Quickening, Volume 2

by Amy Lane

  I traded her for Drian and gazed into his green eyes. “And you, you shouldn’t consider doing that at all.”

  The look he gave me was pure Bracken.

  For a moment I thought smugly that I knew whose baby was whose, and then he smiled beatifically and I realized I’d never know.

  Nor did I care to.

  Nicky came around the corner with a giant mug of juice and ice for me, which he’d snuck into the library like the miscreant he’d love to be.

  “How’s our guys?” he asked, waiting until Drian was sucking away to hand me my much needed drink. “They going to make it doing this for another two weeks?”

  “Our guys are fine,” I said. Yes, there were breastfeeding endorphins that did make me mellow, but there was also a sense of relief. There would be other battles, but for today, sitting in our sunny spot in the back of the library, I could smell books and smile at my handsome husbands and know that when we returned to Green’s hill, he’d be there with open arms.

  “In fact,” I said, closing my eyes against the sun coming through the window, “I’m going to pretend that it’s all gonna be fine. For just a moment. I think it’s some peace well-earned.”

  SAC STATE held graduation at the end of May. The twins were six weeks old, and as big as six-month-old human children, but still I was almost horrified when Green insisted we take them off the hill for the graduation ceremony I’d never planned to attend.

  “But Green, I don’t even need the ceremony…,” I whined. In truth I was a little embarrassed. Yes, I’d taken my finals, and I’d even written my final papers—a feat only manageable because my babies had about seven nannies in addition to their three fathers.

  It just didn’t feel fair to be making such a big deal out of a degree—okay, two bachelor’s and a master’s, so degrees—that I hadn’t really been there at the end to earn. And I was pretty sure Hallow had manipulated my damned professors to accept the papers and not give me shitty grades on them. Either that, or the fact that I had to breastfeed newborns before, during, and after classes had just sort of pushed the pity button on all of them.

  It didn’t matter. Green got stubborn, much as he had before the jailbreak in August. I would have a damned graduation ceremony, and I would have robes and a little hat, and I would walk across that stage when someone I didn’t know called my name.

  I sat there on the hot, crowded floor of Sleep Train Arena and fanned myself with my program, scanning over the sea of bodies until I found my family.

  Like all thirty of them. Hell, it would have been more if the ceremony wasn’t at one in the afternoon.

  Green had one baby and Bracken the other—from the floor, I couldn’t tell which, although I did see a spark of daddy-generated glamour around them both. Nicky had the baby bag. My parents both had armloads of flowers, and everybody else had some sort of card or gift in their hands too.

  Silly, pure vanity on their part, because they could always give me gifts back in the hill, and why did I need cards or flowers or any of that other shit anyway?

  Except… except they were my family and my friends, and they’d followed me through hell and back, and who was I to tell them that we couldn’t celebrate this moment, this one moment, when for once I got the thing I’d been working for my entire life.

  Even if it turned out to not be the thing I wanted most anyway.

  The announcer called out my name—shortened, of course. “Corinne Carol-Anne Green.”

  I took my two steps across the stage, expecting a big ruckus, but that wasn’t what happened.

  The entire auditorium went still, and I turned toward my family, who took up almost an entire section in the second row. To a one they all stood up—my husbands, my friends, my subjects, my joy—

  And they all, hands to their hearts, bowed low at the waist in the breathless hush of the arena.

  I stared at them openmouthed, then held my hand to my heart and bowed back. And then I walked across the stage, wiping tears and makeup from my face as I picked up my diploma and shook hands with the president of the university.

  It was official. “Student” was no longer my name.

  But “Mother” was.

  THAT NIGHT, after the inevitable banquet and celebration, and the joyful recap for the vampires of absolutely everything that had gone on during the day, Bracken, Green, and I did a thing we’d almost feared to do for the past six weeks.

  We sat out in the Goddess grove, allowing the balmy air of May to wash over us and dandling the babies on our knees, talking softly about every burp, fart, coo, and smile, because they were all magical.

  Green had pronounced my body “good” that morning. All of the postpartum bleeding had cleared up, the incision was completely healed, and although still recovering from being stretched like a rubber band, my stomach was… well, not ginormous and swollen. It was human—that was it. Human and soft. Even my ankles were thinner, which was some sort of miracle in itself.

  In short, once the children were asleep in their cradles—and the cradles put in Grace’s room for a blissful night of babysitting—my husbands and I were going to do something intimate and pleasurable and almost forgotten. We were going to fuck like hamsters on Viagra, and I was so excited.

  But first, this.

  We all took a breath as the breeze washed through the garden and let ourselves yearn. Then we let ourselves hope.

  “Please, beloved. You promised Green… you promised him….”

  “Hello, luv,” Adrian said, his voice as transparent as his gently smiling face. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

  Next to me I heard Green exhale softly, and Bracken make a broken little sob.

  I smiled at him, tears burning my eyes, so joyful in that moment I almost couldn’t speak.

  Almost.

  “Hi, beloved,” I said softly. “Would you like to meet our children?”

  I felt his hand pass through my hair, slightly more solid than a breeze, and I didn’t imagine the kiss on my brow.

  “Look,” he said in quiet delight. “They can see me.”

  Oh, they could, both infants staring at Adrian’s ghost in the ambient light of the garden.

  “Of course they can,” I said, my throat tight. “You’re going to be part of their lives. Ready to get acquainted?”

  He beamed at me, then sat himself cross-legged in front of us and met the boy we’d named after him and the girl with the silver-spangled blue eyes.

  Purple

  Amy’s Alternative Universe Romance

  Little Goddess: Book One

  Working graveyards in a gas station seems a small price for Cory to pay to get her degree and get the hell out of her tiny town. She’s terrified of disappearing into the aimless masses of the lost and the young who haunt her neck of the woods. Until the night she actually stops looking at her books and looks up. What awaits her is a world she has only read about—one filled with fantastical creatures that she’s sure she could never be.

  And then Adrian walks in, bearing a wealth of pain, an agonizing secret, and a hundred and fifty years with a lover he’s afraid she won’t understand. In one breathless kiss, her entire understanding of her own worth and destiny is turned completely upside down. When her newfound world explodes into violence and Adrian’s lover—and prince—walks into the picture, she’s forced to explore feelings and abilities she’s never dreamed of. The first thing she discovers is that love doesn’t fit into nice neat little boxes. The second thing is that risking your life is nothing compared to facing who you really are—and who you’ll kill to protect.

  Little Goddess: Book Two

  Volume One

  Cory fled the foothills to deal with the pain of losing Adrian, and Green watched her go. Separately, they could easily grieve themselves to death, but when an old enemy of Green’s brings them back together, they can no longer hide from their grief—or their love for each other.

  But Cory’s grieving has cut her off from the emotional stability tha
t’s the source of her power, and Green’s worry for her has left them both weak. Cory’s strength comes from love, and she finds that when she’s in the presence of Adrian’s best friend, Bracken, she feels stronger still.

  But defeating their enemy is by no means a sure thing. As the attacks against Cory and her lovers keep coming, it becomes clear that their love might not be enough if they can’t heal each other—and themselves—from the wounds that almost killed them all.

  Little Goddess: Book Two

  Volume Two

  Green and Bracken’s beloved survived their enemy’s worst—with help from unexpected vampiric help.

  But survival is a long way from recovery, and even further from safety. Green’s people want badly to return to the Sierra Foothills, but they’re not going with their tails between their legs. Before they go home, they have to make sure they’re free from attack—and that they administer a healthy dose of revenge as well.

  As Cory negotiates a fragile peace between her new and unexpected lovers, Green negotiates the unexpected power that comes from being a beloved leader of the paranormal population. Together, they might heal their own wounds and lead their people to an unprecedented place at the top of the supernatural food chain—a place that will allow them to return home a better, stronger whole.

  Little Goddess: Book Three

  Volume One

  Humans have the option of separation, divorce, and heartbreak. For Corinne Carol-Anne Kirkpatrick, sorceress and queen of the vampires, the choices are limited to love or death. Now that she is back at Green’s Hill and assuming her duties as leader, her life is, at best, complicated. Bracken and Nicky are competing for her affections, Green is away taking care of his people, and a new supernatural enemy is threatening the sanctity of all she has come to love. Throw in a family reunion gone bad, a supernatural psychiatrist, and a killer physics class, and Cory’s life isn’t just complex, it’s psychotic.

  Cory needs to get her act and her identity together, and soon, because the enemy she and her lovers are facing is a nightmare that doesn’t just kill people, it unmakes them. If she doesn’t figure out who she is and what her place is on Green’s Hill, it’s not just her life on the line. She knows from hard experience that the only thing worse than facing death is facing the death of someone she loves.

  Loving people is easy—living with them is what takes the real work, and it’s even harder if you’re bound.

  Little Goddess: Book Three

  Volume Two

  Cory’s newly bound family is starting to find its footing, which is a good thing because danger after danger threatens, and Green can’t be there nearly as often as he’s needed. As Cory learns to face the challenges of ruling the hill alone, she’s also juggling a ménage relationship with three lovers—with mixed results.

  But with each new challenge, one lesson becomes crystal clear: she can’t be queen without each of the men who look to her, and the people she loves aren’t safe unless she takes on that queendom with all of the intelligence and courage in her formidable heart.

  But sometimes even intelligence, courage, and steadily increasing magic aren’t enough to do the job, and suddenly the role of Cory’s lovers becomes more crucial than ever. Nobody is strong enough to succeed in every task, and Cory finds that the most painful lesson she and her lovers can learn is not just how to deal with failure. Cory needs to learn that one woman is only so powerful, and she needs to choose wisely who sits outside her circle of family, and who is bound eternally in her heart.

  Readers love the Little Goddess series by Amy Lane

  Vulnerable

  “What can I say about Amy’s writing that I haven’t already said? Not much. She’s fantastic, I love everything she writes.”

  —Love Bytes

  Wounded

  “There is much darkness in this book, but there are rays of light as well. I look forward to furthering this series.”

  —Prism Book Alliance

  “It’s another great read, so full of emotion and drama, magic and mystique.”

  —Jeannie Zelos Book Reviews

  Bound

  “I loved this book. That’s actually all I have to say. I loved it and it left me reeling.”

  —Gay Book Reviews

  “This was another great installation of The Little Goddess series. It is just as riveting and wonderful as all the other books in the series have been.”

  —Inked Rainbow Reads

  Rampant

  “I think Rampant, Vol 1 is my favourite book in the series.”

  —Prism Book Alliance

  “With the intensity (and the stakes) jacked to eleven, Rampant, Vol. 2 is a white-knuckled thrill ride of a resolution, leaving the reader with a tantalizing peek into what’s in store in the next book in the series.”

  —The Novel Approach

  AMY LANE is a mother of two grown kids, two half-grown kids, two small dogs, and half-a-clowder of cats. A compulsive knitter who writes because she can’t silence the voices in her head, she adores fur-babies, knitting socks, and hawt menz, and she dislikes moths, cat boxes, and knuckleheaded macspazzmatrons. She is rarely found cooking, cleaning, or doing domestic chores, but she has been known to knit up an emergency hat/blanket/pair of socks for any occasion whatsoever or sometimes for no reason at all. Her award-winning writing has three flavors: twisty-purple alternative universe, angsty-orange contemporary, and sunshine-yellow happy. By necessity, she has learned to type like the wind. She’s been married for twenty-five-plus years to her beloved Mate and still believes in Twu Wuv, with a capital Twu and a capital Wuv, and she doesn’t see any reason at all for that to change.

  Website: www.greenshill.com

  Blog: www.writerslane.blogspot.com

  E-mail: amylane@greenshill.com

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/amy.lane.167

  Twitter: @amymaclane

  By Amy Lane

  The Green’s Hill Novellas

  Green’s Hill Werewolves, Vol. 1

  LITTLE GODDESS

  Vulnerable

  Wounded, Vol. 1

  Wounded, Vol. 2

  Bound, Vol. 1

  Bound, Vol. 2

  Rampant, Vol. 1

  Rampant, Vol. 2

  Quickening, Vol. 1

  Quickening, Vol. 2

  Published by DSP PUBLICATIONS

  www.dsppublications.com

  Published by

  DSP PUBLICATIONS

  5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886 USA

  www.dsppublications.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Quickening, Vol. 2

  © 2017 Amy Lane.

  Cover Art

  © 2017 Anne Cain.

  annecain.art@gmail.com

  Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.

  All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact DSP Publications, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or www.dsppublications.com.

  ISBN: 978-1-63533-440-1

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-63533-441-8

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016918940

  Published June 2017

  v. 1.0

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sp; Printed in the United States of America