by Kristie Cook
The Council swore me in as matriarch—the first coronation ceremony I’d actually had. It wasn’t as bad as I’d expected all these years, although my numb mind might have had something to do with the fact that I didn’t notice all the attention on me, even when everyone took to their knees, their heads bowed. In fact, the numbness still hadn’t allowed me to think about how on earth I was going to lead the Amadis. The reality of being matriarch hadn’t quite set in.
But I did understand Lucas’s statement now. He hadn’t returned that night at the abbey. He hadn’t been able to walk away with my son or the lykora. But he had made his point. He’d taken away those who were precious to me. And he’d taken away my security. He’d put me into a position he knew I wasn’t ready for. He wanted to see exactly how far I would go, and not only for Dorian. Because he’d ensured that all of the Amadis were now my children. Not Rina’s, not Mom’s. Mine. He wanted to see my real wrath.
He’d declared war against his own daughter.
And war he would get.
He had no idea the true wrath I could unleash. I didn’t know myself how far I would go. But we would all soon find out.
For now, however, as Tristan and I sat in our suite in the Amadis mansion, I needed a moment. A moment to be me, Alexis: a mother, a wife, a daughter, and a granddaughter. A friend and a lover. Not a matriarch. Not a warrior. Just a person with hopes and dreams that had been shattered. A person who had experienced tremendous loss. A person who needed to mourn so she could recover and become even stronger.
I’d cried when Mom and Rina first died, unable to control my emotions at the time, but I’d maintained control ever since. And it had been the only time I’d cried since the day Dorian disappeared. But now that it was all over, I could no longer hold up the dam. I curled up on the antique loveseat against my husband, and he wrapped his arms around me.
“It’s okay, my love,” he murmured against my ear. “Let it go.”
And finally I did. I sobbed.
I sobbed for the friend and protector I thought I’d lost and had regained. I sobbed for Sasha who had fought so hard for us and would protect us until her last day, which was hopefully a long ways away. I sobbed for my son and all that he had been through and that he was back home where he belonged. Where he would always belong. I sobbed for how much he had already changed, how he brooded even now as he sat in his bedroom with Sasha, rather than playing outside.
I sobbed for my grandmother, my leader, my role model, my idol, the woman I thought I could never understand, but I understood more than I knew, for realizing too late how much she loved me and everyone else. I sobbed for my mother, who had raised me on her own as a Norman for my safety, who had always protected me, who had taken care of my son so I wouldn’t have to be a single mother, who had taught me to be strong and noble and loyal. I sobbed for the life we shared and for the future I now had to live without her. I sobbed for the baby girl we still hadn’t conceived and maybe never would. I sobbed for the Amadis, the ones we had already lost, the ones we would still lose, and the ones we would gain. I sobbed for all of humanity and the dark future ahead.
When I finally finished, my gut aching from crying so hard, I wiped away my tears and looked up into the most caring, understanding, loving, and beautiful pair of eyes I would ever know. My husband’s. He gave me the strength I needed. He was my rock, my pillar, my Second. I didn’t have my mother or grandmother in this world with me, and I didn’t have a daughter. I was the only one of my kind left. The only Amadis daughter.
But I had my son and my Tristan.
He brushed his lips across my forehead and pulled me tighter against him in confirmation.
And for the first time in weeks, I smiled.
Epilogue
“Explain to me again how your taking Dorian was in everyone’s best interest.” I leaned over Owen, who actually looked kind of small as the chair seemed to swallow him. I sat on the edge of my desk in Rina’s office, which I’d reluctantly taken over, with my arms crossed and my fingers tapping against my bicep, as he slid lower in his seat. “I’m still not sure I understand.”
Weeks had passed, and by now I’d heard his story several times, but I didn’t miss an opportunity to torture him. Whatever I could dish out would never compare to what Tristan and I had gone through when our son had been taken.
“You’d barely left Hades before Kali told me what Lucas had planned, and she divulged her own plan to me,” the warlock explained once again. “She thought she had everything figured out with the stones she created. Lucas had asked her to create them—they weren’t her own idea, although she took credit for them. He’s been working with governments around the world, promising them super-soldiers, but his real goal was to be able to take control of the Normans and use them.”
“But why?” I asked. I hadn’t yet tried to make sense of this part of the story, but I needed to understand now. As matriarch. My stomach knotted as it always did when I was reminded of my new title. “He has his own army already.”
“Because Normans are expendable,” Owen said, and he cleared his throat when I gasped. “In Lucas’s eyes, that is. He wants an army to fight the worst battles so he doesn’t lose too many of his own. But when he asked her to create the stones, Kali saw them as her opportunity to take control. Her goal for centuries had been to oust Lucas and take over as leader of the Daemoni. So instead of making the brothers and their offspring—which also meant the soldiers who shared their stones—respond to Lucas, she ensured the spell made them respond to her. But Lucas had already come up with the idea of the lykora blood.” He let out a dark chuckle. “Kali threw a fit when Lucas was about to one-up her like that. Since both you and Tristan were away from the safe house, Lucas acted, and Kali knew she had to act, too. Lucas wanted Sasha, but Kali wanted Dorian.”
“Why?”
“To use him, of course. She had all kinds of plans to use him against Lucas. Starting with pissing you off so you’d go after him. She thought you and Tristan had the best chance of killing him, and then she could lead. But even if you didn’t, she had possession of what the Daemoni wanted most. She wanted the Ancients to see she wasn’t afraid to take Dorian. She wanted to hold him as a pawn over them and the Amadis. Along with her Norman army, Dorian would be her key to the throne.” He shifted in his seat, sitting up higher as he explained his actions. “I instantly saw that the fastest way to hammer down her trust in me was to volunteer for the job and follow through on the one thing that would hurt you the most. Plus, it meant I had Dorian and nobody else did. I could make sure he stayed safe. I was protecting him.”
“Which you could have done by not abandoning us in the first place,” I pointed out. Once again.
“Right. But you needed Kali’s soul, and I wanted her gone, out of this world forever. And I needed you to do it. We had to work together. I discovered her weakness. You had the jar, and I knew you’d do it right.”
“And why couldn’t you let us know you were behind it all but still on our side?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “You know that first time you reached Kali’s mind—when you ticked her off so bad? She said you felt her.” I nodded at the memory of the scream in my head. I hadn’t recognized it as Kali at the time, but knew that’s what he referred to. “She implanted a mind-trigger in you. Every time you got close, she hit it, and it gave her access to your mind. It’s kind of along the same lines of what she did with some of the Council members a couple of years ago. So if you knew, you could give me away without knowing it. Then Dorian and I both would have been dead.”
I exhaled sharply. “Okay, but six months, Owen? Really? Do you have any idea what we went through?”
Six months had felt like a lifetime. When I noticed how much Dorian had changed, it still felt as though years had passed. I swore Kali put some kind of age-progression spell on him. He’d grown half-a-foot, standing three inches taller than me, and looked more like his father than ever. His hair had darkened to
a dirty blond, and he appeared to be twelve or thirteen rather than nine. He had the attitude of a preteen, too. Owen said he wouldn’t be surprised if Kali had done such a thing—the faster Dorian came into his full powers, the more valuable he became—although the magic had probably died with her. I hoped so. He was already growing up way too fast without any help.
“I’m sorry,” Owen said for the thousandth time. “I am so, so sorry, Alexis. I don’t know how many times I have to say it. I tried to make it happen sooner. I dropped the cloak so you could find us, and I left clues for Blossom’s tracking spell to pick up on. But Kali was psycho. She’d get all paranoid for no reason and change her plans without telling me. I made the portal, instead of letting her do it, so I could keep it open for you to come through. Before that, I took us on the route by the Fairfax safe house so you would pick up our mind signatures.”
“Well, you really pushed Blossom and me,” I said, pouring on the guilt factor. He probably didn’t need it. Rina had told him many times before that he pushed our limits—especially mine—way too far, and he needed to be careful. Sounding like her made me sad, so I could only imagine how it made him feel, being on the receiving end.
“Are you done torturing Scarecrow for the thirtieth time?” Tristan asked as he sauntered into my office. “You know that’s not the real reason he’s in here.”
I shrugged. “We were waiting on you. What better way to pass the time?”
I glared at Owen, silently daring him to roll his eyes or make a smart aleck remark. He knew I’d forgiven him, but he also knew I wouldn’t forget for a very long time. Not three days before he’d taken Dorian had he promised me he would never take my son anywhere without our permission. He’d broken that promise—and all kinds of trust on multiple levels—and I wasn’t going to let him off easy. Even if he did blame himself for Rina and Mom.
Owen had never known the part of Kali’s plan that brought Mom and Rina into danger. He’d thought she’d chosen to go to northern England because she had a castle near there, not because the soldiers tied to Noah were based out of Yorkshire. And apparently she’d chosen to take Noah specifically to get her revenge on Rina.
Owen had hoped we’d followed them through the portal and were on our way. When he planted Dorian on the sacred grounds, he had no idea Kali had used Noah to lure Rina and Mom to her, so it had never occurred to him that Kali would use Rina the way she did so she could enter the sacred grounds. We decided that Kali had altered her plan for revenge when Tristan and I showed up and she realized Owen had double-crossed her.
Rina’s and Mom’s deaths changed me, and I’d do anything to have them back, but Owen’s plan could have gone even worse. We all could have died in a bloodbath. He’d been right about Kali being too arrogant to call in other Daemoni for back up, but she’d still had a lot of firepower at her fingertips. Firepower that now belonged to Lucas.
Which was the real reason we’d gathered in my office right now.
“So you were going to tell us about Noah and those soldiers,” Tristan said as he sat next to me on the edge of my desk.
“Yeah, that,” Owen said. He inhaled a deep breath before diving into it. “That really was a DoD building where you almost caught us, and that’s a Lucas thing, not a Kali thing. Not entirely, anyway. Lucas got fed up with the so-called weakness of the Summoned brothers and their offspring. I guess he also finally used up his patience with trying to replicate Jordan’s Juice. So when he made ties with the U.S. military, they came to him with the idea of creating these super-soldiers using Daemoni blood. They said they’d give him more infiltration in the higher ranks if he could give up some of his people and their blood, and not just to the U.S. Several countries are involved. He gave them the brothers and a bunch of their descendants.”
“That’s who’s locked up in there?” I asked, my teeth on edge. I shouldn’t have been surprised—this was Lucas we spoke about—but I still couldn’t believe he’d give up those he’d worked so hard to get. Actually, I guess he hadn’t. Tristan, Dorian, and I were the only ones he really had to work for. And the only ones he’d never get.
“There and in other places around the world. And Kali wormed her way into the project with her promise of the stones. She implanted the stones in the Daemoni who went to the DoD, let them soak, as she put it, then broke up the stones and implanted them in all the soldiers who had their blood. Then not only would those soldiers be stronger and maybe have certain extra abilities, but they’d be able to control them, too. The Daemoni would be able to control them, not the DoD.”
“You mean Kali would have the control,” Tristan clarified.
“Like I said, it was supposed to be Lucas—that had been his plan after all—but she’d tried to put one over on him.”
“But . . . she’s gone,” I said. “Who has control now?”
“Well, obviously Lucas,” Tristan answered for Owen. “As Scarecrow said, Lucas trumped Kali with the lykora blood.”
“But he couldn’t have taken that much of Sasha’s blood,” I said.
“Couldn’t he have?” Owen asked. “I don’t know how long he had her. I don’t know how much they need to be affected.”
“If his primary goal is control and loyalty, he wouldn’t need to give the blood to everyone,” Tristan said. “We saw it used on the Norman soldiers, but he doesn’t have to give it to all of them. He only has to give it to the Summoned brothers and their offspring.”
“Right,” Owen said. “All of the Norman soldiers with stone-chips in them would feel the same thing their so-called masters do. So Lucas only needs to control the masters—the brothers and their descendants. Oh, and Martin. Kali gave him Martin, too, but I don’t know if Lucas bothered using him or not.”
Tristan steepled his fingers together and rested his chin on the tips. “So we could potentially have thousands, maybe tens of thousands of human soldiers under Lucas’s control. Some of them, if not all of them, extremely dangerous.”
Owen nodded, his face grave. “And of course, we can’t kill them.”
“If that’s not bad enough,” Char said as she walked into my office with long, purposeful strides, “you need to turn on the TV.”
Vanessa followed her in and brushed her hand over Owen’s arm, but she came to my side. She propped herself against my desk and draped an arm across my shoulders, and I leaned against her, into her hug. What can I say? I’d been wrong about her. She was Amadis through and through. She was also my sister. And I needed her.
We all turned our eyes toward the flat screen in the corner. I didn’t want to make too many changes to the Amadis mansion so soon after Rina’s passing, but Tristan and I insisted we have electricity in our offices, along with computers, Internet service, and access to the news networks. Tristan picked up the remote from my desk and turned the television on. Every channel showed the same thing:
“It’s happening in several major metropolitan areas around the world,” the reporter was saying as the screen displayed what at first glance looked like anarchy in a city’s streets—like a riot after a big sporting event or a controversial court case. But when I watched the action more closely, I saw.
“Oh, my God,” I gasped, clapping my hand over my mouth. “Those are . . . vampires. Attacking right there. In the open.”
As if to demonstrate my words, a vamp’s mouth clamped over a Norman’s throat, blood spilling down the woman’s white blouse.
Then a naked man ran into view, and as he lunged for the camera, he exploded into a wolf, were-goo raining all over the street and onto the camera lens. The camera banged around on the ground for a minute followed by blood-curdling screams that caused my stomach to clench, and then the camera came upright. A familiar face with pale red hair, crooked yellow teeth, and an ogre’s grin came on screen—the same face that had sat across the table from me years ago and told me the man by my side didn’t really love me.
“Ian,” Tristan muttered.
“Guess what, mates?” Ian said int
o the camera, sending a chill through my veins. “Vampires, werewolves, witches, and warlocks—we’re all real.” He leaned closer to the camera, a sinister gleam in his eyes as his tongue ran over his bloodied lips. “And we’re coming for your blood . . . for your flesh . . . for your souls.”
About the Author
Kristie Cook is a lifelong, award-winning writer in various genres, from marketing communications to fantasy fiction. She continues to write the Soul Savers Series, a New Adult paranormal romance / contemporary fantasy, with Promise, Purpose, Devotion, Power, and the latest release, Wrath, book five, available now. She’s also written a companion novella, Genesis: A Soul Savers Novella, which details the compelling history of her Soul Savers mythology. Over 250,000 Soul Savers books have been sold, with Promise peaking at #54 on the Amazon Top 100 Paid list and at #1 in the Amazon Fantasy category.
The Space Between, consistently one of the top rated New Adult books on Amazon, kicks off her second New Adult paranormal series, The Book of Phoenix.
Besides writing, Kristie enjoys reading, cooking, traveling and riding on the back of a motorcycle. She has lived in ten states, but currently calls Southwest Florida home with her husband, three sons, a beagle, and a puggle.
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