Fangs for Sharing (Supernatural in Seattle #1)

by Bella Jacobs

  “But if either of us were to die,” Leo warns, “then you would die, too. So these promises aren’t without risk, especially in a world as dangerous as ours.”

  “Nothing in life is without risk. But some are worth taking.” I reach for Leo’s hand and then Rourke’s, the last of my doubt fading away as that where-I’m-meant-to-be sensation flows through me again.

  These men are home to me, and I never want to leave it—or them—again.

  “I’m ready,” I say. “I want to be yours before the sun comes up.”

  Leo squeezes my hand. “You won’t regret it. I’ll make sure of it.”

  “We both will, but for the vows to be consecrated, we’ll need a witness.” Rourke’s eyes narrow as he turns to where Jamal is lying curled in a ball on the floor, whimpering so softly I didn’t hear him until now.

  “He can be our witness.” I roll my shoulders back. “And then we can tie him up in the back seat, and I’ll drop him off at the nearest hospital. Let them figure out what to do with a third-eye wound.”

  “You’re a kinder person than I am,” Rourke says. “I’m in the ‘leave him here to rot’ camp, but…”

  “He can’t hurt anyone now.” Leo crosses to stand above the clearly broken man. “He’s lost his gift and his status in the shiver all in one day. But if I ever see you in Seattle again, Jamal…”

  “I’ll stay away,” Jamal whispers from the floor. “But there’s something you should know, majesty. Before you say your vows.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Rourke growls. “He’ll do anything to court favor and save his sorry skin.”

  “He’s right.” Jamal pushes into a seated position, tears in his human eyes and a pink trail running from beneath his curly bangs. “But I also tell the truth. And I think this is a truth you’ll want to know before you take your mate.” His attention shifts my way, a rueful smile lifting one side of his lips. “It was the last thing I saw. The last thing I’ll ever see.”

  Rourke starts to speak, but I lift a hand, “No, let him tell us. It might be something we need to know.”

  Leo nods. “Quickly, then. We don’t have much time before sunrise.”

  “We had it wrong, all of us, for all these years,” Jamal says, with a soft laugh. “It was never about finding a one-in-a-million woman. It was about finding the woman who’s one-in-a-million to our princes. Your Incomparable, the woman neither of you wants to live without.”

  Rourke and Leo exchange loaded glances before Rourke turns back to Jamal, voice hard as he demands, “You’re serious? This isn’t a trick?”

  “I’m serious.” Jamal arches a brow as he adds in a warning tone, “So be prepared. If you take your vows, you’ll break a curse. By the time you wake this evening, all hell will have broken loose. You’ll be the reigning masters and consort of Seattle, and the fate of our city will be in your hands.”

  Leo and Rourke lock eyes for another long beat before they turn to look at me, a single unspoken question scrawled across their handsome faces.

  I curl my fingers into fists and smile. “Well, I have been wanting to do a little hiring and firing around the castle.”

  Leo grins as he reaches for me. “As soon as the dust clears, I’m putting you in charge of staffing.”

  “Even though I have no experience running an estate?” I move into his arms, hugging him tight.

  “I trust your instincts,” he says, claiming my lips for a long, slow kiss.

  “As do I.” Rourke shifts behind me, his arms going around my waist as he kisses my neck. “But as soon as the madness passes, the first item of business is the honeymoon. I need more time with nothing to do but feed and bed you, woman.”

  “Agreed,” Leo says. “But we should hurry. As much as I hate to rush something like this, the sun is so close I can smell it.”

  “I’ll start,” Rourke says, fingers digging deeper into my waist. “With free will and by the power of the Kiss that grants eternal life, I, Reagan O’Rourke choose Eliza Frank as my consort and mate. I vow to defend our bond to the death, sharing her equally and honestly with Leo Poplov, my brother in this bond.”

  With a soft sigh of relief, Leo repeats the vow, sending shivers across my skin as he places his hands on my ribs just above Rourke’s, making me ache for them. Even now, after this horrible night and with Jamal bleeding at our feet, I want them so badly it makes my voice shake as I stumble through my vow, repeating the words after Leo, promising to love and defend these men until the end of time.

  The moment I’ve finished, a shimmering, sizzling sensation ripples through me, leaving me even more connected to Leo and Rourke, so close I can sense the echoes of their heartbeats pulsing beneath my skin.

  For a commitment-phobe with serious intimacy issues, it should be a scary feeling. But I’m not scared. Even with all the danger looming in our near future, I’m excited, energized, and so grateful that when Leo and Rourke embrace, snuggling me between them as the bond settles into place, I almost start crying again.

  But I don’t. This time, happiness wins.

  I hope it’s the start of a trend.

  “Are you sure I can’t interest you in my services?” Jamal asks a few minutes later, on our way down to the car. “I may not have second sight anymore, but I know my way around the castle.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” I say, watching as Leo and Rourke tie the shorter man in the same ropes he used to bind me and then tuck him into the back seat. “I appreciate you saving my life when the Kin Born attacked, but I’m going to stick with Sven. He might be honest to a fault, but at least he’s honest.”

  Leo slams the door on Jamal before hurrying around to the back, where Rourke is holding open the trunk. “You’re sure you know where to go? And what to do if any of Gloria’s day guards find you before nightfall?” he asks, climbing inside.

  “I’ve got it all under control,” I say, shooing him on. “Now go. Rest. I’ll see you at sunset.”

  “Hang in there, love,” Rourke says, “and we’ll get to the happily ever after part before you know it.”

  But it’s all happily ever after, it turns out. Even the hard stuff.

  After all, if I hadn’t been going through hell, I never would have found heaven. I never would have been invited to stay at the castle or have escaped to a magical lighthouse where Leo, Rourke, and I had the time and space to finish falling in love.

  So as I gun the 911 to life and peel out toward downtown, I’m not thinking of some far-off future when everything will be perfect someday.

  I’m right here, in this sweet moment, with my new husbands safe in my trunk and a powerful machine humming around me, ready to take me exactly where we need to be.

  Chapter 25

  From the texts of

  Eliza Frank Poplov-O’Rourke

  and Eugene Eustace

  Eliza: I don’t care how dangerous it is, Eugene. I need you to find Leerie. ASAP. And just FYI, if you ignore my texts again, I will track you down and stab you with sharp pins until you remember that I’m married to two men who are just looking for an excuse to munch on your scrawny neck.

  Eugene: I haven’t forgotten, Eliza. Believe me. But it’s not as easy as you’re making it out to be. The Fairy research wing is guarded twenty-four seven, and even if I manage to slip past the guards, you need an approved thumbprint scan to access the database. My print won’t give me clearance.

  Eliza: Then find a friend or a thumb that will and get busy, buddy. You have forty-eight hours.

  Eugene: That’s impossible! There’s no way I can get what you need by then.

  Eliza: And there’s no way I can wait any longer. Leerie’s been missing for almost three weeks already. Her relatives have no idea where she is, and neither do any of her friends around here. She could be hurt, lost and alone somewhere, and sadly, you’re our only hope of finding her. So step up and do the right thing for once in your miserable life, Eugene. You might find you enjoy it.

  Eugene: I’ll try. But if I get
caught and the scary people running the fairy research program kill me, I’m coming back to haunt you, Eliza. And I don’t plan on being a friendly ghost.

  Eliza: Well, you haven’t been a very friendly alive person, either, so that makes sense. Call you soon. Have good news for me, okay? If you do, I’m pretty sure I can make a case for calling off those guards outside your apartment and giving you some privacy again.

  Eugene: Does that mean I can leave Seattle? Start fresh somewhere where the vampires don’t know my name and want to kill me?

  Eliza: Maybe. Give me Leerie’s location, and then we’ll talk about yours.

  Eugene: Done. And Eliza?

  Eliza: Yes?

  Eugene: Good luck tonight. You deserve to win. You’re the best of those pageant princesses. You always have been.

  Eliza: Thanks, Eugene. Good luck to you, too. And just for the record, I forgive you for the rhinoceros thing. I can’t say I enjoyed it all, but it’s part of the journey that got me to where I am now, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

  Eugene: Even with the lingering side effects?

  Eliza: Even with the lingering side effects. In fact, those may be my favorite part.

  Chapter 26

  One week later

  I’m not a cheater. I’m just not built that way.

  It’s not in my DNA—before or after the scrambling.

  I’ve never slipped bleach into another pageant contestant’s shampoo or stolen her fire batons before she’s due on stage for the talent competition. I’ve never spiked a rival’s health shake with ex-lax or put pepper spray in her makeup. I wouldn’t so much as snip a line of beads from an evening gown, let alone use top-secret supernatural powers to give myself an unfair advantage.

  Yes, a mini earthquake during Scrawny Sheila’s dance routine—the only other ballet performance, and my only serious competition for first in the talent division—would have been convenient, but I’m an honorable woman. The day I discovered my lingering rhino gift, I vowed that I would only use my power for good, and it’s a promise I intend to keep.

  But as I stand beside the other winners on a raised platform in the lobby of the Seattle Suites hotel, holding my most dazzling smile for the flashing cameras, the temptation to put my foot down gets worse with every passing minute.

  On one side of me, Sandra, second runner-up this year, keeps tripping over her feet as we change poses, jabbing her high heel into my instep more than once. On my other side, Penelope, the new Miss U.S., whispers nonstop smack between her Vaseline-coated teeth, testing the better angels of my nature.

  “Must be so hard,” Penelope coos in her syrupy sweet voice, “to know you lost because of something as stupid as a tragic haircut.”

  Ignoring her, I lift my chin and roll my left shoulder back, the better to display the first runner-up ribbon draped across my chest.

  Do I wish I’d won? Yes. Does it stink that people still have such a narrow definition of what’s beautiful in this day and age? Of course. But I overcame a lot of adversity to make it to this pageant, and I’m proud of myself, even if I’m not going home with prize money or a crown.

  “I mean, what were you thinking?” Penny giggles—meanly. “What parasite took over your brain and made you think doing that to yourself was a good idea?”

  “Your hairdresser should be shot,” Sandra announces in a weary voice from my other side. “No offense. I mean, you still beat me, but…”

  “None taken.” I squeeze Sandra’s hand. “Are you finally going off that horrible diet now? You seem so tired.”

  Sandra nods. “I am. I’m done with pageants and dieting and letting dress size and lack of butt-dimples mean more than anything else in my life. I’m checking into a treatment facility tonight.”

  “I’m so glad to hear it,” I say, smile widening as we shift positions and lift our chins, obeying the photographers’ shouted orders. “It’ll be good to see you healthy.”

  “You should join her, Eliza,” Penny says. “Clearly you need an intervention as much as Psycho Sandra.”

  “Shut it, Penelope,” I snap, fighting to keep my smile pleasant. I search the crowd, looking for two familiar heads, but there’s still no sign of Leo or Rourke. But the sun only set thirty minutes ago, and my husbands are coming from the Famine shiver’s compound outside of town. We’ve been staying there since taking power, playing it safe until we’re sure the Strife castle has been cleared of booby traps, traitors, and Gloria’s ear collection.

  I’m turning her tower trophy room into a breakfast nook, where non-vamp guests can watch the sunrise over the hills in the mornings, decorating it in peaceful, creepy-severed-ear-vibe-banishing blue and green.

  “No, you shut it, Eliza,” Penny says. “I’m on top now. You’re just a washed up has-been who will never wear a crown.”

  I laugh at that, I can’t help it.

  “You think that’s funny?” Penny glares at me beneath her gaudy rhinestone tiara.

  “I do, actually.” I have to wear a crown tonight, in fact, at the inauguration ceremony for the newly united Strife and Famine shivers. It’s a Famine shiver heirloom from the sixteenth century, smuggled over in a cask of whiskey when they moved from Ireland to the Washington coast in the late eighteen hundreds.

  It’s a ceremonial piece—I won’t have to wear three pounds of diamonds on my head all of the time, thank goodness. But for a night, paired with a shimmery silver dress that makes me look like I’ve been stitched up in moonlight…

  Well, I’ll take that crown.

  And the two men in tuxes threading their way through the crowd toward me right now, looking so drop-dead gorgeous I always feel like the biggest winner in any room, no matter what my pageant banner reads.

  Though, I’m pretty sure I’m done with banners and beauty pageants and all the bullshit that goes along with them. I’ll just have to find another way to raise my start-up money.

  Maybe there’s a market for hundred-year-old vampire ears on eBay…

  Or I could just take my husband’s start-up check and thank him for believing in me—a much more reasonable option. Besides, it feels good to help and be helped by the people you love. I learned that the hard way, and it’s a lesson I won’t soon forget.

  “Go ahead, yuck it up,” Penny sneers, the smile falling from her face like a piano dropped out a third-story window now that the photographers are putting their cameras away. “But it’s over for you, Eliza. You made a fool out of the entire pageant. You’ll never qualify next year, even if you can grow out that mangy scraggle on your head by fall.”

  “Why are you being so mean?” Sandra sags onto a bench beside the Miss U.S. display at the back of the platform. “You won, Penny. Ease up.”

  “Ease up,” Penny mimics in a high-pitched voice as Leo and Rourke reach our side of the lobby, pausing at the base of our makeshift stage beside a cardboard cut-out of last year’s Miss U.S. to watch the pageant fur fly. They’ve recently been through a nasty change of power—they know what one looks like.

  “Seriously, Sandra,” Penelope continues with a deceptively casual toss of her hair, a sure sign that a real zinger’s on its way out of her wretched mouth. “If I were you, I’d skip that halfway house or whatever. Being thin is basically the only thing you have going for you. Lose that, and you’re just another sad, ugly duckling, waddling around, thinking someday you’re going to wake up and find out you’re a swan.”

  “Enough, Penny,” I growl, glaring a hole in her stupid, mean-spirited face.

  “Spoiler alert,” she crows, snapping her fingers in the air above poor Sandra’s little head. “You’re not.” She shifts her glittering blue eyes my way. “And neither are you.”

  Parting shots delivered, Penny executes a runway-worthy one-eighty swivel with a hip pop and flounces away, headed off the platform and down to where the Miss U.S. handlers are waiting to whisk her away for a night of promotional interviews and photo ops—right after she cuts the first slice of the anniversary cake,
celebrating one-hundred and fifty years of the Miss U.S. Pageant.

  The cake is already waiting at the bottom of the stairs by Bonnie, the pageant organizer, and a man in a chef’s hat holding a plate and a rhinestone-studded pastry server.

  At the bottom of the stairs…

  Right beneath Penny the Dreadful…

  Heart racing and temptation rising to a feverish pitch inside of me, I glance at Sandra and the tears running down her pale face, then back at Penny, then back down to Sandra, her shoulders curving as she curls into herself like a frost-shriveled leaf.

  And that does it.

  I can’t control it. My foot has a mind of its own.

  I’m dimly aware of Leo calling my name in that warning tone of his, but it’s too late, I’ve already summoned the power of the crash into my toes and brought down my Thunder Foot.

  The platform ripples, shaking Sandra in her seat. She reaches out to brace herself on the arm of the bench, but unfortunately for Penny, there are no bench arms on the stairs. No railing, either.

  So as the platform shakes, Penny trembles, losing her footing in her sky-high heels. She stumble-skids down the last few steps, gaining momentum until she’s moving so fast there’s no way she’ll be able to stop herself before impact. She’s going in, and she’s going in hard.

  I see the same realization zip across the chef’s face a moment before he decides to jump for cover instead of going down with Penny in a blaze of buttercream frosting.