The woman’s eyes started to water a little. For a hard-nosed reported, I figured that was a big deal.
She sniffed. “So I caught him when the actual authorities came in, and I asked him how he could keep doing it over and over and over. How could he keep delving into the darker side of our nature? And do you know what he said?”
I shook my head. “I have a feeling it’s going to make me feel like a dope.”
“He said he had a ray of sunshine to go home to and that was all he needed to keep fighting.”
Emotion caught up in my throat, and I took in a deep breath. Damn man, damn that perfect man. How could he say one thing and do another? “Who was the blonde?”
“What?”
I felt the tingle of her power in my temple. Damn strong stuff. “He hadn’t called in a few days. I guess he was too into the job, but Jessa and I spied in on him and I saw him necking with a blonde.”
“Had to be Felicity,” Merci nodded. “She’s one of the agents out of Chicago. She’d been hunting this coven for ages and finally took down the master vampire but got herself filleted in the process. Charles offered to feed her.”
“Feed as in, she’s a vampire?” Gave the word necking a whole other meaning.
Merci nodded. “If he didn’t, the hunger would have taken over and she could have hurt someone or died. Tends to go either way with vampires.”
I leaned against the white tile counter. He wasn’t cheating on me. The thought gleaned through my brain. Of course, he wasn’t cheating on me. He was doing what he did best: saving someone from themselves. Facing down the monsters and keeping it all to himself.
It’s what I’d come here to get, right? The truth, and from a girl who couldn’t tell a lie. Didn’t get much more pure than that.
I SAT WITH PIPER on the porch. Even with my hot shifter blood, I had to tuck up under a blanket in the winter that was still sitting on the North East edge of the country. That day I’d discovered why I lived in Texas, and it was wet and white and covered the ground.
Piper’s warmth eased the cold. With every moment I was with her, I felt stronger, better, less like a radioactive canister that needed to be handled with care.
It also could have been the coffee in my hands and just sat in total awe of the woman before me. She’d just told a story that blew my little diary out of the water.
“So in total, it’s three thousand or so,” she finished as she put her tea down on the side table.
“In one pack?”
“No, they are tied to their Primos like yours are tied to you, but I have a piece of them too.”
“And you can send them power?”
“With a thought. The new Primos and Primas usually come to me for power, to have that exchange, but I think you honed in on me for a whole other reason.”
“I’m in for any enlightenment here.”
“Wanderers find me when they are hurt, injured. I’ve gotten a few fairies and gnomes here and there, but mostly shifters. They come to me when they need help. You weren’t injured, but you do need help.”
The truth of it echoed through me and sent goose bumps across my skin.
“But I’ve heard the rumors. Merci’s done some research. You’re an oddity, Violet.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice.”
Piper smiled. “I mean that you really aren’t like anyone else I’ve met, and I’ve met a lot of Prima’s over the years. You’ve got an instinct, an edge that some others don’t have.”
“I’ve always chalked it up to not being smart enough.”
“I don’t think it’s that,” Piper shook her head. “And I wish that I had time to get to know you a little better, but you can’t stay here, Violet.”
“I know, Piper. I’m not one to shirk my duties.”
“Shirk?” she smiled.
“I won’t hide. I just needed to clear my head. This power scares the hell out of me, but I know I have to get ready for what might come.”
“What will come,” Piper corrected. “The universe has a way of throwing things at us ready or not. But I can at least give you a crash course in power control.”
I was nearly blown off my seat when she let down her shields, my coffee splashing all over the place. It wasn’t aggressive, just that much of it. I braced myself on the chair and closed my eyes as I swam around in it. And slowly, I released what borders I had managed during the day as well.
Her cookie cutter scent mingled with my burnt magnolia.
“Wow,” Piper whispered.
“Welcome to Violet-Land.”
“I know it’s a little crowded in there, but focus on the links.”
Closing my eyes, I couldn’t see them, but I could feel them, shooting in all different directions.
“You’ve got bound members, like me. The ones that will always be a part of me, of my power.”
As I got adjusted to swimming through her cookie scent, I started identifying them. Golden strands, just like mine. Maybe I actually had done something right with this Prima thing.
“And then you’ve got the ones that are just part of the pack, the ones who just came for the connection.”
I felt her strengthen a connection. It wasn’t a golden strand but a thread, like a silken strand that wasn’t as strong as the silver connections.
“They function the same, but the golden one’s can’t be broken. The other’s are there by choice. And if they choose, they can sever it.”
“Does it hurt?”
“A little.”
I felt her caress a golden strand.
“And here’s how you pull.”
There was a strum in her power around us.
“And how you send.” The string grew hot and the golden light shot off into the universe.
I was surprised. “I’ve done this. Not that I’m bragging, but I’ve done this.”
I felt her wink, even though our eyes were closed. “I told you you’ve got an edge. Have you heard their thoughts yet?” she asked tentatively.
I shook my head. “Feelings, yes, but no thoughts.”
“Good, I had memories that weren’t mine running around for weeks before I figured this one out.”
Still floating around in her power, I felt her strings and then she sort of put a lid over them. “My dad was a Jazz musician, played every instrument in the band, so I see them as strings in a piano that I can close the lid on when I need to.”
Suddenly, the animals running around us just vanished, and it was quiet again.
“What about the closing it all down? That’s the problem.”
“Well, you and I will have the same problem.”
“What’s that?”
“This much power doesn’t close down. Not without magical assistance.”
I heard boot steps on the wooden porch. “Piper?”
We opened our eyes and saw a young man with the bluest eyes I’d ever seen, a deep teal. I nearly fell into them as they studied me carefully.
“Nothing, Rafe. We were just working on something,” Piper said with a warm smile.
I felt the briefest of brushes as his eyebrow arched into nearly a ninety-degree angle. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
The young man bounded off the porch.
“That’s Merci’s boy. He has a similar history to yours.”
“Likes to live on the dark side?”
“Lived on the dark side. Probably recognized a little of the dark side in you.”
“Oh.”
“But you are working on it. So let’s try to tidy you up a bit.”
“MY BRAIN HURTS.” It wasn’t whining. It was a mere statement of fact.
Piper had been working out my border muscles until they were as tight as a jar filled with hot coals in which the heat could still be felt from a few feet away.
There truly wasn’t any hiding after this. There wasn’t any hiding behind my borders so the Barons couldn’t track me. However, there also wasn’t any lowering my borde
rs to use my panther senses either. The key was not being tempted to open the jar of hot coals at any provocation.
“I have a feeling this is going to make it much better.” She pointed to the road that lead up to the country house. I cocked my head and listened to the black car driving up. The rumble of the engine. I’d know that rumble anywhere.
“Chaz?”
I leaped over the banister and landed on the frozen grass. I ran for his car. I’d never been so happy to see that car in my entire life. I’d never complain about the muffler again.
Chaz stopped when he saw me and jumped out, leaving the car running. “Violet?”
I threw myself into his arms. I buried my nose into his neck and took in a lungful of his warm heady scent. I pressed against him, wanting to burn the feeling of him back into my body. It was like I’d forgotten what his arms felt like as they wrapped around me, what his stubble felt like against my cheek, what his lips felt like against my ear.
“Hey there.”
In my new borderless state, I felt him open his borders and closed my eyes as his deep golden center enveloped us. It was heaven. Yasmina could have her peace; I had mine right here.
“Vi?”
I pulled away and looked up at him, eyes wet. “I missed you.”
“You’re different. You feel different.”
“It’s been a rough four weeks.”
In an instant, the furrow between his golden eyes was back. I’d even missed that furrow. “Four weeks? I’ve only been away for one.”
“And that in itself is a very long story.”
He kept his arms around me. I’d missed his golden eyes. I’d missed his pouty lower lip. I’d missed that little indentation in his chin.
I leaned up and kissed him. I needed to kiss him to burn away any thoughts of his infidelity from my brain. I needed to make sure that he was my Chaz.
And boy, was he. He immediately grabbed my chin and tilted my head to deepen our embrace. His hot honey taste filled my mouth as his tongue massaged mine. His strong arm encircled my waist and spun me around. He pressed the long line of his body against me as he sat me on the edge of his still running car.
The slight vibration of the motor beneath me made me smile.
And then he smiled and pulled away.
“You really did miss me,” I smiled with a raised eyebrow.
“Oh yeah.”
He nestled between my knees and nuzzled my neck, winding his fingers into mine. I closed my eyes and just listened to his strong lion heart for a moment.
“Why are we in Maine?”
“Long story.”
“And why are you wearing plaid. You hate plaid.”
“I was cold?”
Chaz, his arms still tightly around my waist, looked at the country house. “Whose place it this?”
“Piper, the maternal home of all shape-shifters.”
“Oh.” He nodded. “Of course.”
I slipped off the car. With a pout, he left my side and grabbed his coat and turned off the car.
I pulled him toward the porch. “I’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”
AFTER THE INTRODUCTIONS, Piper gave me a scandalous smile. “Why don’t I leave you two birds alone?”
She went into the house, leaving the two of us on the porch.
“What’s going on, Violet?”
I pointed to a swinging seat on the patio. “What do you remember?”
He went to sit. He looked so natural sitting on a well-loved porch swing. I might need to look into one of those for Iris’s house. “I worked the case in Chicago, and then I started to drive back. About two a.m., I stopped, got some gas and then I started thinking about you and my radar activated and I followed it here.”
“Is it really that strong?” I sat next to him and spread the prewarmed blanket over both of us.
“With you, yeah.” Chaz reached under the blanket and found my hand. “Tell me what happened. And I want the Violet Jordan unfailing truth.”
That word that seemed to be haunting me. I started where he left, with the dead girl, told him about our ‘discussion’ with the Warthogs and how well that went.
“And now I’m a Prima.” I bit my lower lip and looked up at him.
He took in a deep breath. “To the mutts?”
I shook my head. “I don’t want you calling them the mutts anymore. They are amazing men, Chaz.”
His eyes darkened as his thumbs stroked my knuckles. “What about Myers? Is he an amazing man too?”
I laughed. “Right. Now on to act two in the saga of my life.”
I told him about Myers, how he did help when Cristina was abducted, but what he had said to me in the living room and what Yasmina had said to me at the haven. It was probably best to just skip over that whole making out with another panther part, for now.
Chaz went pale and he pulled his hand away from mine. “You said what?”
“She took you Chaz. I was angry, capital A. You know there’s no brain-mouth filter when I’m angry.”
“But she’s a living goddess on earth, Violet.”
“And I totally creamed her.”
“How?”
Here was the part that I hadn’t wanted to tell him, my own little hell that I’d been living perfectly fine with. “Up until yesterday, I’ve been housing Haverty’s power, but not using it. I packed up the Legacy and fought it every time it eked out.
“With that confrontation, the power took hold and . . . I can’t describe it. It protected me.”
“Are you telling me that Haverty was more powerful than Yasmina?”
I frowned. “No, I’m telling you that in that fight, I became more powerful than Yasmina. It’s not his power anymore.”
A smile played on Chaz’s lips. “So you hulked out, in a sense?”
“Guess I did?”
“What was your trigger?”
“You.”
And this was the time for the big confession. On a porch, in Maine, freezing my ass off, with a fight looming just on the horizon.
I teared up as the words poured out. “I’ve always said that we fight for what happened between the full moons. It’s not about magic or sacred prophecies; it’s about who we are and who we are with. The Cause put you in a time loop, or something, to keep you away from me, tried to keep me from being happy. That’s why I blew up and I wish that was figuratively.”
I sniffed and wiped my eyes. My nose had to be the color of Rudolph’s already. “I love you, Chaz, and I love the complicated life that we are trying to build together and even surrounded by four very capable men and one very strange dog, I still wanted you to be the one that I shared it all with.”
Chaz slid across the swing and wrapped his arms around me tightly. My head nestled naturally in the crook of his neck. He whispered in my ear. “That could possibly be the first time you said you loved me.”
“I know. I suck.” I sniffed. I knew that I was staining his shirt with my tears, and yet I knew that he wouldn’t care.
He pulled away and lifted my chin to look into those deeply golden eyes. “I say screw them.”
“What?”
He jumped up from the porch, leaving me freezing on the porch swing, and went out to his car. He pulled something out of the glove compartment and jogged back.
Chaz knelt before me on the old wooden porch that could have used a layer of paint. “Marry me.”
Everything seemed to stop. The wind stopped blowing, the winter birds stopped chirping. The sounds of the others playing in the snow behind the house were silent. “What?”
“I’m asking you to marry me, Violet.”
He popped open the little black velvet box in his hand and inside were two rings. My mother’s silver band without a stone and his mother’s ring with a definite upgrade in the diamond.
Because I physically could not get a single word to come out of my mouth, Chaz nervously filled the silence. “It hit me about, well I guess in your time it was about a month ago that I would
n’t be able to use your mother’s wedding ring. Heirloom silver and all. But when you found my mother’s ring in the bottom of that trunk, I knew what to do.”
He took the silver band out of the box. The combination of our family’s rings was perfect, dare I say fated.
“I know we have problems. And I know that this won’t solve them. But, as you so elegantly put it, I want to share all those problems with you.”
“Chaz, it’s only been six months.”
“When you know, you know, Violet.” He took my hand.
“Yes.” The answer echoed through me and tingled across my skin. Another choice. And with all the others that I had made in the past six months, my skin prickled with the power of my answer.
He slid the ring on my ring finger and exhaled deeply when it was in place. It caught the last rays of the sun light bounding off the snow, sending rainbows of color on his face and shirt.
I tackled him. It wasn’t pretty. I wrapped my arms around him and we fell to the wooden porch floor together, the blanket tangling between us. I kissed his face and his ears and his neck in little excited kisses, not caring that his stubble rubbed my lips raw.
He laughed. That deep throaty laugh that I hadn’t heard in ages.
When we stopped, we rolled onto our backs and looked at the slat in roof, which could also use some paint.
“I’m glad Jessa was right about the size.”
I propped up on my elbow. “Jessa knew?”
“Well, you don’t have parents to ask permission, I figured Jessa was the next best thing.”
That explained why she was so sure that the mirror vision was just a misunderstanding.
He sighed and brushed an errant strand of hair from my forehead. “I was waiting until a better time but . . .”
“There’s never going to be a good time.”
I leaned forward and rested my chin on his chest, looking up at him. In the last rays of sunlight, he was a mass of golden light. My lion-hearted fiancé.
Oh, I liked the sound of that.
Chaz tucked his arm under head. “What?”
“As much as I am enjoying this, we have to go.”
“Get back to your pack?”
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