by Mikayla Lane
“Is it real?” she whispered in awe, afraid if she was loud it would disappear.
Shane looked down at Charlie, who was so excited she was trembling, and he sighed knowing he couldn’t deny her this, she’d been through enough in her young life. Instead of demanding the room be put back the way it was—like he intended—he picked her up in his arms and gave her a brilliant smile.
“Grandpa doesn’t lie. You think he wouldn’t make it real? You know better,” Shane teased as he ran to the castle with her and jumped inside.
Shane knelt on all fours as he chased a giggling Charlie through the pink tubes.
“Argh, mateys! I got me a princess!” he snarled in a playful pirate voice as he chased her through the tubes towards the pirate ship.
Angel laughed when Drago headed towards the pirate ship. He turned halfway there with a grin on his face.
“What? Someone has to play pirates for her until Chris and Liam’s boys are ready to do it,” he said with a shrug as he disappeared inside the ship before reappearing on the deck and manning a cannon.
Drago pointed the cannon at the tubes and shot it at Shane. Several grunts of approval were heard from the other guys when a large, cannon-sized foam ball shot out of the cannon and struck the clear red tube where Shane was crawling after Charlie.
As most of the guys wandered over to see what other weaponry was available at the ship, the women headed towards the pink castle. They managed to get inside, and Dree and Angel grinned in appreciation. They nodded at Quinn, who saw what had them so excited and she grinned.
Each of them popped up from one of the four turrets in the castle and began shooting sponge arrows at the guys with the crossbows mounted in the turrets.
“Oh no you didn’t!” Cole yelled out when a sponge arrow nailed him in the back of the head.
Suddenly all cannons were manned, and there was a flurry of spongy ammunition hurling across the room with taunts and teasing thrown in. Shane and Deacon were just tying Charlie to the mast of the ship with a plastic string of rope when Mikal, Chance, Grai, and Tricia walked in the room.
“Are you kidding me?” Mikal muttered, completely unheard through the playful shouts and taunts of the combatants.
“You did have the tubes reinforced didn’t you?” Tricia asked Grai worriedly as they swayed with the weight of four brothers crawling through them to get to the castle and the women shooting arrows across the room.
Grai grinned and nodded his head as he took in the happiness he could feel enveloping the room. It was exactly what he’d hoped it would be—a place for them all to be themselves. A place where his grandchildren didn’t have to think of the horrible things in the world they would one day have to face.
Grai opened his arms and seconds later, Charlie appeared in them and hugged him close.
“Thank you, gran’pa,” she whispered.
“Thank you for being my little princess,” he whispered back as he stroked her soft, white hair.
Grai opened his eyes and looked over at Lara intently until she nodded, then he set Charlie on the floor.
“Why don’t you show your mommy your castle? I think your aunts need some help defending it,” Grai said with a grin at her.
Charlie turned and looked at the castle before gasping dramatically and putting a hand over her mouth.
“I’m coming! Lock the door! They can’t get inside if you lock it!” she yelled as she ran to the castle, her straight white hair flying behind her like a beautiful cape.
Quinn and Angel were laughing as they pushed against the door inside the castle that led to the tubes while Cole pushed at it from inside the tube.
“I’ll be right back,” Grai said to Tricia through the shengari’ before he followed Lara out of the room.
Mikal appeared beside him as they walked down the hallway towards Dread.
“I’m glad you’re back, my friend,” Grai said to Dread, noting how exhausted he appeared to be.
Grai knew the toll it had taken on Dread to spend two weeks with Fiona, Moira, and the other anomalous hybrids. Dread just nodded once in acknowledgement, refusing to speak anymore of the situation with his mate. He had another priority at the moment.
“I have spoken with Fiona at length,” Dread said, not wanting to waste any more time. “She doesn’t know where Satalis is hiding; none of them do. The bastard trusts no one, but we now know enough to plan a full out assault on every damn thing he’s touched—his businesses, homes, contacts, material investments, and wealth.”
“You want to draw him out by taking away everything he’s using to hide,” Grai said with an appreciative nod. “You have the lists?”
Dread held up a half inch thick binder.
“We have everything Fiona and Moira gathered on him over the years. There’s shit in here we didn’t even find with all of our resources because it’s all a paper trail only,” he said as he handed the binder to Grai.
Chris headed down the hallway to where everyone was discussing Satalis after hearing from Mikal. He looked through the binder as Grai flipped through it, not really caring what was in it right now. It didn’t matter; as the team leader, his decision was already made.
“We’re in,” Chris said as he nodded at Dread.
The door to the entertainment room opened, and out came Deacon, Siggy, Dante, Drago, and Viper. Siggy grinned as he snatched the binder from his father’s hands and jumped back from his reach.
“I need this. Thank you,” Siggy said as he flipped through the information.
“Oh we can inflict some pain with this,” Dante whistled as he flipped a page over Siggy’s shoulder.
“I want more than pain,” Dread ground out as he clenched his fists in rage as an image of his broken mate flashed in his mind. “I want more than just a quick and easy death. I want him to know the full power of the House of Death and the true meaning of pain before I kill him.”
“We will help you make that happen. I promise you that, my friend,” Chris vowed on behalf of his siblings.
Dread nodded his head once before heading down the hallway behind Siggy and Dante as they went to a conference room to study the information in the binder.
“Is he well enough for this?” Grai asked Viper and Drago.
He needed to make sure Dread hadn’t become unhinged during the last week he’d spent trying to get near his mate while learning what he could about Satalis from Fiona, Ainsley, and the others in Peru.
“He’s as well as you can expect under the circumstances,” Drago assured them.
“We can keep him balanced,” Viper promised at the same time as he wondered if they could. He’d never seen his older brother so focused on vengeance before.
“Anything I have is yours, including my prayers to the gods for Dread and Moira,” Grai said before he excused himself and went back into the entertainment room.
Chris watched a beaming Quinn come out of the room, and he headed over to her.
“Is everything OK?” she asked when she neared him.
“Yes, my love, everything will be fine. We just have to go back to work soon,” he admitted as he pulled her into a hug and kissed the top of her head.
“You’re going after him aren’t you?” Quinn whispered.
“Yes,” Chris said simply, unwilling to ever lie to her again.
“I hope you kill him this time. But don’t you dare do what you did the last time,” she said.
“Never again. I’m coming back to you,” Chris promised.
Dread sat slowly at the table in the conference room, his rage barely held in check as he tried to push Moira from his mind and concentrate solely on destroying everything Satalis loved.
*****
Satalis screamed in impotent rage at the bare stone walls. The Dranovian bastards had somehow laid waste to his breeding program and ruined his ability to restart it. It would take him years to find more hybrids and many more years before he could get viable results. They’d set his plans back by decades, and he didn
’t have that long before his other machinations bore fruit.
“Well, there’s no avoiding it now,” he screamed at the empty room. “The enemy of my enemy is now my ally.”
He stormed out of the room and up several steps.
“Someone get me that bastard who runs the local Ralidina cult,” Satalis ordered a hybrid.
Coming in July 2016
Niklosi’s Nightmare
Niklosi Jevasari, Valendran prankster and deadly warrior, vowed he was going to avoid a mate for as long as he could. Nik liked nothing more than his life of missions and danger, living only to work hard and play even harder, taking nothing seriously if he didn’t have to.
BJ Markson was a small town sheriff with more cows in her jurisdiction than people and less drama than drying paint. One night when she’s called out on a noise complaint, she finds a dangerous stranger killing another man and turning his body to dust.
Suddenly, the warrior who hates complications and the sheriff who doesn’t believe in anything are going to clash in a battle of wills and beliefs that will end with one life changing forever and the other begging for a chance to escape . . . Niklosi’s Nightmare.