by Scott, Helen
He’d been gone for hours now, and the second he’d disappeared, my jet lag had made a nasty reappearance. After we’d been shown to our room and Elizabeth had gone to rest—the withdrawals had started to hit her hard the second Merlin had gone, which raised a whole other bundle of questions—the shadow creatures had begun exploring the suite, and I’d come to see that they were wary of the dragon. Not that I blamed them. I didn’t know that one either, and it was so big and grand. It reminded me of a crystal candelabra, and yeah, I knew that sounded weird, but it was true.
In the movies, like Pride and Prejudice—one of my faves—the candelabras were all huge with hundreds of candles all over them. That was how the dragon was. It was illuminated from the inside out, each point of its joints glowing like a living flame.
It was, to be frank, creepy as shit, and even creepier to think that they lived inside me, or to be more accurate, that I could call on them to pop into existence.
Now, though, I doubted there were more creatures to expunge from my soul, and those that were loafing around the fancy suite the Reapers had given us were starting to look agitated.
The dragon kept shaking out its wings, the hellcat’s mane kept ruffling, and the bear’s snarl had me wincing every time I heard it. As for the eagle, it kept making these cawing sounds that sent shivers down my spine.
It felt like an omen.
Like the bird was warning me.
But I didn’t know what it was warning me from.
“Marcella!”
I blinked and came to, realizing that all my mates had now clustered around me. When that had happened, I couldn’t say, but they were here and they were watching me.
“What’s wrong?” I asked warily.
Cade growled, “You. That’s what. What is it? What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I just feel weird.” I pressed a hand to my stomach again as the nausea swirled inside me.
My skin was starting to feel tight once more. Too tight, like it could explode. So tight. Dear Maker, so tight.
I began to gasp for air, uncertain what was happening to me, and I was terrified considering the beasts were out and just as agitated. Was another creature being ‘born?’
What the fuck was happening to me?
It was like my blood was boiling. As though my organs were too large for my insides. I felt like I was cooking from the inside out. As though…
My mouth worked as I dropped to my knees, and the second I collided with the ground, the electricity in the room was snuffed out until the only glow came from the dragon.
The beast flapped its huge wings and came to hover over us. Whether to watch my demise or to offer comfort, I wasn’t sure.
As I curled my hands into fists, I felt the pain surge through me again. Coarse or not, I knew what it felt like to be double stuffed, and that was how I felt, like my skin was too small, like something was simultaneously trying to explode out of me while being stuffed inside me too.
I’d have burst out giggling if the pain wasn’t excruciating, and suddenly, with a pop, whatever it was that had surged from out of nowhere was inside me.
Alien.
An alien presence deep inside my body.
The dragon scared the shit out of me by squawking. I knew it stunned my mates too, because they all cursed and jerked back in surprise at the noise, but when we peered overhead, me panting like I’d given birth except instead of expelling something from me, it had been shoved inside me, I saw the fucking craziest thing.
My mouth trembled as…
“Holy fuck. Is it laying an egg?” Barclay croaked.
It was.
The dragon born of light was laying an egg.
A fucking egg.
Made of light.
Right above me.
Like…
I screamed as the egg plopped into my lap. Staring at it, unsure of what the hell to do with the large orb, I didn’t have to fret long.
The dragon squawked at me again in disgust and then, with its huge maw coming in close to hiss at me, its—fuck, I guess this was confirmation ‘it’ was a ‘she’—her claws appeared and snatched the egg from my lap.
Like remnants of blood, traces of light covered my pants, and even though it wasn’t gross, I still wasn’t sure if I’d seen anything more disturbing in all my life.
Shuddering, I began to wipe off my lap, but Cade whispered, “Holy fuck. Come and look.”
I twisted around to look at where he was and saw he’d taken to standing beside the window. At his words, everyone scrambled to join him, only Keiran waited and hauled me into a standing position.
He supported me as we headed to the space the others had left for me, and when I saw the beast outside, my heart almost stopped.
The window had a fantastic vantage point. I could see why the Reapers had chosen this for their base. At the summit of a hill, they could look down on several neighboring towns. Because they were so old, I could imagine them having plotted this like a Duke or Earl of old would before laying foundations on their castle.
Because of that, I could see for miles on end, and what I saw was complete and utter darkness.
All the lights in all the surrounding towns had disappeared, winked out of existence like electricity didn’t exist.
And amid that penetrating gloom, the dragon was all the more visible. Its wings of light glowed gold as they pumped through the air, powering higher and higher with the large orb in its clawed feet.
For endless moments, we watched, awestruck as the beast headed farther and farther away.
“It’s going to the moon,” Darius rasped a few seconds later, and though I wanted to argue, I couldn’t.
Even as the beast sank deeper into the distance, its body grew smaller, but the orb in its claws didn’t.
Until…
“Sweet fuck,” Barclay mumbled.
“I can feel it,” Gideon said at the same time as Cade whispered, “Maker, I’m connected to it.”
I didn’t even have it in me to gape at them, instead, I was staring at the place where the moon suddenly had a twin.
❖
Lily
“Henrick, I need to do this.”
My mate’s nostrils flared in disapproval, and though it was a look I was getting quite used to seeing in the short time I’d known him, I disregarded it.
I wasn’t scared of him.
I didn’t care if he was one of the almighty Reapers, a band of men who terrified my own brother—the Enforcer of the LeFauvre line. I just wasn’t frightened. How could I be? How could I be scared of the man who’d made love to me like I was a delicate china doll, but who was more than capable of fucking me like the bad girl I could be too?
Each of them was like that.
Dual in nature to suit my own mercurial temperaments.
I’d never thought to be aligned with a brotherhood such as this, never imagined it in a thousand years, and yet their power was such that for once, I was a nonentity. To these men, my name meant buttkiss, and I’d never been happier than I was in their presence.
That didn’t mean, however, that I was going to let them get away with riding roughshod all over me. At least, not all the time. Certain things weren’t worth fighting over while others were.
This was one such moment. Not only was the fate of the whole world hinged on the balance I could provide, but also whether or not they decided to trust me enough to know myself and my limitations. I didn’t just need to do this, I wanted to. I wanted to atone for some of the evil my family had put into the world.
The others would follow Henrick, since he was the de facto leader, so he was whom I concentrated my efforts on. “I need to do this,” I repeated. “I need to manifest the good within myself and bring it to the fore. I am the light part of the triangle, I know that as surely as I know you are all my soulmates. I don’t care whether anyone else believes it, but I need to prove this to myself, prove that I’m not the dark, that I can bring the light you all want to you and br
eak the chains of darkness that have bound you for so long.”
Henrick stared at me for a long moment and I didn’t back down, didn’t break eye contact. I knew if I did, then it would be the same as admitting defeat, and that wasn’t going to happen, not on this. Finally, he blinked and looked away, and I knew I’d won. My heart soared with happiness. I was the light, and they trusted me to bring that to the table in the coming battle.
After a minute of chewing on his lower lip and stroking his beard, Henrick stated, “We fight with you. Our only goal is to protect you. I don’t give a shit about the Maker or the Lady or whatever fancy fight they are starting with each other, and I know none of the others do either.” When he was done, Henrick looked around the group of men surrounding us, his eyebrows raised in silent question. Nods followed.
“We only just found you, our flower, and we aren’t ready to lose you just yet. It would break my heart,” Gabe chimed in, his brow curving into a frown.
No one knew how sensitive these men really were, mainly because they didn’t let it out with anyone but me, but I knew, and the frown wasn’t fake. He wasn’t exaggerating to make an impact, he really was feeling the ghost of heartbreak.
“You are our everything, Lily. Don’t you see that without you, we don’t care if the Lady and Merlin reduce the world to ash? We don’t care who wins or loses, if something happened to you, then we would have already lost,” Henrick added.
Tears stung my eyes and I knew they meant every word they’d said. One of our agreements was to never lie to each other, even if we thought that we were protecting the other. My brother had used that excuse too many times for me to trust or believe it anymore. As soon as the guys had understood, and a few other things, the way we talked about things changed. I was included and looked to for my opinion, and I cherished it, because it had certainly never happened before.
“I don’t want to lose you either, especially because we don’t know if my death would kill you. I don’t want that on my conscience, not in this life or the next. All I want is to make it safe for us to live our lives. If the Lady knows about me, then with or without the Cavalry she’ll be coming for me. I don’t want to live in fear, not anymore,” I declared, as I reached for each of my men, touching them in turn.
I had grown up in luxury, with staff around filling my every need, except one—physical affection. It was something that the Reapers had shunned for years, thinking it made them weak, but now that we were all together we could draw strength from each other’s touch, and right now, I needed their strength as much as I needed to show them I was strong.
“We fight, and if we die, we do it together,” Gabe said.
Nods went around the circle.
“Fine,” I agreed. “Together or not at all, for everything.”
I gave each of them a peck on the cheek, wanting to do more, to solidify this new level of trust between us, but the scream that came from the room Marcella and her men were staying in reminded me that we were not alone. The sound was not one of pleasure and it had us all racing down the hall toward the guest suite.
Chapter
Marcella
There were two moons now, and my dragon was nowhere to be found. I couldn’t even really feel a connection to the creature anymore, not like I could with the others. I guessed the supernatural cat was officially out of the bag to the humans. It wasn’t my intention, hell, I hadn’t even wanted or intended for the egg thing to happen, but it was done now. For whatever reason, there was a second moon, and that was bound to have consequences that went deeper than terrifying the humans.
Maker, were we about to experience a tsunami?
Just as my heart began to pound with the biological implications of having a second moon, the doors to the suite burst open, and Lily and the Reapers came rushing in.
“I heard a scream,” she said, panting slightly as though she had just received the fright of her life.
“Uh, nothing to worry about, I guess,” I mumbled, and jerked my chin toward the sky.
In a split second, the space around the windows was crowded, and Lily and I were being pressed toward the glass while the guys all stared up at the sky.
“Holy shit,” Lily whispered upon seeing the two moons.
“Yeah, about that… No idea where it came from, but my dragon laid an egg and then flew it up into the sky and now we have two of them,” I explained, feeling bashful and like I was responsible for the new celestial body, which I was. Even if I hadn’t asked for this shit to happen.
“Did you just have a stroke or something? You’re not making any sense,” Lily replied, as she put the back of her hand to my forehead like she was worried I had a fever.
“Everything she said is true, and no strokes or other medical issues occurred,” Raven commented, sounding moderately annoyed about having to defend me to the very woman who’d tried to kill me multiple times.
“So you have a dragon and didn’t think that was important to mention?” Lily asked, but her tone bubbled with excitement.
I winced. “Yep, but the dragon is woven from light, whereas the others are just woven from shadow.”
“The others?”
I nodded to the space behind her where my hellcat, bear, and eagle had all settled and were now napping. When she turned, she almost screamed. The noise was just starting to leave her lips before she clamped her hands over her mouth.
When her hands came down, her mouth gaped open for a moment before she began, “Are those...?”
“The ones you saw at Eastbrook? Yeah,” I answered, confirming something she had long accused me of but had never been able to prove. I had always taken time with my illusions and shadow creatures to make them appear as realistic as I could, even though they were just made of shadow, and now that I would weave light in as well, they looked like the real deal.
“Holy shit,” she breathed, before spinning to face me and saying, “I fucking knew it! I knew they were connected to you somehow. Ha! I was right all this time.”
I laughed, feeling an unexpected sense of camaraderie with her. “You were. I’m still thankful that you couldn’t prove it though.” Fuck only knew how many beatings that had spared me.
“I like the new decoration.” Merlin’s voice came from outside. We only heard it because the window was open. It drew us all back, though, as he stared up at the new moon as well. “I just thought I should let you know that the Cavalry will be here within the next twenty-four hours. I have a bit more to clean up, but then I will join you. All of us being together should draw the Lady out.”
“What?” I exclaimed. “I thought we’d have more time to get ready!” The next thing I knew, I was talking to an empty field.
I turned to my guys, completely pissed off at Merlin’s drop a knowledge bomb and run antics.
Everyone else seemed to ignore the fact that he’d just appeared and disappeared like a flash of lightning, one that was imparting not so great news.
“What’s wrong, love?” Gideon asked, eying me warily.
“Did you not just see Merlin? Hear what he said? Hear what I said to him?” I questioned, feeling confused.
Heads shook all around me. I quickly relayed the little information he’d imparted, and grumbles sounded throughout the group of men gathered around us.
“Sneaky bastard didn’t want to get trapped with us,” Henrick muttered.
“Trapped?” Lily echoed, her voice a quavering mess as fear seemed to coat her from head to toe.
“The Cavalry has always known where were lived, just like we knew where their residences were. If they will be here within twenty-four hours, then they will lay siege to get to you. We need to go to town and get supplies if we want to wait them out, or get supplies to fight them. Either way, we don’t have what we need here,” Gabe explained, sounding irritated.
“Can I come?” Lily asked.
I wanted to jump in and say no, tell her it was too much of a risk, but that would be showing that I didn’t trust the Reaper
s to keep her safe, so I kept my mouth shut. They’d come back, and if they didn’t have Lily with them, then they knew how screwed we were. Henrick nodded once at Lily and all of them trooped out of the room.
“Are we sure it’s a good idea to let her go with them?” Keiran queried.
“No, but it’s better not to insult our allies right before a fight,” Darius cautioned quietly. “Besides, the Reapers are some of the best trackers in the country, if Lily does get away then it won’t be for long.”
“So I guess that leaves us here all alone with our mate for the first time in days,” Cade noted, with a distinctly sexy undertone to his voice. A tendril of excitement wove through me, making my body tighten in anticipation.
“I guess it does,” Gideon agreed, his eyes meeting mine as the roar of motorcycles started up outside.
All of my mates were looking at me like I was their last meal, which was something that made my blood hum with pleasure and anticipation. As the sound of the motorcycles faded into the distance, I couldn’t help the need flowing through my body. It had been too long and we all needed to be in top shape if we were going to be fighting the Cavalry tomorrow, and that meant feeding in more ways than one.
I backed away from my men, leading them toward the bed, and they pursued me like the predators they were. Gideon and Barclay flanked me, then skirted behind me and moved through the door before I could. Part of me felt bad for what was about to happen to the bedroom since it wasn’t ours, but the rest of me couldn’t care less. We had the resources to replace whatever was damaged, if we survived the next twenty-four hours that is.
Barclay surprised me by grabbing me from behind and hauling me back up against him, my body coming alive with my desire from his touch. I squeaked and wriggled, pretending to struggle, but my men knew me well enough to know it was an act, one that drove them wild. It wasn’t that they wanted to take me against my will or anything like that, but my attempt to flee, even one as half-hearted as what I just did, drew their Vampires to the surface, woke their predatory natures, and if we were going to have one last night together then that was what I wanted.