A Legacy Divided

by Holley Trent

  Jody had his phone to his ear as they marched toward the outer door. He needed to get Lora up to speed and see if she could contract enough glass workers to fix all the factory windows overnight.

  He shouldn’t have been surprised she wasn’t answering, because when he stepped outside of the factory, he spotted her on the steps, nibbling a green apple, and with an extremely livid fairy standing behind her.

  For so many times in recent weeks, the circumstances had rendered him speechless, and that moment was yet another.

  Lachlann had no such incapacity. “You will cease your constant and reckless disregard of my duty,” he said to Ótama. He grabbed her by the wrist, and she promptly yanked herself away.

  “I will continue to do as I please and when I please.”

  “Without a guard, then? Do you think me so foolish that I would believe that before you boarded that ship you did not have many men keeping watch over you?”

  “I had one man to watch me, and I’ll thank you to remember that. Also, my primary aide was quite capable of defending me from hostile brutes like you.” She clutched her cloak closed at the throat and stormed toward the SUV. “Assuming I didn’t handle them myself.”

  Lachlann held his ground on the stair, hands balled into tight fists at his sides, steely glare locked on Jody. “You. Know. Better.”

  Jody wasn’t about to get into a pissing contest with an ancient fairy. He valued his life too much. He had a child he wanted to see born, and his own stubborn, frustrating woman to deal with.

  He’d thought Lora understood why she needed to stay within the protected deep interior of the mansion. She was a reasonable woman. She should have known better, too, and yet there she was, eating an apple and carelessly standing around in public as though she hadn’t recently been associating with hostile parties.

  Jody yanked off his hat and gave his hair a tug to clear his head. He closed his eyes, let out a ragged breath of frustration, and bolstered his spine. “We were trying to move quickly and efficiently,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “Pray tell,” Lachlann said, “what is so efficient about traveling with a frail woman prone to flights of fancy and who wanders off with the slightest provocation.”

  “Frail?” Lora balked. “I’ve never heard a more ridiculous statement from you. I almost regret helping you on this mission.”

  “You do not understand her as I do.”

  “Perhaps you’re right, however, I’d caution you to be careful with the language you use to speak of her. Your idea of strength is outdated, at best, and demonstrably sexist. That woman was confined to a small space for a very long time. You should be pleased that the worst thing wrong with her is that she wanders at times you find inconvenient.”

  Jody had never seen Lachlann look anything close to chastised, but at that moment, the slackness of his jaw and slight pinking of his neck hinted that he might have been close.

  “You have her in your sights now,” Lora continued. “I think it would be wise if you give her space for the time being. It would not do for her to request some other guard, would it?”

  “She cannot.”

  “She most certainly could. Her family would certainly oblige her.”

  “Even knowing she is mine?” With that question, he turned to Jody.

  Fuck.

  He hated being put on the spot like that, especially when he suspected that his answer would be judged more harshly by a witness to the question than by the man who’d asked it. “Maybe…especially knowing that,” Jody said. “You’ve got to understand who we are as a people. Our culture says that we heed what our mothers tell us and that we hold our women up as models of excellence.” Even when their sisters and cousins were heartburn-inciting daredevils who seemed to thrive on danger.

  Even when their lovers rejected notions that they knew best and did their own thing, in spite of the risks.

  He gave Lora a searching look.

  “They’re stronger, you know.” Elliott’s voice had a faraway, wistful quality to it. “I don’t really…try to make sense of it all yet. I just know that my sisters are different than I am and not just because we have different mothers. I’d feel sorry for anyone who’d try to tell them they can’t do something.”

  “That is not how things are amongst my kind,” Lachlann said. “The strength of one’s magic does not determine dominance in a relationship.”

  Jody had never heard a chorus of winces before that moment. Apparently, he was the one who had stuck his neck out and who needed to put the fairy in his place.

  He gripped the edges of his hat and stretched it while he gathered his words.

  “Okay. Listen. One of these days—and soon—you and I are probably going to have to have a nice sit-down chat about some things. You’ve been out of the loop, and you’ve missed some societal changes. I’m sympathetic. Really, I am. But for right now, I’m going to tell you this.”

  Lora was still sitting on the step, carefully looking anywhere but at Jody.

  Come on, love. You’re not going to ignore me anymore.

  He helped her stand and wrapped her arm around the bend of his before she could scurry away.

  Her cheeks blazed red.

  Really?

  “Let go of history,” he told Lachlann. “Let go of any ideas you have that there’s one right way to take care of someone. Let go of any ideas you have that their way must be wrong if your only rationale for determining that is that they sometimes dare to step outside of the box you’ve put them in. And that they sometimes choose to be less circumspect in dealing with dangerous people than you might.”

  Lachlann’s cheek twitched, but he held his tongue.

  “You’re not always not going to agree. In fact, there might be some times where you never agree on anything at all, and those are the ones that’ll test you. Those are the ones that’ll make or break what you have. Mate or not, if you can’t respect her sudden thirst for freedom, you’ll lose her. Are you willing to risk that?”

  Lachlann turned toward the rental SUV Ótama was in. She had her back to the door and was watching traffic, or perhaps just sulking. One could never tell with that mysterious woman. Her moods were impossible to map or categorize.

  “No,” Lachlann said curiously. “I am not.”

  “I didn’t think you would be. You waited this long to encounter someone with the right mix of magic to be your mate. Don’t sabotage yourself. Take it easy. Go slow, all right?”

  He didn’t respond, but Jody was certain he’d heard.

  Lachlann moved sullenly toward the vehicle he and Lora must have arrived in.

  Jody crooked his thumb toward the SUV and told Elliott and Colt, “Tell them we’re going straight to the airport. If they’re going to Fallon with us, that’s up to them. Might be wise if one of you who isn’t Lachlann can convince Ótama to go back to Norseton, though.”

  “I’ll do it,” Colt said. “She expects that shit from me, anyway. I’ve worked on her security detail enough times that she knows that I’ll wheedle her into submission.”

  “Great.”

  Elliott and Colt wasted no time heading to the vehicles.

  Jody turned to Lora.

  “You said a lot of pretty things,” she said. “Is this is where you’ll talk out of the other side of your mouth and tell me I’ll be going back to Norseton with Ótama?”

  Gods, he wanted to. The idea of Lora out there, knowing she was someone’s familiar target—knowing she was pregnant—soured his gut.

  Taking a deep breath, he pulled her against his front, holding her too tight for her to squirm—tight enough to feel her rapid heartbeat.

  He was scared, too.

  “You…go where I go,” he said. “From this point forward, and if it’s what you want. I hope it’s not.”

  “It is.”

  “You’re killing me.”

  “I suppose you will find a way to cope.”

  “I guess I’ll have to.” He buried his nose in her hair
and inhaled deeply the scent of her as they swayed slowly side to side. “You have no idea how much I love you. The thought of anything happening to you—”

  “Nothing is going to happen to me, Joseph. But if it does, you’ll fix things, won’t you?”

  “Of course I will. Every single time.”

  “So I won’t worry, then.”

  “I will.”

  “I’m fine with that.”

  He laughed and released her from his constricting grip.

  She pushed up onto her tiptoes and grabbed his cheeks. She pulled him down for a kiss and rested her forehead against his. “I love you. I do. I just never want you to forget that things will never be equal between us. I’m not what you are. People will always question why you choose me over someone of the blood. I was scared of that before, but now I just…I suppose that’ll have to be their problem.”

  “Yes.”

  She slid her hands into his back pockets, and he suddenly remembered the card he had in there.

  He groaned and ferreted it out for her. “You can update the contact information you have for this group.” They made their way down the stairs with Lora peering at the business card. “I’ll tell you all about them and what they’re going to do for us in a bit, but the most pressing issue is that…we need to get new windows on this place immediately.”

  Lora stopped in her tracks and turned back to look at the building. “What?”

  Briskly, he turned her to the SUV again and got her moving. “There was magic involved.”

  “Whose, Joseph?”

  He cleared his throat and opened the back door of Lachlann’s rental. He murmured, “Mine,” as he poked his head in. To Lachlann, he asked, “Are you flying back to Norseton?”

  “Aye.”

  “And will Ótama be returning with you?”

  Lachlann’s head turned infinitesimally in Jody’s direction. “You tell me, sire.”

  Jody closed the door.

  “What did you do to the glass?” Lora asked him.

  “It was barely a warning shot, sweetheart. Did you know that it’s possible to wrap a single bolt of lightning around a building?”

  Lora’s complexion suddenly went ashen.

  Grinning, Jody opened the front passenger door of the SUV and looked at his ancestress.

  She gave him the innocent blink routine.

  He didn’t buy it.

  “She’s going,” Colt said from the back seat. “She just doesn’t want to ride with him to the airport.”

  Elliott climbed out, chuckling. “I’ll ride with the fairy. Maybe I can distract him so he doesn’t know he’s in a bad mood.”

  “That may turn into quite the chore,” Ótama trilled.

  Jody closed her door.

  Already, Lora had her phone to ear and was speaking to someone at a window company.

  At least one of them would always be consistent and levelheaded. Maybe it was a good thing she wasn’t of clan blood. They’d never get shit done otherwise.

  His own phone buzzed right as they got moving. Recognizing the number as Shea’s, he answered with, “Yeah?”

  “Are you sitting down?”

  “Yes. What happened?”

  “Your wolves are good, dude. They stripped that cooler down to scraps and found wads of cash in the liner.”

  “Cash? Why?”

  Lora lifted a querying brow at him.

  “One moment,” he mouthed to her. “It’s Shea.”

  She nodded and started talking faster into her phone.

  “There was a receipt with the cash,” Shea said. “Had a dolphin emblem at the top.”

  Jody got a sinking feeling. “Shit. They’re really connected, then?”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good thing or bad one from your perspective, but, yeah. We think so. Our best guess is that Dan Petersen delivered a Fallonite kid to Anders’ cult.”

  “Recently?”

  “About eighteen months ago. This was the final payment, apparently. My dad is scrambling to track the kid down now.”

  “So Dan knows about Anders.”

  “We don’t know that. We know that Anders knows about Dan’s dirt, though. I wouldn’t bet the trust goes both ways. Dan’s fucked no matter what. That’s what he gets for being greedy.”

  “Indeed. Let me call you back. We’re heading toward Fallon now.”

  “Yep.” Shea disconnected.

  Jody turned to Lora and tossed his phone into the cupholder. “That motherfucker.”

  “Let me call you back, please,” Lora said to the person on the other end, and then to Jody, said, “Catch me up. We’ll get it sorted.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Fallon, Nevada

  Lora

  Although Lora had never personally visited the crew in Fallon, she couldn’t help but have formed a negative impression of them. Even before Contessa had such a hostile reception there, Lora had been aware of the group’s strong anarchist inclinations. Part of her job as the admin for the queen was compiling sanitized news items about the community into a bulletin that was e-mailed not only to residents of Norseton but to many related groups’ members as well.

  Every single month, she got a slew of charming responses such as “Go fuck yourselves” and “Stay out” and “Delete.”

  She responded to each of those with a carefully constructed message informing them of when they’d subscribed and showing them how to remove themselves from the list.

  Most stayed on because they were too nosy not to.

  If she’d ever thought she’d be standing in an overgrown field with a bunch of hostile Fallonites, breathing in motorcycle exhaust, and fearing for the continued wholeness of her eardrums, she wouldn’t have bet on it.

  She sighed—quietly, she’d thought—but Jody turned around and lifted a brow. “You want to wait in the SUV?” he asked without moving his lips. There were too many Fallonites within earshot, and none had recognized them yet.

  Lora had thought it would be wise to approach the group somewhere where they could query as many of them as they could at once. Also, she thought it would be intelligent to speak with them someplace they could easily escape from should they need to get out in a hurry.

  She didn’t doubt for a second that they would need to make a hasty escape. A motorcycle rally wasn’t an ideal scenario, but it was the best they could do on such short notice.

  “I think that’d be an awesome idea,” Colt murmured. “Get in the back seat and stay down low.”

  “I will not,” she said.

  He cut Jody a Well, I tried look.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Jody said.

  The bikers circling around the dirt track slowed as the guy in the center waved a flag and lifted his megaphone. “Show-off time is over, folks. It’s a school night, so let’s run down the old and new business real quick so we can get the hell out of here.”

  “Who is that?” Colt whispered.

  Lora cleared her throat and stood on her tiptoes to get closer to his ear. “I believe his name is Walter Ellis. Community leader, of sorts, here. Fallonites don’t like having an organized group structure, but they recognize the need to have someone keep everyone in the loop. Too dangerous not to.”

  Jody grunted. “He’s not related to me, is he?”

  “No. Distant relative of Oliver’s, though. Fourth cousin or something like that.”

  “Good to know.”

  They listened quietly as Walter informed the group of upcoming events, the sick and shut-in in need of financial resources or visits, and so on. Then he held the megaphone up for new business. “Anyone got anything to say?” he shouted.

  Lora was hoping someone would say something—that Jody wouldn’t have to walk out to a cold crowd—but the Fallonites were all restless and ready to leave.

  “All right, then,” Walter said. “I guess we’ll dismiss until—”

  Jody jumped the fence and raised a hand to him. “If I may?”

  Sour bile suddenl
y inched up Lora’s throat. She placed a hand over her neck and willed the sick filling away, but she knew the only cure would be her getting into the truck and them driving to New Mexico.

  “Who the hell are you?” Walter asked.

  “Jody Dahl.”

  “Dahl?”

  “Yeah. You know the name. That Dahl. You knew my father, huh? And who he married?”

  Whispers in the crowd suddenly turned into roars of discontent. Some of the people standing near Lora and Colt edged closer, shouting “How dare you come here?” and such at them.

  Colt penned Lora closer to the chain-link fence, putting his body between her and the crowd and pretending nothing was amiss.

  Walter scrubbed a hand down his face and shook his head. “Okay, Mr. Jody Dahl. You’ve got thirty seconds. What do you want?”

  Jody took the megaphone from him. “I’ll be brief. I’m here because the all-group council is convening. The rules haven’t changed from the time we arrived in this place. We respectfully request for you to select two delegates to attend. We have numerous issues to hold hearings on, including the unsanctioned adoptions facilitated by Dan Petersen and—”

  The shouts got louder, swallowing every word Jody spoke next.

  Walter jumped onto a podium in the center of the track and waved his arms at the crowd. He took the megaphone from Jody and said, “Settle down. We wanted it dealt with, right? Wanted folks to get their due for messing with us? You said you didn’t trust the Afótama to handle it? Well, they’re giving us the chance to have our say. Two delegates is more than most of all the others are getting, isn’t it?”

  Jody nodded grimly.

  The Fallonites had the largest group other than the one in Norseton. Their delegation would hold clout, even if their opinions weren’t the majority. Tess was innately petty, but she’d be fair. She would hear their remarks and thoroughly consider them.

  Jody took back the offered megaphone. “There are also other issues on the docket relating to Afótama concerns that must be, by code, heard by the council. I’m sure you’ve heard rumors by now of some of the upheavals in our community. You can have your chance to help us resolve it.”