by Ella Summers
“Wouldn’t count on it,” someone commented. It sounded like Callum.
His statement was followed by another round of chuckles from the audience.
Alex grinned at Logan. She just couldn’t stop. She’d never thought that she would ever meet someone she loved as much as she did her family. And Logan was part of that family now.
“The rings please,” Riley said.
Naomi and Makani stood and stepped forward, carrying their sons. The wedding rings were looped into the tiny golden chains fastened around the babies’ necks. Riley reached for the rings, but before he could take them, the decorative flower vase behind him exploded.
Alex spun around, honing in on the disruptive magical force at the other end of the very long aisle. A young man stood there, dressed in torn jeans and a black tank top.
“Everest, stand down,” Kai said in a loud, commanding voice.
“No!” shouted the mage. “I shall not stand down!” He waved his hand, summoning four sparkling silver wolves out of thin air.
“You know this loser?” Logan asked Kai.
“Jareth Everest,” Kai said. “Youngest son of John Everest.”
“Another head of a magical dynasty.”
Kai nodded.
“Drachenburg, your people are strange people,” Logan commented.
Kai didn’t even argue.
“I shall not stand down!” Jareth Everest said again, louder this time. He reeked of alcohol and discontent. “Not now, not ever!”
Alex glanced at Sera. “What do you say we deal with this gate crasher?”
“It would be my pleasure to kick his ass.”
Jareth waved his summoned wolves forward. The beasts charged, but they didn’t charge far. Logan took them down with a wave of throwing knives, and they winked out in four puffs of smoke. He’d hidden his weapons well. Alex hadn’t spotted a single one of them on him.
Jareth howled and summoned a fresh batch of beasts, giant dragonflies this time. Logan launched more knives, Alex and Sera used their hidden knives as well, and Kai fought with magic. Within thirty seconds, the beasts were gone, and the commandos were dragging away the shouting summoner in chains.
The guests cheered in appreciation of the good show. Of course Alex and Sera had to take a bow. They blew a few kisses into the crowd too.
“He’s crazy,” Alex commented to Sera as Jareth was carried off, howling like a wounded wolf.
“Maybe we should have gotten a few straitjackets after all.” Sera winked at her.
Alex laughed at her sister’s reference to the chair covers they hadn’t ordered for the wedding. Truth be told, she’d been a bit nervous when they’d set off down the aisle, but no longer. Now, she was feeling right at home. Crazy as it sounded, the fight had calmed her nerves. She could tell that Sera was more relaxed now too. Maybe it was because fighting was in their blood.
“Ready?” Logan asked Alex.
She took his hand. “Let’s get married.”
And so they were.
13
The Dragon's Dungeon
The wedding reception lasted late into the night. Between the two houses’ many rooms, there was more than enough space for anyone who wanted to sleep over. And some guests, like Marek and Eva, were staying at Naomi and Makani’s house.
The hours passed with food, dancing, more food, lots of games, and an extra order of midnight pizzas, a surprise from the grooms. Alex and Sera were very pleased about that.
It was nearly dawn when Alex awoke beside the pool between their properties. She lay next to Sera, on side-by-side recliners. Empty pizza boxes were stacked in piles against the glass pool fence.
“Hey, Sera.” Alex tapped her sister. “Wake up.”
“Where are our husbands?” Sera said drowsily.
“Husband.” Alex smirked at her. “You like the sound of that, don’t you?”
“Absolutely.”
“So do I,” Alex told her. “And I don’t know where they are.”
She looked around the pool, but Logan and Kai were nowhere to be seen. There were, however, a lot of snoozing guests in recliners, all in a post-pizza haze, an overdose of yumminess.
Alex and Sera peeled themselves off the lawn chairs and went to go look for Logan and Kai. They soon spotted Riley.
“Have you seen Kai?” Sera asked him.
“Or Logan?” Alex added.
“Saw them about half an hour ago, heading into your house, Sera,” Riley said. “They told me they were going to Kai’s dungeon.”
Alex snorted, looking at Sera. “Kai has a dungeon?”
Sera shrugged. “It came with the house. Come with me, and I’ll show it to you.”
Alex followed her sister into her house. Once inside, Sera turned and went down a staircase lit up with floor lights embedded in the tiled steps.
It got darker and cooler the deeper down they went. And they’d already gone down pretty far, at least two levels. Finally, they reached the end of the staircase—and the dungeon.
The dungeon’s floors looked like they’d been carved out of stone. The walls too. Alex and Sera passed cell after cell. They were all empty.
Alex looked around in awe. “This is more than a mere dungeon. It’s a full-on prison.”
“You’re going to tease me forever about this, aren’t you?” Sera sighed.
“No way. I’ve had decades to tease you.” Alex flashed her a wicked grin. “Your new husband, on the other hand, has to be properly welcomed into the family with copious teasing.”
“I have to admit, Alex, the way you’re rubbing your hands together in sinister glee has got me a tad concerned.”
“Kai has a dungeon.” Alex cackled. “This is going to be epic.”
They followed the light at the end of the hall into an open cell. This one wasn’t empty. Logan and Kai stood in there. The wedding crasher lay unconscious at their feet.
Sera looked down at the unfortunate Jareth Everest, and her eyes widened. “What did you do to him?”
“It was the alcohol which did that to him,” said Logan.
Alex inhaled deeply—and nearly gagged on the stench of alcohol that permeated the unconscious man. It was so thick, it was oozing out of his pores.
She eyed the empty beer bottles on the ground. “And you two gave him the alcohol?”
“Everest was drunk before he showed up at the wedding,” replied Kai. “Those are our beer bottles.”
“Watching the wedding crasher sleep off his alcohol indulgence…” Alex arched her brows at them. “Quite an exciting pastime.”
“Not exciting, love,” said Logan. “But necessary. We needed him to sleep it off and sober up a bit.”
Kai leaned his back against the stone wall. “The commandos said he was completely nonsensical when they dragged him in here.”
Sera watched the sleeping man. “Just how long are we going to stand here and wait for him to wake up?”
“I don’t know. He looks pretty out of it.” Alex nudged Jareth with her toe, but he didn’t wake up. “I bet we have time to grab a few pizzas from upstairs and bring them down here, even with that insanely long hall of cells and the twenty-story staircase you’ve got here.”
But the crasher was finally stirring. He opened his eyes and blinked a few times. “Ohh, my head.” He rubbed it. “What hit me?”
“That was the booze,” Sera told him.
“And the commandos’ fists once or twice,” Alex added.
The crasher blinked a few more times. “Serafina Dering.” He stumbled to his feet. “And Alexandria Dering. The Sisters of Mayhem.”
“You ok?” Sera asked the stumbling man, looking worried.
“Must be our frightening reputation,” Alex told her.
“He’s not afraid of you,” Logan said, his eyes trained on Jareth. “He has the hots for you.”
“Which of us?” Alex asked.
“Both of you. I can see it in the way he looks at you.” Logan inhaled slowly. “And I can smell
it in his sweat.”
Alex plugged her nose. “I can’t smell anything over the stench of alcohol.”
“So he has a crush on us?” Sera pinched her nose closed too, presumably at the smell, but she might just have been disgusted by the idea that this stinky, sweaty guy had a crush on her.
“It’s true! Oh, my beautiful black swans, it’s true!” Jareth sang. “You are the sun and the moon, the steel in my heart.”
Alex and Sera exchanged concerned looks.
“So you crashed our wedding because you have a crush on us?” Sera asked him.
“It is so much more than a crush, dearest Serafina,” he cooed. “It is true love.”
“True love?” Alex folded her arms across her chest. “With both of us?”
Jareth set his hand on his heart and declared, “Love knows no boundaries of person or place. You are two linked souls—Dragon Born—souls destined to be linked to mine. I am the centerpiece, the one to connect you both.”
Sera blinked. “Oh, boy.”
“He’s almost too drunk to kill,” Alex told her.
Logan’s fingers tapped across one of his knives. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”
“Agreed.” Kai’s face was stone-cold serious.
But the wedding crasher ignored their vexed husbands. He had eyes only for Alex and Sera. “I do apologize for my inebriation, fair dragons.”
Alex lifted an eyebrow at Sera. “Fair dragons?” she mouthed to her sister.
Jareth continued, “But, alas, I didn’t have the courage to confess my love, not without consuming copious quantities of alcohol first.”
“And you had to confess your, uh, love at our wedding?” Sera asked him.
“Of course, oh sweetest sisters,” Jareth serenaded them. “For you both should be marrying me, not the insufferable Kai Drachenburg and the psychotic assassin Slayer. After all, you deserve better, someone with some class.” His statement was punctuated by a loud belch, an unforeseen consequence of consuming far too much alcohol. “You two are special. I knew it from the moment I first laid eyes on you so long ago.”
“Uh, Alex, do we know this guy?” Sera asked.
“I don’t think so?” Alex leaned in for a closer look at the wedding crasher. “Wait a minute…I think we once apprehended him at a party full of young mages. They were doing nonsense and their magic got out of hand. It was like…three years ago?”
Jareth bowed to them. “And I’ve been watching you ever since.”
Sera frowned. “Ok, now that’s creepy.”
“I was watching when you, Sera, saved this great city and when you excelled in the Magic Games. I was watching when you, Alex, went off to Europe, when you battled the foul Convictionites in London and Munich. I was watching you both when the Grim Reaper hounded you, when demons plagued the world, and when the magic-haters baited their trap.”
“What trap?” Alex asked him.
“Why, in Zurich, of course. Just two weeks ago.”
“How do you know about that?”
“I know everything about you, my beautiful Alexandria,” he sighed, reaching for her hand.
Logan moved swiftly to cut him off. “Ok, that’s enough.”
“Yeah,” agreed Alex.
They all left the cell, then Kai locked it.
“Wait!” Jareth shouted through the bars. “You can’t leave me locked up in here!”
“Watch me,” Kai said and turned his back on the mage.
“This will mean war, Drachenburg! War!”
They all walked away.
“Pretty dramatic guy,” Sera commented as they ascended the staircase. “Wonder what he meant about war.”
“Jareth’s father John Everest sits on the Magic Council. He’s the head of a powerful dynasty. They have some powerful magic too,” Kai said.
“Let me guess,” said Sera. “Summoners.”
Kai nodded. “Yes, each and every one of the Everests.”
“The wedding crasher…” Logan shook his head, like he was trying to rearrange his thoughts. “This isn’t about Alex and Sera.”
“Jareth is enamored with them,” Kai replied. “You said so yourself.”
“Yes, I did. And he is. But this isn’t what this is all truly about.” His eyes scanned the living room the moment they made it to the top of the staircase. “True, Jareth clearly has the hots for them, as evident by all the articles and pictures of them he collected.”
“Articles?” Alex repeated.
“And pictures?” Sera added in horror.
“He muttered about them in his sleep,” Logan told them. “But this isn’t about that. Or about you. If he’s truly been in love with you for years, why act only now?”
“His last chance before it’s too late?” Alex suggested.
“This is connected to everything else that’s going on,” Kai said quietly. “Lauren Valentine and the Frost dynasty. Silvio Bullet. All the other recent divisions in the supernatural community.”
“I believe so,” Logan said.
“But what’s the common link between those people?” Sera asked. “What would make them all act this way? What would make them turn against their allies, and even their friends?”
No one had an answer to that.
“The Convictionites are behind it,” Alex said. “I’m sure of it.”
“But how?” Sera asked again. “How could the Convictionites make supernaturals turn against one another? And what does any of it have to do with Nightstar?”
“I don’t know.” And Alex didn’t like that at all. “This all feels like we’re unwilling pawns in some big game designed to destroy us.”
“Perhaps the Convictionites used Nightstar’s simulation on the supernaturals,” Logan suggested. “To muddle their minds.”
“I’ve checked up on all the supernaturals behaving oddly. All of them have been in the public light, going about their business for weeks, long before the Convictionites freed Nightstar from prison. The Convictionites couldn’t have put any of those supernaturals through a simulation. Muddling someone’s mind takes time and lots of it, assuming it’s even possible with Nightstar’s simulation. The Convictionites didn’t have that time,” Kai pointed out.
“The Convictionites could be taking a more indirect approach to influence the supernaturals who’ve acted out,” Logan said. “They have made ample use of blackmail and coercion in the past.”
“True.” Kai pulled out his phone. “I’ll have Tony put some people on tracking the affected supernaturals, but it might already be too late for them. We don’t know someone has been affected until they act out. And once they act out, the damage to our community is already done.”
14
Surprise
With no answers forthcoming, Alex and Logan walked back to their house next door. Maybe they should have gone back to question Jareth some more, but that wasn’t the sort of thing Alex wanted to do on her wedding night—no, make that morning. The sun had just crested the horizon.
No matter. Being romantic wasn’t tied to a particular time of day. They could be romantic all day and all night.
But Alex and Logan had only partially undressed each other when the doorbell rang.
“Alex?” Logan grumbled, the word buzzing against her naked neck.
“Mmm?”
He lifted his head to meet her eyes. “Did you order pizza?”
“Maybe?” she replied, her smile innocent.
Logan began to pull on his shirt.
“No.” She set her hand on his chest. “I’ll get it.”
She grabbed his shirt and pulled it over herself. Then she went to answer the door, so her husband didn’t kill the pizza delivery guy. That would just be bad luck on their wedding night.
Alex sprinted through the living room, her bare feet pattering across the cold stone tiles. She opened the door. A delivery guy stood there, in the distinctive red-and-yellow uniform of Wizard House Pizza. He gawked at her, his gaze sliding up her stockings, to her b
lack garter belt peeking out from the bottom of Logan’s dress shirt.
Alex smiled and took the pizza box from him. “Bye.” She winked, then shut the door.
She ran back across the living room, the hot pizza box warming her hands, the aroma of fresh cheese, sweet tomatoes, and savory pizza crust making her mouth water.
Logan was waiting for her at the bar in the kitchen, his bare chest shimmering in the early morning light. She set the pizza box on the counter and flipped open the lid.
Alex ate the pizza, and Logan watched her eat it.
“What is it?” she asked him as she started on her third slice.
His eyes twinkled with amusement. “You’re eating pizza for breakfast.”
“Luckily, Wizard House Pizza was still open. They close early in the morning.” She licked the melted cheese off her fingers. “Apparently, not that many people order pizza for breakfast.”
The twinkle never left his eyes. “I never would have guessed.”
“Hey, you knew what you were getting into when you married me.” It was her lips that Alex licked this time. “No take-backs.”
“Alex, I will never give you up,” he said, his amusement hardening into a deep devotion that made her heart skip a beat.
He jumped to his feet. So did she. As Logan stared into her eyes, her heart pounded hard, her breath was short.
Then his hands were suddenly on her. His touch was rough, his kiss possessive, passion driving his hands.
“Not so well-behaved now, are you?” she teased him.
He stopped kissing her. His hands dropped to his sides. “As you wish.”
Alex met his cool facade. She wasn’t fooled. Beneath it, he was just as wild as she was. Beneath it, he wanted her just as much as she wanted him.
“Actually, I don’t wish it. Not at all.” She put his hands back on her body.
“Good,” he said against her mouth.
His teeth nipped her lower lip, drawing blood. Groaning, he licked her lips, drinking up every drop of her. She grabbed the back of his head, drawing him in, kissing him deeply. Her teeth broke the skin of his lips and now she drank him in too.