by KT Strange
The door shut behind us as Wolfe stepped up to the front of our group. Having him there settled my fizzing nerves.
“Lovely,” he commented to no-one. The click of heels had me looking up as my mother appeared at the top of the stairway, her face a mask of makeup and fake smiles.
“Wolfe, as I live and breathe,” she said, taking the stairs with the steadiness of a rock, her shoulders thrust back like a linebacker. When she reached our level, I felt my guys shifting behind me.
She didn’t even look at me, just embraced Wolfe like he was a long lost friend, her red-painted nails carding through the hair on the back of his head.
I went still as her touch drifted from foreign to familiar. Wolfe didn’t pull away until after a moment, a hearty chuckle filling the air around him.
“Evangeline, you’re quite the glory. Although when I saw your daughter for the first time, I knew she had to be yours… you passed on your pretty genetics well didn’t you?” Wolfe glanced at me, one of his eyebrows quirked. I swallowed. He was fine. Things were weird, but when weren’t they?
“Hi Mom,” I said, with an awkward little half-wave. Evangline’s eyes crinkled at the corner, her mouth grimacing more than smiling.
“You brought… all of them?” Her voice lifted up as she surveyed the pack. “Are… are there more?”
Charlie coughed.
“No Ma’am, we’re it, don’t worry, we take care of Darcy just fine,” he said, falling into a thick yokel accent that had me itching to turn and give him a look. But then who was I to tell him how to talk to someone he might have a hand in killing if things went a little sideways.
“Phoenixpack,” Eli said, crossing his arms over his chest, clearly intent on not shaking my mother’s hand she offered. “It’s something to meet you.”
“Elias Gunner,” Wolfe said by way of introduction, “his brother, Finn.” Finn raised his hand before shoving them into his pant pockets, ignoring completely how much his suit must’ve cost. “Their compatriot, Cash Legend. The three of them served with the Allies.”
My mother looked faint.
“O-oh. Veterans. Thank you for your service,” she said like she was anything but grateful.
“Charlie Gage’s me,” Charlie said helpfully before nudging Ace. “This here’s Wesley but we all call him Ace.”
“Wesley’s a lovely name,” my mother said, her mouth full of lemons. “Ace is a bit… well I suppose it’s well enough for a name that your little band mates call you.”
Cash gave me a look and a tilt of his chin that I could only guess meant if we have to kill them all, I claim her mmkay? I gave a minute shake of my head.
“We’d love to receive you right for dinner. I’ll beg your pardon that we weren’t prepared for all of you, so perhaps we should go to the drawing room for a drink first?”
“We’d love that,” Wolfe said, as hell froze over and pigs flew. I tagged after him, my guys dogging my steps just as close as we entered the drawing room. My mother clasped her hands together.
“Well this is just… this is just exceptional,” she breathed, her voice faint as she looked over our group. “I’ll… I’ll see to the setting of extra plates.” She escaped, her heels clacking on the floor.
“Wesley’s a lovely name,” Ace said with a grumble.
“I call dibs,” Cash said, confirming my early interpretation of his look.
“Don’t be crass,” Wolfe hushed him. Finn wandered the room slowly, looking up at the oil portraits of family members living and long gone.
“Hey here’s you, Darcy,” he said, the rest of the pack following him. I groaned.
“Please don’t,” I said.
“You played the violin?” Eli asked, glancing over his shoulder at me.
“Badly,” I said, “as in I didn’t play it at all. They just wanted me to look accomplished for the portrait.”
“You look like you’ve got gas,” Charlie observed, “or that you just hate your life and the people who were forcing you into that fugly… dress. What is that, lace?”
“Can we not?” I asked. Wolfe snorted and paced the length of the room, running his fingers over the backs of chairs and settees.
The guys settled for standing around awkwardly like a bunch of 1970’s underwear models who didn’t know where to put their hands. I sat on one of the velvet chaises, bracing my feet so I wouldn’t slide forward off the damn thing. The pressing urge to go to the bathroom was distracting me, but I wasn’t sure if it was an actual bodily need or just nerves making my whole body tense.
A shriek echoed through the halls and I jerked up and off the settee, Finn moving in front of me. Wolfe held up his hand.
There came a clatter, and another shriek, this time louder, forming into words.
“What do you mean she’s here?!” My sister’s voice bounced down to us, and I pushed past Finn to stick my head out the doorway into the hall. At the top of the stairs, my mother stood, her hands raised in placation. My sister, cleaned, her hair held back away from her face, a maternity gown enveloping her, turned her head to glare down at me savagely.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. Her eyes widened when Eli stepped up beside me.
“Dear, my sweet Eva, you should be resting,” my mother urged, taking Eva by the arm and trying to lead her away from the bannister.
My sister wasn’t having that shit. She jerked away from our mother, nearly backhanding her in the process, and grabbed the railing, jolting down the steps one by one.
Her eyes never left my face, her fingers glowing sickly green.
“At least now I can finish what I started,” she spat, each word more viciously intent than the last. One of my wolves growled, another snarled a curse.
“I think not,” Wolfe said smoothly, stepping in front of us. “Eva Hailward, it would do you well to remember that there has been no trial yet, and no way for your sister to prove her innocence-”
“She knew he loved me best so she murdered him,” her eyes glowed with power and I felt myself vomit in the back of my throat a little bit.
Oh god. Her and Creston?
My mind whirled.
Of course. Of course. It had been right in front of me and I hadn’t seen it at all, too stupid, or too in denial maybe.
My mother let out an artistic gasp, too perfect, and lifted her fingers to her mouth. She had to have known, and from the barely-surprised look on her face, she must’ve.
“Christ,” Finn muttered. “Your family is so fucked up.”
“I think we got the only decent Llewellyn,” Ace agreed, and I felt his fingers wrap around my hand, squeezing me gently.
“Now no thanks to her, all I have left of him is this,” Eva gestured at her belly as she spoke to Wolfe, before curling her lips in a sneer at me. “Kenton doesn’t even want it in his house, says it’s twisted me, like Creston was twisted, but he wasn’t, he was perfect, and you couldn’t have that, could you, Darcy?”
“Stop.” Wolfe held up a hand, and my sister went perfectly still, one of her feet just coming off the stair. My mother went to her, steadying my sister’s frozen body.
I exhaled very suddenly.
“Evangeline,” Wolfe said, “I really do hate to be rude, but I think it would be best if we did not have dinner tonight.”
“Thank fuck…” someone whispered softly. As for me, I couldn’t drag my gaze away from my sister. Wolfe’s powers might have stopped her in her tracks, but she still breathed, huffing little puffs of air out her nose, and her eyes were locked on me, an unholy fury in them.
“Oh but the cook will be so disappointed, we had a lamb prepared,” my mother said, keeping a locked hand on my sister’s forearm to stop her frozen body from toppling forward down the stairs.
I couldn’t help it.
I snorted with laughter. My sister’s eyes flashed green, her muscles twitching, and my mother glared at me.
“I would hope that being around a witch of high esteem like Wolfe would have given you s
ome sense of how to comport yourself,” my mother snapped.
“Oh my fucking god, my sister is pregnant with her brother-in-law’s baby, my father tried to kill me, this whole family wants my mates dead, and you’re worried about me being rude? In case you hadn’t noticed, I am not exactly the problem here.” I blurted it all out. My mother opened her mouth, inhaling, prepared to give me some sort of sharp rebuke.
Eli growled, and her jaw snapped shut.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” Wolfe said, before gesturing to us, without turning his back on my mother, for us to go to the front door.
Cash grabbed me by the upper arm and pulled me when I hesitated.
“Let’s not fight when the devil’s in their eyes,” he murmured to me. The air outside felt weightless in comparison to inside, and I was grateful he’d dragged me along.
The limo that we’d come in hadn’t even gone anywhere.
“What’s the odds Wolfe knew we wouldn’t even stay for an appetizer?” Ace asked as he held the door. I ducked in, a burning sense of urgency in my gut as the rest of the guys piled in after me.
We waited long moments, the door wide open, until Wolfe appeared, banging on the roof as he slid inside and slammed the door shut.
The limo lurched forward, and Charlie had to grab me when I nearly slid off my seat.
Wolfe twisted to watch the great manor recede into he night, and then turned to look at us.
“Well, I’m famished. Shall we get a drive-through?”
Eleven
Darcy
“Concentrate, Llewellyn.”
I scowled across the grass where Luka and Wolfe stood, identical we r judging u Darcy Llewellyn expressions on their faces. After my sister’s performance at our aborted ‘meet the family’ dinner, Luka and Wolfe had holed themselves up in the library for three days straight while Max drank a lot of wine and stared at me with wide eyes, getting me to tell her the whole story again. And again. And again. With the appropriate holy shits and whoas at the Creston-knocking-my-sister-up reveal each time.
Eventually, Wolfe and Luka had emerged, blinking like mole-rats and declaring that I needed to learn more advanced lightning-tossing if I was going to hold my own in the upcoming battle.
I was the least practiced, least experienced witch out of everybody, after all. A fact that I was hoping would slip by and I could just get along with my basic bitch witch spells.
Daria sat to one side, watching me carefully, sprawled on the grass as Max braided her hair.
“Does everyone have to watch?”
“Your boys aren’t here, to spare them the humiliation of having such an ignorant for a mate,” Wolfe said, cheerful smile on his face. “Let’s begin. Lightning shield, please, my dear.”
I growled at him and felt that twist inside me, my powers waking up. They shuddered for a moment, making my skin tingle, before bursting outward from my body, surrounding me in a small, dome of glittering white-blue power. It flickered as I took a deep breath, and then steadied, humming softly.
“That’s pretty,” Max commented, her voice muffled by the shield of my powers. The light was so bright that it cast a tinge on the grass and the flowering brush that edged the lawn. Wolfe squinted at me and then nodded.
“Exceptional, you’ve been practicing.”
“Mostly in my head,” I said. “Sort of thinking what it feels like to do it… not so much doing it.”
Wolfe made a pleased sound.
“Ninety-five percent of magic is in your head,” Luka offered, “the more you think it through, the stronger you’ll become.”
“I dream in illusions.” Daria had closed her eyes against the light. “All night, every night.”
Luka shot her an appraising look. Wolfe raised his hand and I braced, knowing what would come next: an attack of some kind.
It wasn’t lightning this time that he came at me with, but fire falling from the sky.
No, not fire. My eyes widened as I jerked back, a molten, steaming rock landing right at my feet, cutting through my shield like it was smoke and burrowing into the ground.
He was throwing meteors at me.
“Fuck, Wolfe!”
“BRACE!” He thundered
I barely had time to register the looks of shock on Daria and Max’s face as I heard the whistle of another meteor pierced my ears. I cried out, my eyes slamming shut, throwing out every ounce of power that I could. Electricity flowed through me, crackling along my skin, flattening and swooping upward; I could see it through my eyelids, burning so bright that my eyes watered.
The impact on my shield hurt like a physical punch. I staggered backward, the sizzling filling the air. I opened my eyes and stared.
Three feet above my head, a meteor rolled over and over, burning itself up, caught in the net of my lightning. Thundered grumbled in the distance and I shuddered. It would have taken me out if I hadn’t caught it. I stepped back and let my shield drop. The meteor thumped to the ground, glowing red-hot.
A streak of mirroring red made me look up. Max grabbed Wolfe by the collar of his shirt, and hauled him down to her height.
“The fuck you think you’re doing!?” She screamed, pointing at me. “That was not okay!”
Wolfe’s expression became severe and he wrapped his hand around her wrist, prying her grip off his shirt.
“That is child’s play compared to what waits for us,” he said.
Max glared up at him before she yanked away, running her fingers through her hair.
“Then maybe we shouldn’t do this,” her voice was shaking. “Maybe taking out the witch’s council should be someone else’s job.”
The lawn was quiet, Daria sitting still, exchanging meaningful looks with Luka.
“There is no one else,” Wolfe said after a moment.
“We are the best chance anyone’s had in… far too long,” Luka said with some regret in his voice. “Maybe this could have been stopped a century ago with words or less bloodshed, but the powers that be are too entrenched now.”
“I still don’t understand why we can’t just go back to being the way we were,” Max said, her gaze never wavering from Wolfe. He sighed, his shoulders deflating.
“There is more to this than just wolves,” he said, “although they are my chief concern.”
“Thanks for that, captain,” Finn said as he ambled out the french doors from the house. He eyed the smoldering wreckage around my feet. “You trying to murder my girl, there, Wolfe? Here I thought you were a friend.”
I skirted around one of the meteorites and went to him, still feeling a little shaky on the inside. I never really thought Wolfe would hurt me, and I don’t think he would have done what he’d done if he didn’t think I could manage. But still. Meteorites.
Daria picked her way across the grass to examine them as I curled into Finn’s welcome embrace.
“I think you best tell them, Grandfather,” Luka said. Wolfe made a face at the name but didn’t argue. Finn pulled me tight back against his chest, and I let him, melting into his warmth.
“We believe the purging of the werewolves, if you could call it that, is just the beginning,” Wolfe said, his eyes dark. “We think that the rest of the magical world of creatures will be next, because all of them post a threat to the witch council’s seat of power if they were united.”
“Is that their plan?” Charlie spoke up as he walked out onto the grass, followed by the rest of the pack. I smiled as Ace bent down and kissed me gently, taking me from Finn as I hugged the youngest of my wolves.
“What makes you think that?” Eli asked. Cash glanced at him and then moved up next to Ace and me, lacing his fingers with mine.
“History repeats itself, the hunger for power never diminishes, and I have seen a few of my former friends, magical creatures like Max here, corrupted or vanish entirely,” Wolfe said, sounding exhausted. “This is a war that I have been fighting to turn the tide on by myself for too long. I thought that I could help things by supporting
what packs I could, saving the lives of wolves where I found them threatened.”
“You’re only one person,” Max said, “vampire or not, spell-casting vampire or not.”
“Sentinel helped.”
“Two demons and a vampire?” She snorted. “You can’t go against a whole powerful group of people and expect to win like that.”
“I was surviving,” Wolfe admitted, and then shot me a look. “But the right pieces have fallen onto the board. I think it’s time to do more than survive. We will take back the council, and root out the evil that has taken it. If that means blood must be shed-”
“They shed ours first,” Ace murmured. Wolfe gazed at him steadily and then gave a single, short nod. “I’m not one for revenge, but I am one for stopping further hurt and suffering.”
I swallowed and looked up at him, tilting my head back. He gave me a sad, small grin.
“So how do we play this?” Daria spoke up, after being quiet for so long.
“The council has been collecting power for decades, infusing their homes with it, using it to ensnare creatures and taking their power from them. It all has to come down,” Luka said. “All of it. We must burn it to the ground, disperse all that energy back into the universe before they get the bright idea to bind us with it.”
Daria made a face.
“Bind us?” Max asked, looking confused.
“It’s what they do to us when we get married,” Daria explained, “it’s how they’ve been stealing the power of all their pretty little wives.” She sounded distressed. That would have been her future, and mine, if we’d gotten married to the partners our parents had picked out for us. A shiver rolled through me.
Creston would have been a death sentence for me, in more than one way. Ace hugged me tight and I let myself relax in his embrace.
“That’s so beyond fucked,” Cash said. “Our women are our world. There’s nothing you could do to make us want to take from them.” He gave me a heart-felt look. “With the bonding, each of us gives over a piece of ourselves, makes you stronger, that’s the only way we could ever have our mate keep up with us.”