Claimed by the Elven Brothers: Decision (An Elven King Novella Book 1)

by Cristina Rayne

  CLAIMED BY THE ELVEN BROTHERS: DECISION

  An Elven King Novella

  CRISTINA RAYNE

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2014 Cristina Rayne

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  The more I looked at them, the more I wanted to just turn around and head back to the jogging path and my car and forget I had even come here on this crazy wild goose chase. Yet they were there, two tall pine trees about a meter apart with a single fallen branch devoid of all its leaves lying horizontally between them from trunk to trunk, and I couldn’t deny that I had seen them.

  I had come out here expecting to find nothing—well, that wasn’t exactly true. I was expecting to find peace of mind again after two days of this very image consuming my every waking thought, an image from a reoccurring dream from the past two nights. That I was now seeing it in reality was mindboggling.

  I stood frozen before it, unsure what to do. In the dream, I had accidentally sent the cell phone I had been clutching in one hand flying between the two pines after rounding a corner on the jogging path and promptly tripping on a root. It was only after I had stepped over the fallen branch to retrieve the phone that the dream had taken a turn to the bizarre.

  From one moment to the next, the surrounding trees had disappeared only to be replaced with an open field of ankle-high grass dotted with white, yellow, and purple wildflowers. The sky had been gray, hazy, as though the entire area was engulfed in a thin fog.

  After that initial scene, I could only remember bits and pieces of the rest of the dream—walking across the field, then sitting on a pearl-colored, silk blanket sipping a cool liquid from a small china teacup that I distinctly remembered being sweet like honey with a slightly bitter aftertaste. I also remembered that I had been sitting with two really good-looking blond men, that we had been talking even though I couldn’t for the life of me remember what exactly we had been talking about, just that it was something important.

  I closed my eyes and made a face. Yes, I even remembered that the tips of their ears had been pointed and sticking up through their hair like they were some kind of Zelda cosplayers. The only thing more odd than me dreaming something as convoluted as that was that I had dreamt the exact same thing two nights in a row—at least the parts I could still remember.

  How many times had I jogged past this very clump of trees over the past three years? Wasn’t it possible that I had seen this setup dozens of times without it really registering consciously? I was probably just freaking myself out over nothing and was suddenly glad that I hadn’t asked any of my friends to come out here with me. They would have wanted to know why, and I never would have heard the end of it if I had actually told them about the dreams, about how I had been obsessing over them.

  “This is so stupid,” I grumbled to myself. “Just walk across and be done with it!”

  Another hour or so and the sun would set. It would take me at least thirty minutes to make it back to my car. I definitely didn’t still want to be mucking around the woods in the dark.

  With a burst of irritation, I stepped over the fallen branch, trying to ignore the sudden pounding of my heart. The effect was immediate. From one breath to the next, the air was heavier, moist, as though I was standing in the middle of a lake with my head barely above the waterline.

  No—not a lake, I thought as I frantically looked from side-to-side, refusing to accept what my eyes had initially seen. However, the view was the same no matter which direction I turned my head or how hard I blinked my eyes. All the trees were just gone as if they had never been there in the first place, and in their place was a field of grass and colorful wildflowers as far as the eye could see under a darkened, overcast sky.

  I stared at the familiar, yet impossible, landscape for the space of a breath before I promptly turned on my heel in order to march back over the branch and between the twin pines. I had seen this horror movie, thank you very much, and had no intention of starring in its sequel.

  “Where are you going, Megan?”

  I froze instantly, but not because the person who had spoken knew my name. That should have sent me sprinting between the trees at full speed without a backwards glance. No, I knew that soft, deep voice, and now that I had heard it, there was no way I could leave without driving myself crazy with questions for the rest of my life.

  I slowly turned around, and there he stood, so close that I could have reached out and easily touched his chest. It was one of the blond, pointy-eared men from that dream. He was dressed in a black, long-sleeved tunic and equally black breeches, looking like he had just wandered out of a Renaissance fair or fantasy convention.

  “Home,” I answered, surprised that my voice came out so steady. “I’m gonna have a couple of shots of tequila, then I’m going to bed and just pretend that none of this craziness ever happened.”

  His mildly curious expression instantly melted into something like panic, and before I could even move a muscle, his hand shot out and grabbed one of my upper arms. “Wait! Can we not at least talk about this a bit more?” he pleaded. “As we said yesterday, there is no need to make your decision right now.”

  “Decision? What decision?” I demanded with a sinking feeling. “No, scratch that. Who the hell are you?”

  Why was I even still talking to this figment of my imagination? I should be getting the hell out of there, not digging myself in deeper! I jerked my arm back and was shocked when I easily broke his hold. In the back of my mind, I had prepared myself for a fight.

  He held up his hands, looking contrite. “I am sorry. I should not have grabbed you, I know.”

  “Who are you?” I repeated against my better judgment.

  “Who—you really do not remember, do you?” he said slowly. “It’s no wonder you look so scared now.”

  I frowned. Did I really? My heart was certainly pounding a mile-a-minute, but I thought I had a better poker face than that.

  “I am Seren of the House Elerren. You have been coming here to meet with my older brother, Locien, and me for the past few days. We talked about several things—important things.”

  I shook my head. “I thought I was dreaming. For the past two nights, I had a dream of sitting with you and another blond man and talking, but I can’t remember what we talked about.” I paused. “That’s it, isn’t it? I’m still dreaming.”

  There was no way this was actually happening, that someone as beautiful as the man before me could possibly exist in reality. There had only been a couple of times in the past that I had realized that I was dreaming while still in the dream, so that’s probably what was happening right now. I felt the tension in my shoulders begin to ease.

  Seren took a step closer, carefully, as though trying not to startle a wild animal. “I assure you, although the Inbetween has very dreamlike qu
alities, this is very real. I am very real.” He held out his hand to me. “Come. Let us go meet with Locien and figure out what has gone wrong here, why you cannot remember our time together.”

  I eyed his hand as if it were a cobra, suddenly unsure of what was real again. “Maybe it would be better if I just went back home,” I said as I took a step back.

  A look of dismay flashed across his eyes briefly before his expression softened to something completely benign and friendly. I took another step back towards the twin trees, now thoroughly alarmed. Why did he want me to go with him so badly?

  “Did you talk with another Sidhe after you left us yesterday?” he asked. “Did he tell you something that scared you?”

  “What?” I blurted before I could stop myself.

  What the hell did he mean “she”? Come to think of it, he did have a slight accent, so maybe English wasn’t his native language. Was he just mixing up his pronouns?

  “Something must have happened within the last day because even at our initial meeting, you did not show so much fear and suspicion,” he insisted, letting his hand fall back to his side. “It’s all right. You do not have to pretend to memory loss. We meant it when we told you that first day that we would never keep you here against your will, that the final decision would be yours.”

  Pretend? Final decision? The more he talked, the more confused I became. I absolutely had no idea what he was talking about, but at the same time, it was becoming more apparent that we had spent at least a little bit of time together. Dreams usually didn’t continue on where they had left off from night to night, so how could I explain this? Did I dare believe that all of this was real? Was I really standing in some weird place talking to a “man” with pointed ears? Was he really an alien and I had inadvertently stumbled through a portal to his ship?

  Despite the fact that any sane person would have been well on their way back through the trees and heading for the parking lot by now, I couldn’t help but be curious. What if this was actually “first contact” and I turned my back on such a monumental point in history just because I was a little scared?

  Yeah, and what if he’s here to abduct humans for some kind of freaky experiment? my mind supplied helpfully. I really needed to stop watching so many horror movies.

  “Are you an alien?” I asked abruptly, deciding to just lay it all out there. “Is that what’s going on?”

  For some inexplicable reason, he suddenly grinned at me as if I had just told him a particularly lame joke. It made me want to punch him in the face.

  “So we are back to that again,” Seren said. He bowed his head. “Here. Perhaps you would like to touch my ears again, to assure yourself of their authenticity?” The last was said with a note of challenge.

  The moment he suggested it, my fingers almost began to itch with the desire to do just that. I scowled at him and clasped my hands tightly behind my back.

  “No thanks,” I said dryly. “You keep saying ‘again,’ ‘again,’ but all I remember is having a cup of some weird-tasting drink and talking with you and another pointy-eared guy. So either this is the most convoluted dream I have ever had, or someone screwed with my head and made me forget a hell of a lot of stuff.” I narrowed my eyes suspiciously at him. “You’re the only one standing here, not answering any of my questions and talking cryptically. How do I know it wasn’t you that did something to me—I don’t know, like make me so obsessed with the dream I’ve been having for the past two nights that I had to come back or go crazy?”

  He lifted his head, the grin gone, and regarded me for a long moment without any kind of discernable expression. After all the emotion he had freely shown me since the beginning, it was more than a little unnerving.

  “I am not an alien,” Seren said finally. His entire demeanor had changed. His body was now probably as tense as mine.

  “But you’re obviously not human, either,” I added pointedly.

  He nodded. “I am an elf.”

  I found myself nodding, accepting him at his word. Something about this conversation felt very familiar, which lent more credence to his claims of several meetings between us. There was no way I could leave now, not when I was finally getting some answers, crazy as they were.

  “Did I come here last night?”

  His shoulders relaxed a bit. “Not during the night. Although it was well past midday within the human realm, the sun had not yet even begun to set when you arrived.”

  I must have come right after work. Come to think of it, I couldn’t even remember going home yesterday at all! Everything from the moment I had clocked out to waking up this morning was a blank except for the snippets of last night’s “dream.”

  “How long have I been coming here?”

  “Today is the eighth time.”

  His answer hit me like a sledgehammer. “You’re telling me that I’ve been coming here to meet with you and your brother for a week now?” I said a bit shrilly. “Then—why the hell can’t I remember driving here? I can’t even remember what we talked about, for God’s sake!”

  “That is what I wish to find out,” Seren said firmly. He held out his hand again. “Will you come with me? Let us go meet Locien and see if we can make some sense of what has happened here.”

  “Come with you where?” I couldn’t help but ask suspiciously.

  Weren’t there stories about elves stealing people to somewhere beneath a hill or something? Or was that a fairy ring…something about not crossing…?

  He smiled gently at me. Damn, but I wished he would quit doing that. I had been trying not to think about how hot he was the entire time, but it was hard not to get distracted when his face lit up like that.

  “You need not worry. A human cannot enter the elven realm unless certain steps are taken, steps that neither I nor my brother can perform. Where we now stand is a dimension in between the human and elven realms, the only place where our two races can meet in our natural forms. Should you choose to go back through the door, we cannot follow—at least not without the help of a mage.”

  “Yeah, but I bet I could still lose sight of the ‘door’ if I follow you farther into the fog,” I said uneasily. “Can’t you bring your brother here?”

  “I could…” he said reluctantly. His eyes flickered briefly towards the two pines and the fallen branch.

  “I still have a lot of questions,” I said. “I promise not to leave, if that’s what you’re worried about, but for now, I would feel more comfortable talking right here.”

  “All right,” he said after another brief pause. “I shall be back shortly.”

  I stood watching his back until it disappeared in the distant haze before I allowed myself to collapse to the ground. To his credit, the self-proclaimed elf never looked back once. At this point, I didn’t know who was dumber, him for trusting me to keep my word when he knew how uneasy and suspicious I was, or me for deciding to keep it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Seeing the elven brothers walking side-by-side as they slowly approached me was a bit of a shock, but in a good, pleasing way. They looked so much alike, from the narrow lines of their faces to the same shade of golden blond, shoulder-length wavy hair that I wondered if they were twins.

  I stood up immediately, wanting to already be on my feet just in case I had to make a run for it. They both paused about a meter away from me, the brother—Locien—looking at me with sharp eyes as though he expected me to bolt at any moment. As I silently stared back at him, I began to see the differences between him and Seren. His eyes were a slightly darker shade of green, his eyebrows slanted a bit higher, and his entire demeanor stiffer, more contained. It was enough that had they been dressed identically, I could have easily told them apart.

  Just looking at them together made my heart race, but for two very different reasons. I suddenly felt as though I was in the presence of a couple of predators, and the feeling both scared and excited me.

  “You are afraid,” Locien spoke suddenly, making me jump. His voice was nea
rly identical to Seren’s which was kind of weird. “Why?”

  “Why?” I repeated a bit incredulously. “I’m standing here looking at a pair of elves straight out of last night’s dream! Why do you think?”

  “A dream?” He frowned and turned to Seren. “You are right. Her eyes have definitely been clouded by another.”

  “What do you mean ‘clouded’?” I demanded.

  I was really getting tired of all their vague suppositions, especially when they insinuated that someone had really tampered with my mind. Either that, or someone had slipped something funny into my drink the last time I went out with the girls and I was lying in a ditch somewhere having the most screwed up trip-out in existence.

  “Sometimes, when humans stumble into the Inbetween and encounter a Sidhe, they are so frightened that it is impossible to even speak with them,” Seren explained. “Thus, an enchantment is placed on their minds. It makes things less certain, dreamlike, if you will. It allows their fears to melt away.”

  “In other words, exactly what I described to you earlier,” I said, taking a step back in rising alarm. “Did you do that to me?”

  “No,” Locien said shortly. “When you first saw us, you were curious, talkative. There was no fear in you at all, so there was no need. Looking at you now, ready to flee like a rabbit confronted by a pair of wolves, it is as though we are speaking to a stranger.”

  Suddenly, he shot forward and grabbed my upper arms before I could even cry out in alarm. Then a feeling like a cool breeze washed over my entire body, and I abruptly found it really hard to think or even to focus on the bastard elf that had just blindsided me. I had only a split-second to consider kneeing him in the crotch before even that thought was lost as my head swam beyond all coherence, and a sense of wellbeing flooded my consciousness completely.

  It felt as though I floated within that pleasant state for an eternity before another sensation penetrated my awareness. There was something warm and firm pressed against the length of my back. It was another long moment before my head cleared enough for me to understand that I was staring at a field of wildflowers as far as the eye could see, marred only by a pair of trees…