by Zoe Forward
“You fighting with Matt again?” Serenity asked Kat.
Kat patted her round pregnant stomach and rolled her eyes.
“That man kisses the ground you walk on. He’d do anything for you,” said Serenity.
“Maybe you need to inform him of that. He lives to prevent me from doing anything.” Kat scowled. “Well, anything outside the bedroom.”
Everyone laughed.
Charlotte touched Serenity’s arm. “Walk with me.”
She followed in silence. They strolled down the beach. Once they were out of earshot of the others, Charlotte said, “It’s pretty here.”
“Yes.” She watched gulls skim the surprisingly calm waters. “Where are we?”
“Barbados. I wanted us somewhere warm. Eli has been bugging me to get you back to this dimension. He worried you’d slit your wrists or something stupid. I assured him that you disappearing had nothing to do with druid shit, and that you weren’t the suicide kind of girl.”
“I didn’t want the suffocation of them protecting me. I quit MI6, but you probably already know that. Everyone should be thrilled. Now I’m taking a vacation to think things over.”
“You’re not going to find him over there,” Charlotte said softly.
“I’m not looking for anyone there.”
Charlotte sipped her mimosa and continued to stroll. “He can’t pop over there. I’m sure if you wait long enough he’ll try to hijack me to get to you. This bond is crazy on the boys. He might try to deny it, but it’ll drive him insane. Look what he’s already done for you.”
“I might be suffering from the bond, but not him. I really think it’s finally over, regardless of what all of you guys think. You’re right. We’re not meant to be. He…”
Charlotte stopped so abruptly that she spilled a bit of her mimosa. “You can’t still be mad at him for Liz.”
“Liz…no. I can’t believe what she was. All those people she murdered over the past few years. Did you know she was behind the London Underground bombing last year?” Serenity gazed sightlessly at the horizon. “It’s horrifying. To think I didn’t know. I was in the frigging intelligence business and I didn’t know.”
Charlotte stepped in front of her ocean view and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I can’t believe I’m about to defend the death reaper. Aside from the interpersonal minutia and bent feelers that come with any man with as much testosterone and scary killing ability as that boy’s got, has Alexi Jovec ever hurt you?”
“No. Did you actually say bent feelers?”
Charlotte cracked a small smile. “Did he do anything other than protect you?”
Serenity shook her head.
“Then what in the blazes are you angry at him about? Get out of that Scottish mausoleum and go fight this out with him. No boy is smart enough to realize they’ve been chosen to be our destined. I honestly think the gods have broken their rules about druids and he’s the one for you. Maybe the gods are shaking up the lines or infusing more power into their descendants. Who knows? He might try to convince himself that you two can’t work, or it’s not allowed, or whatever absurd death reaper rules he follows are true, but that guy is yours, honey. Sounds like you’ve been bouncing in and out of each other’s lives for long time. He won’t stop following you. All the signs are there.”
“I don’t know.”
“I won’t say I like him very much. I won’t be inviting him over for dinner anytime soon. You, dear, are always welcome, though. But, then again, Alexi did everything he could to fix your life. That does earn him a few brownie points. He even called Eli and coerced him into helping him with the Liz situation, which is swallowing a lot of ego pie for someone as secretive and independent as Alexi. He was also probably mad as a riled-up hornet at Eli since the boy, bless his misdirected heart, made Alexi think the two of you were now getting it on.”
She gasped. “Eli didn’t do that, did he?”
Charlotte nodded. “Stupid. No doubt.”
“Cripes. I need to talk with Eli.”
Charlotte grabbed her arm in a stinging grip. “Alexi gave you back everything you lost, didn’t he? You could make your own choice about MI6. No one is trying to assassinate you any longer. He paved the way for you to find your guy, who he probably thinks is Eli. Honey, that means Alexi is probably living in a world of physical and emotional agony just as much as you. As stupid as it may be, he might think he’s doing right by walking away from you.”
“He killed Liz. That was…I should’ve done it. She was my responsibility.”
Charlotte let go of her. “It would’ve eaten away at your soul for the rest of your life if you had. He prevented that. I’m convincing myself that I might actually like him a little bit. So, why are you mad at him?”
“I don’t like that he lied to me. He played me. How can I ever trust him?” She whirled away. “Then he got himself shot being heroic. He stepped in front of me just as Liz shot at me.” She turned back to face Charlotte. “It tore through him and into me. Direct stomach hit on him, but he pushed me so it only got my side. That was a death shot for him. I don’t even know how he continued to fight.” She added with a whisper, “Then he saved Eli. I’m so mad at him.” She fisted her hands. “I should’ve been the one to kill Liz. He asked me not to. But she was my fault. I must’ve done something wrong by her. How could she have gone so wrong? Maybe I wasn’t there for her enough after Mom and Dad died. I don’t know.” She gazed over the brilliant panoramic view of the ocean until her eyes burned from the glare coming off the water.
Charlotte pulled her against her chest in a one-arm hug with her drink in her opposite hand. “Oh, honey. None of this is your fault. None of it was your responsibility. That child was born with a screw loose. Or maybe just with no screws tightened. There’s nothing you did wrong. It wasn’t your responsibility to raise her. She was old enough to know better when your parents died. Your mother came to me, scared, a few months before she left us. She knew Liz was going wrong and feared what she might do to you. Did your mother ever tell you that Liz tried to kill you more than once when you were younger? Remember that time you fell off the dock at your lake house in February and into the icy water?”
“I barely remember that. We were playing, and then I was in the water.”
“Your mom saw it. Liz just stood there smiling in an eerie way…your mom knew Liz meant it. Liz did it on purpose, and not in a sisterly mischievous way. The girl really wanted you dead. Your mother had to protect you. That’s why she and your dad forced you to do weapons training so hard. When they weren’t there to protect you from Liz anymore, the goddess gave you a more powerful protector. Alexi.”
Her mind swirled with the information. She pushed away from Charlotte. Weird events from her childhood suddenly made sense. The fire when she was eight. The time she got lost on a camping trip when she was ten. “Why didn’t you tell me? Warn me?”
“I wasn’t sure if Liz was over it once she moved out on her own. I’m sorry. So very sorry. That’s why I propose we not keep secrets from each other anymore. There’s enough for us to contend with without us keeping things from each other, particularly potentially life-threatening things.” Charlotte glanced back toward the condo behind the tent. “I’ll tell the boys you’re fine.” She slid a business envelope from the folds of her voluminous gauzy dress. “He gave this to Eli to give to you.”
Serenity took the envelope—the seal had already been broken—and glanced up. “He as in Alexi?”
Charlotte nodded.
“Alexi faced off with Eli? Oh, my. Is Eli okay?”
“He was pissed when Alexi walked away from him. Sounds like the idiot threatened your death reaper, but he’s fine other than damaged pride.” Charlotte smiled wide.
“What?”
“You’re going to make a great mother.”
Serenity shifted, uncomfortable under Charlotte’s get on with it stare. “I’m not ready for kids.”
Charlotte squeezed her arm. “Get back
to that man and…it’ll happen without you trying very hard. We all seem to have a damned embarrassing weakness when it comes to our boys in the bedroom.” She sighed and gazed across the water. “I’m so darn sorry I didn’t tell you about Liz. I guess I owe you one.” She smiled wanly. “I know you’ll take advantage of that one day. We need you to be the ferocious woman you’ve trained to become. We need you to teach all of us how to protect ourselves with weapons. Beyond the boys, you are our strongest protector, as evidenced by the Confirmation. Right now to be strong, you need him. So, go back to your parents’ place in the other dimension. Look at that envelope, and then find him. I’m sorry I opened it, but I didn’t want it to be full of some bullshit Liz might’ve done to torture you from her afterlife.”
Serenity rotated the envelope that had her name scrawled across the front. She said, “Thank you.”
“There’s a way to know if it’s meant to be with him. You know this, don’t you?” Charlotte asked.
Serenity shook her head.
“Do the chest mark. The gods will only allow the mark to work on the man they deem is your destined person.”
“I thought that’s reserved for ceremonial marriage only.”
“It can be done without ceremony.”
“I’ll remember that.” She glanced toward the condo and the guys still milling on the deck. “I need to talk to Eli.”
No one spoke as she ascended the wooden stairs to the landing in front of the condo. She met Bryce’s concerned stare. She hadn’t really looked at him a long time. He’d aged so much even in the past year. They all knew his time was limited. “Thank you. I don’t think I’ve ever told you how much it meant for you to be there for us when our life imploded after my parents died, and after my time with the OLM. I was a mess for a while.” She hugged him. “I’m sorry I was pretty awful to you, especially on security issues.”
Bryce held her tight. “You gave me more than a few gray hairs. You don’t have to go it alone all the time.”
She stepped back. “If you boys will stop suffocating me, then I’d be happy to collaborate.”
Matt nodded. His gaze darted to where Kat laughed beneath the tent. “What was that power surge about?”
Serenity smiled mysteriously. “Sisterhood.”
“What does that mean?” Matt asked cautiously.
“We’re going to be getting together more often.”
Matt’s eyes snapped to Bryce. “You said it was too dangerous.”
Bryce shrugged with a clear it’s your problem half smile.
“We need each other,” she said. “Kat suggested cauldrons. Then Jen had some potions ideas…”
Matt groaned.
Bryce chuckled.
Her gaze slid to Eli, who stared at her like a lost puppy. A Great Dane puppy, but still not the powerful man she knew he could be. “Will you walk with me a few minutes?”
Eli nodded.
She led him down the stairs and around to the front of the house, where there was a wooded area. Less public.
Crap. Where to start. They walked in silence for many awkward minutes.
Finally he said, “I know. Hell, I know. I just…somewhere along the way things changed for me. I think I love you.”
Serenity halted and gazed up at him. “We aren’t destined. I really wanted it to be you, especially during the university days. But…don’t you remember that one time we kissed in my flat?”
“I thought it was pretty good.”
“Oh, come on.”
He shrugged, and his look said he clearly thought it’d been great.
She said, “It was dreadful and you bloody well know it. Oh my God. You don’t remember it.” She gripped the back of his head and pulled his mouth to hers. As their lips collided, the same catastrophic ickiness pervaded her being, but she forced herself to try. She detected his muscles turning rigid and his desire to recoil.
Eli broke it off and stepped away with horrified wide eyes. “That was…”
“Awful.”
Eli laughed.
Serenity smiled, relieved.
He said, “You should’ve done that a year ago.”
“I never forgot the first time and wasn’t about to go in for a repeat. It was like kissing my brother or something.” She shuddered. “Besides, a year ago I was having issues with a certain assassin.”
“He doesn’t deserve you.”
Serenity waved at a bench and sat. Eli sat next to her. She said, “You mean I don’t deserve him. Look what he did for me. For both of us.”
Eli’s cheeks darkened with color. “I might’ve done something bad. Or at least given him the impression that you and me…that we were a thing.”
“Charlotte told me. It doesn’t matter. If Alexi wants me in his life bad enough, then that wouldn’t stop him.”
“What does that mean? He’d take me out?”
“I don’t know. He can be unpredictable.”
“Great. Guess I deserve it if he comes after me. Are you going to look for him?”
“I don’t know. It’s not working out very well for me to avoid everything. I think I’ve got to confront him and figure out where we stand. I’m not sure we can make it work, given what he is and what he must do. Do you know what he is? Did Bryce or Charlotte fill you in?”
Eli nodded. “I got the abbreviated version.”
She took his hand and clasped it between both of hers. “Thank you for always being there for me. For not preventing me from doing things in MI6…for asking me not to take risks. You don’t have to quit MI6 this time.”
“I didn’t.”
“Good.” She gazed toward the path that led back to the beach. “I should go say good-bye to the girls. But I’m not really up for it.”
Eli chuckled. “Don’t worry about them. I think I heard their plan was to get drunk, except Kat. Then do a movie or TV thing. I think they wanted to do a True Blood marathon. Kat is hopelessly addicted to that show. Matt hates it when she crushes on Joe Manganiello.”
“Vamps and wolves kind of gross me out.” She turned the envelope in her hands, curiosity driving her to look. “I do have one favor to ask before I go.”
“Ask.”
“Can you, um, fix my knees and hands? I tripped while jogging today. Those strawberries are hell for cocktail dresses.”
He chuckled and took her hand. Warmth tingled her knees and her hands where they were skinned. Seconds later he pulled away.
She rotated her hands. “Thanks. I think you’re as good as Matt with this.”
“Let me know if you need me again. For that or for kicking that rat bastard’s ass if he treats you poorly.”
“Thanks.” She shifted back to her alternate dimension and wobbled with hands as feelers over to the sofa to collapse while the shift blindness passed. Her mind whirled with vertigo. Too much hopping and emotional overload.
Once her vision returned, she palmed the thick envelope. With dread she opened it. Inside was a deed to a house, and pictures. She could barely breathe as she perused the pictures. It was this house, but in the other dimension. A stapled-together packet detailed the security upgrades.
There was no note. But she knew. He did this. She didn’t know how he’d convinced them to sell, but he did this.
Chapter Twenty-One
The jeans worked, Serenity decided, as she rotated in front of her full-length mirror, but after forty-five minutes and a pile of already-tried shirts, she was nowhere close to finding the right top. She needed sexy but strong. Enticing but…oh, hell, she just wanted Alexi to be turned on. She grabbed a black scoop-neck sweater and tossed the rest of the shirts on a chair. He better care that she’d tried this hard.
She brushed her teeth, messed with her hair for a minute, and renewed her makeup. She glanced at the old perfume bottle on the shelf above the toilet that her mom had called her secret weapon. She sniffed, detecting nothing. Maybe it was a potion from Jen’s mom or something. Perhaps one little dab. Couldn’t hurt. She needed al
l the magic she could get. She focused to shift back to his dimension. To him.
Upon arrival she went invisible and started the countdown. Her arrival destination lacked city noise, but she did detect ocean waves in the far distance.
“It’s just us,” Alexi rumbled.
She jumped.
“You need not be invisible, but good defensive strategy.”
Her stomach clenched as she dropped invisibility. Had he always sounded that sexy? “Where are you?”
“Right here,” he rumbled nearby.
Reaching around blindly, she collided with him. A sideways step bumped her into him. She looped her arms around his neck, buried her head in his chest, and inhaled his clean masculine scent. His arms wrapped her. Tranquility settled into her mind for the first time since they’d been shot and he disappeared from her life. This was where she belonged. This was the only place she wanted to be.
She whispered, “I couldn’t stand not knowing…after you’d been shot. I worried.”
“It will take more than a bullet to take me down.” She heard the humor in his tone.
“I don’t know. Seemed pretty bad.” She hugged him harder and blinked rapidly against the relief tears cresting on her lids. What was wrong with her today? Every little thing had her eyes leaking.
Long beyond the point her vision returned, he asked, “Are you okay, ragana?”
“Yeah…no. I’m not doing so well.” Please don’t let me go.
“Is it because of your sister? I am sorry she is dead. There was no choice. When Hades orders me to…I cannot argue with him.”
“Actually, it’s not that. I understand why you had to do what you did, but I’m pissed at you for keeping me in the dark about everything that day. What was all that poetic bullshit about trust?”
“If I had told you what might happen, then you would never have gone through with entering that building.”
After a few seconds of silence she admitted, “You’re probably right.”
“I know I’m right.”
“Frigging future-seeing thing. Not fair.” She shook her head against him.
He asked, “Then what’s the problem? Why are you not doing well?”