Summer's Gone

by Jen Talty

  “Sometimes I thought it was because my dad might have actually loved her. She always danced around the house, happy to do anything anyone asked, always obeying my father. But when she appeared with the vase that held all the captured fairies and then swore at me to do the fairy thing, I thought she might have been the best actress ever and had known everything from the get-go, but it seems that isn’t true because she’s acting weirder than ever.”

  “She’s definitely changed since being brought here,” Chaz said.

  “No offense, but I’m not sure I want her to be my mate,” Drew said.

  “I’ve noticed a subtle difference in her when she’s around you,” Isadore said. “

  When he’d stepped into the house a half hour ago, Coral had smiled, then given him this look of disgust, as if she hated him. “If she’s my fated mate, then why isn’t there this intense connection between the two of us?” he asked for the millionth time, unsatisfied with any answer he could think of or his brothers had tossed at him.

  “We’ve just come full circle to the possession, or whatever it is inside her,” Chaz said as he sat in the chair next to Drew. “We need to find out more about what the Royal Fairies did when they cast themselves into human existence. The Legend didn’t predict twins. We are also finding evidence that King Lear might have left some things out of the Legend when he told it to the wolf pack the day before he was murdered.”

  “And I’m also having twin Wolfairies,” Isadore said. “Something that the Legend did not predict.”

  “I’m not having twins with your sister,” Drew mumbled under his breath. “She’s a kid, and I’m barely a man.”

  Nico and Chaz both laughed.

  “This isn’t funny,” Drew said, with flushed cheeks. He’d never been with a woman, and while it had never been a big topic of conversation, his brothers knew. It wasn’t that he hadn’t the opportunity, but Drew was a bit of an old-fashioned sap and he wanted his first to be his last.

  “No, it’s not,” Nico said, turning serious. “We have to go on the belief that she’s your mate and without her, all of this is for nothing. All the fairies, Royal and otherwise, will perish. Not to mention what will happen to mine and Chaz’s children.”

  “What do you propose we do?” Drew tossed his hands wide.

  “I think you and Coral need to be alone without any of us around. Just you and her,” Chaz said.

  “And how is that going to help?” Drew understood that it should help the mating process along, but he had no idea how to cast out a spirit.

  “You might be able to reach her. The real Coral. Not the one that has been living with this spirit for what I believe has been her entire life,” Isadore said. “And then she might know how to get rid of the spirit. For all we know, she’s taking to it.”

  A slow throb filled Drew’s head. At twenty-three, he’d seen some pretty crazy things as an officer for Twilight Crossing, but his training didn’t prepare him for this. “I don’t think I can do this alone.”

  “You have to,” Chaz said. “We’re all right here for you.”

  Nico inched his way across the room, resting his hand on Drew’s shoulder. “If we don’t cast out whatever is taking over Coral, she very well might die. We can’t have that. Not if she’s your fated. It could kill us all.”

  Drew swallowed the thick lump that formed in his throat. He had always done his duty when it came to his pack without question. He did it with honor and pride. So why was this mission making him question who he was and what his future role might be in this family?

  “I need a lifeline,” Drew said, taking in a deep breath. “We need a plan if this being inside Coral is only out to hurt us.”

  “We’ve thought of that,” Chaz said. “But the stronger Coral is, the stronger her fairy power will be, and you’ve seen what my wife and Isadore can do. We need Coral to be able to do the same thing.”

  “My sister is already on her way to your cabin,” Isadore said. “Please, take good care of her.”

  “I promise, I will do my best.”

  “We’ll stay in close contact,” Chaz said.

  Drew nodded, curling his finger around the front door. He glanced over his shoulder, nodding to his brothers. Drew knew that he’d never leave Coral alone. He might not feel a pull toward her in a primal way, but he did know that there was something about her he needed to protect on a primal level.

  And he’d step up to the plate, no matter what it meant for his future.

  “You’re my real father?” Coral asked, taking the man named Ralph’s arm as they walked out of the main house, heading for the cabin on the other side of the farm. She glanced over her shoulder, looking for Drew, the handsome wolf who looked at her like she was a crazy person.

  “We’ve been through this before,” Ralph said.

  Coral scowled. Ever since she came to this farm a few weeks ago, her mind had a foggy glaze over it. She tried to reach back and pull out the memories of what her life had really been like. The hell Isadore had lived was real, yet Coral’s mind poured a thick haze over them, only letting her see things that were cheery. Her entire life, she had felt different. Now she knew why. She wasn’t a witch. She was a fairy. A Royal Fairy. And a visionary. She was supposed to be able to see things.

  But no future came to her. She saw nothing of what was to become of the Wolfairies, the wolves, the Royals.

  Nothing. Not a single vision flashed in her brain.

  The only thing she did see was a faint image of a huge, dark wolf staring at her with big, dull eyes that carried an emptiness that went on forever like a bottomless pit, while another wolf, not as tall but just as menacing, sat by her bedside, making her feel safe.

  “Explain it again.” A request she’d made many times, to many people. For the last few days, her memory hadn’t been very good.

  “That depends on how you look at it,” Ralph said. He had a nice spirit about him. Kind. Sweet. And he’d helped Daphne deliver the twins in under two hours with minimal pain. But Daphne was the Fairy Queen with her own healing powers. She’d started as the princess, but as more Royals flocked to the farm, it became apparent that her role was to be a leader, next to her husband.

  The Fairy Wolf King. She covered her mouth, biting back a chuckle. She didn’t care for laughing much anymore, and she didn’t understand why. She’d always been so carefree.

  And clueless.

  She’d never forget the day Nico and Isadore showed up at her family home and her mind snapped from this silly little girl, to a woman with a purpose.

  Only she had no idea what that purpose was. She just knew she had to get the vase she’d been given by a stranger when she’d gone into town the year before. The stranger told her of the day a wolf would come and take her and her sister into the safety of their own people.

  She hadn’t understood what that meant, but the man handing her the vase dropped to her feet the moment his fingers released the glass jar. Seconds later, he had fizzled into a pile of dust. When she’d returned home, she hid the vase and every day, she put it in a new spot, making sure her sister and father never found it.

  That had been the first time she realized she should be very afraid of the man she had been calling dad her entire life. “How should I look at it?”

  “I’m the father that made sure the person you’re supposed to be will be reborn. But a long time ago, you belonged to a very special couple who loved you so much, they cast your soul into a human body, to protect you, until the world was ready for your kind.”

  “How do you know? How can you be so sure?”

  Ralph shook his head. “I honestly don’t know how I know. I had no idea I was a fairy for many years, and then I met your birth mother. She hadn’t told me about either of you until she was on her deathbed. And that’s when I was captured and told that even I had a higher purpose. It was in the vase I learned of all of this. But none of us know the entire story. Just bits and pieces.” He tapped her temple at the base of Drew’s cab
in. “You have a special purpose, Coral. Just like your sisters, Isadore and Daphne.”

  Coral pursed her lips. She felt a certain kinship to Daphne, but all of this Royal Fairy Family stuff had started to give her a headache. She wanted to leave this place. Go back to a simpler time where she didn’t know anything and could play and laugh and not worry about the fate of the Wolfairies.

  Except she no longer felt like a child, free of adult worry and responsibility. However, she had no idea what it meant to be a woman, much less a fated mate to a powerful wolf.

  Isadore and Nico took on their roles as protectors like a second skin. The Warriors. Which Coral found sort of funny because Fairies didn’t have warriors.

  But wolves did.

  And something told her that wolf blood coursed through her veins like an erupting volcano. No. It wasn’t something. It was a dream that prickled her mind as a child, but every time she even questioned it in her own thoughts, something squelched into a faint memory, as if she hadn’t even dreamt it at all.

  She shivered. She didn’t understand that sensation. Neither Isadore nor Daphne were part wolf, so how could she be?

  “I feel like I’m being cast aside, both from the farm, and myself. What am I supposed to do?”

  Ralph kissed her forehead. “I only know that something is inside you. I don’t know if it is good, or if it is evil. I just know that we have a limited amount of time to find a way to cast it out, and I think only you and Drew have the answers.”

  She looked toward the main house, far off in the distance, lit up by a combination of bright lights and fairy dust. A tall, dark silhouette strolled across the dirt road, his dark-blond hair glowing in the moonlight. He stood maybe six feet, but his shadow stretched on for what seem liked a mile.

  Drew.

  He did make her heart beat a little faster, but that could have been fear for he could be the talk, dark wolf with a coldness in his eyes, and not the one standing by her side.

  Chapter 2

  Drew closed the door, clicking the deadbolt. He never locked his doors before, but considering everything, he figured he should. Didn’t matter that the Coven of the Raindrops had cast a powerful spell, it wasn’t the kind that could wrap them in a protective blanket and keep out anyone who might want to cause them harm.

  It simply served as a security system, so to speak.

  Not to mention, he had to kick his roommate out for the next few days, though he took it in stride.

  Coral sat on the sofa, her dainty hands clasped in her lap. Her long, blond hair curled down over her shoulders. She was a petite girl, but with curves where a man desired.

  Where Drew desired.

  Her magical, blue eyes captivated him, sucking the air out of his lungs.

  He cleared his throat. “Interesting night,” he said, leaning against the door.

  “Joyous night. The twins are beautiful, and amazingly talented for creatures not even a day old.” Her voice had a sweet ring to it that reminded him of a hummingbird. He could hear the excitement trickling from her lips. When he’d first met her, she was filled with a personality like the vibrant bubbles in a flute of champagne fizzing to the top of the glass. Always smiling and spreading her cheer like one might expect from a fairy, but she was a bit out of step as compared to Daphne, or Isadore, or any of the others.

  Now she sported a permanent semi-scowl which crinkled her forehead, making her look as though she were perpetually pouting. Whenever she was playing with the children in the yard, that look would vanish. Those were the tiny moments that made his heart stir with a tickle of attraction.

  Then she’d look his way.

  He wanted to be able to make her smile again. He wanted to get to know the woman who lurked behind those soft-blue eyes. His heart paused as he, for a split second, saw a glimpse of the woman Coral could be.

  “Chaz says he can communicate with them. I find that cool, but weird,” he said.

  “I’m with you on both accounts,” she said, nodding her head. “Ralph, and my sister Isadore, tell me I am your fated mate, but I don’t feel like one.”

  Points for the girl for being direct and to the point.

  “To be honest, neither do I, but Gerri, from the Paranormal Dating Agency, says we are, and she’s never wrong. Look at my two older brothers and what has happened since they mated with who Gerri paired them with.”

  Coral turned her head toward the fireplace where the crackle of burning wood filled the cabin. “I think you’re nice, but you look at me like I somehow disgust you, which doesn’t bode well with marriage, much less us creating little bundles of Wolfairies.” She held up her hand. “And I’m not even close to wanting any of that for a long time.”

  He rubbed a hand down his face, feeling like he’d just aged twenty years. “I find you a lot of things, but disgusting isn’t one of them. And since we’re being honest here, you don’t look at me like you like me much either, which is one of the reasons I pull back, even after I found out you are my fated mate.”

  A faint smiled curled on her plump lips. “So, what do we do now?” A red and orange glow from the fire made her skin sizzle with the soft reflection.

  “Lucky for us, we get to spend some time alone in this cabin to get to know one another.”

  She turned her head and gave him a faint smile before glancing toward her lap. “I can’t tell if you’re being serious.”

  He swallowed.

  Hard.

  Had he said the statement with a drop of sarcasm? When he’d left the farmhouse less than an hour ago, a sense of dread filled his heart.

  Now panic grabbed a hold of his heart.

  Or maybe it was a tinge of fear wrapped in a tortilla of attraction.

  A genuine pull to be near her made him close the gap, but he couldn’t be sure it was a primal need to be with her, or what his mother called his kind heart.

  “My father…Ralph…” she shook her head, “I don’t know what to call him, but he says there is a creature living inside me.”

  Drew inched his way toward the sofa, a slight tickle of excitement crawled up his skin settling in paces he’d prefer remained calm. “That’s what we are told,” he said, sitting on the sofa, taking her hand in his.

  Her soft skin glided like silk against his hard calluses. He focused on the sensation, hoping that something dramatic like thunderous fireworks finale on the Fourth of July would happen.

  “We need to find out who, or what, it is and then make sure we can safely banish it from your body.”

  Her hand trembled. “When you are near, I feel it and it’s restless. Almost angry,” she said, her big, blue eyes widening with the kind of fear he’d felt on his first assignment with the Twilight Crossing. Didn’t matter that he had Nico by his side all through his training, the fear of failure had been so strong he worried he’d screw up and cost a life.

  “Maybe that’s why you are always giving me weird looks,” he said.

  “Doesn’t explain why YOU look at me oddly.”

  He let her hand go, leaning back against the sofa. “I’m sorry. I have no appropriate explanation for that. You’re a beautiful woman, and I like you. At least what I know of you, but I have kind of avoided you.”

  “And I, you.” She laughed. It was soft and sweet, and fairy dust filled the air.

  “Oh my,” she whispered with a giggle that filled room like tiny raindrops. “I’ve never done that before.”

  “It’s good. It means your fairy powers are blossoming.” He scratched the back of his head, having no idea how to approach this. “For years, you lived under the spell of a witch.”

  “I thought I was destined to be a witch seer, not a fairy visionary, and the worst part is I can’t see the future.” She tossed her hands wide, falling back on the sofa, rolling her head to the side. “I see nothing. Fucking nada.” Frustration coated her tone and her cheeks flushed red, but a little smile curved her plump lips as the word ‘fucking’ tumbled out of her mouth.

  “It�
��s adorable when you swear,” he said. He’d only heard it one other time, but for whatever reason, it showed a side of her that he could get on board with.

  “Sometimes I want to say the words I hear others use so freely. If I had ever used a word like that, my father would have probably thought I was like Isadore and then treated me like he did her. It’s weird because for all my life, I felt protected from the hell that Isadore lived. It was almost as if I didn’t see it, but I did, and when I think back now, I cringe at what she had to do in order to protect me.”

  “She loves you.”

  “But who am I? Am I me? Or a spell that was cast on me. Or am I this creature that is living inside me, perhaps taking me over? Is that who is talking to you now? Is it a bad creature that when we banish it, it will destroy the babies? If that’s the case, then let it live inside me forever.” She spoke so fast he could barely keep up, but every question she blurted out, he’d asked the exact same thing.

  “You know that we’ve been told if we do that, the babies will die, and Isadore’s babies won’t be born. Neither of us can let that happen.”

  Coral blinked, her long, thick lashes fluttering like a beautiful butterfly, hovering over a tree branch and that damn dust bristling onto his skin. It did make him feel closer, but there was something else in that dust. He could smell it. A faint woodsy scent. “I know, and I would give up my life to make that happen.”

  Her tone bordered on desperation and devotion.

  He shifted his body, resting his arm on the back of the couch, his other hand on her thigh. “That right there tells me I’m talking to Coral, the visionary of the Royal Fairies. Not some creature we know nothing about.”

  “Or maybe that’s what the creature wants you to think, and it’s all trickery.”

  He couldn’t deny that point. It was as if he could be talking to two different people, with two different agendas, at the same time, and he had no way of knowing what reality any of them were living.