by Abby Blake
“How much danger?” Benjamin asked without a hint of emotion.
“I had two assassins chasing me through the slip paths. I am hoping that I lost them a slip path or two before I came to you, but I cannot be certain. They shouldn’t be able to follow a dragon jump vortex.”
Adam nodded in agreement and glanced around their little group. There were seven of them all together. Adam, Benjamin, Thomas, Brody, Devlin, Jennifer, and the pixie queen, Emmallina. The only one who didn’t look green with travel sickness was Brody. Fortunately he was also aware enough of possible danger to have morphed into his dragon shape the moment they were all through the vortex.
“Why do you have assassins after you?” Jennifer asked, sounding bewildered.
“That’s something I’m hoping my daughter can answer,” Emmallina said calmly.
“Can they kill you?” Benjamin asked evenly.
Emmallina glanced around the group before seeming to deem them trustworthy. Considering that pixies were literally believed to be indestructible by the wider paranormal population, an affirmative answer could be spilling even more pixie secrets.
“I believe that you have already stumbled onto that answer, Benjamin. In miniature form we are far more vulnerable, and yes, in that state we can be killed. Many of my own people don’t even know that. I’m not sure my daughter even realizes how vulnerable she is.”
Benjamin seemed to hesitate for a moment before asking, “Does living in miniature affect the pixie brain?”
“In what way?”
Again Benjamin hesitated and Adam realized there was no easy way to ask a mother if her daughter were crazy. “Has Connistanterina ever shown any signs of mental illness?”
“None that I am aware of, but my husband and I both wondered if her killing spree was some sort of breakdown. My daughter can be arrogant, headstrong, and at times quite annoying, but she has always treated her assassin’s duties as a distasteful, yet necessary, part of paranormal life.”
“Okay,” Benjamin said as he glanced around the area. “Which way, Brody?”
“About four hundred yards south,” he said as he returned to his human-shaped form. Adam couldn’t help being a little envious that the guy could change back and already be fully clothed. Brody had once told him the clothes were a temporary illusion and not actually real, but it still meant he wasn’t standing naked in front of the rest of them. Not that Adam had anything against nudity, but it would have been convenient in times when dealing with, oh say, royalty.
Thomas helped Jennifer to stand, so Adam went to assist the pixie queen. The woman wobbled as she stood up and wrapped both her hands around his elbow.
“Thank you,” she said as they turned to follow Brody. “I apologize for putting your mate in danger. When I asked her to meet me, I didn’t expect to be fighting off assassins when I got there.”
“I doubt that Jennifer has even given a thought to her own safety,” he said quietly. “My guess is the woman is more worried about everyone else.”
“Being a nurturer does seem to be a big part of her core personality,” Emmallina said with a secretive grin.
Adam nodded. He could almost see her swollen with his and Thomas’s children. Jennifer would make a wonderful mother, if they could only figure out a way for all three of them to be happy together. He tried to set the thought aside as he used his heightened werewolf senses to scan for danger, but he was still ruminating on the problem when they stepped into the safe house where Connistanterina was being held.
* * * *
Thomas nodded at the bullfrog sitting on the bench and hoped that Bull wouldn’t choose this moment to change into his human form. If there was one thing Thomas could guarantee, it was that the man had a penchant for hitting on any woman in the room. His frog prince claims were so annoying that one female vampire had even threatened to violently throw him against the wall as the princess had done in the original Grimm brothers’ version of the story. Disturbingly, his human appearance wasn’t much different to his frog shape—big, bloated, and slimy looking with a wide mouth and a personality to match. He was lucky he possessed the ability to go without sleep in his frog version, because without that rather unique talent of his shifter species it was unlikely the PUP squads would have put up with him for very long. There had been more than one joke about dumping him in the kitchen of a French restaurant.
Thomas helped Emmallina onto the sofa and then went to retrieve the miniature pixie from the cupboard under the sink. It wasn’t exactly the best place to keep a prisoner, but they hadn’t yet found a way to transport her elsewhere without giving her a chance to “slip” away.
Angus’s prototype was definitely promising, but until the portable ward field generator was subjected to more tests, it had been deemed not worth the risk. As soon as Thomas lifted the glass jar from under the sink the miniature pixie started ranting, throwing herself against the glass time and time again, her words barely loud enough for werewolf hearing, but her anger very clear.
She stilled when she saw her mother sitting on the sofa.
Brody placed a small speaker-type thing on the top of the jar and the pixie’s voice filled the room.
“Mother?” she asked, sounding like a young child rather than the accomplished assassin that she truly was. “Get me out of here! These idiots are interfering in official PLA business. If they don’t get out of my way, I’ll fry their asses, too!”
“Conni?” Emmallina asked, looking very worried. It wasn’t until Thomas heard the tone in Emmallina’s voice that he realized the miniature pixie was shaking. But it wasn’t from rage as he’d first suspected. Connistanterina’s eyes were sunken, her skin sallow, and her wings were hanging limply behind her. She actually looked kind of like a drug addict suffering from some pretty serious withdrawals. “How long were you on fireweed?”
“Fireweed?” she shrieked as if the question were an insult. “I’ve never touched the stuff!”
“I’m sorry, Conni, but you have been on it. Considering how long you’ve been missing, and the severity of your withdrawal, I would say you’ve been on it for many years.”
“She wouldn’t do that to me,” Connistanterina said, but the words lacked conviction, and the pixie seemed to somehow deflate before their eyes. “She loves me. She wouldn’t do that to me.”
“She who?” Emmallina asked softly.
Connistanterina gave her a stubborn look, but then sighed as if she realized her mother would finally get the woman’s name from her. “Victoria. She’s a witch, but she loves me. She wouldn’t do this to me.” Connistanterina’s words seemed to be the automatic defense from someone who’d just discovered their loved one had betrayed them. But again her denial lacked conviction and Thomas was beginning to wonder if the pixie maybe considered it herself as the withdrawal symptoms had begun. Connistanterina scratched at her arm, apparently not noticing the severe welts that weren’t healing the way a healthy pixie should.
“How long have you been together?” Emmallina asked, obviously trying to put her daughter at ease but at the same time get the answers they needed.
“It would have been twenty-eight years last week, except…”
“Except?” her mother asked, leaning closer to the jar, apparently trying to give Connistanterina the impression that they were having a mother-daughter talk without the audience.
“Except that she didn’t come for me. She knows where I am. She always knows where I am. I don’t understand why she didn’t come for me.”
Connistanterina glanced around as if finally remembering they weren’t in the room alone. “What did you do with her? You hurt her, didn’t you? She came for me and you killed her.” She started pacing around the inside of the jar, her tiny doll-sized movements very clearly telegraphing her agitation and her madness. “She was right! She told me this would happen. She told me humans would end up exterminating us. The Oracle had to die. She had to die slowly. She had to die painfully. And she had to die in a place where only V
ictoria could absorb her knowledge.” She continued pacing, her words becoming more insane, less coherent, her movements full of rage and fear. And then almost like a puppet with its strings cut, Connistanterina flopped to the bottom of the jar and started to cry. Her sobs were punctuated with words that seemed to suggest she’d failed her lover, that Victoria had abandoned her when she’d realized the information had gone to humans, and how she’d tried so desperately hard to make things right before anyone had found out.
“Why did you burn them, Conni?” Emmallina asked calmly as her daughter continued to cry hysterically. Amid tears, sobs, and halting breaths the miniature pixie finally told them enough to piece the answer together.
Because it’s the only way to stop an Oracle from passing her information to the next chosen one.
* * * *
Jennifer shook violently in her lovers’ combined embrace. Never had she witnessed such a heart-wrenching tragedy unfold right in front of her.
And she’d never in her life felt so helpless.
Even hours later, with Emmallina and her daughter both in protective custody, the mission briefing completed, and the most logical conclusions drawn, Jennifer couldn’t stop reacting to the assassin’s emotional breakdown. It seemed clear that the unknown “Victoria” had used Connistanterina for her own purposes for many years.
It wasn’t known how long she’d been force-fed the paranormal drug known as fireweed, but it seemed likely that it had been for many, many years, maybe all of the years Connistanterina had believed herself in love with Victoria.
Adam and Thomas had held Jennifer close through it all, giving her comfort as she struggled to cope with everything that had happened. It was in her nature to fix things, but being faced with something as irreversible as Emmallina was now trying to cope with was heartbreaking.
But it did ram home one very important fact.
Life could change in a heartbeat. Determined to overcome her fear once and for all and reach for what she wanted, Jennifer asked the question that had been on her mind for several days now.
“Does it hurt to become a werewolf?”
* * * *
Thomas tried not to react in a physical way, but surely even a human could hear the sudden pounding of his heart. This was the first time Jennifer had even acknowledged their offer to make her a wolf, and he could feel every muscle in his body pulling tight with tension. Hell, he hoped this meant what he thought it meant. It seemed almost funny that he could want something so desperately even though he’d tried to deny their connection and walk away months ago.
“I don’t think so,” Adam said in a calmer voice than Thomas could have mustered. “Most humans remember the double bite as being uncomfortable, but they tend to sleep straight after so the sensation is short lived.” He smoothed the hair away from her eyes as she finally stopped shivering in their embrace. “The last human to be made a wolf in our pack was a man named Cal. We could go speak to him if you like.”
Thomas desperately wanted to introduce Jennifer to the rest of the pack, but he didn’t want to overwhelm her with the idea of so many people both he and Adam considered family just yet.
“I’d like that,” she said shyly. “Do I have to pass some sort of test or something to become a werewolf? I mean is there something like a citizenship exam or learning course that I would need to do before I became one of the pack?”
“Like Introductory Werewolf 101?” Adam asked with a soft laugh in his voice.
Jennifer laughed with him, and Thomas pulled her closer, tucking her back against his front and sighing with contentment. He was probably coming off as a complete wimp, but the giddy relief running through him that their woman was at least considering joining her life with theirs was playing havoc with his reactions.
“Not really anything formal,” Adam said, smiling as if they weren’t talking about the most important decision in their lives. “Traditionally, the change is done by the pack alpha and your mate, but since you’ve got two mates, it’ll be the two of us who bite you.”
“And then we’ll be able to have a family?” she asked earnestly.
“Yes,” Adam answered with a smile wider than Thomas had ever seen on his packmate’s face.
“How soon can we organize a visit to your family?”
“Whenever you’re ready,” Thomas said carefully. It had only just occurred to him that Jennifer’s choices may be a knee-jerk reaction to everything that had happened earlier today.
“I’m ready now,” she said, turning her head to look up at him.
“Maybe we should wait,” Thomas said haltingly. Adam gave him an incredulous look and seemed angry enough to kick him. Jennifer just looked hurt. Thomas scrubbed a hand over his eyes. “Shit, sorry.” He rolled Jennifer over so that he could see her face more fully. “What I mean is you’ve had a rough few days. We don’t have to make any decisions right now. Adam and I aren’t going anywhere and we’re both willing to wait until you’re one hundred percent sure that a life with us is what you want.”
“I am one hundred percent sure,” she said, reaching over to touch his face with her hand. “I’m not denying what happened with Emmallina and her daughter didn’t affect me, but it did highlight that life is constantly changing. I’m not silly enough to believe that a relationship will be all sunshine and roses. Marriage is a never-ending flow of change and acceptance and growth…and compromise. The only thing we can know for certain is that we are all willing to work together to make things work.” She reached up and pressed a kiss to his lips. “I don’t want to wake up one day and regret that I never tried to overcome my fears. I’m willing to make that leap of faith because you’re both worth it.”
His chest swelled with pride. His woman was an incredible human, and she would make a valuable addition to any family, pack, or PUP squad she chose to join. “I promise to do everything I can to make certain you never regret putting your faith in us. I love you, Jennifer.”
“Same here,” Adam said, pressing a playful kiss to her neck as he pulled her into his embrace. “Now,” he said with a mischievous grin, “it’s barely three in the afternoon, and your sister won’t be up for at least three more hours, so we can’t go tell her the good news. Whatever shall we do with the time?”
Jennifer wriggled in his arms, pressing back against his groin as she winked at Thomas.
“I suppose we could play a card game,” she said with a wide smile.
“As long as it’s poke-her,” Adam said with a laugh. Both Thomas and Jennifer groaned at the silly pun, but Adam smiled unrepentantly and started tickling their mate. She shrieked with laughter, wriggling closer to Thomas even as Adam pulled her away.
And suddenly it seemed so simple. None of the reasons he, Adam, or Jennifer had come up with meant a damn thing. They loved each other. It was as pure and as simple as that.
Each day of life was precious.
And he didn’t want to miss a moment.
Epilogue
Emmallina watched over her daughter as the woman slept fitfully. Benjamin had proven he was the good man she’d believed him to be by calling in a favor from one of his friends, a doctor and bear-shifter called Eric. The doctor had confessed knowing very little about fireweed and its side effects—especially on pixies—but had promised to learn as much as he could without sending up alarm bells. He’d treated Connistanterina for exhaustion and given her a sedative to help her sleep.
It was disturbing that a full-grown pixie could be so vulnerable. Pixies had such an efficient self-healing physique that they didn’t even have doctors or medical people in pixie society. The closest they had were midwives to help with the birthing of babies, but even then they were more of a cheer squad than a necessity in any medical sense of the word. With both mother and child capable of self-regeneration should something go wrong, many pixies simply thought of midwives as the people who cleaned up the mess after the baby was born.
But now, thanks to medical intervention, her daughter lay quietly
on the pillow beside Emmallina, her tiny doll-sized body finally still. The nervous twitching had been quite hard for a mother to watch, but the miniscule dose of sedative Eric had given her seemed to have worked.
Emmallina let her mind wander as she watched over her daughter, the love that Jennifer and her mates had for each other washing over her. It was sad that by becoming a werewolf Emmallina would lose track of the lovely human, but the woman deserved to be happy. Very, very happy. Lost in her contemplation of a love so rare and pure, it took Emmallina a moment to realize that Connistanterina was looking at her with widened eyes. She looked almost as if she’d only just realized her mother was in the room.
“Mother?”
The word was barely there, but Emmallina nodded and reached over to get the speaker-type device that Benjamin had given her.
“How did you find me?” Even through the speaker the words were weak, but for the first time in many years Connistanterina sounded like the child Emmallina had raised and not the angry woman she’d become.
“It’s not important now. Just try to get some rest.”
“I feel like I’ve been hit with a hammer.”
“It’s the withdrawal from the drugs. The doctor suggested that maybe the fireweed was implanted under your skin so that your pixie constitution didn’t have a chance to neutralize it. We can only speculate why the implant didn’t burn up with the rest of your body each time you were incinerated, but the last time when they glued down your ashes, it finally seemed to have been removed.” She leaned over and straightened the pillow slightly so that her daughter wouldn’t fall off. “But it would seem that in miniature form your immune system hasn’t been able to recover from the withdrawal.” Connistanterina gave her a horrified look and it was all Emmallina could do not to lift her daughter into her arms and hold her tight like she’d done when she was a young child.
But the look slowly faded and Connistanterina settled again. She seemed to be almost asleep until she jolted and sat up in a panic once more.