by Abby Blake
Wilson wanted to break the warlock in half for his careless choice of words but managed to rein in his temper. It wouldn’t do Amber any good if he started pummeling his fear for her safety into every man who looked at her sideways. In warlock terms Jason was still fairly young—barely seventy—so in a lot of ways he still had a lot of emotional maturing to do.
“Look,” he said, seeming in a hurry to get his job done and go back to headquarters, “Benjamin has ordered that all entry into Sugarvale be by warlock bounce tunnel or dragon vortex travel.”
Wilson frowned. That didn’t sound right. Very few beings could trace a dragon vortex and only warlocks could track other warlocks, but entering town by human transport shouldn’t have been a security risk at all. If anything it was less likely to attract attention than any other sort of travel.
When Wilson and Darian exchanged a look, Jason rolled his eyes. “Look, whatever. I was told to escort you to headquarters. The car is stuck here. So either you come with me or you walk into town. It’s not my fucking problem if you want to be stubborn.” He turned and opened a bounce tunnel. Wilson had worked with this man for the past fifty years. He’d been quirky and strange on occasions, but he’d pulled their team out of as many dangerous situations as they’d done for him. Surely they could trust a squadmate who’d never before let them down.
Nodding, Wilson lifted Amber into his arms and stepped out of the truck. Amber was completely exhausted, still recuperating from the blood he’d taken fourteen hours ago, but her eyes fluttered open as he moved toward Jason’s bounce tunnel.
They were about twenty steps away when a second tunnel opened beside the first and Jed Mathewson stepped out. Amber’s eyes flew open, the fear almost tangible.
“No,” she said wildly, thrashing in Wilson’s grip. He tried to hold on without hurting her but her voice rose in terror as he ran toward Jason. “Stop!” she screamed at the top of her voice. “He’s the traitor. It’s not Jed. It’s not Jed. It’s him.”
Wilson skidded to a stop less than five feet from the entry to Jason’s bounce tunnel. He could hear Jed calling to him not to go through, and was vaguely aware of Darian moving to engage Jed as Wilson got Amber to safety. But her words stopped him dead. He turned, looking at Jason, wondering if Amber’s terrified words could be true.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Jason said as he moved toward them. “She’s in danger. Go through the tunnel. I’ll help Darian with Jed.”
But there was something in the man’s eyes. Something Wilson had never seen before. But this time when Wilson stood his ground, he felt an invisible force pushing against him, trying to force him into the tunnel. He tightened his grip on Amber, knowing instinctively that it was only his vampiric strength holding him steady. If he were human he’d already be gone.
“Darian,” he called as loudly as he could. It distracted him in his fight with Jed, but if Jason was the traitor, then chances were Jed was here to help, not kill them. Fuck, he hoped he was making the right choice.
As Darian and Jed turned toward them, Jason must have realized that his cover was blown. He swore and dived into his tunnel, the swirling colored lights dying quickly as it closed behind him. Wilson staggered forward as the force that had been pushing him backward also disappeared. He managed to regain his balance quickly, but he was still shaking all over. If Amber hadn’t warned him, they could very well be dead right now.
“It’s okay,” Amber said as she reached up to touch his face. He’d been so focused on keeping her safe he hadn’t even given a thought as to her being awake. Once she’d told him what she knew, she’d relaxed in his arms, and trusted him to keep her safe.
“I love you,” he said as emotions he’d never before experienced rolled through him.
“Well, I’d say that ended rather well, wouldn’t you?” Jed said as he and Darian got close enough to be heard. “Hello, beautiful.”
“Hi, Jed,” Amber said with a genuine smile. “I knew you wouldn’t betray us.”
“Good to know I still have some fans,” he said with a cocky wink, but then he grew serious. “I picked up a warlock trailing me a couple days ago. I didn’t want to risk bringing him to your door, so I couldn’t warn you, but I’m assuming by your presence here that he found you anyway.”
“He did,” Darian said grimly. “Brought five pixies with him.”
“Damn,” Jed said with a grin, “I’m sorry I missed that.”
“Yeah, well, we didn’t exactly hang around. Not my idea of good odds.”
Jed nodded. “Mine neither. So why Sugarvale?” he asked with a wink at Amber. It seemed obvious that he knew what was going on.
“Because Ava has something for me.”
“Correct answer, beautiful,” Jed said. “When your vampire finally unlocks his arms and lets you stand on your own two feet, he might help me get this fallen tree out of the way.” Amber pressed a kiss to Wilson’s jaw.
“It’s okay,” she said again. “You can put me down now.”
He finally let her go, helping her to stand and holding her steady as she found her balance. Considering she’d been in a deep sleep when this all began, the poor woman was probably feeling completely discombobulated.
Before she stepped out of his arms, she lifted her lips to his, kissed him softly, and whispered the words he would never get tired of hearing. “I love you.”
Epilogue
Amber couldn’t help but feel a little overwhelmed. After spending ten days completely alone with her guys it seemed almost strange to be surrounded by other people. Stranger still was the feeling of belonging, of a type of sisterhood with these women that she’d never actually met before.
“Can you sense Lilly?” Hannah asked as she handed Amber a much-needed coffee.
Amber gave her a half smile and shrugged. “Sort of, I think.”
“It’s the same way for me,” Hannah said. Ava and Kali nodded in agreement. “I just wish we could find her. I feel like getting all six of us in the same place at the same time would somehow answer a lot of our questions.”
“Me, too,” Ava said, lifting yet another salty cracker to her lips. The poor thing still looked a little green. Apparently morning sickness with a dragon baby was rather unpleasant. “What I don’t understand is why we would feel complete with only six. With three of the Oracle’s receptacles assassinated before we even knew what was going on, shouldn’t we be feeling like one-third of us is missing?”
“My brother, Dave, has a theory on that,” Kali said with a smile.
Amber must have looked confused because Hannah added, “He’s one of the human cops assigned to investigate the murders. He called Ronan for help. Ronan called in Alex, and that’s how they realized there was a paranormal connection. Without Dave it’s quite possible none of us would have survived the pixie’s attacks.”
“Except that weren’t both you and Ava able to hold off your attackers with telekinesis?” Amber asked. Wilson and Darian had given her the bare-bones summary of the reports they’d read, but it still didn’t seem possible. When both women nodded, Amber couldn’t help but be a little envious. “Telekinesis sounds like a really handy skill.”
“It is,” Ava said with a cat-who-ate-the-canary smile. “Want to try it?”
“Huh,” Amber said, feeling like she’d somehow lost the thread of the conversation.
“You have it now, too,” Kali said with a broad smile.
“How is that possible?”
Ava shrugged. “I have no clue, but I do find myself rather concerned that I seem to be able to create a hole in the ground with just a thought.”
Still reeling from the news of her own newly acquired skill, Amber wasn’t really sure what to say. Given that her hole-creating skill seemed rather strange, she felt the need to apologize for accidentally sharing it. But before she could open her mouth Hannah giggled.
“That is so cool,” she said with a wide smile. “I’m sure it has some rather handy defensive applications, too, but right no
w all I can think about is the pool I could dig in my backyard.”
All four of them laughed for a while as they one-upped each other with even more outrageous uses for the skills they shared, but eventually the conversation circled back to the women who’d been murdered.
“Dave thinks that perhaps two of the women who were murdered weren’t actually involved. We all share a birth date and time within an eight-minute window. Two of them were born in that eighth minute. The rest of us were born three minutes apart.”
“Seriously?” Amber asked, somehow shocked by information that she sort of already knew. She rubbed her forehead. This “knowing” stuff was confusing some days. “What about the other one?”
“She was born first.”
“Is it possible,” Amber asked, still rubbing her head, “that the first woman was actually the Oracle’s receptacle? I mean, I didn’t have any of these skills or knowledge two months ago.”
“That’s Dave and Ronan’s theory, too,” Kali said with a nod. “They think maybe we’re part of a fail-safe type of setup. When the actual Oracle’s receptacle was murdered, she instantly passed on her knowledge to the rest of us. Of course for that theory to be accurate it means that we were somehow prepared by the Oracle when we were born. Otherwise, why wouldn’t the information go to a child being born at the time of the human Oracle’s murder?”
“It also raises the question of why she didn’t use her skills to hold off her attacker,” Ava said with a frown on her face. “Is it possible she only possessed the knowledge without the skills? And if so, how did we get them?”
“And,” Hannah said, looking a little green now herself, “nothing we know explains why the pixies burned the victims from the inside out.”
“That’s true,” Ava said, looking thoughtful. “Why alert humans or paranormals to pixie involvement?”
* * * *
Darian found his fiancée practicing her new telekinetic power with the TV remote control. The thing hovered in midair, turning slowly end over end. Clearly her discussion with the other Oracle’s receptacles had given her more questions than answers and had left her feeling melancholy. Deciding to try and lighten the mood, Darian stepped into the room.
“Sorry, no,” he said, grabbing the remote quickly. “The remote control is the sacred symbol of man’s technology. It belongs only to man. Woman must not touch.”
She laughed as her eyes dropped to his crotch. “Well,” she said, seeming happy to have something else to think about, “if you don’t want me touching your toys, I guess I’ll have to go find Wilson.”
“Very funny,” he said, but laughed with her. They’d only been in Sugarvale a day and, despite the unsettling conversation Amber had shared with the other women, it was already proving to be the right choice. Ronan had been rebuilding the small town for several months now and had quickly offered a house for the three of them to stay in. It was sparsely furnished but had the essentials—king-size bed, sofa, refrigerator, and TV. The kitchen also seemed fairly well stocked with pots and pans, so it was only a matter of getting food into the place. Strange how easily the place felt like home. Considering everything that had happened and still could happen, staying here permanently appealed to all three of them for many different reasons.
Darian was still trying to understand how Ava had somehow given Amber the gift of telekinesis just by being near her. Neither of the women could really explain how they did it, but learning of Nathan’s ability to create a shield that Ava somehow taught him—or he’d taught her as she claimed—was mind-boggling. Nathan was a talented, experienced employee of Deeks Security, but like his boss, Ronan, he was only human, and he certainly wasn’t an Oracle’s receptacle. How the hell Ava had passed on that talent to him was still a source of confusion for everyone involved.
They heard Wilson come in the front door a few moments later. It was a nice change knowing that they could relax a little. Now that they’d been able to figure out where the security breach had come from, they’d been able to fortify the town with more security. It had been decided that Kristen and her protectors Dyson, Angus, Adam, and Thomas would be called in from wherever they were to join them all here in Sugarvale. If Jed, Devlin, Wesley, and Bull were ever able to locate Lilly, they’d been told to bring her here, too.
It was obvious by the way the women were able to share talents that they were safer in a group. With her new telekinetic ability Amber would be able to hold off a pixie attack long enough for him and Wilson to help. Of course, they had no intention of going further than the next room, so she wouldn’t have to hold a pixie off for long, even if it somehow got inside the house. With the multiple layers of sphere-shaped wards surrounding the town in every conceivable direction, an enemy wouldn’t be able to get within four miles of Amber without alerting the whole town.
Considering that it was now home to half of PUP Squad Alpha and many of the Deeks Security employees, that was one hell of a security system.
“What did I miss?” Wilson asked when he came into the room.
Amber pouted dramatically. “Darian won’t let me play with his remote.”
“Maybe he’ll let you play with these toys.” Wilson casually dropped the leather bag on the floor at Darian’s feet, gathered Amber in his arms, and sat down on the sofa with her in his lap. “Jed went back and collected it from the jungle hut,” he explained. “He reset the wards, too, so at least we won’t have to worry about animals and insects taking over before we get back there.”
“Remind me to thank him,” Darian said as he opened his bag of BDSM supplies and grinned wickedly. “But first we should deal with our beautiful fiancée.”
“What did I do?” she asked in surprise.
“What did you do?” He glanced at Wilson and then back at her. “You threatened the safety of the remote for one.”
She giggled, as he’d intended. “So you’re going to spank me for touching the sacred man-toy?”
Wilson burst out laughing. “Sure sounds like a good enough reason to me.”
“So,” she said, climbing off the sofa and eyeing them both. It was obvious she was trying to keep a straight face and failing. “All I have to do to get your attention is touch the remote?”
“Princess, you will always have our attention,” Darian said, unable to keep the emotion from his voice as he stood up and reached for her.
She stepped into his arms and kissed him softly. “I love you,” she whispered against his lips. She turned around and kissed Wilson the same way, then whispered the same words in the same loving tone. Darian pressed against her back, unable to resist touching the woman who’d claimed his heart.
“Oh, by the way,” she said as she slid out of the embrace a few moments later, “look what I’ve got.”
She held the remote in her hand, winked at them both, and then ran from the room. Darian laughed as Wilson chased their woman upstairs and into the bedroom. He grabbed his leather bag and followed them at a slower pace. Life with Amber would never be dull. She was beautiful, vibrant, creative, sexy, intelligent, compassionate, and loving. He really couldn’t imagine a marriage or a future more perfect.
And he planned to make every single moment count.
THE END
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Abby Blake prefers to read or write romance over just about everything else—except maybe chocolate. Most days she can be found hurrying to do what needs to be done so that she can curl up with her laptop and her latest bunch of heroes.
Also by Abby Blake
Ménage Everlasting: PUP Squad Alpha 1: Vampires’ Witness
Ménage Everlasting: PUP Squad Alpha 2: Demon’s Embrace
Ménage Everlasting: PUP Squad Alpha 3: Dragon’s Fire
Ménage Everlasting: PUP Squad Alpha 4: Bears’ Claim
For all other titles, please visit
www.bookstrand.com/abby-blake
Siren Publishing, Inc.
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