by Hettie Ivers
She continued, “That rogue attack: circumstance. The daughter I have as a result of that rogue attack—that’s the story of who I am. Today. You want to see me vulnerable? Talk to me about my child. Don’t talk to me about something that happened nearly ten years ago that amounted to a blip of time in the grand scheme of my life.”
I nodded and took another step. “You’re right.” Those two words had always worked with my sister whenever she was upset and lecturing me about something.
Avery’s eyes narrowed. “What am I right about?”
Damn.
If I went with “everything,” she’d know that I was full of shit and think I hadn’t been listening to her at all. The truth was I had been listening. But I could only remain so focused when she was naked and acting all badass like she was right now when all my blood was in my cock.
“You’re right that I’m a dinosaur chauvinist from the seventeenth century who has spent several centuries um … rescuing … too many damsels.”
Her brows went up.
Score. I totally had this. “But I think I can change that. With time and … hero complex … therapy.”
I winced as the last words left my mouth, knowing I’d taken it too far.
She bit her twitching lip, confirming it.
Yeah. Too far. Her shoulders were shaking with laughter now.
I’d get better at this.
Avery
We ended up having sex in Chaos’s walk-in closet, then twice more in the bedroom, before he finally conjured suitable clothing for me. The man—my mate—was too damn adorable and sexy to resist. Particularly when he walked around sporting monster wood and talking about going to hero complex therapy for me.
While snuggling in his bed in a state of postcoital bliss, I finally broke down and shared the truth with him about how I actually had not survived a rogue attack—about how I’d died and come back to life again, my wounds from the attack healing themselves in the process.
Chaos listened intently as I told him about the dark orb that I’d seen and connected with in the ether … and brought back with me. I told him I believed the soul of my daughter had somehow healed me and that perhaps she had also prevented me from dying when I’d shifted into a werewolf for the first time.
I didn’t really know for sure how I’d managed to survive it. That was the truth. I’d definitely felt as if I was dying during that horrible transformation. No one and nothing had helped to hold the pain from me; that much was certain.
Alcaeus said it was important that he meet with Sloane before talking to his brother and Milena about her. I’d wanted Kai to teleport us only as far as Denver, telling Alcaeus that he and I could drive the rest of the way down to Durango. But it was a long drive at six hours, and Chaos insisted we didn’t have time.
I didn’t trust Killjoy Kai. He’d been giving me the stink eye all morning, and he and Alcaeus had barely spoken since last night. But ultimately I agreed to let Kai teleport us directly to Durango, on the condition that he not come anywhere near Sloane.
As promised, Alcaeus ordered him to wait outside, at a safe distance from the little house I’d rented at the end of a sparsely populated street.
I’d sent a message to Azda and Sloane a few hours earlier through one of the online message forums I used to communicate with Sloane in code, letting her know that I was on my way and that I was bringing a friend with me. The only friend of mine that Sloane knew about was Wyatt. And she had only met him on a few occasions, and always in public settings, never in any of the homes we’d rented.
I knew right away as Alcaeus and I entered the house that they’d gotten my message, because Azda was sitting in her rocking chair dressed in her best housedress, wearing really poorly applied make-up.
As Chaos crossed the threshold behind me, I suddenly felt the blood drain from my face and bile rise up in my throat at the magnitude of what I’d just done in bringing him here. He must have sensed my inner turmoil because he gave my shoulders a reassuring squeeze and stepped forward to introduce himself to Azda.
He had her charmed in seconds flat. Once the initial introductions were made in English, Alcaeus said something to her in another language, and she responded in kind. As I got my breathing and heart rate under control, I realized they were conversing in Navajo.
Tears stung my eyes and I released an internal sigh of relief when Alcaeus chuckled abruptly at whatever it was that Azda had said to him. I gave myself a mental shake and yanked my heightened emotions under control, before quietly excusing myself and heading down the hallway to Sloane’s bedroom.
I found her growling and hum-talking to herself, sitting on the floor in the corner, facing the wall.
My eyes flew wide as I took in the destruction that had occurred in the three days since I’d last been here. Her bed was a total loss, as was her dresser. Ashes and scorched remains were all that was left of most of the furnishings that had been in the room. Used fire extinguishers were everywhere I looked. Black char marks marred the walls and the ceiling. And the floor—the carpeting in the room had been burned through to the gypcrete subflooring that lay beneath. Whatever small sections that hadn’t fully burned away had melted to the subfloor.
The only thing left in the room that seemed to still be intact and undamaged was her Disney suitcase with the image of Elsa and Anna from Frozen. She really did like that movie.
This was bad. Although I’d confessed to Chaos last night that Sloane had recently begun telekinetically setting things ablaze, I might’ve downplayed just how out of hand that habit of hers had quickly become.
I knocked twice on the doorframe to get her attention. She didn’t turn around to acknowledge me, but after about another two minutes, she stopped hum-talking to the wall and issued her usual greeting.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t come back this time, Avery.”
“I know.” I nodded at the back of her head and took a few steps into the room. “But here I am—still living to disappoint you,” I teased lightheartedly. “It’s a mom’s job.”
“Your scent’s changed,” she observed without emotion.
“Yeah.” I guessed it had. It occurred to me that I might permanently carry Alcaeus’s scent now that he’d marked me. “Um … I brought a friend here with me to meet you.”
“I know.”
“He’s a werewolf, like I am. But he’s got special powers, like you do. Do you think you might be up for meeting him? I think you’d like him.” When she didn’t respond, I added, “I really like him. He’s … fun. Kinda goofy, actually.”
“I can’t have fun, Avery,” she said over her shoulder before turning around to face me, drawing her knees up to her chest. “I can only do bad things. The voices say—”
“Whoa!” Alcaeus exclaimed, startling me as he suddenly came up behind me and put his arm around my waist. “This is awesome. Can this be my room?”
I turned and pushed hard against his chest, walking him backward out of the room as I scolded in a hushed tone of voice, “You can’t just do that kind of thing with her. You can’t just—”
“Yes,” Sloane answered him. “I’m finished with it.”
Alcaeus started laughing, and he whispered, “Don’t worry,” to me before taking my hand and walking us back into the room.
“Wow, that is super-generous of you, Sloane,” he told her. “I gotta tell you, your mom is even cooler than I already thought she was if she lets you decorate your own room like this. My mom never would’ve let me do this.” He whistled low. “This is amazing.”
“Her name’s Avery,” Sloane told him, her expression stoic. “Everyone calls her Avery.”
“Oh, okay,” he agreed, shooting a glance at me. I nodded. “I’ll call her Avery, too, then. My name is Alcaeus. But your mom—I mean, Avery—likes to call me Chaos. That’s cute, right? You can call me Chaos, too, if you want to.”
She didn’t answer. I could tell she was taking him in, though—doing that thing where she looked through peop
le more so than looked at their exterior.
Chaos took a step closer to Sloane, but I held him back when he made to take another one.
“I was supposed to stay dead,” she said to him conversationally at last, like it was a normal getting-to-know-you thing to say. “It was a mistake when I was born again.”
That she was talking to him at all and connecting so much already was a really good sign. I prayed she hadn’t stumped him with her morbid declaration when he didn’t respond right away.
But after a beat, he nodded and said, “O-kay, then. Thank goodness for mistakes, right?”
“You’re with the others,” she assessed.
Oh, shit.
He cocked his head. “Others?”
“The ones coming for me. The ones who kill Avery.”
Hellfire. How to explain that one?
He frowned. “Um … I’m sorry, what did—”
“No one’s going to kill me, Sloane,” I interrupted. “I’m always coming home. That’s what moms do.” I smiled and pulled on Alcaeus’s hand, dragging him out the door with me as I told Sloane, “We’ll just be in the living room chatting with Azda if you need us, baby.”
Once we were far enough down the hallway and mostly out of Sloane’s hearing range, Chaos pulled me to a stop and cupped my face in his hands.
My voice was an anxious whisper as I rushed to defend the situation he’d just witnessed. “I swear, that’s the first time she’s ever burned her whole room like th—”
My words were smothered by an open-mouthed kiss as his body pressed mine up against the wall. I was dizzy with arousal by the time we came up for air.
“She’s adorable,” he proclaimed with such absolute conviction and enthusiasm, I almost started to cry.
“You really think so?” I squeaked. “I mean, I know so—but I’m biased, as her mother and all. I think she’s perfect, of course. And she can connect, right? You saw that, didn’t you? She totally connected with you in there.”
“Totally.”
“Oh, my God, this is great.” Hallelujah. Everything was going so much better than I’d ever imagined it could.
“We need to talk about Azda, though,” he said.
“That’s right. You really speak the Navajo language, too?”
“Yeah, a little bit. So listen, I—”
“That’s so amazing,” I gushed.
“Well, you know, I’ve been alive for a while. I’ve had time to learn a few languages at this point.” He tugged nervously at the back of his neck.
He was so hot when he got all cute and modest. I tilted my head to the side. “So … you speak every language on the planet, pretty much?”
“Nah. C’mon, there are over seven thousand spoken languages. Give me a break; I’m not that old.” A faint tinge of pink colored his cheeks as he smiled back at me, and my heart had never felt so light and full of hope before.
I wasn’t only in desperate lust with Chaos; I was in love. Seeing him with Sloane had cinched it.
“So listen”—his smile fell away and his eyes grew serious—“we need to talk about Azda.”
“Yeah?” I smoothed the goofy grin from my face and straightened my posture. “Sure. What’s up?”
“Well, did you know that Azda was close friends with your paternal grandmother?”
“Ah … yeah, Azda speaks English, Chaos. And she’s lived with me for nearly eight years now.”
He nodded. “Okay, but did she tell you that your grandmother was a powerful seer?”
An unsettling feeling came over me. “No. She never mentioned it.” Why hadn’t she mentioned it?
“Well, she was. And she was able to foresee her own demise and the beginning of the decade of no light. She saw glimpses of the dark spirit who was prophesied to enter into the world, and she accurately surmised that this spirit would kill off all of the seers prior to its birth—herself included—which, by the way, is something my own pack’s supernatural seers failed to see coming.”
“What are you saying?”
“Well, I’m saying your grandmother had to have been a pretty badass seer.” He shook his head. “But that’s beside the point. She saw you—her long-lost granddaughter—in her visions, too, and she saw how your future would be tied to the birth of the Rogue. Her visions of you and Sloane were so vivid that she was able to give Azda a street address and a date for where and when she’d be able to find you.”
“Oh, my God. That’s how Azda was able to find us when supernatural hunters had failed?” Why hadn’t Azda ever told me this herself?
“Yeah. So your grandmother told all this to Azda, and she asked Azda to do her a massive favor in order to protect you—the granddaughter she’d never known about. She felt as if she’d already failed you, because she’d found out too late about your existence. Understand?”
I felt myself frown. “What are you getting at? What did she ask Azda to do?”
“Is this true, Azda?” I confronted her where she sat in her rocking chair. “My grandmother asked you to find and murder my only child?”
She nodded solemnly. “She was hoping to protect you.”
“Oh, my God. Azda, I can’t believe this. How could you? All this time? How—why? I don’t understand. But—you didn’t do it. Wait. Why didn’t you?”
She shrugged. “I changed my mind.”
I couldn’t even.
“That’s it?” I tossed my hands up. “You just changed your mind?”
Alcaeus sat down on the ruined couch while I proceeded to pace nervously in front of it, trying to process the bomb of this alternate reality and side of Azda that I’d somehow been blind to. “This is insane. We can never let Sloane know about this.”
“She knows,” Azda said.
“What?” I stopped and spun around to face her. “Sloane knows? You told her?”
“No. She figured it out a while ago.” Azda smiled and then chuckled softly to herself. “Sometimes, when you’re not around, she gives me grief about it. She’ll say she’s still waiting for me to kill her, and she’ll ask me what’s taking so long.”
My eyes bugged out. “Azda! That’s horrible.”
“Bah,” She threw a dismissive hand my way. “You don’t get it. It’s her best and only joke—aside from calling me the old blind spot. I laugh myself silly every time.”
Alcaeus started snickering then, and I shot him a death glare. “This isn’t funny.”
He covered his mouth with his hand, nodded, and mumbled an apology, but I could see that he and Azda were still sharing in the humor of this supposed “joke” that Sloane apparently made about her own murder by her caregiver. The caregiver I’d been leaving her with for eight years. I saw now how the “old blind spot” nickname that Sloane had given her was more of a crack at me than it was at Azda.
Azda had been my blind spot. I was the worst mother ever.
“I can’t handle this. I can’t believe that this has been happening right under my nose. All this time. Why, Azda? Why did you change your mind?”
“Because I saw that you were harboring a power even greater than the power within the Rogue.”
Say what? I stopped pacing. “Are you suggesting that I have some hidden supernatural power that has yet to emerge? Something that my grandmother foresaw?”
She rolled her milky eyes, and Alcaeus started chuckling again.
“The skinwalker gets it,” Azda remarked with a snort.
“What is so funny?”
Chaos laughed harder at her skinwalker label, grabbed my hand, and pulled me down into his lap on the charred sofa.
“Well?” I punched him in the shoulder. “Is someone going to let me in on the joke?”
“You have something better than a hidden supernatural power, Avery,” Azda said with a smile. “It’s the same superpower you’ve always had, even when you were human. Strong will.”
“Strong will?” I huffed. “Strong will? You get me all excited that I might be getting a cool new superpower and then l
et me down with an afterschool special message? You’re saying you didn’t kill Sloane because I have a strong will? That makes no sense.”
“Does so.” She raised her chin. “Special talents and superpowers can only carry a being so far. Strong will prevails when powers fail; it trumps all in the end. And a good sheep-herder can make all the difference.”
“Makes perfect sense to me,” Alcaeus inserted.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or to smack my palm to my forehead. To think that for all this time that I’d been out slaying rogue hunters in an effort to protect my baby, I’d left her alone with a seemingly harmless old lady whose sole motivation in entering our lives had been to kill her.
“Also,” Azda continued, “I realized that the darkness in Sloane could never be destroyed. It can only be moderated. Curbed. Killing the child solves nothing.” She leveled her gaze on Alcaeus. “Your tribe is wrong in your approach. Eliminating Sloane will not save the human race.”
I felt Alcaeus’s arms band tighter around me, although he said nothing in reply.
“Darkness will always find a way to live on,” Azda asserted. “Perhaps even through Sloane’s reborn soul, if she is killed. The world has a better chance of stopping the prophecy of the Rogue not by killing it, but by understanding it. By accepting its nature. By helping it to cope with its own darkness and by finding commonality within its deviances. This is the only way.
“Sloane is strong-willed, too, like her mother. And there is light in her. There is a chance that Sloane may master her own darkness yet. But she needs time. And she needs a strong, loving sheep-herder.” Azda’s not-so-blind eyes cut meaningfully to Chaos. “Perhaps two.”
Alcaeus
“Who are Elsa and Anna?” I whispered to Avery as she passed me where I stood just within the doorway of Sloane’s bedroom. “Are they friends of hers that she plays with?”
I’d heard Sloane mention the names a few times amid her internal dialogue.