“I wish we could have met a long time ago,” he murmured. “I don’t know how, but I do wish it. Maybe you would have taken a summer road trip down the coast. Or, if I’d become a teacher instead—”
“Wait a minute!” I gasped, shooting up to a sitting position. He followed suit, placing a hand on my back.
“What?” he asked, his eyes full of concern. “What is it?”
I looked at him with wide and wild eyes.
“I know how to protect Iris.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Okay, first of all, I just want to say, I totally called it.” A grin cracked his lips.
“Oh, get dressed. We have to go tell them!” I said, giving him a playful shove as I went about collecting my discarded clothing items.
“I’m not kidding,” he said, scooting off the sofa and grabbing his pants. “I told everyone, multiple times, ‘When Marigold wakes up, she’s going to figure it out, and you’ll all feel like idiots’. Okay I didn’t say the idiot part, but I did say the rest.”
“So, everyone knows you had an instant crush on me?” I teased.
“I—” he started to argue, but cut himself off as his mouth gaped open, unable to respond. “Yeah, everyone knows,” he finally admitted with a playful smirk.
Once dressed, I told Crew to text Layni and have Sentry Force meet us in the meeting room. As we rushed across the grounds towards the main building, I texted my dad and Iris separately, asking the same.
I received a text back from my father immediately.
I tried to call you three times. We’re already in the meeting room. You had better get here fast. You and Mr. Wrathshore have a lot of explaining to do.
I stopped dead in the cool night air and my heart skipped a beat. Crew whipped around and rushed to my side.
“What? What’s wrong?”
I held up the phone to show him the text.
“Shit,” he hissed.
“What’s going on?” I groaned. “If it’s just about you and me, then why did he say ‘We’re in the meeting room’?”
“I think I have an idea of some others who would not want us together,” he said with a grimace.
“Who?”
“My parents,” he answered. “The faerie ones . . .”
“Oh, crap,” I uttered.
“Yep.” He took a deep breath and grabbed my hands. “But nothing anyone says in there is going to change what I want. I know it’s been a ridiculously short amount of time, since I met you, but I want to try this. I want to make this happen. I haven’t felt this way about anyone, ever. It just feels . . .”
“Right,” I finished his sentence, remembering how I had felt exactly the same way.
“Right,” he echoed. “So, we take this together. We’re together.”
I sensed a bit of question in his statement, so I nodded. “Together.”
He lifted my hand up to his mouth and kissed the back of it before turning and marching toward the building. I had to take quick, long steps to keep up with his determined gait, but I managed to stay at his side the whole way, until we entered the meeting room, down the main corridor from the great hall.
Crew was right. Seated at the long conference table next to my father were a male and female that looked to be about my father’s age and they were obviously not of this world. They both had skin of a bluish tint and pointed ears, with eyes that looked like actual diamonds and hair that looked like thick spider’s silk.
The rest of the table had been filled by the Empire State unit of Sentry Force, whereas Iris was keeping her distance, standing at the door with Layni at her side.
“Glad you could finally make it,” Forrest said in an agitated drawl. “We have tried to call you each a few times. Must have been loud in the city?”
I nodded quickly. “Salsa music,” I said, though I knew that wasn’t when he tried to call me.
“Listen, whatever you two are here for, it’s not important,” Crew jumped in. “Marigold has an idea—”
“Not important?” his mother shot out of her seat. “You know we would only be here, risking your safety, if this were important.”
“I am perfectly safe,” he argued. “However, the people here at this academy are not. We can fix that—”
“Son, the only person who has been hurt at this Academy since you arrived is my daughter,” Forrest said, crossing his arms and glaring at Crew. “If I’m to believe Galena and Eiren here, you’re directly responsible for that.”
“Dad, no,” I interjected. “I would be dead if Crew hadn’t combined magic with me. He saved my life!”
Everyone in the room gasped except Layni and Iris, who seemed bored by the information that everyone else found shocking and scandalous.
“So, it’s true?” Galena collapsed in her chair with a hand to her chest. “I can’t believe this.”
“How dare you?” Forrest spat. “I do everything to accommodate your stay here and you do this to her—”
“I am fine!” I shouted, but he talked over me.
“—and take her gallivanting around Manhattan right under my nose, after I expressly asked you to stay away from my daughters!”
“With all due respect, sir,” Crew said in a deep, steady voice, “your daughters are adults who are perfectly capable of making their own decisions. Marigold is wickedly smart, stunningly brave, and deeply caring. My feelings for her aside, I wouldn’t hesitate to save her life again, because I know exactly how many kids and teachers in this school need her and look up to her as well as value every word she speaks.”
My chest swelled with emotion at his words and I squeezed his hand in gratitude.
“So you have no remorse for your actions?” Eiren snapped.
“None at all,” Crew replied with a shake of his head.
His parents exchanged a serious glance and sighed in unison.
“We’ve allowed this to go on long enough,” Eiren said, standing from his seat. “If you can take care of yourself against these Sentries, or whatever they’re called, you can defend yourself against your aunt Tenebra. You’re coming back home.”
“My home is in Salem,” he growled through gritted teeth.
Galena shot out of her chair again, her eyebrows furrowed into a menacing glare. “You will come to the realm of the fae and choose your mate.”
He shook his head again and clicked his tongue. “Hard pass.”
Iris chuckled behind us.
“You may take the half-breed as your mate, if you love this realm so much,” Eiren offered, gesturing toward my sister.
The room erupted in protest from several sources.
“Now, hold on a minute,” my father drawled.
Iris screeched: “Oh, wow, okay—I’m not an object!”
“That’s inappropriate,” one of the Sentry Force men remarked. Either Kevin or Rufus; nobody had ever told me which one was which.
“I don’t want her,” Crew responded. “No offense, Iris.”
“None taken, Dude,” she chuckled.
Galena gasped, as though someone had died in front of her, and she threw her bony hand over her mouth. “Oh dear.”
“What, Galena?” Eiren asked.
“They have joined energies and souls,” she muttered. “I can sense their union.”
“Their what?” Forrest snapped.
“Okay, this is humiliating,” Crew groaned.
Iris broke into hysterical laughter, and despite my embarrassment, I had to bite my lip not to smirk at the sound of it.
“Son,” Eiren said in a slow, lecturing tone, “if you have made a complete union, both of your essence and your body—”
“I can’t hear this,” Forrest grumbled from the head of the table, shaking his head.
“—you cannot enter into another union, until this one is broken.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“I think,” Iris said, stifling her giggles, “he is saying that you two are faerie-married and he can’t go back with th
em and marry another faerie until he faerie divorces you.”
Crew looked at me and shrugged. “She’s basically right.”
Galena and Eiren exchanged another glance, this time it was disappointed and defeated.
“There is nothing for us to do here, then,” Galena sighed.
“I’m afraid not,” Eiren muttered. “I hope you find happiness in this union, Son. If not—”
“Don’t finish that sentence, please,” Crew interrupted; his voice stern.
Without another word, Galena and Eiren vanished into the air, with just a hint of shimmer.
The room was silent for a long minute until Iris finally spoke up. “Well, congratulations, you two. Maybe you could have asked them to, y’know, help us defeat the Sentries, as a wedding present?”
“They never would have,” Crew said turning to face her. “But, Mare has an idea how to keep you safe, at least, which we’re hoping will throw them for a loop.”
“Okay,” Iris mumbled nervously, “what is it?”
I took a deep breath. I didn’t like my plan, but it seemed like the only hope.
“There’s one place we know where you can go and where the Sentries aren’t,” I explained. “Somewhere they don’t exist.”
“Where is that?” Layni asked.
“The past,” I answered, my throat going tight.
Iris’s face dropped. “Are you serious?”
“It would only be until we could figure out something permanent,” Crew said. “Then we’ll bring you back.”
“You can do that?” Iris asked.
“Your sister can,” he replied.
“Well, I think I can,” I corrected.
“She can,” he said.
Iris looked between the two of us and grinned. “Well, I’m certainly going to miss all this,” she chuckled.
“You—you’re okay with it?” I asked.
“Well, if my choice is time travel or being hunted by metal death machines for who knows how long, yeah, I think I’ll Marty McFly on out of here,” she said.
“Iris, don’t be ridiculous,” Forrest jumped from his seat. “This is a terrible idea! You can’t just leave—”
“This actually sounds genius,” Layni interrupted. “Marigold, what made you think of this?”
I felt a blush tinge my cheeks. I couldn’t tell them it was what Crew said to me after we’d made love—though they did all know about that, thanks to his parents . . .
“I—um, we went to a Cuban restaurant for dinner,” I explained, twisting the night’s events to fit a less scandalous reason for my revelation. “I remembered how one of my teleport spells had taken me to a historic event in Cuba—in present time—but it got me thinking when I came home about how interesting it would be to witness other historic moments.”
“Wait, you’ve been to Cuba?” Crew asked, and I nodded. “Well, my restaurant choice for our first date feels a little less impressive now,” he joked.
“I was in Havana for the 2008 elections,” I continued, giggling for a moment at Crew’s self-deprecation. “Naturally, I became enthralled by other significant elections.”
“Oh, God,” Iris groaned. “I know where this is going . . .”
“While trying to fine tune a time portal, the only spell I ever drafted was for New York City, November nineteen-twenty.”
“Why then?” Forrest asked.
Iris, Layni and I all stared at him and answered in unison. “Women’s suffrage.”
“Oh, right,” he muttered, sitting down in his seat.
“Damnit, Mari!” Iris yelled abruptly.
“What?” I yelled back, out of habit.
She threw her arms up in the air and raised her volume even more. “That’s prohibition!”
“Okay, well I will send you with all of my best ‘conjure cocktail’ spells,” I said with a shrug. “You’re going to have to make money somehow.”
“Did you just advise your little sister to open up a speakeasy in Manhattan?” Forrest spat with disapproval. “Right after I had to hear about your . . . dalliances with this—this hotshot imposter?!”
“Yes, Dad,” I said plainly. “I did. I’d think you, of all people, wouldn’t be pointing fingers at anyone over dalliances, right now, hmm?”
He glared at me for a moment before finally sighing and throwing his hands up in defeat. “I need a vacation.”
“Then you should take one,” I said, a hint of a snarl on my lips. I wrapped my arms around Crew. “Crew and I will take care of Shadow Lane. I have a fantastic spell for a portal to post-Castro Cuba.”
A few wry laughs sputtered around the meeting room, and Crew lowered his lips to my ear, sending a fresh round of flaming desire through me.
“Marigold,” he murmured, “you’re amazing.”
I blushed as he kissed my cheek and squeezed my arms.
Danger still loomed outside the walls of Shadow Lane, and I was going to have to send my sister back in time a hundred years, until we could figure out how to keep it at bay, or how to eradicate it completely. I knew I had a rock to hold on to; a shelter from whatever storms were on the horizon—Crew.
I wasn’t afraid of anything that might come our way. Together, we could handle it all.
PREVIEW: SEEKING THE ALPHA
Wolf Pack chronicles Series
By:
Amelia Wilson
PROLOGUE
You can never, truly, know when the worst day of your life is coming. It’s always waiting for the perfect moment to spring out, to become an unexpected bump in the tracks that derails your entire life. Of course, Mia couldn’t have known that she was living in the worst day of her life. She had pancakes for breakfast. A boy told a great joke in her science class. She even finished her homework early. How could she have ever have believed her worst day had finally arrived; looming over her like a dark shadow?
According to Mia, the woods were the soundest place to be. They were a secret haven, nestled in between her backyard and the middle school she walked to each day. The towering trees burst from the ground, sheltering her with their colorful leaves. They were mighty towers that she pretended were part of her own fortress, a powerful force that sheltered her from the troubles of her everyday life. She could close her eyes, and breathe in the delicious concoction of crisp autumn air, and tangy pine and leaves, still wet from a recent downpour.
Mia flourished here, and she walked home from the school one afternoon with an extra spring in her step, the keychains on her backpack jangling as she hopped carefully from stone to stone across the bubbling creek. She hummed to herself – a new song she’d learned in chorus class that day – relishing this tiny place of freedom. She passed a bulky tree, smiling up at its branches, blissfully unaware of the figure hiding behind it waiting to spring out at her.
Mia tumbled to the ground with a hard thud, and her backpack slid up her back as her legs flew back over her head and she rolled over. Another body collided into her, arms clutching round her waist as it dragged her down into a swooping ditch in between the trees. Mia cried out, trying desperately to untangle her arms from the knot of limbs, but she couldn’t. The knot separated as they crashed into a pile of leaves. Mia felt the weight leave her and her eyes fluttered open, suddenly blinded by the blank slate of the grey sky above her. She could hear the leaves next to her shuffling wildly, and soon her attacker was standing right over her, his shadowy frame filling her vision.
“Rowan!” Mia shouted as she sprang up from the ground, still covered in a layer of crumpled leaves. She punched the shaggy-haired boy in the shoulder.
Rowan laughed, revealing the gap between his two front teeth. “You should’ve seen your face,” Rowan said, clutching his stomach in the hope of containing his laughter.
“I already knew you were there,” Mia said defensively.
"Yeah right," Rowan said, brushing his hair out of his face.
His locks were dark-chestnut; often unkempt and just covered his deep-hazel eyes. Mia stared a li
ttle too long at him and was startled as his hand reached out to help brush the leaves from her clothes. She felt a tiny spark, almost like the minuscule zap one gets from a wool sweater, as Rowan picked a bright-orange leaf from her jacket sleeve. Mia often felt this way when Rowan was around. He was almost like lightning to her, though she couldn't quite sum up this feeling into perfect words.
“Oh, I missed one,” Mia said, but Rowan beat her to the leaf still burrowed in her amber hair.
“Your hair is soft,” Rowan said nonchalantly. Even with his indifferent tone, Mia still took it to heart, as a compliment. At fourteen she was not really starting to think about boys, but whenever she was with Rowan she felt different.
"Race you to the rock!" She said, as she took off. She was already halfway to her favorite spot. Rowan groaned, shuffling awkwardly through the piles of leaves, kicking them up into the air.
They sat on their rock, looking out at their neighborhood nestled safely below. Mia took out a thick marker, coloring a new drawing wherever she could find space.
“You shouldn’t draw on it, Mia,” Rowan said. Mia shrugged.
“It’s a little late for that,” she said, gesturing to the dozens of faded drawings she had already completed during their times at the rock. She expected Rowan to laugh, but as she looked up at him she was immediately concerned at his firm expression. He gazed sadly out into the neighborhood.
"Mom's packed up the last few boxes already," Rowan said quietly.
Mia capped her marker, her heart sinking a bit. "You're not going too far, right?" She asked.
Rowan shrugged. "We'll be on the other side of town now," he said. "I don't think we'll be in the same high school next year." Mia looked down at her boots. Rowan had been her best friend since they were very small and they lived just a few steps down the road from each other. She liked how close he was to her all of the time, as if he could always be there for her whenever she needed him. However, looking at Rowan, now, she knew that she'd have to put her own feelings aside.
She dug into her backpack, pulling out a small object wrapped in paper. "Here," she said. "I was going to wait, but I thought you'd want it now."
Bonded by Fae's Magic Page 7
