The Raven Trilogy- Complete Series

by Elle Lincoln

  “I’m sorry.” Guilt creeps up my spine.

  “Don’t be. We understand, but enough is enough. Now proceed. I’m just going to watch.” Mac sips his own drink.

  “You are all drunk,” I point out.

  Patrick laughs like that is the best joke I’ve ever made. “Oh, honey, if only one sip could get us drunk. I’m sober as a fox.”

  My brows furrow, he’s probably right. I guess I’m just an immortal lightweight. Logan takes a finger and brushes the skin between my brows, smoothing out the wrinkles.

  “You good?” He searches my eyes.

  “Yeah, I’m just… I shouldn’t have shut you guys away.” That one might eat at me too.

  But I can’t think about it, because Logan’s lips are on mine—rough and demanding. The tether holding him back snaps and his tongue spears my mouth, his lips unyielding as he devours me. His stubble scrapes my cheek, my mouth. The burn stoking a fire inside me that I should have never denied. The darkness that lives in my core awakens for the first time in a month, stretching out her claws, sniffing the air and scenting each of her men.

  Mine.

  I roll on top of Logan. My heart pounding, my body burning, and my senses overload, and I lose my self to the feel of him. Of them. Hands run up my sides, gently grazing the bottom of my braless breasts.

  “Off,” Patrick growls in my ear, his body warming my back as he kneels over Logan from behind. His hands skim my sides, brushing over Logan’s to tear my shirt from my body. His hands thread mine as he places them behind his head.

  I lean back, gazing down at Logan. His eyes darken and his pupils take up the deep brown iris. He doesn’t once take his eyes from mine as his hands graze my sides, his touch featherlight, and then those calloused thumbs flick my sensitive nipples.

  I gasp, leaning back into Patrick, my core tightening, my head filling with erotic need. Everything inside of me spirals into a tight coil of want.

  My fists clench my pants as my gaze lifts. Casseus kneels a few feet from Logan’s head, his eyes fixed on Logan’s fingers as he rolls my nipples between his thumbs and forefingers. His thoughts flood my head with ropes and chains, those dark desires ramping me higher. My hips jerk, seeking that sweet fucking friction.

  I roll my head to the side, giving Patrick access to my neck. His beard runs along my shoulder blades as he places little kisses along my spine and the column of my neck. His mouth clamps down on the tender flesh that resides there, his teeth marking my skin.

  My eyes meet Mac’s. Shadows hide him, and his grown out, blond ringlets brush his shoulders, rising in disarray as the light from the cabin grants him a halo. He leans forward, his gaze heating my skin, rolling down my body, and stopping where I restlessly grind against Logan. My own eyes graze his body where his t-shirt hides nothing, his muscles strain, and those sweats he wears tells me exactly how excited he is in this moment.

  Balor sits beside him, leaning back and giving off an air of casualness I know he doesn’t fucking feel. His bare chest gleams in the moonlight, his kilt sitting low on his hips, while a hand grips his cock, and a thumb flicks over the fabric where his sweet spot hides.

  I lick my lips.

  “I want...” All of you. The words fail me as Logan squeezes my nipples, and I’m riding that delicious border between pleasure and pain.

  Something catches my eyes beyond the space between Balor and Mac, past the porch, and in the still dark of the Forest.

  My blood chills.

  I lean forward, my body no longer rocking with pleasure. Eyes wide, I catch that small spark I know I wasn’t meant to see.

  My guys are too fucking slow, and the world moves in slow motion as they scent and feel my fear.

  I pull every ounce of magic into me, yanking the Sluagh from the ether, gripping the strings until I fill myself to the brim with power. I seek the threads of my guys, pushing energy into them.

  My power surging until we all dissolve into the mist.

  Just as everything my eyes see goes up in an explosion that rocks the Earth.

  Chapter 2

  Bette

  Up In Smoke

  Wave after wave of flame and debris rolls over us, through us. My ears ring with the song of destruction, yet my eyes cannot look away, not even as they sting with emotion and blinding light. The blast ignites every piece of wood, curtain, couch, and bed. Everything.

  Our home.

  “Bette, move!” Balor’s roar shakes the Earth once more, and his wild eyes scan me before he dives in my direction. Except none of us are corporeal and the only thing he does is dive through the three of us sitting here.

  “Balor, stop.” My voice is empty as the world burns around us, consuming our world, our life we were just starting to build. Pain engulfs me as I struggle to speak around the grief. “Just drift.”

  I rise to hover over Logan, his eyes panicked as flames dance around us. He glances anywhere he can, the question in his eyes the same as the others. How? He gets up as he normally would, but since he’s mist, gravity no longer exists, and he flails.

  “Bee, I’m not going to ask how you are doing this, but I’m just thankful you marked me.” Logan’s voice shakes, his head jerking around the area. “I had so many plans for the night,” he mumbles to himself, breaking the tension as we stand in a literal fucking explosion.

  “Move to the edge of the forest,” Balor orders, then tries to walk, but his feet just lift and stomp down onto nothing.

  “Drift, you derp,” Casseus chides, which is easy for him to say since we are both the same supernatural. Balor? Not so much. He is used to being the giant he is, weighing an actual ton.

  I glance around as the others struggle to figure out how to move as an incorporeal being. The entire scene is comical in a disturbed way as they struggle to figure out how to move in this form. A bubble of laughter bursts from me, full of sorrow and strain. Stress morphs that laughter to tears as I keep hold of my guys in this form.

  Casseus moves over to me, his ghostlike fingers trying to brush my tears away, their weight nonexistent for now. “We will get through this.”

  I know he is trying to comfort me, but my emotions are a raging storm fluttering from one extreme to the next. Anger rises and with it, my darkness. “Someone just tried to kill us.”

  “Yeah, with a bomb!” Patrick is the only one who has figured out how to walk and waits a few feet away, grumbling to himself about fooking immortals and mortals. “No one fights like a man anymore! It’s preposterous!”

  “You aren’t a man,” comes Mac’s lazy reply.

  “Ye know what I mean. Swords and axes. Bombs! Who fucking blows something up with a bomb?” Patrick crosses his freckled arms, while a vein pulses in his forehead.

  Tired of waiting for them to figure out how to drift, I turn and slide toward the tree line, beyond the fire. I pull the guys along, tugging them like unwilling toddlers. Once there, out of the danger zone, I go to drop the mist and hesitate. “Brace yourselves. Gravity is about to ruin your night along with all the sounds of the fire.” The world is dampened in this form.

  I allow gravity to weigh us down and listen to a few thumps before the crackling of wood takes over my senses. Smoke infiltrates my lungs, itching them to a cough, while small snaps and louder bursts pop from the rubble. I stare at the destruction laid out before us. Nothing is salvageable. A numbness creeps over me now as I gaze at the burning rubble. A long time ago, I accidently burned down the first cabin, this time it wasn’t my fault.

  “We don’t always sit outside.” I blink, wondering when the tears will come back. It isn’t normal to feel this paralyzed. “Some nights we go to bed early, it’s nearly three in the morning. We should have been asleep. And if we were...”

  “Hey.” Mac pulls me into his arm, his heated body comforting. “We will find out who did this.”

  I will find out who did this and I will destroy them.

  “I saw them,” I mumble into Mac’s chest while dreaming about death.r />
  Logan grips me, turning me around. “Where?” He rips his shirt off, preparing to shift.

  I point toward the darkest part of the forest.

  “Patrick, follow us,” Balor commands. “Cas, Mac, keep her safe.”

  Casseus snorts. “I believe she is the one who will keep us safe, sir,” he mocks.

  But Balor isn’t listening, he’s already adjusting his kilt and stomping away through the forest as he grows. I sigh. “He’s so angry he can’t even realize any fool can hear him.”

  “But they won’t hear me.” Logan turns, dropping a swift kiss on my lips before taking off, and leaping into the brush as a wolf.

  “They might hear me.” Patrick pulls his ax from the ether before stomping away.

  “We have nothing.” The numbness fades for a moment, allowing pain to pour into my numb emotions. “If Grandma hadn’t left for the other cabin, she wouldn’t have survived.”

  “I’m going to stop you right there, Little Raven.” Casseus spins me to face him, his eyes crazed and his hair in disarray while smoke billows behind him. “No one died except the house. Forget about the house right now, we are crafty fuckers. Balor lived for centuries without a home until he built one. Hell, he built himself a castle. Imagine that.” Casseus grips me, turning to look at the fiery bubble before us. “A castle sitting here overlooking the forest below.”

  “I like it, we can dig deep enough to let some saltwater spill up from the earth. Or we can move east.” We both glance at Mac. He might joke, but he is also more than likely serious. He just shrugs, his crooked smile lifting one side of his lips.

  “Do you want to move, Mac?” I study him, waiting on his answer, though his features don’t change. The sea is so far away and we’ve been selfish.

  “It would be a lie to say I don’t want to.” He turns, facing Cas and I head on. “But there are things I’ve found that are worth the sacrifice.” My body warms from that look, though the heat from the fire roars, it kept me cool with shock.

  Casseus steps in behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist and setting his chin on my shoulder. “First thing we will do is take a vacation to the beach. We can lie around naked on our own private shoreline. Each taking turns fucking you until you pass out, then starting all over again when you wake. But right now, I want to talk about Bette and her little magic trick.” How he can go from talking like a filthy porn star to serious in two seconds flat will always amaze me. I can’t recover that quickly.

  “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.” My eyes catch our burning home once more and my lips twist in disgust, the sight cooling my libido again.

  “Come, let me show you.” Cas grips my hand, leading me down the driveway toward the useless car. Mac following on our heels. I glance back at him, wondering if he knows what Cas is going on about, but he just shrugs.

  “You think there is a shirt in the car?” I don’t mind the chill of the night, but my nipples are feeling confused right now, caught between the stimulation they received from Logan’s and Patrick’s hands, then nothing, to the fire and now the wind that keeps teasing them to hard little nubs. Not even counting Casseus’s words that can turn on a nun.

  Mac snorts, trying to hold in his laughter. Casseus, however, laughs, his body shaking with amusement. “Oh, Bette, that was amusing.”

  “Get out of my head.” My merry band of warriors flawlessly figured out how to communicate through our mental link, while I’m still stumbling in the dark. None of them will teach me, since they finding it highly amusing. I’ve learned some things, but I’m nowhere near their level with it. Yet. I’m blaming my one month long mental vacation for that regression.

  “Nope, and I’m sure there is still a bugout bag in here.” But that isn’t what Cas reaches for. Instead, he reaches for the stone hidden under the bumper holding the trapped Sluagh.

  “Casseus, what are you doing?” I watch as he peels the tape holding my ghosties on the bumper. I’m glad they decided this was a more logical hiding spot, even if at the time I didn’t think it was.

  A smile tips his lips, and his brows rise once he gets it free. He whips it in front of us, standing in one fluid movement. “Voilà.”

  A nervous flutter rises in my belly and adrenaline spears me. I yank the stone from his grip using the burning fire from behind me to light up the smooth stone. “Where are they?” My voice breaks with emotion, and I feel more empathy than what I felt when watching the world burn around me.

  “Free, Bette.” Casseus grabs the now crystal clear quartz and slams it on the stone driveway. I watch as the rock shatters and Cas nods to himself.

  “What the hell! Why did it shatter?” Stone doesn’t just crack or break like that.

  “It served its purpose. Stone like that imbued with magic becomes fragile once it’s no longer needed.” His full attention lands on me. “Still horny?”

  Mac snorts as my eyes widen. “Cas! What’s going on?”

  “Is that a no?”

  “Yes, it’s a fucking no!” Even if my body floods with desire at just the thought of being between those two again, while Cas whispers dirty little secrets into my ear and Mac teases my body.

  “See, you say no, but I’m in that head of yours, and I’m not feeling a no.” That smug face is almost too much to handle.

  I turn to Mac, hoping at least one of them can focus, but I find the same smile on his face. “You too? Focus!” I resist the urge to kick their shins.

  Casseus once again comes up behind me, his hands on my hips and his lips at my ear. “You set them free, Bette, your need rose to a peak and you pulled them to you to save us.”

  “Just like that?” I know I yanked on them to turn all the guys into the mist, but I didn’t know I freed those that were trapped.

  “Apparently so. And...” He spins me. “They are all with us once more.”

  Tension bleeds from my shoulders that I’ve been holding on to since the day I lost them. I close my eyes, allowing Casseus’s words to sink into me. To allow their truth to ease all my worries. We may have nowhere to sleep tonight, but we are whole. It’s something I often take for granted—a reminder of the person I was before the Sluagh found me, killed me, then made me immortal. Turning me into the Lady of the Hunt.

  “Now what?” I eye the car warily. With the flux of magic, all technology broke down, which included modern cars. This little beater is about twenty years old, but I haven’t thought to see if we can salvage the hunk of metal. I hear motors running through these woods on occasion, but I’ve never questioned it. Until now.

  I bite my lip, realizing just how deep my depressive state had been, turning me into a shell of the woman I had become, not even the one I was years ago peeked through. Instead of dwelling on it, though, I make a mental note to not let it overtake me again.

  This era is too dangerous for me to sit around as a shell. I scrub my face with a hand, feeling weary. Wallowing in what I should have done left me weak and exhausted, something I’m paying for right now as emotions continue to destroy my mental capabilities.

  “Let it roll through you, Bette, acknowledge how you feel and move on.” Mac’s words strike a chord, giving me that tether. Maybe they can stay in my head, at least for tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll challenge myself to face everything head-on and then wake the fuck up. “As for what we need to do…” A devious smile lights up Mac’s face.

  “I don’t like that look. That’s a Casseus’s look, and when you have it, I know nothing will go well.” I place my hands on my hips, staring him down and trying to look intimidating. But I’m still partially naked and neither of them have been willing to open the trunk and give me a freaking shirt.

  “Well, we may have been tweaking with a few things,” Casseus adds with an amused snort.

  “What did you two do?” I back away until they are both in my line of sight.

  You three need to get here, now.

  Balor’s voice rings through my head. Casseus and Mac lose their lively demea
nor, their heads cocked to the side as they hold a conversation I’m not included in.

  Mac quickly unlocks the trunk, digs through a bag, and tosses me a shirt.

  “What’s going on?” I ask, but my question goes unanswered.

  “The ATVs.” Casseus grabs my hand, leading me into the woods, and down a worn dirt path to a shed. I knew it was there, but I didn’t think it would be necessary anymore, since cars and other vehicles died because of the magic flux. Now, I realize how wrong I was as the guys open the door, revealing two muddied up ATVs.

  “I’ve got Bette, go. We are right behind you.” Mac swings me up in his arms, setting me on top of the vehicle.

  Casseus starts his vehicle with a serious expression. An anomaly for the amused pirate who is always the first to crack a joke—well, besides Patrick. Worry gnaws at me as possibilities of what could have gone wrong flutter through my head.

  Someone could have gotten hurt, a commonality since the fall of mankind. Or one of my guys got hurt. That thought spikes adrenaline through me. I hate these thoughts and I wish they would just tell me what is going on, because my imagination is so much worse.

  Casseus darts out into the night, his motor roaring.

  Mac settles in front of me, starting the ATV and pulling out after Cas. The rumble of the engine drowns out my thoughts as Mac expertly swerves between trees.

  A wolf howls in the distance, and I know without a doubt it’s Logan, calling to a pack that left him with us. Their tie forever severed since he chose us, but there if we are ever in need.

  Why are we in need of the pack?

  My adrenaline ramps up.

  Branches scrape my arms, some foreign to Earth but no longer. Leaves flutter around us, their colors in full summer bloom. The heat of the night surrounds us, granting the situation an ominous feel as the fire still rages in the background.