“Gabriel!” she choked, her eyes wide, her heartbeat now kicking up a few notches. Malcolm held her tightly to him, his fingers brushing the hair from her face. “Shh,” he told her. “He’s not here, luv. He’s dead.”
“No,” she insisted, shaking her head and trying to sit up. “He’s not dead!” Cole wasn’t letting her go anywhere. He held her fast and peered down into her eyes. Lucas heard her heart skip a beat and settle down; Malcolm’s power was rushing over her. She was a dormant again; he had more influence over her now than he had before.
“Yes he is, Charlie,” he told her “He is dead. I swear to you, luv.” Charlie swallowed once, and relaxed in his embrace. Cole turned to glance over his shoulder at Lucas.
There were messages in that gaze. They were stark and meaningful.
Lucas turned to Danny and instructed her to stay where she was until he called for her. She may have wanted to argue with him, but she knew he was right. She nodded and Lucas left the second clearing in order to make his way back to the first one.
The snarling and bursts of magic had died down a lot; the men were obviously falling one by one on both sides. Lucas readied himself for what he would find when he entered the field, but the sight that met his eyes stopped him cold nonetheless.
Gabriel Phelan was indeed dead. He lay at the base of the altar where Charlie’s grandfather had attacked him, the crystal he had been wearing around his neck shattered. Lucas knew it had been the Vessel that held his life force. He knew this because he’d spent a very long time learning everything he could about warlocks after the disappearance of his brother.
But that wasn’t what took Lucas’s breath away.
As he stood there, the last of the sounds of struggle passed and half a dozen flashes turned wolves back into men. They were proof that the wolves had won this round, but Lucas paid them no heed. He couldn’t.
Boots moved slowly across the blood-drenched earth and Lucas felt Daniel Kane step up beside him. On his other side, Jessie Graves approached. They too were quiet. All eyes were trained on the two men who lay by the altar upon which Charlie had nearly killed herself. One body belonged to the twice dead, once-risen Gabriel Phelan.
The other belonged to Alexander Kavanagh. The Overseer.
*****
They’d all known it was pointless. It had been the destruction of Phelan’s Vessel that killed them both. There were no wounds to heal, there was no life left to save. But Danny had fought several pairs of hands with fierce determination and finally, they’d allowed her to kneel beside the Overseer and press her palms to his chest.
It had been one of the most heart breaking things any of them had ever seen. Danny had no family. She’d been raised by Lalura, an older and wiser witch within their coven. But she’d never had a father. This man came as close as any man had ever come to filling that role. And he was also Charlie’s grandfather.
Now Charlie had no family either. Danny hadn’t wanted her friend to suffer that loneliness, but there was no helping it. Kavanagh had died taking out the man who threatened what he treasured more than anything else in life and in fact life, itself.
When enough time had passed, Danny allowed her hands to drop and stood back up in time to see Charlie coming into the clearing with Cole at her side.
Time slowed down and the world silenced itself. Charlie looked into her friend’s eyes – and then her gaze slid to her grandfather’s prone form.
That had been hours ago.
Now Lucas led Danny from the front steps of the Council headquarters toward the motorcycle that sat waiting at the end of the drive. The sun was just coming up over the tree tops; the tide was slowly ebbing away. The early morning was quiet.
Behind them, in the grand building that housed the most powerful werewolves in the world, Jessie Graves had just been pronounced king. More or less. He’d earned his position as the new Overseer – and no man had ever wanted it less. He had steadfastly refused at first, until the members of the Council were at last able to make him recognize that the Overseer had been training him for just such a position. It was even in Kavanagh’s will.
That was what had cinched it for Graves when nothing else really would. He couldn’t bring himself to dishonor Kavanagh’s memory by refusing something that the former Overseer had plainly wanted in life.
And so it was done and Daniel Kane and his wife had gone home and Malcolm Cole had absconded with his mate to some place private and quiet.
Charlie was a dormant again, but the good news was that along with her made-wolf blood, the gypsy curse she’d born on her arms had also disappeared. She accepted it with ambivalence that weighed more heavily on relief, and not one person she knew would have blamed her. The curse was gone and it was never meant to have been hers in the first place.
Once Charlie had some time to mourn and could put the death of her grandfather behind her, Cole would turn her once more. As far as Lucas was concerned, the green-eyed alpha werewolf was looking forward to it. There was no way to hide that kind of desire.
Lucas approached the bike of black and chrome and righted it, kicking up the stand and gracefully swinging his right leg over to mount it. Danny waited beside the bike, her hands tucked into the pockets of her black zip-up hoodie. She watched him in enigmatic silence for a moment and he wished he could read her mind.
Her multi-hued eyes sparkled in the morning light, almost glowing with their inherent and potent mix of magic.
Finally, Lucas smiled and gripped the handle bars. “Get on, baby doll.”
Danny considered the gentle command and then cocked her head to one side. “Why should I, Lucas Caige?”
“Because, little witch, you and I have a lot of getting to know one another to do,” he told her. “And I doubt you want me to start doing it right here in front of Council headquarters.”
“I could turn you into a frog,” she teased, her eyes twinkling.
“You could,” he admitted, feeling his own face crack into a grin. “But then you’d be carrying around a frog all day long. You know you would think I was too cute to just leave me sitting here.”
Danny threw back her head and laughed; the sound like magic to Lucas’s ears. Hell, it was magic.
“Maybe,” she said through her laughter.
“So why don’t you save yourself the trouble,” he said, “and get on?” He put the key in the ignition and turned it, never taking his eyes off of his mate. The bike roared to life with a twist of his throttle and rumbled beneath him, a steel beast ready to run.
Danny didn’t say anything further. Instead, she gave him a sweet smile of surrender, put her arm around his shoulders, and mounted the bike behind him.
Lucas took a pair of shades from the inner pocket of his jacket and put them on. And then he leaned into the bike, twisted the throttle, and drove them both toward the rising sun.
Epilogue
The bruises will go away, he told himself. They always did. But he was so tired. She’d drained him to the point of breaking him this time – or, at least that had been her goal. She was relentless.
This was never ending.
He’d been in this hell for so long….
Light shafted through the chamber and onto the bed, piercing his eyes. He blinked against it and rose as far as the chains would allow him to. He recognized her curves in the doorway at once.
“Little wolf,” she purred, striding across the chamber toward him. He tensed; he always did. No matter how many times she manipulated him and used him, he would never grow used to it. He would always fight her.
She tsked him for his reaction and cocked her head to one side. “Relax,” she said, smiling so that he could see the fangs she used on him again and again. “No need to struggle right now. I know you’re weak. I have a surprise for you,” she told him. Then she turned toward the open doorway and nodded to a guard. The guard nodded back and left. “Father found him dead in a field, but fortunately for him, he had only just been killed,” she said, turning b
ack to face him.
He watched as the guard came back, accompanied by another. Between them, they dragged a bound man dressed in black. There was the smell of black magic upon the prisoner so potent, he couldn’t believe the man had actually allowed himself to be captured.
“Oh, he didn’t allow us to do it,” the vampire said, obviously having been reading his mind. “He put up quite a fight once we raised him, didn’t you, Jason?” She laughed when the man speared her with his cold green eyes. “He wasn’t thinking straight. After all, he should know that as long as I possess this,” she held up her hand and a crystal on a leather string dangled from her forefinger, “I possess him.” She glanced over at the warlock again. “The poor thing is love lorn. But I’m going to make him forget all about it.”
Then she turned back to the bed and he felt her power pour over him. No, he thought. His inner voice growled, Get the fuck out of my head.
Her only response was to smile wearily and shake her head. “It hurts me how little you trust me, even after all of this time, Byron.” She sat on the edge of the bed, and he tried to move back, but the infernal chains held him tight. No man-made chains could hold him. But this woman and her power and her family and their chains had held him for fifty years.
“Then let me go,” he told her, his deep voice filling the chamber. It should. He’d been very strong once. Very strong. “The last thing I want to do is cause you pain,” he told her, flashing his own fangs.
“Now, now,” she said, shaking her head reprimandingly. “You know I could never let you go.” She leaned over and he tried not to flinch when her fingers brushed a lock of his long black hair from his forehead. “You’re perfection. I wanted you the moment I laid eyes on you.” She smiled. “And daddy got you for me.”
Byron wanted to vomit.
“Now, you should know,” she told him then, leaning back as if she could sense his disgust and was hurt by it. “I brought Jason here for you. You see, the woman he loves happens to be your brother’s mate.”
Byron froze at the mention of his little brother.
“And Lucas wouldn’t be enjoying her right now if he hadn’t put a silver bullet through Jason’s heart.” She seemed to consider something a moment and her gaze became distant. “He’s very smart, your brother. Very resourceful.” Her expression took on a longing cast and Byron’s gut clenched.
“Leave him alone,” he told her. It was a warning. It was a desperate plea.
The vampire princess turned back to him, her cold violet eyes taking him in from head to toe. “Oh I will, my love,” she promised him, licking her red, plump lips. “On one condition.”
The End.
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