Sapphire Flame: A Paranormal Romance (The Flame Series Book 7)

by Caris Roane

  Grant almost snapped an ungenerous, ‘no’. Instead, he nodded curtly then ate more of his sandwich. Maybe his body language would dissuade Ryan.

  Apparently not.

  Ryan turned to face away from the others eating at the table, all of whom were chatting, then said quietly, “You don’t know what you have in her. She’s one in a million. Hell, one in a billion and you know it. So, don’t be an ass and dump her the way you have the women you’ve bedded over the past six years.”

  Grant was ready with his reply, But Ryan lifted his hand. “Don’t want to hear your excuses, my friend. This is Five Bridges. Take the gift when it’s offered or be alone for another six years, or a hundred. But I’ll tell you this, you’re going to be miserable if you fuck this up and she leaves you for good.”

  Ryan turned back to the table and accepted a refill on his coffee. He then hunkered down and set to work on his second sandwich.

  Grant didn’t want to think about Natalie right now. He felt guilty as hell that he’d basically taken her into his bed then sent her on her way. Nothing new there except damn if Ryan wasn’t right. She was exceptional and had been instrumental in helping him to take over the Meldorin Pack.

  Something inside him grew hard as steel, however. This wasn’t the time to be thinking about love and marriage. He had to focus on his wolves. Period.

  The alarm sounded just as he finished his coffee. The external security force leader tapped on Grant’s telepathy.

  Give, Grant responded.

  We’ve got incoming from all directions.

  Grant shot to his feet. To the room, he said, “This is it. Get to your stations.”

  Along with the others, he left the conference room on a run and headed to the command station they’d finished setting up an hour ago. With a collection of screens, he had visual around the entire property and could see Kryder and his force advancing. They wore black tanks with blue trim, carried AR-15s, and moved on a trot toward the front of the compound. Grant had been right. He recognized the uniform of The Sapphire Club’s security force.

  Checking out the Meldorin response, Grant smiled as he watched his men and women take up their positions. All the secret work he’d done for years now became evident. Small portions of walls slid away to reveal well-fortified firing positions. The rocket launcher team moved to their station which was protected by a thick layer of cement. Support personnel was ready to run ammunition as needed.

  Using a top-of-the-line com system, he spoke to his team leaders. “This is it. You know what to do. Once the firing starts, continue until Kryder and his force retreats.”

  All twelve responded in the affirmative. Each was positioned with ten trained men and women. There wasn’t a single blind spot around the compound.

  Each monitor reflected a portion of the exterior. Grant kept his gaze fixed on the one that showed a heavily armored Jeep. Kryder was no doubt within the vehicle.

  He rose through the top aperture and started shouting orders. His men immediately started firing as they continued to advance.

  Kryder then disappeared back inside the vehicle.

  Grant watched as his people responded. The firing could no doubt be heard throughout Savage. It was war and the cacophony almost busted his eardrums. He removed his headset and listened through the room’s speakers.

  Ryan and his staff sat at various desks and keyboards. He stood at the back of the room, itching to be on the front lines. Adrenaline spiked in his veins.

  Everything about their set-up was working.

  He kept looking for a way to improve their situation, but his admin team had created all the right precautions. Their line held.

  Suddenly, he felt a hand clap over his mouth and a sharp blade enter his back, not deep but enough to make him freeze in pain.

  Kryder’s voice shot into his head. Hold steady, asshole, or you’ll die in a puddle right here without your people even remotely aware of it.

  The pain was all but unbearable as Kryder withdrew the blade. Kryder had his arm around his neck, the blade now pressing against the skin of his lower back. He saw the room through a soft glow. Shit. Kryder had pulled him inside an invisibility spell.

  Now, look to your right.

  Slowly grant shifted and saw that the spell included a team of five men each armed with assault rifles. They stood in a row against the wall.

  Come quietly and I’ll let them live. Make the smallest fuss and this room will be a broken-up place of blood and monitors. Your fucking choice.

  Grant had planned for a dozen scenarios, but he hadn’t considered this one. If Natalie had been here, either her wolf or with a quick dip into the future, she could have shown Grant the trap he’d just fallen into.

  He took one final glance at the monitors and saw that Kryder still appeared to be in the Jeep.

  I see what you’re wondering. I have a double. He does quite well at a distance. But I also have a terrific fae that I keep chained up. She showed me what to do. BTW, too bad your fae deserted you. She could have told you all about your weak spots. But then you were always too much of a lone-wolf. So, what’s it going to be, Grant? Do we leave quietly? Or do I shoot up your friends then drag your ass out of here? Either way, you’re coming with me.

  Why take me at all?

  Haven’t you guessed? I need your woman. She’s got the gift I require for all my future plans. The fae I’ve got just isn’t sharp enough.

  For a moment, Grant considered what he should do. If he left with Kryder without disrupting the kidnapping, he’d be putting Natalie in danger. But the reality of losing so many of his pack within the next few seconds, made his decision for him.

  Let’s go.

  Kryder had trained his own men equally as well. Two of them pivoted to take the lead, two fell in beside Grant on either side and the rest took up the rear.

  Kryder chose the route that led back through the sandpit and the underground tunnel. Grant wondered what he’d find, as in dead bodies on the ground, although it was unlikely. The monitors would have shown an attack.

  Instead, the small team of warriors at the exit stood facing outward and watching the empty pine forest opposite the road.

  Once past the compound’s team, Kryder’s group lifted into levitation and rose steadily into the air. Almost at the same time, Kryder’s force on the ground began to retreat.

  Grant heard his wolves raise a shout of triumph, unaware that the enemy had just kidnapped their alpha.

  ~ ~ ~

  After having settled into the cottage Agnes assigned her, Natalie had gone to the chapel to think things through. She’d spent the past couple of hours, sitting in the front pew, her thoughts turned inward.

  Her iridescent wolf lay on the carpet a few feet in front of her, but stretched out on her belly toward her, muzzle on paws. Every once in a while, she’d lift her head as though listening to the sounds outside the building but would soon revert to her head-down position. Her eyes, however, remained fixed on Natalie.

  Several times, she had the sense that Grant reached out to her but fell short of telepathy. Of course, she wondered if she was imagining it.

  She sighed. Renee had challenged her to examine her fears, so she’d taken the time to do just that. She’d been looking hard at what she feared most.

  It didn’t take her long to understand that what she’d really feared was losing Grant. Though, given the way he’d so easily dismissed her, what she feared might have already happened. Worse, she hadn’t put up the smallest fight to hold her ground at the compound.

  When had she become the kind of person that didn’t live full-out? When had she started holding back so fiercely, as though her life depended on it?

  She almost chuckled at the thought, since quite often her life literally depended on being wary and cautious. Staying at Agnes’s compound instead of returning to her canal home was a perfect example.

  Yet somehow, her new, wolfish instincts told her that by not fighting Grant on the issue and insisting
on a place at Meldorin, she’d made a serious mistake. Just how serious, she wasn’t sure.

  She wasn’t finished, though. She would make an effort to reach out to him, even to challenge him if she had to, in the same way Renee had spoken sternly to her.

  As she sat watching the wood sculpture shaped into waves of water, she forced herself to grow very relaxed. There was a truth she needed to face, something she’d been avoiding from the time she’d left the Meldorin Compound.

  She pressed a hand to her chest. She realized her heart hurt. No, it ached as though the physical separation from Grant was causing her real pain.

  Drawing a deep breath, she let it out slowly. From the beginning, she’d known her relationship with the wolf wouldn’t be simple. But she hadn’t expected this, to feel as though her heart was being torn from her chest just because she wasn’t near him.

  A gasp followed.

  Oh, no. Was it possible?

  There was only one answer. Despite all her best intentions, Natalie could finally admit to herself she’d fallen hard for the wolf, really hard, smack-down-on-cement hard.

  For all the angels in heaven, she loved him. Not just wanting to jump his bones, though that was part of it. She loved him with a deep, searing love that spoke to the breadth of her soul and his.

  It was love.

  Love. And Grant.

  She knew something else as well, she was already bound to him. Not in an alter wolf sense or because he’d marked her, but as a woman to a man. Her heart was given and had been for some time.

  As she looked back, she couldn’t quite pinpoint when it had happened, when perhaps she’d said to herself, Here’s the man for me. Nothing specific came to mind.

  Instead, her connection to Grant and her desire for him had come in pieces. It had begun the moment she’d seen Grant in the Graveyard defending a near-dead fae against three powerful wolves. Despite getting shot, his focus had been pure: To get the woman, even though she was fae, to Kiara’s refuge in Revel.

  Each subsequent hour with him, in his company as together they worked out the invisibility spell with the wizard, had added more pieces. Later, while rescuing the young wolf, Alanna, at The Sapphire Club, her heart had gone the distance and she hadn’t even known it.

  Grant was the man for her and like hell she was going to let him go without a fight.

  She stood up before she’d made the conscious decision to move. In kind, her wolf rose to sit on her haunches as though waiting for orders. Natalie glanced at her. “Did you know?”

  Her wolf yipped and appeared to smile.

  “Well, you’re wiser than I am.” She narrowed her gaze at this external expression of all that she was. “Then why did you approve our leaving the Meldorin Compound?”

  But her wolf didn’t respond. She thought she understood. She’d needed to figure this one out herself.

  Renee had told her to address her deepest fear and it was that if she loved Grant, she’d lose him. But something told her that in leaving him as she had, she’d put him in jeopardy.

  Her wolf rose to all fours.

  “So, I’m on the right track?”

  Her wolf yipped once more.

  She could feel it now, the call from a distance. Would Renee finally come to her and explain everything to her?

  Natalie thought not. This was on her, to figure things out, and to make her next move.

  She’d adamantly opposed searching out her own future. But right now, she needed information.

  Everything about her alter life coalesced in this moment as though events had been building for six years precisely to this pinnacle. She revered what was happening and gave it a place of importance she’d been unwilling to before.

  She was part of great events now. She’d risen out of her simple life of making a living by showing others the future to one of binding herself to the alpha of the Meldorin Pack.

  She closed her eyes and in the sanctity of the chapel opened her heart and her mind to the near future, to her place in the Meldorin Pack, to her bond with Grant. She had a job to do, a critical one, that meant as it had from the beginning to help her man stay alive in a world dominated by unworthy creatures like Kryder.

  For the first time, the future parted before her without a single twinge of pain. All the muscles down her back were relaxed.

  But as she focused on Grant, a wave of dread rolled over her long before the images arrived. She could have retreated, but the time for backing away had passed.

  She ordered the future to come to her now.

  What arrived was the reason for the dread. She saw Grant bound and bloody, hanging from chains.

  She could have shut it down, but she wanted more information.

  She rolled the future back, closer to the present.

  Within the vision, Kryder shouted. “Where is she? Natalie is mine. Find her. Summon her. Bring her to me or I swear to God you’ll both die before the night is out.”

  Grant lifted his face to Kryder and met the monster’s gaze stare for stare. “The real question is why can’t you see her for yourself? But I believe I know why? You’ve lost the power the pack gave you.”

  “Much good that same power is doing you.” Kryder lifted his fist and punched Grant with a hard left.

  Blood flew in an arc as Grant’s head snapped back and to the side.

  Natalie forced herself to keep going. She needed to see where he was. Within the vision, she panned back. The location was unfamiliar, but several of the guards in the room had blue flames climbing their necks and cheeks. She also recognized the blue trimmed black tanks from The Sapphire Club.

  The problem was she had no idea where this room was located within the club’s multi-level, underground building.

  A simple idea came to her.

  ~ ~ ~

  Grant’s joints were on fire from hanging suspended for hours. Every few minutes, two of Kryder’s guards would pull on his legs until he was howling in agony. Sweat poured down his body in rivers. Blood oozed from a dozen stab wounds and an equal number of bites. Kryder liked to shift and tear chunks of flesh from his body.

  “I’ll leave you for now to think about saving your ass. I need Natalie. Even if you die here tonight, Grant, I’ll find her.”

  He heard the door shut and breathed a sigh. He was losing blood, a lot of it. He wasn’t sure how much longer he had.

  His thoughts turned to Natalie.

  He felt like a fool on all fronts. The profound euphoria he’d experienced during the process of becoming alpha to the Meldorin Pack, had blinded him to a host of realities.

  Earlier, some time while he’d been showering, his sense of duty toward his wolves had settled within him in a profound way. The problem was, he’d acted as though Natalie had never entered his life, as though she had no value to him. Despite that her assertive nature had given him a clear path plus any number of enhanced abilities, he’d easily shunted her aside in the name of responsibility.

  When Kryder had made it clear his goal now was to take possession of Natalie, to make use of her giftedness in commandeering the future, the awful scales had fallen from his eyes. He’d needed Natalie. She’d been instrumental from the beginning. Why had he suddenly behaved as though she had no value on any front?

  He considered himself a rational man. But in this situation, he’d behaved irrationally. If for no other reason than the safety of his own hide, he should have kept her close. The question was why he’d reacted as he had? Why had he let her go without a second thought, without even once considering that the loss of her presence and her unique abilities could jeopardize the entire pack?

  As blood dripped onto the stone floor beneath him, the truth became a glowing fire within his chest. His damn throat grew tight. Everything became clear in a sudden blaze of light. When he’d left the bed and moved away from the comfort and warmth of her body, he’d been afraid to acknowledge how he felt about her. She’d become the sun in his sunless world and he was as bound to her as though he’d
completed the wolf-bond.

  For so long, he’d lived without a woman in his life. He’d told himself the pack must come first. But the reality was simpler: He feared loving and losing another woman the way he’d loved and lost Renee.

  With all his heart and in such a short space of time, he’d fallen in love with Natalie, deeply and irrevocably.

  He also didn’t think he could have picked a worse time to have figured it out. He wanted nothing more than to reach out to Natalie and draw her back into his world. But the moment he did, he would put her in serious jeopardy. So, he remained silent though he was filled with a longing so profound he could hardly breathe.

  Now it was too late. He was hanging in chains in the dungeon of The Sapphire Club. He couldn’t risk contacting Ryan, either. If he did, the pack would come after him and many if not all would die in the attempt to extract him from Kryder’s hidden place of business.

  The question was, what could he do? How did he need to change his view of things if he hoped to survive?

  Grant?

  A lightning bolt of adrenaline flashed through his veins. Natalie. She’d reached out to him, but he couldn’t answer. He didn’t dare. He wouldn’t risk her life.

  She kept talking. I can sense you’re there but you’re not responding, so I’m going to share a couple of things. I made a mistake not challenging you after you left your rooms earlier tonight. I knew you’d shut a door. Truth? I wasn’t much different. I’ve been scared out of my mind to know love again, because the pain of losing Aaron and Grace had torn my heart to shreds.

  But I don’t want to live that way anymore. I don’t think you do either. We need each other in this Godforsaken world. I need you, Grant, and those are the hardest words I’ve ever said in my life. I need you. I need to sleep beside you during the day and work beside you at night. I don’t want to live my empty, work-driven life anymore. I want you, a life with you, whatever that needs to look like. So, what do you say?