CELMUND: Elemental's MC (book 7)

by Alexi Ferreira

  “Do you have my woman?” Draco growls, his features tense.

  “No, no . . . all at its own time,” he says. “I have played you all like a chess game, and you have fallen right into place.”

  “Well, fucker, you have now played the wrong piece,” Draco roars as he lifts his hands. Instantly, there is a strong current of wind that tosses Leif and Talia forward. Knowing Draco, I’m prepared, and as soon as he lifted his hands, I was on the move. As Leif and Talia start to fall forward, Burkhart is falling on them from above. When I reach Talia and hurriedly pull her away to safety, Burkhart is punching Leif.

  I look up in time to see Draco lifting Burkhart off Leif with a strength that is astounding; he then picks up Leif by his neck with one hand. I have very seldom seen Draco lose his shit. Well, Leif started with the wrong Elemental. I don’t think there will be anything left of him once Draco is finished.

  “Where is my mate?” Draco’s voice is gravely and low with his anger, his eyes shining an ungodly blue. Burkhart is now standing next to Draco. His hand is holding on to Draco’s arm, trying to pull it away from Leif. If I wasn’t so worried about Talia, I would find this funny, as it’s usually the others who calm Burkhart down and not the other way around.

  Pulling Talia slightly away from my chest, I pull the blindfold away from her eyes. “Are you okay?” I murmur as I kiss first one cheek and then the other where there are tears coursing down. She nods, and then she throws herself at me again and begins to sob. The feel of her safe in my arms again brings tears to my eyes.

  If anything had happened to Talia, I would forever lose my light. She has transformed my existence into something special. Her presence in my life has completely overshadowed any darkness that might have existed. My arms tighten slightly around her, pulling her even closer against me. The way I feel, I will never let her go. Looking up, I see that Draco hasn’t been appeased and is still holding Leif by the throat.

  I can see Leif’s eyes start to roll, and I know that he will kill him if we can’t calm him. “Draco, if you kill him, you might lose the opportunity to find your mate. What if he has her stashed somewhere?” I persuade. Draco shakes him once and then tosses him through the air as if a pebble.

  “You will die by my hand. You messed with our women and my men. You only breathe while there is a use for you. As soon as that use is gone, you are gone.” With those words, Draco looks at Burkhart and inclines his head towards Leif, who is now squirming on the ground, fighting for breath. “Take him. I want him home.” He then looks at me and nods in thanks.

  We will take Leif and wring every secret, every drop of knowledge that he might have, out of him, and then we will end his miserable existence.

  TALIA 20

  Celmund has finally brought me to his home. I thought that I was going to find another club like in Cape Town, but to my surprise, their compound is surrounded by trees and mountains. As soon as we climb out of the helicopter, I breathe in the clean air that surrounds this place. Before I have even entered their home, now my home, I already know that I will love it.

  Celmund has taken my hand and is guiding me towards the open doors of what looks like a massive garage. I’m surprised because from the air, no one would ever have said this was here, as they have excavated their home into the mountain.

  My surprise doesn’t end there. When we finally enter the garage, I see that it doesn’t only hold motorbikes but different types of cars too. There are two guys I don’t recognise working on a bike. One seems like he’s still a teenager.

  “Let me introduce you to Gunner.” The older of the two smiles and inclines his head. Another perfect specimen of a man. It’s quite sad when you get used to seeing such handsome men, that when you encounter another one, it doesn’t do anything to you anymore. “And that there is Kade. Kade is Scarlett’s brother,” Celmund explains. Kade smiles broadly at me and waves.

  “Hi,” he says happily.

  “Hi, nice to meet the two of you,” I greet. Celmund takes my hand and guides me through a door and down a corridor that then opens into a beautiful courtyard surrounded by rock walls. The only light that shines into the courtyard is from a wide opening at the top of the rocks. This place is beautiful and peaceful. I believe that I will love living here.

  I have never really settled down, always having a feeling of homesickness. Today for the first time, I feel like I’m finally home.

  “What do you think, sweetheart?”

  “It’s absolutely beautiful.” He tried to explain the compound to me, but seeing it is even better than what I imagined.

  “Hey, you guys have finally arrived,” Nova calls out as she walks into the courtyard from one of the corridors. “Great. Celmund, you can leave Talia to me. I will show her around.” She takes hold of my arm and starts to pull me behind her.

  “Nova . . . what are you up to now?” Celmund calls out.

  “Nothing. We just want some girl time,” she says with a giggle. I laugh at Celmund’s pained expression as he looks after us.

  “What are you up to?” I ask when she knocks on one of the doors. Before she can answer, Aria opens the door.

  “Yay, you’ve arrived,” Aria calls out as she steps forward to hug me. The pleasure of finally having other women as friends who don’t judge me because I’m different is refreshing. Also, all these women will understand me. All of them have gone through similar situations through their lives because of being different in one way or another.

  Walking into the room, I see that all the others are already there, including Scarlett, who arrived this morning. “Hey, girl, welcome to your new home,” Gabriela calls out, the others following with similar greetings.

  “Thank you.” The knowledge that this will now be my home and my family—instead of frightening me like it would before, it now comforts me.

  “Well, now that the pleasantries are out of the way, shall we get to the interesting stuff?” Nova says as she takes a seat next to Scarlett. The sound of that instantly puts me on alert. These women are up to something. I don’t know what it is, but going by their suddenly gloomy faces, I’m already dreading it.

  “The men will deal with Sven soon. Before they do, we would like to give him a lesson,” Aria says.

  “He purposefully placed the devices on us. He made us go through hell wondering when our last day would be. He must pay for his actions. We won’t kill him because that’s not who we are, and I’m sure our men wouldn’t be too impressed in not having their revenge, but we want to make him suffer like he made us,” Brielle says.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Well,” Aria begins, “Jasmine is going to find him with her gift, and then all of us will piggyback on her energy and attack him in our own way. All of us have been able to use our gifts in this way, so I’m sure you will too.”

  “You mean that I will throw things at him even if I’m not near him?” I doubt that will work. Already being able to move things when looking at a screen is amazing to me. If for some reason we can do this, we will be unstoppable.

  “Yes, you will,” Jasmine replies. “Shall we start while the kids are down for their naps?” Well, they don’t give me much time to process this. I may as well try it and see if I can do what they all can do or not. Jasmine pulls her chair towards the middle of the room and then sits. All the women move to stand or sit around her.

  “Come on,” Nova calls to me. Taking hold of my hand, she places it on Jasmine’s arm. “Now close your eyes and just let your energy flow. If it’s like us, you will soon start to see Sven in your mind, and then it’s up to you.” Wow, if this is possible, we will be able to do anything.

  Closing my eyes, I relax. What if I don’t see anything? Will they think less of me because I’m different? I take in a deep breath and then another, trying to calm all my muscles. Suddenly, an image of Sven pops into my mind. At first, I think that I’m imagining him sitting on what seems like a bed, his back against the wall, but then I decide to try and see i
f what they say is possible.

  Looking around, I notice that he’s sitting in some kind of cell. There isn’t much to move around and be able to hurt him with. I see him start to squirm as if in shock. I wonder if one of the other women is already torturing him? Looking at the bed where he was sitting just moments ago, I pull off the sheet and roll it into a rope that I twist around his neck. I see his hands lift to try to pull at it, but I hold on. Looking around, I move the ends of the sheet to one of the bars and start to tie it there. He squirms and struggles. I can see his breath is laboured. He starts to scream and then cry. I’m about to move the bed from where it is to pin him to the bars, but suddenly, the connection is broken, and I can’t see him any longer.

  “Darn,” I hear Scarlett say. When I open my eyes, I can see her disgruntled face before me.

  “What happened?” I ask. Why would the connection end so abruptly?

  “It was Draco,” Aria says. I saw him place his hand on the bars and then touch Sven’s arm. “You see, we can’t use our powers against or on our men. Therefore, because Draco touched him, the connection broke.

  “Draco is going to be mad,” Gabriela says with a shrug.

  “I don’t think so,” Jasmine replies. “He will know that we wanted our revenge too, just like them.”

  “It would be nice if they were angry. I haven’t had Ceric in a pickle for a while.” What does she mean for a while? The poor man nearly died of a heart attack when she volunteered to be the first one to extract the device. I shake my head and smile. I think it’s time that she also feels a bit of what her poor man goes through.

  “Don’t worry, you can always get back at him when you start growing wings. Just fly away.” At my words, everyone stops to talk, and then I see Scarlett hurriedly turning around with her hand over her mouth.

  “What do you mean, growing wings?” Nova asks worriedly.

  “Well, Celmund tells me that after a century, we will start to grow bat wings,” I say innocently, and see Nova’s mouth fall open, her face reddening.

  “No flippin’ way.” Gabriela gasps, but before she can say anything else, Scarlett starts to shake her head and mime to the other women that I’m pulling her leg.

  “I will kill him,” Nova states. “There is no damn way I’m becoming a fricking bat.” She rubs the tips of her fingers over her eyes and groans.

  “You didn’t know?” Scarlett asks innocently.

  “He is so dead. First blood, then a tattoo, and now I’m supposed to become one of those slimy-looking critters?” As she speaks, her voice rises in anger.

  “Oh, don’t worry. Bjarni tells me that we don’t really transform into bats. We just grow wings like them, but they are pretty colours,” Gabriela says with an impish grin.

  “Are you fricking serious? You are fine with slimy wings growing out of your body? What are we? Gargoyles!” At her outburst, I can’t hold it in any longer and throw back my head and roar in laughter. Nova is a pleasure to be around. Her response to life is so real and alive that it is refreshing.

  “You are lying, aren’t you?” she asks suspiciously as everyone starts to laugh. “Don’t fricking do that. I was ready to find myself a gun and shoot Ceric for turning me into a fruit bat.” She huffs, but then her mouth turns up and she laughs. “It was funny, though.” And then she’s roaring with laughter.

  Suddenly, the door to the room bursts open. Wulf and Burkhart stand there in the entrance. “What were you all up to?” Burkhart asks with a raised brow.

  “What does it look like?” Gabriela asks. “We were joking around.”

  “Don’t lie,” Wulf grunts as his eyes meet Jasmine’s. “I can still feel the intense energy release in here.”

  “We have the same, or even more, right to make him pay for what he did than you do,” Nova states, a smile still on her lips.

  “You will all drive us crazy,” Burkhart says as he shakes his head, but I can see a twinkle in his eye as he turns and strides away.

  “We are going to meet. It’s time that you ladies help us,” Wulf grunts, and with those words and a look at Jasmine, he also turns and leaves.

  “What did that mean?” Scarlett asks.

  “I think it means that those stubborn asses are finally seeing our worth,” Gabriela says with a smile.

  “I wonder what we could help them with?” Aria asks with a frown.

  “When they came to get me, Leif said that he knew who the other mates were. He also said that they were not seeing what was right before them,” I reveal, because ever since I heard it, it’s been playing around in my mind. I tell them exactly what Leif said and see all their pensive faces as they ponder what I said.

  “What could he mean by that?” Aria asks.

  “You know what I think? I think that we should try and get the truth out of Leif,” Scarlett says. “If someone asks him questions, I can tell if it’s the truth or a lie and what the truth is, and Aria can read his mind.”

  “We can try that. When they call us to the meeting, we should have some answers for them. Like that, we can impress them with our initiative in finding the truth,” Brielle states.

  CELMUND 21

  As soon as we arrive, they are already pulling Talia into their fold, and even though I’m happy that the other women accept her so easily, I still dread the things all of them will get into. I heard the brothers talking about what they were doing to Sven. We should have known that the women would want to see him pay for what he did. From what I heard, he was being strangled with the bedding. That could only be Talia.

  My heart warms when I think about how great she is and how easily she has integrated into our lives. I have noticed that my woman is always ready to help. She has also shown how selfless she is when she goes over and above everything to help others.

  She doesn’t know this, but we have brought Jason back with us. Bion is going to start extracting the devices from him now that they have been deactivated. I know that if we told her, she would worry. Like this, we will clean him up, not just from the devices but from the drugs too. Once we are happy that he’s fine to be integrated into society again, we will set him free.

  Draco has called a meeting after witnessing what the women were doing to Sven. We need to decide how we’re going to let them help us, or they are always going to be getting themselves into situations. “Hey, Brother,” Caelius greets as he comes to sit next to me.

  “Where is Leif?” I ask for the first time since arriving. I need to go speak to him and try to figure out what he knows. We need to find the other women. From what he said, it seems like he knows where Draco’s is. Looking to my right, I see Draco talking to Wulf and Cassius. By his appearance, it doesn’t seem like anything is bothering him, but I can tell that he’s stretched thin. I know that this whole talk of his mate has got him thinking.

  “We have him underground in the cell. That fucker should be dead,” he grunts, which makes me look at him. Caelius is not one to talk unless required, and for him to say what he just did, it means that he’s also holding on to his shit by a thread.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “Yeah, just tired of this shit,” he grunts as he leans back on his chair and folds his arms. I feel a tingling down my back and know that Talia is close. I thought that we were going to talk about the women; I didn’t know that we were going to have them here. There is a knock at the door, and then Scarlett walks in, followed by the others and the kids.

  Great. We may as well just make this a family meeting instead of our usual down-to-business meeting. Talia walks in, and instantly, I can feel my cock hardening at her presence. The others say that with time, our bond becomes stronger and the desire we have for our woman grows. If that’s true, then I’m in trouble, because as it is, I already want my woman constantly.

  “Come sit here,” I call as I hold out my hand for her to come and sit on my lap. As soon as she sits, I know that I have made a mistake. This is going to be an uncomfortable meeting. My arms move around her wai
st, and I pull her firmly against my front, her fragrance embracing me in her sweetness.

  “I heard you have had a productive day?” I ask quietly, and see her cheeks warm with colour.

  “He deserved it,” she murmurs back.

  Before I can answer, Draco starts to talk. “Ladies, I think you know why we have invited you to our meeting.” He looks around at everyone before he continues. “We have realised that unless we let you help us, you will constantly be getting yourselves into trouble. Therefore, we will all decide here today on what you will help us with and what you will stay away from.”

  I feel Talia tense on my lap. I bring my hand up to her neck and start to stroke gently. “From what I saw today, I believe that we would be stupid not to use you, but we need to set some boundaries and rules,” Draco states.

  “I think that we can use your gifts in different ways at different times. It’s all a matter of planning. Who disagrees?” Draco looks over at Wulf, who starts by giving his vote. When everyone has finally voted, its unanimous. Everyone is in agreement that the women should help. I think that most of us just want to make sure that they don’t get into trouble. Brandr and Aria’s son starts to whimper. I see Brandr take him from Aria before kissing her forehead. He stands and starts crooning to the kid.

  My insides tighten when I realise that I want to do that. I know it’s still early, but I want Talia to have my children. “Well, then, ladies, at every meeting, depending on what we are doing, we will make sure to see in which area you can help us,” Draco says in dismissal.

  “Draco, before we go, can we update all of you on something we found out?” Jasmine says. What could they possibly have found out? Maybe when they tortured Sven, they found something out. I see Draco nod in agreement.

  “Now, don’t get upset, but we decided earlier on that there was something that we might be able to find out if we penetrated Leif’s head,” Gabriela says as she looks at Bjarni.