by Vivian Wood
“We were talking about Pere Mal’s disappearance,” Asher said, always the sober voice of reason. The man was so stoic he was practically a robot, which was funny compared to Kira, his little spitfire of a mate. “We haven’t heard a single thing from his camp in weeks now. He’s just gone.”
“Yet every single one of his minions seems busier than ever,” Aeric pointed out.
“Yeah, but when we corner one of the buggers they seem different. They used to be kind of gleeful in their evildoing now they just seem… terrified,” Gabriel concluded.
“Echo’s hearing whispers about a new guy running the show. Similar name to Pere Mal, even, but… no one will talk. Her usual sources are all running scared, keeping themselves out of the limelight. I tried to run down Ciprian the Vampyre a couple days ago, and even he looked nervous.”
“That’s saying something,” Aeric said with a frown. “Ciprian is one of the cockiest people I’ve ever encountered. I use the term people liberally.”
“I still think this comes back to Cassie’s prediction about Kieran and Kellan,” Gabriel said, crossing his arms. “She prophesied that if Pere Mal didn’t kill them, someone bigger and more dangerous would come looking for them.”
“Not us,” Kieran interrupted. “Don’t lay this at our feet. The big bad wolf is supposed to be hunting a fated mate. One of us is supposed to fall for a girl, and she’ll be the target, not us.”
“Yeah, but if the new boss is anything like Pere Mal, he’ll be hunting you to find her,” Gabriel said.
“This is all pointless anyway, since neither of us has been love-struck,” Kellan said, then arched a brow at Kieran. “Unless you’ve caught feelings for Emma?”
Kieran squinted.
“Who?” he asked. His twin’s scowl made it clear that Emma was the girl Kieran had scooped from Kellan only the night before. “Ah, yeah, no fears on that front.”
“Apparently not,” Kellan snapped.
“Well, with all the fuss, I think this makes it clear that you’re the one who’s going to end up with the doomed damsel in distress as your fated mate,” Kieran said, unable to resist digging the knife in a little deeper.
Kellan’s cheeks flushed with anger, but he didn’t get another word in.
“Sorry to interrupt this charming discussion,” Asher said, “But we have bigger things to worry about. Pere Mal and the new guy might be working behind the scenes, but we still have other tasks to complete. Namely, there’s a pretty aggressive nest of young Vampyres in the Treme, and they’re proving to be unpleasant neighbors.”
“They snatched and bit a kid last night,” Rhys sighed. “And this is after a number of other complaints. We have to clear out the whole nest and burn the house to the ground, make sure they don’t come back. You know how territorial Vampyres can be.”
“What are we waiting for, then?” Kieran said. “Let’s go raze ‘em to the ground.”
Shaking his head, Kieran followed the rest of the Guardians to the waiting SUV, ready to do some damage.
“Hell,” Kieran said, shaking a clump of bloody goo off his sword hand. “Have I mentioned that Vampyres are disgusting? Not to mention their taste in interior decor. This whole house is stuck halfway between an opium den and something out of an Anne Rice novel. It’s very imaginative, is it?”
“Aye, but at least the job’s done,” Rhys said, surveying the room with little humor. “It looks like we’ve got them all, don’t you think?”
Gabriel stalked across the room with a grimace, pausing to wipe his blade on a velvet curtain.
“This nest makes my skin crawl,” Gabriel griped. “Just in time, here comes the upstairs contingent.”
Aeric came down the rickety stairs first, then Asher appeared, supporting Kellan as he walked with an obvious limp.
“What the fuck’s wrong with you, then?” Kieran said. His words were cavalier, but it didn’t stop him from hurrying across the room to check on his brother.
“Damned Vampyre bit me on the leg!” Kellan groaned. “On the leg, for Chrissakes. I’ve never taken so much pleasure in decapitation before, I swear it.”
“Did he manage to get his poison in you?” Rhys asked, following Kieran over to examine Kellan’s injury. “Och, yeah, the skin around the bite’s already turning dark. We’ll have to get you to the emergency room, I think.”
Kellan’s expression darkened. “I hate the hospital.”
Kieran signaled to Aeric, taking over as the support post for his brother.
“Don’t be a child,” Kieran prodded his brother. True to form, Kellan snapped to his own defense.
“Anyone who got trapped and vivisected by the London Royal Society would hate doctors. It was a month before you noticed they were holding me!” he protested.
“It was the early 1600s, there was barely a mail service those days. Besides, it’s been four centuries. Don’t you think it’s time to conquer your fears, little brother?”
“Little brother, my ass,” Kellan muttered as Kieran helped him outside and into the back seat of the Guardians’ SUV. “Mother never told us who was born first, you just think you’re superior. Mostly because you’re delusional.”
Aeric and Rhys climbed in the front, and Aeric drove toward the Gray Market.
“Consider the evidence,” Kieran said, keeping up the banter between them. No doubt, Kellan’s wound was already growing painful; a distraction wouldn’t hurt. He ticked off thoughts on his fingers. “I’m a Prince of the Summer Court. I can use glamour to change my shape. I’ve learned to genuinely shapeshift, and my bear is gorgeous. I can wield strong elemental magic, I can jump between most of the planes of existence without effort—”
“We’re twins, you horse’s ass,” Kellan said with a roll of his eyes.
“I’m just stating facts here, no need to get touchy. Or is this the old Light versus Dark debate? Are you still sore about being what is clearly the lesser of two great powers?” Kieran cocked a brow in a challenging way, knowing it would rile Kellan further.
“Will you two shut the hell up?” Aeric said as he pulled up in front of an abandoned house just north of the French Quarter. “It’s like driving around with two children in the back seat.”
“Is this the new portal to Sloane General?” Kieran asked, peering at the ivy-covered, hole-riddled house. For the sake of expediency the hospital had its own private entrance, separate from the rest of the Gray Market. “Last I saw, it was all the way down in the Holy Cross neighborhood.”
“As it happens, the Guardians have their own entrance to Sloane. Several of them, actually, sprinkled around the city. We seem to need the emergency services more than your average bear shifter,” Rhys explained.
“Posh,” Kellan jested. A glance at him revealed that he was beginning to sweat a little. It took a lot to make one of the Gray brothers show discomfort, so Kieran climbed out of the car and dragged Kellan out too.
“Alright, I think there’s an opportunity here,” Kieran told him as he and Rhys helped get Kellan up the house’s cinderblock front steps. They stepped through the bolt-hole, feeling the brief loss of gravity, and then walked right into a familiar corridor. They were no more than a hundred yards from the ER’s admitting desk now.
“What’s that?” Kellan asked, his jaw tight with the obvious effort of suppressing his pain.
“There are tons of hot Kith nurses at this place. You could use a little nurturing, brother. And probably to get laid—”
“Hey, hi,” Aeric called to the triage nurse who peered up from the admitting desk. “Alpha Guardians. This one’s got a nasty vamp bite, big dose of poison. Gonna need to see a doc, ASAP.”
“Oh!” the petite blonde nurse said, jumping up. “Come over to the first exam room, okay?”
She led them into a small room with an examination table and two chairs. Turning to the Guardians, she pursed her lips.
“Can you get Dr. Khouri for us, if she’s here? We’ve worked with her several times,” Aeric asked the n
urse.
“Dr. Khouri is always here,” the nurse said with a little smirk. “I’ll be sure to get her for you.”
She settled Kellan on the exam table.
“Try to relax,” she told him. “Have you seen Dr. Khouri before?”
“No, she sees some of the Guardians’ mates,” Kieran cut in.
“I see. Well I’ll go grab her now. Only one of y’all can stay in here with him, though,” she told them with an apologetic frown. “The other two need to give us a little room to work.”
Aeric and Rhys left the room without a question, taking seats just outside the room. They could still see through the glass if they turned around, so it wasn’t much of a sacrifice. Left to their own devices, Kieran and Kellan shared a look.
Kellan opened his mouth, about to start talking smack. Then he froze, brow furrowing. Kieran turned, wondering what could possibly have shut his twin down so fast.
Outside the room stood a gorgeous woman in a white doctor’s coat. She was petite but curvy, her sexy figure apparent even through her scrubs and lab coat. She had creamy caramel skin and a long curtain of raven’s-wing hair. Clutching a stack of patient charts, she didn’t so much as glance up as she made her way toward Kieran and Kellan.
Kieran’s heart and gut lurched as one, the force of the feeling almost brought him to his knees.
Mine! his soul cried.
And then, a moment later, mate.
His heart pounded in his chest, his hands shaking, the need to touch her almost unbearable. It was happening, just like Cassie predicted. Kieran had doubted her before, but now it was so, so clear.
“I found my—” he started to say, then stopped and snapped his gaze to his brother. Kellan had been speaking, and damn if it didn’t sound like he’d just said…
“Fated mate,” Kellan finished.
Kieran could feel himself gaping at his brother like an idiot, saw the same dumbstruck expression on his twin’s face.
“Oh hell no,” Kieran hissed, baring his teeth.
Kellan could have anything else in this world, anything. Kieran would lay down his life for Kellan without a thought.
But this girl… this woman… she was his.
2
Chapter Two
I have got to be one of the unluckiest people on the planet, she thought. Plain and simple.
Dr. Serafina Khouri bit her lip as she juggled what felt like a mile-high stack of patient charts.
Okay, okay. My life isn’t that bad. I have a job, I have a home. I shouldn’t be so whiny. But still…
So far, this Tuesday morning shift at Sloane General’s emergency services department wasn’t really treating her too well. After arriving at four forty five in the morning, fifteen minutes before her shift was supposed to start, she waded into a seemingly endless line of cases.
A fire at a popular Vampyre club had filled the ER with Kith patients complaining of minor burns and smoke inhalation. A fight had broken out amongst a bunch of wolf shifters at a Motorcycle Club rally, which meant Sera was treating broken noses, vicious bite marks, and a couple of concussions. In the middle of all that, a Bejahhb demon had gone into labor in the waiting room, and the birth of six squirming and tentacled baby demons had nearly wiped Sera out.
Sera herself had dropped two trays of surgical instruments, ripped the seat out of her scrub pants, and burned the sensitive skin of her inner arm on the Bejahhb mother’s acidic afterbirth. All of that was in the first six hours of her shift, too. She dragged herself through the rest of her shift with blessedly few incidents. Well, no more incidents with patients.
The staff were a different matter. Though Sera had worked at Sloane General just over a year, she wasn’t terribly popular amongst some of the staff. Specifically, Dr. Gregor Day and all the nurses and doctors who hung on his every word. The handsome French gargoyle had targeted Sera from her first day at Sloane, asking her out on a date within minutes of meeting her.
Date wasn’t even the right word for what he’d proposed. He’d asked her if she wanted to come over to his apartment for a bottle of wine, “and maybe a movie… if we get that far”. With an accompanying wiggle of eyebrows, implying that they would be too busy having energetic sex to watch a movie.
Sera had flushed and turned him down, offended by his amorous presumption. Unbeknownst to Sera, she’d set herself on a particularly difficult path for the rest of her employment at Sloane General.
Her rejection of Dr. Day’s advances had seemed a shock to Gregor, and made a good bit of gossip for the hospital staff. Like how dare Sera turn down the tall, dark, and handsome doctor that everyone secretly longed for? Not only did Sera have a strict policy against dating coworkers, but she also found Gregor to be pushy and egotistical.
Besides, Dr. Day had a distinctly unfair advantage over Sera, though it took her a while to discover the fact. Gargoyles had a ton of natural healing magic flowing in their veins, which meant Gregor could just waltz in and fix nearly any ailment. The ease of his work made Sera green with envy.
Her adoptive parents were a hedge witch and a falcon shifter, but Sera’s own Kith powers remained a mystery. Every once in a while she could fire off a little healing magic, but for the most part she had to work her butt off to care for her patients. Her own stubbornness was the only thing that had propelled Sera this far into her medical career, that and a lot of late nights. She’d be damned if she was going to let one man’s big ego foil all she’d worked for.
She sighed as she left a patient’s room, feeling restless even though she hadn’t stopped moving all morning. She always felt this way just after a full moon, like she was missing something… but what? The corners of her mouth tugged downward as she thought of the way she lost herself during the full moon, whole hours that disappeared…
Better not to think of that. Waking up sore and forgetful didn’t mean she was doing something bad. Just… mysterious, even to herself. Between that and the dreams, those vivid dreams about whole lives she’d never lived, people she’d loved and lost and yet never even known…
Yeah, Sera had a lot going on in her life right now.
“Dr. Khouri.”
Sera turned to find Dr. Adeem, the Chief of Medicine, standing behind her with an impatient expression.
“Dr. Adeem, good morning. Or afternoon?” Sera corrected herself, frowning at her wristwatch.
“It is nearly six in the evening, Dr. Khouri,” Dr. Adeem said in his crisp Pakistani accent, looking down at Sera over the bridge of his glasses. “Are you feeling quite all right?”
“Yes, of course,” Sera blurted out. “Just a busy day. Like every day, ha ha.”
An awkward moment passed, Dr. Adeem narrowing his gaze at Sera.
“Fine,” he said at last. “I know your shift is nearly done, but I’d like you to see one last patient. One of the Alpha Guardians has come in with a Vampyre bite. Since we consider them VIPs, I would like you to see them before you leave.”
“Me?” Sera asked, embarrassed at how surprised she sounded.
Dr. Adeem’s frown deepened.
“Yes, you. Dr. Khouri, I know you’ve had a little trouble adjusting to Sloane General, but you are an excellent doctor. Very thorough and knowledgeable. I know you will give the patient the best care possible.”
He lifted his brows, as if challenging her to question his statement.
“Thank you,” Sera said, blushing. “I— I’ll go see him now.”
Before she could ruin the moment, she whirled and started down the hallway.
“Dr. Khouri!” Dr. Adeem called, pointing down the hallway. “They’re in Exam Room One. The other way.”
She halted and wheeled around with a grimace, giving him a quick wave and an awkward chuckle as she headed the other direction.
Smooth, Sera.
She wanted to get out of Dr. Adeem’s sightline so badly that she had to keep herself from breaking into a sprint as she headed for the ER. She nearly lost her stack of charts in her enthusiasm, a
nd was still wrestling them as she approached the door of the exam room.
Frowning, she plucked her new patient’s chart from the doorway and flipped it open. Usually she liked to give it a brief read-over before she consulted with the patient, which meant that by the time she introduced herself she already had a fair idea of the patient’s complaints and which questions needed to be asked.
“Kellan Gray?” she asked at last, stepping fully into the room.
She glanced up and did a double take. There were two of them, two huge hulking men with silvery-brown hair, impossibly broad shoulders, chiseled jaws, and piercing green eyes.
Twins. Holy crap.
“Aye,” the one seated on the exam table said.
There was something, some subtext between the two men, all in a brief glance. Sera opened her mouth to speak, but suddenly she felt strange. Hot, burning hot. But freezing cold, too. Like her skin was ice, but some strange heat was bubbling up from inside her, lava rising under a dormant volcano, ready to blow the top off it all.
Looking at them gave her the oddest sensation, almost… possessive? Like a voice whispering mine. Before she could think too much on that, she broke into a heavy sweat all over her body.
“Dr. Khouri?” one of the men said, reaching out to her.
Then Sera felt her whole body shudder. Saw a brilliant white wave of magic burst free from her body, even as her eyes rolled up in her head.
She didn’t feel herself hit the floor, but she went down, down, down…
3
Chapter Three
Kellan and Kieran lunged for her at the same time. Kellan growled low in his throat when his knee went out under him, meaning that Kieran swooped in and grabbed the girl before she could hit the ground. Just watching Kieran catch her and cradle her in his arms, staring down at the pretty doctor with something close to awe…
It hurt. More than his damn leg, deeper.
“A little help, here!” Kieran shouted.