by M. L. Briers
A string of fairy lights suddenly took on a life of their own, wrapped around his ankle, and he was flat on his face on the floor once more, growling like a wild thing with the urge to rip off someone’s head.
“You seem to have two left feet tonight,” Drake chuckled. “Oh no, wait, that’s obvious.”
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~
“Let me up before I put my knee somewhere you’d rather I not,” Nancy warned her mate.
“You brought this on yourself.”
“I’ll remember those words when I deliver my knee,” she bit back on a low hiss.
“Now, let’s not be rash,” Jeff chuckled, but the sound of his chuckles rubbed over her last nerve like sandpaper.
“I don’t see it as being rash…”
“Nancy!” Ashley yelled from somewhere inside the house, and Nancy snapped to attention. “We’ve got faeries in the house!”
“I noticed,” she sneered as she eyed her mate with a death glare.
“Unfortunately, we will have to continue this another time — faeries in the house, trumps your stupidity,” Jeff said as he dropped his arms from around her body and allowed her to shimmy off of him.
She couldn’t resist elbowing him in the ribs one more time as she scampered to her feet. The grunt of pain that came from his lips was just too satisfying to miss out on.
“Speaking of stupid — I don’t hear your brother calling you for help,” Nancy said as she started off down the hallway with her mate in tow.
“Be nice or…”
“Go home?” Nancy tossed back over her shoulder with a small chuckle of amusement.
“Hardly.”
“Dang, don’t raise my hopes like that. It was as if you’d finally seen sense,” Nancy offered back.
“Never going to happen…”
“You seeing sense? Thought not, but one can always live in hope.”
“You really are…”
“Be careful what you witch for.”
“Oh, if I was wishing, it would be for…”
“A blow-up doll?”
“Gee, you crack me up,” he offered back with a dry tone.
“I’m just returning the favor for every time that I look at your face, and it brings me such amusement.”
Jeff couldn’t see any way to win with her. Every time that he opened his mouth she had bettered him.
How was he supposed to woo his mate if he couldn’t dazzle her with conversation, humor … him?
He supposed that he could just let nature take its course. Or rather, let the mating pull take its course, and then he would be irresistible to her anyway.
His beast growled. Somehow, man and beast didn’t like that idea too much.
No, he needed to woo his mate fair and square. But first, the damn faeries.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
~
“We’re going on a fairy hunt?” Nancy asked as the three witches stood in the kitchen and mumbled to each other.
“I don’t like the word hunt.” Ashley gave a small shake of her head. “It sounds cruel, evil, mean, and it sort of reminds me of the witch hunts, and we know how they went.”
“And what the faeries did to your mate wasn’t cruel, evil, and mean?” Eliza asked.
“That was just funny.” Ashley sniggered.
“Sorry I missed it,” Nancy offered back with a small gleeful grin.
“Straight into the tree — pow!” Eliza said as she shook her head in dismay.
She’d spent all that time dressing the stupid tree, and she thought it looked quite good, only for the big old alpha to slam dunk the thing right out of its pot.
“Really sorry I missed it,” Nancy chuckled.
“It was a classic,” Ashley sniggered again. “If only I’d had my phone to record it…”
“For your grandchildren?” Eliza chuckled, but the hard stare that Ashley gave her made her clear her throat and kill her chuckles.
“So, no fairy hunt — then tell me, what are we going to do?” Nancy asked.
“Fairy fishing,” Ashley said with a small shrug. It didn’t sound a lot nicer to her, but she was clutching at straws.
“You mean like with little metal hooks that tear into their skin…” Eliza cocked a finger, put it in her mouth, and she yanked at her cheek. “And then you’ve got them, and they’re squealing in pain and…”
“Can you not?” Ashley asked as she offered her a look of pure disgust.
“I told you those horror movies she watches are a bad influence on her,” Nancy whispered.
Eliza made a popping sound as she pulled her finger out of her mouth and grinned at her friend.
“Bet fishing doesn’t sound like the way to go now, does it?” Eliza chuckled.
“Does it really matter what we call it?” Nancy asked. “We just need to get those pesky little demons out of the house before they cause any real damage — to us.”
“Somehow, I knew you weren’t worried about our mates,” Eliza said, and her tone sounded a little too accusing for Nancy’s liking.
“If you remember rightly; I was the one who voted to kill our mates,” Nancy offered back.
“Meh,” Eliza grumbled as she gave another shrug of her shoulders.
“Hunt, fish, ground the little demons into the dirt, it’s all relative in the grand scheme of things. We need to get rid of them before they attack us,” Ashley berated her friends.
“Agreed.” Nancy nodded.
“Fine.” Eliza shrugged her shoulders.
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~
“Oh no.” The alpha took his own sweet time as he shook his head from side to side. Ashley rolled her eyes back in her head and groaned inwardly at the man’s attitude.
“Yes,” she offered back.
“You saw what those fairies did to me, and I’m an alpha. I’m not allowing you to go head-to-head with them. What if you get hurt?” The alpha growled in annoyance at his mate’s rashness.
“Okay,” she held up a finger in front of his face to silence him and help get her point across. “Not allowing me?” Ashley put one hand on her hip and started to wag that other finger in his face. “Are you seriously trying to tell me…?”
“Yes. Do we have to do this now?” Kiel tossed back, without consideration of how it would sound. His duty was to protect his mate, not send her toe to toe against the faeries.
“Yes. And I don’t believe you said yes.” She folded her arms, narrowed her eyes on him, and gave him an evil hard stare.
“I can say it again if you like, yes.” He shrugged. He wasn’t about to back down.
“How like an alpha male to…” She stopped talking the moment that he slapped his hands against her upper arms. She was about to look down at them, just to make sure that he was doing what she thought he was doing when he yanked her towards him — and his lips came down on hers.
“Holy — wow,” Eliza sniggered.
“I suppose that’s one way to shut her up.” Nancy shrugged.
Ashley offered a small shriek of double surprise, the first because he’d kissed her, the second was when he pushed her back slightly away from him, and she twisted her head to the side, mouth slightly open, and gazed at him in disbelief.
“Well, you did say you liked me to be the take-charge kind of guy, dominant,” he grinned from ear to ear.
He could hear the wheeze of breath escaping her throat as she stared up at him. Then her brain kicked her backside into gear; she snapped her mouth closed and scowled at him.
“You need to stop doing that,” Ashley grumbled.
“No, I really don’t,” Kiel chuckled as he looked at his rather baffled and bemused mate.
“I need to go hunt faeries,” Ashley bit out through clenched teeth.
She was angry at him for kissing her like that in a sneak attack that blindsided her and angry at herself for liking it.
“I thought you said you didn’t like the word hunt,” Eliza offered with a snigge
r.
“Not helping,” Ashley grumbled as she slapped the alpha’s hands down from her body, gave a small shake of annoyance, and went to sidestep the big guy.
“Nope,” Kiel said as he stepped in her way.
“Oh, for goddess sake, they are just faeries — it’s not like it’s a big, ugly, mean vampire, like the one you keep as a pet,” Ashley offered back.
“I heard that,” Arthur called from another room.
“Pet in question,” Ashley offered back as she lifted a hand and motioned toward the door. Then she dropped her hand back to her side and made sure that it slapped her thigh; it sounded better that way as if she was making a statement all its own.
“If those fairies did to you what they did to me, you’d be damaged,” he reasoned.
That was only logical. He couldn’t understand why his mate didn’t get that.
“Then isn’t it lucky that we have a vampire on tap?”
“On tap?” Arthur called.
“Blood bank!” Nancy called back.
“I don’t share — I take,” Arthur called back.
“Looks like things are going to change around here,” Nancy called back on a snigger.
“Don’t count on it,” the vampire said as he appeared in the doorway and eyed the witch.
“Count” Eliza sniggered. “Count Dracula.”
“I’m so lucky that I’ve lived three hundred years and never heard that one before,” Arthur offered back with a dry tone.
“If you want to reach three hundred and one then I suggest you don’t cross us,” Nancy offered back with a smile of glee for the man.
“I admit that the vampire’s blood is useful…” The alpha got no further as Arthur made a point of choking on his disbelief.
“I’m sorry?” The vampire folded his arms across his chest and snorted his contempt for the alpha’s words. “Do I look like a medicine chest, walking cure-all to you?”
“Yes.” The alpha offered back before he turned his attention right back to his mate again. “And the answer is still no.”
“The trouble with that is — alpha – I didn’t ask the question,” Ashley tossed back.
“The answer is still no.” Kiel shrugged.
“Boy, does he not know witches,” Eliza offered a muttered whisper to Nancy.
“Boy, does he not know Ashley,” Nancy offered back, and Eliza nodded in agreement.
Ashley snorted her contempt for him as she lifted her chin in defiance, took a couple of steps around him, and stalked toward her friends. All three witches turned and walked in regimented unison toward the door.
Arthur moved out if the way to let them through. He certainly wasn’t about to stop them.
“What was that?” The Alpha looked to Arthur for answers.
“Are you being sarcastic, because it’s hard to tell?”
“No.”
“Oh.” The vampire looked surprised.
“Was my volume turned down when I was speaking to my mate?” Kiel growled.
“You never tell a woman no.” Arthur berated him with a look. “You find a way to make it so that they come up with the right answer, seemingly, by themselves, and then you consider it for a long moment, frown, and begrudgingly accept it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Boy, do you not know women,” Arthur said as he tossed up a hand, turned on his heels, and followed the witches out of the room.
“Yep, I’m getting that impression as well.” The alpha muttered to himself.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
~
“Okay ladies, let’s get ‘em,” Ashley said with an emphatic nod as they strolled into the living room and stood side-by-side.
Nancy lifted her hand and snapped her fingers, cutting off the overhead lights and sending the room into semi-darkness. The fairy lights on the downed Christmas tree still shone brightly, twinkling and flashing, and the log fire still flickered in the fireplace, but it was the perfect conditions that they needed to find a fairy’s aura.
The three witches stood perfectly still and eyed the room, scanning for auras, and listening for movement. Nothing. Either the faeries weren’t in the room, or they were in hiding.
Eliza pulled on her magic, lifted her hand, and fanned it from left to right in front of her. Heavy footsteps came up behind them as their mates arrived and Ashley was prepared for round two with her mate.
“What she doing?” Jeff asked as he leaned in and whispered in Nancy’s ear.
“Der, magic,” she offered back as she placed her palm against his face and pushed him backward.
“I get the feeling your mate doesn’t like you,” Drake chuckled.
“No talking,” Ashley hissed over her shoulder.
She didn’t turn to look at her mate, but she could still feel his presence, and she could certainly hear the way that he was grumbling deep within his throat.
“There!” Eliza pointed toward the Christmas tree.
With a small high pitched squeal at being spotted; the fairy took to flight, darting behind one of the heavy drapes that covered the window.
“I’ve got this,” Drake announced as he sidestepped the witches and rushed toward the curtain, yanking it back, and exposing the fairy that hovered there.
“Careful, dangerous when cornered,” Eliza rushed out, but it was already too late — with another high-pitched squeal the fairy zapped him.
The alpha groaned as Drake dropped to the floor like he’d had his strings cut.
“Oh no, you do not mess with my mate,” Eliza hissed, raising her hands in front of her, and shooting her magic right back at the fairy.
The fae hit the window and slid downward like a character in a cartoon, and it would have been amusing, but that was when all hell broke loose.
Faeries shot out from their hiding places in defense of one of their own, and the witches and fairies were pinging magic back and forth between them, and they weren’t too fussy about hitting anyone who got in the way. As Drake found out when he scrambled to his feet.
“Window — open,” Nancy demanded as she flicked her hand on her wrist and sent a fairy flying for the glass. It hit face first, slid down the glass to the frame, tried to hold on as best it could, but she zapped it again, and with a squeal, it fell down into the snow.
“Damn it!” Jeff yelped from the pain of three faeries that were circling him, zapping as they went, and he waved his arms around in the air trying to slap away them as best he could.
It was only the sound of his mate’s shriek of pain that sent his protection mode into overdrive. He roared as he lifted both arms and frantically punched the air.
He felt the connection as he managed to catch one faerie on the end of his fist, and the little fae ended up face first and legs in the air inside the coal bucket by the fireplace.
Jeff started across the room for his mate. He immediately snatched her up and tossed her around his body behind the safety of his back.
“Damn it!” He growled again as a new set of faeries joined with the old set that had been attacking him and zapped him.
“I got this,” Nancy said as she bolstered the magic to her protective shields and wrapped them around her mate’s body. Then she set about zapping the faeries and tossing them away.
One fairy landed on top of Drake’s head as the man got to his feet, and it zapped him a good one as it fisted his hair and held on for the ride as Drake tried to shake it off.
“How many damn faeries did you bring in with that tree?” Ashley practically growled at the alpha as he gave up trying to bat the faeries away, snatched up a cushion, and wielded it through the air like a shield.
The little squeals of faeries being swatted across the room felt satisfying, and he was sure that even through the hearty growls, his beast was sniggering with delight.
“Obviously, too damn many,” Kiel growled back.
His beast was well aware of the sound of a rumbling growl that had emanated from his mate. Right then; the wolf was
preoccupied with taking care of their mate and sorting out the faeries to do much about it, but the alpha was sure that the beast would remember when all the fun and games were over and the fairy threat was eliminated.
Then she’d better watch out.
“Real Christmas trees bring faeries — why doesn’t anybody get that?” Ashley grumbled as she thrust a magical wall in front of them and made a push toward the open window.
Some faeries chose to escape out of the window on their own, while others were tossed out into the snow on their backsides. She didn’t much care how they left, just as long as they did.
“I’ve never had a real damn tree in my house before…” The alpha growled back.
“You were warned — pigheaded, male, testosterone-fuelled, muscle-bound…” She muttered.
“Can we stop pointing out my good points and deal with the faeries?” Kiel grumbled back.
“Duck!” Nancy shrieked as a vase hurtled through the air toward her mate’s head. Jeff turned just in time to see it up close and personal before it slammed into his forehead.
Jeff hit the floor a moment later.
Nancy felt the rush of anger within her, she summoned a wave of magic and blasted it towards the faeries that had done the dirty deed. They tried to scatter, beat the wave, but it caught them up, tossed them head over heels towards the open window, and spluttered them against the glass.
More fairy backside hit the snow.
Nancy bit down on her annoyance, but when her gaze snapped down to Jeff as he pushed up to a sitting position, shook his head like a wet dog, and groaned — well, she couldn’t help but chuckle.
“I guess it’s lucky it was your head, or it could have done some real damage,” Nancy grinned.
“Gee, thanks.” He grumbled a growl.
Arthur stalked into the room and scanned the area. He groaned at the sight of the battle being waged. Then he turned on his heels and strolled straight back out of the room again.
One thing was certain when there were witches and fairies, and a whole heap of magic flying around — he’d be sure to get zapped. He wasn’t waiting around to be proven right.