by Leia Stone
‘I’m fine.’ My eyes flicked upward for a moment and I saw that most of the pack was gathered around, the circle of dead grass inching towards them.
A wave of dizziness came over me then, and I prayed that I wouldn’t pass out. Not before I could save him. The emotions of it all become too much; tears started rolling down my cheeks.
“Come on, Isaac! Get up!” I shouted as the magic swirled faster around him and I, creating a tornado of purple and orange.
Suddenly two strong hands clamped down on my shoulders, green magic shot down my arms, and energy zipped through my body, giving me strength.
Logan…
Whenever I needed him, he was always there. My better half.
Isaac rolled on his back, gasping for air, and stared up at me, eyes wide, dripping tears.
Relief poured through me as I unclenched my white-knuckled hands from the staffs, ceasing the magical wind tunnel, and fell on top of him, crying and hugging him.
He chuckled and then winced. “I knew you could do it,” he told me, patting my back. “And also your hair is in my mouth.”
I burst into painful, broken-rib laughter, and pulled away to get a better look at him. His coloring was healthier and his eyes had more life. He was going to be okay.
I fell backward next to him, just allowing myself to relax and lie down, letting go for the first time since I’d fallen from that canyon. For once, I could be at peace with who I was. If I shifted, I wasn’t going to be hunted and killed.
Logan wordlessly lay next to me, holding my hand, and the three of us looked up at the pristine white clouds.
“Ya’ll are crazy,” Danny said, hovering over us.
Keegan laid down his shotgun and plopped right on the ground next to Logan. “I guess I’m out of a job, huh?” he asked Logan.
Skyborn no longer needed protection. What an amazing feeling.
Logan chuckled. “I think I’ll still keep you around.”
“Yep. We’ll need security for our new Earth School,” I told them both, and that got me a pat on the hand from Isaac.
We did it. We’d snuffed out the darkness. For once the good had come out victorious.
Chapter 12
One Year Later…
“Oh my God, I can’t handle the cuteness!” Danny squealed.
He looked dashing in his charcoal gray suit, complete with dark blue bow tie. Lily was one year old and walking. The little flower girl dress she wore was too adorable for words. Light pink, it cinched at the waist and belled out like a princess dress.
“Can you believe I’m getting married? Now I really regret not being wilder in my teenage years,” Danny said. Danny had wanted to get married right after Ireland but weddings took time to plan and we’d had more to deal with back home than we thought.
Nadine and I laughed. “I’m sure you were plenty wild,” I told him. I’d heard enough stories to know that was true.
Lynn was trying to wrangle Lily and get a pink bow to stay in her hair, but the toddler kept ripping it out. The sound of the crashing waves outside was peaceful and calm, much as the last year had been. We’d had a few run-ins with druids trying to carry on, or take over, Ardan’s mission, but they were weak. Like, “barely conjure a ball of red magic” weak. When Ardan died, he sucked their magic away with him. Now they were forced to either try to hunt skyborn, which they weren’t strong enough to do, and there were too few of them, or go into hiding. Isaac had hopes that it might lead them to take up earth druidry like in the old days. He had hopes that they would remember that nature could give them power too.
We’d opened the Earth School three months ago, with only five students. Casey, Geoff, a tiny fairy that was Minka’s friend, Danny’s cousin who was a sorcerer, and then one young druid girl who was orphaned by the battle in Ireland. It was a random bunch, but we had Danny acting as sorcery professor. Eva had taken to teaching the fairy about magic. Logan and Sophie were training Casey and Geoff. And then Isaac and I were working with the druid girl. Best of all … they were friends. All of them. They ate every meal together, and hung out as a group as often as they could. Our school would have no race divisions if I could help it. Casey even offered her molar to make the fairy, Jaslene, big.
Danny turned his attention to Nadine. “When are you and Gear getting married?”
The tattoo artist smiled at him and raised her left hand. There was a small infinity symbol tattooed on her wedding finger.
My mouth fell open. “When did that happen and why wasn’t I invited!” How dare she!
Nadine had taken the place of my best friend. Jen and I still spoke and texted often, but she was off at graduate school living a different life. Nadine and Gear still lived on the land, and in the event that we had some shifter teen students enroll, they had offered to teach them. Meanwhile they were acting as groundkeepers. Nadine had added another stray to our growing list of animals. Hemlock and Mittens had already taken kindly to the one eyed Chihuahua we’d named Cyclops.
Nadine smiled. “Last night, walking past a tat shop in Waikiki.”
Danny groaned. “How boring. You get a tattoo and that’s it? No cake? No dress?”
Nadine laughed. She and I shared the same views on marriage. We didn’t need a big song and dance to prove our love was forever. “I’m in the dress now and getting the cake tonight,” she told him, winking.
He chuckled. “Yeah, MY cake. That dress does look amazing on you, by the way,” he declared.
Nadine and I wore matching purple silk cocktail gowns, our hair all twisted up into a bed of curls.
“Thank you. That suit looks quite dapper on you,” she told him.
He pressed his hands into the coat to smooth it. “I’m nervous. What if it’s too windy, or if the food isn’t good enough, or—?”
“Everything will be fine. Also, I’m pretty sure I saw Rufus wrapping a gold bar as your present.”
Danny’s eyes widened as he perked up. “Bless Uncle Rufus.” Our alchemist had become an important benefactor to the Earth School, supplying us with endless money to finance the buildings and infrastructure we would need as the school grew. He and Isaac were good friends again, leaving the past in the past. Eva and Isaac were now a couple, and Roxy and Dominic had come together too. Everyone was really happy and at peace. Even Sophie had found someone to love, Johnny, an unassuming member of Dee’s pack. Her group had pretty much disbanded after Ireland, but we still kept in touch.
“Alright, let’s do this,” Danny declared.
I walked over and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “It’s going to be the best wedding ever.”
And it was. Or at least of the minimal amount of weddings I’d attended. We danced, ate, drank and laughed. Eva drank a little too much and almost bragged to a table of sorcerers that she had The Eye—Isaac was able to shove a dinner roll in her mouth before she could. I’d taken it from the body of the truth witch, back in Ireland, and given it to her. We heard sometime later that the truth witch had killed Hensel, so we didn’t need to worry about him anymore. It was hers.
As the sun set, I was on the patio of the beachside hotel with Logan, Sophie, Keegan, Danny, Dominic, Roxy, Nadine, and Gear. The original pack. Keegan raised his glass. “To Cooper and Ruben, who are missed during this special night.”
We raised our glasses. “Cooper and Ruben!” we echoed.
I touched my mother’s necklace at the base of my throat, and wished she could be here as well to see what we’d accomplished, and to meet my friends… my family. The necklace was a little discolored from the barn fire, but it worked just fine.
Logan and I congratulated Danny and Keegan once again, and then we made our way down the beach, hand in hand, toward our villa.
“So I was thinking, when we have kids, Logan Junior for a boy and Racine for a girl, after your mom’s real name,” Logan said.
I laughed. “Logan Sharp! Stop trying to have babies with me. I’m too young.”
He chuckled and it gave me goosebumps. I
loved his laugh. “You’re right. We have forever to have children.”
He ran his eyes down the length of my body and my belly warmed. Taking two quick strides, he was suddenly pressed up against me. When his lips pushed against mine I moaned, the heat flared to life within me.
Logan pulled away, grinning.
“What?” I asked, my hands finding their way to his biceps.
“You’re in heat,” he mused.
I smiled. Tonight was going to be fun. I was the luckiest girl in the world to spend the rest of my immortal life with him. In heat or not, he was everything to me.
“Well then, I guess I should go try on the lingerie Danny got for me as a thank you for being his bridesmaid.”
Logan’s eyes practically glowed green. “Is it customary to get your bridesmaids lingerie? I thought it was the other way around.”
I laughed. “No, but this is Danny we are talking about.”
Logan chuckled and pulled me along, continuing the walk to our room.
“Sloane?”
I looked over at him, admiring the way the sunset cast shadows across his strong jaw. “Hmm?”
“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said.
He had no idea. He’d saved me, literally and figuratively.
“Fine! Three years,” I groaned playfully.
He frowned, seemingly confused. “What?”
“In three years we can start trying to have a baby,” I informed him with a smirk.
The sheer joy that spread across his face lit me up inside, and my dragon practically purred. He scooped me up then, I laughed and kicked my legs as he ran full speed to our room.
We did it. We’d gotten our happily ever after.
THE END
Check out the first chapter of my next brand new series Dream Wars on the next page.
Los Angeles
Year 2030
Chapter One
I tipped my black coffee back, taking down the rest of the cup in one big swallow. I needed to stay awake until we met our next job assignment in an hour.
As I rolled out my neck, my comrade gave me a once-over.
“You look like shit. When was the last time we slept?” Brisk asked me. His deep, husky voice always made me melt a little, but we’d tried the dating thing and were better off as friends, coworkers. Besides, everyone knew he’d end up with Ronnie anyway, once she learned to get that stick out of her ass and finally give in to his advances.
“Forty-nine hours, and she’s on her period, so that doesn’t help,” my best friend answered for me.
I rolled my eyes, groaning. “Geez, Ronnie! You’re stalking me again,” I warned her as she tied her long, black, silky Asian hair into a bun and placed two small throwing knives in to secure it.
She pursed her lips. “Need I remind you of my position on this team, Commander?”
Sass. So much sass.
I didn’t think tracking my periods helped her be any more or less of the team surgeon and medic. Maybe it did, what did I know? I failed biology. I was more of the F in math and science but A in English and ceramics kind of girl. I could make a mean table vase, but don’t ask me to do your taxes or explain why volcanos erupted. They just did.
I’d wanted to beat the shit out of Ronnie when I’d first met her at the Dream Wars Cadet Academy. She was a smarty-pants know-it-all with a serious attitude problem. But now I’d come to crave that verbal ass-kicking that only Ronnie could give. Veronica Sato was an Ivy League graduate and the best damn trauma surgeon I’d ever seen. It was her job to make sure that our team of five, including her, stayed healthy and with our organs tucked safely inside of our bodies.
I groaned, the weight of sleep pulling at my limbs. “We’ve gone longer,” I reminded Brisk, shivering as I thought about the time I went seven days without a single minute of shut-eye. I thought I was going to die.
Ronnie nodded. We all had gone long stretches without sleep ever since the ghouls, an invisible alien race, landed on our planet ten years ago and started feeding on the human bodies of those asleep. The ghouls were like a cross between vampires and zombies. Nodding off had become a fight for our lives, but it also kept me employed. Avoiding sleep allowed me to heal the wounds I sustained while in the Dream Wars. If a ghoul injured you in the Dream Wars, it carried over into your physical body. So I refused to sleep unless I was 100 percent.
“Just the coffee or any stims?” Ronnie had her little freaking torture flashlight out and was shining it in my eyes.
I flinched, avoiding the light. I didn’t like stims, not since losing one of my best warriors to a stim addiction. She knew that. She’d also spent nearly every minute of the last two days with me, so she knew I hadn’t taken any. Dick. I just glared at her.
She threw her hands up. “Okay, no stims. Chillax, mamacita.” Even though Ronnie was Japanese, she somehow turned into an old Mexican lady when she was frustrated. It was weird but I’d come to love it. She frequently bitched us out in both Japanese and Spanish.
“Did you see this client’s file? He’s like mega rich and uber hot. My favorite combination,” Maxine cut in, purring in her raspy Marilyn Monroe voice.
Maxine was our resident beauty queen. Literally. She was runner-up at a Miss USA pageant four years ago at the ripe age of seventeen. Don’t ask me why we were still having beauty pageants when humanity was dying off in their sleep. Priorities, right?
It wasn’t until Maxine’s parents were mutilated in their sleep by ghouls that she joined the cadet academy the following year. I’d never seen someone with so much rage. When she fought, it was like a bomb went off; once she started, she didn’t know how to stop herself. She was my front-line soldier, one of the best I’d ever had.
“Of course I’ve seen his file. I’ve memorized it,” I told her.
She was right. He was rich—all of our clients were—and he should be. He owned Striker industries, a private weapons research facility on the west side that he headed up with his genius little brother. He was also, in fact, uber hot.
“I’ll bet he’s a total dick,” I continued.
The hot, rich ones always were. You had to be rich to be able to afford my team, but we usually protected fat, lazy, old businessmen. Not young, model-hot, in-shape guys like him. Nearly half of my equipment was from Striker Industries. Next to the president of the United States, this was the highest-profile client I’d ever had.
Maxine grinned. “I wouldn’t mind if he got a little rough,” she said with a wink.
I chuckled. Maxine didn’t hide her promiscuity, that was for sure. She lived life to the fullest and it was admirable.
Nox, our dark and broody warrior, spoke then. “I heard his last three teams got killed,” he said from his corner in the shadows. Nox Lightfoot was our resident pyrotechnics expert. He loved to blow shit up. His father was Japanese and his mother a full-blooded Navajo, which gave him a smooth brown complexion and cheek bones to die for. We often called him ‘pretty boy’ just to rile him up.
“I read that,” I told him.
I had to keep calm, couldn’t let one ounce of fear into my mind this close to entering the Dream Wars. Nodding off after dwelling on bad shit just projected you farther into the war zone.
That was the reason I was commander of this team. Not necessarily because I was a badass fighter, which I was, but because I had complete control over my mental state before sleep. My mentor, Master Aki, taught me well. It didn’t hurt that I also had a special affinity for mental projections and telepathy. Ever since the ghouls landed, I’d had some certain gifts creep up. Many of us did, as if their presence somehow heightened aspects of our humanity that was previously suppressed.
Brisk stood then. At six-foot-four and stacked with muscle, he cast a long shadow over Ronnie and I. “I’ll pull the car around,” he said and tossed his lucky green beanie over his messy brown hair.
I nodded, going over inventory one last time before feeling confident enough to head to this client�
�s house. His file was vague on why he needed protection. Most high-profile cases had a nightly warrior or two who they went into the Dream Wars with, but it wasn’t usually with an expensive special ops team like mine. That was a bit of overkill for nightly guarding. Especially for Damien Striker, who had military training and an endless supply of weapons. And though most people couldn’t afford us for longer than a week, he’d booked us ‘indefinitely.’ I’d never seen that on a contract before. At a hundred grand a week, it was certainly going to cost him. The average Joe only needed a single warrior to guard them, but hiring an entire team meant something was up. With three teams already dead, something told me nothing about this would be easy.
Walking over to the mirror, I ran some water over my face. Master Aki taught me this ritual. The water symbolized a cleansing. Whatever trials of the day or the week or the year, they were washed away with the water. Tonight was a new night. A new sleep. A new dream. A new war.
“I’m in control. I project peace. I give protection. I harness strength,” I told the blue-haired girl in the mirror. My eyes fell onto the smattering of freckles across my nose and faintly on my cheeks, reminding me of my late father. He told me growing up that they were angel kisses.
My team was used to my ritual by now. They didn’t say a word, just sat in quiet reverence as if witnessing a person in deep prayer. Which they were. My mind was my temple, and I needed to keep it pure before sleep.
The guy’s file kept running through my mind. Three teams dead. He hasn’t slept in four days, and he’s injured.
More water.
“I’m in control. I project peace. I give protection. I harness strength,” I said again.
The Dream Wars were my bitch.
I got this.
If you liked this sneak peak then you can check out the book here. www.amazon.com/Dream-Wars-Rising-Leia-Stone-ebook/dp/B07CSYHCPR
I hope you loved Sloane and Logan’s story. I do have an idea to extend this world by doing a spinoff in the future with Isaac, Sloane, and the crew heading up the Earth School on their land, and having young teens with supernatural powers (lots of hidden fae creatures) come to learn. It would be with a different main character’s point of view. Someone young and sassy. If this is something you would be interested in, then tell me to write it! Join my Matefinder Pack or email me and let me know =) <3 Thanks for reading.