“They can’t do that.”
“No, they’re not supposed to do that. They’ll make something up to cover the fact that they’re slighting him because he’s a supe.”
“Maybe…”
“Why does it bother you so much?”
“Because it’s not like him to keep things. I revealed the truth about who I am. I took him home to meet my family. He knows everything secret about me.”
“You act like you two are married already or something.” Yasmin sighed. “Look, it’s not that I don’t sympathize—I do, I really do!—but maybe he just needs more time to trust than you did. Maybe he planned to tell you, but you took him by surprise and ruined his plot. He might have wanted to share the news with you over wine and chocolates or something.”
Yasmin’s outside perspective, while irritating, was correct. Maybe she was reading too much into his reaction at the beach.
“Okay, fine, but what about the dream?”
“Let’s see what the cards have to say. I need you to focus. This is better in person, but we’ll work with what we’ve got.”
Yasmin shuffled an old tarot deck in her hands. The beautifully painted cards depicted thorned roses and twining vines on the back.
“Seven is a magical number, so I prefer to do basic, seven card spreads.” Yasmin dropped her voice to a theatrical whisper, “I don’t know how to do anything but burning questions because it’s all Mom taught me. So focus on it.”
While Astrid concentrated on her anguished thoughts, her friend cut the cards, shuffled, and spread seven on the table in three rows, one at the top and three in the two rows beneath.
Yasmin flipped one. “This card in the center, the Queen of Coins, symbolizes your question, and your desire to know the outcome of your union with Nate. She represents beauty and fertility, love and splendor.” Yasmin’s eyes shone amber in the dim light; then she tucked her chin and closed her eyes. “I see acceptance. And… something else. Hey, Astrid?”
Her heart skipped a beat. “What? What is it?”
“How much of your future do you want to know?”
“What do you mean?”
“How deeply do you want to know your possible future?”
Astrid thought back to what Ēostre had said about the potential to make a wrong choice. “Just enough to help him if I need to. I’m… I’m afraid to know more. Watatsumi warned me against it.”
“Okay. As I said, the Queen of Coins represents a woman who is nurturing and accepting. Don’t press him. Let him come to you on his own. In time, Nate will reveal everything you need.”
Yasmin moved to the next card and smoothed her fingers over it. “The Prince of Arrows tells of your obstacles and the influences regarding your query. Your misery is a short-lived burden, but Nate stands at the heart of it, a beacon in the foggy night. I see him surrounded by conflicts on all sides, emitting a radiant light. Honesty is the core value of his soul, and when he lies, it hurts him deeply. Especially when it’s to you. Now, these two cards here on the right are your hopes and fears. The Nine of Cups is often thought of as the Wish card.” Yasmin’s fingers hovered above the card and her eyes closed. “Most of all, you wish for your dream to be a harmless nightmare, but it isn’t.”
Astrid swallowed. “So what I saw really was a vision?”
“It could be, yes. Prophecies are warnings given shape and form. Over here on the left, I see an older man entering your life as a guiding force.”
“Who?”
“No idea. I’ve never seen him before. He’s...” Yasmin closed her eyes and tilted her head, as if seeing something distant far away. “No—I don’t know him.”
“Damn. Okay, keep going.”
“Your fates have become gnarled, and in the coming days there will be times when you feel trapped. Victimized.” Her friend’s voice trembled with each vague word. “Lost. But losing hope will only doom you to further suffering. You and Nate are both caught between opposing worlds headed on an unstoppable collision course. It’s too late to change it. It’s destiny.”
“Opposing worlds? Collision? What the hell does that mean, Yaz?”
Yasmin chewed on one of her purple fingernails. “It means I can’t speak anymore without upsetting the balance.”
Astrid groaned and swept her hair back from her face. “Yaz, every day I am resisting the urge to bond with this man. I…” Her voice trailed off and she wrapped her arms around herself. “I don’t want to lose him.”
“Well, in that case, I’d say you need to go for it. If you feel the pull toward him, your heart knows best. And since shifters are out in the open, you have the freedom of telling him what’s up and seeing how he feels.”
“Is that what the cards say I should do?”
“That’s what I am saying you should do. So get off the line with me, go splash some water on your face, and call your man.”
“It’s the middle of the night.”
Yasmin stuck her tongue out. “You called me.”
“Yeah, but he has an actual job.”
The young witch held a hand over her heart in mock outrage. “That’ll be the first, last, and only reading I ever do for you, chica. Love you, night!”
“I’m sorry, I love you t—” The conversation blipped and went dead, effectively cutting her off. Frowning, Astrid crawled into bed with her phone and brought up her message window with Nate.
Astrid: Hey, are you awake?
A few seconds later, her phone chirped with a return text.
Nate: I am now. What’s wrong?
Astrid: Are you okay?
Before a game of textual tag could ensue, her phone rang with an incoming call.
“I’m sorry I woke you up after making you go to bed.”
“It’s fine. It’s not like I need more than two hours of sleep, right? So what’s up?” After a pause, he chuckled, and she heard the grin in his tired voice. “Can’t wait to see me after all? Need me to make a spontaneous, late-night visit?”
They had decided early on that they were far too classy to use the term “booty call,” but Nate had paid a fair number of them to her apartment over the months since his first visit.
“I wish it were that simple,” Astrid muttered. She sighed and gazed at her ceiling.
The humor faded. “What’s wrong?” he asked in a softer voice. “Bad dream?”
“Yeah. Are you, um, due to be deployed again or something?”
“Not really. I mean, they want me to go out for another drill and inspection gig, but I haven’t received an official assignment yet. I’ll be gone two weeks max if I’m picked. Why?”
She twisted the sheets around one of her fingers and made a disgruntled noise.
“Astrid, what’s wrong?”
“I care for you, Nate, and I realized we haven’t talked about a lot of things or where this is going for us. I just wanted to… I guess I wanted to know if you think about that, too.”
Nate sucked in his breath, and a pregnant pause, heavy as a cannonball, hung between them before he finally whispered, “I’ve never felt this way about any other woman, Astrid. Not this serious. I wake up with you on my mind, and I can’t sleep without texting you goodnight. It’s crazy. Thought about you the whole time I was away, and now I can’t wait to see you.”
“Can you come over now?”
“Baby, if I drive now, I’m liable to veer off the road. Look, I’ll be over as soon as I can tomorrow and we’ll talk. About everything. I promise.”
Goose bumps raised on her arms and a pleasant tingle of anticipation crawled down her body. The promise of discovering his secrets brought a smile to her lips.
Success.
***
It was the last lie he ever wanted to tell her.
Less than a minute after the call ended, a chirp-chirp from the phone notified him of an incoming message. He opened the text to reveal a photograph.
She stole his breath away, literally and figuratively, while he stood beside his bed half dres
sed with his phone clutched in one hand. Astrid lay amidst her bedsheets, topless with one arm casually draped across her breasts. The photograph only captured her from lips to midsection.
Another message arrived.
Downloading.
The image revealed cotton panties and crumpled Tinkerbell pajama shorts on the floor beside her bed.
Astrid: See you soon.
Nate hoped so. He really hoped so, but it was about more than sex and physical gratification. As arousing as the image was of Astrid sprawled naked in her bed, warm and wet, waiting for him, what he truly wanted was to see her face. He would have traded both for a picture of her drowsy smile.
Which was why it was time to come clean.
He couldn’t continue living the lie, but he had one last job to do.
Nate made the drive to his father’s house in Los Angeles, unconcerned with the late hour and fueled on coffee. The late hour made the trip easier, leaving a distinct lack of congestion on the roads. What might have taken him three or four hours by day took under two.
He sent a text from the driveway and waited until a light flickered on in a downstairs window before heading to the door and letting himself in. He had his set of keys, but he never felt welcome in the house, and the last thing he wanted was to catch a bullet for entering at odd hours. Kay owned several pieces and stored them in unusual places around the house
“What brings you by at this ungodly hour?” Kay’s voice called from the kitchen where Nate found him at the island counter with a bottle of scotch and two fresh glasses. He nudged one toward Nate and smiled, his green eyes crinkling. “You’re lucky I haven’t crawled in bed yet with Elizabeth.”
“Yeah, I know. Had something on my mind and wanted to talk with you though. Face to face.”
“Speak up then. What’s up?”
Nate wrapped his hand around his glass without raising it to his mouth, too nervous for a sip of alcohol—or even a full shot—to quell the unrest in his heart.
“I’m done. I’m not going to spy on Astrid or the Drakenstones for you anymore.”
“Excuse me?”
Kay had a voice like ice. He never shouted, and Nate had come to learn at a young age that the quieter his father’s voice went, the angrier he was. Kay’s voice now was near a whisper.
“It’s not right, and she doesn’t deserve all these lies. I can’t do it to her anymore.”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this from you, Nathaniel. You have feelings for this creature? You think that thing gives a damn about you? You’re a meal to it. A plaything. It’s like the cat we owned.”
Nate sighed, able to predict his father’s point. “She played with her food.”
When Nate was a child, shortly after his parents split and his mother lost custody, she’d gifted him a kitten for his birthday. She’d told him, whenever he felt down, whenever he was missing her, to hug the cat tight and pretend it was her. And he had. Nefertiti had died a few years ago, waiting exactly two days after Nate returned from his fifth deployment. She’d been a better friend than the man who raised him.
“She did. She’d catch a mouse or a bird, and she’d play with it tenderly, didn’t she? Then she’d run away with it, and we’d discover the body missing its head in our shoes the next morning.”
“Astrid isn’t like that.”
“She’s an animal. A dangerous beast. And one day, you’re going to be that mouse. Mark my words, it’s a matter of time before you see how deadly they can be. If you had your memories—”
“I don’t want them back,” Nate whispered. The magical words had the ability to halt his father.
Kay’s eyes blazed with fury. “Has she cast an enchantment over you?” he demanded.
“No!”
“You wouldn’t know if she did.”
“I would. I know what magic feels like, and she hasn’t done anything like that. She wouldn’t because that’s not the type of person she is.”
Kay sneered and looked him up and down as if he were a little boy again. “So you think because one of these beasts gives you a little pussy that it cares about you and has human feelings?”
“She does,” Nate insisted. He straightened his shoulders and gazed into the face of his dictator, and in a clear, confident voice continued, “I won’t hunt her or anyone else. I’m done. Cycle after cycle of vengeance and murder isn’t worth this. What’s the point?”
“She’s a dragon. You’re a slayer.”
“She’s half-human. That doesn’t prove the monsters are infecting us. It proves we can coexist and live together in harmony. It means they’re people, too!”
Kay slammed his fist into the top of the counter, shaking the contents of their glasses and the scotch bottle. His face went purple with rage, and his voice rose to a rare roar. “It means you’ve been compromised! And it means you’re no brother of ours if you’re going to throw your lot in with them. You need to make a decision now. It’s the brotherhood, or it’s these beasts.”
“Then I’ll choose the beasts. I’ll choose her every time because at least they’ve come clean with the world. They’re honest, good people, and they accepted me into their home like I was family. I won’t betray them.”
Kay’s jaw clenched and hard, green eyes stared into Nate’s face without breaking contact. “That so?”
Something wild and insane came over Nate, an emotion he’d thought had been trained out of him by a stern, unforgiving father figure and years in the Navy: defiance. He straightened his back and refused to break gazes. “That’s right. I won’t do it anymore, and if you send anyone else in my place to harass Astrid or watch over her family, I’ll tell them everything. I’ll tell them about all of you. Names and identities. All of it. Maybe I’ll do it anyway just to see you sweat.”
“Get the fuck out of my house.”
“Gladly.”
Steel-spined, he strode from the kitchen and cut a direct line to the door. His younger half-brother peeked down at him from the stairwell, the spitting image of Kay’s current body with wavy auburn hair and eyes like chipped emeralds.
“Dude, why are you and Dad fighting? We could all hear you guys.”
“Don’t worry about it, kid. Go back to bed.”
“He sounded pissed.”
Nate paused at the door, hand on the knob, and looked back at his brother. “Just remember he doesn’t own you. You have to make your own choices in life, Aaron, and you have to own up to the repercussions.”
With no other pearls of wisdom for Kay’s favorite son, he headed back out into the night and drove away.
Nate stopped once to gas up and purchase coffee along the way back to San Diego. With two shots of espresso in his gut, he pulled into the lot of his condo and stared at the building.
He didn’t want to go up there. What he wanted was a woman a few miles away, a devious minx who texted him a photo of her discarded panties on the floor. He wanted to tell her he loved her, and that he’d forsaken his people and everything he’d once stood for to keep her family safe.
Five minutes later, Nate hadn’t killed the engine. He gave himself a pep talk; then he drove to Astrid’s building and let himself into the garage with her spare parking pass. He nodded to the night watchman in passing on his way to the elevator, and once inside, he phoned her.
“Nate? It’s almost five in the morning. Is something wrong?”
“Open the door.”
“Huh?”
“I’m waiting outside.”
A couple moments passed before the lock clicked and the door drew open to frame Astrid. She wore a thin, yellow silk robe trimmed in white lace. And he wanted it off. He didn’t know what exactly came over him, but rather than greet her, he took her face between his hands, stepped up to her, and kissed her as if they hadn’t made contact in months. Astrid made a startled squeak that gave way to a moan. She yielded, opening to him.
Her back struck the wall beside her door, and she writhed, trapped between it and his hard body.
At that moment, he came to the realization that he couldn’t wait. He fumbled to shut the door and turn the lock.
With one tug, her robe fell open, and the sleeves slipped down her arms, revealing the magnificent, naked body beneath. He dropped his hand to unzip his jeans, shoving them down enough to free his straining cock.
“Nate, wha—”
He claimed her in one stroke, her receptive body so wet, he would have thought she was waiting for him. In his haste to see her, he’d come unprepared without a single condom.
Even that didn’t matter. Her thighs clenched and her head fell back, his name a moan on her lips. He slipped out to the tip with reluctance, only to feed every inch to her again with delicious slowness. On the next thrust, he adjusted the position of her hips until the angle drove his cockhead to the place that made her scream with lust. She squeezed her fingers around his shoulders and rolled her lower body.
“Nate?”
“I missed you,” he huffed out between frenzied and wild thrusts, more urgent than any lovemaking they’d ever shared before. He hefted her up, bracing her with one hand beneath her thigh.
His rhythmic pace faltered, steady thrusts becoming erratic with the need for release. He nipped her ear and muffled his groan against the side of her neck.
“I want to come inside you, Astrid. So bad, baby.”
He’d forgotten how it felt.
“Do it,” she whispered. “I want to feel you again.”
Freed by her words, he surrendered and threw caution to the wind. Their renewed thrusts slapped her ass against the wall in a repetitive thump, accompanied by their joint grunts and throaty groans. Release came with a hot spurt. Astrid quivered around him, silken muscles tightening over his dick in rhythmic squeezes and delicious aftershocks.
It was the best mutual orgasm he’d ever experienced in all of his life, and sharing it with Astrid only improved it.
She clung to him, eyes closed tight and breaths shallow and fast. Nate dropped his sweaty face to her shoulder and struggled with his racing heart.
“Are you okay?” she whispered in the dark.
“Yeah.” He fell quiet, and after a moment said it again. “Yeah. Now that I’m with you, I think I am.”
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