by Lauren Dane
“Thank you.”
“As my Alpha has made clear, we’re in this together. We can’t afford to let this break us.”
She nodded. “No, we can’t. But thank you anyway.”
He turned, his wolves carrying the body away as they left the scene.
“Let’s go. Get some rest. This all starts again in six hours.”
Faine walked ahead, opening the passenger-side door for her. She allowed it because she was beyond exhausted.
“I need to go back to the office.”
“You’re about to pass out.” He pulled away from the curb and away from the scene. But it was still in her head. The faces of all those Others who depended on her to protect them.
And the sheet covering the one she couldn’t protect.
“I have a couch in my office.”
“You and your sister are very much alike.” He grumbled this under his breath, but she heard it and it made her smile.
“She has blue hair.”
“The outside doesn’t matter. Your insides are the same. Stubborn. Do you think you’ll be more effective if you work until you literally just fall over? Who will you be helping then?”
“You know how long I’ve been awake because you’ve been with me the whole time. I don’t see you getting into your jammies.”
“Jammies?”
“Pajamas. The clothes people sleep in.”
“I don’t sleep in any clothes.”
Christ.
But before she could really go there and imagine him, nearly seven feet of hard muscle and tawny skin, naked and in her bed, he spoke again.
“And I’m four hundred years old, Helena. I am Lycian. I was bred to be up for days on end, fighting, marching, killing, all without sleep. You’re a witch, and while you’re powerful and fierce, you can’t survive on two hours’ sleep in two days.”
“There were twenty humans in that group tonight. That means they’re not flinching at sending their ranks to die. If I sleep, I’m not following up. How many people are going to die while I take a little nap?”
Failure wasn’t something she liked at all. And in truth, she felt like she was drowning at least sixty percent of the time these days.
“You have people working three shifts. Trust them for six hours. Just six hours. You know you’ll be far more alert and less inclined to make a mistake or miss something when you get some rest. Your magick will be stronger as well.”
He was right. She knew he was. She’d used a lot of magick over the last few days. Her head hurt, her eyes felt like sandpaper and repeated adrenaline rushes followed by the crash afterward had left her muscles less and less responsive.
“Fine, but I’ll sleep on my couch at the office.”
“No need.” He pulled up to a gate that slid open. “My place is right here. You can have my bed and I’ll take the guest room. It’s a big bed.”
He was very, very bossy. But once she’d allowed herself to agree to sleep, her will to argue was gone.
The mini subdivision, now nearly full of Others, was pretty much an armed camp. Guard towers dotted the several-block area. High fences surrounded the entire subdivision. Barriers much like those that had been put into place outside public buildings in the wake of the 9/11 attacks surrounded those high fences to ward off any attempts at car bombs.
Many in the area now lived this way. It made her sad, but at least it kept them safer.
He pulled into his garage and she realized she’d never even been to his house before. She trudged to the connecting door as he turned off the alarm. “Wait here.”
He went in first. She wanted to make a crack about how they’d just gone through eight different security checkpoints and two different alarms to get this far. But she’d seen so much happen in the last months after the Magister had come and turned everything upside down. So much death and destruction.
She kept her mouth shut and waited patiently until he came back to her. “Come on.”
It was a surprise, how nice the place was inside. Faine worked so much that she didn’t have any idea when he would have had the time to get the furniture and housewares inside.
“My sister.”
She shook herself out of her thoughts. “What?”
“You were wondering how this place got decorated. My sister came from Lycia and she took care of everything. I’m not here that often, but when I am, it’s nice to have a comfortable home to return to. A safe one.”
He pushed a door open. She saw the massive bed, and may have sighed wistfully.
“I need a shower first. I’m covered in soot.”
Another door pushed open to reveal a bathroom. “I’ll get you some clothes. Towels are in that cabinet there.”
And then she was alone to get rid of her filthy clothes, leaving them in a pile in the corner. She’d deal with getting a towel after she was clean, not wanting to get them dirty.
Hot water rained down on her skin as she made her way into the stall. She simply stood there, letting it wash over her for long minutes.
There had been far too many showers like this one. Where she’d stood and hoped all the death would wash off. But it was bone deep and she wondered when, if ever, she’d be able to let go of the things she’d seen—and done—over the last months.
She let the tears come as she scrubbed her hair. As she saw the soot and blood head down the drain. When she stepped out, she was grateful that he’d turned the heat up. Lycians, like shifters, had high body temps so quite often their homes tended to be cool.
But like his brother, Simon—her sister Lark’s boyfriend? Mate? Whatever he was—Faine seemed to thrive on taking care of people he considered his to protect. Helena knew she’d become one of them.
She liked it, even as it chafed sometimes. It was nice to have someone taking care of her when it felt like pretty much every moment of her existence now was about taking care of everyone else.
He’d left a huge shirt on top of a towel. She hadn’t even heard him come into the room. She hoped he hadn’t come in when she’d been crying.
She had a reputation as an ice bitch. Crying ruined that image. Though he’d never say a word, he’d know all the same.
After a cursory towel-dry of her hair, she braided it quickly, put on the T-shirt that came to her knees, and shuffled into the bedroom where he’d left a pitcher of water and some snacks, and had even turned the blankets back.
She shoved some crackers into her face, gulped down three glasses of water, and lay back.
Once she did that, even as she felt herself falling toward sleep, she couldn’t help recounting the last several days. One skirmish after another. Like a horror movie.
An assault by four kids at a high school in Fountain Valley. The shifter they’d attacked had handled it himself but they’d had to stop a near riot when the human parents of the bullies had shown up at the victim’s house, demanding blood.
Vandalism in Garden Grove. A restaurant had had its windows broken out, anti-Other graffiti had been spray-painted on the walls. The interior had been totally destroyed and the food ruined.
A car set on fire in La Habra, which was where they’d been when they got the call about the community center in Whittier and had rushed over only to have to engage in an actual, no shit, pitched battle on the street with crazy people who thought it was totally okay to kill kids and the elderly.
She hated this world. Hated that people wanted to kill her simply because she was different. Hated that her friend Molly had been attacked and was now in a cast because of the rising threat of the human separatist groups.
These were her former neighbors. The kids she and her sister Lark had gone to school with. People she used to think were friends. The dividing lines had been drawn and the gulf between them got deeper by the day.
And now that Molly had given an ultimatum to the humans to leave the Others alone and stop trying to harm them or strip them of their rights as Americans, those lines kept getting drawn.
They wer
e in a brief limbo period as Molly recovered, but soon they’d be on the road again and Helena would most likely be on the security detail for those Others who were travelling all across the country addressing crowds of humans, Others and legislators of all types. Trying to educate. Trying to mediate. Trying to stop an all-out war before it broke out.
But the edges of the world were torn and frayed. Helena wasn’t sure how much longer things would hold before snapping.
* * *
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Berkley titles by Lauren Dane
Bound by Magick
HEART OF DARKNESS
CHAOS BURNING
GOING UNDER
The Brown Siblings
LAID BARE
COMING UNDONE
INSIDE OUT
NEVER ENOUGH
LAID OPEN
(A Berkley Heat Special Novella)
The Federation Chronicles / Phantom Corps
UNDERCOVER
RELENTLESS
INSATIABLE
MESMERIZED
CAPTIVATED
The Delicious Series
TART
CHERISHED
(with Maya Banks)
Anthologies
THREE TO TANGO
(with Emma Holly, Megan Hart, and Bethany Kane)