Dare to Believe: The Gray Court, Book 1

by Dana Marie Bell

  “What’s the Claiming?”

  He looked up at her, then back down at the ground. “Do you remember the golden light that surrounded us just as we came?”

  He heard her suck in her breath. “That was the Claiming?”

  He looked into her eyes and nodded, holding his breath all the while. This was the part that scared the crap out of him. She could reject him utterly at this point, deny the mating and pull away from him. He wouldn’t be too surprised if she did. In the grand scheme of things, they’d only really known each other for three days. Although she wouldn’t really be able to go very far, now that the ritual was halfway done.

  He watched her absorb the implications. “Do you choose your mate, or is it a fate kind of thing?”

  He was surprised. He thought she’d have more questions about the Claiming. “The gods choose our mate for us before we’re even born. If we’re extremely lucky, we find her or him during the current life; if not, we hope, no, pray we may find them in the next.”

  “So, there’s no choice?”

  He didn’t like the slow, considering way she said that. “The moment I saw you, no other woman would do. Before the other night, do you know how long it had been since I’d had sex?”

  “No.”

  “A year.”

  She blinked, stunned. “A year?”

  “You went seven.” His grin was lopsided, he knew, but this was too important an issue to screw up with a lame joke.

  “But…your reputation…the blondes you escorted all over the place…”

  “I dated, occasionally, but I didn’t really…click…with anyone. Couldn’t figure out why, at first.”

  “You joined the company five years ago.”

  He nodded, watching the wheels turn in his woman’s head.

  “But we didn’t meet until three days ago.”

  His expression turned tender. “Vanilla and peaches.”

  “Huh?”

  “Your scent. Vanilla and peaches. I could smell it wherever I went in the company. Took me a while to track it down to accounting, and when I finally did I had the CEO slot, and you kept disappearing.” She bit her lip, looking guilty. “Yeah, I figured it was deliberate.” He sighed. “I could see you occasionally from the back, and, while I must say it is a mighty fine view, I prefer the one from the front.” He brushed a hand down her cheek, delighted when she blushed. “I love watching your eyes.”

  Those beautiful eyes of hers darkened, as did the blush that still stained her cheeks. “When…” she cleared her throat, “…when did you realize I was yours?”

  Leo resisted the urge to grin in triumph. She’d accepted him, whether it was consciously done or not. “When I tasted you.”

  “What?”

  “Remember the kiss on the dance floor at the Halloween party?”

  “The one where you tried to lick my toes through my mouth?”

  He laughed. “Has anyone told you that you have an interesting way with words?”

  “Mm-hmm. Was that when?”

  “Yes. I knew you were the one for me.” He couldn’t help himself. He stroked her hair back from her cheek, enjoying the feel of it slipping through his fingers. Everything about her fascinated him.

  “This whole bonding thing. What’s the next step?”

  He returned his gaze to her face. “The next step is the actual ceremony. In it I pledge my being to you, and I share of my power with you. In doing so, I grant you some of my life force, which lengthens your life. You’ll live as long as I do, actually. It’s one of the true pieces of magic the Sidhe actually possess, other than our human glamour. All Fae have a human seeming. It’s a gift from the gods to protect us in the human world.”

  “And the whole Arabian Nights slash Easy Rider thing wasn’t magic?”

  He shook his head. “Not like other Fae can do, like my Dad.”

  “Sean isn’t Sidhe?”

  He sighed and took her hand, just because. He began stroking her fingers absently. “No, he’s not, and that’s the root of a lot of the problems on the Joloun side. His blood isn’t blue enough for Mom’s family to fully accept him.”

  “What kind of Fae is he, then?”

  He looked at her and just knew what her reaction was going to be. “He’s a leprechaun.”

  For a moment she didn’t react. Then her lips twitched.

  “I wouldn’t say it if I were you.”

  If she heard the mild warning in his voice she chose to ignore it. “So, are they really always after his Lucky Charms?” Her eyes were beginning to water as she tried to suppress her laugh.

  “Ruby, I’d stop now.” He could feel Sean beginning to move towards the barn. When a leprechaun wanted to, he could move with preternatural speed on his own land.

  “Can I see the purple horseshoes?” She bit her lip, the laugh beginning to escape.

  His father was inside the barn now, propped up against the door, one ankle crossed over the other to match the arms crossed over his chest. He was staring up at the hayloft with an amused expression. Leo sighed.

  “So, is the blue moon this month?”

  Sean’s brow rose and Leo braced himself. “No, but I understand the two of you were mooning my horses a little while ago. Care to come down here and ask me those questions now?”

  Ruby jumped, her face filled with a mixture of guilt and fun.

  “Dad, we’re not bonded yet, so don’t do anything…permanent, okay?”

  Ruby leaned over the side and grinned down at Sean. “So, what really happens if I take my eyes off the leprechaun?”

  Leo’s awed, horrified “Holy shit!” was almost lost as Sean gave her a wickedly lethal grin. “Darling, if you’re really, really lucky, said leprechaun will show you he knows exactly where the pot of gold is.”

  Leo gaped. He knew his father was devoted to his mother. He also knew his father wouldn’t really put the moves on Ruby. When his father winked at him, he closed his mouth.

  Sometimes Leo needed that little reminder that, in fact, he was a leprechaun, too.

  Sean pushed away from the doorframe. “Now, if you two are done playing in my hayloft, Aileen has lunch ready.” Sean sauntered, whistling, towards the house, and Leo’s heart left his throat.

  “You are a brave, brave woman, and if you ever scare me like that again I will tie you up and lock you in a tower for the rest of your life.”

  Ruby looked back at him. Something in his face must have given away exactly how much she’d frightened him, because now, after the fact, she looked concerned. “What?”

  Leo took a steady, calming breath. She had to learn, and she had to learn fast. He couldn’t let her be hurt through ignorance. “Leprechauns are earth spirits. This is Dad’s land. If he really wanted to, he could hear a whisper a mile away, cause an earthquake, open a sinkhole the size of a dime that goes damn near to the core of the earth, you name it. He knows everything that happens on his land unless something is done deliberately to block him. The minute you started with the jokes he knew and headed over here.” Leo growled. “And you are very lucky he likes you.”

  “Oh.”

  “Needless to say, we did not eat Lucky Charms when I was a kid.”

  “Poor deprived baby.” The joke was almost absent-minded, like she’d already dismissed his warning. “Lunch, then we finish the conversation?”

  His stomach growled.

  She laughed shakily and tugged him to his feet. “C’mon, big guy, let’s go eat.”

  Jaden slammed the drawer shut with a snarl. The damn bitch was getting loonier by the day, and if he didn’t find out how she’d figured out his weakness soon he was going to scream.

  Jaden paced the room, knowing he had about an hour before the Deranged Darling got back from her big society party. She’d hopped Daddy’s jet for a little jaunt to California yesterday, and Jaden for one couldn’t be happier.

  Jaden hoped she got hit by a bus. It wouldn’t kill her, but damn if it wouldn’t make him feel better.

>   She was so meticulous and neat, she had to have the information written down somewhere. But it wasn’t in her desk, her room, or in the hidden safe behind the Renoir, and damn if that wasn’t one of the cheesiest things he’d ever seen. Talk about a cliché.

  Where would she hide it? If he could just lay his hands on the name of the person who ratted him out…

  Not Duncan. Not after everything they’d been through together. Duncan had taken a frightened newbie vamp in, one who’d been tossed out by his Master, and helped him find his feet and fangs in a world where vamps were the lowest rung of the social ladder.

  Oh, sure, if you were a Black Court vamp you were pretty high on the food chain. Of course, if you remained Black Court after being turned it pretty much guaranteed you were a psychotic ass-hat. White Court, on the other hand, looked down on vamps as lower than dog shit until you proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you could overcome the Dark Queen’s taint. Jaden held back a cynical laugh. Like he had a choice about being “tainted”. For the White Court, proving you were untainted usually meant being dead. A dead vamp was the best vamp, as far as Queen Glorianna was concerned. It was why most vamps who left the Black Court pledged their allegiance to Oberon and the Gray Court. There vamps were treated just like any other fae. If you fucked up, the Court fucked you up. If you didn’t, you lived a happy, productive life. It was something Jaden could understand, even encourage. He’d sent more than one lost young vamp to Oberon’s mountain palace.

  When they first met, Duncan had looked past the fact that Jaden hadn’t yet pledged himself to Oberon. Duncan had seen Jaden, and liked something in him. He’d taken him in, made him his right-hand man. Hell, he’d fucking blood-bonded with him, even if it was only the lightest bond a vampire could cast. To be bonded to a White Court Sidhe lord was almost unheard of for one of his kind. He’d been Duncan’s ever since.

  And if it wasn’t for the fact that the Deranged Darling was Duncan’s family she’d already be dead.

  Jaden stomped out of the office, closing the door behind him and relocking it quickly. She’d never know he’d been there. He’d long since learned the knack of searching without leaving a trace. He headed to his own office, located right next to Duncan’s, and slumped into his chair. He put his feet up on his desk, tipped his head back, and tried to come up with a plan that would free him from Kaitlynn without losing the one person on the face of the earth Jaden would gladly die for.

  Ruby spent lunch mostly absorbing what Leo had told her in the hayloft. The part that wasn’t trying to understand everything she’d been shown was enjoying the look of shock and awe on Moira’s face all through the meal. She kept darting glances between Ruby and her father, and Sean knew exactly what his daughter was doing. He kept his face serene, but when Moira wasn’t looking he winked at Ruby.

  After the meal, Ruby turned to Aileen. “Is there anything I need to know about a Sidhe mating that Leo might not want me to know?”

  “Hey!”

  Ruby ignored Leo’s indignant shout and focused all of her attention on Aileen.

  Aileen stared at her thoughtfully. “What has he told you so far?”

  Ruby recounted everything Leo had told her, leaving out the incredibly hot sex they’d engaged in, but from the small smile on Aileen’s face she had the feeling Sean had already filled her in on that small fact.

  “So. You know how the Claiming is done, starting with tasting and ending in…hmmm… I believe you understand that part just fine.” Aileen smiled serenely at her son, who flushed bright red. “The Vow is quite simple, really.”

  Turning to Sean, Aileen took his hands in her own. “I vow that from this day forward you shall not walk alone. My strength is your protection, my heart is your shelter, and my arms are your home. I shall serve you in all those ways that you require. I pledge to you my living and my dying, each equally in your care. Yours is the name I whisper at the close of each day and the eyes into which I smile each morning. I give you all that is mine to give. My heart and my soul I pledge to you. You are my Chosen One, you are my mate, and you are bound to me for eternity.”

  Sean kissed the back of Aileen’s hand, the love he felt for his petite wife very evident. “I vow that from this day forward you shall not walk alone. My strength is your protection, my heart is your shelter, and my arms are your home. I shall serve you in all those ways that you require. I pledge to you my living and my dying, each equally in your care. Yours is the name I whisper at the close of each day and the eyes into which I smile each morning. I give you all that is mine to give. My heart and my soul I pledge to you. You are my Chosen One, you are my mate, and you are bound to me for eternity.”

  Ruby sighed. “That’s beautiful.”

  Aileen turned to her, her face still glowing with her love for her husband. “That’s the Vow. There’s a bit more to it than that, a flow of magic that’s exchanged when two people take the Vow. That’s called the Binding.”

  “But I’m human, I don’t possess magic.”

  “Oh, yes you do, kitten.” Ruby turned to find Leo watching her, that quiet possessiveness once again in evidence. “All humans have magic, they just don’t know how to find it.”

  “I don’t know if I understand.” Ruby stared into Leo’s otherworldly face, knowing her confusion showed by the concern in his expression. He hadn’t bothered to put his glamour back up.

  “Trust me, kitten. Okay? Without speaking the Vow there’s no way to demonstrate the Binding, and since my parents are already bonded they can’t show you what it looks like.”

  She sighed. “I’ve trusted you since the party, so I guess I can keep going out on that particular limb.”

  Leo picked up her hand and placed a gentle kiss on the back of her fingers. “The only possibly frightening part for you would be if the Binding is strong enough to have visible results.”

  “Like the Claiming?”

  Leo shot his parents a quick look. “Not quite. If the Vow is taken during a time of stress it’s possible the show would be a bit more spectacular than that.”

  “Oh.” Ruby thought the Claiming light show was spectacular. What would be next, fireworks? “What’s the third part of the mating again?”

  “There’s the Claiming, the Vow, and the Binding.”

  Her head was beginning to spin. She got the Claiming and the Vow, but… “What’s the Binding again?”

  “That’s the part where my power and yours blend, bonding us together for eternity.”

  Oh. “Eternity is a really long time, Leo.”

  “No. It’s not. Eternity is looking for your soul mate and never finding her.”

  Leo used the hand he was holding to pull her to her feet. “We’ll be in our room.”

  Leo closed the door and turned to face his reluctant mate. “Okay, kitten, now you know.”

  “You’re positive I’m yours?”

  Leo nodded, his eyes never leaving her face. Her face was shadowed, her brows drawn together in a thoughtful frown. She licked her lips and drew a quick breath. “How does this affect Shane’s kidnapping?”

  “If the Malmaynes have their way, our mating would be set aside in favor of the alliance marriage, something I’m not willing to risk.”

  “How can a mating be set aside? I kind of thought that was permanent?”

  “Our mating isn’t complete. They could say that I could fulfill the terms of the contract and then return to you. Of course, Sidhe breeding being what it is, odds are you’d be around seventy years old before Kaitlynn conceived.”

  “Seventy…” Her awed whisper tapered off into a low whistle. “And you’d still be…” She waved her hand in his direction. He could only assume what she meant.

  “Young? Yeah, pretty much.”

  Her “hmph” was thoughtful. “But, if they won’t accept Shane or Moira as a substitute…” She huffed out a breath and began pacing, growing agitated. “I mean, why does it have to be you?”

  “Because my magic is almost pure Sidhe.
Moira’s is almost pure leprechaun and Shane… Well, we’re still not quite certain how to classify Shane, other than wild.”

  Ruby cocked her head, more confused than ever. “Wild?”

  “The Sidhe and leprechaun blood in Shane is almost evenly mixed. He has the powers of both, with a little extra something genetics seems to have thrown into the mix.”

  “What would that be?”

  Leo shrugged. “If Shane exerts himself, using both his leprechaun and Sidhe powers in tandem, he can make fantasy reality.”

  “You mean he could actually make that tent appear?”

  “The harem tent? Yes, down to the outfit you were wearing.”

  “Wow,” she breathed, intrigued at the possibilities.

  “He uses it mostly in his work. He’s an artist.”

  Her eyes went wide with admiration. “Wait. Your brother is Shane Joloun?” When he nodded, she whistled again.

  Leo moved, pulling her against him. His hands cupped her ass, kneading it leisurely. “I wouldn’t even think of it, Ruby. You’ll find you have a very jealous mate.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes twinkling. “You don’t want the houri outfit? I want your harem pants, oh sheik!”

  Leo leaned down and kissed her, hard and swift.

  “How does he do it?”

  His lips had barely left hers before the question popped out. “We’re not sure, but we think it’s the earth sprite part. The tent would be made of silk, like the pillows, both born of the earth. Add in that he could read the fantasy in your head, and bingo! Instant harem tent.” Leo continued to knead her ass, loving the feeling of the firm globes under his hands. “But he can’t do it very often. It tires him out pretty quickly, so he usually uses it for self-defense, work, or sex.”

  “Sex? You mean, he makes his fantasies realities and—”

  Leo laughed. “No! We can’t make life, Ruby! We’re not gods, after all.”

  “Then what—”

  “Condoms.”

  Ruby just stared at him for a moment, looking disgusted and amused. “Your brother has the power of limited creation in his hands, and he uses it to make Trojans. What, he doesn’t know where the drug store is?” Leo’s cheeks flushed and he laughed, knowing he looked guilty as hell. Her eyes narrowed. “You talked him into that one, didn’t you?”