Elain stared at him, not saying it. He met and held her gaze, the words unspoken.
“Stay the course,” Elain finally said. “Don’t give up. Don’t give in.”
His voice sounded barely louder than a whisper. “Do you understand how badly it hurts? The loss sears my soul every day. When I do manage to sleep and open my eyes, the first thing that hits me is the pain. Every time I see her, it is torture. And yet I cannot force myself to stay away, even knowing that she is not mine.”
“But she is yours.”
“Elain, we are not wolves. We are archdemons.”
“She is still yours,” Elain insisted. She finally turned her gaze back to the window, unable to stand the pain behind his eyes. “Have patience and faith, Amiago.”
“Why do you call me that?”
“Because you cannot forget that’s who you are. Who you were to her. She will return to you, one day.”
“Will nearly died after losing Abby. He wouldn’t survive losing Kal. And this time, I would refuse to help Father.”
“He won’t lose her.”
“You’re daft.”
“No, I’m just stumbling my way around this craziness as best I can and telling you what I see. What I feel. Just be ready and don’t give up.”
She finished her tea, handed him the mug, gave him a quick peck on the cheek, and returned home to Arcadia.
* * * *
Ryan closed his eyes and felt the echoes of Elain’s words boring through his soul. He knew that there were things Lina and Mai didn’t know.
Things they one day should know, but he wouldn’t be the one to tell them.
Not yet.
There were others who were best left to that revelation, if they so chose.
He walked back to his kitchen to rinse out her mug.
* * * *
Lacey had heard the familiar car pull into her drive without needing to hear the man’s voice to know her visitor.
“Eh, lovely? Ye here?”
“Out here.”
Jocko walked through her house and joined her on the back steps, where she’d been sitting and staring at the two rose bushes planted in the corner of her garden.
He heavily lowered his bulk to sit next to her and draped an arm around her, pulling her close. “Oh, lovely,” he whispered when he saw her tears. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t give ye happiness.”
She tucked her head against him. “You did. You have. And you do.”
He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “They were as beautiful as ye are, my love. I wish ye’d let me mark ye.”
“Not yet,” she softly said. “I can’t yet.”
His heavy sigh weighed her down. “I understand.”
They sat there, staring at the rose bushes. “I need to tell you something,” she finally said.
“I have a feeling this is important to ye.”
“And to you.”
He tipped her head up to look down into her eyes. Her rugged, rough, and gruff old Alpha wolf. “Nothin’s more important to me than ye.”
“Jadwiga finally told me.”
He froze, staring at her for a long, silent moment. “Yes?” he whispered.
After she repeated it to him, he sat, stunned, with her crying in his arms. “Are ye sure?” he hoarsely asked. “Is she sure?”
“Yes.”
“Then why’d she…I mean…” He sighed. “All these years, shepherding them along, then? One life to the next?”
“Hades gave her a lot of leeway as his daughter.”
“And she couldn’t bind ’em in the same way, being they were siblings with different loves throughout their lives. Unlike Sean and Colm.”
“Right.”
* * * *
Jocko felt like he’d been punched in the gut. “The crotchety old biddy,” he hoarsely said, his own tears finally falling. “Goddess bless her.” He closed his eyes and deeply inhaled Lacey’s scent. She’d soothed his soul so well after losing his mate so many years before.
“Will ye be tellin’ them, then?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if they need to know. I don’t even know if they should know.” She sat up and sniffled, wiping at her eyes. “It might be the wrong kind of distraction for them right now.”
He laced fingers with her and gently squeezed. “So will ye at least settle my mind on one thing?”
“What?”
“Ye traveled to Bolivia. When ye returned, I know I smelled a hint of something wrong on ye. What secret is Ortega keepin’ from us?”
“Not from us. I can’t tell you that, either. Colleen must be protected. Elain is handling it, and you cannot mention this to anyone. I can’t protect the knowledge within you from Lina. That’s why I can’t let you mark me right now.”
“So I can’t edict ye, and so ye can skirt around the absolute truth with me to protect me.” He closed his eyes, fighting the urge to groan. “Bloody hell,” he muttered. “I’m guessin’ there’s adequate cause?”
“More than adequate. Including what I’ve seen. And what Elain’s seen. Please, you have to trust her. And me.”
He took in another deep breath and slowly blew it out. How many hours had they silently sat on this same step over the years, staring at those two rose bushes at different times of the year, wondering.
Never knowing.
Hoping.
“Given what ye just told me, lovely, I will. Baba Yaga didn’t walk down a road of fire just to have me runnin’ my feckin’ mouth and ruinin’ her plans.”
She gave him a peck on the cheek. “Thank you. Can I make you dinner?”
He smiled and pulled her in for a deeper, harder kiss, his hand cupping the back of her neck, melting her the way he always had ever since they’d taken up together as a couple. “First I want my dessert, lovely. A sweet taste ‘o my heart and soul.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Syrena had been on the run a week now. That morning, after Carl texted her, she’d bugged out. Ever since the day he’d come by and given her the phone, she’d been planning to leave and had packed, ready to leave at a moment’s notice and never look back.
She’d driven by the parking lot where she’d initially planned to park and then kept going when she saw the three women standing there, appearing to be looking for someone.
It wouldn’t do for her to be seen.
She knew a goddamned wolf when she saw one. Syrena didn’t even have to get close enough to smell it.
She pulled into a parking lot at a Walgreens a couple of blocks over and then walked down and around and back again. If Carl thought she was going to do what he said to do, he was fucking nuts.
She didn’t know what it was, exactly, that Carl had planned, but she didn’t put it past him to kill her in the process. Or at the very least, set her up to take a fall. Especially considering how weird he’d been acting lately.
Her senses had pinged from the moment she’d requested money for the new irrigation system well and hadn’t been made to play twenty-thousand questions with him, or give him five estimates first, to justify it.
That alone meant something was up.
Then he’d openly left the money in her fridge.
Like he was trying to lull her into a false sense of security.
That wasn’t like him.
Something was wrong. Seriously wrong.
Like hell she’d go down for it.
She’d already packed everything she’d need to take in her car and would be leaving her home behind for a place she’d purchased a while ago without telling Carl. Down in southern Mexico, not far from a nephew of hers, one beholden to her by incriminating information she held on him. Information that would earn him an immediate death sentence from Carl if he knew.
Carl had no need to know any of that. Yet.
But before she did that, she needed to retrieve something. It couldn’t be left behind.
The bank was open, and she’d headed inside. Soon, a helpful teller was assisting her with o
pening her safety deposit box.
Once she was alone in one of the little alcoves they had for people to go through their things, she opened the box.
Inside, wrapped in several layers of old canvas, lay a book she suspected was one that had been spoken of in rumors for generations. The knife being with it only added to her suppositions.
A Grimoire Lilitu.
It took her breath away and, frankly, she had to force herself not to scream in delight and victory, to crow, to shift and kill everyone in the goddamned bank.
Obviously, Carl had somehow heard rumors about the safety deposit box key. That was the only thing she could think of. And if she called that number he’d given her, whatever was supposed to happen when she made the call would take her out, too, giving him the key and giving him access to this.
Nopety nope nope.
She switched off the cell phone, pulled the battery out of it, and dropped it inside the box, closing it and then returning with it to put it back, locking it away.
The book and knife, she’d tucked them in her purse and briskly headed out and down the street, not even bothering to look toward where she’d seen the three women.
I don’t need any more fucking trouble than I already have.
Whatever had happened, she knew she no longer had a son. Carl was gone. Whether he’d turned on his nest, or turned on his kind, or just plain turned crazy by cockatrice standards, Syrena knew she would face the next stage of her life alone.
But with the power of a Grimoire Lilitu, she knew she could rule the world. She also knew there was a cockatrice down in South America somewhere, one rumored to be nearly five hundred years old and who’d avoided the wrath of the wolves and other shifters in Europe, one who’d worked for the Nazis and escaped to South America with them, and who might be able to read the book.
She’d find out or die trying, but she wouldn’t sit around and wait for her son to kill her.
* * * *
Boorman returned from the Tavares plane feeling frustrated and angry. The damned Tanuki, Bera, had apparently gone to ground. Whatever she’d done to piss off Ausar on Earth, now she was desperate to cover her tracks.
Fuck.
That stupid creature had fucked everything up from the get-go. Then again, he shouldn’t have expected any better from her considering how her mother had fucked things up in the past.
He wouldn’t make that mistake a third time. Unfortunately, he’d been desperate for someone he could bend to his will, use for his purposes, who could cross the planes undetected by the archdemons.
He returned to the cave to think and see if he could contact anyone on the Earth plane through the barrier. He’d had trouble in the past trying to summon whoever had the amulet.
If anyone had the amulet.
Not being able to travel to Earth himself for fear of Ausar and his henchmen sensing it the moment he crossed, he’d tried to contact any descendants who might be in possession of the amulet.
Then again, it could be sitting on a dusty shelf somewhere, or in a box.
Or buried in the ground in some stupid coffin.
He could search for it himself…if he were on Earth.
What he wasn’t expecting when he returned to the cave was to find the bodies of two men lying there. Obviously murdered, and despite their stench of death, there was more than a hint of his lineage in them despite them also stinking of human.
Blast!
What had he missed?
Time flowed differently on Earth, faster than here. Obviously, they’d traveled through the barrier. Of course, it figured he hadn’t been here when they’d done it.
There was also the body of a woman…
Wait. Not a body. She was unconscious. Breathing, and had probably been the one to kill the men.
And she was…
A smile filled his face. No. He couldn’t be this lucky, could he?
She was of his line. Why she was unconscious, he couldn’t figure out. But she was alive, and she looked uninjured.
Even better, she smelled strongly of her fertile time.
He grabbed her and slung her facedown over a large rock that had served this same purpose in the past. He didn’t care if she was conscious or not. She was part human, but there were enough of his line’s genes in her that he could smell it on her.
Meaning she could start this process again.
He smiled.
What a lucky break.
* * * *
Aliah awoke with a start in the hotel room, sitting up in bed, disoriented and confused. For a moment, it’d felt like she’d been immersed in a dream where—
Yep, Carl’s cock was rock hard. And being in his body, she felt that. And his horniness.
Dammit.
Dropping back onto the bed, she spit in her palm, fisted his cock, and started stroking, trying to sate the suddenly urgent need to fucking come.
Why not? It wasn’t like she could take any other actions right now, other than catching up on sleep.
And she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep with this damned thing poking all over the place.
No sooner had she busted a nut the first time than his cock annoyingly sprang to life again. She used her cum-coated hand, not needing extra lubricant, to quickly stroke a second one out of Carl’s balls.
Then, as she lay there recovering, a third hard-on sprang up.
What the hell?
This time, the orgasm didn’t produce much in the way of cum, but it left her trembling, barely able to think.
Carl didn’t know what was going on either. She’d just looked inside his brain to find him when the urge, insatiable, struck again.
It was nearly dawn as she lay there in bed, exhausted, Carl’s cock raw and finally unable to get hard again.
The feeling had been as if someone else was in charge of her body. Not Carl, because the putz was metaphorically rocking in a corner and sucking his thumb.
This had been unlike anything she’d felt before.
Aliah finally crashed into sleep.
* * * *
Boorman hadn’t bothered to fasten his breeches after taking the woman several times.
If she didn’t survive and never woke up, then at least he’d vented some frustration.
If she did, she would bear the start of another chance to finally get what he wanted.
He’d send her back to Earth to do his bidding, Bera be damned.
And he’d not screw up this time like he had before. He wouldn’t allow time to flow and pass and lose track of her.
And he would make sure to keep her bred. Already, he knew what he could do to keep her tethered to him for as long as he needed her. He had a recipe he could use, keep her needing him, dependent upon him.
Smiling, he slung her over his shoulder to take her to his home. He didn’t dare leave her alone for fear of her disappearing.
There—presuming she woke up—he could make sure to keep her captive until she caught, make her drink the potion until he was satisfied she would remain loyal to him…
And hopefully, finally, formulate a successful plan to get his revenge.
THE END
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tymber Dalton lives in the Tampa Bay region of Florida with her husband (aka “The World’s Best Husband™”) and too many pets. Active in the BDSM lifestyle, the two-time EPIC winner is also the bestselling author of over one hundred books, including The Reluctant Dom, The Denim Dom, Cardinal’s Rule, the Suncoast Society series, the Love Slave for Two series, the Triple Trouble series, the Coffeeshop Coven series, the Good Will Ghost Hunting series, the Drunk Monkeys series, and many more.
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The Fire Road Page 19