by S. Young
Vil immediately disappeared. Caia threw Reuben a disparaging look. “I don’t know why people are so afraid of you.”
His answer was a smug cocking of his eyebrow.
Someone really needed to put that guy in his place. She shared a look with the witch, and Caia knew Marion was thinking the same thing.
She felt a rush of pure happiness that the magik was back in her life.
23
Fences
“I’ve never done a communication spell with another person holding on to me before,” Caia snapped at Reuben as they stood facing each other in her suite, both mirror images of each other with their impatient sneers and defiant arms akimbo. “Are you really sure it’s necessary?”
Reuben shook his head, his expression that of someone who felt they were dealing with a person of little intelligence. “No, it isn’t necessary. However, I think it’s time you tried it, and you can since you’ve been to the hotel before.”
“If I kill you, this will be all your fault.”
“Caia, you won’t kill me,” he reassured her. “We really must work on your confidence if you’re to have any hope of taking on Marita and winning.”
“As much as I enjoy your pep talks, can we maybe get going?”
“Hey, I wasn’t the one stalling.”
Caia took a deep breath. Sometimes it felt like she was dealing with an obnoxious teenager. Bracing herself, she held a tentative hand out toward the vampyre and he gripped her tightly, her hand mostly disappearing in his large one. Butterflies erupted in her belly at the thought of seeing Lucien again after all these weeks and the bad terms they’d left one another on.
The Council hadn’t been too pleased with her decision to go after Marita with only Reuben and Saffron for help, but they soon realized the method in the madness, considering how difficult it’d been so far to track her with her using the trace to escape all the time. Thus, they were letting Caia go, although she was unnerved by Benedict De Jong’s goodbye, the smug asshole waving her off as if sure it would be the last time he ever laid eyes on her. Goddess, she hoped he was wrong.
“Caia, let’s go.” Reuben squeezed her hand. At his insistence, she closed her eyes and tightened her energy around them both, visualizing the front entrance of the hotel.
An immediate lethargy crashed over her body, and she felt a tug on her hand suggesting Reuben was holding her up. Taking a deep breath, Caia opened her eyes and forced her legs to straighten, demanding strength rush back into them.
She and Reuben stood in the empty foyer of the hotel, Reuben grinning at her.
“If you say I told you so, I will kill you,” she snapped.
“Caia!”
She jerked around at the sound of her name and only caught a brief glimpse of Magnus running through the dining hall door before she was crushed in his arms like a little girl. She held on tight, breathing in the scent of her favorite lykan. “Uncle Magnus.” She grinned and pressed a kiss to his cheek, watching as he glowed under her affection.
“We missed you.” He pressed her back, glowering at Reuben. “You have some explaining to do.”
Caia could see trouble brewing. “Where is Lucien?”
“In his room.” Magnus continued to glare at the vampyre. “He wants to kill this one.”
“Oh, he can’t do that,” she rushed, her hands fluttering nervously. “I need to explain to him before he sees Reuben …” She trailed off and huffed at the blank expression on the vamp’s face. He wasn’t concerned in the least.
“Magnus,” she growled between clenched teeth, realizing she was the only one anxious about the situation, “can you take Reuben into the dining hall while I find Lucien? And please promise you won’t let anybody try to fight him. I know he doesn’t look like much.” She smiled sweetly at the scowl Reuben threw her. “But he can snap any one of us like a twig in under a second.”
Magnus huffed but agreed. He gave Caia directions to Lucien’s room, and she watched silently as they disappeared into the dining hall. She exhaled, brushing her hair off her face. Seeing a mirror hanging on the wall by the entrance, she rushed over to it and gave herself a quick once-over. She wanted to look cool and aloof but instead she looked short and tired. Grunting, she turned away and headed up the stairs.
As she neared Lucien’s room, she could taste his scent in the air and her ears perked up, hoping to catch sound of him. What she did hear made her heart stop, and she paused outside his bedroom door, her fingernails making crescents in her skin as she balled her hands into tight fists.
“So you’re just going to forgive her?” Rose snapped on the other side of the door.
What the Hades was Rose doing in his bedroom? Caia felt an overwhelming desire to scratch the female’s eyes out and while she was at it, throw a good kick to where it would hurt Lucien the most!
“Rose,” he said, quiet but determined, “we’ve been over this.”
“I know, but I’m still your friend, Lucien. I’m concerned. You can’t just forgive her for leaving you, for lying to you—”
Is that how he saw it?
“She’s going to hurt you again and again because this war means more to her than you or the pack.”
Bitch!
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lucien growled.
Yes! Thank you!
“I’m not trying to piss you off, Lucien. I’m trying to save you some heartache.”
At the dawning silence, Caia had had enough. She pushed open the door with enough force to send it slamming back against the wall and had to stop herself from flinching under the crash it made.
She hadn’t really meant to make that dramatic an entrance.
Lucien gazed at her wide-eyed, and as he noticed her pointed glances between him and Rose—Rose who was stroking his cheek affectionately—he flushed, realizing how it looked. “Caia …”
She shook her head. All this time she’d been in turmoil, and he’d been letting the redhead cozy up to him in his bedroom suite. She glared at Rose and wasn’t surprised to see hatred in the lykan’s eyes. Jealousy was a powerful emotion. She should know.
Caia huffed, drawing her arms across her chest. “Looks like I wasn’t too greatly missed, huh? Jeez, Lucien, you work fast.” She seethed.
If she hadn’t been so angry, she would’ve been amused by how flustered and panicky he got, pushing Rose away from him. “It’s not how it looks.”
“It looks like Rose has been trying to replace me. It looks like she’s in your bedroom … alone … with you.”
He made to move toward her, but Rose pushed him back, turning on Caia in an instant. “You’re the one who walked out, so don’t accuse him of things you know nothing about.”
How dare this … this … this person speak to her like she had business being involved in her and Lucien’s … well … business!
Caia walked slowly toward her, her eyes spitting fire. “For starters, I was kicked out. And as for you, what goes on between me and my mate has nothing to do with you, so I suggest you get out before I lose my temper.”
The air around Caia crackled and sparked, and she felt the urgency of her power pleading for release as it tingled excitedly in her fingertips. Rose’s eyes widened, and she looked up at Lucien for help. His lips pinched and he pinned her with a threatening look. Taking the hint, the lykan fled the room, dodging Caia, clearly afraid of her.
When she was gone and the door was closed firmly behind her, Lucien crossed the room to Caia but stopped so there was enough obvious distance between them. “That really wasn’t what it looked like.”
Caia shrugged as if it didn’t matter when they both knew it did. “Whatever. You wanted to see me, so I’m here.”
“Caia, don’t.” He shook his head angrily. “You must know how bad I feel about kicking you out. But you should’ve told me about Reuben. I’m supposed to protect my pack, and I didn’t know one of them was being blackmailed!”
“In order to protect the rest of you,”
she argued.
“Yeah, but you are the pack, Caia! What is the point of preaching about looking out for one another and me protecting you all when I couldn’t even protect my own mate?”
Caia exhaled wearily. “I did what I had to do.”
“Is that our relationship from now on? Doing what we have to do to the detriment of our mating?”
“I had to lie, and you didn’t trust me … that’s not the mating, Lucien, that’s us!”
He shook his head as if he could dispel the accusation. “No! I only said I was kicking you out because I thought you would see how crazy you were being and change your mind.”
Suddenly, all the resentment she hadn’t even known had been there bubbled up to the surface. Caia grabbed a cushion off the sofa and threw it at him with all her might. It bounced off his chest, and he stared at her, incredulous.
“Didn’t you even stop to think? Didn’t you wonder why I was so adamant about killing the Septum? Me? Killing innocent people?” She gestured wildly. “Did that make sense to you?”
“No!” he yelled back like a child. “I knew something was up, but what the hell was I supposed to do? Run after you and leave my pack to deal with six deaths all by themselves?”
She grimaced and shifted away from him. “No,” she mumbled and picked at the thread on a throw over the sofa.
After a minute of silence, Lucien dropped down onto a chair. “So you didn’t kill the Septum.” It wasn’t a question. Clearly, Vil had told Lucien the little she had explained and hopefully left out the rest.
“I couldn’t. There was a little girl … anyway, we worked out something else.”
“Worked out what?”
“I can’t tell you.”
His jaw clenched. “Can’t or won’t?”
Ignoring his look of betrayal, she sighed. “Can’t.”
He glared at her. “I can’t believe you’re being like this. Fine. Keep your secrets. But tell me one thing … are you going after Marita?”
That much she could be honest about. “Somebody has to do it.”
Lucien launched to his feet. “But why does it have to be my mate?”
Caia chuckled humorlessly. “Oh gods, Lucien, I don’t know. But if I don’t do this, things are going to get really bad. And it’s not like I’m going into this alone. I have Saffron and Reuben.”
He stiffened and his face turned a mottled red. “Is he here? Has he actually dared to come here?”
Yes, Reuben had acted ruthlessly, but Caia couldn’t handle a disagreement between him and Lucien right now. “It is his hotel.”
With a bellowing curse, Lucien blew past her and out the door. She heard him running along the corridor at an insane speed. Oh dear goddess! He was going to attack the vampyre who couldn’t die! Swearing under her breath, Caia took off after him, scaling the stair railings to try to catch up with him.
As it was, when she barreled into the dining room, Reuben towered over Lucien, his large hand wrapped around Lucien’s thick neck. The flashing glints of red in his eyes told her he was mesmerizing Lucien, keeping him still as he choked the life from him, Lucien’s face turning a terrible purple as they all stood struck dumb by the sight of their Alpha on his knees.
Caia felt a rush of sickness. “Reuben … STOP IT!” she screamed, but he merely tightened his hold. Suddenly, Magnus leapt at the vampyre only to be backhanded as if he were a fly.
“REUBEN!” she screamed again as Ella followed Magnus’s footsteps. Lucien’s eyes were closing and terror took hold of her energy; her energy took hold of her, sneering at her hopelessness and flowing out in a stream toward the vampyre. To her utter surprise, it hit and Reuben was blasted across the room with enough intensity to send him crashing through the windows and outside into the cold. For a moment, she was stunned that her magik had actually worked on Reuben, and fleetingly she wondered if he’d been lying all along about being impervious to it.
But somehow … she didn’t think so. A trickle of sweat slid down the side of his face.
Hacking coughs shook Caia from her thoughts, and she rushed to Lucien who was being helped up by Draven. Her hands fluttered over him, checking to make sure he was all right, and she breathed a sigh of relief as his normal color returned. He appeared dazed and pushed her hands away as if she were irritating him.
“Well, that was a surprise.”
Caia looked up to see Reuben clambering back inside through the window he’d just been thrown out of. He brushed off pieces of glass and grinned unrepentantly. “Looks like I’m not impervious to you, Caia. Although, I have to say that a blast like that would have killed a lesser man. My feelings are hurt.”
Her jaw dropped at his audacity, and her lykan colored her words as she replied through a mouth longing to fill with her sharp wolf teeth, “You ever touch one of my pack again and I will send you back where you came from, you son of a bitch.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “I’ll heed that warning. Since, apparently, you might actually be able to do it.”
Draven looked bewildered by the man. “You don’t seem that bothered.”
Reuben shrugged. “I’m not. I’m impressed. I’ve been waiting a long time for someone like Caia.”
Lucien growled and made a move toward the vampyre, but Caia pressed him back, scolding him. She was rewarded with one of his frostiest looks before he straightened his massive shoulders and thundered out of the room, Magnus and Ella following in his wake.
Caia felt tears of frustration prickle in her eyes. “You were going to kill him.”
“No.” The vampyre shook his head. “I know killing Lucien would mean losing you, and I need you too much. I was merely teaching him a lesson. He attacked unfairly.”
“You blackmailed his mate.”
“But it all turned out okay in the end.”
“He doesn’t know that! He thinks I’m punishing him for kicking me out of the pack.”
Reuben threw her a condescending look before taking out a flask of blood from his inner coat pocket. He went to take a swig and noticed her watching. “You depleted my energy.”
Caia threw her hands in the air, wondering why she even bothered trying to get answers from the guy. “I’m going to find Jaeden. You … stay away from my pack.”
“I don’t know if they’re your pack again just yet, sweetheart,” he taunted, and laughed when her only answer was a rude gesture.
24
The Green-Eyed Monster
Rose’s heart pounded in her chest as she stood in the middle of the woods, some fifteen minutes from the hotel. She’d rushed out of a pack meeting where Caia had told them all about the Septum and the little girl, Eliza Emerett, she couldn’t kill. Caia seemed to go off into a world of her own as she described the little eleven-year-old Midnight and where she lived. Rose smirked. She doubted Caia had meant to be so detailed in her maudlin retelling of why she couldn’t possibly go through with such a wicked plan. But that was all Caia was telling them, and Rose was more than a little suspicious.
Clutching the cell phone, she prayed the number she had for Marita was still in use. Surely if it was, and she saw who was calling, Marita could look into the trace and see Rose was sincere in her intentions. All she had to do was fight through the fog Reuben had put over her trace to hide her from Marita, but she would be careful to keep where they were staying still masked. It would be better if she held all the cards.
Rose was reeling from Lucien’s betrayal, and yet she couldn’t blame him. It wasn’t his fault. He was under that she-witch’s spell. They all were! And Caia was going to bring the pack to disaster. Lucien and his pack were good people, nothing like the ambitious, deceitful pack she’d grown up in where your best friend would stab you in the back if it meant climbing the next rung on the hierarchical ladder. She had to save them from Caia, from themselves, and then she and Lucien could finally be happy together. Marita wasn’t a bad person! It dumbfounded her how all these people could believe a woman who had successfully led the Daylight
Coven against the Midnights could just become a monster. This was a witch hunt started by a being that needed to be stopped. And if Rose helped Marita stop Caia, she was sure she could negotiate a pardon for the pack.
Trembling with excitement, Rose dialed the number. It rang for a while, but finally the tone clicked.
“Rose,” Marita’s familiar stern voice.
Relief washed through her. “Oh, thank goddess, Marita. Do you know why I’m calling?”
“Hmm, yes, I’m reading the trace. Very interesting. What is interesting is I don’t know where you are.”
Rose paused. “I can’t tell you that just yet.”
“I see.” She was silent for a moment. “Fine. I appreciate you calling, however. And this information I’m reading in the trace about this Septum and this little girl. It’s all true?”
“Yes,” Rose gushed. “Caia’s planning on destroying the trace.”
Marita hissed, “That little bitch.”
Rose waited, her ears lifting under her hair every time she heard a noise. No one could know she was doing this. They wouldn’t understand right now.
“I want you to keep pretending you’re on their side, Rose. Contact me if you discover anything else of importance.”
“Of course.”
“And Rose …”
“Yes?”
“I won’t forget your loyalty.”
25
Last Mistake
Caia was dancing with Lucien, her cheek pressed against his shoulder as they swayed gently to the music. A soft breeze played with the hem of her dress and tickled through her hair as she sighed contentedly. It was a perfect night. The dark sky sewn bright with stars as colorful as fireflies, the air temperate and free, the sound of the surf crashing on shore as rhythmic as a lullaby.