by Lauren Dane
“Tosh has called, everyone there is okay. They’ve got extra guards on him, Delilah and Parrish. There are Others who still haven’t come out. They may not at this point given the threats and the holes in capitol security. He appeared on television about half an hour ago and hailed you as a hero for saving all those bystanders.”
“Me?”
Molly turned, taking Helena’s hand. “You. Helena, you risked your life to save hundreds of people. All in full view. This will change a lot of people’s minds about us. You did the right thing even though they’d just been calling out insults and threatening to shoot you in the head. That changes people’s perceptions.”
“Glad my near death can help PR.”
Molly frowned. “I didn’t mean it that way. But the fact is, it did.”
“I know you didn’t. I’m sorry for snapping at you. You should know I’m going to recommend to The Gennessee and Meriel that we end this traveling road show. The security risks are too great and in the end, we endanger even more people. I know you believe in this, but I can’t stand behind it after today.”
Molly nodded. “I understand.” They went into the living room, which had been transformed into a makeshift media room. Laptops sat on multiple surfaces. Caspar stood when she came in and began to clap. People looked up, smiling when they saw her and got up, clapping as well.
Warmth rushed through her. Humility chasing it.
She put a hand up to stop them. “Thank you, all. I appreciate it. But the fact remains that a hole in security created that situation today. And we lost two good people because of that. Each of you did your job and that saved lives. If anyone deserves applause, it’s you all.”
Molly grinned and they sat, Molly continuing to fill her in.
The president had made a statement condemning the bombings. She’d also stated her belief that Others were citizens and had the same rights everyone else had, including the right to address their grievances to their government without being bombed. She called for calm and a cease in the escalation in violence.
“How about she signs an Executive Order saying so?” Helena appreciated the nice statement, but for goodness’ sake, it was time to back that up with the power of the presidency.
“I know. My sources say she’s trying to let this all work out through states and up to her before she does anything like that. She wants to help, but she’s got a big job.”
“Fuck that. If she wanted to help, she’d help. All this talk is getting us killed. We need her to be a leader now.”
Molly nodded. “I agree.”
Tosh had also done a news conference with Parrish Carroll and Delilah Sperry at his side. In it they hailed Helena as a hero who’d selflessly risked her life to save all the people on the steps, including the ones protesting her very existence. The FBI, headed by Anderson’s task force, had issued a brief statement as well, saying preliminary evidence indicated the attack was domestic terrorism a la suicide vests.
PURITY had their own press conference where they accused the Others of the bombings for publicity and to make them look bad. Humans First had been very quiet and it made Helena wonder why.
“You know it has to be one of their people.” Gage came in with Faine—who gave her a smile that made her tingle a little, and handed her a mug before sitting at her side.
“Drink that. Your mother has called twice and forbade us to disturb you, but she said when you were ready you needed to drink as many cups of this tea as you can.”
Oh, he disturbed her all right. But it was too late to run.
Helena just gulped it down, knowing it would taste horrible, but that if her mother said to drink it, she’d better just obey or face Rain’s wrath.
She grimaced and then shuddered. “Not one of her better-tasting mixes, but as she’ll totally make you tell her and she’s quite hard to fib to, you can now give her the truth.” She put the mug down. “I do believe it was Humans First and PURITY behind this. The more I think about the way Lynn Reed was acting in that hearing, the more I’m convinced she knew something was up. In any case, I’ve got to call in to speak with Gennessee. I was just telling Molly that I’m recommending we end this tour. She can do her testimony via video if necessary. And let’s be honest, everyone has said what needs saying. I’m concerned about what’s going on with our own people.”
“Cade left to go deal with the wolves. He said to let you know we had the use of their plane if we needed it.” Gage sat back. Even in the house his gaze was never still, always roving, looking for possible trouble.
“We do. All this moving around exposes us to a threat I simply can’t protect adequately from. Not anymore.”
She’d take Molly back to Seattle and then get down to Los Angeles. She’d probably have to go to a meeting of the Council of Others. She had three messages from them already, but she wanted to check on her people as well.
Chapter 11
THEY got off the plane in Seattle and she smiled at the sight of her sister on the tarmac.
Lark gave her a hug, kissing her cheek. “Hey you.”
“Hey yourself. Thanks for the escort. I’m going to stick around here and catch a ride down south.”
“You’re not.”
Lark and Helena both turned, surprised by Faine’s rumble of disagreement. Simon just burst out laughing.
“I’m not?” Helena gave him a look that would have sent any other person running. But not this giant. No, he just looked back.
“You’re not. You’re going to my house and you’re going to rest for a day and then we will go wherever we’re needed next.”
“You have a house here too?”
“I have multiple houses. It’s a smart thing to have places you can retreat to when necessary.” He shrugged, looking every bit like a prince as he did so.
“You’ve been appointed my guardian?”
“I believe we’ve already discussed this issue. You need a keeper sometimes because without one you will run yourself into the ground. In case you’ve forgotten, and let me hasten to add that I have not, you nearly died today. You stopped an explosion, and in doing so you bled from the nose and mouth. You need to sleep. Not nap, like you did earlier. You need to eat a real meal and then you need to have a hot bath and then you need to sleep for an uninterrupted eight hours. Then you’ll be well enough to go about saving the world and risking your life again.”
Lark gave Helena a wide-eyed look. “So when did this happen?”
Helena threw her hands up in the air. “It’s like I’m not even here.”
“I’m taking Molly home. Everyone else is going home or to the hotel. I’ll talk with you later. Just let me know where you end up.” Gage gave her a one-armed hug before disappearing with Molly, who gave her two thumbs up and a wink.
“We should get out of the open.” Simon held a hand out to Lark, who looked back and forth between Helena and Faine.
Lark pulled her aside. “They’re going to hear everything we say, but let’s pretend they can’t, okay? You can stay with us. There’s plenty of room. Or you can go back to Los Angeles. I do think he’s got a point. If you go back home, Mom is going to show up at your place with a basket full of goop, tea and tinctures and she will make you consume them all while covered in sticky stuff that will make you itch out the poison or whatever. And then she’ll make you tempeh loaf. Or you can stay here, have steak, some good scotch and cheesecake. While you tell me when you and Faine hooked up.”
“Is this supposed to be a choice? Mom’s tempeh loaf or letting that giant wolf over there tell me what to do?”
Lark laughed. “You fucked a Lycian and, from the looks of it, he’s not just interested in a few days between the sheets. They latch on and then you’re done.”
“I boned him, I didn’t marry him.”
“I’m not a wolf,” Faine called out, amusement clear in his tone.
“Beast, Lycian. Whatever. Bossy, and the sex wasn’t so good I’ve lost my mind.”
Lark cocked he
r head and dared her to keep lying.
She sighed. “Okay so it was. But . . .”
“There are no buts. He’s right. You need to rest. Also? They come with one setting. Bossy. Domineering. They’re used to being in charge. But they’re worth it. At least the Leviathan brothers are.” Lark smirked. “Come on.” Lark took her hands. “I don’t see you enough and you’ve had a rough day. Let me take care of you. Let’s catch up a little. Please? Before he and Simon can start making plans for world domination?”
“Just Lark domination, pixie.” Simon smiled at Lark, who waved it away as they walked toward the brothers.
“Faine’s place happens to be our place. He’s just poking at you. Come on back. I’ll grill some steaks and we can relax. I’d like to spend time with you and my brother for a change.” Simon gave her a little bow and she knew she was giving in before she did it.
* * *
“SO while Lark has Helena cornered off in your room, interrogating her, let me do a little interrogation of my own. What’s going on?”
Faine stood on his brother’s deck, looking out over all the wildness just beyond. He breathed deep of the trees and earth. “It’s good here.”
Simon grunted. “There’s plenty of acreage just up the road for you to build your own house. But I figure you’ll be settling in Los Angeles at this point. How long has this been going on between you and Helena?”
Faine blew out a breath. He’d been holding all this inside for some time and it felt good to finally be able to talk about it with someone who’d understand. “I’ve been attracted to her for some time. Months now. Probably since the first time I laid eyes on her. Until today it was just kisses.” He pushed away from the rail he’d been leaning against, pacing. “She could have died. It just hit me and then I saw her in an exposed moment. Emotionally, I mean. It was . . . I couldn’t resist any longer and I realized it was stupid to have resisted as long as I have. I don’t know, at first I felt like perhaps I should have waited, talked it all over with her before we had sex.”
Grabbing his glass, he turned to face Simon, letting the smoke of the scotch dance over his senses.
The scent of the meat rose as Simon put the steaks on the grill. “She’s a big girl, as Lark is so fond of saying. She knows what we are. Her sister is my Ne’est, after all. Helena knows what she wants. If she hadn’t been interested and hadn’t wanted you, she would have punched you in the head and kicked you out of her room.”
Faine guffawed. “They’re a lot alike, I imagine. You appear to be unharmed so you must be doing something right.”
Simon growled. “Infuriating, these Jaansen females. They’ve got a penchant for placing themselves between danger and their people. Drives me nuts.”
“And you wouldn’t have it any other way.” Faine understood it because he felt the same. The danger of what Helena did made him crazy, but he respected her path a great deal.
Simon snorted. “No. It’s an integral part of who she is. One of the reasons I love Lark so much. She’s a warrior. As Helena is a warrior.”
“As we are. But you and I are nearly seven-foot-tall males who share existence with a beast bearing razor sharp teeth and claws. We’ve been bred for what we are in ways they can’t be. They’re far more physically fragile.”
Simon gave one of his infuriatingly calm shoulder shrugs. “That’s all true. The fact that they’re warriors like we are makes it easier—rationally—to accept the danger they put themselves in. But the fact that I love Lark so deeply is always a challenge to ration. But I do and it’s who she is. There’s no way around that, and if I don’t accept it, we can’t be together. Let’s not avoid the fact that you’re not only Lycian.”
Faine blew out a breath. “Yes. She knows my mother is a demoness so it’s not as if it’s a secret. But when is it I’m supposed to bring up that the two halves of my being unite to make me cleave to the right female for life? Especially when she knows I was married at one time and I wasn’t bonded to Lydia?”
“You loved Lydia, yes. But she was human. And you and I both know there’s love and there’s forever love. You didn’t make it up. It simply is. Given that one of your siblings is bonded to her sister, I suppose it means our genetics seem to click with theirs. It’s not a surprise that you’d fall for her. She’s beautiful. Willful. Passionate and fiery about things. And she’s got a most excellent left hook.”
Faine snorted a laugh. “She does. And some other stuff she does, Krav Maga, that stuns me when she does it. She’s so fragile though, just beneath that tough exterior. It calls to me.”
Simon nodded. “And you want to protect her. You know by now that you can only do so much. The Jaansen women are not going to be managed. You have to be sneaky about it. And really? You have to accept the whole package. That means they come home bloody at least once a month. Though lately it’s more. I’m hoping it slows down at some point.”
Faine scrubbed hands over his face. “I want to take her to Lycia. Things are so busy just now it hasn’t been possible. But soon. I want to take her and explain everything.”
“She’s your Ne’est then?”
Lycians weren’t like werewolves in the sense that they didn’t have the same sort of fated mate bond with their partner. Most Lycians had plural marriages. Faine was born when his and Simon’s father had two other wives. Many married or had long-term partnerships. But they had long life spans and they loved and embraced that love. Sometimes it was short term. Sometimes it was longer term, sometimes it meant more than one spouse.
But for some, usually in ruling families, there were special bonds. A voluntary bond that united a couple together for their entire lives. Tila, Faine’s mother, and Cross, his and Simon’s father, had chosen to perform the binding after Simon’s mother had died. Lark was his brother’s Ne’est. His key. Their union was forever and highly respected by their people.
Faine felt that for Helena. And more than that, he was half demon, and demons tended to imprint on mates in the way of cat shifters. Intense attraction and then a voluntary binding. The two parts of Faine’s being had united in their hunger for Helena. He wanted her and he wanted her forever.
It all came down to just how Helena felt about it all.
“She is my Ne’est.” Faine blew out a breath. “Now I just need to convince her of that.”
Simon laughed as he turned the steaks. “Unsolicited advice?”
Faine shrugged. “Always appreciated.”
“They’ve grown up in the human world. Concepts of love are different for them. It took a while for Lark to come around when I first told her she was my key. Even though they’re witches they live in a world of what they can see more than what they can feel when it comes to romance.”
This had occurred to him. It had been a positive when he’d interacted with human women. He kept it light and that was fine. Back home he’d had more than enough company when he desired it, but Lycians were on the same page. They knew what he was, what he wanted, and those females who wanted more looked elsewhere.
He had thirty years with Lydia and it had been wonderful. But every time he went to his parents’ house, he saw their connection, saw what their bond was and he yearned for that. Had waited hundreds of years for it.
He hadn’t expected Helena. When he’d told her that, it was the total truth. Yes, sure, she was desirable on many levels. That hadn’t been the surprise part. It was that sweetness he glimpsed, as well as the ferocity in battle—that combination had been his undoing.
“We broached the subject earlier today and she blew it off. But she didn’t get out of bed either.” Faine raised a shoulder and grinned. His shoulder had ached for an hour after they’d been together. The nails she’d raked over his skin had left a mark that should have healed faster.
That they hadn’t was just another sign she was meant to be his. A mate’s marks faded slower because they were meant to be shown off.
Simon’s laugh was knowing. Faine knew his brother and his mate had
an intense connection. “Keep a first-aid kit handy and watch your blood pressure. She’s as wild and hard to manage as her little sister, I’ll wager.”
“Yes. They share a tendency to work until they fall over.”
“You’ll need to provide incentive to get her into bed. It doesn’t get easier. Lark works herself to exhaustion. I’m glad Helena is here, maybe they’ll both rest a little. At least relax.”
“The next step is war. You know that.” Unlike Lark and Helena, Faine and his brothers had been through war. More than once. He wished it wasn’t heading in that direction. War sucked for everyone involved. But the humans, the ones who kept provoking the Others with acts of violence, weren’t going to listen until they were taught a hard lesson.
And sometimes hard lessons were bloody.
Simon sighed. “Yes. They have fought against it. But you can’t not react to what happened. We’ve tried diplomacy and it’s not working.”
* * *
“HOW do you handle it? Being around such a big person all the time?” Helena asked as she pulled on some thick socks. Lark hadn’t bothered with any pretense; she’d led Helena to Faine’s room and Helena hadn’t argued. What would the point of that have been?
“The doorways around here are big.” Lark winked. “You mean his presence?” Lark sat on the floor, leaning back against the chair. “If I sit on the bed, my scent will be there and he’ll get agitated. Lycians are particular and Faine’s going to want your smells all over the place.”
“See, that’s part of what I mean.” Helena pulled a pillow into her lap to lean on. “It’s so sudden. Yesterday he was one of my guards. Today he sexed me into a puddle of goo. I’ve never . . . shew, suffice it to say he’s got some moves.”
Lark laughed, pushing her hair from her face. “A body lives a few centuries and they seem to pick up some stuff. If he’s anything like Simon, well, you’ll be well satisfied. No worries there. As for handling him? If you tell anyone this I will deny it.” Lark sent her a prim look and she laughed.