Hard Breaker

by Christine Warren

  She wasn’t naïve enough to believe it had really been that easy for them. It was never that easy for anyone, let alone couples who had to cross a species barrier in addition to all the normal ones. But that didn’t keep a small part of her from feeling a twinge or two of envy. Maybe it hadn’t been quite as hard for Ash and Drum as it was turning out to be for Ivy and Baen.

  “You know, you’ve been doing very well with your lessons. I had a bit of a mental block when I first started, but then I had to do a few things in the heat of the moment before I ever got a real lesson, so I can admit I was a bit impatient with starting over from the beginning.”

  Ivy shrugged. “It’s all still a little surreal for me. I never even wondered what it would be like to be able to do this stuff. Not because I didn’t believe in it, but because … I don’t know. Maybe because I figured that if I could have, I would have by now. I feel a little bit like an adult having to sit down with the kindergarteners. You know, squeezed into one of those tiny chairs with my knees pressed all the way up to my chin.”

  “Oh, you mean a Kylie-sized chair.”

  She chuckled. “Something like that.”

  Drum turned around, leaning back against the railing now and focusing on Ivy. “You’re doing fine. I think we all felt like that in the beginning, but you’re picking things up fast. Not that you have much choice, given the situation.”

  “Yeah, nothing like the specter of certain death hanging over your head to make a girl study hard.”

  “And when it comes to the big spell, we’ve all started from even ground. No one’s tried to work anything like that before, and you’re holding your own with the rest of us. We can’t ask any more than that, can we?”

  “Sure you could. You’d just be doomed to disappointment.”

  “No one is disappointed in you, Ivy girl.” He laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

  She blew out a breath and stared hard into the distance. “Baen is,” she admitted quietly.

  “Ah.” Drum folded his arms back across his chest and gave her a knowing look. “I thought that might be the real reason behind those frowns of yours.”

  Was she really that obvious? she wondered for a second, then gave in and admitted the truth. Yeah, she probably had been.

  “I have no idea what I’m doing with him.” She shook her head. “He keeps telling me all this stuff about Fate and destiny and how we’re partners and how much we mean to each other and part of me really wants him to be right. But the rest of me thinks he’s just clinically insane.”

  Drum chuckled. “Yes, I remember that stage. Believe me. It wasn’t all that many months ago. Have you gotten to the point where you think everything will just be fine if you move to a different continent and leave no forwarding address?”

  “I hear Greenland is highly overlooked in terms of quality-of-life issues.”

  “I was thinking Australia, personally, but after a lifetime of Irish weather, I was looking for sunshine and beaches. You know it’s perfectly natural to feel that way, don’t you? Think about it. Think about what’s happened in your life in the last week or two and compare that with all the … what? Twenty-four years? That went before it.”

  “Twenty-seven. It’s not just the suddenness, though. I honestly don’t think that’s what I’m hung up on. Not really.” She hesitated, unsure whether to keep going. Drum was easy to talk to, but was she really ready to admit to him what had her so tied up in knots? Just because he was with a Guardian didn’t mean he would get it. Besides, if she had this talk with anyone, shouldn’t it be with Baen?

  Not that she’d been doing much talking with him. Every time they got a few minutes alone to themselves, they ended up naked and sweaty. It wasn’t conducive to soul-searching, or to meaningful heart-to-heart discussions.

  There were too many other body parts pressing against each other.

  “Let me guess. Destiny?” Drum asked, then grinned and launched into an impression of Gene Wilder’s character in Young Frankenstein. “‘Destiny! Destiny! No escaping death for me!’”

  Ivy laughed. She couldn’t help herself. The moment perfectly summed up her inner conflict, while pointing out the inherent ridiculousness of her reaction to it. “Yeah, something like that. You do a mean Frederick Frankenstein, by the way.”

  Drum pretended confusion. “Who? That was me, when I first met Ash.”

  Ivy imagined him repeating the scene in front of the tough, serious Guardian and laughed again. She could just imagine the female’s expression. “Right.”

  “Well, nearly, in any event,” he said. “I didn’t take very well to the news. Not to any of it, really. I’d grown up in a family where a little gift wasn’t a great surprise to anyone. I have a knack for finding things that have gotten lost, for instance, and my baby sister can see what hasn’t happened yet, as I told you. Those things I had known all my life, and I had no trouble believing in that kind of magic. But the rest of this? Stone statues that spring to life in the middle of the night? Real, tangible demons and crazy cultists who worship evil in ways the chat shows couldn’t even fathom? No, none of that made sense in my pretty little world. I didn’t like it at all, and I wanted it to get the hell out of my pub and never come back.”

  He gestured to himself and the house and his smile turned wry again. “You can see how that all worked out for me, in the end.”

  “Well, Ash doesn’t strike me as the kind to take no for an answer.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “But Baen does?”

  “Touché.” Ivy wrapped her arms around her torso, wishing she’d put on a heavier jacket now that the sun had fully set. “No, Baen is pretty determined to make me see things from his perspective. I’m just … having a hard time with this idea he has that it’s all been predetermined.”

  “Because if it’s just Fate that’s thrown you together, how would you know whether either of you had genuine feelings for each other, and you’re not just ending up stuck with each other because some big mouth in the heavens up there said you had to.”

  Her head jerked up and her gaze flew to his face. How had he summed up all her angst so perfectly in just a few words?

  “Because I wondered exactly the same thing, love.” He answered her unspoken question with a grin. “Trust me. No one in this world has a more complicated relationship with the notion of Fate than an Irishman. They mix the stuff into our baby bottles. Everyone where I come from believes in Fate, whether they call it that or destiny or the hand of God. We Irish are a fatalistic bunch. But that doesn’t mean I was ready to surrender the most important decision in my life to some outside force. I intended to choose the woman I loved, thank you very much, after much searching and careful deliberation.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I met Ash, didn’t I?”

  “And you just gave up on having it be your own idea?”

  “Oh, not quite. There may have been some kicking and screaming and bare-knuckled punches thrown at Fate’s ugly mug before it was all said and done.”

  “May have been? Do not lie to the poor human, Michael. You fought like a tiger and sobbed like a little girl before you finally manned up and accepted the inevitable.” Ash joined them in the dim light cast on the terrace from the sitting room beyond. “To be honest, I was embarrassed for him. He lost all sense of dignity for a time.”

  Grabbing his mate around the shoulders, Drum hauled her against his chest and growled a playful threat. “I don’t recall you giving in gracefully there, my stony love, so let’s be careful where we cast the blame, shall we?”

  Ash pretended a cool indifference, but Ivy didn’t miss the way she leaned into her mate’s embrace, fitting against him as if she belonged there. “I merely report on events as I recall them, and I recall you pouting like a child deprived of sweets.”

  Drum lowered his head to nuzzle his mate’s cheek and murmured, “Then you’ll just have to give me a taste of honey to keep me happy, won’t you?”

  Ivy look
ed away and pretended she hadn’t heard that. With any luck, it was too dark out here to see her blush.

  Ash hushed Drum and spoke to Ivy. “The point that I believe is important to remember, is that most of us resist Fate in the beginning. It is the natural response of any animal to fight against a restraining hand, and humans remain animals like any other in this regard. Fighting Fate is not a bad thing. In fact, I believe that Fate wants us to struggle against it, for if we accept it too quickly, it can see that we may lack the strength for what it has planned.”

  Ivy didn’t think anyone could accuse her of giving in too quickly here. Especially not Baen.

  “What is important,” Ash continued, “is to recognize that if Fate insists on guiding us along a certain path even after we resist, it is not because it wishes to trap us, but because it knows that the place it guides us toward is the place we will best be able to become our true selves. In other words, Fate does not wish to be humanity’s puppet master, only our treasure map.”

  She offered Ivy a smile, hooked her arm around her mate’s waist and guided him back toward the house. Watching them go, Ivy mulled over the Guardian’s words. If Fate wasn’t trying to force Ivy into a relationship with Baen, but merely offering her an opportunity that would inevitably give her much more than it cost her, then what was she really fighting against? Fate? Baen?

  Or herself?

  * * *

  Ivy had disappeared from the house that evening before dinner, and it had cost Baen every ounce of self-control he possessed not to hunt her down like a wily fox. She had been behaving erratically toward him since they had arrived at the manor, warm and affectionate one moment, running away to avoid him the next. He had told himself that she needed time to adjust to the idea of being his mate, but his self had started to grumble back and insist that she’d had plenty of time, and now it was their job to demonstrate all the benefits of accepting their relationship. Most of which, if his inner voice was to be believed, had to do with nudity. Lots and lots of nudity.

  As it turned out, his inner voice belonged to an insatiable pervert.

  It had to be insatiable, because the one place where Ivy had not tried to run from him over the last week had been in the bed they shared every night. All he had to do was touch her, and she turned to him, sweet and eager and pliant in his hands. She gave as good as she got, too, lavishing him with pleasure on a few memorable occasions that had made him fear the other members of the household would respond to his roars to see who had died or been killed. Luckily, the others seemed to know to stay away. Either that, or the manor bedrooms had some of the finest soundproofing ever installed in a private home.

  Yet despite all the time he spent in his mate’s sweet arms and sweeter body, he never seemed to get enough of her. He had only to think her name or hear her voice and smell the scent of sweet oranges, and he wanted her again. For a male who prided himself on his honor and self-control, it was turning into something of an embarrassment. Even more so because of the teasing to which his brothers liked to subject him.

  They went at it again, subtly over dinner in the presence of their mates, and then with less restraint in the smoking room, which they commandeered for themselves most nights. Not because any of them smoked, but because no one in the house did, either, so it afforded them quiet, privacy, and an environment with heavy, masculine furniture they did not have to worry about breaking every time they took their seats.

  Instead of smoking, most of the Guardians spent their evenings honing weapons, reading through books and pages their Wardens had passed on to them, and taking advantage of the novel experience of having so many of them gathered together in one place. Even the eldest of them had only rarely spent time together in the past, and most of that had taken place on the field of battle, where opportunities for conversation appeared sparingly. Sharing a common archive of memory and knowledge was one thing, but being able to actually speak to each other freely and openly made for a refreshing change.

  Most of the time. Baen found it less of a delight when the others of his kind used it against him. Especially when they did it with such open glee.

  “Given up on your little female for the night?” Knox asked, throwing the evening’s opening salvo. “Or did she chase you off with that satchel of hers? She wields a mighty weapon, considering it is made of canvas and leather.”

  Most of the others chuckled while Baen glowered at them all from his comfortable leather chair. It had been days since Ivy had struck out at him with her bag, hitting him square in the side of the head when he had pushed her too far on the subject of their mating. He had thought they were alone when he had pursued the subject, but apparently one of his brothers had been lurking nearby, and they had yet to let him forget the incident.

  “Leave him alone,” Ash scolded. She perched in the corner of a heavy sofa with her legs curled up tailor fashion and her lap full of hardware. “Or perhaps you’d like me to share what I know of your own courtship? A little birdie told me it wasn’t all smooth sailing between you and your witch, brother.”

  Knox’s smile morphed into a frown, one with a distinctly petulant air about it. “A little birdie named Kylie, I presume. That one certainly likes to share a story or two, doesn’t she?”

  Dag passed behind Knox’s seat and smacked his brother across the back of the head. “Watch your tone when you speak of my mate. Even when you might be speaking the truth.”

  Another chuckle rippled through the room, and Knox joined in. None of them had been able to completely escape the group’s teasing, but that didn’t stop Baen from feeling he’d been a particularly popular target. Of course, there was the slightest chance his nerves being on edge made him a tad oversensitive of late, but he preferred to discount that notion.

  “Don’t listen to these beasts, Baen.” Ash ran a soft cloth over her weapons, polishing surfaces that already gleamed. “They might be our brothers, but they have little notion of how to deal with women, especially human women. That any of them have managed to win, let alone keep a mate, is a testimony to the forgiving nature of their better halves, not any credit to themselves.”

  Kees hooted. “As if you had such an easy time yourself, sister. I heard that the path between you and your Drum did not run entirely smooth.”

  The female Guardian refused to take the bait. “I had two barriers to surmount in my case. Not only was my mate human, but he had the mind of a man, as well. That made my job twice as hard as any of you, because I had to overcome the limitations of masculine thinking.”

  Boos and hisses and good-natured grumbling greeted her words, and a few balled-up pieces of paper and decorative pillows were immediately lobbed in her direction. Ash merely ducked, dodged, and smiled as she continued her polishing. “I rest my case. Males always try to reduce complex issues to one of two things—fighting or fucking. Females require slightly more advanced tactics before they can be won.”

  Baen snorted, speaking before he could think better of it. “Neither of those seem to be a problem for my little mate and me. We seem to spend any time I can engineer for us to be together doing one or the other. Or both.”

  Spar snickered. “Trust us, brother. We’ve heard.”

  Ash snatched up one of the pillows that had landed beside her and landed a solid blow to the angelic-looking Guardian’s smirking face. “Say something like that in front of the human, and you’ll earn more than a pillow to the face, Spar, and from more than me, I would wager. Have some respect.”

  Baen shifted uncomfortably. While he found enchanting the way his mate’s cheeks flushed rosy red when she felt angry or embarrassed, he would not want his friends to be the cause of such emotions. Nor would he want her to add that to the long list of grievances she must have against him by now.

  “Yes, remember what Dag said to Knox,” he finally grumbled. “Watch your mouth when you speak of my mate.”

  “But that is your whole trouble, isn’t it?” Dag pressed, dropping onto the far end of the sofa opposit
e Ash. “The little redheaded female has not admitted that she is your mate, has she?”

  Baen answered with a narrow-eyed glare.

  “Easy, brother. That was not my attempt to goad you, merely to clarify the situation. We all understand this part of the wooing process, and we all remember how it felt to be there. Knowing your mate stands before you and having her refuse to acknowledge your claim is maddening. We know.”

  “Then I would think you would all be able to offer me useful advice, instead of poking fun and teasing me at every given opportunity.”

  “Oh, but the poking is so much more fun,” Spar quipped.

  “Frankly, I did not think you would appreciate my advice.” Kees grunted. “I would not have, when I was in your position.”

  “What is it?”

  “Patience.” Kees smiled when Baen made a sound of disgust. “You see? You do not appreciate it. I was right.”

  “In more ways than one,” Knox said. “You were right that your advice is not appreciated, but it is correct. There is nothing else to be done with females like ours. They might look small and delicate, but they are fierce in their own right, and there is nothing a male can do to hasten their acceptance of their fates. You must let them come to realize the truth on their own.”

  Frustration gathered in Baen’s chest, threatening to either strangle him or make him roar. Neither would accomplish anything more than a brief release of tension, though, so he fought back the emotion and focused on his brothers. “And what if she never stops fighting? My mate is stubborn.”

  “No, she is afraid.” Ash threw down her cloth and shot Baen a look of disgust. “You need to pay more attention, Guardian, and listen to what your mate tells you.”