It still didn’t give him rights over her.
Cormac didn’t give her time to reply. “That being said, Rendell was more of a pompous dick than usual.” He looked thoughtful.
She was grateful to get off the topic of feelings. “He was.”
Cormac sat down where Rendell had been minutes before. “He wanted to get something from you.”
“Perhaps.” She didn’t want to go into it. “What was on Hiro’s phone?”
Cormac shook his head. “Still working on it.”
Her phone rang. “One second. This is Eric.” She answered to find Eric sounding more pissed off than usual.
“We have a problem,” he said. “There’s a meeting in one hour at my house. All advisory council members in the city are expected to attend.”
“What is it?”
“You’ll know soon enough.”
“Eric, I am the head of that council. I deserve a bit of advance warning.”
“I know. That’s why I called you first. See you soon.”
She was left with a silent phone. Cormac took her shoulder. “Everything okay?”
She shook the phone as if it could magically impart more information. “I don’t think so. We’re going to find out.”
Chapter 17
Stephan stopped them at the door. After greeting Michaela with a touch on the arm while Cormac tried to control his desire to knock the guy out, Stephan raised his perfectly groomed eyebrows. “In camera meeting, Michaela. Ambassador Cormac can stay out here.”
“The hell I will,” Cormac said politely. “Michaela does not leave my sight.”
The tall masquerada sighed and ran a hand over his shaved head. “Dude, don’t make this worse. You can’t go in. This is our business.”
“Then she doesn’t go.”
As Michaela opened her mouth, Stephan jerked back as if Cormac had hit him. “Who do you think you are? She doesn’t need a keeper. Especially you.”
Michaela stepped between the two, her tiny body dwarfed by the angry men. “Time out. Stephan, I need to request special permission for Cormac to come in. We have precedent in Caro’s attendance.”
Her voice wavered slightly and Cormac glanced down in concern. She looked tired, but he couldn’t tell if it was deliberate to play to Stephan’s soft side. Damn the masquerada. They could be tricky.
Stephan started shaking his head before she even finished the sentence. “No can do. This is big, Mike. Too big to let outsiders in.”
“Michaela’s life is under threat,” Cormac said. “I’m her bodyguard.” This was close enough.
If he thought this appeal to Michaela’s safety would work, he was wrong. Stephan’s face went tight as he turned to Michaela. “Is this true?” he demanded. “Why didn’t you tell me or Tom? You went to an outsider?”
The hurt in his voice was clear to both of them. Michaela shot Cormac an agonized glance and in that millisecond he knew whatever came out of her mouth was going to be insane.
“We’re mated,” she blurted out. A heavy flush started up her neck. “I’ve taken Cormac Redoak as my mate.”
The pendant hanging around Cormac’s throat burned with a sudden heat and he tried not to keel over at the intensity of the pain that ricocheted through him. Michaela gasped and her hand flew to her chest as she stared at Cormac in shock. She was breathing harder but so was he.
Luckily, Stephan was too stunned to notice their reactions. His mouth fell open as his eyes bounced between the two of them. “Holy Jesus Christ, what the fuck did you say?”
Cormac mentally seconded that. Did she have any idea of what she’d done? He was desperate to see what sigil the pendant had branded on his flesh.
After all, it would be a match to the one that appeared on Michaela.
“You heard me.” Michaela tried to smile but it came as a grimace. “We’ve known each other a long time and been working closely lately and, well…” she trailed off. “You know how things happen,” she finished lamely.
A complicated mix of emotions streamed over Stephan’s face before the masquerada moved forward and embraced Michaela. Cormac’s hearing was good enough to hear what he said into her ear. “All these years, I hoped you would find someone who was worthy of you. It’s what I wanted most for you.”
He turned to Cormac and gave him a bone-cracker of a hug. He understood the implicit threat. Treat Michaela wrong and he would be crushed. This didn’t bode well for when he told them that he had no desire to be mated, even to Michaela. “Welcome,” Stephan said simply. “Now is not the time to announce such a joyful union, as you’ll see in a minute. We’ll say you’re here as a consultant.”
Michaela nodded weakly, her face sallow and clashing with the flush that lingered at her throat. She cast a beseeching glance over her shoulder at Cormac, who managed to mouth “What the fuck?” at her before she turned back.
Cormac was still too shocked to give full range to his fury and he forced himself to try to stay calm enough to get her side of the story. She had no idea what she’d done. Cormac’s mind boggled at the trouble those simple words would cause him. I’ve taken Cormac Redoak as my mate. To Michaela, she’d blurted out a lie under duress. It was stupid, and ill-considered, and frankly not in character for her at all but he could see, if not understand, why she’d done it. As a member of the North American masquerada’s ruling council, Michaela was expected to attend meetings, even emergency ones. Since she was also not supposed to reveal her work with Pharos, it now put her, shite, both of them in the awkward position of trying to explain why Cormac needed to shadow her.
To her, the lie was a quick fix that could be eventually solved. Stupid but somewhat reasonable. He supposed.
The problem was, the moment the words came out of her mouth, they’d stopped being a lie.
Michaela would have seen only the many superficial amours and dalliances the fey played at. What she didn’t know was how seriously they took mating. A fey’s mate was as important as their family forests and the mating bond so strong the death of one mate meant the death of the other within days. It was more common for fey to enter a partnership with a compatible other, easily dissolvable and often political. To mate was to open oneself up to ecstasies and torments deeper and more intense than most fey wanted to risk.
Why mate? went the old joke. My tree will never die on me.
Not even his parents had mated.
Cormac stared at Michaela. Was it possible that she knew what she was doing? It was…but he dismissed it as improbable. An exiled fey was hardly a catch, and he couldn’t think of a single reason why she would pick him over, well, anyone.
As a caintir, any mate of Cormac’s would have to deal with the greater intensity of his attachment to the natural world. Fear of what that would mean for a mate had even kept him from pursuing deep relationships. It would absolutely, definitely prevent him from saying the words that changed everything for a fey, the public announcement that sealed the deal.
When Michaela declared him as her mate, he had become her mate. His pendant had confirmed it for them. They were bonded for life. To make it even worse, Queen Tismelda insisted on approving any matings. She also disapproved of mixing blood between groups.
Those words had doomed him. He was never going to get his forest back. A dull pain formed in his gut. Yetting Hill would be gone forever from the Redoaks. Isindle with no home. His tree…dead.
If his tree died, he died. As his mate, so would Michaela.
Six, seven words and one minute to create this absolute fucking mess.
Stephan’s phone beeped and he excused himself to meet the next councilor. “You know the way, Michaela.”
Cormac waited, almost on his toes, until Stephan’s steps faded away. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
She still looked stunned. “I must have been. I can fix it.”
&nbs
p; No, she couldn’t. “What were you thinking? What were you thinking?” Perhaps if he kept saying the same thing he’d get…what? Magically transported to his non-mated state? She looked so wretched that he almost didn’t have the heart to blame her.
But not quite. Cormac turned away, doing his best to keep his self-possession. Letting loose his rage on his new mate in front of the masquerada would be a death sentence.
Like the one Michaela just put on you. You and Isindle.
Did it make it worse that she didn’t know the consequences of what she had done? In a way, perhaps. To lose his forest and be force-mated as a result of deliberate malice would have been understandable and probably would have happened in retaliation for one of his own insults or actions. He would have deserved it.
Instead he’d lost everything so Michaela could get in a fucking meeting.
“Cormac, I…” Michaela stood beside him but she stopped talking when he turned to face her. He relented slightly. It might have been her fault, but they were now stuck in this nightmare together. Still, they needed to discuss this reasonably before he hit her with the mates-for-life whammy. She was still rubbing her chest but hadn’t checked to see what had caused the pain. He didn’t want to reveal it right now. Beads of sweat appeared on her forehead.
“Are you well?” he asked.
She was still rambling. “I…I don’t know. I froze. There was nothing else I could think of. Caro comes to meetings. I didn’t have another plan that didn’t involve telling Eric’s entire advisory council that we need to be together because the super-secret group we’re both members of has said so.”
Footsteps approached. “We need to talk about this later.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” She looked wretched.
Then Stephan was there with another masquerada councilor and motioned for them to enter the room.
Good God. He had a bloody mate. No forest, but a gorgeous, sexy, intelligent mate. For a brief moment, Cormac wondered crazily if being mated would be all that bad.
Perhaps it wouldn’t. Until his forest died and they died with it.
* * * *
“What’s the meaning of this, Michaela?”
Every masquerada had stopped what they were doing to stare at Cormac. Michaela took a deep breath, feeling it hitch in her throat. Her idiotic mating comment had affected her more than she had thought. Even her heart was racing. She put it aside. She was the head of the High Council and the others were right to expect an explanation.
“Councilors, may I present Cormac Redoak, our fey consultant.”
Josiah rose from his seat near the end of the table. “I don’t recall approving a fey to join us.” Fey was uttered with almost visible distaste.
“If the Hierarch said it’s fine, then welcome aboard,” said Phoebe. Michaela smiled and stopped herself from shading her eyes with her hand. The lights were too bright in the room. It was too hot as well. Or too cold.
Josiah slammed his meaty hand on the table. “This is a closed meeting, Michaela. Who the hell do you think you are, to bring in this outsider? This is a huge disrespect to the council and Eric.”
“On the contrary. I’m honored we have such a guest.” Eric came into the room followed by Caro. Josiah clenched his fists and sat down with a bump.
Another wave of dizziness came over her. From the look Eric and Caro gave her, then shot to Cormac, it was clear Stephan had wasted no time in telling the Hierarch what Michaela had said. She tried to keep her face impassive, but noticed Cormac giving a ghost of a nod, handling it with a level of grace she knew she had no right to expect. She wouldn’t have been surprised had he stormed out after she’d made such a stupid, presumptuous comment. She rubbed again at her chest, wondering if she’d been stung by some bug. There was a slight burning itch on the skin over her left breast. She would have checked was it not generally frowned on to look down one’s shirt during important business meetings.
Eric tapped the table and the room quietened instantly. “First, thank you for coming. As you see, we have a visitor, Ambassador Cormac Redoak, who is here at my request. I’m sure you made him welcome.”
He paused, but no one said a word. They were all capable of reading their Hierarch and it was clear that he was immersed in an icy fury. Even those who were antagonistic to him were smart enough to keep their mouths shut.
Michaela did her best to concentrate, but her thoughts refused to stop spiralling. How could she have told such a lie to Stephan? There was no hole on Earth deep enough for her to hide. The only thing to do was to get him after the meeting and explain that…even here she broke down. It was a mistake? How can you make an error about being mated? That she misspoke? Oh, sorry, I meant we were dated. Rated. Bated. She shook her head to interrupt the rhyme of words. It was too bright in the room, so hard to concentrate. When had Eric changed the lights?
Then there was Cormac. She owed him a huge apology for such a transgression. He must be furious. She would have been.
She laid her hands on the chair arms and willed herself to find some amount of peace for this meeting. Abject apologies to Stephan and Cormac would have to wait. Eric had not called an urgent meeting in months, not since he told the council the details of what had happened with Iverson and announced his plans to clean house.
She swayed in her seat, then sat snapped-up straight, wondering if she was falling ill. It was rare for a masquerada to be sick, but when it took them, it took them hard. That would at least explain why she was making such stupid decisions.
Like saying she was mated to Cormac.
Mated. To Cormac.
Cormac met her eyes across the table. His were filled with the anger she expected—she would be furious—but for a moment she thought she saw pity. Odd.
Eric leaned forward and rested his palms on the table. “I called you here to tell you that I have confirmation Frieda Hanver has resurfaced.”
Michaela pressed her hands down harder on the chair arms to steady herself. Eric would be counting on her to assess the reactions of the others in the room. Caro’s cool gaze flitted from one face to the other, doing the same thing. There was nothing but disbelief and consternation, even among Eric’s enemies. What Frieda had done when she impersonated Caro and tried to kill Eric was so beyond the pale that no masquerada with minimal moral sense could countenance it. If they lacked even that small core of goodness, then self-preservation would have kept them still and mum.
“My informants say she is in North Africa building a small army of disenfranchised arcana. I am telling you this before I tell the other rulers.” He paused. “Frieda is no longer a masquerada problem. She and her followers have taken Iverson’s ideas and expanded them drastically.”
“No,” gasped Phoebe, who was one of Eric’s strongest supporters. “They want another war with the humans? That will break the Law. The humans will massacre us.”
“She’s gathered vampires, weres, and a mishmash of others. There are masquerada. Many of them.” He nodded at Cormac. “Even some fey. They call themselves the Dawning.”
A loud mutter burst from around the table. Cormac’s brows lowered thunderously but he stayed silent.
Michaela heard this as if from a distance. Sweat dripped through her tightly bound hair and down her face as her dizziness grew.
Eric’s voice boomed in her ears. “They want to end the Law. For Frieda’s army, the only success is the total annihilation of humanity as an independent race.”
A babble burst out as the councilors all spoke at once. There were calls for Frieda’s arrest, to know who her collaborators were. Eric’s plans. The trustworthiness of his informants.
She tried to rise but wavered as she stood.
“Michaela!” It was Cormac, already vaulting across the table.
That was all she heard before she toppled into his arms.
Chapter 18
Eric insisted Michaela stay at his house where she could be treated properly. Cormac agreed instantly once he found out the reason for her collapse.
Michaela had been poisoned.
“We don’t get sick like this,” the lead medic had said as she ordered a full toxicology screen. “There’s another factor at play.”
The other factor, they soon found out, was a deadly combination of liquid minera and other nerve agents. Tom Minor, Eric’s security chief, was visibly torn between admiration for the recipe and disgust for its creator when he reported to the others.
Cormac, on the other hand, felt nothing but rage. His anger towards Michaela’s damaging lie had been shoved to the side in light of this more recent danger. Cormac might not want to be mated but he was, regardless of the circumstance. That still had meaning.
The killer had tried to harm his mate, under his nose, and that was an action he could not let go without retribution.
“How the hell could this have happened in your house?” He tried to keep his voice level as waves of anger continued to spill through him.
Stephan held up a hand. “Our medics say it could have been administered any time in the last six hours and most likely in food or drink. Apparently it’s designed to only affect masquerada.”
Cormac narrowed on this. “Most likely or definitely?” The tea. The food Anjali had brought. Rendell’s visit.
“It’s possible she touched it and consumed it that way,” Stephan said. “I think less likely, though.”
The killer was getting bolder. Cormac’s thoughts were in such a rush that he didn’t notice the others in the room staring at him expectantly.
“What?” he snarled.
Caro pushed back her wavy dark hair and sighed. “Ambassador, we want to help.”
He knew where this was going and made up his mind before she even laid it out for him. The branded sigil under his pendant throbbed. His link with Michaela was still strong; she was recovering. Michaela trusted her compatriots. The only question now was how much he would tell them.
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