I had to learn to do a lot of everyday tasks all over again.
Writing, for instance.
Since I was left-handed, I had to learn how to write right-handed.
Instead of shoes with laces, it was just easier to get slip ons.
Then there was taking a shower.
Who the hell knew it would be so hard to wash your hair with one hand? Of all my challenges, I never expected that one to be one of the most difficult ones I had to face.
Thankfully, I had Dean who helped me tremendously.
Then there was my brother, who’d also been a Godsend.
It was Dean, though, who changed my life.
Not only had he not stopped until he found me, but he also didn’t stop until I was healthy again.
It’d been just four short months ago that he’d returned to work after taking nearly eight months off.
He’d returned to the SWAT team a lot earlier than that, and with everything I’d been through, I’d managed to come to terms with this important part of who Dean was. Besides there were some benefits.
Such as his uniform.
Most wouldn’t think that black tactical pants, boots and polo shirts were sexy.
They’d obviously never seen Dean in full SWAT uniform.
All those sexy bulging muscles fit into a tight pair of pants and shirt, was breathtaking.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Dean asked, snapping me out of my contemplation of his body.
“I was looking at your shoes,” I lied.
He rolled his eyes, knowing full well I was lying, and started walking into the house he’d been fixing up without me.
A house that I’d been hell-bent on fixing up myself—and now I wasn’t.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t physically do it. Likely, I could help with the rest of them. I just didn’t feel the drive anymore. My priorities had changed, and although I still helped with design and planning, I no longer had anything to prove to the man in front of me.
I’d proved my worth to him a hundred times over, just like he had with me.
I looked down at the ring that sat heavily on my right ring finger.
The one I’d received a few days after I’d woken up in the hospital. The one I hadn’t taken off since.
Dean and I hadn’t officially married, yet. We would do it later this year once everything was more back to normal.
When that day came, though, nothing would change. We’d be legally married, yes, but we’d still be just as devoted to each other then as we were now.
“You coming in or you going to contemplate the paint colors all day?” Dean called from somewhere in the house.
My eyes automatically went to the paint colors, ones Dean and I had chosen two weeks ago at Lowe’s, and I smiled.
“I like this paint color!” I called to him.
Dean snorted.
“You better. This house was a bitch to paint with all the trim you had me put on,” Dean muttered from somewhere in the house.
I followed the sound of Adrienne’s cries of happiness and anger, and found her and Dean in the kitchen.
Adrienne was on the floor playing with a pile of toys that’d obviously been left from the last time she’d been here with Dean, and he was studying something on the counter.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Paper,” he muttered, sounding distracted.
I came up to his side and peered around his bicep, sucking in a breath when I saw what was on the front page.
“Hell yeah,” I muttered. “They’re considering the death penalty?”
Dean hummed in confirmation.
“Yep,” he stated.
I didn’t know how to feel about that.
On one hand, I’d suffered greatly at the hands of those two men. They deserved the death penalty, especially seeing as they didn’t just stop at Raven and I. No, they’d done it to hundreds of women before that, and had never been caught.
The other, more vindictive part of me, thought that they shouldn’t get the death penalty. Surely, there were other ways that they could suffer while in prison. The death penalty was too easy for them. They didn’t deserve easy. They didn’t deserve a quick death.
Fuck no. They deserved something so slow and debilitating that they would wonder how it could possibly get worse than it already was.
The sound of a toy being thrown across the room had both Dean and I looking over just in time to see Adrienne taking the first crawl of her young life.
Dean and I collectively sucked in a breath as we watched her move first one knee, then the other.
Her hands soon followed, and our breath left us in a rush as she crawled all the way over to her toy.
The front door banged open and Wolf appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, Nathan running around like the tiny terror that he was at his knees.
The moment Wolf got within reaching distance of Adrienne, he scooped her up and immediately said, “This day can go to hell.”
I blinked.
“Why?” I asked.
He growled in frustration.
“I’m not going to talk about it right now. I need you to watch Nathan for the night.”
“Does it have to do with a certain blonde with a tornado girl attached at her hip?” I teased Wolf about his most recent love interest.
Hannah and Wolf had been ‘not seeing each other’ for a couple of months now. Although both said it wasn’t anything serious, I wasn’t sure that it was not more than that at this point. They spent a lot of time together.
“No,” Wolf scowled. “This has nothing to do with Hannah and everything to do with Raven.”
My brows rose.
“Raven?” I asked in surprise.
He nodded, scowling.
“Yes. Raven.”
***
Dean
“I wanted to be the Chip to your Joanna,” July pouted cutely, hours later.
I smiled at her.
“You can still be the Joanna to my Chip,” I told her, referencing our favorite fixer-upper show. “You’re better at the decorating and staging than I am, anyway.”
“You should’ve seen how he wanted to decorate the last house,” Able called from across the room where he was standing on the ladder painting trim. “He wanted to go with apples. Who the fuck decorates in apples?”
“My mom decorates in apples!” I said.
“A mother and father you never see. What’s that say about them?” Bowe called from the attic where he was running an HDMI cable through the rafters.
“I saw them last month when they stopped by for a night,” I replied.
July patted my hand to comfort me, and I scowled at her.
My parents had been very distant lately.
Although they were there, they weren’t there.
My father had finally retired, due to health reasons, six months ago, and my mom had finally gotten him to follow through with his promise to travel the world.
They’d only spent very limited time with Adrienne in her entire year of life, and although I was loathe to admit it, it kind of upset me.
“Hey!” someone yelled from outside.
I walked out into the front yard and found Tai standing there with his wife, Mia.
“What?” I asked.
“Are we going to this house, or that house?” he asked, indicating the one Able, Bowe, and I had started out fixing up originally.
“That one,” I said. “Gonna break the kitchen in before I sell it tomorrow.”
“By the way,” July called from behind me. “None of this was my idea. If anything happens to that house in between now and then, it had nothing to do with me.”
Tai laughed just as Booth pulled up with his wife, Masen.
They all got out of their respective cars, and my eyes lit with excitement knowing everyone that mattered would be here for what was about to happen.
Even Wolf, who had only us
ed the excuse of needing to drop his son off for some important errand with Raven while he really went and brought all the catered food back to the house.
Everything was going according to plan, and I couldn’t wait to see the look on July’s face when she realized what was really going on.
I just had to keep her away from my project house for another hour, and then she was free to go over there and join her own party. A party that would turn into the night that she’d become mine legally.
It all worked out perfectly as our friends and family went over to the house, while I kept July busy painting trim.
The icing on the cake, though, was two hours later, under the light of the setting sun, when I married my best friend. The woman that I was going to spend the rest of my life with.
“I have blue and red paint in my hair,” she whispered, her face filling with laughter.
I grinned.
“That’s very patriotic of you,” I teased, pushing her light brown hair away from her face.
She rolled her eyes and pressed her mouth to mine.
The cheers of our friends surrounding us, the woman I loved above all others standing in front of me, decked out in her finest paint-splattered clothes, finally became mine. Forever.
What’s Next?
Dragons Need Love, Too
10-19-16
Prologue
Growing up is when you go from using drugs for fun to using it just to function like a normal human being.
-Food for Thought
Nikolai
Alright, Jean Luc. You know what to do, I said telepathically to my spotter.
Jean Luc hit the lights and the entire surrounding area went dark.
I blinked, and then suddenly I was seeing in shades of red, green, blue, yellow, and orange.
There’s a man in the back room, left corner. Gun. There’s a man in the right side of front room, in front of the television. Gun on the table. One more on the back porch smoking a cigarette, no gun. I relayed to my men who were surrounding the building.
10-4, was echoed amongst them, and I started to creep forward on my hands and knees.
I had no clue what kind of security they had out here, but with my ability to control my body temperature, I hoped that whatever ultra-red/thermal cameras they had out here would be rendered useless with all the power I was expending.
Slowly, we all converged at once, moving stealthily through the long grass.
Perdita was overhead, circling closer and closer, looking at her own version of a thermal heat camera.
Perdita could do wonderful things, but one of the best things was her ability to manipulate her energy.
She could appear hot, cold, or even dead. Whatever she wanted you to see is what you saw.
I also had that gift.
It was a gift that not even my older brother, the badass King of the Dragon Riders, had.
I could sense heat like a…well…dragon.
My bonded dragon, Perdita, was very unique, and from all places, across ‘the pond’, as she put it.
She was from Ireland, and over eight hundred years old.
She’d never bonded to anyone but me; something that was the same for most dragons and their bonded dragon riders.
I had not understood the depth of Perdita’s powers until we’d been bonded for over four years. She’d given me short lessons on how to harness the powers that she’d passed on to me, but I’d not been able to do so at first.
Mostly because I’d bonded with her at the young age of nineteen, instead of twenty-one.
I’d still been a boy, and hadn’t really understood the enormity of our connection until my brother had sat me down and explained that not even he had bonded until he was twenty-one.
So it’d been a wakeup call to realize that Perdita hadn’t been completely honest with me until I’d accidentally used her gift on her.
Perdita was the queen of illusions and was excellent at appearing harmless.
And apparently, so had I. I’d finally gotten sick of how she’d been treating me, and had thrown her so far into an illusion that I didn’t know how to get her back out. Mostly because I wasn’t sure how to get her out of it, and partly because I was still mad at her.
After she managed to get out of it herself, she’d apologized, and then had explained that I’d shown her her worst nightmare. Something in which to this day, she still hadn’t told me about.
Something inside of me stilled, and all my warning receptors started to clang at the same time.
Ford, Alaric, Jean Luc, Ian, and Dorian stopped when I hissed out a warning the second I saw the first trip wire.
There’re explosives. Be vigilant, I ordered.
Do you want me to disable them, Boss? Ian asked.
Negative. If we have to leave in a hurry, I don’t want them to be able to come for us at a quick pace. It’s best if they think they’re all inactive. It might prove useful later, I explained to the men.
10-4, Ian confirmed.
So we kept moving until we had about four feet in between us and the house.
Alright, Perdita. Do your thing.
Yes, Sire. You’ve got about ten minutes until I will no longer be able to hold it, Perdita expounded.
Perdita was so good.
All Perdita—or me for that matter—had to do was send out what was similar to a movie toward the men in the house.
However, she was more selective than I was.
When I wanted to play the mind games, everyone within my immediate area saw the same thing.
The only ones’ immune were my brothers.
And they didn’t even realize things were different before, or after, Perdita and I played our mind games.
I wasn’t sure what she was showing them, but not one of them reacted as I moved into the house like I owned the place.
My limited telekinetic abilities enabled me to open the doors without breaking anything, then walk straight up to the first man and take him out with a sleeper hold.
He never even realized I was there, nor that I was choking off his hair supply.
He stayed pliantly in my arms until he passed out from lack of oxygen.
Then, with the utmost care, I dropped him to the floor at my feet.
With the first man taken care of, I moved into the main room and started looking around.
After taking care of two more men, I came to the room where Brooklyn was being held and immediately started to get queasy at the horrid condition she was in.
She looked like death warmed over, and I wasn’t sure she’d even be alive long enough for Keifer’s mate to see her best friend again with the shape she was in.
Her hair was in dark clumps of brown around her dirty face.
She was in a bra and bike shorts that accentuated how skinny she’d gotten since she and Blythe had graduated from nursing school only a few weeks before.
Bruises ran the length of her arms and legs.
A cut above her eye looked like it could’ve used stitches when she’d received it.
Now the only thing that would fix it was plastic surgery of some sort.
The icing on the cake, however, was the tear streaks that ran the length of her cheeks.
None of that stopped me from picking her up as carefully as I could into my arms and walking with her out of the house.
“Let’s go,” I murmured quietly once I reached the front door.
“You want me to take her?” Alaric asked softly.
I shook my head, trying to fight down the irrational surge of rage that shot through me at the mere mention of him taking this woman from my arms.
“Alaric and Jean Luc, follow us home. The rest of you need to stay to make sure we make a clean exit. If I don’t get her to my sister soon, she won’t make it,” I ordered hurriedly as Perdita hovered above us.
The moment Perdita and I made it a mile away, they would no longer be under her spell.
Dirty Mother
11-3-16
Chapter 1
If I’m in a parking space about to back out, and you honk at me, you better believe I’ll sit there until I die.
-Fact of Life
Ridley
“Goddammit,” I said to no one in particular. “I will take her to another goddamned hospital if you don’t fucking do your GODDAMN JOB!” I finished on a roar, and not one single person in the entire ER was looking at me with anything but fear.
Even the cute little blonde.
A blonde so light it was almost white.
She was about five six or so, with deep blue eyes and wariness seated deep.
She hadn’t come close to me all night. Not a word was said between the two of us, but I couldn’t help but watch her.
She’d worked on my sister, and had been the only one to listen to what I had to say.
Then a bitch of a nurse, who must’ve been the big, bad bully of the bunch, had pushed the younger nurse away with an order for her to go restock or something; then she’d disappeared.
I’d seen her a few times since then, each time she’d been carrying boxes instead of working on any patients.
My curiosity was piqued.
“Ridley?” my sister said softly, making me turn to look at her instead of where the blonde had disappeared.
“Yeah?” I asked softly, turning so I could see her face.
“Did I hurt your truck too bad?” she asked.
I smiled and ran my hand down her face.
“It’s not too bad,” I lied.
It was totaled.
For the second time in two months.
“I should’ve never gotten pregnant,” Kitt whispered.
I looked down at my sister, studying her face and the seriousness of her statement.
“You don’t want Emily?” I asked her.
A tear escaped her eye.
“I’m so tired of having this disease,” she whispered. “I’m so fucked up it’s not even funny. I even killed someone.”
I bent forward and pressed my lips to her forehead.
“Then where would Apple be if he didn’t have you and Emily?” I asked her roughly. “Where would I be?”
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