They both nod their confirmation, and Brandon’s arms fold around me, pulling me back into his chest, “She’s right on all of it. We can handle the guests and not need to reach out. We don’t know how far Alyssa and her coven managed to spread the poison.”
He kisses the top of my head, “No worries, love. We’ve got it handled. Don’t we boys?”
Mikael, who’s been oddly silent during the entire exchange speaks up, “Why don’t you go take a relaxing bath? We’ve got a long day of caterers and decorating ahead of us.”
I can’t tell if he’s just trying to get rid of me, but regardless, I’ll take it. Raking my nails across the hard planes of his rock-hard stomach, I leave him with an understanding that we have unfinished business that we’ll settle later.
CHAPTER THREE
Twirling bodies fly across the dance floor with their partners in tow. The music is upbeat and flowing one song into another. It’s very much speaks of a high-class party. Glancing down, I see I wear a long, white dress with a corseted top and tulle running down from my hips that continues to the floor. I stand in the middle of the dancers as they circle around me. Half masks cover their faces, only alluding to who they might be underneath. It becomes nothing more than a sea of flashing faces, each one seeming angrier than the last. I spin, trying to find an opening to duck through as a means for escape. As I move, the dancers close in around me. I become dizzy and feel myself falling.
That’s when twin steel grey eyes catch mine in the crowd. He’s not one of the dancers. No, he simply stands with a glass of pink champagne in his hand watching. When our gazes lock, everything in the room freezes. The music. The dancers. All of it. They’re all frozen in place.
Never taking my eyes off his, I push through the bodies, making my way to him. Dirty blond hair hangs down to his shoulders. Dressed in a tux, he’s lost the jacket leaving suspenders stretching up over his white dress shirt clad shoulders. The shirt is open at the top, and he’s rolled the sleeves up his forearms. Blood red, his color choice of masks stands out against the suit.
As I come to a halt before him, he smiles, showing off a set of perfectly white teeth framed with a pair of fangs.
“Do you know who I am?” he asks with a purr in his voice.
Even in my dreams I can’t help the defensive snark in my own, “Should I?”
He grins as if he expected nothing less, “I go by many names lately, but you may call me Jude.”
I take a step away from him. The name triggers something in my memory, but I can’t remember what it is.
“Your friend Mel recently helped save a dear friend of mine,” he says.
"You?" I question, taking another step away from him. "You sent Mel and her coven off on a wild goose chase, not knowing if they'll actually return from it. Then you show up here? Are you insane?"
He tilts his head to the side while studying me, and his hair cascades over his shoulder. A breeze at my back warns that the dancers continue to move closer, almost as if they are following and waiting for something. A lean hand reaches between the two of us and I follow it up to Jude's eyes. There I find promises of safety, protection from the blood thirsty crowd at my back, but as I flat out told him how do I know that I can trust him?
As if reading my mind, he says, "Would it help to know that Mel is completely safe?"
I don't know why I'm willing to put so much faith in this man when he's proven to be a wild card. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that this is just a dream. I'm pretty sure that he can't actually do me any physical harm here. Plus, I'll take the risk of the unknown with him, compared to the incensed mob of dancers behind me.
When I place my hand in his, I'm surprised to feel that it's warmer than it looks. I think I half expected it to be cold as ice. Placing my hand in the crook of his elbow, he leads us out a familiar set of doors to a balcony. It dawns on me then. We've been inside of the mansion this whole time. Only, the outside isn't the same as the real world. Here everything has a shiny quality to it. The giant moon hiding behind shadows of clouds in the sky. A flower garden full of nothing but roses that look black in the small amount of light coming from above.
"Why did you bring me here?" I ask curtly, not looking to his face.
In my peripheral vision, I see his lips quirk up, "I didn't bring you here, my lady. You brought me. Well, if we're going to get technical about it, I suppose I welcomed myself into yours already in progress."
His head tilts up toward the sky as if he's checking to make sure that it remains there, "Mel and the rest of her coven did me a favor that I was unable to perform myself. That act indebted me to them. Because of your importance to her, I lend my services to you as well."
I turn to face him now, "I don't understand. I'm not in need of your services as you call them. My coven is perfectly capable."
"Do not be arrogant in this," he snaps, though, staying soft-spoken. "I learn many things that others do not know or wish me to know."
Holding up a few fingers, he silences the questions begging to leave my mouth, "You don't need answers and we do not have enough time as it is. You are planning a party for tomorrow night, yes?"
An overwhelming desire to question him more burns within me, but I get the feeling that whatever he is about to say is too important. Instead, I reply with a simple nod.
"Thought so," he says, more to himself than to me. As he turns to me, his masked face looks as though it's bleeding, "We only have seconds now. Listen and listen carefully. A darkness hovers, clouding this event tomorrow. I keep trying to see through it, but something keeps blocking me. All I can see is an uninvited guest and lots of blood."
He stops as though there's more but doesn't want to say the words. I push him, "Is that it?"
Just when I think that he's not going to answer, he replies, "And you. I keep seeing you, surrounded by your mates and swimming in your own blood."
Well, shit. Just when I think that it can't get any worse.
"There's nothing more I can do for you from the position I'm in," he says, shaking his head in remorse.
"I can't tell you how much I appreciate what you've done by coming here to warn me. I'll have my mates cancel..."
"NO!" he yells, causing the world around us to shift.
Feeling skeptical of his intent now, I narrow my eyes at him. Unfortunately, before I can tell him how shady he sounds, the dream starts to turn black around the edges. I can no longer hear tendrils of music coming from the ballroom.
Jude grabs my bicep hard enough to bruise as he cautions in a harsh whisper, "Listen, whoever this is I can feel their intent, and they’re out to destroy you. What I see will come to fruition if you don't protect yourself. They will come whether you cancel the party or not. Use the humans as a distraction if you must, but prepare your coven. Do not cower, or they'll see that as weakness and push harder. This is your one and only chance to destroy them."
My eyelids get heavy as he lets go of my arm, and then I'm floating into clouds of darkness.
CHAPTER FOUR
"Can someone please tell me what the actual fuck is going on right now?" Victor growls into a room filled with our entire coven.
"Dru pretty much spelled it out for you, man," Shane retorts in a grim tone.
Victor looks as though he wants to smack him in the back of the head with his own ass, but settles for words instead, "I heard what she said, smartass. But, I'm not sure we're hearing the same thing or not."
Propping my elbow on the table, I drop my head into my hand, beyond frustrated. This has been an ongoing argument since I woke from a dead sleep two hours ago. Victor and Brandon both knew something was wrong instantly and barely gave me a chance to explain before yanking me out of bed to a coven meeting. Under normal circumstances, I'd have bitten their heads off, almost quite literally, for acting like brutes with me. Something about Jude and his revelation, however, left me shaken. It didn't help matters any when Mikael noticed the hand shaped bruise on my bicep. So much for dre
ams not following me into the waking world. Since that discovery, said mate has been sitting still as a statue within touching distance of me, without voting one way or another.
My patience has worn thin, and yet another outburst from Victor sets my teeth to grinding. I slam my fist down on the table and all eyes turn to me, "Stop fucking bickering. I can't take it anymore. Since when did you start ignoring what I say anyways, huh? I am the lady of this coven." Very few times have I ever found it necessary to play that card, but I need them all on the same page. We risk everything if we're not.
"My lady," Taylor begins, "We mean no disrespect. It's just dangerous for us to rely on the word of a stranger. No matter what identity he claims. For all that we know, he could be working with Alyssa or the Resistance."
Snatching my phone off the table, I press the speed dial button.
It only rings once before a gruff voice comes down the line, "What?"
I roll my eyes, "Put Mel on the phone, Ryker."
"Do you realize what time it is?" he growls.
"Why yes, I can tell time, thanks. Now let me talk to her," I demand.
There's a rustle on his end and other voices carry through the line. It makes me curious as to who she's got there beside her. I'm not an envious snot about it or anything. Mel has one of the shall I say most well stocked out of all the covens. Not a single of them should be fucked with on a good day. Except maybe Liam. He's always been a sweetheart. Too bad that's one I was never able to lay claim to. As one coven lady to another, it's mere curiosity on my part. Or I might just be a freak. Yeah, ok, it's definitely both.
"Hello," Mel answers no evidence of her slumber in her voice.
As I informed Ryker, I'm well aware of what time it is, so I get right to the point, "Jude came to me in a dream tonight."
All background noise on her end ceases at my words. Placing the phone on the table in front of me, I click the button to put it on speaker.
Her words echo around the room, "What did he want?"
My eyes find Victor's as I tell her the conversation from the dream and add, "If what he says is the truth, he wants to help me."
"I don't know," she says. "Did he give you a reason as to why he would openly offer help when he hasn't before?"
"Yes, he said that he owes you a debt and wanted to return a favor," I reply.
A deep voice from her side, sounding a lot like Killian, speaks, but it's too low for me to catch the words. "What did he say?" I ask a little bristlier than perhaps I should. I meant what I told her last time about there being no hard feelings between us about him, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't bother me at all to hear his voice from somewhere other than at my side.
She brings me back on topic, "Killian said it could be a case of it scratches his back to scratch yours sort of thing. If he's telling the truth and someone does plan on crashing your party, it could be someone that he himself is having trouble with or wants taken out. If that's the case, I'll personally hunt him down and kill him myself for risking someone else's neck in place of his own. It wouldn't be the first time."
"Were you able to save her?" I ask out of curiosity. I don't really want to know if they didn't, but it'll say something for the truth of Jude's words if they did.
I can tell there's a smile in her voice when she says, "Yeah. We got to her just in time. It's all kinds of fucked up and we need to sit down for a talk after we get all of this other shit squared away, but for now, she's as good as she can get. I will say this for Jude, though. Ali trusts him. We might have rescued her from the Resistance, but Jude kept her alive. Plus, he knows that if he hurts any of us, there’s nowhere he could hide from me and Phoenix."
With both her and her extremely tall mate’s capabilities as dreamwalkers, there's no doubt in my mind she speaks the truth.
"It's decided then," I say more to my vampires in the room than her. "We will get ready, and we won’t give these fuckers an inch."
"Do you need us up there?" Mel asks, jumping back in.
There is power in numbers, but I refuse to show weakness. Turning to look at Mikael for the first time, I see the determination on his face as he nods to me.
"We'll be good," I tell her. "Thanks, though."
Other voices on her end sound like they're arguing, but she cuts them off, "If that changes, let us know. We'll get there as fast as we can."
As we say our goodbyes and hang up, I take a second to be thankful that it's not just my coven experiencing bickering with its ranks.
Mikael stands from his seat and takes my arm to lead us from the room but not before telling the other ten males in the room that we're preparing for war. The words seem a tad dramatic, but I've completed the first half of my mission, so I don't say as much.
CHAPTER FIVE
I let him drag me into the hall, out of the others’ sight before jerking him to a stop using the arm he’s still got in his grasp.
"I appreciate what you did by taking my side in there, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to allow you to drag me all around the house behind you," I snap. "I can walk just fine."
His eyes cut down to me before he growls deep in his throat. Faster than I can blink, he's got both hands underneath my ass and my back against the wall. When his mouth crashes down on top of mine, it's a savage claiming. I can't even come up for air until he decides to allow it. The control is Mikael's alone. He grinds his body into mine hard enough to force a meek whimper to roll from my lips into his mouth.
We still haven't broken apart when I feel us moving away from the wall. I tuck my hands into his dark red chin length hair, giving it a sharp tug that has him gripping me even tighter. One of his hands leaves me for a second but then comes back just as quick. It isn't until I feel him kick a door shut that I realize he's taken us into one of the smaller sitting rooms. My heart slams in my chest. I could live with my mates for the next two hundred years, and I'll never lose the thrill of this feeling with them.
Releasing me, my feet barely have time to touch the floor before his hands rip off the little pink cami covering the top half of my body. Nonetheless gentle, he jerks my matching pants down to my ankles, not even bothering to remove them all the way before spinning me around in place.
With my back against his chest, his left-hand travels up my now naked body to close around my neck.
His voice is a hot whisper of air in my ear, "He. Marked. You."
A shiver rolls down my skin when his fangs trace the open spot on my neck hard enough that I'm able to feel droplets of blood leaving a trail down my shoulder. As if seeing it brings out his inner demons, he forces me face down over the back of the low sitting couch, and he enters me in one quick thrust. I don't give him the satisfaction of hearing the approving sound that tries to slip past my lips. No. I'm going to make him work for that small prize.
Even as he works his hips against mine, I'm able to contain myself. I have to bite my lip hard enough to draw blood.
Movement to my left has my head lifting in surprise. Mikael has me so fully distracted that I didn't even hear my other two mates enter the room behind us. Brandon sets his small stash of weapons on one of the end tables before he begins to strip off his clothes. Taking a quick look over to Victor, I see him sitting on one of the smaller chairs next to us. He's still wearing all his clothes, but his jeans are unbuttoned with the zipper pulled down. His legs spread out in front of him, enabling me to get the perfect view of him palming himself while watching Mikael pound into me from behind. My fangs flash as I snarl at him for positioning himself so far away. When his lips tilt up, I know that this serves as my punishment for not agreeing with him during our coven meeting.
Using my arms, I snarl again and try to push myself up to get to him, but Mikael slams into me causing me to lose what grip I have on my control. I cry out, even though it's short lived. As soon as the sound leaves my mouth, a naked Brandon comes to stand in front of the couch. I lick my lips, already knowing what he intends to do.
Leaning dow
n, he teases me with his tongue as he kisses me. When he raises back up, I don't wait for an invitation. I take him in my mouth and all the way down my throat as I relax it. His head tilts back and a groan escapes him as he grabs the back of my blonde hair to hold on to.
Mikael leans over, and I feel a drop of his sweat fall onto my back, "I don't give a shit who he is or who he says he is, he will never be allowed to touch you again. I'm going to kill him as it is for marking you. You're mine, ours. Only we mark your body."
Pulling out at the same time as he lifts my feet off the ground, he spreads my legs even wider. When our bodies collide again, he rubs the one spot that's begged for attention this whole time. It sends a cascade of sensation down my spine that doesn't seem to end as his fangs sink into my shoulder, and he shudders on top of me. As if by some chain reaction, both Brandon and Victor's moans split the now silent room. I swallow down Brandon's release before letting him go with a popping noise. He lets out another moan and crashes down beside us on the couch.
Mikael pulls us upright and kisses the bruise forming from his bite. Normally I'd set his ass on fire, maybe quite literally, for leaving such a visible mark. However, putting myself in their situation, I would have responded with the same crazy jealous behavior. Probably even worse. I'd slay a bitch for touching any of my mates.
A sardonic smile crosses my face and Victor snickers, "Look, you made her smile, mate."
"Of course, I did," Mikael says arrogantly.
Before I can quip anything back his way, he makes up for it by pulling his black t-shirt over my head. Then speaking to all of us he says, "I've got a really bad feeling about tonight. I'm half tempted to lock you in the bedroom." The last he says with a smack to my ass.
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