Warders, Volume Two

by Mary Calmes

  Walking upstairs, I turned the corner and saw him standing in the doorway of his bedroom.

  “Hey,” I called softly, seeing how rumpled he looked, his hair standing up and the way he was squinting suggesting a hangover of Biblical proportions.

  “You shit,” he snapped. “I was supposed to get laid.”

  I took a breath and squinted at him, holding myself together.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Instead of answering, I shook my head.

  “Malic?” He said my name softly as he took a step forward. “Why are you covered in dirt?”

  I cleared my throat. “I had a rough night.”

  He came toward me, but I took a step back.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’m filthy and you look so clean and—”

  “Malic,” he growled, charging across the rest of the space separating us. He leaped at me, and even though I was hurt and a little unsteady, he was still so much smaller that he didn’t upset my balance at all.

  “Baby, it’s okay,” I soothed, one hand on his face, the other cupping his ass, holding tight to make sure he didn’t fall.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  I leaned in to kiss him instead.

  He met me more than halfway, taking possession of my mouth, his tongue pushing for entrance as I smiled against his lips. The man was warm and he smelled like sleep and vanilla, and the way he was whimpering, trying to get closer, I could not have asked for a greater declaration of love and need. I put a hand in his hair to hold him still and used my other arm to wedge him tight against me. I didn’t want to let him go.

  The kiss went on, and I found myself drowning in him, his breath and his touch, in the feel of his tongue tangling with mine, of his groin pressed into my abdomen.

  “Oh God,” Dylan finally gasped, breaking the kiss to take a gulp of air, hands on my face. He stared at me with swimming eyes. “Baby, what’s wrong? Please tell me, you’re scaring the crap out of me, but my brain gets all fuzzy when you kiss me and—”

  “Dylan.” I sighed, putting him back down, both my hands in his unruly curls. “You just saved my life.”

  He looked so confused. “How?”

  I dragged him back into the bedroom with me and sat him down on the bed while I paced in front of him and told him the whole weird story. When it was done, when he was staring at me with wide eyes, he told me to go take a shower.

  “What?” It was not the reaction I had been expecting.

  “You need to wash last night off of you, and you need to sleep. So—”

  “But it’s Christmas Eve. I want to—”

  “It’s still only what, around eleven in the morning?” he said as he glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand. “You can sleep a few hours and still be up way before dinner, go caroling with my family, and then to church for midnight Mass.”

  “Dylan, I didn’t want any of my crap to mess up your holi—”

  “Nothing’s messed up. We have lots of time,” he promised me, taking hold of my hand, squeezing tight. “Go jump in the shower, and I’ll bring you something to eat.”

  He was being so strange and calm that it was a little frightening. I hurried to do what he asked.

  I stayed in the shower longer than I should have, but I was exhausted and needed the heat on my body. When I emerged from the bathroom, opening the door, I wasn’t sure for a second if I was dreaming or not.

  “Marcus?” I said to my friend.

  He was standing there in the hall, holding his hook swords and my spatha. He looked like he was ready for war except for the fact that he was wearing a very expensive designer suit.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He strode down the hall and smacked me hard in the stomach. I had to bend forward just a little from the impact. “Yes, it’s really me, and yes, I’m really here. Why in the world would you not call me?”

  “Could you not hit me?”

  “Why, I repeat, did you not call me?”

  “You’re in Kentucky with Joe, and I—”

  “For crissakes, Malic,” he snapped irritably. “Dylan said you thought it was a summoner demon?”

  He looked really good, and just seeing him, I felt better. Just looking at him, for me, for all of those in his clutch, brought on a sense of well-being that was really remarkable.

  “Mal?”

  “Thank you for coming.”

  “I couldn’t sense you at all,” he told me, and I heard the worry in his voice. “Normally I can, and I’ve been trying to get ahold of you all morning, so when Dylan called, I came.”

  I reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. If it were anyone else besides Marcus, any other warder, I would have held up and held it together, shown no weakness. The only one we were all honest with, the only one we showed our cards to, was Marcus. For the others it was newer, the realization of what they did without thought; for him and me, it was how it had always been. The trust had always been understood. Best friends from the first day I ever laid eyes on him. So because it was him, my anchor, I did what I only ever did with Dylan: I showed him the need in me. I let him see.

  He stepped close, and even though all I was wearing was a towel and he was wearing a Prada suit, I grabbed him. I leaned—and I never did that, but my head went down on his shoulder—and I breathed. Only Marcus could actually support my weight when I gave it to him. At six foot six, covered in hard muscle, he made you think linebacker, not lawyer.

  “So,” he said after a long minute, stepping back at the same time I let him go. “You were on a different plane?”

  I nodded because he didn’t have to ask me if I was okay; he just talked like everything was fine and normal and good.

  “That’s why I couldn’t feel your presence at all even when I concentrated.”

  “Yeah, but I wasn’t deep enough for the time shift to start.”

  “When did you go in?”

  “Sometime last night.”

  “You feel all right?” he asked, looking me over. “What did it do to you?”

  “It washed my memory.”

  He smiled. “But you’re a warder who has a hearth. A demon can’t take the memory of a hearth. It’s buried too deep.”

  “I had no idea that I could never forget his name.”

  “The demon probably thought his name was yours. That’s how dear it is, how deep inside it’s buried.”

  I just stared. “Is that how it is with all hearths and warders?”

  He nodded, smiling gently, and I knew he was thinking about Joe.

  Joe.

  “Aww, shit,” I groaned. “Just when the man started to like me.”

  His smile got bigger. “He likes you.”

  “He’s gonna hate me. I take you away from him on Christmas Eve? I’ll be lucky if he ever speaks to me again.”

  For years, Joe, Marcus’s hearth, had disliked me because he had thought I had designs on Marcus. Little did he know that the only designs I had were brotherly, not carnal. When I had found Dylan the year before, it had finally built a bridge between us that taking Marcus away from him at Christmas had probably torn down.

  “I was worried,” he told me. “Joe’s the one who said to come, find out what was wrong, and report back. How Joe felt before, that’s over and done. He cares for you; he cares for Dylan. Don’t second-guess him. He won’t like it.”

  I nodded because, just a little, I was afraid of Joe. We all were. It wasn’t in a fear of his temper kind of way or a fear that he would or could hurt me kind of way, but more in a Jesus Christ, don’t let me disappoint him way that really made no sense. We all wanted the man to be happy with us, and we all wanted his approval for reasons that were completely unexplainable.

  “Malic.”

  I realized that my mind had been drifting. “Sorry, what?”

  “Put on some clothes, and I’ll meet you downstairs so we can talk.”

  “Did you meet Dylan’s family already?”

  �
�Yes, your boyfriend introduced me.”

  I tipped my head at the weapons in his hand. “How did you explain those?”

  “I didn’t. I left them on the roof when I got here and just now went out the window in the master bedroom and brought them in.”

  “Why are you carrying them around?”

  “I don’t know where to hide them, but because we don’t know what we’re dealing with, I don’t want to run the risk of not being able to reach them.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “So where?”

  “Give them to me. I’ll put them back in Dylan’s room in his closet.”

  He passed me his hook swords and my spatha. “No one goes in there but you and him?”

  “’Course.”

  “Okay, I don’t know.” He put his hands up. “He’s still a teenager, you know.”

  I flipped him off. “He’s twenty now, asshole.”

  “Sorry, I stand corrected.”

  “You’re being a dick.”

  He waggled his eyebrows.

  “You know, Dylan wants me to rest,” I pointed out.

  “Well, you need to eat first, and then we need to go over and see this guy who thought trading a warder to a summoner demon was a good idea.”

  “He had no idea I was a warder,” I told him. “I’m sure of it.”

  “Doesn’t change the fact that if you had been weaker, I would have never seen you again.”

  He had a point.

  “We’re going over there.”

  “Yes, sir,” I teased.

  “It’s not an order,” he assured me.

  “Of course it’s not.” I smiled, but as he left me, taking the stairs down, I had a moment to remember a conversation I’d had with our fellow warder Ryan the week before.

  He and I had been picking up Marcus to clear a nest of verdant demons, and we were waiting outside for him.

  “Have you noticed how much he’s changed lately?”

  I turned slowly to look at my former lover, fellow warder, and friend. “Who? Marcus?”

  “Yeah.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, he’s definitely become the leader.”

  “You know, I thought for a while that I would do it, become sentinel after Jael.”

  “You’d make a good one.”

  He shrugged. “I get mad fast, and that’s not good. You rush in—”

  “Not always,” I defended myself.

  “Always,” he assured me. “And Leith thinks too much, and Jackson… Jacks is good, except that his power isn’t increasing. Have you noticed that?”

  “Yeah, I have noticed that.”

  “It’s Raph, I think,” he told me. “One of the things a warder does is gain strength to protect his hearth, and the longer the hearth and warder are together, the more power the warder gains, as he has more and more and more to lose.”

  “Sure. First there’s just the hearth, and then there’s the hearth and the home they make, and then the hearth’s family and then children….”

  “Exactly,” he agreed. “But with Raph, he can protect himself, so Jackson’s power isn’t increasing to take care of him.”

  “But he doesn’t need to; he’s got an equal in Raph. That’s kind of nice.”

  Ryan nodded. “But that does not make him a good candidate to be sentinel.”

  “Yeah, but let’s not take away that Jackson is still one of the strongest warders I know.”

  “No, no, I know, but still.”

  “Marcus never wanted to be sentinel because he worries so much about losing anyone that he could never make the hard decisions.”

  “But now he knows he doesn’t have to.” Ryan exhaled deeply. “Now he knows, after that last stunt he pulled where he saved all of us and nearly died, that he can do all the sacrificing to keep us safe and not lose anyone.”

  “Yeah, that’s great—the king rushing out in the middle of the battlefield to save his knight. That’s fuckin’ brilliant.”

  Ryan chuckled. “Marcus will be sentinel after Jael. There’s no doubt in my mind.”

  “And we’ll have to guard his ass all the time to make sure he doesn’t get himself killed.”

  “I’ll do it.” Ryan smiled his dazzler up at me.

  “Me too,” I assured him.

  “Malic?”

  Again my mind had been drifting, but this time I was looking at Dylan and not Marcus.

  “Hey.” I took a breath. “I’ll be down in—”

  “What if you hadn’t been able to get back to me?”

  It took me a second to realize that he was shaking. “You know that would never happen.”

  “How—” He cleared his throat, and I saw it then, the tears welling in his eyes. “—do you know?”

  “Because I came back because of you,” I told him, striding forward, reaching him, hands in his hair, on his face as he stood there, eyes closed, his face lifted to me.

  “Malic,” he whimpered, “I can’t lose you. I just got everything I wanted and— ”

  “Baby.” I sighed, my breath on his skin making him shiver. “You are stuck with me forever if that’s what you want.”

  “That’s what I want,” he told me, eyes fluttering open as he stared up at me. “So marry me.”

  Not again, I thought, and I groaned.

  Instant squint as he pulled back, visibly annoyed. “What’s with that look?”

  “Just, really? I still can’t believe you said that to your father.”

  “What? That I want to marry you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But I do want to marry you.”

  “Which is fine, but your dad was happy with what I said.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said that I wanted to keep you.”

  “Like a pet.”

  “Oh for crissakes, not like a pet! You know what I meant. I want you to stay with me forever, and I will love you and take care of you.”

  “Like a pet.”

  I growled at him. “I’m gonna kill you.”

  He scowled.

  “Your father knows my intentions are honorable.”

  “Does he?”

  “Of course.”

  “I want a ring.”

  He had to be kidding.

  “I’m not kidding.”

  It was insane how well the man could read my mind. “You wanna get married and you want a ring.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Hands on his hips. “Because I love you.”

  “Fine, love me, but weddings are for straight people. We’ll just make a promise and—”

  “I want to make a promise in front of our friends.”

  “Dylan—”

  “And a judge.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Joe and Marcus did it.”

  “Joe and Marcus are both sentimental saps. We’re not.”

  “Go downstairs and tell him to his face that he’s a sap.”

  I strode to the top of the stairs, abandoned all propriety and pretense of adulthood, and yelled down the stairs at Marcus.

  “What?” he barked when he appeared on the bottom step.

  “I think marriage is stupid.”

  “I think you’re stupid,” he told me before he walked away.

  I turned back to look at Dylan.

  “I want to get married,” he insisted.

  “No.”

  “I want to be Dylan Sunden.”

  Oh God.

  “Malic?”

  Of all the things he could have said, voicing his desire to share my last name, the name my father had always told me meant the world to him when my mother had taken it, was the one thing that would change my mind.

  “Oh.” His smile was luminous, his eyes sparkling with mischief and happiness at the same time. “Somebody liked the sound of that.”

  I took a breath.

  “Dylan Sunden.”

  “Your father….” I coughed. “Shaw is his name. You should never l
et Shaw go.”

  “But I could let go of Walter.” He waggled his eyebrows, coming closer. “And then Shaw could be my middle name, and think how literary I’d sound. Dylan Shaw Sunden.”

  What the hell was up with names? Just Dylan’s had saved me, and now simply thinking about him sharing mine—permanently…. People got divorced all the time, every day, so why did just the thought of him having my name make my heart hurt?

  “Malic.”

  I had enough time to look up before he launched himself at me.

  “I love you so much,” he told me before he kissed me senseless.

  My hands slid over the curve of his ass as he made love to my mouth. It was made for me, the perfect round globes made to be stroked and squeezed, and the way he moaned deeply into my mouth made me whimper in reply. I was a heartbeat from dragging him into the bedroom when he broke the kiss to look at me with clouded eyes.

  “Baby,” he said, and his voice was full of aching, drugging need. “Let’s go downstairs, eat, and then take Marcus and go over to Brad Darby’s house, okay? I want you to kill the demon that tried to take you away from me, and then I want to watch you punch Brad out.”

  I squinted at him.

  “What? I can’t be petty?”

  “People.” We both turned, and there was Marcus, scowling at us. “Let’s eat.”

  He left before I could apologize for mauling my hearth when we were kind of in a time crunch to get him back to his own mate and his own Christmas.

  “He’s getting really bossy,” Dylan grunted, tightening his arms and legs around me so he was plastered against my front. “Have you noticed that?”

  LILY SHAW was completely charmed by Marcus Roth. She stammered a little, she made sure his plate stayed full, and she disappeared for ten minutes and came back with makeup on. Dylan could not stop staring at her.