Wild and Free

by Kristen Ashley

  “Just a bad dream,” Callum muttered.

  “A street with dead human bodies?” Lucien asked.

  Abel nodded. “That and some vampire. They seemed to be facing off. He saw me, but she forced me out of her dream before I could catch anything.”

  Lucien stared at him, his stare acute, and stated, “The vampire saw you in her dream.”

  Abel tensed at what he was feeling coming off Lucien and replied slowly, “Yeah.”

  “And she forced you out?” Lucien asked.

  “Yeah,” Abel repeated.

  “How did she do that?” Lucien pressed.

  “Turned, saw me, lifted her hand, shouted ‘no,’ then we were both awake,” Abel told him.

  “The vampire, did you know him?” Callum queried, and Abel looked to him.

  “Don’t know any of them except the good kind and the dead kind, but the last I don’t actually know since they got dead before I could get to know them,” Abel answered.

  Callum looked to Lucien speculatively so Abel did too.

  “What?” he asked.

  “What did this vampire look like?” Lucien questioned, and Abel shrugged.

  “Blond. Lean. Tall. Think he had blue eyes. Know he had asshole written all over him,” Abel told him and then tensed at what he now sensed coming from Lucien. “What?” he snarled.

  “I need you to come with me,” Lucien declared.

  “Why?” Abel asked.

  “Please, just come with me,” Lucien said, his voice going low.

  Abel looked to Callum, who was watching Lucien. “You know what this is?”

  Callum turned his gaze to Abel. “Perhaps.”

  “Either of you gonna share?” Abel asked.

  “My father is blond, tall, and lean,” Lucien stated, and Abel looked back to him.

  “So?” Abel prompted.

  “So, he’s also the leader of the rebellion,” Lucien shared, and Abel’s entire body strung tight.

  He had to be fucking kidding.

  “You consider sharin’ that sooner?” he bit out.

  “Actually, I have,” Lucien returned calmly. “However, telling someone who you need to trust you implicitly that the immortal behind a faction of others like him, who wish to obliterate the world as we know it and execute unspeakable acts, is your father is not something that engenders trust.”

  Abel scowled at him but made no comment, seeing as he spoke truth, so Lucien drew in a breath and continued.

  “Trust like that has to be earned. Unfortunately, I was in a difficult position for I’d hoped to make inroads with you, but I also had to do it making a decision that had no right answers. Keep from you something that would mean you wouldn’t trust me not only because of what that something was, but that I was keeping it from you. Or share something dire with you upon first meeting that would make it difficult for you even to begin to trust me.”

  “I hope, brother, that you can see Lucien’s dilemma,” Callum put in quietly.

  Abel didn’t take his eyes from Lucien.

  The fuck of it was he could see Lucien’s dilemma.

  He didn’t respond so Lucien kept talking.

  “I have a photo of my father on my iPad inside. I’d like you to look at it and tell me if that’s the man you saw in Lilah’s dream.”

  Abel didn’t move.

  He stated, “I’m taking it the apple fell far from that tree.”

  “I’m eight hundred and twenty-three years old and not one day in all those years was a day where I felt even a modicum of warmth for my father,” Lucien returned.

  Abel felt his body relax and his lips curl up. “So you hate him.”

  “He’s despicable and this is only the latest in a very long history of him proving just that,” Lucien replied.

  “In other words, you hate him,” Abel said again, and finally, Lucien smiled.

  “Yes, Abel. In other words, I hate him.”

  “Right, then let’s go see this picture,” Abel muttered.

  Lucien nodded and turned, Callum and Abel following him into the house. Abel and Callum waited in one of the dozen living rooms the place had while Lucien went up to his and Leah’s bedroom to get his iPad. He did this with vampire speed, which meant they waited about five seconds.

  Abel was feeling no humor when he looked at the photo of the man on Lucien’s tablet.

  This was because it was the man in Delilah’s dream.

  “What the fuck?” he whispered.

  “Fuck,” Callum also whispered.

  Lucien just drew in an annoyed breath.

  Abel focused on Lucien. “She’s dreaming of someone she doesn’t know.”

  “Yes,” Lucien agreed.

  The seconds of the dream he saw and felt, the slaughter, Delilah’s terror, raked through him.

  “This means whatever the fuck that was might happen,” he bit out.

  “None of the dreams have come true, Abel,” Callum reminded him. “Except the good kind that Sonia and I or Lucien and Leah have had.”

  This did not make Abel feel better.

  “She was terrified in that dream,” Abel told him. “She reeked of it so much, I tasted it and I was only in that dream for a coupla seconds.”

  Callum’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing.

  “He saw you,” Lucien said, taking Abel’s attention back to him.

  “Yeah,” he confirmed.

  “Be careful, Abel,” Lucien warned, his voice low and heavy. “In war, anything can happen. I cannot imagine a scenario where anyone, especially you, would allow Lilah to be in that situation by herself. That said, there are many forces at work here and anything we do, as frustrating as it is, we must proceed with caution.”

  “What you’re sayin’ is, I should let her have her dreams and not try to get in again,” Abel deduced, and Lucien nodded.

  “We’ve learned that our dreams can cause harm. If Lilah’s aren’t harming her, and she isn’t remembering them, then there’s no reason for you to try to get in,” Lucien said.

  “Because some bitch of a witch somewhere has got the power, or some other supernatural shit might be goin’ on, and they’re usin’ Lilah and her connection to me as a channel to lure me in and maybe do me or both of us harm in her dream,” Abel guessed.

  “I don’t know,” Lucien replied. “But as I said, I would be careful.”

  “So what if they get frustrated that they aren’t gettin’ to me and they step things up with her and her dreams do do her harm?” Abel asked curtly.

  “Then you go in, but you do it with me close so I can mark you and pull you back,” Lucien returned.

  “You can do that?” Abel asked.

  “I’ve no idea,” Lucien answered. “But I can attune myself to you, or her, so I’m relatively certain I could pull one or the other of you out of a dream state.”

  Abel’s eyes narrowed. “Relatively certain?”

  “It’s all we have,” Lucien said quietly.

  “Fuck,” Abel clipped.

  “We need to move,” Callum growled, and Abel and Lucien looked to him.

  “What?” Lucien asked.

  “We need to move. We need to do something,” Callum ground out. “We need to take the offensive to them. We need to hunt them, inactivate their soldiers, dismantle their infrastructure. We can’t have them manipulating dreams. We can’t give them any in to get to somebody. And we can’t sit around on our asses for eternity.”

  Obviously, Callum was feeling restless too.

  “With due respect, Cal, it was you three days ago who advised caution,” Lucien noted carefully.

  “That was three days ago,” Callum shot back. “Now there’s a possibility one of The Three can be murdered in their beds without the enemy even penetrating the outer wall. So my advice has changed.”

  “And how do we start doing that?” Abel asked.

  “We begin to gather intel, doing it aggressively by giving them a target,” Callum answered.

  Abel’s entire frame
went wired. “Delilah’s in enough danger. I won’t have her in more.”

  “The women stay here. We’ll be the targets,” Callum told him. “Whoever comes after us, we take them down but not out. If we have a prisoner, he or she can be interrogated.”

  Finally. A plan. Not a great one, but it was something.

  “I’m in,” Abel stated immediately, and Callum grinned.

  “Wolf,” he whispered.

  “Whatever we do must be meticulously planned,” Lucien added.

  “And vampire,” Callum said on a smile.

  Lucien settled in, crossing his arms on his chest, but he didn’t contradict the king of the werewolves.

  “I’ll go extract Hook from his vampire,” Abel said.

  “I’ll find Stephanie,” Lucien stated.

  “I’ll get Ryon and my brothers,” Callum put in.

  “We wait until Xun and Wei are done with our mates to fill those men in,” Lucien declared. “Our decision will not be popular with the females. My sense is that it would be far easier to deal with all three after the fact, not before.”

  “Agreed,” Callum replied.

  “Got a problem with that,” Abel muttered, and Lucien looked to him.

  “I know Lilah has issues with you leaving without her knowing where you’re going. Of course, I hesitate to advise you to lie to your mate. Destiny has chosen certain types of women for all of us, and when we return from this, not one of them will make it easy. But prior to going, if you share with Lilah you’re training on the grounds but away from the house, perhaps that will eradicate any pain she might feel because she’ll think she knows where you are.”

  Abel didn’t like it, but he also didn’t like hanging around waiting for shit to happen. He knew himself and he was quickly getting to know his mate. Wild and free. They both wanted it. Wanted it in a way that their current situation couldn’t last long before something had to give.

  And maybe Lucien was right. If she thought she knew where he was, she’d have peace of mind and the men could get out and do something.

  Therefore, he said, “It’s worth a shot.”

  Lucien nodded and murmured, “Then let’s go.”

  Without hesitating a moment, that was what they did.

  * * * * *

  Yuri

  Of course, she had to be beautiful.

  Yuri disliked using his skills on females who were beautiful.

  Even so, he held her by her throat, suspended several feet up from the floor against the wall. He put enough pressure on for her to fear the oxygen depletion so she couldn’t focus on magic.

  And she felt the fear. He smelled it. It permeated the air all around them. And staring in her blue eyes, with her dark hair framing her heart-shaped face, he wanted to rip into her throat and taste it.

  When those eyes clouded over and her nails clawing at his hand fell away, he dropped her. She slumped to her side at his feet, drawing in weak, ragged breaths.

  “You try me further, I’ll drain you and find another witch,” he warned, tipping his chin only slightly to stare down his nose at her.

  Feebly, she lifted her hand to her throat but moved no further, outside of sliding her eyes up to catch his gaze.

  Her voice was rasping when she whispered, “You are as they say you are. Ruthless.”

  “I am as I need to be to save my sister, my people, your people,” he retorted.

  “Right, your sister,” she spat weakly. “Another vampire who no doubt stood by, smiling, during The Burning Times.”

  “My sister is a wolf,” he informed her coolly.

  She blinked.

  “If memory serves, The Burning Times ended when the werewolf king, McDonagh, intervened with The Dominion on behalf of your sisters,” Yuri went on. “And my sister is married to McDonagh’s son and was born a mere thirty-seven years ago. She doesn’t even know what The Burning Times are.”

  She pushed up to a hand, her voice stronger and completely disbelieving when she noted, “It’s impossible your sister is a wolf.”

  “Much has happened in the last several hundred years,” he returned. “But factually, you’re correct. My sister cannot be wolf. Essentially, she was adopted, which might not make her blood, but she’s still my sister.”

  It was then that Yuri had to admit to a mild sense of admiration when, even in her current situation, she didn’t let it go and snapped, “You nearly annihilated my species.”

  “I did nothing of the sort,” he returned. “At the beginning, I was busy feeding and fucking. At the end, I was listening to my father petition The Dominion on the witches’ behalf in support of McDonagh’s intervention. I’ve never touched a witch in my life until tonight, and further, I’ve never had an issue with a single one of your kind.”

  “Even so, we endured four hundred years of persecution and genocide at the hands of your kind,” she hissed.

  “And the members of The Dominion who championed that were removed and executed,” Yuri shot back. When she opened her mouth to again speak, he continued, “Now, as enjoyable as it is debating history with you, as I shared with you earlier, matters are quite urgent.”

  “I remember,” she stated sarcastically. “The end of the world as we know it.”

  “You’re aware of The Prophesies,” he reiterated, which he’d mentioned before their tête-à-tête degenerated.

  Though, their tête-à-tête didn’t start on a good note. The second she got out of her car, she saw him as vampire and fled, necessitating him pursuing her, which was an immensely easy task even if she did throw magic his way as he did it. He was still twenty times her speed and strength, and she was young, nowhere near the height of her powers.

  Nevertheless, even though he chased her only from her car to her home, this taking approximately ten seconds, it was irritating and shaved away a minute edge of his patience, something that was paper-thin on the best of days.

  With all that, there wasn’t much conversation to degenerate.

  However, when he cornered her in the living room of her home, she again tried to conjure magic rather than listen, which eradicated any patience he had left.

  “Of course. And apparently, in order to explain your unwarranted attack, you wish me to believe that they’re coming true,” she replied as if she didn’t believe him in the slightest.

  “They are.”

  “Right,” she muttered, pushing up further, and Yuri regarded her.

  Long, dark hair with a lustrous sheen and attractive wave, the mass of it curling over her shoulders and down her chest. Big eyes that were a startling blue with a midnight edge to the iris. More than ample breasts from which he would very much enjoy feeding. The same with her thighs and ass. A musky scent that would not normally be his preference, but mingled with her residual fear, as well as her courage, he couldn’t help but find it alluring.

  With the restrictions on vampire feeding finally lifted, if this was any other time, and indeed if he were not vampire and she were not witch, he’d take her, making her enjoy it. He’d start with her inner thigh, close to her sex, so he could feed at the same time he watched his fingers thrust deep and listened as excitement overcame her fear.

  “Uh, I don’t have to read minds to see you’re looking at me like I’m your next meal,” she pointed out, taking his attention from where it had fixated on the pulse in her neck and bringing it back to her eyes.

  “I’m hungry,” he warned. “And you’re immensely beautiful,” he went on, seeing her blink again at his words. “And you smell magnificent, like blood and earth and wind, fear and bravery. I want that taste on my tongue,” he told her with blunt honesty and watched as her eyes grew round. “So perhaps we can hurry this along so my control doesn’t snap along with my patience.”

  “You’re hungry?” she asked, the fear edging back, but he couldn’t help but notice there was a hint of curiosity.

  “This mission is important and dangerous, so I left my concubine behind.” He ignored her wrinkling her nose, n
ot only because he didn’t like the indication she found his use of a concubine distasteful, but also because it was annoyingly adorable. “This means I haven’t fed in three days.”

  It also meant he hadn’t fucked in three days. Since the restrictions were lifted, he, like all other vampires, took advantage. And after five hundred years of having the sweetest blood to be tasted in his mouth, blood that came from attractive women who very much enjoyed his feeding to its fullest (when he could not), he took everything a concubine could offer, not only her blood.

  But he wasn’t doing this now.

  Which was yet another reason he was in a foul mood.

  At his words, her eyes got huge and she pushed against the wall, whispering, “Oh my God.”

  Yuri sighed and forced them back on track. “A witch. In this town. Twenty years ago. With a blessed athame that can scar an immortal. A name and address would be useful.”

  He watched her head twitch and he knew she knew of whom he spoke, something that wasn’t surprising. Since he began hunting witches, when he sensed this one, he knew she was the one he’d approach—the only one he’d found who was young enough to be malleable and old enough to know what he needed to know.

  So he crouched and she pressed deeper into the wall. He could hear her heart thumping hard and fast in her chest.

  “A name,” he pushed.

  “Scar an immortal?” she asked.

  “A hybrid vampire wolf.”

  That time, she jerked her head side to side in a sharp negative. “There are no such things.”

  “There are. I’ve seen him. Spoken to him. Fought at his side when someone tried to kill him and his mate along with the others who make The Three.”

  “You’ve got to be lying.”

  Bloody hell.

  He threw out an exasperated hand. “Why would I be lying?”

  “Because if he exists, The Prophesies actually are coming true.”

  Yuri clenched his teeth.

  She stared at him. Then she did it harder. Finally, she squinted at him so hard he thought she’d have an aneurysm.