by Nadine Mutas
“Dad, I’m sorr—”
“And I don’t ever want to hear my daughter apologize again for something that was beyond her control. Stop it. No one blames you but yourself.”
A sob broke from her throat.
“Now,” her dad said gruffly, “are you going to make me stagger across the hall, or will you come here to give me a hug, sweetheart?”
Succumbing to the sobs racking her chest, she dashed over to him, flung herself in his arms. He held her close, rocked her, petted her hair, and murmured soothing words, each one a balm to her bleeding soul. When Merle joined them, they pulled her in as well, until they were huddled together in one big knot of sobbing joy.
The last three living MacKennas, reunited in spite of loss and pain.
Merle’s reddened eyes found Maeve’s when they pulled apart eventually. “How?” she whispered. “I know it was you. How did you bring him back?”
Maeve wiped the tears off her cheeks and turned her fingers so Merle and her dad could see. “My tears. They heal. It’s one of my phoenix powers.”
Merle’s brows rose as she understood. “The tea.”
Maeve nodded. “I didn’t know if it would work.”
Arawn had suggested she try, having connected the dots of her true nature and potential powers with the miraculous healing of the bobcat. When she thought back to it, she remembered some of her tears dropping on the cat, on its open wounds. And seconds later it was healed.
It wasn’t her blood that did it.
“You’re a what?” asked her dad, his forehead creasing.
Apparently Merle hadn’t gotten to that part yet when she talked to him earlier. “I’ll tell you all about it. But let’s get you out of here first.”
Because, with his mind healed, Frank MacKenna would never have to spend another day at the nursing home.
They dove into the process of checking him out and tackling the amount of paperwork that went along with it, but by late afternoon, he had the okay to leave with them, and they went straight to the old Victorian.
Where, after a long evening spent talking, reminiscing, catching up, their dad retired to the room he once shared with their mother—still furnished and kept clean through all these years—while Rhun, who’d joined them at some point to meet his father-in-law properly for the first time, carried Merle to bed muttering something about being “hungry.”
Maeve strolled out to the backyard, lacing fingers with the man who held her heart, who stood waiting for her in front of the charred stump of the old cherry tree.
The one she burned to the ground when her phoenix exploded seventeen years ago.
It still hurt, would probably always pain her to look at this symbol of their loss, but…the wound was healing. Slowly, gradually, like the progress she was making in reclaiming her life, her body, her mind. She still had spells of panic and slithering, paralyzing fear, moments when she was with Arawn and they’d have to stop so she could root herself in the present, fight back the lingering shadows of her nightmares.
But they were getting rarer.
Talking to Tashia helped. Having Arawn supporting her with endless patience helped. And in response to every inch of reclaimed dominion over herself, her phoenix preened and rustled her feathers, stroking along her senses and underneath her skin.
She squeezed Arawn’s hand. “I’d like to introduce you to my father tomorrow.”
They hadn’t taken that step yet, having decided to not overwhelm her dad with too many revelations all at once.
Arawn peered down at her. “Think he can handle it?”
“Well…” She shrugged sheepishly. “I figure once he’s gotten used to the idea of Rhun as Merle’s mate and husband, we can try to give him a heart attack with you.”
One side of his mouth lifted in a sensual half grin. “I want to show you something.”
“Oh?”
He curved one arm around her waist, pressed her close. “Hold on.”
Whipping wind and lightning whirled her into shadows and mist, and the next second she was standing on the lava-crusted slopes of a mountain. Her hands still gripping Arawn’s shirt hard, his arm a reassuring heat around her waist, she glanced around, the cold night breeze barely affecting her, courtesy of Arawn’s warmth.
“Mount Hood,” she whispered as she recognized her surroundings. She stared at Arawn. “How?”
“It seems,” he said, sliding his energy around and over her like a blanket of tingling heat, “that I gained some of Velez’s powers when I destroyed him.”
“And now you can teleport.” She exhaled on an incredulous laugh. “If I weren’t so breathlessly in love with you, I’d find that scary as hell.”
He made a disbelieving sound. “You were never scared of me.”
“No.” She gave him a lopsided smile.
“And I might take offense at that”—he cupped her face, stroked over her lips with his thumb—“if I did not consider it such a precious gift.”
She rose on tiptoes, tugged him down to her and kissed him, long and slow and soul-crushingly thoroughly.
When they broke apart, he murmured, “Where would you like to go? I can take you anywhere in the world in the blink of an eye.”
Her heart flipped at the look on his face, and her chest ached with love so deep it almost hurt. “Take me home.”
He paused just long enough that she had to make sure he knew what she meant by sending him the image—and he smiled and flashed her into the heart of his dominion, into the room where he’d given her his heart.
Home, she whispered in his mind as he laid her out on their bed.
Thank you for reading To Enthrall the Demon Lord!
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Books in the Love and Magic series by Nadine Mutas:
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Novels:
To Seduce a Witch’s Heart (Love and Magic, #1)
To Win a Demon’s Love (Love and Magic, #2)
To Stir a Fae’s Passion (Love and Magic, #3)
To Enthrall the Demon Lord (Love and Magic, #4)
To Tempt a Witch to Sin (Love and Magic, #5), coming in 2018
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Novellas:
To Caress a Demon’s Soul (Love and Magic, #1.5)
Acknowledgments
My heartfelt thanks goes to my husband, who made the timely completion of this story possible by jumping in and taking over everything else while I wrote, wrote, wrote. Your sacrifice, my love, is admirable, as Arawn would say. I love you more than I can express in words, and that is saying something, seeing as I’m an author and all.
More thanks to my great and understanding editor Faith, and to my cover designer Najla, who brought my vision of Arawn and Maeve’s cover to life so incredibly beautifully.
Thank you to Jess Kolner and Chloe Elizabeth Brownhill for the suggestions for names for Juneau’s side.
Many thanks go out to Riley Cole and Abbie Roads for providing such valuable insight into therapist-client relationships and the context of therapy for PTSD. Your info was super helpful, and any errors that snuck into the text are entirely mine.
And, I have to thank—with emphasis—all my readers who kept asking me about Maeve and when she would get her story, and especially the members of my reader group on Facebook, who are so amazing in their enthusiasm and love for my books and characters. I love hanging out with you ladies, and I so appreciate your support!
About the Author
Nadine Mutas is the award-winning author of paranormal romances featuring demons and witches and lots of forbidden love. Her debut novel
, To Seduce a Witch’s Heart, won the Golden Quill 2016 for Best Paranormal Romance as well as the Published Maggie Award 2016 for Paranormal/Fantasy, and the latest installment in her Love and Magic series, To Enthrall the Demon Lord, is a finalist in the prestigious RWA® RITA® Award 2018 for Paranormal Romance.
After obtaining a university degree in the subjects job counselors like to warn you about (“There’s no money in humanities!”), Nadine is now writing full-time and introvertedly thriving from her home office. You can usually lure her out of her socially awkward shell by striking up a conversation about languages (keywords: Indo-European family; relation of Sanskrit to Ancient Greek) and watch her geek out for the next hour.
She currently lives in California with her college sweetheart, beloved little demon spawn, and two black cats hellbent on cuddling her to death (Clarification: Both her husband and kid prefer her alive. The cats, she’s not so sure about.)
Nadine Mutas is a proud member of the Romance Writers of America (RWA) and the Silicon Valley Romance Writers of America (SVRWA), the Rose City Romance Writers (RCRW), as well as the Fantasy, Futuristic & Paranormal chapter of the RWA (FF&PRW).
Connect with Nadine:
www.nadinemutas.com
[email protected]
Copyright © 2017 Nadine Mutas
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. For permission requests, contact Nadine Mutas at one of the addresses below.
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Nadine Mutas
PO Box 94
New Almaden, CA 95042
[email protected]
www.nadinemutas.com
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Cover Design by Najla Qamber Designs
www.najlaqamberdesigns.com
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Editing by Faith Freewoman, Demon for Details Manuscript Editing
Created with Vellum