Breaking Free

by Layla Nash

  “His last wish?” Nick sat forward, immediately shaking his head. “He’s still got a wish left? Oh, hell no. That changes the ball game. That’s way too dangerous.”

  “It is what it is,” I said. “I’ll deal with it when it comes up. The alternative is to just kill him.”

  “I can get on board with that,” Nick said. “But if Ray has a wish left... He’s a dangerous man. A crazy bastard with a taste for vengeance. None of us are safe.”

  “None of us are safe so long as he lives, either. Wherever he is. He could show up tomorrow and wish us all dead, so what’s the issue?” Fatigue weighed my eyelids down, and the lumpy bed looked more and more inviting. Maybe he had coffee hidden in that shelf of cans and bags. I didn’t have time for sleep.

  Nick frowned as he studied me. “Well, right now Ray is stuck. He can’t really do anything. Neither can Smith. If anything upsets that balance, we can create a whole shitload of trouble.”

  “How do you know?” Suspicion woke me up just as much as caffeine, luckily. “What have you been up to?”

  He yawned and rubbed his jaw, apparently unconcerned. “I’ve been looking for Smith. I have some friends who are able to go to the Betwixt, and they at least know that Smith and Ray are in the same place. When Smith dragged Ray away from here, Ray apparently had a charm or something—from that fucking genie—that got them both stuck. I don’t know if there’s anyone crazy enough to go in there and... un-stick them.”

  “I’ll go.” That was the easiest choice that night. “Just tell me—”

  “It’s not that easy,” Nick said. “Shifters can’t cross into the Betwixt. Well, born shifters can’t. Ray was changed, so there’s enough of his human side left that he’s able to squeeze over. The fae don’t like it, but it’s a loophole.”

  I blinked, squinting at him as if it would help make sense of the words he strung together into nonsense. “The Be-what?”

  “You’re cute when you’re confused,” he said, and leaned forward to tweak the end of my nose. I swatted at him but he’d already moved away, and once more he looked completely relaxed in the uncomfortable chair. “The Betwixt. It’s... I dunno. A different plane, a different world, an alternate world. It’s where all the fae live, most of the time. They can cross into our world in some places, and some of the bigger fae can cross wherever the hell they please. Like Smith.”

  “So Ray and Smith are trapped, together, in a different world?” My headache returned with a vengeance. “How do I get them back so I can free the djinn?”

  Nick’s eyebrows rose. “You find someone who can cross over and free them.”

  It was like talking to a stubborn child. I took a deep breath and gripped my knees. “Do you know someone like that? Someone I could hire?”

  Uncertainty stole over his expression, and for a long time, Nick stared at the glowing wood-burning stove. Finally he sighed and nodded. “I might. They don’t like our kind, but for the right amount of money, they’ll probably do it.”

  “Great. When can we meet them?”

  “You’re not getting anywhere near them,” Nick said, frowning. “I don’t trust them enough for that.”

  “If I’m paying them, I’m going to meet them.” I rubbed my eyes to try and stay awake. “I don’t care how much you trust them. I’m not yours to protect, hot shot.”

  Nick smiled with only half his mouth, the scars pulling his upper lip into a snarl. “I prefer ‘ace,’ thank you. Now, before you fall asleep in your little nest, call your pack and tell them you’re fine, and we can—”

  “No.” I ignored the cell phone he held out, and the rage turned cold and sharp around my heart. “I’ll deal with the cackle later.”

  He still held out the phone, as if I’d change my mind. “You don’t want to be queen anymore?”

  “I—” I didn’t know how to finish that sentence. The moment he asked it, the possibility of not being queen nearly overwhelmed me. I’d be free of all the obligations, all the burdens and bullshit paperwork. The decisions that no one wanted to hear, the arguments about petty shit that didn’t matter, the responsibility for the lives of adults and children... I could have walked away if I wanted to, and let them believe me dead at the hands of BadCreek. The cackle would have gone along under Cassidy’s leadership and probably ended up engaged in illegal and underground activities, just like under my mother’s leadership, and none of it was my problem. They hadn’t cared enough to even search for me.

  My chest hurt. “I don’t know.”

  Nick nodded slowly, but before he could speak, I swung my legs up on the bed and scooted to the far side, closest to the wall. “I’m tired. You can sleep up here if you want, but don’t try anything.”

  “Believe me, if either of us would get handsy, I’m guessing it would be you.” He messed with the wood stove, fussing with the ashes, and shuffled around the cabin dealing with lanterns and other things. “So don’t you try anything.”

  “You had your chance,” I said over my shoulder, facing the wall so I wouldn’t see his face. “And you blew it.”

  Nick snorted. “At least one of us did,” he said under his breath, and I groaned, dragging the thin sheet over my head. So juvenile.

  He laughed at his own joke though, and flopped onto the mattress, nearly launching me into the air, and yawned. “You should at least call Eloise in the morning and let her know you’re not dead.”

  “I will.” She was the only one I worried about. I stared up at the ceiling in the darkness, listening to the steady rise and fall of his breathing. Not seeing his face made it easier to think and speak, and I waited until he might have slept before I whispered, “I could just disappear.”

  “I know how to do that,” he murmured. “We could go anywhere. Paris, Prague, London, Reykjavik. Anywhere you want.”

  It didn’t even bother me that he said “we” and invited himself on my trip. The cackle could go on thinking I’d died, and I would have a fresh start. My heart ached, because it was exactly what I’d planned to do when Cal and I eloped. We’d wanted to go to Europe and get married and travel, eating decadent meals and drinking as much wine as we could get our hands on. A honeymoon to last a decade... Tears blurred my vision as I thought of it, and him, and mourned that a different man lay in the bed next to me. “Paris.”

  Nick took a deep breath and moved slowly to spoon me, his arms strong and comforting as he held me close in the curve of his body, and he sighed. “I know you’re not crying over me, darlin’, but you don’t have to tell me who until you want to.”

  I closed my eyes; I didn’t want to share Cal. Not with him. Not yet, and maybe not ever. I just shook my head on the pillow, and Nick grumbled and held me tighter.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Nick

  He really didn’t want to talk to the witches ever again, but if Lacey needed them, Nick would steel his nerves and approach the damn coven. They scared him more than the leprechaun or any of the shifters in the city, mostly because he didn’t understand how their magic worked or what they could actually do. Everything had limits, but he hadn’t seen the limits of what the coven could do. The wolf didn’t like it. The witches smelled wrong.

  Lacey, however, smelled very right. He couldn’t sleep, not with his arms around her and her sleep restless with dreams. Nick stared into the darkness. Tomorrow she would want to call Eloise and figure out how to make things up to the djinn, and he’d be dragged back to the real world. The city. And Kaiser would be waiting to lock him in the little room to make sure he wasn’t completely crazy. The wolf growled in anticipation, though he cut off when Lacey stirred and made a questioning noise in her sleep.

  He liked the idea of her leaving the damn hyenas behind. The cutthroat politics of their pack would have changed Lacey too much. He could see how it already had, from the way Eloise and some of her friends talked about Lacey. She’d been hardened, ground down by the hyenas.

  Nick rubbed his forehead and untangled himself just slightly from Lacey,
lying on his back so he could spread out. Maybe it was better if the hyenas just assumed she’d died. Maybe it would be better if the bears believed he died, lost in the woods. It would hurt Kara, but she would get over him quickly with her mate and the new baby. Then he and Lacey could melt away into the past and start over in Europe. No more leprechauns, no bears, and definitely no witches.

  For once, he drifted to sleep on a comforting thought and didn’t wake until Lacy elbowed him in the gut as she climbed over him to get out of bed.

  She muttered, “Gotta pee,” and kept fumbling, her other hand landing on his face, and eventually dragged herself and half the sheets out of the bed.

  Nick yawned and didn’t bother looking at the clock; it was after dawn, he knew that. The wolf could sense it just in the subtle shifts of light in the cabin. He didn’t want to get up, but that damn internal clock got him up anyway. Plus he didn’t want to miss another opportunity to feed Lacey.

  By the time she stumbled back into the cabin, he had the water boiling to make coffee and scraped a few cans of corned beef hash into the pan to warm up for breakfast. She crawled back into bed after growling something about morning people, and didn’t emerge again until he’d had a cup and a half of coffee and started another pan of hash.

  Her hair stood up in odd tufts, she didn’t bother opening her left eye, and pillow marks wrinkled one cheek—and she looked completely fucking stunning. Nick gazed at her, a little bemused at his own shift in thinking, and Lacey glared at him more with her good eye. “What are you smirking at?”

  “You look frightful,” he said, and leaned to hand her a fresh cup of coffee. “No cream or sugar, so you’ll have to sweeten it up with your personality.”

  “You don’t look so hot yourself,” she muttered, though he thought the twitch of her mouth meant amusement and not rage. He couldn’t tell for certain; he needed more practice reading her expressions. She was too good at hiding. “Do you have a truck near here or something, or are we walking?”

  “Walking, unless you want me to call the bears.” Nick arched an eyebrow as he handed her a bowl piled with a mess of hash. “And how do you propose to tell Eloise you’re fine but not have her blurt that out to her mate? That lawyer is the worst secret-keeper in the entire fucking city.”

  Lacey frowned as she looked at the food. “I haven’t figured that out yet. And I need to speak to my second-in-command, Savannah. I just need to make sure everything is fine with Cass in control. Once I know the cackle will be taken care of and things will go on, I can walk away.”

  He didn’t like that part. At all. What if the second told her things weren’t fine and Lacey decided to stay? What if she challenged the new alpha for control and ended up in rank fights? Lacey could be hurt or killed to get something she didn’t even really want. And then he’d have to get the witches to intervene even more, and he didn’t even want to think about how much it would cost him to do that. He didn’t even know if the witches could pull someone back from the dead. It was worth finding out, just in case.

  “Did you hear me?”

  Nick blinked, looking over at her. “What?”

  “I asked if you knew who we needed to see to figure out how to free Ray and deal with the djinn.” Lacey put the empty bowl aside and made a face as she sipped the strong coffee. “Since that’s first on my list of things to do.”

  He had other ideas of what should have been first on the list. But Nick kept those for another day. “I can give them a call, but they won’t want to meet right away. Maybe tonight. You should probably deal with the cackle first. And call Eloise.”

  “What, are you afraid of her or something?” Lacey arched an eyebrow in challenge.

  “You bet your ass I am,” Nick said. “She turns people into stone with her eyes. I’m not trying to piss her off.”

  Lacey muttered something about cowards under her breath, then shoved to her feet and stretched, making groaning noises that turned Nick on way more than they should have. “I’ll call her on the way. How far is it to the road? Can the bears pick us up, or should I have Eloise? I’ll protect you from her scary eyes.” Lacey rolled her eyes as she said it, clearly underestimating her crazy-ass friend.

  Nick picked up the battered cell phone, debating the wisdom of both approaches. “The bears are closer. But you’ll have to help me convince Kaiser I’m not crazy and don’t need to be locked up. Otherwise you’re on your own and I won’t tell you how to find Ray.”

  “Great.” Lacey looked doubtfully at the flimsy flip-flops, then shrugged and got up. “Let’s get moving.”

  He definitely regretted giving her the coffee. It would have been a much better morning if she just wanted to snuggle back up in bed.

  He regretted it even more after the hour-long forced march through the forest at a breakneck pace, without stops or water or anything. Nick considered himself in pretty good shape, but Lacey moved with a single-minded determination that left him huffing and puffing for breath in her wake. He grumbled and complained, but she hardly looked at him.

  Kara made fun of him for being out of breath when he called her, after she got over being relieved he wasn’t crazy, and even Owen smirked by the time Nick dragged himself out of the trees and up to the road where they waited next to a giant SUV.

  The bear chewed on a long grass stem, eyeing Nick as Kara handed Lacey better clothes than the ragged sweats. “So are you crazy or not?”

  “I’m not crazy,” Nick said. “Ask Her Majesty.”

  Lacey snorted, reappearing in a much nicer combination of jeans and T-shirt, and handed Nick the sweats. She glanced at Owen before reaching for the door of the SUV. “No, he’s out of his fucking mind. I tried to screw his brains out last night and he wouldn’t let me.”

  Owen stared at her as Lacey jumped into the back seat of the SUV, and Nick felt his heart stop for a good ten seconds.

  Kara looked at him from over the hood of the SUV, her nose wrinkled. “Dude. Ew.”

  She climbed into the front passenger seat, leaving Owen and Nick staring at each other in silence. Owen finally shook his head, searching for something to say, then shrugged. “We’d always tell the Marines, never stick your dick in crazy. So I guess... you did the right thing?”

  “I couldn’t tell you.” Nick still couldn’t believe Lacey blurted that out, right in front of his sister. What the hell kind of game was she playing?

  “But you’re the dumbest fucker in the city,” Owen added under his breath, then got in the driver’s seat.

  Nick had never agreed with him more.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Lacey

  I didn’t know why I decided to announce that I’d tried to sleep with Nick, but after we were all in the car and an awkward silence took over as Owen drove, I figured it was probably so I wouldn’t let myself get invested in the relationship. If everyone knew about it, or at least that part of it, then I didn’t have to take Nick seriously. It would become a joke, and then I wouldn’t have to face the possibility that I actually liked him.

  Nick didn’t let the silence stretch too long, though. He leaned forward to talk to his sister. “No one else knows, right?”

  “No,” she said. She had the same self-possession that her brother flaunted, though Kara had had a rough go of things when she first escaped from BadCreek. I made a mental note to ask Nick was the fuck he was thinking when he brought her into the compound. Regardless of his mission, he shouldn’t have risked his family. But Kara seemed happy enough, holding Owen’s hand as the bear drove. “We didn’t tell anyone about Lacey. Or you losing your mind and apparently behaving like a gentleman for the first time ever in history.”

  “You’re my little sister, and it’s none of your business who I screw or don’t screw.” Nick looked a little irritated as he leaned back in the seat, legs akimbo until his knee almost bumped mine. “So get your mind out of the gutter, kid.”

  Kara turned in the seat to look at him, faking a shocked look. “What? I’m proud of you f
or not behaving like a drunken frat boy. It shows personal development and some real character, Nick. I feel like we should throw you a party or something. Like a bar mitzvah—you’ve finally become a man.”

  “I could get the cake,” Owen said. “I think Sasha could be ready with the piñata. Is this the kind of party that would have piñatas?”

  “I think it’s a great idea,” Kara said.

  Nick’s ears turned red. “You’re being assholes.”

  I loved it. I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing, and maintaining my composure as Nick’s expression grew more and more wounded probably took a year off my life. It felt easy—relaxed and familiar, like real friends would tease each other without worrying about offending someone’s sensibilities or bruising an ego. There wouldn’t be a rank challenge at the end of a poorly-timed joke. No one was using the downtime to search for weaknesses or solicit more information to use against them later. I could breathe around them, and it was a real gift.

  Kara gave Nick a dark look. “If you’d stopped being a man-whore a few years ago, we wouldn’t have any reason to be so surprised that you didn’t sleep with a beautiful woman like Lacey.”

  “Well, thanks,” I said, ignoring Nick’s spluttered objection to being called a man-whore. “So he gets around, is what you’re saying?”

  “Not lately,” Owen said. The attempt at male solidarity was a good effort, but Kara patted her mate’s knee and shook her head.

  “Maybe not lately, but he needed a break after the previous ten years.”

  Nick frowned. “I wasn’t that bad, Kara. You’re giving the wrong impression.”

  “You were trying to fill an emptiness inside you,” she said, absently. As if the observation wouldn’t take my breath away with how close to home it struck. “You did it with work and women. Neither seemed to get the job done, so you did more of both. And more and more and more, until finally you landed here. Something’s working to fill that void now, but I don’t know what that is yet. Food? Beating on Sasha? Glaring holes in the back of Owen’s head every time he looks at my ass? I don’t know. I like you better this way. I don’t have to worry about bleaching everything you touch.”