She put her hands on her hips. “Micah, that is you trying to get me out of doing anything. Yes, I’ll look. Then I’ll come help you. Be back.”
“The rest of you,” I pointed to the outskirts of the place. “Spread out. There will be some people rushing out. I want to speak to the first few. We’re going to let them go. All the Vamps die. And the rest of the people who make it outside? Well, that’s up to you I suppose. If you have trouble killing humans who had no trouble sending Originals to kill you or your families, stay back.”
The buildings were old. I’d seen the boxes in the basement. If all of them were the same then this would go easily. If not, well then we’d improvise. I was burning this fucking nightmare to the ground.
It turned out that Micah and Deacon were actually much more proficient than I was at lighting fires. They’d done it a lot more. Torching old housing developments was one way to reclaim land that would otherwise lay destitute from not being used. Genesis had done this many times.
If they’d ever burned buildings down with people in them, I didn’t know.
There were certain things I just planned on never asking.
Old wood burned fast, and they’d not constructed these places with the idea that someday a Werewolf and a bunch of Warriors would come by to do this. I stood back, my hands crossed over my chest. I felt… nothing.
Was that odd? Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. I’d always been the bad guy. Perhaps that hadn’t changed. But when the few people—all of them some cloned version of my mate—ran from the building I watched, feeling nothing about the fact that they’d escaped fire at all.
I grabbed two of them by their collars. One might disobey. Two would not. “You go tell whoever is in charge that we have destroyed the cloning machine. It’s gone. Everyone is fair game now. You send them after us? We come after you. No more victims here. Got it?”
They fell to the floor. It was funny. They were supposed to be exactly like my mate. I’d always thought they smelled different, but now I could see slight alterations in their faces, too. One of them had the slightest wrinkle next to her left eye and the other a mark on her lip. Yes, I’d never mix them up. How did anyone?
I let them go and stepped back. A whistle sounded, so low I might have missed it if not for my super Wolf hearing. I swung around and sniffed the air. It was Brynna. She was alerting us to something. I turned to Micah, and he nodded. “I can hear better since my Vamp bite. Don’t ask.”
I wasn’t going to. We all had our shit to deal with that was for sure. “What is she alerting us to?”
“I sent her to watch for trouble. She’s found some.”
“What…” I never got to finish that thought. Out of the building where the originals must stay between destruction they streamed. At least fifty of them. That was more than I’d thought. Some of them were on fire. All of them were roaring. It was a deafening, mind numbing sound that made me actually want to vomit. I couldn’t say I’d ever had such an experience to auditory stimulus before but there it was.
We couldn’t fight. But I didn’t think that was what they’d come here to do. Vamps died from fire. I had to believe, Original or not Original, some things were the same. If things could bleed, if they could burn, they could be killed. That was true for all of us.
My mouth watered. My Wolf had always liked taking down enemies. I didn’t care whether it was their fault or not. They’d attacked my mate where she lived. They had to be gotten rid of.
I yanked Deacon and Micah, pulling them out of the way. “Trust me. Stay low. Stay out of the way. All of us for just a few seconds. Can Brynna hear us?”
Micah nodded. “If she’s tuned in. I bet she is. She’ll take cover.”
That was good. I poked my head around the corner and watched the Originals burn. It wasn’t pretty but death never was, not even when it came to circle of life stuff, which this was not. Whatever or whoever they’d been before they were this, I could feel sorry for how they ended. That didn’t mean, however, that I would in any way allow them to continue to hurt my pack.
I met Matt’s eyes in the distance. My pack mate nodded at me. He understood what I’d come to discover right in this moment and maybe, even though he’d distorted things until they were no longer recognizable, my father had grasped as well. Sometimes you did whatever you had to do whenever you had to do them.
Even burning your enemies to the ground.
I was so glad Margot wasn’t there to see it. This was the worst of me. I would save her from this. That was just how I was made.
The walk back was quiet. There wasn’t much to say when you’d burned an enemy to the ground and left ashes of the dead behind you. I didn’t feel bad. Once again, I wondered if Margot had made a terrible mistake aligning herself with me. I sniffed the air. It was hard to read how anyone around felt emotionally. It was possible to close yourself off, even as a human, and sometimes deep internal conflict could do just that. If the person didn’t know how they felt about something, neither did their scent.
Brynna gasped and then covered her mouth. Micah put a hand on her arm. “What is it?”
She shook her head. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s obviously not nothing.” He pulled her against him, leaning in toward her, and I missed Margot with the power of ten thousand suns. She was all I wanted in the universe.
Still, I remained where I was. “Are we in trouble?”
Brynna looked at me with pain in her gaze. “No, Jason. We’re not. It’s just…” She nodded behind her. In the distance were regular Vamps. They’d poked their heads out since we burned the originals. They’d have to leave soon, the sun was going to come up.
But they hadn’t been bothering us, and I wondered if there was some sort of unspoken agreement we’d get the rest of tonight off since we’d taken care of what might have been an issue for them, too.
Nothing good could come from having those originals around.
I followed where she stared, yet it took me a moment to believe what I saw. My mother was in the distance. Not too far but not close enough to touch her. The scent of the woman who had loved me from the moment I was born and somehow managed to raise me despite crippling Werewolf odds to give a shit about humanity was gone.
The thing about a mother’s love… I shook my head. I really didn’t know what I thought about a mother’s love. It had been gifted to me as though it were my right to have it simply by being born. She’d adored me and my sisters. There had never been a day I’d questioned her adoration of me, even in times when she’d had to correct or punish me.
And then it had been gone. She’d been among the first to get sick. So much had happened right away. Icahn had started cryogenically freezing people to wake up later. I’d had my girlfriend and her family dragged off into the process to save them, half wondering if they would ever wake up at all. Or if I’d be around when she did.
My father thought the virus affecting the Wolves halted our aging. But for how long? What would happen?
I’d obsessed for a week. Icahn promised us if the whole mess turned out to be nothing he’d wake them right up. Only that’s not what had happened, it hadn’t turned out to be nothing, a whole lot of something had taken place instead.
My mother had gotten sick. The virus spread. I wiped her brow, tried to bring down her fever, but one evening she opened her eyes and she was a Vampire. No one had bit her—although lots would succumb that way. She was one of the first Vampires in our area.
We should have killed her right there. Certainly, my father the Alpha Werewolf should have had the balls to help his human wife from staying a Vamp. He hadn’t. He’d opened the front door, gotten out of her way, and let her terrorize the street. When the same virus, working differently on us than regular humans, finally took us under, I’d been grateful for the nothingness.
Until I woke up in this time. Changed. Lonely. Scared. And not better off than I’d been in the world before.
And there she was. The woman who
had bandaged my knees when they were skinned, sat with me through fevers, laughed with me, disciplined me, and generally made me feel like I mattered all the time stared at me through Vamp eyes.
“Can she see me? I mean. Does she know who I am right now?” I asked Brynna. Never would I have this opportunity again.
Brynna sighed. “That’s a complicated answer. Yes and no. She has your memories right up front in her mind. Hard to explain. It’s like there are front and center memories and backdoor ones. You and your sisters are right up front for her. Does she know this very second? No. But you being here has triggered a slideshow of them.”
She was right. I didn’t get it. Didn’t want to. I just knew that once again I was being presented with the chance to prove I wasn’t my father. I wouldn’t hesitate, wouldn’t falter.
I looked at Micah. “Sometimes there are things we just have to do alone. Would you guys go on without me?”
He nodded once, and the group left me standing there. For a Vamp, she was very still. Usually they ran from Werewolves. Well, unless they were told by their makers to work with them. I walked toward her, slowly. I would shift and chase her if I had to but I’d rather not have to do it that way.
“Well, it’s nice to see you, Mom.” I talked before I could overthink it. I could do this whole thing in silence, but I had things to say. She didn’t really see me? That was okay. I had my eyes on her. I’d always know what I’d told her. These sorts of situations, like funerals, were really for the living anyway. The dead and the mindless Vampires didn’t know what we were and weren’t doing. Or at least that’s how I felt.
She didn’t budge. Was she frozen? Was Brynna wrong? Did she know I was there? “I’ve had a heck of a time, Mom. I’m back from the dead. Cloned. Different body than the one you took care of. Can you tell?” I shook my head. No questions. That would only make me nuts. “Dad is gone. Autumn and Luna are, too.” I choked on their names. Interesting. I hadn’t really let myself be sad about them very much. My sisters would always be fourteen in my mind, never becoming the power mad eighteen year olds I’d last known them as. “Anyway, I’m glad to see you. I’ve fallen in love. For real this time. Not like what you knew was too much and not right when I was in high school. My girl, her name is Margot, she’s a doctor. Super smart. I think we get each other. With her, I feel very… human. Love you. Sorry it went the way it did. If I’d been stronger back then, you’d never have had to suffer like this.”
My mother didn’t budge or indicate that she heard me and that was a good thing. I didn’t have a stake. And the only other way to kill a Vamp that didn’t involve me shifting and mauling my mother was to take care of her like I had the originals. Did I want to burn my mother to death? No, of course not. Would I? Fuck, yes. She should have been dead hundreds of years ago.
I wished she’d close her eyes. The universe didn’t tend to grant me wishes. They’d already given me a second chance to have a great life with Margot. I’d take this pain. I’d live with it.
I set my mother on fire.
She didn’t even scream.
Sometimes Vamps did. But not my mother.
I would have expected to have some great moment of clarity, to be rushed with memories of her scent, her touch, making cookies or some shit but nothing happened. I just stood there. And burned my mother to death.
And then after that I just stood there. And stood there. And stood.
The sun was high in the sky when Margot’s scent hit me, drawing me from the nothingness that invaded my mind. I sucked in a breath. Had I been holding it?
“Hi. What are you doing here?” She was supposed to be safe in bed where I left her. Or maybe not. That was hours ago. Too many. Why had I stood here so long? I didn’t know.
She wrapped her arms around my waist. “You left me asleep in bed while you burned the enemy to the ground. And Deacon thought maybe killed your mom, too.”
I nodded. “That about sums it up.”
“Why didn’t you take me?”
That was an easy answer. “You’d had enough trauma. I wanted you to rest.” I smoothed her hair off her forehead. Margot was so beautiful in daylight. None of us spent enough time outside in the sun. We lived fearful of the night. “I think we made a dent. I can almost guarantee there are more Originals but they know now we can end the clones. That’s something.”
She kissed the bottom of my chin. “Are you going to really not talk about what happened like both things were a super big deal?”
I searched for the right response and it didn’t come to me. What was there to say? Yes, both events had been horrific. “Did you walk here alone?”
“No, Matt brought me. Jason? Deflection much?”
I didn’t scent Matt so that meant my pack mate kept his distance. She was right. I would love to deal with just about any subject in the world than the ones we should talk about. I choked on the first sob that hit me. The problem with losing it is that I never saw the breakdown coming. The good news was Margot seemed to have. She wrapped her arms around me tighter and just held on.
She didn’t let go when my knees gave out but sank to the ground with me.
She didn’t let go when I ran out of tears.
She didn’t let go when the shaking stopped.
She didn’t let go when the nothingness hit.
That was the thing about Margot. She never let go. Ever.
I should feel embarrassed but my mate’s holding me in the worst moment of my existences didn’t bring on those sensations. Instead, she was warm, safe, mine, and the best thing that had ever happened to me.
I really, really loved her in this world where there shouldn’t be this kind of love.
One year later…
I ran my hand over Margot’s belly. We lay stretched out on our bed. Having moved into a family cabin in preparation for the baby, we had more room. The baby kicked under my hand, and she grinned without looking up. At this point she was well versed in how much I liked when the baby moved for me. I guess he or she wasn’t technically moving for me but it felt that way so what difference did it make?
A knock sounded, and she yawned. The proposal she examined couldn’t wait til the next day since the council had to vote on Micah’s request. Truth was, she and I both knew I was going to help Micah get the men he needed for the wall to keep the Originals out, even if they said no. It would be easier if they said yes. She and I both understood how these things worked.
“You or me?” She set down the paper.
“It’s Chad so it could go either way.”
I jumped up and made my way to open the door. An exhausted Chad Lyons leaned against the door waiting for me. His daughter never slept. I tried not to dwell on that fact too much considering I was in for just that sort of thing very soon. Three more months.
The idea still blew me away.
“Medical or Wolf?”
He pointed at me. “We have another arrival.”
Wow. That was three this week. We’d sent word out. Young Warriors liked to travel. I didn’t blame them. Being cooped up in the same spot all their lives was a lot to ask of them, even if we needed their help. When appropriate, if they ran into Werewolves, they told them that we were a place Werewolves and humans lived together. If they wanted to.
Some of them seemed to want to. Young families of Wolves and humans were coming. And as long as they swore allegiance to me as their Alpha and through me Genesis, we were all working this out. There was a future.
A future that meant fighting Vampires and mad scientists. That was never going away. At least not in my lifetime. But this was my life. The world we lived in. I looked over my shoulder at Margot. She nodded at me.
I didn’t deserve her. I’d always be sort of an asshole, kind of the bad guy. But my girl didn’t mind. That was how these things worked out sometimes.
So yeah, I wrote this stuff down. I don’t know if anyone is going to read it or care. I don’t even know what I’m talking about half the time. But I’m Jason
Kenwood. I’m still here. I fell in love. I got lucky. Probably more than I deserved. If there’s anything more you want to know, you’re just going to have to mind your own business. I’m done talking.
There are life and death things to do and important things like loving on my wife.
About the Author
About The Author:
As a teenager, I would hide in my room to read my favorite romance novels when I was supposed to be doing my homework. I hope, these days, that my parents think it was worth it.
I am the mother of three adorable boys and I am fortunate to be married to my best friend. I live in Austin Texas where I am determined to eat all the barbecue in town.
I am in love with science fiction, fantasy, and the paranormal and try to use all of these elements in my writing. I've been told I'm a little bloodthirsty so I hope that when you read my work you'll enjoy the action packed ride that always ends in romance. I love to write series because I love to see characters develop over time and it always makes me happy to see my favorite characters make guest appearances in other books.
In my world anything is possible, anything can happen, and you should suspect that it will.
I'd love to hear from you! Please visit my website at www.rebeccaroyce.com to sign up for my newsletter and learn about my books!
Also by Rebecca Royce
Wings of Artemis
Kidnapped By Her Husbands
Rescued by Their Wife
Crashing Into Destiny
Meeting Them
Reclaiming Their Love
Loving Them
Ship Called Malice
Saving Them
Dark Demise
Light Unfolding
Still Waters (coming soon)
Last Hope
Tradition Be Damned
Past Be Damned
Destiny Be Damned
Jason: A Dystopian Paranormal Urban Fantasy Romance (Warrior World Book 3) Page 13