by Lenore Wolfe
“How on Earth do you do that?” Jes exclaimed. “I can see you, but it’s like you—blend with whatever’s around you!”
Mia laughed. “Isn’t it great?” She came fully back into the room. “I’ve been teaching my sisters. I think it will come in handy when we’re fighting.”
Jes was amazed. She had learned some pretty powerful things herself from the Fae, but this one took the cake. “I don’t understand how you do that!” she stated again.
“Well,” Mia said, “It’s like everything else with your spells, you have to believe. A good example would be one of Roman’s doorways. Everything we believe is an illusion. You have to stop seeing everything in—what we think of as our reality, and start seeing them—how they really are.”
Jes nodded. She couldn’t help but be excited. “I know, but I can’t seem to let go. That’s something I was working on in the Land of the Fae. I have to let go of what I believe is my reality. I have to let go of what I think is my reality—and let myself truly feel it. But it’s just so hard!”
“Here,” Mia said, “let me walk you through with some guided imagery.”
They sat there practicing like that for the next couple of hours, and by the time Justice and his other two sisters walked in that evening Jes had managed to start fading out. Still every time she was nearly there, she’d panic and come fully back into the room, which frustrated and impeded her progress.
Justice happened to see her when she was halfway there, and his other two sisters exclaimed, “Jes, you’re doing it.”
Their voices startled Jes out of her trance, causing her to come fully back into the room.
“What are you teaching her?” Justice nearly growled. “What if she gets stuck like that?”
Jes laughed and shook her head at him. He was always a little concerned with some of her magick too: probably just being a bit protective. “I don’t think there’s any fear of that. I seem to have the opposite problem.”
His other two sisters sat down in two of the other various chairs. He joined Jes on the couch, and they caught each other up. His sisters talked about the rumors they’d heard about Constantine. And Justice told them about what had been happening down at Second Chances. After awhile, they were joined by Mira and Dara, and later still, they went to eat and were joined by Dracon.
They were sitting around the table, laughing and joking around, when Jes realized how long it had been since they were last together like this. Back then they’d just been kids, without a care in the world—all except for Dracon, who had taken Justice under his wing.
Jes hadn’t understood why he’d done this—not then. But now she did. He had been helping him to prepare for the prophecy—and his position as the Prince of Fire.
She couldn’t help but to wonder if they would ever again be carefree.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Jes
Jes wasn’t taking no for an answer. She was getting out of the manor and going for a walk. She was going stir-crazy, locked up on this compound. She was used to being out. She was used to doing her police work, having some independence. Now, her work was gone—her life completely changed.
Constantine had changed all of that.
The fact that she was destined to marry a prince of her people had changed all of that.
And the fact that she would have to take a similar position—had changed all of that.
Justice, himself, had changed all of that—when he’d easily proven to her that there didn’t exist a future—that didn’t include them living together—sharing their lives as one.
It wasn’t just the prophecy that united them this way. It wasn’t just the prophecy that held the bond for them.
It was the depths of the emotions she felt, every single time he did something as simple as putting his arms around her.
She frequently had to take these walks. Justice didn’t like it, she could see that by the look in his eyes, but he didn’t stop her. He didn’t act as though he thought he had the right to control her—just because they were bonded together, and she was his woman.
He just didn’t like her to go by herself, especially if it was getting close to turning dark. He had asked that she not risk her safety in being out close to dark.
But right now, her watch still showed an early hour of the day. She ran little risk of getting caught out after dark. They all knew they didn’t run as much risk in going out during the day, so that was when everyone got out and did the things that resembled normalcy.
It was hard to remember what normal felt like any more.
It all came crashing down on her—all the permanent changes to her life.
Loving someone wasn’t easy. Everyone seemed to think that when you fall in love, everything is supposed to happen like magick. But love didn’t work that way. Falling in love was just the beginning—the easy part. The rest of it was hard work. After the falling in love part had happened—everything else either went uphill—or downhill. It kept you on an emotional roller-coaster ride.
Jes was always either missing him—or looking for a way to see him. And she wasn’t used to feeling that way. She couldn’t remember when her life had felt normal, a time when she hadn’t spent every spare moment—thinking about Justice. Now, she couldn’t imagine her life without him again.
And they had this tremendous war heading their way.
How did everyone else handle all of these changes at once?
It was one thing to wake up one day, and have to leave all the humans she’d just spent the last several years with—people who had become her family. It was another thing when she was thrust into all of this training. Not just because she had to get up every morning and go from Jaguar, and National, politics to hand-to-hand combat classes.
It was also the fact that she no longer had the freedom she was used to having. She couldn’t go anywhere, other than these walks, without armed guards by her side at every moment—even if she just needed to go to the store.
She also had to face the fact that she was expected to step into a place of royalty—the place of a princess, a place where she would have never wished to go.
This had never been her dream.
She hadn’t bargained on that in all the years she had known Justice. She’d had no idea that he came from royal blood. She had not known he was a prince.
She reached the meadow and sat on a log on the edge of the meadow.
Well, there could be no help for it. She would take her place by Justice’s side. And she would learn to adjust to all the changes in her life.
And she would be what her people needed.
Peering out into the peaceful sunshine, she relaxed into the lazy afternoon. A tree above her provided some shade, and she sat looking at the way the sun peeked through the leaves, dappling the ground with shadows and light.
Jes loved shadows and light.
Something about the patterns of light, coming through the trees, made her want to capture it in paint. She listened as the birds talked to one another in the trees, and just let the smell of the sun-baked earth filled her senses. And she gave in to the notion to lie upon the grass.
Within moments, she was fast asleep.
And while she slept—she dreamed. She dreamed of her father standing before her. He was telling her that she needed to realize the power of joining with the vampires. He was telling her she needed to see the bigger picture.
He demanded that she hear their side of the issue.
She had never seen him like this—so arrogant—and so aggressive.
He demanded that she take her place at his side—that she snap out of the childish innocence of the Jaguar People, and realize that the humans were simply too full of self-delusions to save the planet from the ruin they had plunged Her headlong into.
Jes couldn’t imagine where all his hate had come from. She shook her head, trying to remember any time when he had acted with such hate.
He came at her, and she woke with a start.
She lay
there, groggy. She felt drugged. She didn’t know what had taken place, but she knew it wasn’t natural. She fought to get her heavy limbs up off the ground—and half-stumbled toward the woods.
She peered up at the sun. She had missed her hand-to-hand combat class. How was it that she had slept so long?
She felt so heavy.
When she finally reached the compound, she noticed that Justice was up on the wall, watching for her return. She’d never been so happy to see him. He saw, right away, that something was wrong, and ran toward the stairs.
When he reached her, she collapsed into his arms. She was amazed that she hadn’t collapsed sooner. It had taken all her will to get back to the compound.
She woke sometime later to find herself lying on their bed. She saw the worry in Justice’s eyes. She had to work to turn her heavy head to where her sisters were. Amar was there working over her, too.
She looked back to Justice. Groggily, she realized how much she liked that he looked out for her. It made her feel wanted. It made her feel special and safe. She just hoped it wouldn’t one day start to make her feel caged—like she had often felt whenever she’d tried to date other men.
Drifting in and out, she realized that she had always started out wanting to find that one special man for herself—had always started out feeling as if it might work, as if she might be able to build a life with a special guy in her life—and had always wound up feeling as if she was strangling—like no air was left in a place—where everyone, not just the guy, came to expect that she’d make certain changes. She always behaved like someone different than whom she really was, because of what that man in her life expected from her.
Something told her that nothing about Justice could make her feel that way.
Her last conscious thought was that she would help to lead their people. She would do anything for her people—especially with Justice by her side.
When she woke again, the sun was streaming in the window. She was surprised to see her sisters, his sisters, Justice, and even Dracon there in the room.
She stared at Dracon.
“Do you realize it is broad daylight?” she croaked.
Why did her throat feel so bad?
Dracon laughed and slapped Justice on the back, then directed everyone else out of the room to leave Justice alone with her.
He knelt at the bedside. “You’ve been out for several hours,” he told her.
She tried to look around, but it hurt to do so. “What time is it?”
“It’s nearly noon,” he answered.
She frowned. How was that possible? It had been nearly dark when she reached the compound.
“The next day,” he appraised her.
Now she really frowned. “What happened?”
He kissed her knuckles. “Amar said it was some magick your father had an old witch use on you. The reason the spell was so powerful is that he apparently still had something of yours to anchor it to.”
Now she was furious. She tried to sit, but fell back. “Easy, love,” he whispered. “Amar said that you will be right as rain by tomorrow.”
She was fuming. “And when I am,” she whispered, “he’s going to regret he ever met me.”
He laughed. “Now there’s the spirited girl I love.”
Chapter Thirty
Justice
Justice walked the wall. Pacing was becoming a habit. He seemed to do his best thinking while pacing. But tonight his pacing was born more of anger than mere thinking. For several days he hadn’t been able to put his finger on it, but he had been becoming impatient of late—as if he were being warned. And now someone had attacked Jes—using magick.
He knew that the rumors Conrad had become privy to were right. He knew Jes’s father was heading their way. And he had a pretty good idea of that that meant. What he didn’t know—was whether her father worked alone, with his own agenda—or if he worked with the one they didn’t name.
For if he worked with him—nothing could be worse.
He could not think of another enemy who would be more dangerous to them then Constantine. But Constantine—with something as powerful as what had been named in some vague rumors at Second Chances….
He could only hope the fates would not be so cruel. He could only hope that these rumors, at least, were not true.
For if they were—Goddess help them.
Justice turned and paced the other direction. Dracon was squatting against an outcropping in the wall, where the rock had been placed for three more feet to provide those on the wall with some added protection. He was watching Justice pace, as he had many times in the past several days.
Justice scowled at him, which only caused him to raise one dark brow at him. Dracon had lived much too long to allow emotions to rule his head. Justice looked forward to the day when he could master his.
But he was becoming more and more concerned about what he was hearing—and now, he was angry.
He was glad that Jes’s father—was not really Jes’s father—or she would have wound up hating him again—when he killed him.
He didn’t know how he was supposed to maintain cool and calculating—in the face of such rage.
He knew that the plans they had begun to put together would seem as nothing if her father brought something so powerful to Constantine—as what he now heard upon the wind of whispers at Second Chances.
And now, her own father had ambushed her—using witchcraft.
As if he were laughing at the power the sisters held as the Sisters of Three.
As if he were taunting them—telling them that not even their power could stop him.
They were going to have to go further—much further—than they had ever imagined they would have to go to defeat an enemy as powerful as Constantine—much further than any of them had planned.
And if her father was tied to Constantine—well, then they were laying plans for a different assault altogether. An assault comprised of proportions and possibilities the likes of which mankind, or any race upon Mother Earth, had never seen before in all Her history.
One of which neither he nor Dracon could see any hope of winning.
Justice and Dracon both spotted the dark sedan before it had even entered the compound. Justice knew it was Lucius. He could feel it. And he had someone with him.
They exited the vehicle at the door, and Justice noticed the other men with him were Micah, Roman and Caesar. Three of the men immediately looked up past the wall at Justice and Dracon, as though they sensed them there. Caesar, however, immediately began to inspect the wall itself.
Now this was a military man he’d like to speak with.
Dracon seemed to think so, too, because he quickly got up from the wall and went down the stairs to greet the men—with Justice right behind him.
When they approached the men, they all shook hands. They hadn’t planned on them all meeting so soon. But he could sense the curled anticipation in each of the men.
Justice was, by far, the youngest soldier there. But not one of the men treated him any differently.
Still, he couldn’t imagine having lived as long as these men.
The thought actually made him tired.
He didn’t know how he felt about living that long.
Tonight they would talk about war. Justice was ready. He felt his blood quicken—as it started somewhere in his chest. He was tense with the need to move forward. He was anxious to finally be doing something—after waiting for all of these years.
But now even more so with this direct attack on Jes.
He had not sought out this war. He had never been glad for war.
But after seeing Jes lying there—unconscious—he was glad to go out and meet it.
This war had been determined to come to him from the moment he had been born. Destiny had been whispering about him greeting this war on the winds of time long before he had suckled upon his mother’s breast, and long before he had stretched his abilities, learning to be a man, when his only thought
had been to protect his sisters from the threat of street gangs.
Justice was glad he was doing something. Preparing for imminent battle was far more proactive than waiting.
It would be a good night.
The men cleared a room where they could have some privacy—and settled down to business. Justice knew that he wouldn’t see Jes tonight. And, as usual, it couldn’t be helped. But it didn’t make it any easier—especially after the attack she had suffered at the witch’s hands.