by Heather Long
Exhaustion hung over him like a shroud, and I swallowed a sigh that wanted to escape. How many things were they all handling while I swanned about this building? Surely there was something more I could be doing for them.
His request from the baths a few days earlier had been ever present in my mind. If things turned against us, they wanted me to flee, preferably with Fin. I’d turned that over and over in my mind, refusing to dismiss it immediately, even if a part of me would prefer to just stay here with them. To fight alongside them.
I could fight. I thought I’d acquitted myself well, but they’d also been fighting together for centuries, longer even. A rational part of me expected that was another reason they wanted me to flee. We really didn’t know all I could do, and it could take a few decades to rein in my new abilities. I was running on instinct and impulse.
While Alfred hadn’t scolded me, he had expressed a reservation, particularly in light of the rugrat currently setting up shop in my body. None of us knew how far along I was. I mean, there was something of a swell there but not like an actual bump, and my boobs didn’t hurt like they could. Fin had told me about that one.
Okay, correction, my boobs didn’t hurt when one or more of the guys weren’t playing with them until I came or they sank their teeth in. I was pretty sure that didn’t count. Ugh. Okay, that was tomorrow Fi’s problem, today’s Fi had to figure out what to do.
A tingle of awareness glided over my spine, and I sighed as the rich scent of green and forest threaded around me a moment before his arms did. The kiss he pressed behind my ear settled some of the disquiet.
“I didn’t think you’d be awake yet,” I said in lieu of good morning. The rasp of his unshaven cheek against mine actually made me smile. I loved that he’d rolled out of the bed and come in search of me. Though I had my own room, we’d all been sleeping in Alfred’s in the enormous bed he had. Usually, they tucked me in the center and took turns on who slept on my immediate sides, with the others rotating to the outside. It settled Maddox’s dragon and seemed to be soothing all of their protective instincts.
“The moment you moved, I woke,” he told me, the sweet lilt in his voice making me smile. He could probably read to me from the phone book and his voice would do that to me. How fun would that be? “I wanted to give you some time to yourself, but then I started missing you and I just wanted to see you. I was going to leave you be, but you looked sad again. Why are you sad, Beautiful?”
“I’m not sad,” I admitted, leaning into him and running my fingers over the backs of his hands where they cupped my belly. They were all doing that, sometimes consciously, mostly subconsciously, or so it seemed to me. One of them always covered my stomach as I went to sleep. Fin kissed it with reverence. Maddox would nuzzle it with his cheek and sometimes rumble that near purring sound. Even Alfred wasn’t immune to the little touches, as though reassuring himself.
And one night, we’d all gone quiet because there’d been the faintest echo of my heartbeat. I had to try and slow mine, but it was there. A gentle little thump-thump. Faint, almost imperceptible, and yet present. Since then, Maddox had become even more watchful and solicitous. Fin teased him nonstop, and it had definitely made all the smothering more bearable. Rogue and Alfred were a little more subtle in their attempts
A little.
Not that it said much. One of them or all of them offered to help with my hair or bathing me. Even sex had gotten gentler, sweeter, and sometimes so achingly tender that I thought I would lose my mind or sob from it.
Sometimes both.
While I wasn’t complaining—well, not much—it remained a constant series of adjustments. I had no idea what each day would bring. As I’d told Elias when Fin arranged for me to call him—he snuck me out of the keep and secreted us away to a distant city where he had a luxury apartment. It might have been Prague. But the view had been stunning, and he promised to bring me back. Anyway, as I’d told Elias, I wasn’t even sure who I was most of the time, but I was happy with the change.
The only thing I hadn’t told him was about the baby. Fin had made a sound argument that our child was going to make a huge change in our world. Right now, that child was enormously vulnerable. The ferocity that awoke in me had only made him smile. “And that right there, Beautiful, is what we all feel when we think of someone trying to harm either of you. Secrecy keeps the baby safe. I’m not telling you to not trust your Elias. He seems a good enough man and a kind friend, but he’s not family. Not here. Not yet.”
And my reluctance at the charge fled when he said ‘yet.’ I might not know anything about being a mother but I did about being a friend. Reconciling those concepts helped. I wanted to tell him. Fin’s ‘yet’ promised me I would be able to, eventually. That helped even more.
When pressed, I’d had to admit that the constant restlessness and hunger I’d lived with my whole life was now absent. The absence alone would be disconcerting, but filling in that gap was a satisfaction and pleasure I couldn’t define.
He’d tried to understand but it was clear in his voice he didn’t, so he demanded to know only one thing. While Fin had afforded me some privacy, I knew he could hear every single word spoken, so I’d just glanced over to find his gaze steady on me.
“Ask,” I told Elias. “I won’t lie to you.”
“Nah, you never do. You just tell me to shut up and mind my own business.” The gruff acceptance sparked fresh tears, but I grinned.
“You know me well.”
“That I do, Red. You tell me you’re where you want to be and with who you want to be with and I’ll back it, every step of the way.”
I smiled, and those damn tears burned in my eyes again. “I love you too,” I told him, and Elias’ stunned silence only made my grin grow. Yeah, I wasn’t the touchy feely type. But I did love him. He’d been my best friend for a long time and put up with me at my worst. “I’m exactly where I want to be.”
Clearing his throat, he said, “Are one of those assholes right there?”
“Yes,” Fin had answered for me. “Feel free to threaten us. Trust me, we’ll destroy ourselves before we let anything happen to her.”
“Just so we have an understanding.”
“Agreed.”
Men.
I’d huffed and rolled my eyes. After, Fin had cuddled me close as I let the stupid tears out. He didn’t seem remotely disturbed by them. Though he was a bit of a bastard and laughed at my mournful complaint of, “Am I going to be a weepy mess the rest of my life?”
“You’re beautiful, even when you weep, love. It will be fine. Trust me, it just gives me incentive to chase the tears away.” And on that note, he did his damnedest to drive my tears away, and he was more than successful. It seemed forever since it had just been Fin and I alone, not that I objected to the others being there.
Okay, caveat, not that I objected anymore. I loved them all with a kind of fierceness I hadn’t expected to ever be capable of. But like my time with Rogue in the bath or with Maddox before the party, and honestly, with Alfred after he finally listened to me, I needed this time with each of them. Fin never once complained about having to share me. If anything, he exulted in it.
The gentleness in his hands coupled with the depth of emotion in every kiss was a drug to my system. Even after our heartbeats slowed and the sweat had begun to cool on my overheated body, I was in no hurry to move. I sprawled over him, and he traced his fingers up and down my spine. The glint of the emerald on my finger twinkled back at me. I’d gotten used to just keeping the emeralds on no matter what I was wearing.
Maddox’s sheer pleasure every time he saw them made me want to. But Fin continued to trace his fingers lazily along my back as I explored one of the Celtic knots inked along his shoulder.
“Are we going to get in trouble for being gone so long?” We hadn’t really made a big deal out of our sneaking out. Yet after Maddox “stole” me, there’d been no mistaking how they kept a closer watch. All of them.
“No
, love, I promise. They know where we are, and at the first sign of danger, we’re away. But I needed some time with you.” At that, I lifted my head and smiled at him.
“I’m glad we came.”
“Me too.”
Then we just…talked, for hours, about everything and nothing. Talked about where he grew up and what it was like for him. About the things he still wanted to do and what he hoped for the future. It was probably the deepest conversation I’d ever had, and when he’d asked me similarly hard questions, I hadn’t avoided the answers.
I told him about my mother. I’d never known a father. She didn’t keep men around all that long. Never dip too often into the same well, she’d always advised. When I was fourteen and the first pangs of real hunger began to hit me and I earned the notice of the men she courted, she spent a year teaching me how to coax out lovers, get what I needed, and get away.
Then one morning, she’d just been gone.
Fin’s scowl deepened with every word, and not even me sprawling against him and telling him it was perfectly natural could dissuade his temper. He wanted more details, but it didn’t take me long to figure out what he really wanted—a target.
And I didn’t need her to die. I didn’t need anything from her. She’d done what all succubi had done—she’d raised me until I could survive on my own, taught me skills, and then gone. It was my own fear about the child I carried now. Would I not be able to bond? But I pushed that fear aside for now. I wasn’t a succubus, and I had to make that my mantra or I would go mad.
That day at his Prague apartment had been three days earlier. Our return had been welcomed and not scolded, much to my relief. Maddox and Alfred had both stolen me away for similar time spent, though we didn’t leave the keep. The only one not seeking me out so far had been Rogue, but I’d counted his absences and they seemed to happen in and around the others stealing me.
As amusing as the game was, I wanted to know what he was doing that they thought I needed to be distracted from.
“You’re worried,” Fin said softly.
“You’re all keeping things from me again.”
“Not on purpose,” he answered. Well, at least he wasn’t denying it. “We’re getting a feel for where the others are. Wyman can move more freely, but Rogue has the greatest stealth because his animals can slip in and out nearly undetected.”
Nearly.
“It’s still a risk.”
“Yes, love, it’s always a risk.” He pressed his cheek against mine as he hugged me tighter. “You’ll have to forgive us for being overprotective for now. We’re still getting used to what it means to us to even consider risking you.”
Rubbing the back of his hands where he linked them over my abdomen, I didn’t smile. “Fin, why is it all right for you four to conspire because you are so worried about risking me, yet you risk yourselves?”
“Because there are more of us than there are of you,” he answered me simply. “Because we have waited for thousands of years to have you in our lives, and I don’t want to wait another thousand years on the chance you’ll come back to us. Because we’re selfish pricks raised in a time long before chivalry, when men made war and the women were the ones we protected, or stole. That last part doesn’t really help my argument, does it?”
“No,” I told him, but I couldn’t suppress the grin trying to break through. “Not particularly. And not all old cultures kept women at home barefoot and pregnant.”
And yes, I might’ve been curling my toes, because I was a damn example of the latter.
“No, they didn’t,” he admitted.
Tilting my head back, I gazed up at him. “And just because there are more of you doesn’t make it all right for me to lose any of you. I won’t choose who I need more or want more because there’s not one among you I want to risk losing.”
He grinned. “But I’m still your favorite, right? It’s fine, you can totally tell me. It’ll be our secret.”
I pinched him, and he laughed.
“I promise, Beautiful,” he said, his voice pitching lower as he sobered. “None of us will leave you willingly. And all of us will fight for each other as much for you.”
That made me feel better on some level. Perhaps it shouldn’t have, but it did. I half-expected Rogue to join us, and was about to suggest we gather breakfast and build a fire and maybe spend the day together just the five of us, when movement flashed on the horizon. The sun had begun to inch its way up on the horizon, all pinks and purples with the promise of a new day across the pristine snow.
But the movement was a dark smudge. A shadow against the light.
“Fin…”
“I see it,” he told me, arms tightening around me.
That was a lot more than just the five Alfred had summoned—the five that included Wyman and Synove.
Alfred appeared beside us as if summoned by the thought. Only the breeze stirred by his movement pushing at my hair alerted me to how fast he’d arrived. He wore slacks only, hastily pulled on and not buttoned.
Similarly, Maddox stood there, in jeans and bare feet looking rugged and primal. And my hormones were up for it. Holy fuck, between the two of them and the fact that Fin was wrapped around me, I wanted to forget there was an army approaching and just get naked.
What had I been thinking about a day together?
“Wyman is with them,” Rogue answered an unspoken question as he came to stand on my other side. When he held out his hand, I clasped his. The look in his eyes held the question he’d pressed me to answer days earlier. Would I go? Would I leave them to this fight and flee the danger?
“We expected that,” Alfred said. “He would have to ingratiate himself, but he’s given his word and his bond. He won’t break it.”
“That’s a lot of trust, Alfred,” Maddox commented. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, but what if you are?”
“I’ve known them all since we were children in another time and another place. I knew them when they were truly my blood brothers and sisters, when we fought together. I knew them when we fell. They would not be here if not for me, for my choices—”
“And theirs,” Rogue said, not letting Alfred finish that thought. “They chose to follow you, as we do.”
The stiffness in Alfred’s shoulders rippled as he seemed to settle into himself.
“He’s right,” Fin said casually. “If they got their panties in a twist over where they ended up, that’s not your fault. I don’t have a single regret about following you.” He punctuated the last with a kiss to my shoulder before moving to take his place between me and Alfred. Yes, he still had my hand, and the weight of his regard struck me.
Would I let him secret me away?
I still didn’t have an answer for that beyond I didn’t want to leave them.
“Even if we did,” Maddox said abruptly, “no one can mistake our choice for anything else.”
“Except Rogue.” Alfred’s tone held just a single note of guilt.
“It’s long done, brother,” Rogue told him. “I am exactly where I want to be, and I forgave you a long time ago. Without you, I’d never have known my little sváss. It’s enough.”
“And now that we’ve gotten the maudlin portion of battle prep out of the way…what do we want to do?” Fin rolled his head from side to side, then cut another glance at me.
I exhaled and then looked at them, one at a time. Maddox’s gaze was pure dragon and raw fury. He was ready for this fight. Fin was no less wild in his countenance, but his expression held just the faintest smirk. He’d already decided we were winning and he wouldn’t accept any other outcome.
Rogue didn’t flinch, but he seemed equally resigned and yet hopeful regarding my decision to stay or go. Finally, I looked at Alfred.
Did I do what I wanted, or did I follow what they needed?
What if they needed me?
“If you stay, Hellion, you fight at my side. You stay with me for the entirety of the battle.”
My heart squeezed. If
I stayed… He was giving me the final decision. Fuck, I loved them.
“We’ll never leave you,” I whispered. “And I’d follow you anywhere.” Fuck those who fell with him. I’d fall every time, no question.
CHAPTER 17
“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.” - Leo Tolstoy
ROGUE
War. He’d told Fiona that war was never pretty and it always came at a price. Of course, the remnants of the Six would not let this go. While they had no way of knowing whether they’d learned of Keeley’s death, it was possible. Rogue had taken responsibility for it, because while they were already gunning for Fiona, he’d prefer they brought their revenge plans to him. Never had he experienced terror as he had that night in the alley.
Not since the massacre of his people. Then, he’d been numb. The destruction had left his soul a bleak place. When Alfred had “saved” him, his fury had known no bounds. How dare Alfred take from him the chance to journey to his people in the afterlife? That cold rage had fed his soul while he sought his revenge, and it had kept him alive.
Alfred allowed it because he wanted Rogue to have a reason to live. It had taken him far too long to understand it. By then, his anger had faded like so much else. Following Alfred had been a choice at that point, but not one Alfred ever asked of him.
But Fiona had brought light and color back into that world. For all of them. She’d given Rogue a reason to hope. A reason why Alfred had forced this life on him so long ago, and he could be grateful. Even if they hadn’t known then, everything had been building to this moment. Every blood-soaked, painful moment.
Losing her was not an option. He knew damn well the others felt as strongly, but the moment Alfred gave her the option, he’d known what her answer would be.
Of course she wouldn’t leave them. She’d done it before, and danger had followed. So maybe, maybe she was right. It didn’t make the decision any more palatable. Together. It was what they’d told Maddox after he stole her. What Fin insisted on the moment he’d felt the ripple of her presence in the world.