant before it slammed into my side and we both tumbled into the shrubs that lined the walkway.

  Moving almost too fast for me to block, claws swiped at my face and chest, a wolf’s muzzle snapping at my throat between blows. Almost as quickly as the attack had begun, the wolf disappeared with a yelp of pain and surprise.

  When I sat up, Niall was in his half-changed form, a wolf that stood as tall as a man, with a vicious, fanged canine muzzle and silver furred hands that ended in curved claws. He stood over the she-wolf, one foot on her neck as he growled a warning to her.

  “Hey, Niall, I’m okay. Just look at me for a second so I know you can hear me.” Niall and Grayson were two of the most powerful and controlled shifters I’d ever met, but something in the tone of his growl held more violence than any other fight I’d seen him in with other members of the pack.

  When he didn’t so much as twitch an ear in my direction, I repeated myself, louder. He huffed at me and immediately went back to menacing the she-wolf, who had turned as much of herself onto her back as possible and was showing Niall her belly.

  It was a submissive gesture that belonged on a natural wolf, not a shifter, but with his massive foot crushing her windpipe, I was willing to bet she would do anything to show she wasn’t a threat. At least not to him.

  I was wet, my new robe was torn, and I was bleeding from lacerations on my elbows and shoulders from the fall and some deep scratches already healing on my chest.

  "Let her go, Niall. Now." He turned his silver muzzle toward me, and even in that form, I could read the confusion in his glacial eyes. "Let her come at me. Do it, and back off."

  With one last long look, he lifted his foot off her throat and backed away from us.

  I discarded the robe, inhaling sharply as the cold breeze off the bay hit me. If I'd taken the time, I could've dried my clothes and warmed myself with magic, but at the moment, the only heat I needed was building inside me.

  The magic moved the way I’d felt the shifters’ beasts move inside them, building and pacing like it was circling upward from somewhere deep inside, fighting to get to the surface. I let it flow through me, filling me like an empty glass until my skin began to glow like the moon, so pale it was almost silver, despite my naturally olive skin tone.

  “You want some, Bitch? Come and get it.” The attacks from the pack had become so commonplace, I was a little irritated that I’d let her surprise me at all. Since Gray and I had decided to try again and see where dating took us, the challenges from would-be queens of the pack had increased to an almost daily occurrence.

  It was one reason Niall had greeted me at the portal we’d set up between my father’s sithen in Montana and my apartment in San Francisco. But I’d been gone for days and had gotten lax in my attention, more worried about having to convince Gray to send wolves to Fairy with me than I was about getting my ass kicked by a literal bitch in heat.

  But this she-wolf had already had enough. She scrambled back, wheezing and coughing and shaking her head slowly as she caught her breath. Her chest slowly stopped heaving as she cringed beside one of the columns framing in the wide glass front door until she regained enough control to shift back into a human form. She hugged herself, covering some of her nakedness. It wasn't usual for a shifter to be uncomfortable naked. Either she was very new, or very shaken by the

  “If the Right Hand wasn’t here…”

  "You'd be dead right now because I wouldn't have stopped at subduing you," I finished for her. "Or are you so new to the pack that you haven't had my prior challenges explained to you?"

  “No one said you kill your challengers.”

  “All. I don’t kill all my challengers. But I would’ve killed you, because out here, near the portal to Fairy? This space, this territory, belongs to Fairy. It belongs to me. And you attacked me in my own kingdom. In Fairy? I kill my challengers.”

  She glanced between Niall and me, and he nodded his great furry head with a growl. “You’d kill a member of your lover’s pack?”

  I laughed, and the sound that burst from my throat was unfamiliar and harsh. “I have his express permission to kill you. He knows my value, and I know my place. You’d better learn yours before you end up dead.”

  Without another glance at her, I stormed up the concrete steps and through the automatic door that opened with a ‘whoosh’ as I approached. Gray was running down the hall from the manager’s office, worry etched into his face.

  "What happened? I felt…" His voice broke off, and he glowered through the glass at the naked woman still pressed to the stone column and his second, still a wolfman, his clothes torn and strewn across the stone apron of the courtyard. "Fuck."

  I almost giggled at the curse. “I’m a bad influence on you, aren’t I?’ He glanced at me, then back again as though he’d only finally realized I was home. “Oh, gods, Morgan, come here.” he enfolded me in a hug, his dark head bent over me as he lifted me so I could snuggle into the nape of his neck.

  My legs wrapped around his waist and I clung to him like I’d been gone for years. “I’m so much happier than I was thirty seconds ago.”

  His chuckle was warm and possessive and full of the promise of the touch I’d been missing among the Fae. I hadn’t realized how accustomed I’d become to the constant touching of the shifters until I was back among the high court, easily the most repressed people I’d ever be around…and I was raised among witches so tight-assed I’d compared them to the puritans who used to like torching our kind.

  He set me down despite my sound of protest and greeted Niall. "You were supposed to watch out for her. What happened?"

  I tried not to notice Niall standing naked in front of me. The casual touch and nudity of shifters were more familiar to me than it used to be, but hot naked man is a hot naked man, and when you're surrounded by preternatural creatures who can literally smell your arousal, it's best to play it safe….at least in front of your alpha boyfriend.

  “It’s my fault, Gray,” I interjected, the reason for my distraction still clamoring for my attention. “I was upset. I distracted Niall with my bitching, and I was too caught up in my Fae stuff to remember that home is no safer for me.”

  He flinched at my words, but before I could change my wording, he cut me off. “You’re right, and the danger to you here is only increasing, now that the pack has voted to name you Valkyr, protector, the challenges are going to continue on two fronts.”

  “So, only half the women who want me dead want to fuck you… the rest just want me dead?”

  “More like, now you’ll have challengers from the men as well, for your position. You’re essentially taking over for Niall, as he moves up in rank to my right hand, you are on my left.”

  I considered it for a moment, hugging myself. "This is a conversation for behind closed doors, I think or at least dry clothes." I trudged toward the elevator without waiting to see if either of the men agreed. After all,
I was the one soaked to the bone and still healing from cuts that might have killed a lesser witch.

  Sometimes, it pays to skirt the edge of immortality. Others, I would almost kill for the chance to be merely human and leave the world of magic and constant power struggles far behind.

  Three

  Gray joined me in the bedroom as Niall puttered around the kitchen. It was like having two boyfriends most of the time…one with sexy benefits, the other for feeding us. It was a good system, and it worked only because Niall’s loyalty to Gray was tantamount to everything else in his life.

  Of course, Gray hadn’t seemed to notice that the once outgoing and flirtatious wolf no longer had time or energy for a love life of his own. As much as I continued the feeling of my little family, if it went on much longer, I’d have to step in and kick Niall out so he could relearn how to enjoy life.

  But Gray's arms around me, cupping my bare breasts as I tried to dress distracted me from even my worries about our best friend. "I missed you so much. I almost caught a flight just to sleep next to you." One hand slid lower, and my breath caught as he cupped the softest, warmest part of me, bending over my shoulder to kiss my neck as he pressed against the sweet nub at the apex of my thighs.

  “Oh, how I missed you too, Gray. Almost too much to focus,” my breath caught in my throat as he slid his fingers further back to find me wet and ready for him, “to focus on my purpose.”

  He chuckled, and the sound was all masculine, sexy and possessive and full something primal that had nothing to do with being a shifter and everything to do with being a man. He lifted me and laid me on the bed, pulling his shirt over his head in one long movement and unhooking the button on his jeans with the other hand.

  "Don't forget, the full moon is only a few days away," he cautioned me, his voice rough and even deeper than usual from his own need. "You'll need to suppress your magic because my control isn't as good as you need it to be."

  “I’m stronger than you think I am. Trust me enough to let yourself go this once and see if I’m fit to be your mate in truth.”

  But even as I said it, I knew that my love wasn’t strong enough to take him in his panther form, and that’s what letting go really meant, that he could shift on top of me without warning if his beast burst free.

  The naked need on his face told me he was willing to risk it, and I felt guilty for asking him for monogamy while I was away. I knew at some point he would probably have to be with another shifter to produce an heir, and I was trying to be okay with that. But I'm a territorial girl, and I needed to know we were good before I sent him to another woman's bed.

  He crawled toward me, his cock so hard already it was pressed to his stomach, then paused. He’d noticed my distraction. I mentally kicked myself for ruining the mood with my thoughts of a future that hadn’t even presented itself yet and motioned him forward.

  “No, Gray. Don’t stop. I’m already worried that I don’t give you enough love. If we stop now, I’ll know it’s true, and I’ll never get it out of my head.”

  He grinned at me like I’d just chased his worries away. “Oh, you have all the love I need, Morgan.” He wiggled his hips a little and made me giggle. “I’ve got what you need too, I can see it in your eyes. How could you ever wonder if you’re enough?” He lowered himself over me and kissed the tip of my nose, my forehead, and my neck, plying me with tiny nibbles between words as he spoke. “We must be something incredible, for all the trouble our people are giving us.”

  His erection pressed against me, and I lifted my hips to let him in, just as he stiffened and sighed, pulling away. A split second later I understood why, as Niall rapped discreetly on the door and cleared his throat. “Sorry guys,” he said, his lilt betraying his humor, “You’ve got some company.”

  I focused my senses on the outer rooms of the apartment. Sure enough, three Fae were sitting in my living room. Fortunately, they were Fae I knew and trusted…at least as much as anyone can trust homeless teens who steal for survival. They knew not to steal from me or the shifters, however. Me, because I fed and clothed them whenever they asked, and the shifters because they were about the only creatures on the planet that the kids recognized as dangerous.

  Gray had his jeans on and was out the door before my feet hit the floor.

  Niall peered into the room as his friend left and wiggled his eyebrows at me. “You got some sun in Fairy. I like it.”

  I stared down at my naked body. “Next time you go with me, I’ll take you to the bathing pools. You might even start to look like a proper woodland creature.” Niall seeing me naked didn’t bother me. I’d seen him naked a dozen times as the entire pack stripped down to run under the full moon. But to my guests, I was the princess of Fairy…No walking out naked in front of Fae children, even streetwise ones like Blythe, Bran, and Korm, the last being a pooka and the newest of my adopted stray Fae-lings.

  I threw on a tank top and yoga pants and joined the others in the living room, ignoring the glance the kids shared as I sat in my favorite chair. I patted my thigh and Akane, the only other Fae in the room, jumped off of Blythe's lap and leaped lightly onto mine.

  Physically, the little kit looked like any other Fennec fox, with red-tinged gold fur and ears that would always look too big for her sweet, narrow little face. But she was part Fae, just like me, the result of a Seelie Sidhe high Fae sentenced to a life in her animal form. Eventually, out of loneliness or forgetting what she really was, she'd mated with a real fox. Akane was the only Fae of her young, and her mother had sent her to me for safety, possibly expending the very last of her Fae understanding to ensure her daughter was protected.

  Now, she had the run of the apartment and most of the building and had made friends with the shifters, who she communicated with as well as she did with me, through her special kind of telepathy. She shared images of her day with me as the others engaged in small talk and Grayson pressed Bran about the apprenticeship he'd just begun with a local shifter, learning welding and ironwork.

  “Akane says you guys ate breakfast here as well? Is everything all right in the underground?”

  Blyth stared down at her hands, her cotton candy hair falling down to hide her wide, alien eyes. She was the least human-looking of the underground kids who dared to breach the surface and spend time with the shifters.

  “There’s talk about a new King in the Dark Court,” she finally admitted when the guys wouldn’t speak. “They say he can kill you in the darkness with a thought or drive the moon and stars out of the sky until you go mad.”

  So, the rumors have made it home already. I silently cursed Lothar, the new Unseelie king, for choosing to complicate my already too frenetic life even further. “Don’t believe all the rumors, at least not yet. I’ve met Lothar, and at least as far as I can tell, he’s just like every other High Fae noble…with a few more scales and sharper teeth.”

  “He has sharp teeth?” Blythe’s voice was almost a whisper. “Did he really eat his father?”

  I sighed and rubbed Akane between her ears. “I have no idea. But if he’s used to eating kings, would he stoop to a halfling pixie?” She shook her head but looked dubious. “Right now, I’m more worried about what a new king means for the bosses in the underground. Has anyone been hurt or have any of the other kids gone missing?”

  Korm shook his shaggy head and growled out an answer in his thick brogue. “No one’s touching us. They’re too concerned with who’s going to come down on them.” As the only Unseelie in our group, I was glad he’d chosen to stick around. He had good glamor, but I’d seen him in his other form, a great black charger night-stallion with flaming red eyes. His flanks had scars down them almost to the long hair below the elbows of his legs. When they caught the moonlight, they shone red with fresh blood.

  He was truly the stuff of nightmares, beautiful and terrifying. But in his human form, he was a great big teddy bear, gentle in word and manner, almost always deferring to the others when someone needed to be in charge. />
  “We won’t let anything happen to you, Korm, or any of you,” I assured them, hoping they couldn’t hear the lack of confidence in my voice. “All right, you three. Make sure you take whatever goodies Niall’s been packing for you since you got here and find somewhere else to be. We’ve got pack business we need to take care of, and what little free time we had is now spent.”

  The kids shared another look that told me they knew exactly what they’d interrupted. They stood almost in unison and accepted the bags of food Niall handed out to them. “Thank you, Mister Niall,” Blythe breathed, her alien eyes growing wider as she gazed up at him, still shirtless, wearing a pair of the basketball shorts my brownie roommate, Pippi, had sewn when she grew tired of the naked shifters always wandering into the apartment.

  He was breathtaking, and he knew it. But Blythe, while almost an adult, was still a child to him, and he was oblivious to her rapt attention. It made me love him more, to tell the truth. The lack of inhibitions among the shifters seemed to make them much less susceptible to some of the uglier problems that humans and even the Fae sometimes face.

  The kids took their reusable grocery bags full of chips and cookies and fresh fruit (my one demand when I learned how much junk food they were getting) and scurried out the door. I went to Gray, depositing Akane on the floor. She chirped her distaste at me and leaped from her cat tree to the table and onto the kitchen counter to beg for her share of food from Niall.

  “You,” I shook my finger at him, “don’t spoil her. She’s already gotten too used to people food. She never leaves Pippi alone when she’s cooking.”

  Niall grinned and winked at Akane, who yapped her agreement and kept begging. “I’ll only feed her things a growing fox needs. Right, Littlebit?”

  She chirruped at him, and he broke pieces of cheese off the wedge he’d been slicing and fed them to her one at a time. “Niall.” I glared at him, “if she throws that up, or anything else, you’re cleaning it up.” Then I turned to Gray. “I need to get dressed properly and check in with Orson. He’s been contacting me via mirror for days asking when I was coming back, but we never synced up for an actual conversation. I hope he didn’t get pissed and fire me, the kids eat enough food to just about bankrupt me.”