by D. D. Miers
“It’s been a long time since a witch was changed. They agreed to forbid the practice generations ago.” She stroked my forehead when I looked up at her and smiled wanly. “Prescot is with your friend Penelope and that naked Leo. They’re headed home.”
“I’m glad.”
“She wanted to stay, but Grayson commanded her to take care of her men.”
I chuckled a little, and it started a fresh bout of coughing as bile rose into my throat. "He means well, but he's still the boss."
“Unless he disagrees with you.”
“True.” The heat that had been burning me from the inside was pushed out by ice that filled my veins and left me almost too cold to shiver. “I think I’m dying, Aunt Portia.”
Her face filled with the compassion that I used to crave. “You will wish for it before you’re done, niece.”
We'd fought together before, but I could feel a change in her that my mind was too muddled even to try to reason out. I reached out for her just as another spasm of pain rocked me to my core. I screamed out my rage and pain as beasts rode my body and drove me onto the porch.
I shut my eyes to the pain, and a thousand pairs of them stared back at me from the recesses of my mind, until I couldn't stand up to it anymore, and my world went black again.
Twenty
When I opened my eyes again, I was in my bed, wrapped tightly in my favorite blanket. So tightly, in fact, that my momentary paralysis made my heart race as I struggled against the warm prison where I found myself.
"Hey, hey, Mo, I'm here. Don't worry. I got you." Gray loosened the blankets and sat next to me on the bed. "We wrapped you up because the chills hit you so hard and so sudden, we were afraid you'd fall right out of bed."
“I thought…I thought I was in a nightmare that pretended to be my own room.”
A soft chuckle from the other side of the bed made my pulse bump up again. “Then you have gotten to know the Fae, haven't you niece?" Portia was in a chair they'd brought in from the living room, sitting with her back to my closet.
“Are you guarding the ‘tween space in my room, Aunt? Or is it a coincidence that you’re sitting like a guard dog at my closet?”
“I know the Fae too, Niece.”
But her voice didn’t hold the disdain it had even just a few hours before. She looked tired, and a little lost, and even through my pain and confusion, I realized that she’d lost everyone who mattered to her, and for a time, even her position in the coven. I’d never had importance or respect to lose.
“You look like you want to find a nice, tropical deserted island to visit for a year or two.”
She scoffed and ran her hands over her dark, lush hair as though she’d inadvertently let a hair get out of place. “I could use a spa day, but I still look better than you.”
“Setting the bar a little low at the moment, don’t you think?”
Even Gray laughed as he smoothed the covers down over me, but he refused to say a word.
I lifted my head a little and sniffed the air. “Do I smell Tryst’s cologne?”
Gray nodded. “Yeah. He got her about an hour ago. I wouldn’t have let him in, but he came with Orson, and I didn’t know how to politely tell him to get lost in front of company.”
"Waiting to see if I'm okay? Or waiting to see if I'm going to make it to the rumble, so he doesn't have to fight alone?"
As if he’d heard me, Tryst appeared in the doorway. “Ah, the blushing bride. Do you ever do anything the normal way?” Even as he chastised me, his gaze fell to the skin that was bare above my blanket.
I pulled the covers up over my chest more and his met mine again. “Why do you care?”
“I just think it’s an awful lot of trouble to go to get out of marrying one of us.”
He was offended, which really didn't matter, except that somehow, the hunters had found us at a cottage a little way from the beach, when it took a great effort for them to cross a moving body of water of that size. How had they tracked them so quickly and easily? I wanted to ask him if he'd sent the hunters himself, or if he was double-crossing me to Lothar and they were waiting until I met him in battle to yell. "Surprise! We're going to kill you now and tell your father about your little coup."
“What about the others? Did everyone else get out okay?”
Orson came in while the others were all looking to each other to provide the answer. “Hey, kids, she’s up, come on in.” He winked at me and took a spot near the window, leaning against the wall.
Blythe, Sasha, and Pippi all piled on the bed like we did when we had our girls’ sleepover nights.
“Are you okay, Mo? You look all…shaded,” Blythe said in her quiet voice.
Shaded was a good word for how I felt too. But unlike when I grew my great shade trees to give me comfort, the furred and winged things that overshadowed me were hungry and selfish, each one of them wanting me for their own.
"I'm fine, thank you, Blythe."
“All right, young ones, the adults need to talk. Go watch some TV and we’ll be out shortly.”
I got hugs from all three, and they jumped off the bed. "Can Prescot come down to the pool with us?" Sasha blushed furiously as she asked, and my heart jumped a little at the thought of the youngest werewolf in America finding first love with one of my Fae kids.
"Be safe, be respectful and above all, don't do anything that will get me in trouble with Maggie. She's a hardass about the rules."
With Tryst and Portia in the same room, it was time to talk about the Unseelie and what we were going to do to stop the hunters.
“You can’t let them infest the human world, Morgana. You know what they would do to the humans, the witches, anyone too weak to fight back will be ravaged and devoured.”
“The Fae have rules, Aunt Portia. Even the Dark Court. Especially the Dark Court. They think humans are like insects. Would you want to live in a place crawling with cockroaches?”
Portia's face hardened, and I saw some of the old anger creeping in.
“We don’t think of humans that way, Ms. MacSolais. But Morgan’s right. The Unseelie see the Light Court as weak and unworthy. The humans and shifters are even lower on their scale of importance.” Orson pushed away from the wall and sat on the edge of the bed nearest her. “But Morgan’s got a plan to change that, and I know she could use your moral, if not physical support.”
“I can’t leave my people to help you.”
A stupid smile pasted itself to my face and wouldn’t let me take it off. “Thank you for fighting with us already. You were amazing.”
Portia flushed prettily, surprising me yet again. “Oh, stop it. I was the least powerful being in the room, and that included the teenager.” She glanced behind her out the door toward the living room. “And that teenager is quite the little fighter, too.”
I nodded. “Prescot had a terrible injury when he was a child, and in healing it, his beast was blocked completely. Tearing it out of him was the hardest thing I’d ever done. I hated hurting him so much, it seems serendipitous that I’m going through what he did, now.”
“Ah, Morgan, always with the self-flagellation,” Tryst smirked and rolled his eyes. “But you still get everything that you want, don’t you?”
“No, Tryst, I get everything I’m willing to fight for. You must have me confused with a Fae who betrays people on a regular basis in a constant bid for more power.”
Gray cleared his throat, reminding us that we weren't alone. "I'd tell you two to get a room, but since one of you is my wife, I'm going to ask you to remember that you're talking to the Seelie Princess and the queen of the West Coast pack."
Tryst blinked slowly. “Been waiting a long time to say that?”
“Not as long as I’ve been waiting to say this. “Get the hell out, all of you. I need some time alone with my wife.”
Orson laughed and patted my ankle. "You guys ever decide to do that properly, let me know, and I'll drop in for the reception."
They filed out of t
he room, Aunt Portia leaving last. “I’ll gather some potions we have on hand and leave them with your people. Be careful, Niece. You’ll need all the magical help you can get and a healthy dose of luck to win a challenge with Lothar NightDragon.”
With a growl of frustration, Gray shut the door on my aunt’s backside. He joined me on my bed, pulling me into his stomach and curling his body around mine. “Has a beast called to you yet?”
“Nothing that stands out against the white noise. It’s like there’s a zoo stuck in my head, except it’s not just in my head, it’s in my body, making me feel like I’m going to pass out from fever, then the chills strike and I shiver so hard I’m afraid I’m going to break my teeth from the chattering.”
His sigh moved my hair into my face, and he smoothed it back again, planting kisses on my neck before he pressed his warm forehead to the skin between my shoulders. "There's a reason we don't turn people on a whim, Morgan. To go through a Chimera phase is…It's torture, plain and simple."
“There’s nothing plain and simple about this, Gray. Why couldn’t I just say I want to be a panther, like you, and make it happen?” Even as I spoke the words, the beast warring inside me for its own identity began to claw its way to the surface. “Gray?”
He held me tight through the spasming pain as animal after animal tried me on like too-tight clothing, tugging and pinching and tearing at my physical form, to fit their metaphysical ones.
“There are so many different possibilities. The power doesn’t know what to do with the magic already in you.”
“I’m Fae. We all have an animal to call, though most disregard that part of ourselves. There should have been something in there already. This should’ve been…” The pain cut off my ability to breathe and I gasped like a fish on the bottom of a boat.
"You don't have to be like me, Baby. You're my mate, and now, you're a goddamned shifter. No matter what form you take, you're mine, for better or worse, forever."
I chuckled as the pain subsided into another cold flash and Gray pulled the blanket tighter over me, holding me. "I was thinking," I mumbled through my chattering teeth, "Tryst was so mad that we performed the handfasting. He thinks he’s so much smarter than everyone else.”
“And survived,” Gray’s voice held no humor as he replied. “The look on his face when I opened the door was…not supposed to be shock, then rage, then boredom. At least that’s not usually the order.”
“He’s just mad because without you, I might’ve let him wear me down, and he’d be wearing a Seelie crown already.”
“You love him that much?”
I snuggled into him, the solid feel of his muscles at my back comforting, just one more clue that I wasn't well. Usually, his cut and rock-hard chest and abs turned me on, safety wasn't my primary concern. "I don't know that I love him at all. But if I didn't love you, he would've had a much easier time swaying me to do my duty."
“Will the Fae accept you as a shifter?”
I barked out a harsh laugh. “Not in a thousand years. We once had true shifters among our people, but I don’t even know what form they took. Now the only shifters are the tricksters, the pooka and kelpies and leprechauns who use a secondary form to fool humans who wander into the ‘tween places.”
“I wish I knew how to help you. The longer it takes for your magic to choose a compatible form, the more danger you’re in.”
“From inside and out.”
"I'll keep you safe from outside threats. You just worry about the inside part." He rolled me over to look at him and pushed my hair out of my face again. "You've made your Fae, and human witch parts work together. It took practice, and sometimes it hurt, right?"
I thought about the hours of practicing spells, summoning plants, and later, meshing my Fae and human magic and learning to summon storms. “The worst was when I was struck by lightning.”
“But it only happened once, and now you’ve got Fae that are in awe of you because you mesh your magics so well.”
I wouldn’t have said they were in awe, but it did surprise people like Eowynn to see me call flame alongside my ability to nurture life. That skill had won me more than one duel in the Light Court. “I swore to help Komodor get free of the Dark Court. I promised Tryst I’d stand with him against Lothar. I can’t take any longer to heal, Gray. Lives are at stake, and if I’m on the sidelines and something bad happens, I’ll never know if I could’ve stopped it. Their deaths will be on my head.”
He didn't bother to argue, because, in my position, he'd feel the same way. Not because we were better fighters than anyone else, or even because we were more powerful…and that certainly wasn't always the case.
The people we fought for belonged to us. They were more than friends and different than family. Both of us had taken responsibility for the safety of the people we chose to make ours, whether we loved them or not. Even Tryst, who tried to manipulate me more often then he helped, but still believed in me and would fight by my side (if my enemy happened to be his).
“We won’t let anything happen to the pack, or your kids, or the goblins, okay?” Gray seemed to have followed my very train of thought. “The broker’s on his own, though. It’s time to change the terms of your relationship with him. Especially if you’re going to be equals.”
I was setting Tryst up to have even more power than me. It was a frightening thought if I let myself go there. "I've got to be at the meeting with Lothar. Is there anything I can do to hold off the change until after this is all over?"
“Actually, I think there is. You go back to sleep for as long as you can, and I’ll be back with something to help keep you calm and suppress the beast. It only lasts a few hours, and it might not work if you try to take it more than once, especially since you’re not a normal human. But I’ll go talk to your aunt and see if she’ll mix up the tincture for us.”
I pulled him back down to me for a kiss, deepening it until I felt him hard against my thigh. “You could stay.”
“If I did, it would only end up hurting you more, as your beast tried to match mine,” he sighed, pressing his erection into me, then pulling away with a sigh. “Nope. No consummating this wedded bliss until after you go through the change. Then…Oh, then I’ll have some things to show you.”
In spite of everything we had going on all around us, the realization that Gray would never have to hold back his own beast when we made love had me pulling him back down to me again, slipping my tongue between his full lips to taste him and taunt him into letting me have more.
He came up for breath with a groan. “Baby, we really can’t.”
I’d pushed my blankets away, and I wrapped one leg around him, holding his hardon against my mound and grinding him through my panties and his sweats. “But when I change, you can, too, every time you fuck me.”
His breathing came faster, sweat beading on his lip as he tried to hold his body off mine, his thready control near the snapping point. “Morgan.” His voice held warning, but his cock pressed to the triangle of fabric between my legs and throbbed against me.
“We don’t have to go all the way right now,” I panted, my need overriding every other sensation. “Just put it in a little.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “Morgana Silk, you nympho. I want you so bad you almost got me, damn it.” He kissed me soundly, all affection, no sex, and rolled away from me before I could talk him out of it. “First, I get you the suppression potion. Then, we kick some ass, THEN we fuck each other’s brains out, okay?”
I pouted, pushing my bottom lip out, and he leaned in to nip it.
“You know the potion I’m talking about?”
I nodded.
“Do you know about how long it takes to make?”
Another nod, my bottom lip managing a little tremble.
He ignored it completely. “Then that’s how long you need to sleep.”
“Is it still night?” It was impossible to see around my blackout curtains, but I couldn’t feel the sun yet.
“Just about sunrise.”
“Then we have a few hours to prepare. Lothar won’t want to take direct action when the king of the Light Court can travel on sunbeams.”
“Is that a thing?”
"Fuck if I know, Gray. No matter how much time I spend there, I still can't tell the myths from history. But I know that the Dark Court avoids broad daylight because they think it gives my father an advantage. They'll wait until twilight, to attack again, or a full night, like last night."
“Then we’ll meet them at twilight.”
Twenty-One
I’d showered and dressed by the time Gray came to check on me again with Portia hot on his heels. She gave me a hex bag and the ingredients she’d gathered for a suppression potion, and we agreed that doubling the potency would give me the best chance of holding back the metaphysical tide until the conflict was over and I had a relative expectation of peace and safety.
“She also needs to be presented to the pack.”
“Good lord, y’all have a lot of rituals for not being a religion,” I griped. “I’ve been presented three times. I’m the dang Valkyr, Gray.”
"And now, you're my bonded mate and a shifter. If we're taking them into battle, they deserve to know who they're fighting for."
Portia had been quiet as we argued but finally interjected. "Won't they be mad that she went that far? Will they think she made Eloise change her so you could be together?"
“Knowing them, they’ll respect that I was willing to go through all this pain and mental anguish to be a true member of the pack.”
Gray agreed. “She’s right. There are a couple of females who might try to challenge the handfasting, but I can push that out until the next full moon, giving Morgan the chance to go through her first change, and then challenges should get dropped.”
"And if they don't?" She put her hands on her hips and faced Gray like I wasn't in the room. "What then? Force her to fight them?"
“Not my first duel, Aunt. If they are that stupid, I’ll kick their asses and send them retreating with their tails between their legs.”