Returned

by Samantha Stone

  You told me none of this, letting me mourn instead. There is no reason for me to choose the pack over him.

  With a shake of his head, Cael took himself and Aiyanna away, probably back to their home in the Irish Channel.

  “You’re going to have to talk to Mary at some point,” Alexandre said, watching Beau instead of Leila’s face. He was careful not to allow any judgment into his voice—there had been enough of that for one afternoon. “You know she’s worried sick.”

  He left her alone, certain she’d call her sister and unwilling to watch the unnecessary guilt play over her features. He’d seen it too many times, when she’d blame herself for Mary’s abuse by her previous employer and the living situation they endured for years before Mary had gotten a job as a nanny.

  She might not realize it, but Leila carried as much responsibility for her sister as Mary did her. Mary had worked herself ragged trying to get Leila the education ripped away from her, while Leila constantly beat herself up for accepting such a gift, allowing her sister to provide for them both.

  Not that Mary would’ve accepted her sister’s refusal. If anyone was more stubborn than New Orleans werewolf Alpha, it was his mate. Alexandre would never forget her running ahead of the pack, into a house full of dangerous creatures because Raphael was inside, alone with them.

  There was no doubt Mary would do the same for her sister, no matter how hard Leila would try to stop her. It was why she refused to tell her sister about her status as an immortal banshee. She couldn’t bear to for Mary to know that their parents were killed and Leila had been as well.

  Alexandre hoped he found the man who’d put a bullet through Leila’s heart. In comparison to what this human was in for, Zach and Scott’s deaths would seem merciful. He’d be happy to get creative in order to teach these humans what happened to those who hurt Leila or anyone she cared about.

  “Beau, come.”

  At Alexandre’s call, the dog loped from the bedroom, through the short hall and into the open kitchen overlooking the bay. Figuring he had some time until Leila wrapped things up with Mary, Wish, and most likely her dance company, who would wonder where she’d been, he decided to take care of the dog.

  It was easy, bringing in supplies to clean and feed Beau—much easier than making batteries appear for Leila’s cochlear implants would’ve been. He’d considered it back at the Murphy estate but didn’t want to risk permanent damage to her implants. Batteries were a little more complicated to create from the Earth than a steering wheel or bottle of shampoo.

  About half an hour later, Beau appeared true to his name. He stood unmoving the entire time he was washed and clipped, albeit watching Alexandre warily with his sea foam green eyes. Satisfied with his work after thoroughly brushing Beau, Alexandre waved a hand to dispose with the dog’s matts of discarded fur. When he fed him, Beau ate as if he were starving, and then eyed the large bag of dog food like he wanted more.

  “You’re going to eat yourself sick,” Alexandre muttered, pouring the beast another half a bowl.

  Footsteps sounded, and Leila’s face lit up when she saw Beau, now clean and neatly groomed. Alexandre had used a few tricks from his talisman to achieve the result, and every bit of the power he’d used was worth it to see Leila so happy. She made over how handsome Beau looked through signs, and the dog obviously understood at least bits and pieces of what she meant because he lifted his head and tail high and strutted in front of her, back and forth like a model on a catwalk.

  “Ham,” Alexandre murmured, grinning.

  We’re going to have to take him to the vet. Leila was still smiling.

  From the way Beau had ripped out a man’s throat so quickly not even Alexandre could’ve stopped it, he had a feeling this animal might have some magical blood in him, making a vet visit pretty pointless. But he didn’t argue with Leila—it wouldn’t hurt anything to see Dr. Prejean. The man had supplied them with tranquilizers the last time they’d dealt with humans. Maybe he’d do it again.

  Alexandre didn’t want to kill everyone working for Senator Murphy. No, he only planned to harm those with ill intentions toward Leila and Mary.

  A car drove by the house, slowing down before speeding up a block or so away. Alexandre decided to ignore it—and Beau’s growls at something he couldn’t sense—for the time being. The chances of the humans somehow tracking Leila and him from that sprawling estate were slim to none, especially given he hadn’t noticed any tails on the drive here.

  “How’d your calls go?” he asked.

  Leila shook her head and sat on a wicker chair. Instead of answering, she reached for her hair and immediately began to pull out pins, neatly piling them on the coffee table until the silvery blond strands hung down to her waist. After reaching up to twist her hair into a rope, which she tied in a knot, she looked up at him.

  I’m expected to be at work tomorrow, and yes, I intend to go. She paused, and when Alexandre didn’t argue, she continued, Wish has offered to let us stay at his place, since he has all kinds of wards and spells protecting his house. I told him that’s where we’d go. Her hands trembled a little, while she kept her eyes fixed on his right shoulder.

  She was expecting him to leave her alone to face this, just as he’d left her alone before. Stupid, stupid. He should have never let her think he was dead, no matter how good of an idea it seemed to be at the time. Something told him he’d regret that particular decision for the rest of his life.

  “I’m more than a werewolf,” he said slowly, carefully. “I can’t promise you’re going to like how my life has changed as a warlock too.”

  For her, he did something he’d never done, and would never do again. He lowered himself to his knees before her and hung his head, the wooden floor hard beneath him.

  “If you’ll have me, I’ll never leave you again. I may never forgive myself for lying to you for these months, but my feelings never changed.” He met her blue gaze, her eyes swimming with tears. “I love you, Leila. I always will.”

  Wincing at her still-bruised leg, Leila gracefully sat down next to him, wrapping her arms around him just as she had hundreds of times before. When she pulled away, her hands were moving.

  You’ll have to build back my trust, she signed with a stern glare. We’ll see how it goes.

  Then she laid her head against his chest and let her shoulders, and tears, fall. They sat on the floor, holding each other, for an unquantifiable amount of time. Finally, Alexandre felt whole again.

  Another car drove by, even more slowly than the last one. It brought another warning growl from Beau, who’d been sleeping next to them on the bit of floor covered in a colorful crab rug.

  Tightening his hold on Leila, Alex rose, lifting her to her feet. The car was stopping, and it didn’t sound like they were visiting neighbors.

  Do you think—

  BAM!

  Alex had only enough time to raise a massive tree and bend it over them when the missile hit, tearing the front of the house apart. Heat scalded his back, and he felt blisters forming on the exposed skin of his neck and calves.

  Before the humans drove off, he sent a tracker and noted he would be getting near depletion of his talisman. Luckily, the tracker stuck to the car before they were gone.

  “Maybe they’ll think you’re dead.” Alex raised himself from where he’d been covering her with his body and reached down to help her to her feet. Broken glass, wood shards, bark and blue plaster scattered around their feet.

  You killed Groot, she signed, shaking her head. Despite her light comment, her entire body shuddered as she observed the destruction around them.

  With a laugh—they’d seen Guardians of the Galaxy together, twice—he plucked a few pieces of bark from her hair. “Technically, they killed him.”

  Now that the part of the house facing the street was gone, they had a clear view of his car. The air conditioning unit sat partially in the driver’s seat and out the windshield.

&n
bsp; We’re going to have to call Cael to get us back to New Orleans.

  Beau barked again, not as aggressively as he had to warn them about the humans, but enough to let him know they weren’t as alone as they thought. It was the third time the dog had done this, and Alex was beginning to think he shouldn’t have overlooked it the first two times.

  He was powerful, but Alex was much less than infallible.

  Involuntarily his hands reached out, searching, and he realized what was upsetting Beau. Conduit.

  There was a conduit here. If it came from his float, it would be ten times as destructive as the humans dreamed to be.

  Beau ran out the front, leaping over piles of debris and bits of wood where small flames burned, his nose to the ground. He stopped at Alex’s car and sat.

  “He senses a conduit,” he murmured to Leila, “and so do I.”

  After Alex gathered Beau’s undamaged possessions, he and Leila followed the dog out to the car, Leila clutching her slightly singed bag to her side.

  Maybe it’s Gris-Gris, she signed, craning her neck to watch the car more closely. Sebastian and Briony may have sent it to find us.

  Seeing how angry Cael had been at them, he sincerely doubted it. There was a chance she was right, however, considering Leila had spoken to Raphael and Mary, likely telling them where they were. She hadn’t mentioned anything about that particular conversation, he noted, indicating that it probably hadn’t gone well.

  “I hope you’re right.” He didn’t want to scare her, but he wouldn’t wrap her in cotton wool like everyone else in the pack did. No matter how much he wanted to. “If you aren’t, there’s a high chance it’ll try to kill us.”

  Perfect, she signed, still watching Beau survey what neither of them could see. Conduits had to be especially powerful to act on their own, and even more so to be nearly imperceptible like this one was.

  The air conditioning unit lifted out of his car as if on its own accord, while the metal roof seamlessly sewed itself together. Alex couldn’t see every detail, but the rest of the car seemed to move back into place like a video of occurring damage played in reverse.

  He almost regretted the quick fix; he hated that car.

  “You were right; it’s Gris-Gris.”

  Leila grinned at him, and he put all of Beau’s things in the car before turning to look at the house mournfully.

  Mary may not forgive me for this, Leila signed, her smile fading away as she, too examined the wreckage.

  Except, the house was coming together exactly how the car had—in a few moves, minute pieces of broken glass formed a window again, and walls torn into a dozen pieces morphed back into squares of flawless blue. The very floor beneath their feet rearranged itself, heedless of their weight. By the time the conduit was finished, Leila and Alex stood inside the house as it had been pre-explosion.

  Gris-Gris! Leila signed as she ran outside, and the conduit—really, conduits—taking the form of a cat finally appeared, leaping into her arms dramatically. The creature purred, rubbing its head against Leila’s sternum, but its green Day-Glo eyes were fixed on Alex.

  You need help from us, a woman’s voice whispered. Leila didn’t look up, so Alex assumed only he could hear her. Call us when you need to.

  Alex inclined his head. Thank you, he projected.

  Don’t thank us, a male child responded. Sebastian ordered us to do whatever we could for you and Leila.

  Gris-Gris batted its head against Leila’s hand one last time before vanishing.

  Leila and Alex locked up the house and piled in the car. When he heard her stomach growl, he made for the nearest drive-thru. They ate in silence, ignoring the slobbering sounds Beau made eating his kid’s-sized ice cream cup in the back seat. When Leila finished her chicken sandwich, she leaned her head against the window.

  “You never told me what Mary and Raphael said,” Alex pressed.

  Cutting him a look from the corner of her eye, Leila pursed her almost-red lips. Raphael’s furious. I told him and Mary that you rescued me, who you saved me from…and he went crazy.

  Unsurprising. Alex hadn’t considered Raphael’s reaction when he went after Leila’s kidnapper, but the Alpha had a temper on the best of days. Any threat to Mary, Leila, or another packmate was sure to send him over the edge. And I told him to prepare for war, Alexandre remembered with a wince.

  A war he’d be on the opposite side of.

  Keeping Leila with him, rather than turning her over to the pack, would be more than enough reason for Raphael to lead an attack on the float. When Alex was in the pack, he would’ve had to acquiesce to Raphael’s wishes—because the other man was Alpha, Alex was subordinate, no matter how seldom Raphael used his dominance in a fight.

  But Alex wasn’t in the pack anymore. He considered Raphael, Sebastian, Heath and Cael his friends, but he didn’t have to play by their rules, or the rules the werewolf Elders enforced. Hell, he’d even been freed from the clan prohibitum by the warlocks rather than the Elders, who were the ones meant to give convicted werewolves their freedom after they’ve served their time.

  In their minds, he was probably more of a convict than ever. He’d expected them to come after him and try to take him to a different clan prohibitum, perhaps one on a deserted island, but they never did. They must’ve had bigger fish to fry than a werewolf-warlock hybrid running loose in New Orleans.

  “How was Mary?”

  Leila drew her light eyebrows together in thought. She wasn’t nearly as upset as her mate. Mary asked me if I knew what I was doing, and I told her I did. She smiled at him sweetly, the beginnings of trust forming between them for the second time. It didn’t last very long; the smile slowly dropped away once she turned to face the road again.

  By intervening in her life after leaving and threatening the pack, he’d put her in the middle of a battle. It wasn’t lost on him that if he hadn’t followed her, they wouldn’t have known who was after her and Mary, and Leila would probably be dead. It didn’t hurt that they knew to protect Mary too.

  Raphael being Raphael, Alex wasn’t certain any of that would be a good enough reason for clemency…especially when his mate was threatened.

  Werewolves were known to pull crazy stunts when their mates’ lives were on the line. Not only was there an unbreakable bond between them, each sharing their powers with the other to a degree, but their very lives were linked. If Mary was killed, Raphael would die instantly.

  Deciding it would be wise to speak to the Alpha in person, Alex turned his attention to lifting Leila’s mood. They had a little over half an hour to drive, and he fully intended to use this time for her amusement.

  Focusing on the grass-covered soil on the right shoulder of the interstate, he pulled his car into the slow lane and pulled, thinking of every flower imaginable, in all the colors he could think of.

  Blooms burst from the ground just before they passed, continuing to do so in time to the speed he drove. Leila gasped, clapping a hand over her mouth.

  They’re so beautiful, she signed, her eyes wide.

  “Having my earth elemental powers back is much more fun with you to enjoy them.” Alex brought up a hundred yards’ worth of multicolored daisies and then changed to tulips. “You know, you could practice your voice in here. You didn’t hurt me earlier when you stopped Cael.” It meant she had more control over her banshee abilities than she probably thought.

  She shook her head, but the expression of awe never left her face. I don’t want to hurt you, she signed.

  “Try me, and I’ll continue this until there’s no more grass on that side of the road.”

  Snorting, Leila signed, Someone’s going to catch this on video, and then you’ll be in all kinds of trouble.

  “Moi? No. They can record the flowers growing and blossoming as much as they want, but we won’t show up on camera correctly. They’d have to track down the car.” Exactly how the humans with the bomb had. Alex’s hands clenched. “O
n second thought, I’ll be getting a new car when we get back into town. I don’t like this one, anyway.”

  “It’s not really your taste.”

  At Leila’s soft, lilting voice, Alex nearly ran over some flowers he didn’t know the name of, blossoms she seemed to like more than tulips. Tiny petals flew everywhere, but he narrowly avoided running completely off the road.

  If he didn’t know she wasn’t a siren, that’s exactly what he would’ve sworn she was. Her timid, quiet voice sounded like a tinkling creek when he was thirsty, or the most perfect notes composers chose to put in their pieces. Basically, her voice was every bit as beautiful as she was.

  Speechless himself, he lowered the back window and pulled a bundle of flowers, each a different type and color, into her hands. Alex was fully aware of the idiotic smile he surely wore.

  “I’ll choose more wisely this time,” he said, continuing to grow flowers as Leila watched.

  Humans did, too, driving more slowly than they should have. Some even pulled over to pluck themselves a bouquet.

  For the rest of the drive, Leila kept the flowers Alex had given her clutched in her graceful hands. They spoke with one another ceaselessly, Leila’s voice growing more assertive by the minute. Neither of them forgot what she was capable of, just as they rejoiced over the fact that, no matter how tired and injured Leila was, nothing she said caused him any harm.

  Alex only wished life would stay so easy once they reached the city, but he didn’t need the psychic abilities so many witches possessed to know nothing peaceful was coming their way.

  Chapter 5

  “IT’S a declaration of war.” Raphael paced the living room of the firehouse the pack lived in, and Mary was surprised her mate hadn’t drilled a trench into the hardwood floors with his heavy boots and even heavier stomping.

  “Maybe he merely wants her safety. Have you considered that, Raphe?” Heath raised an eyebrow, and his mate, Sophia, frowned from her position by the door.