How dare Ronan Connelly take my future, Abigail thought, those wide eyes narrowing in the mirror reflection. I worked my whole life for this. He has no idea who he is messing with. I’m meant to rule the Dragon Clan, and I would have let him rule it with me—but no. Now he has to be dealt with.
“Speaking of the plan,” Abigail said, turning away from her mirror musings and facing Michael again. “You understand your role in the next part of this, right?”
“I thought that we were waiting for Liam to contact us.”
Abigail sighed, her hands on her hips again. “How many times do I have to tell you that we don’t wait for things, Michael? Yes—Liam is going to get in touch with us. But we still have to be working on our own to make sure that nothing goes wrong. Liam is not exactly the brightest bulb.”
Michael sat up. “I don’t know. He seems nice enough.”
“Nice does not mean smart,” Abigail pointed out, a rare moment of self-restraint keeping her from pointing out that Michael, himself, demonstrated that point. “We’ve let Liam know we’re in town. We’re waiting for him to contact us with more information. All of that’s true. In the meantime, you’re supposed to be rallying the others. They don’t fully understand why we’re doing this, Michael, and you have to convince them that this is life or death. We take over Boston or we all die.”
“But this isn’t life or death,” Michael pointed out. “This is you, wanting to be in power.”
Abigail bit back her frustrated retort and went to the bed, sitting down beside her so-called leader and taking his hand earnestly in hers. She had to play the role and convince him, like she always did. “Yes,” she admitted. “I do want to be in power. I like power. I will never lie to you, Michael, and say that I don’t. But I want to do good things with power—that’s why I need it so much. Ronan is going to ruin us. You know that. He’s weakening the clan by introducing non-shifters into it. It’s going to destroy us from the inside out and cause so many problems for our children. We can’t let him do that, and he won’t be reasoned with.”
“Have we tried?”
Abigail grit her teeth. “Yes—of course. Liam has talked to him on many occasions, and he’s concluded that nothing will change Ronan’s mind. Everyone in the Boston branch is madly in love, and you know how stupid love can make people. We have no choice but to fight for the clan.”
“Why can’t you stir everyone up into violence?” Michael muttered. “You know that’s not my style.”
“Because it has to come from you,” Abigail insisted. “You are our leader, Michael. You have to act like one.”
He sat up, looking her in the eye. “If I have to act like one, then maybe I should tell you that …I’m not sure about this, Abigail. I don’t know that this is the best way. This is your plan. Not mine. This isn’t how I would do this—I don’t think that violence is necessarily the answer.”
Abigail had to use all of her self-control not to roll her eyes. She couldn’t afford to put Michael off now, and she actually had an ace in her back pocket for just this exact moment. She had known that she might need something that would convince Michael that he needed to fully commit to what she wanted him to do.
“I didn’t want to have to share this with you,” Abigail said, sighing, as though this was very hard on her. “Because I don’t like to cause you pain, Michael. But you need to know, because I can tell that you’re not in the right headspace for this.”
“What are you talking about?”
Abigail got up and retrieved her smaller bag, opening it up and pulling a folded piece of paper out of it. It was an email exchange that she and Liam had fabricated together. Liam understood that Ronan had to be taken down at any cost, and she had explained to him that Michael might need a last push to convince him. Together, they had come up with the item that would do the job—a supposed email conversation between Ronan and Moira.
She handed it to Michael, reading with him over his shoulder.
Moira,
I’ve spoken with your father, and I’m furious. His concerns don’t matter at all—we know what we need to do. We know what everyone needs to do. Our survival depends on this, and I will take over every single branch of the Dragon Clan if I have to, to make sure that everyone is adopting these new policies. There will be no more arranged marriages, and I will stop at nothing to make sure that this practice is abandoned altogether. If I have to forcibly separate people, I will. Marriages between Dragon Clan members are dangerous and forbidden. I expect you to explain that to your father and to fall in line. Immediately.
Ronan
Ronan,
Understood. I’ll do what I can. But you need to be prepared for the fact that we may have to eliminate dissenters.
Moira
Michael read the exchange several times, and Abigail could feel him getting tenser and tenser with each read-through. Abigail knew exactly why he was so upset, and it was only in small part because the fabricated email exchange made the two sound ruthless.
It was primarily because Michael was already married. He had taken a wife from another branch of the clan, and he loved Breanna with all of his heart. She was his world. His life. His support system. His everything. The implication that if Ronan was successful, he would somehow take action to separate marriages between Dragon Clan members would light the fire under Michael that was so hard to fan into flames but that, once burning, was absolutely unstoppable.
When he looked at her, Abigail knew that she had him in the palm of her hand.
“I’m in,” he said, and it was the first time that he really, truly meant it. “If they have to be taken down, then we’ll take them down. Nobody is going to try to take Breanna from me.”
Abigail grinned at him. “Then let’s call everyone together and make sure they understand exactly what has to happen. When Liam calls, we’ll be ready.”
They would be ready to destroy the Boston branch, and Ronan in particular. Nobody crossed Abigail and walked away without consequences, and Ronan was no exception. He was strong, but so was she. He was fast, but so was she. He had friends …but so did she. Abigail would happily stack herself up against any one of the Boston clan because she had always been training for this. The dragons’ noble cause to serve humanity and live in secret had never sat well with her, and she had spent her years training for the moment when she would become so much more than a hidden public servant of an undeserving population.
She had been willing to let Ronan be her vehicle to power, but now she would tear him apart and kick the pieces into the sea without losing a moment of sleep over it.
In fact, she was looking forward to it.
“You have an evil look on your face,” Michael said, frowning.
“Just remember what he wants to do to you and Breanna,” Abigail retorted. “He’s dangerous, and we’re taking him down, right?”
Michael nodded grimly. “Yeah. I don’t like it, but yeah. We’ll have to take them all out.”
“Good riddance,” Abigail said, smirking as she mimed dusting the dirt off her hands. “And just think …you can keep the LA branch, and I …well, I’ll rule here. Boston will be my playground.” She threw her arms out, twirling, then falling onto the bed and staring up at the ceiling. “Nothing is going to stop me this time, Michael. Nothing.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Natasha
“What do you want?!”
Natasha was at the end of her patience with the looming shadow of Josiah Webb that followed her from room to room within her house. She had been back home for two hours, putting in some time to maintain her own life while Ronan worked with his friends to track down Michael and Abigail. Charlotte had opened up the channel for Ronan’s Nana to come through and potentially help them locate the LA clan, but Gabrielle had not appeared, and after half an hour of waiting, Ronan had been forced to move on to the next method.
It was going to take time, and there was nothing that Natasha could do to help, so she had gone home to begi
n packing some of her things, touch base with some neglected clients, and get an update on her lawyer regarding tracking down Matthew.
The problem was, it was difficult to do any of that with Josiah Webb looming over her. She was no longer afraid of the man, though this was certainly her first experience with having a ghost near her. He didn’t scare her—but he did annoy her.
“I don’t have anything to tell you,” Natasha said. “I don’t want to help you crossover out of the waiting area of death and into your eternal rest. Why are you here? Can you even say anything?”
“Of course I can.”
The fact that he actually spoke did send another thrill of fear through her, and she had to take a moment to collect herself. “Oh. Well, then, what the hell do you want? Because I’m not helping you.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Josiah said, his voice as intangible as he was, whispering through the air. “Ronan belongs to Abigail. She needs him in order to be happy. He should never have betrayed her the way that he did, and he will betray you too.”
Natasha rolled her eyes, turning back to her packing. “Old story. Not interested.”
“I know things.”
She whirled on him again, crossing her arms over her chest. “What’s your part in all of this anyway? Why did you try to steal money from him? You’re dead now because of that, you know. Why are you still fighting against him?”
“I would do anything for Abigail,” Josiah said, his ghostly eyes flashing with intensity. “She’s everything to me, and she deserves to be happy. She was never meant for me, but it was my life’s work to make sure that she had everything she could ever want.”
“By helping her have another man?” Natasha asked incredulously. “Wow, you are really …whipped.”
Josiah’s eyes flashed. “True love is a dedication. A selfless one. Ronan was destined to be with Abigail, and he gave it all up. He ruined her life and his. If it takes my power to make him suffer, then that’s what I’ll do.”
“And that’s worth your life.”
“It’s worth anything,” Josiah said. “I put a curse on him right before I died. If I can curse him again while I’m here, I would do it. If it weren’t for you, he would be close to death by now, which is why I’m here, talking to you. You don’t know him as well as you think.”
Natasha frowned, resting one hip against the desk in her bedroom as she studied the ghostly old man. “What does that mean?”
“It means that he breaks hearts. Do you know that one woman he dated committed suicide after they broke it off because he just left her behind? That’s the kind of man he is.”
The revelation, true or not, sent a chill through Natasha. It touched on her worst fears—of being hurt again by a man who couldn’t protect her feelings. She could protect her own body, but her heart was so vulnerable. “That’s not true,” she said. “Ronan isn’t that person. And if he was, why would you want him for Abigail?”
“Because he’s what she wants,” Josiah said. “And her heart will always belong to me. She just needs the access that Ronan gives her to take her own power within life. She’s incredible. Amazing. He doesn’t deserve her. He doesn’t even deserve you. Leave him now, before it’s too late. What has happened to you since you’ve been with him? How many times have you been hurt or scared or confused?”
Natasha pressed her lips together, not wanting to answer the question, either out loud or in her own head. It wasn’t Ronan’s fault that their lives had been chaos since they got together. He had also brought her so much happiness amidst all the turmoil, and she trusted him. She did. He wasn’t the man that Josiah was making him out to be.
“I don’t trust people who steal, lie, and try to kill people,” Natasha told him sharply. “You fail all of those things.”
“So does the man you say you love. After all, didn’t he kill me?”
“He didn’t intend to.”
“Are you sure?”
Natasha felt a horrible trickle of doubt, and it only made her angrier at Josiah. “Get out!” she yelled at him. “I don’t want you here! Leave me alone. I’m not abandoning Ronan based on your word. You don’t even know if you want him dead or if you want him with Abigail. Why would you try to kill him if he’s her destiny?”
“He was her destiny,” Josiah said, giving now sign of backing down or leaving her be. “He took that for granted. Wasted it. This is now his punishment. I would have just taken the money from him as compensation for his disrespect, but he had to turn it into a fight. He brought this on himself, even after Abigail was so willing to overlook the fact that her future husband had a penchant for sleeping with every female he came across.”
“Get out,” Natasha said, her voice shaking with fury now. “Get out. I don’t want anything to do with you.”
“You should listen to me,” Josiah chided, drifting away from her. “It will be very bad for you if you don’t.”
Natasha was shaking, but he was gone, and she was alone again. Immediately, she pulled her phone out and called Charlotte, needing a friend to weigh in on what had just happened to her—a friend with a working knowledge of the other side.
Charlotte answered on the first ring. “Hello?”
“Josiah Webb is haunting me.”
“What?” Charlotte asked, clearly not expecting to hear that. “You’ve seen him?”
“Talked to him,” Natasha said. “He’s making Ronan sound like someone who can’t be trusted. It’s not that I believe him, but …”
“But he’s upset you.”
“Yes. You know, I don’t know Ronan all that well. I love him so much, but I loved Matthew once too.”
Charlotte’s voice was firm. “Ronan is not like Matthew, Natasha. You know that.”
“I do,” she said quickly, hating even thought that she was questioning Ronan and what he had done in the past. “I do know that. I just don’t know what to think. My instincts tell me that Abigail is a manipulator who is setting this whole thing up, and that Josiah is a confused old man who wants to believe the fantasy that Abigail could have loved him but was unable to be with him because of some sort of destiny thing. Josiah is right though—since being with Ronan, my life has been turned upside down. Is that healthy? Am I making a horrible mistake?”
Charlotte was quiet until Natasha had spilled out all of her words, and then her response was simple. “Ghosts manipulate and have agendas, just like humans. What does your gut say about Josiah?”
“That I shouldn’t trust him.”
“Then don’t. Don’t trust a single word.”
Natasha was staring at herself in the mirror in her bedroom as she spoke to Charlotte, watching her own face and looking into her own eyes. Guilt ate away at her for the doubts she was having about Ronan and the circumstances he was in, because she truly did love him.
And yet she couldn’t stop thinking about Matthew and all the years that she had looked the other way when warnings signs arose. She had almost ended up dead because she didn’t want to believe anything bad of the man whom she had loved.
What Josiah was accusing Ronan of was bad character. Natasha thought she knew Ronan better than that.
But she had thought she knew Matthew better, too. He hadn’t always been an abusive man. At the beginning, she had thought he really loved her, and she had ignored any red flags, trusting in him completely. They had been happy once.
“Natasha?” Charlotte’s voice sounded concerned. “Where are you? Do I need to come see you?”
“No,” Natasha said, swallowing the lump in her throat. “No. I’m sorry. I’m just letting him get to me, and I shouldn’t. My gut says he can’t be trusted. My gut says that Ronan can be. I need to trust myself. It’s just …hard.”
“Then trust me,” Charlotte told her gently. “I’m telling you that he’s a good man. And I’ve had Josiah inside my mind. I’ve been one with him, when he came through the channel. He’s dark. Twisted. His energy burned mine. If given the choice, I’d hav
e nothing to do with him ever again.”
Charlotte’s words did exactly what they were intended. Natasha felt such an intense sense of relief hearing that her friend—who hadn’t ever lived with an abusive man—felt the same way that she did about Ronan and Josiah. Natasha respected Charlotte, and she trusted her judgement. It was the push she needed to feel confident in her own assessment, and it allowed her to let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding as she walked over and sat down on the bed. “Thank you,” she said earnestly. “I needed to hear it from someone else. Please—don’t tell Ronan that I ever doubted him.”
“Honey, Ronan will understand. You need to talk to him about it yourself. If he doesn’t react well, then he’s not the man that I think he is.”
“You like him that much?”
“I wouldn’t trust your heart with almost anyone. But I’d trust it with him.”
Natasha felt tears come to her eyes, and she pressed her hand to her heart to try to contain the emotion she felt. “Thank you, Charlotte.”
“Don’t thank me. Nothing can ever repay the debt I owe you. I’m here—always.”
They said goodbye and Natasha hung up the phone, lying back on the bed. Josiah was nowhere to be seen, but she didn’t believe for a second that he’d really left her side. She narrowed her eyes at the ceiling and jerked both hands upward, each displaying only the middle finger.
“Screw you, Josiah. Haunt me all you want, but you won’t get at me again. Go to hell and stay there.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ronan
Ronan scrolled through Liam’s phone, reading the text messages that had been sent back and forth between him and Abigail—the woman who Ronan was supposedly going to marry. It made his stomach churn to think of actually being joined to someone who could speak as hatefully as Abigail did. She spewed venom about Ronan and his decision to change the way that the Dragon Clan members mated, and she fed Liam’s own hatred of Ronan as well. She degraded her own leader as someone who would never act, and she planned with Liam how she would get Michael to come here with the rest of their clan and stage a takeover that nobody in the other clans would object to because Ronan was clearly off the deep end.
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