23. Lycan
Lycan
I couldn’t sleep. I lay awake and stared at the ceiling long after Poe’s breathing evened out and Ava started to snore softly. I blamed it on adrenaline, on having the best sexual experience in a very long life of fucking around. But it was more than that.
I couldn’t lose either of them. I wanted both of them, and I was selfish enough to take them.
I didn’t care that shifters were only meant to mate one person.
I didn’t care that Kodiak would probably have a lot to say about my claiming Poe after marrying a Vanderbilt, not to mention my flat-out refusal to undo any of it.
I marveled at how quickly my worldview had changed.
A week ago, I never wanted to be mated. I thought I’d ruin it.
I thought it would ruin me. And now? Well, maybe Ren was right.
Maybe I’d been so focused on the bad parts, I hadn’t considered how amazing it could be.
Or maybe it was the threat of losing her, losing him, that had me tightening my hold on them until I couldn’t breathe.
If Poe’s wolf didn’t want me, the mark would have faded. If Ava didn’t want me, she would have insisted on the annulment paperwork the day after she came out of her transition. If they didn’t want each other, they wouldn’t have…
I stopped that train of thought. Their shared marks, done without me present, seethed in my chest like a festering wound.
But watching them together opened a perverse box in my hedonistic heart, and it wasn’t closing.
Who the hell knew I had a hot-wife kink?
Well…maybe only with Poe. The thought of her with anyone else sent my wolf on a rampage bordering on rabid.
Restless and tired of fighting it, I pushed the covers back and sat up, glancing over my sleeping partners. Ava was on her side, facing Poe, her hands wrapped in his. Poe’s forehead touched hers, his features softened and relaxed in a way he so rarely showed when he was awake.
I’d do anything to keep them like this—safe and protected and warm in my bed.
I thought back to what the witch said to Poe in Copenhagen at the royal reception.
She’d mentioned a half-formed bond. Why bring that up?
What had she meant? A small thread of fear unfurled in my stomach, making my wolf’s ears twitch.
With Ava and Poe mated, she should be protected by him, by pack magic.
But I’d gone and screwed with that by marking Poe.
Had I fucked it up? Had I put them both in danger with one moment of weakness?
What if his wolf rejected her mark in favor of mine?
I didn’t have an answer by the time they woke up, and the question rode with me the entire way to St. Albans.
We got there by midday, and Ava couldn’t put off work any longer.
If we were to keep up the ruse, she’d have to meet with Scott Fitzgerald tomorrow, which left us very little time to plan and coordinate her safety.
I was beyond relieved to walk into the townhouse and see some of my family waiting for me.
“There he is!” Aquila said when I walked through the door. He threw his hands out to either side and pulled me into a big hug. He was a few inches shorter than me, but it still felt like being manhandled by a kraken.
“Ava!” Maeve shouted, rising from the couch in the living room to rush toward her twin sister. They embraced and cried, and I softened, seeing my wife with her other half.
As if summoned by my thoughts, Ren stepped out of the crowd and pulled me into a hug. The moment we connected, I sighed, and the weight of the last few days lifted off my shoulders. The family bond flared.
“Okay?” she asked with a gentle smile.
“Okay,” I answered.
Sol and Guin walked around the corner, joining Maeve and Ava in their reunion.
“Jesus Christ,” Guin said. “I leave you alone for a few weeks, and you come back married, scarred, and…what the hell is that?” She pointed at the mark on Ava’s neck. “Are you mated?”
Guin shot me a glare, one I pointedly avoided while I scooped Sol into a big hug and twirled her around.
“Hey there, your worshipfulness,” I teased, using the nickname I’d taunted her with when she’d spent a few weeks stuck in the Fiver with us. She’d been privileged and spoiled at the time, but this version of her had come a long way. “Couldn’t resist the carnage, huh?”
She laughed and swatted my chest. “You know I’d never miss an opportunity to tear out vampire hearts.”
“Oh, so feisty now that you’re all mated and chock full of Orion’s magic.”
She rolled her eyes. “I was feisty before that.”
“Don’t we know it,” Poe added, scrubbing his hand over her hair.
I clapped hands with Mill. He’d officially gotten mated to Maeve a few weeks ago. Though to hear her tell it, they’d been mated since she was nine but weren’t around each other enough for it to fully seal.
Mating bonds were weird.
I turned to Moose, long dark hair hanging around his shoulders.
“You look like shit,” Moose said. “Fuck your way through half of Europe, did you?”
“Is that jealousy?” I said with a laugh. There would be time to explain everything that happened, but knowing the way this pack talked, he’d probably already heard the gossip.
Serpent, the pack’s enforcer, hugged me next.
When he shook my hand, he glanced down, away from my gaze.
At the time, I chalked it up to his wolf showing respect for mine, but I caught a familiar scent as he backed away, one that had no business being on him, not when it came to my little sister.
I pushed that thought down. More important issues were at hand.
Orion entered the room next, his dark eyes taking in the scene before they landed on Poe and me.
“Glad to see you made it,” Orion said, pulling me into a hug.
“Thank you for coming,” I said, breathing in his familial scent. I’d never had a brother, but Orion probably came the closest, and he didn’t even like me that much. Still, he smelled like home, like Sol and pack and Helena. It grounded me, brought me back to reality.
“That your handiwork?” he whispered when we broke away, nodding to the marks on Poe’s neck. He stood across the room, one hand on Ava’s lower back while she caught up with her sisters and met the other brothers.
I cleared my throat. “It’s complicated.”
“Hmm,” Orion grumbled. “We’re gonna have to talk about that.”
Another guy I didn’t recognize came around the corner next, tall with a mohawk and a scar along his right cheek.
“This is Mick,” Orion said. “He’s on loan from the London chapter, courtesy of Smiler.”
“You already checked in with the prez of this territory?” I asked.
Orion nodded. “Mick’s going to hang with us, just in case we need anything.”
“Does he know?” I tried to ask with my eyes. Keeping humans in the dark about our magic kept us safe, but Bastards were blood, no matter the chapter. We swore an oath of loyalty, and that included keeping secrets.
“He knows,” Orion said. “Smiler vouched for him.”
Mick shrugged. “Eleven years I’ve been riding with that man. You lot aren’t the strangest thing I’ve seen.”
A ginger-haired woman I didn’t know stepped up from the back corner. Her jeans and leather cut identified her as a member of the Royal Harlots: Asheville, NC chapter.
“Bridge,” she said when I grabbed her palm. “I take it you’re what all the fuss is about?”
“Lycan,” I answered. “You must be the witch.”
“This one is Leander, my warrior,” she said, nodding to the dark-haired guy at her left. I’d only met the Harlots a handful of times, but I’d heard how it worked. The witch wielded the magic; the warrior kept them alive.
“We’re your backup,” Leander said. “You’ll need us for whatever bullshit Evelyn has in store.”
“Alright,” Orion barked. “Now that we’re all one big happy family again, let’s figure out what the fuck is going on and what we’re going to do about it.”
We spent the next few hours going over what we knew and our encounters with Evelyn and her vampires. It was clear she’d been following us most of the trip and likely knew our itinerary. The Vanderbilt women sat on the couch together while the Bastards bounced ideas around.
Like that, it was easy to see how they’d all come from the same family.
Sol and Guin had the same emerald eyes, the same strawberry-blond tint to their hair.
Even if Maeve and Ava had inherited their dark coloring from their father, all four women shared the same eye shape and stubborn set to their jaw.
I would have liked to meet Priscilla Kennedy. Based on her daughters, I’d bet she was a hell of a force to reckon with.
“Fitz Global is in the Square Mile,” Mick said. “There’s one road in that doesn’t sit under a camera, and it’s the one I’d use if I wanted to hit you. Take the long way in and out. Let the cameras have us.”
“That’s a great idea,” I said, suggesting we use multiple vehicles to keep her guessing. Mick and I strategized our route and backup plan while the others debated what to make of Evelyn. I tuned back in to the conversation when I heard words like “curses” and “rituals.”
“It’s connected to Priscilla’s bloodline somehow,” Bridge said. “We’ve been digging into the ritual Marx was doing to Maeve when you rescued her. It was a suppression spell, a kind of siphoning magic, specifically tied to the Kennedy family. A curse.”
“Suppression spell?” Maeve asked. “What the fuck is that?”
“It would suppress a shifter’s ability to change,” Leander explained, “and the caster would be able to absorb that magic to make them more powerful.”
“I was already a fox when Marx took me,” Maeve added. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“But it could be why Evelyn is going after Ava,” Bridge continued. “Why she’s been reeking up the place and trying to hide it. Whatever Marx started, she could be trying to finish it.”
“She was in Paris before Marx died,” I said. “We tracked her coming through the airport days before.”
“Maybe she was a part of it from the beginning,” Serpent added with a shrug. “Maybe she was waiting for Ava to turn so she could snatch her, too, just in case.”
“Let’s take the curse out of the equation for a minute,” Moose said, rubbing his eyes in exhaustion. “We don’t know what it was, what it actually was intended to do, or who wanted it in the first place. That’s too many variables, and in the end, it doesn’t matter.”
“What do you mean it doesn’t matter?” Aquila asked. “It could be Evelyn’s entire motivation. Don’t you think we should figure that out?”
“We have four shifters from the Kennedy line right in front of us,” Moose explained. “It obviously didn’t work, or they wouldn’t be here.”
“I still say she wants revenge,” Maeve said. “It’s the most likely scenario. I killed her brother; now she wants to kill my sister.”
“The signature on the curse was dark,” Bridge said.
“Marta’s my cousin, and she’s smart as a whip.
She looked at the research your healer did on Maeve’s blood, and based on what I can tell, it would have been catastrophic.
If Evelyn wants to continue it, she probably has a host of witches and vampires on standby. ”
No one said anything, but my attention zeroed in on Ava, who pursed her lips and widened her eyes like something had just occurred to her. She stayed silent.
“I’m just saying,” Moose continued. “Take it out of the conversation for a second. Here are the facts. We’ve got a vampire horde coming after us. They have witches. They know where we’re heading next. They know what we’re doing. Most importantly, we know what they want. This is an advantage.”
“I’m not using my wife as bait,” I barked at the same time Poe said, “My mate’s not going out there.”
The room went quiet as a dozen sets of eyes danced between me, Poe, and Ava.
“What exactly is the dynamic here?” Maeve asked, clearly the only one with the balls to point out the elephant in the room.
“Maeve!” Sol hissed. “Don’t be rude.”
“I’ll tell you later,” Ava whispered.
“Maybe you should tell us now?” Aquila offered. “It might help.”
Orion rubbed the space between his eyebrows and offered a low, simmering growl.
“Everyone, please focus. We have until tomorrow morning before Ava is supposed to walk into Fitz Global to negotiate the final deal. If Evelyn knows what we’re planning next, she knows that meeting is on the books. We need to be ready for her.”
“Send me instead,” Guin offered.
The veep sighed and shot her a disgruntled look. “That’s not helping.”
“I’m serious.” Guin pushed to her feet. “I’m the head of Vanderbilt Holdings. I’m Maeve’s sister. I’ve got the same odds stacked against me, and no mate is waiting for me at home.”
Moose laughed, and Serpent lit a cigarette, shaking his head as he took a long inhale.
“It took half the officers and two hours of arguments to convince Kodiak that letting you come with us was an adequate idea,” Moose said. “If he finds out we sent you out as bait, he’ll kill us all.”
“I don’t give a fuck what Kodiak thinks,” she snapped.
The room erupted into debate after that.
Ren rolled her eyes, and Serpent pointed out that this attitude was the reason she hadn’t officially been made part of the pack.
Everyone talked over everyone else, but I focused on Ava, who gave me a knowing look, one I recognized from her time in the boardroom.
She wouldn’t put any of her sisters in danger, and she wouldn’t take no for an answer. It rankled my insides and set my wolf on edge, but wasn’t her headstrong obstinacy one of the things I loved the most about her?
“I’m doing it,” Ava finally said as she stood up next to Guin.
“Avalon,” Guin chided.
“Shut up, Guin,” Ava said. “I’m not putting you in my place, and I’m not going to run away and hide.
If she wants me, she can come get me. Lycan will be there, right?
Poe will be there. Locust and Bow and…and all the rest of you.
” She smoothed the front of her blouse and ran her hands over her thighs before brushing her hair out of her face.
“We can’t cancel the meeting. Too much is riding on it. So let’s figure it out.”
I’d never been more proud of her and more terrified for her.
The heavy molten lead of Poe’s agitation zipped through the tiny bond between us, lining my chest and coating my heart.
He didn’t like this idea, and I couldn’t blame him.
But I knew my Trouble. There wouldn’t be much we could do to stop her, and heaven help anyone who tried.