Chapter 21
Chapter twenty-one
“Sammy, I don’t know. Are you sure?”
It was after closing time at the Cherry on Top Bakery. Empty tables. Empty chairs. Music barely audible over the speakers, enhancing the quiet instead of competing with it. The scents of roasted coffee beans and buttery desserts lingering in the air.
For two years, it had been Sammy’s safe place, his solace. While he still loved baking, he had found a new refuge.
Reaching across the table, he took Braeden’s hands and gave them a gentle squeeze. “I’m sure. I’ll come visit, but my life is in Shreveport now.”
“I get that, but I could manage the bakery. You don’t have to give it up.”
He didn’t see it as giving up anything. He was just…moving on. The place had given him purpose and something to cling to when he needed it.
He didn’t need it anymore.
“Braeden, you love this place almost as much as I do.”
“I do, but I don’t—”
“You know the recipes,” he cut in, speaking over his friend. “You know the customers, the vendors, the schedule.” Releasing him, he sat back and waved his hand out to the side. “You kept the bakery running for weeks while I was gone.”
“Are you sure?” Braeden asked again, sweeping his chestnut hair away from his face. “You could sell it.”
“I could.” It wouldn’t feel right, though. “I think the place is in good hands, though.”
They sat there for a long time, a comfortable silence stretching between them.
“I want to redecorate,” Braeden blurted.
Sammy tossed his head back and laughed.
“Go ahead. It’s yours now.” He rather liked the cozy teals and warm browns with subtle pops of color, but he wasn’t offended. “I look forward to seeing what you do with it. I do have one favor to ask, though.”
Braeden frowned, his eyes narrowing with suspicion. “What?”
“Give Aerin a job. Please.”
While Dominic had been busy tearing apart the house, Chapel and Thierry had located the other captives and spirited them away from the mansion in New York. Most of them, including the young shifter from Valdosta, had been returned to their families or packs.
Aerin didn’t have a family. The little water sprite didn’t have a pack, a coven, or a circle—no one to look out for him. Instead, he had been living on the streets of Jacksonville when he’d been abducted.
The pack had offered to take him in, of course, and help him get back on his feet. Predictably, he had been hesitant to accept, and he’d been a nervous mess while living at La Madriguera.
So, Sammy had offered him his cabin in Hunters Hollow. Like the bakery, he loved the place, but it wasn’t home anymore. Not for him anyway, but maybe it could be for Aerin.
With Dominic’s help, they had made necessary improvements for comfort and safety. Nearly three months later, though, Aerin rarely ventured out on his own. Not exactly what he had in mind when he’d made the offer.
He wanted the sprite to heal, not hide.
“Oh,” Braeden said, his tone falling as he slumped back in his seat. “I mean, yeah, no problem. Do you think he’ll take it, though?”
Probably not without a little nudge. “I’ll make sure he does, but maybe start with part-time.”
“That’s probably a good idea.” He rubbed a hand over his face and sighed. “What the hell happened in New York?”
Nothing good, and nothing that would be going away anytime soon.
“You’ve seen the news. There’s really not much else to tell.” Nothing he wanted to share anyway.
A plus-one at the auction had turned out to be a reporter with a prominent news agency in Philadelphia. From there, the dominoes had started to fall, turning an already terrible situation into nothing short of a shitshow.
News about the kidnappings, the auction, and the trafficking had made headlines for weeks. Even now, coverage of the story remained consistent, though it had largely devolved into rumors and speculation.
Still, the backlash had been loud enough for the Ministry to get involved, especially once it had spilled over into the human community. According to the press release, they had even formed a task team to investigate the “accusations.”
“Yeah, I know,” Braeden said, blowing out a sharp breath. “Why those specific Otherlings, though? It sounds like they were chosen, but no one really knows why.”
“Because they all had something extra, something that made them special.”
A siren who could control minds rather than just influence them.
A banshee with the ability to predict death with surgical accuracy, right down to the second.
The teenage werewolf who had been born with a rare mutation that trapped her shift in a perpetual cycle of innate magic, making her an unstoppable force.
Aerin didn’t know why he’d been taken, or so he said. Sammy suspected the male was still protecting a secret, something he didn’t want anyone to know.
And that worried him.
“I—that’s just—damn,” Braeden stammered when Sammy finished his explanation.
He had seen the same reaction play out thousands of times online. Shock. Disbelief. Anger. A lack of words that felt adequate to describe the level of disgust the situation evoked.
Good.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Braeden added, some of the color returning to his cheeks. “Zarrik said they’re sending an Investigator here to interview Aerin.”
As a Ministry Investigator himself, Braeden’s mate typically knew privileged information long before the public—if they were ever informed. And because Braeden couldn’t keep a secret to save his life, that meant the rest of their friend circle did too.
“When?” He didn’t want the sprite to have to face that alone.
“Not sure, but he’ll probably want to talk to you as well.”
Sammy nodded. That much, he expected.
“Thanks for the heads-up.”
“No problem. I’ll let you know if I hear anything else.”
Quiet settled between them again, each lost in their own thoughts. Well, Sammy had thoughts. After a while, however, he realized Braeden wasn’t so much thinking as assessing.
“What?” he asked, an edge of defensiveness in his tone.
Braeden shrugged. “You look different.”
Sammy arched an eyebrow as he reached for his coffee mug. “How so?”
While no longer compelled to mold himself to fit other people’s desires, he had found he could still change his appearance at will. He rarely used the ability, but it had been helpful in reverting his hair back to its previous length and color.
“I don’t know. Lighter, maybe.” Braeden tilted his head. “Happy looks good on you.”
His cheeks heated, and he lowered his eyes, no longer capable of holding his friend’s gaze as a shy smile curled his lips. “Thanks.”
“So, you really have magic now?”
The smile vanished in an instant.
“It’s…complicated.”
And he wasn’t saying that because he didn’t want to talk about it.
He had spent his entire life believing he was just an ordinary changeling, and not even a very good one at that. Hell, he’d built his whole identity around it.
Inarguably formidable, his mother had been a halfling, with magic flowing from only one side of her lineage. That had been explanation enough for why he hadn’t inherited so much as a scrap of her abilities. Not common, but not exactly rare, it had never occurred to him to question it.
Then, in the span of a heartbeat, that reality had dissolved around him. Discovering that everything he thought he knew about himself was a lie had shattered his entire sense of self.
And he’d learned that truth by killing someone.
Dominic constantly reminded him that it hadn’t been his fault. He agreed, but that didn’t make him feel any better about it. The fact that Henri Delacour had been a dangerous monster who deserved his fate didn’t change anything either.
“The blood magic wasn’t only a tether,” he said when Braeden continued to stare at him. “It literally bound me. It suppressed magic I didn’t even know I had, and it dampened my ability to control the change.”
Dominic had explained it by likening it to the volume knob on a radio. His magic had been muted, turned all the way down to zero. Not off, but too quiet to hear. His sensitivity to other’s desires, to what they wanted from him, however, had been cranked to the maximum setting.
“No offense, but your mom sounds like a real bitch.”
The response caught him off guard, eliciting a bark of surprised laughter from his lips. “None taken.”
She really had betrayed him in every conceivable way.
“But I’m still mad at you.” Braeden dropped back in his seat and folded his arms across his chest. “You could have told me. I don’t know what I would have done, but I would have tried to help you.”
“And that’s why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt because of me.”
“You didn’t even tell me you’re a changeling!”
Sammy winced. “I’m sorry. Being a changeling wasn’t exactly something I was proud of.” With Dominic’s help, he had been slowly working on changing that. “When I came to Hunters Hollow, I just wanted a fresh start without all the baggage.”
Braeden exhaled slowly, and the tense set of his shoulders relaxed. “I get that. Doesn’t make it suck less.”
Accurate. Succinct. Slightly unhinged.
Sammy chuckled. “Very insightful.”
“I know. It’s a gift.” Then he jerked upright and practically threw himself forward to rest his elbows on the table. “So, what’s it like having magic?”
“It’s…okay.”
“That’s it?” Braeden looked utterly scandalized. “Come on.”
“I don’t know. I’m still learning how to use it.” More importantly, how to control it.
Dominic had been teaching him, but because magic flowed both ways through their bond, their lessons didn’t always go according to plan. Not only did he have to learn how his own powers worked, but he also had to contend with the influence of his mate’s more powerful brand of magic.
Most days, he opted out completely and preferred to do things the old-fashioned way—with his hands.
“Zarrik has some weird demon mojo. Dylan was turned into a vampire and is allergic to sunlight now. Tenn moved to the fucking Underworld—which is apparently a real thing—and he’s off hunting down ghosts.
” Braeden dragged a hand through his hair, his expression a little sad.
“Now you have magic. Everything keeps changing.”
They both sat with that realization for a while. Before Sammy could work out how he felt about it, a melodic chime rang from the speakers as the front door swung open, ushering in a warm breeze and the vibrant scents of spring.
His pulse stuttered, and heat rushed to his cheeks when Dominic stepped into the bakery. Silhouetted against the setting sun, he looked powerful, dangerous, and far too tempting for his own good.
Or Sammy’s, for that matter.
But he couldn’t make it that easy for the wolf. “You’re late.”
His mate had been dropping him off and picking him up from work for weeks now since he couldn’t jump, teleport, phase, or whatever on his own. Turned out, being able to move through time and space without being yeeted off the planet was an exceedingly rare gift, even among magic users.
Who knew?
“And you’re mouthy,” Dominic shot back with a playful growl. “Ready, colibrí?”
Sammy pushed his chair back but paused and glanced across the table before standing.
“Go on.” Braeden made a shooing motion with his hand. “You two are disgusting.”
“Like you and Zarrik aren’t?”
“True.” His friend tilted his head up and gave him a cheshire grin. “But he’s not here, and I’m jealous.”
“And you wear it so well.”
They continued to snipe at each other, each insult becoming increasingly ridiculous, until Dominic cleared his throat to interrupt them.
“Thierry said if you’re late for dinner again—”
“Oh, shit.” He didn’t even need to hear the end of the threat for it to be effective. “Gotta go.”
Braeden’s laughter followed him all the way out the door.
“Come on,” he demanded, his patience razor thin as Dominic moved at glacial speed.
He wouldn’t say he and Thierry were friends, not yet, but they shared a tentative trust these days, and he didn’t want to do anything to upset the balance.
After accidentally barbecuing a vampire in New York, he had locked himself away in his old bedroom at La Madriguera, terrified of hurting someone else. For a whole week, he had refused to see anyone, including Dominic, speaking to him only through their bond or a closed door.
It had been Thierry who had dragged him out of his self-imposed isolation. Literally.
He had barged in, hauled him over one shoulder, and carried him out while grumbling something about Dominic being a raging dick without him.
At the time, Sammy had resented the hell out of the wolf, but he knew now that he’d needed someone to force him to confront what had happened. Dominic would have been the logical choice, but his mate loved him too much.
Thierry had just wanted peace.
Maybe he could be someone like that for Aerin.
“I’m not late.”
Lost in thought, Sammy jerked around, already forgetting what they had been talking about. “Huh?”
“And dinner isn’t for another hour.”
“Oh. Oh!” It took a second, but once the words registered, his urgency instantly morphed to irritation. “You lied.”
Grabbing him by the front of his shirt, Dominic pulled him up on his toes and claimed his mouth in a brief but heated kiss, right there in front of the gods and everyone to see. Not that Sammy tried to stop him.
“I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.”
Okay, fine. The guy had him on a technicality.
“In that case, I want to swing by and see Aerin.”
Dominic groaned. “Sammy.”
“I’ll be quick.” He held his hand up, pinky out. “Promise.”
His mate sighed and grumbled, just like Sammy knew he would. Then he hooked their pinkies together, and in the next breath, they were standing near the tree line outside the cabin.
It had a new roof, new windows, and a fresh coat of paint. Outwardly, it appeared different, but when he looked at it, he still experienced the same sense of belonging.
“You coming?” Dominic asked, already several feet in front of him.
“I’m coming.”
But there must have been something in his voice because Dominic stopped and turned back to face him.
“What’s wrong?”
Sammy shook his head. “Nothing. I was thinking about something Braeden said.”
“And what’s that?”
“He said that everything keeps changing.”
“And what do you think, colibrí?” His mate grinned, one of those special smiles that always made his heart flutter.
“Give me a minute. I’m having an epiphany.”
Chuckling, Dominic doubled back and tucked a knuckle under his chin to urge his head up. Then he kissed him again, soft and unhurried this time, as if nothing else in the world mattered.
“Tell me.”
Head buzzing, it took him a moment to gather his thoughts and form them into something coherent.
“I don’t think everything is changing.” He glanced toward the cabin again, then back to his mate. “Just the things that are supposed to.”