by Amber Lynn
“If I have to deal with a Spanish inquisition, you’re going to be sitting right next to me. Do you think we should immediately tell her we’re trying to have a baby? It was pretty funny when you told her we were thinking about building a house together.”
“You have an evil streak in you. I’d prefer we not share any baby news until we’re sure. It may take us a decade to convince the world that we belong together. Abbie seems like the kind of person who’d hear about a planned baby and instantly throw a party.”
Jack leaned my body back in the water so I could get my hair wet. Holding me with one arm, he reached over and grabbed my shampoo from the shelf behind me. When my hair was thoroughly drenched, I pulled myself back up.
“No one can throw a party, but I’m guessing you already have names picked out.”
“Hold on for a second,” he said before answering my question. It wasn’t like I could go anywhere, but I wrapped my arms around him and held on. “I do have ideas for names, but that’s only because I got a little excited when you told me we were going to have kids, and then gave me a cold shoulder for weeks. That left me a lot of time to think about things like names for our children.”
He let go of me while he dumped some shampoo in his hand and put the bottle down. Adding a little bit of water to his hands, he lathered the shampoo up and massaged it into my hair.
“Should I look again to make sure you’re still going to have the kids I saw?”
He shook his head. “Our future is our own to make now. I don’t see us having the perfect white picket fence life, but as long as you’re by my side, every day will be perfect. Lean back, and make sure to close your eyes.”
I followed directions and let the grime rinse out of my hair. The rest of my body still needed scrubbed, but my hair feeling clean was half the battle.
While I finished rinsing, a washcloth started making its way around my body. Not surprisingly, there were certain places it lingered a little longer than others.
“You haven’t said anything about me biting you. I hope it’s not an issue, because I feel a little like turning into a vampire around you.”
“As long as you can receive as well as give, there’s no problem at all. I wish the biting led to you getting marked. We’ll get married, so you’ll have a ring, but a werewolf mark is kind of a status symbol in my world. I know it’s stupid, but when I was little, I always thought about how it’d feel to see may mark on someone.”
“How do these marks work, can you show me one so I know what they look like? I’ve never seen one, and you have me curious.”
“I don’t know how they work, exactly. Supposedly when you mate with someone you decide you’re going to keep around, you bite them and the mark appears. The next time we see my sister, I’ll ask her to show you hers. It’s not like a normal one, but you can get an idea from it.”
Doing something I rarely ever did, I connected with Jack’s mind so I could see exactly what he pictured when he thought about his mate. Running into an image of me with a black paw print on my left shoulder blade made me feel giddy, which wasn’t a feeling I really ever had.
I brought myself up so my chest rubbed up against his. My back stiffened as I branded the image I saw into me. I didn’t have to cause the pain when I did it, but it made it feel more permanent. Evidently Jack had softened enough that the slight push that resulted from my marking pushed him out of me.
I didn’t know if marks were reciprocal, but I wanted the world to know Jack was mine too, so I put a matching mark on him. I didn’t let the pain reach the branding iron level that mine had, but he got a little tickle from it.
“What was that?”
He let me slide down his body, so I could stand on my own feet. I grabbed the washcloth from him and the bar of soap from behind me. I didn’t need to turn around to get the soap, but I did so he could see what I’d done.
I went to turn around, but his arms reached out and held me still. One of them lifted up and traced the paw print.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to articulate exactly how much I love you, Kennedy, but I will spend the rest of my life trying to prove it to you.”
He leaned down and kissed the mark, before letting me turn around. I looked up in his eyes, which were glittered with flecks of gold.
“It’s a good thing I love you too, Jack. Otherwise I’m sure your efforts would drive me crazy pretty fast. Let me get you cleaned up so we can go deal with our houseguest.”
Saying the words to him was so effortless that it almost scared me. The house didn’t come crashing down around us as I declared my love, so I took that as a sign there was hope for us. Dealing with Abbie once we made it downstairs was probably going to cause things to turn interesting, but we were a united front, and I had a feeling that front could battle through anything.
Chapter Eighteen
Getting dressed with Jack was an exercise in patience. He only had the clothes he’d worn the day before, so it was easy for him to jump right in to what he was going to wear. When it came to what I was going to wear, everything I owned was apparently too sexy.
I ended up in a pair of tan dress pants and a buttoned-up purple shirt that had three-quarter length sleeves. I toyed with unbuttoning an extra button or two, just to mess with Jack, but he quickly made sure my cleavage was hidden.
We made our way down the stairs with our hands locked together. Abbie didn’t even pretend to be coy, waiting at the bottom of the stairs for us.
“Whoa, it’s the wolf. I can’t say there were a lot of options, but after you physically pushed him out of your house, I am a little surprised.”
“Nice to see you too, Abbie. You didn’t happen to make breakfast, did you? I’m starving.”
Jack pushed by her and walked us into the kitchen as I spoke. He pulled out a chair and directed me to sit.
“Well, I can see why the black cloud that’s been hanging over this house has lifted. You’re glowing, Kennedy, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen this exact sheen on you.”
“You’re not going to lecture me for falling into his trap?”
Abbie knew about my past and his, so I expected a little more scolding. She took a seat next to me and laughed.
“I haven’t been able to come over to your house in weeks because of the funk you were in without him around. I’m not going to claim to understand what’s between you, but it’s pretty obvious that when you’re away from him, the world should stay out of your way.”
I looked at my friend. Her blue eyes were full of laughter.
“There were a lot of reasons for me to be in a funk. If you thought it was him, why didn’t you tell me to go find him and fix things?”
“Have you ever thought I was someone to turn to for relationship advice? I’m a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am kind of woman. Telling you to tie him down and get laid wouldn’t have solved the underlying issue you two had. I’m guessing you’ve come to some kind of understanding about how the past is the past and the attraction between you two is something you can’t fight.”
“I like her way of thinking. Add tying me down to the list of things we need to try.”
Jack’s head was in the fridge as he tried to find us something to eat. He was going to have an uphill climb if he thought there was any bacon hiding somewhere in the fridge.
“Only if I get to use heavy duty chains. I don’t think ropes will cut it with you.”
“We’ll figure something out. I guess it’s going to be fruit salads all around? We’re going to have to start introducing meat into your diet. I have a feeling if we keep things up, you’re going to start craving it.”
“But I thought you two couldn’t have kids. Wasn’t that part of all the doom and gloom going on? He’s going to have kids and because of your grandma, they can’t be yours.”
So much for not venturing to the topic of kids around Abbie. Mentioning cravings was enough to put her right on the path of baby talk.
“That’s what we’ve hea
rd, but Jack is determined to make sure I have his kids. Neither one of us knows how that’s going to work, but I think we’ll enjoy trying.”
“Okay, I have all sorts of things I want to say, but I’m not going to put a damper on the mood. I noticed there wasn’t a vehicle parked out front. Did you two skip merrily along from a reconcile at the library?”
There hadn’t been an official relationship to reconcile, since I didn’t count him spending one night as a relationship. I was surprised Abbie hadn’t said anything about the man she liked to just call a demon showing up back in town. I’d checked her face for any signs that he’d shown up at her house in retribution again.
I didn’t see any new signs of aging, so I hoped Jack was successful in making sure Helki didn’t know he’d come over. I’d done what I could to protect Abbie’s house, but I was afraid she’d invite him into the house again.
“He snuck in after I had an unexpected companion walk me part of the way home last night. Helki showed up at the library.”
Abbie knew the name. I’d told her what I thought it was just in case it had some kind of power over him. Hearing me say his name, Abbie stiffened.
“Shit.” She stood up and walked over to the back door, peeling back the curtain to look outside. “I’m guessing you guys didn’t take the fact that he got a little jealous when you just went to dinner together into to account when you got freaky, did you?”
“I did specifically ask Jack if anyone saw him come over, so it crossed my mind. When it came down to it, I obviously wasn’t thinking about him.”
“If you could think of anything other than me, I was doing something wrong. Since he’s back, I’ll probably spend the day trying to run him out of town.”
“Are you looking to get yourself killed?”
Abbie seemed satisfied that Helki wasn’t in my backyard, and walked back to the table. I didn’t like where her thoughts instantly went.
“I’m not afraid of an incubus. There’s very little chance he’s going to enthrall me.”
Jack brought over two bowls and put them in front of us, then he walked back to grab a bowl of his own. He’d found some peaches and grapes, which was impressive as far as I was concerned. I hadn’t been to the store in a week, so supplies were low.
“He’s not an incubus. He’s a satyr, and he gets power from having sex. The more sex he has, the more he can show off.”
I popped a grape in my mouth and bit down. I rarely had green grapes, preferring the purple variety, but the green ones had been on sale. I found them to be a little bitter, and the one in my mouth wasn’t any different.
“What do you mean he’s a satyr? When did you find that out?”
It was Jack’s turn to stiffen about something I’d said. I was on a roll for saying things that made people in the room uncomfortable.
“Artemis and Apollo mentioned a satyr killing humans when I took my little trip to the past. I didn’t get full explanations about what happened to the human. When I asked him about it yesterday, he didn’t deny that he was a satyr.”
“How is a satyr alive? Your mother personally hunted and killed every last one of them.”
“Why would she do that? She seemed annoyed by them, but I didn’t get the sense she was getting ready to go on a killing spree.”
I hadn’t gotten very far into my breakfast, and the turn in the conversation made me push my bowl away. Jack revealing something I didn’t know about my mother wasn’t something I expected to happen over breakfast.
“This falls under the ‘I don’t think you’ll believe it if I tell you, so I’d rather you see it for yourself’ category.”
“You’ll tell me and I’ll believe you because I can tell when someone lies to me. Just ask Abbie.”
“That’s true. I try to get things by her all the time and she always knows when I’m stretching the truth.”
Abbie wanted to hear the story as much as I did, so she would’ve agreed with me if I claimed the sky was orange.
“Fine, but if you question what I’m going to tell you, you have to promise you’ll go talk to Selina and Nikki. Nikki has a connection with Ece, and Ece was there at the time, so maybe she could prove it to you.”
“Ece, as in the first female werewolf? Nikki said her and Vik were reincarnations, she didn’t say anything about talking to anyone.”
“It isn’t something that happens all the time, but she’s learned quite a bit about the past from her.”
“I thought it was Selina who was relaying all the information about the past. Not that I didn’t think Nikki could get glimpses, but Selina did all the talking.”
“I’d say neither one of them get full stories, but I don’t have their kind of power, so I don’t know exactly how any of that works. What I do know is that going into the reading, Selina warned me you would see things and if you pulled out too soon you’d hate me.”
Jack didn’t jump right into an explanation. Instead, he picked up a peach from my bowl and fed it to me. I tried to take it away from him, but he was insistent on being the one to put it in my mouth.
“There’s more important things than eating right now.”
I looked over to Abbie’s bowl and saw that it was empty. Jack’s was too, and evidently he was offended that I didn’t immediately eat what he made for me.
“Taking care of you is the most important thing to me, and you need to eat.”
“I’ll eat everything in the fridge if you tell me why you think my mother killed all the satyrs.”
“Even the ketchup? I’m pretty sure that’s all that’s left in there.”
Jack grabbed my hand and pulled me out of my chair and over to him. When he had me situated in his lap, he wrapped his hands around my belly, under the table where Abbie couldn’t see him caressing it.
“If it makes you feel better, I’ll eat the ketchup. What did I miss from not following Artemis around?”
“You missed her learning that it wasn’t the wolves that killed your family. We were framed by the satyrs. I don’t know the full story about why they did what they did. I just know they were wiped out after Artemis found out.”
“But I saw her curse wolves so they couldn’t find love. Didn’t either you or your sister tell me that wolves didn’t love until recently?”
The twist in the story wasn’t expected. I’d assumed from how much they’d been pushing for me to learn more that there was going to be some miraculous turn that put the wolves in a good light, but I didn’t think they were absolved of their sins.
“As I’ve said, there were mistakes on both sides. I’m told curses made in the heat of passion aren’t things that can easily be undone. The curse stood until you were born. It took a little longer for Nikki and Vik to be born, but your mother’s curse has run its course.”
“You keep saying that line about mistakes. I’ve heard all sorts of mistakes made by the goddesses involved. What exactly did the wolves do?”
“They killed Leto,” Jack whispered into my ear.
I craned my head around to see his face. It was blank, waiting for my reaction. I imagined he expected me to freak out and push him out of the house like I had when I thought wolves killed my father and siblings.
“How in the world did werewolves kill a goddess, or titan, whatever you want to call her?”
“I wasn’t there, so I don’t have an answer. You really should’ve seen this all for yourself. The parts I can relay only get confusing.”
“I’d say. You don’t know why the satyrs would set you up. You claim wolves killed Leto, but you don’t know how they did it. How’s your lie detector doing, Kennedy?”
“He’s not lying. The issues about why the setup took place and Leto’s death really don’t matter right now. The biggest thing we need to figure out is what a satyr is doing in the twenty-first century. We already knew things weren’t safe for humans in the area, but if you’re right about my family wiping out his species, and he knows it, we have a bigger problem.”
; I didn’t know enough about the situation to know whether he could’ve been involved with the death of my family. He hadn’t attacked me personally, so I hoped that meant he wasn’t hip to the past. I liked having the upper hand by knowing more than my opponent.
Something about Helki had warned me he was going to be an opponent the first time we met. I’d been intrigued to find someone with strong magic, but something about him had told me we wouldn’t be friends.
“I haven’t had the unlucky privilege of talking to him. Did either of you pick anything up the times he talked to you?”
It was probably good Jack hadn’t spent time conversing with the satyr. The only time I’d seen them anywhere near each other had ended up in my first kiss with Jack, and a pissed off satyr. I supposed if Helki wanted to just kill me, he wouldn’t have acted jealous.
“There wasn’t a lot of talking once he got me under his thrall. He could’ve told me his evil plans to take over the world, and I wouldn’t have known.”
“He’s been pretty cryptic when we’ve talked. He was supposed to come by the library today to talk about how he was alive and what he knows about my mother.”
Jack growled, a more menacing rumble than I’d heard from him. I leaned back into him and kissed his neck.
“Calm down. You know you want to know the answer to that first question.”
His teeth grated against each other before he was subdued enough to respond. I glanced over at Abbie to see her reaction to his gold eyes. If he was growling, I was sure they’d changed.
Abbie shook her head when she saw me looking. The small smile turning up her lips let me know she wasn’t afraid of the big bad wolf.
“I don’t want you anywhere near him. Why in the world haven’t you protected the library like you have the house? Every step you make should be within a security bubble, especially now.”
“Please tell me you’re not going to be one of those boyfriends.”
My words were sarcastic, because I already knew what kind of boyfriend he was going to be. Eventually he was going to have me shackled up at home to make sure the world didn’t somehow hurt me. He was going to have to understand that I was more of a danger to the world than it was to me.