by Michele Hauf
They’d kept the demoness down here too long. His fault. He should have questioned her immediately and then deported her. But now with this new information his father had given him. Really? Colin had met Sophie after leaving his family?
Kir stopped before the third cell, his shoulder facing the bars. He didn’t look inside, but he could scent the demoness. Faint trace of sulfur and, above that, a sweet, cloying perfume tainted with the salty mist of tears. She was a woman who prided herself on her appearance, much like Madeline. Yet she hadn’t been allowed personal comforts, only two meals a day and some books. He could hear her shiver and knew she was aware of his presence.
His father hadn’t met Sophie until after leaving the pack and his family. Remarkable. Had his mother been so impossible to live with? Kir knew Madeline was a difficult woman and was very controlling. Hell, Bea was afraid of her. Yet he had only ever respected her.
She’d had an affair with Etienne? Did Estella know? Dare he ask Etienne? It could be the only way to get the truth.
But would the truth change things? Bandage his broken eight-year-old self’s heart?
He turned to face the bars and located the dark figure huddled in the corner on the bare mattress placed on the cold concrete floor. The darkness didn’t allow him to make out more than a froth of hair and shapeless clothing. And yet, the faintest glint glowed briefly on her face. Two red irises.
Bea’s eyes were pink. Faery eyes were normally purple. So when a faery mixed with a demon... That didn’t make sense to him. Purple and red making pink? Probably it didn’t work that way. His mother’s eyes were blue and yet he’d gotten his father’s brown eyes.
He loved Bea. Half demon or not. He could love the demon within her. He must learn to. And it wasn’t fair to blame an entire race for the sins of one woman. Who may not have been responsible for his father leaving him in the first place.
By the gods, everything he believed was now being tipped on its head.
“Will you tell Colin I love him?” The tiny voice came from the darkness. “And I’m sorry. The addiction is so...so powerful.”
Kir swallowed and gripped the cell bars. “Could you overcome the addiction?”
“I...” A sweep of fabric across the floor as she stretched out a leg. “Perhaps. Not in Paris. Too easy to access V here. It calls to me, Kirnan. Even sitting here for so many days... I can still taste it. It is a wicked mistress.”
“What if Colin took you away?”
Sophie’s head lifted. Red glowed in the darkness. “You would not banish me to Daemonia?”
Such hope in her voice. Had he a right to play judge and jury? She had tortured and likely killed many vampires to obtain the V she not only used but also sold. She was guilty of a crime. But perhaps not guilty of stealing Colin from his family—only loving him. Maybe she had been the one to put back together the pieces of his father’s broken heart.
“Kir?”
He stepped back. Waited for her to speak.
“My son...” Sophie crawled forward on hands and knees. “He mustn’t know what I’ve done.”
Edamite’s relationship with his mother was good.
His heart thudded. Why was this so difficult?
“Be ready for transport soon,” he stated.
Kir walked away, without another word. At the top of the stairs, he gave Jacques orders for this evening.
* * *
“Jacques is taking my place on the hunt tonight,” Kir said as he drove the Lexus out of the city limits. “That is, if the portal works.”
“It doesn’t work?” Bea adjusted the radio but did not stay on a station for a complete song. He suspected she liked playing with the dials more than the actual music.
“It didn’t last time Jacques attempted to pass through it. I’m not sure a fix has been made yet.”
“Interesting.” But her tone was more accusing that wondering. “When will you hunt? Isn’t it an instinctual thing for you?”
“It is, but it is a pleasure instinct, not a survival thing. There is plenty of food here in the mortal realm to keep me alive. And, besides, you are a much more pleasant evening.”
She stroked the vest he wore. “This is your armor, wolf.”
“I like how if feels. A different fit than other vests I’ve made. I think it’s your faery dust.”
“You are my knight in leather and fur,” she said. “And I am pleased to be your damsel.”
“Something tells me this damsel can protect herself.”
“I probably can, but I’ll always swoon for you. How did it go with your dad?”
Kir sighed. Yet, for some reason, his heart felt lighter even if he didn’t want to accept that lightness. “He’s not involved.”
“He confessed that?”
“Yes, among other things I’m still trying to wrap my brain around.”
“Want to talk about it?”
He checked the dashboard clock. Sophie had been transported half an hour earlier. “Much as Colin wanted us to take him in hand and release Sophie, I wouldn’t allow it.”
“So is his girlfriend going to be sent back to Daemonia?”
Kir signaled a turn and followed the queue of red taillights exiting the city limits before him. Jacques had left the compound with Sophie in hand. And as far as Etienne had been informed, the act had already been completed. The demoness had been transported to a Reckoning service across town.
But if the transport vehicle got a flat tire and Colin Sauveterre just happened to be in the vicinity at the time...
“Everything will go as it was meant to be,” he said.
Chapter 20
Standing on the porch, bare toes wiggling over the edge of the unpainted pine floorboards, Bea closed her eyes and spread out her arms. Splaying her fingers, she took in her surroundings through smell, taste and sensation. Oncoming autumn smelled light and only a little foreboding. She looked forward to experiencing her first cold season in the mortal realm. In Faery, winter was vile and wicked, and she had rarely ventured outside her little palace room for fear of the freeze that turned the Unseelie lands to virtual glass.
So she had led a pampered life, albeit as the black sheep. Just because the walls had been crystal and the foods fine didn’t mean she hadn’t felt a vast and pining desperation for compassion and a loving hug. Connection. Family. Simple love.
Kir loved her unconditionally. And because of his love for her she was rising from the intense grief that had wrapped her soul for the past weeks. Kir grieved their lost child as much as she. She adored her husband. And the feeling was so huge and overwhelming she caught an arm about the porch column and hugged it as she thought of her fine husband, off loping about the forest.
All alone.
“I should have gone with him.”
Why hadn’t she thought to do such a thing? Since she’d been in the mortal realm, she’d not flown or shifted shape to small. Surely she could. Her glamour may be weakened, but if she could bring out her wings, then shifting shouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately, she’d never had a reason or a place private enough to afford such luxury. It hadn’t even occurred to her to try the first time they’d visited this cabin.
Giddy with anticipation, Bea spun once, then shed her yellow cotton sundress and scampered off the end of the porch that opened onto the forest floor. But her feet did not touch the leaf-strewn earth. Instead, she shifted, transforming to a small shape, her wings unfurling and carrying her high through the trees. She passed an emerald-capped hummingbird that could not keep up with her zipping pace, and she laughed, the sound of her glee falling to the forest floor in glints of faery dust. Arrowing through close-spaced branches, she lifted a hand to slap one as she passed, sending a scatter of desiccated leaves fluttering to the ground.
Soon enough she spotted the brown-furred wolf tracking the forest floor below. The beast loped casually, pausing to sniff the base of an oak tree, then dashed ahead, playfully, and darted this way and that. He headed toward the stream that
curled among stacked boulders and majestic pine trees.
Bea arrowed toward her husband and flew alongside the wolf for a while before the beast noticed her presence. The wolf stopped abruptly, sniffing the air that glittered about her, and sprang up on his hind legs to bat the faery dust with a forepaw.
She landed on his head, her toes sinking into his fur, warmed from his run. He didn’t try to shake her off. Even in wolf form he knew her. Bea spread her fingers through his fur and snuggled to give him a hug.
The wolf wandered to the stream with her sitting between its ears. He dipped his head to drink in the cool water, and Bea turned onto her stomach, digging her fingers and toes into his fur to hang on.
“Never had a wolf’s-eye view of the world. I could so rock this. We can race through the forest with me calling ‘Mush!’”
She laughed and turned onto her back, but her giggles upset her hold and she slid down the wolf’s nose as if on an amusement park attraction. She landed with a splash in the water.
“Oh, this water is cold!”
Shivering, she soared upward, her wings flapping double time to shake the water from them and her bare skin.
The wolf howled.
“Was that a wolf laugh? Seriously?”
Within two blinks, the wolf’s body shifted and lengthened as it transformed into Kir’s human were form. He came to man shape, laughing, his hands in the water as he knelt on all fours.
Bea flew to his shoulder and landed, gripping a hank of his hair to secure hold. “I don’t think that was funny.”
“Did you say something?” he said. “I can’t hear anything but little bells. You’re so tiny. And naked!” He sat back on his haunches and held out his hand. “Come here. I’ve never seen you in this form. The forest called to you, too, eh? It’s paradise out here. There are days I think I could stay in wolf form forever.”
Bea lit on his palm and sat, cross-legged, leaning back on her palms to look up at him. He seemed to be a giant. His big brown eyes were sheened with gold and tenderness. Funny to remember now how frightened she’d been to walk down the aisle, and, still, on her wedding night, she had inexplicably trusted her new husband. He was true to the core, a valiant man.
He touched one of her wingtips and she curled the long filament of it about his finger in response. He couldn’t hear her voice when she was in this small shape, but it was nice, this meeting of their worlds in different forms.
She crawled forward and lay on her stomach, leaning over the edge of his palm, and looked down. At his lap, his erection jutted like some kind of Greek column she’d fly into at her father’s home if she hadn’t been looking. She wouldn’t be able to wrap her arms around it in her current form, but the thought to try...
Fluttering her wings, she lifted from his palm, and he leaned back, catching his palms against the shore stones. She landed her feet on the head of his cock and stood with arms akimbo, looking up at him.
“You think so, eh?” he asked.
His cock suddenly bobbed, and Bea put out her arms for balance. Well, she was in a certain mood. The day was too perfect not to be. So...why not?
Fluttering down aside the huge column, she stood next to it and gave it a hug. It was as tall as she. The vein that ran the length of him pulsed against her cheek. Bea licked his skin. It tasted saltier than usual but also like the fresh, cool forest. She hooked a leg along the curve of his erection and stretched out her arms, performing a pole-dance shimmy. Oh, the things she had learned watching television.
Spinning and pressing her back against his warm, steely length, she sashayed her hips down along him. Kir groaned and...laughed.
“Come to your normal size,” he said in that deep, husky voice that always cued her it was time for sex. “I’m struggling between horniness and a good belly laugh.”
With a shudder of her wings and a focus inward, she stirred her glamour and her body transformed, her bones growing and skin stretching. It didn’t hurt. She came to full size with a spill of faery dust sprinkling over them.
She kissed him, spreading her fingers through his hair as she had done with his fur. “It felt good to shift and soar through the sky. I should do it more often, but someone has forbidden me to do so in the city.”
“We could come out here more often.”
“Nothing would make me happier.”
A shift of his hips placed the head of him at her folds, and she directed him inside her. He glided in slowly, sweetly burning a path to her core. She groaned and leaned forward, hugging his chest and nuzzling her head at the base of his throat as he lazily pumped inside her.
“Tell me this will never end, Kir. Us.”
“It will never end. I promise. I love you, Bea.”
They clasped hands and the bond mark glowed brilliantly as they made love until the night snuck in a chill that chased them home. Once in the cabin, Kir started a fire, and they made love on the woven rug before the amber flames.
* * *
They hadn’t planned to head back to Paris for another day, but Kir got a phone call around seven in the morning from his principal asking him to meet him in an hour. Etienne had insisted it couldn’t wait. And Kir recognized his leader’s serious tone because it was rarely used.
Had Etienne discovered his sleight of hand with the demon Sophie? Jacques had promised his silence, and he knew that it had been a lot to ask of a friend. Not wanting to discuss it over the phone, Kir said he’d head into Paris immediately.
Bea was disappointed they wouldn’t have another night out in the quiet of the country, but she helped him batten down the hatches so they could quickly get on the road. She lay across the front seat, her head on his lap all the way home.
She’d told him that shifting to small size yesterday had tired her. She wondered out loud if it was her demon half growing stronger now she was in the mortal realm. Kir didn’t say anything. It had been amazing to see her in that shape. That she had trusted him enough to show that side of herself.
* * *
Etienne was an easygoing man who was young for a pack leader. Probably only a hundred and thirty years old, he assumed the command and presence of a much older wolf, one who had seen much and had learned from experience.
And Kir would never forgive him for forcing him to marry Bea, because to forgive would mean he regretted the marriage. And that was something he could not do. He should thank Etienne for the gift he’d given him. Kir did respect the man.
And then he did not.
Had his principal had an affair with his mother? Could Etienne and Madeline’s relationship have been the catalyst to Colin leaving? He wasn’t sure how to bring it up. And depending on what Etienne had called him in for, it could be the wrong time to do so.
He’d play it by ear.
“Kirnan, have a seat. Sorry to call you back in early from the cabin. I didn’t make it to retreat this full moon. How pitiful is that?”
Kir remained standing. “You’re busy, principal. If you need me to do more...?”
“You and Jacques are doing an incredible job enforcing. You got the Royaume situation tied up?”
Apparently, Etienne had not heard of the demoness’s escape. Whew.
“Settled. The, er, demoness has been deported. And the V-hub that was in current operation has been burned.”
“I always hate to mete punishment. Especially when this case was so close to home. How is your father?”
“I suspect I won’t be speaking with him for some time, Principal Montfort.”
“I’m sorry, Kir.”
“Royaume is a small pack. Sometimes a pack follows their principal, even knowing what they are doing is wrong. The pack members look up to their principal.”
“I trust the two of you will handle it accordingly. As for guarding the portal, that’s been going smoothly. Only had a few encounters with humans thinking they were wizards trying to pass through. The things humans get to these days. The idiots have seen too much TV and played far too many video gam
es. Although, Jacques said he again wasn’t able to access Faery to hunt again last night.”
“Really? What’s that about?”
“You should sit,” Etienne said.
Kir sensed discomfort in the man’s tone. Too curt.
“I’d rather stand. I’ve been driving. Need to stretch out my muscles.”
Etienne leaned forward across his desk, placing his palms flat. “Sit. Please.”
Kir sat on the wood chair and drew up an ankle to prop across his knee. He’d done nothing wrong. Unless Etienne really did know about the situation with his father and Sophie. No, Jacques was discreet. Although, he had asked his best friend to make a move against his father.
Was it something about him and Bea? Couldn’t be. He hadn’t told Etienne about Bea’s miscarriage, but surely word had carried to him.
Though Etienne rarely involved himself in the enforcing schedule, Kir had to ask. “Is there a new case?”
“No. I’ll get straight to the point. The passage is not working, and we’ve learned why just this morning. Malrick refuses to honor the accord made between Valoir and the Unseelies.”
Kir’s mouth dropped open. He didn’t know what to say or how, exactly, to process that information. They’d only gotten to use the passage for a few months. He hadn’t even hunted in Faery.
“We offered one of our best wolves—you—in exchange for a promise that both sides would honor the alliance,” Etienne stated. “But for the past month we haven’t been able to access the passage at all. And my contact, who has been keeping tabs on Malrick, says he is indifferent to what the pack wants. Sounds like he made the agreement merely to pass off an unwanted by-blow on us.”
“How dare you.” Kir sat up halfway but stopped himself from reaching across the desk to grip his principal by the throat.
“Settle, Kir. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have used that term. It’s what Malrick calls her, you know.”
Sitting down, Kir nodded. He could believe as much. But that didn’t mean Etienne had a right to repeat it. “Bea has been made to believe she is less than worthy. She grew up knowing her father had no love for her.”