by Sienna Aylen
His hackles rose. “Of course, it is. Their arrival is only a small hiccup. I still have everything under control.”
“You’d better. I’d hate to see you fail, especially at this stage of the game.” With those parting words, the line went dead.
He threw the phone onto his backpack and paced to the opening of the shallow cave. By the time they finally figured it all out, it would be too late. The entire Clan would be forced to their knees before him. The rightful Alpha. Looking out over the snow-kissed peaks, he could almost taste victory, and it was very sweet. Soon the entire territory would be his, one piece at a time.
Game. Set. Match.
Chapter Five
#xa0;
Emma stepped past Damien onto the sunlit porch. She couldn’t help but think the view would make the perfect painting. She would use oils to capture the nuances of color. Sweeping strokes of pigment would decorate the scene. The backyard lined up right along the edge of the forest. Vines trickled along the edges of the grass, creeping back to reclaim their territory.
Blackberry and blueberry bushes were planted next to the porch railing for easy access. Reaching down, she plucked one of the ripe berries and popped the delicate morsel into her mouth. There was even a charming rubber tire swing that had seen plenty of use hanging from one of the lower tree branches —but no shed. Not even the hint of one. “Okay, Smokey, where’s the shed?”
When he would’ve taken her hand, Emma jumped out of the way. Coughing delicately, she linked her hands behind her back to avoid the temptation of touching him.
Blushing at his knowing grin, she watched Damien stuff his hands into his pockets and start off, leading the way to a well-worn path through the trees. “It’s about a half mile in this direction.”
They moseyed down the path side by side, setting a leisurely pace. The crisp breeze teased the ends of her hair, sending them floating through the air to land on his arm, connecting them. Breathing out a harsh breath, Emma ran her hands through the mass, pushing it from her face. Ending the connection. She forced herself to focus on the muddy trail and not the forbidden hunk towering next to her. One foot in front of the other, avoiding bugs or any scurrying critters that liked to hide in the brush. Counting, Emma focused on her footsteps. Four, five, six…
Why hadn’t she seen him in the memories? There hadn’t been even one scene with his face in it.
Nine, ten, eleven…
Could Tessa be right? Was Damien her—?
With a jolt, she noticed that the gray cloud of memories wasn’t nudging her like it usually did. It wasn’t stomping around, demanding her attention like an errant toddler. Turning her focus inward, Emma went in search of the ever-present mass. Scanning her mind, she expected the vapor to be in its normal position on the fringes, surrounding her in a murky bubble. But it wasn’t there. Sweeping left and right, Emma at last spotted the dark shadow huddled on the right in the farthest shadows.
With gentle coaxing, Emma tried to access the memories, to encourage them to overtake her once more. The mass condensed into itself further, making itself as small as possible.
What the hell?
As they came to a curve in the path, on a hunch, Emma switched places with Damien, moving to the inside of the curve on his left instead of the right. When she looked back into her mind, the vaporous essence was now on the opposite side, huddling on the left side instead of the right.
Damien lifted a low-hanging branch out of her way. “Tell me about yourself. Where were you born?”
Taking a deep breath, she counted to five before letting it go, clearing her thoughts and relishing the fragrance of the fresh, clean air. “I was born in Ireland, back when it was just small tribes living off the land.”
Damien smiled. “What happened to your family, they still alive?”
Emma looked up at Damien’s face. He seemed genuinely curious. It had to be his eyes, she decided. They were a vibrant gold, the kindest eyes she had ever seen. Intelligent and mischievous, but gentle as well. “Why do you ask?”
He shrugged, moving his body closer to hers as they walked. “Because I’m curious. I’ll tell you about my family if you tell me about yours.”
Inch by inch, he scooted, until their arms were but a hair’s breadth from brushing against each other. With every step closer, the pressure in Emma’s head lessened. The dull throb of a headache that constantly accompanied her melted into the barest whisper of annoyance. A soft voice in her head breathed, He’s yours, Emma. Trust him with your past.
Groaning, she reached up and picked a flower off a tree. “Everyone I knew while growing up passed into the next life ages ago. My birth family were humans, very religious, suspicious of anything outside of their realm of ‘normal’. They were always guarded around me. I knew things a child shouldn’t and could repeat verbatim conversations that I was never around to hear. When I was eleven, I blurted out a secret about our leader. Morighan had said a few days before that his brother had gone missing but I found out differently. He had stabbed his brother in the back, thrown him off a cliff and then married his widow, all within forty-eight hours.”
Emma stared off into the distance to the top of a cliff, smashing the flower in her palm. Damien stayed silent next to her. She knew she was going to tell him but she hesitated. The past was better left buried. She understood he wasn’t going to drop the subject until she gave him something, so she chose her words with care.
“Long story short, he convinced everyone I was a witch and they kicked me out into the wilderness in the middle of a snowstorm. Outcast was the term used then. I wandered up into the hills to an empty cave. I fell asleep and woke up in front of a fire. Menora found me that night. She was part of the Council before ours, had the same gifts I do. After that night, she took me in and raised me as her own. She passed away when the rest of the Sixth Council did. The rest is history, literally.”
Seeing the pity and shock on Damien’s face made her cringe. She could imagine what he was thinking. How could anyone do that to a child? Poor Emma. She didn’t want his pity, or anyone else’s for that matter. The past was the past and there was no way to go back and change it.
Head held high, she awaited his reaction with a blank face. She expected sympathy and compassion but she got neither. Instead he stopped in the middle of the trail and turned to face her. “That’s awful. So, Contessa and Gwen aren’t related to you at all?”
Shoving her hands into her pockets, Emma rocked back on her heels. Knowing he wasn’t going to push about her past helped her relax. “Nope, none of my sisters are blood-related, although according to Aslynn, we all have the same blood type. All right, it’s your turn. What’s your family like?”
The grin he sported lit up his entire face. “My family is a mixture of personalities, kind of like you and your Council sisters. My grandparents on my mother’s side were the Alpha pair of the Clans for over a century. They took the Alpha title from the Potters, who had three kids, but none of them had Alpha traits. My grandfather challenged Joseph Potter for the title. Anyway, my grandparents then had two daughters, my mother and her sister. Mom was a wild child and went off to tour Europe for a few months after graduating from school. While she was there, she went to a human-run bar with a few friends and got hit on by one of the bartenders.
“She told him she wasn’t interested, but he claimed he was completely smitten. He followed her back home and pursued her until she gave in—and my parents have been inseparable since. My father challenged my grandfather when he wanted to retire and my parents held the Alpha title until a few years ago when I stepped in and did the same thing.”
Emma halted in the middle of the trail to listen to his story, giving him her undivided attention as he continued, “My parents gave birth to me. Bleu came along a few years later. When I was ten, my aunt and her mate died in a plane crash. Hunter and his sister Lysa became orphans and my parents took them in. Lysa became our little sister. We’re all protective of her, especially Hunter.
He was livid after the accident. We all were. I knew after that we’d need outside help before anyone else got hurt.”
Emma turned, heading back down the path. His family sounded so normal. She had her sisters but most of the time they didn’t open up with one another about their deepest struggles. Each one of them had seen enough evil to last a thousand lifetimes. They were all standing at the edge of the cliff, looking down and judging the distance to the bottom. She knew if one of them jumped, ending her existence, the others would be close behind.
Not you, Emma. Remember the big hunk standing next to you, your Fated?
There, she’d said it. Said the F word. Well, said it to herself. But that was just it, though, she couldn’t bring herself to be one hundred percent positive that he was her… Fated. All signs pointed to it but she wasn’t sure that she could trust her own mind. At least not without further proof.
A long time ago, she had accepted that having a family like Damien’s wasn’t in the cards for her. She wished she’d come from a family like his but then again, she wouldn’t be the person she was today if she had. She wouldn’t have learned the necessary skills to survive. Thrown into the fire at a young age, she had learned by trial and error. Forged in the flames.
Sincerity colored her voice when she finally responded. “They sound like a wonderful family. You’re lucky to have them. Hunter is quite the character but I know what he’s feeling. I would have no remorse ending anyone who came after my sisters like that. You don’t have to worry about the accidents. We’ll stop whoever is behind it. It’s what we do.”
The clearing opened to a large wooden shed where the Clan evidently housed all their off-season supplies. Through the open door, she could see snowmobiles, plows and winter gear lining the inside of the building on custom shelving that kept everything organized and accessible. As Damien’s footsteps slowed, she met his gaze and scoffed. “That can’t be a shed, it’s the size of a house.”
Emma almost jumped out of her skin when Damien leaned close, invading her personal space with only a scant few inches between them. One large hand came close to her face as he ran his finger down a lock of her hair and whispered, “What exactly do you think the shed is going to tell you, all its dirty little secrets?”
Flipping her hair over one shoulder, she broke the connection. Eyebrows crinkled before she went up on tiptoe, her mouth hovering right next to his ear, close enough she could feel his entire body tense. Lowering her voice an octave, she drawled, “Oh, I don’t know, it could be anything from some frisky Clan members making out to, say, perhaps a face or clue as to who cut down the tree.” Straightening, Emma skirted around him and cast a smile over her shoulder. “Just remember, Baloo, don’t distract me. This’ll only take a few minutes.”
Emma tugged off her left glove and tucked it into the back of her jeans. Flexing her fingers, she braced herself and gingerly placed her hand on the weathered wooden surface.
The rush of images came at her so fast it was akin to having mental whiplash. Without Damien close, the memories sprang from the corner of her mind and crowded her like claustrophobic people on an elevator, entering and exiting at every floor. It was almost a high, euphoric and overwhelming in equal amounts. Thankfully, the shed was only twenty years old. Antiques could keep her in their grasp anywhere from hours to days, depending on their age.
Shoving at the mist, Emma crawled back to the surface with only a trickle of blood seeping from her nose and a throbbing headache to prove their existence. She reached behind her and pulled the glove out of her pocket and onto her exposed hand. She closed her eyes to try to rid herself of the suffocating fog and the pounding in her head that told her she’d used her gift one too many times that day.
The soft fabric of a cotton handkerchief dabbed at the sticky oozing blood and a firm, callused hand gripped her chin. The warmth of his fingers was a balm to her muddled senses, pushing the mist back to the edges of her mind and holding it there.
The memories rioted for her continued attention but his gentle grip on her face took center stage, pulling her from the murkiness into reality. Emma blinked a few times to clear the cobwebs from her vision. Damien’s touch had done the unimaginable. It had centered her back in the present. It was a bright light in the darkness. A beacon of hope.
It took a moment for his gruff voice to penetrate her senses. “How long have you been getting nosebleeds, Emma?”
Coughing a few times, she cleared her throat. “They started a few centuries ago, sporadically at first, but now they’re a regular occurrence.”
Damien took the crook of her arm and led her to a large tree stump. Guiding her to sit, he crouched in front of her. “Your gift is different, isn’t it? It isn’t so hard on your body as much as it is on your mind.”
“Something like that.” Emma knew she looked like crap. Reading objects always played havoc with her mind and it translated to her face. Eyes filled with pain, blood trickling out of her nose and her breath coming in shallow pants were the typical symptoms that gave away her weariness.
Damien pocketed the handkerchief and stood up. “That’s why you didn’t want to tell me about your gift. If people knew what you can do, they’d turn you into a commodity. A performing monkey.”
Emma nodded, the movement sending shards of pain through her skull.
With quick steps, he paced back and forth, running both hands over his face. “How many objects have you read?”
Taken aback at the question, she paused before shrugging. “Well, I’ve been doing this for two millennia, give or take a century. Multiply that by all the normal objects you would touch in an average day. You do the math.”
He stopped abruptly in front of her, splaying his hands wide. She marveled at the look of sheer determination stamped on his features. “Then why do you still do it? It obviously isn’t good for you.” He stared off for a moment before jerking his head back to meet her gaze. “Wait. What would happen to you if you touched an antique?”
The tension radiating from him was worsening her headache with a vengeance and she just didn’t feel like dealing with it. His jaw was clenched and one pulsing vein on the side of his forehead was more prominent than it had been before. If he clenched any more, he would look constipated. The thought made her crack a tiny smile.
The growl she received in response made her want to laugh even more but it was too much effort to expend with the stabbing knife that was carving through her skull. Sighing, she rubbed at her eyes. “I do it because it’s my job, it’s what I’ve always done. If I touch an antique, the consequences would depend on the age of the item.” Emma avoided his gaze. “A younger one might knock me out for a few hours, an older one… Well, if I ever encounter one my age I assume it would either make me comatose or kill me.”
“You’re kidding me, right? Two thousand years, Emma. Let me guess, you read the objects alone too. All by yourself without anyone to look after you when you come back to the surface. When they make you unconscious for hours or days, who looks after you?”
Emma glared at him. “No one. It isn’t anyone else’s responsibility.”
Damien paced to the shed before turning around and snarling, “And you’re completely okay with that? You act as though your life is over already! It’s your job, but it doesn’t define who you are, Emma. Do you even care that you’re killing yourself?”
Emma rose unsteadily with a grimace of pain. She stiffened her legs and propped her hands on her hips. Temper escalating at his ignorance, she found herself yelling at him. “I have no other choice! I can’t abandon my sisters, not when this is happening to them too. We’ve lived longer than we ever imagined we would and you know what? It gets old! You have a family, a life. All I’ve ever had is my sisters and my job. That’s it. If I die on the job, then so be it. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.”
Emma raked a hand through her hair and walked around to the back of the shed. When she had been younger and less jaded, she’d had bright dreams of f
inding her Fated, settling down, opening an antique shop, ironically enough, and having open land to call her own. But that all had changed. Her gift was spiraling out of control, so much so that she didn’t think even her Fated would be able to balance it out.
Confused and tired from her raging headache, Emma focused what was left of her energy on putting one foot in front of the other, scanning the ground as she went.
Damien followed as she crouched down and looked underneath a bush. Both of their tempers had exploded and now she was feeling the effects. She pulled away from him, retreating back inside herself and putting back the wall of ice that encased her true personality. It was the only safe thing to do.
Damien snarled again. “It doesn’t have to be that way, you know. There’s always a choice. You could stop. You should stop. Retire. You’ve been doing it long enough.”
She found the object she was looking for and unwrapped it from around one of the pointed branches. “Stop what? My life? And leave my sisters to fight alone? Not a chance.” Her voice dropped and went toneless. “My life is what it is. I came to terms with that fact long ago. I’m not asking for your approval of my lifestyle, Damien. You are a job, just like many others. I don’t owe you an explanation.”
Emma stood and trudged back over to him. She grabbed his wrist and placed a wadded-up ball of red in his palm. “Whoever it was kept to the shadows. He was in bear form so I didn’t see a face. I did, however, see Hunter. The woman he was with lost these in the ensuing activities.” Without waiting for a reply, she spun around and started walking.
Sneaking one look over her shoulder, she saw Damien crush the scarlet lace panties in his fist. The look on his face proclaimed he was far from done with the conversation.
That was too bad, because she was finished with it. As he started after her, she increased her pace, disappearing into the brush.
* * * *
“So, sugar, you seen any visions of the future where you’re naked in my bed?” Hunter asked, holding open the door of the cabin with one arm.