5. CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER FIVE
Omaera
Three men stood in front of me.
Three gorgeous men.
All of them looked very different, but all of them were beautiful in their own way.
I’d had a dirty dream like this once, but it sure as hell didn’t end in their claiming me in whatever paranormal savage rituals they were probably thinking of.
My head hurt, so I sat down on the yellow corduroy couch Gemma refused to let me get rid of, even though we could afford better. Back when we dropped out of college and were flat broke, we found the couch on the side of the road and carried it with us from apartment to apartment. Now that we were flush with cash, I wanted to get us something newer and better, but she said it was a reminder of how far we’d come.
Burying my face in my hands, I let my tight curls fall forward. “So you’re telling me that for thousands of years people and,” not lifting my head, I waved one hand to encompass all of them, “whatever you guys are, have been coexisting and humans just never knew?” Finally, I glanced up at the vampire, bear shifter, and fire mage. What the hell was a fire mage anyway ?
All three of them nodded.
“And have you ever heard of your kind mating with a human before?”
They all shook their heads.
“Then this has to be some kind of a mistake. Because I’d know if I was a shifter, vampire, mage, or something.”
“The other species is demons. There is a sub-species of vampire, which we prefer not to speak of,” the vampire said with zero inflection in his tone.
“But there are many shifter species,” the bear added. “Bears, cats, wolves, foxes, eagles, and dragons.”
“Dragons?” Gemma blurted out, sitting in the green velvet armchair, eating her Pad Kee Mao like this was a soap opera and she was very invested in the characters and plot twists. Only this wasn’t a television show. This was my damned life. “There are real life dragons? Or are you talking like those Komodo dragons? Because that’s cool too. But if we’re talking Game of Thrones dragons, then I have to see this.”
“Those are technically wyverns,” the mage said. “Though, I agree, they look cool.”
“We do not have wyvern shifters,” the vampire added, again with absolutely no inflection in his voice.
“We do have actual fire-breathing dragon shifters though.” The mage’s eyes widened with excitement. “Their fire is hotter than anything I can conjure. It’s why all Realm weaponry is forged by dragon’s fire. Only dragons are bladesmiths.”
“I know a few,” the bear said with a casual lift to his bulky shoulder. He glanced over at the vampire who stood stoically beside him. He sneered and took a full step away, putting more distance between them.
There was no hiding the bear’s complete disdain for the vampire. It radiated off of him in near tangible waves.
Both the vampire and bear hadn’t been happy when the mage arrived, but they seemed to have settled whatever initial aversion they had toward him, not that the mage seemed to care.
But the bear wanted to tear out the vampire’s jugular, and the vampire was well aware of it and keeping his distance.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I pinched the bridge of my nose. “What does this Fated Mates thing mean? Do we have to get married?” I opened my eyes and fixed my gaze on all of them standing there. “You all tell me that you followed my scent—” I paused and sniffed my pits for a second. I wasn’t rank. “Then rocked up on my doorstep looking like fucking Pooh Bear, Nosferatu in a GQ spread, and . . . I don’t even know what to make of you,” I said, waving my hand in front of the fire mage. “An open Hawaiian print shirt, flip-flops. And, are those genie pants? What the fuck?”
The fire mage shrugged. “What? They’re comfortable. Lots of room for my giant balls.” He snickered and glanced sideways at the other two, but they both shook their heads and scoffed.
“They’re hideous,” Gemma pointed out.
“I am human. I am not mating any of you. I choose who I want to sleep with. And it’s certainly not three weirdos who smelled their way to me. Thanks, but no thanks.”
“You did say you felt a pull and that you could trust us though. That deep down you’re feeling the Bond too,” the bear shifter pointed out.
Ugh. Why did he have to be right? Because he was. I did feel an odd pull to all of them. It wasn’t just an attraction. It was so much deeper than that. It was physical. It was emotional. Hell, it was in my freaking soul. I felt it everywhere. In my chest, in my belly, and . . . goddamn it, between my legs too.
“Tell them what you told me. What you heard when you woke up after you were struck by lightning,” the bear said. I knew their names, but for some reason, referring to them by name just felt like I was accepting the ridiculousness of all of this. By referring to them as what they were , I was keeping a boundary. A level of separation.
“All hail Omaera Playfair, Queen of the Realm,” I said, trying to sound bored.
The vampire’s mouth dropped open and for just a second, I became mesmerized by his long, white fangs.
“Of the Realm ?” the mage asked. “As in, King Donovar is dead? ”
“Who the fuck is King Donovar?” I asked.
But the mage and vampire had already pulled out their phones and wandered away to make some calls.
“May I borrow your phone, please?” the bear asked. “I need to call my dad.”
“Where’s your phone?” Gemma asked.
“I don’t have one. I just kept losing them when I shifted and forgot my clothes.”
His sweet and simple honesty, as well as manners, threw me off even more. But for some reason, I found myself standing up from the couch and handing him my phone. Now all three of them were on calls while Gemma and I just sat there like confused idiots.
The vampire was the first to return, his face paler than it already was. He stowed his phone in the inside pocket of his black coat. Then he dropped to one knee in front of me.
The mage returned next, equally somber, and did the same.
Finally, the bear, who grunted as he dropped his enormous frame to one knee.
“My Queen,” the vampire began. “I pledge my allegiance to you.”
“And I,” the mage repeated.
“And I,” rumbled the bear.
“What the fuck is going on?” I demanded, surging back to my feet. “Get up. All of you. Get up and get out. This is ridiculous. I’m not your queen . I’m not anybody’s queen. I’m Omaera Playfair. A human. A h-u-m-a-n. Got it? Sure, I was an orphan. But my aunt, a nice lady by the name of Delia Refera, raised me since I was a baby. I would know if I was some weird . . . thing , like you guys.”
The mage shook his head. “Not if there was a cloaking spell cast over you.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? Get up. All of you. Now.”
They rose to their feet again.
“You,” the mage cleared his throat, “are the heir to the throne of the Realm. It has been confirmed that King Donovar was killed last night. As he slept. And he must have been your father. Because the moment he died, his power and title transferred to you, eliminating any cloaking spell that may have been cast. ”
I shook my head. “No fucking way. No.”
“What does this mean?” Gemma asked. “Who killed the king? Who killed Maer’s dad?”
“He wasn’t my dad,” I snapped, facing her.
Suddenly my friend fell to the floor, gripping the side of her head and screaming in agony. Blood dripped from her nose.
“What did you do to her?” I demanded, directing my anger at the men who had rushed to Gemma’s side along with me.
But when I turned to them, the vampire and bear both dropped to the floor as well, clutching at their temples as blood poured from their nostrils.
“What are you doing to them?” I rounded on the mage now since he wasn’t screaming in pain. It had to be him.
He held up his hands in surrender. “It’s not me. It’s you. You’re angry and taking that rage out on their brains. You need to stop or you’ll kill them.”
“I’m not doing it,” I said. “I’m not.”
“I can do mind blocks. It’s one of the powers mages and demons have in common. It allows us not to be mind controlled by you.”
“Mind control?” I left the bear and vampire to their own devices and focused on my best friend, who cried and writhed on the floor, clutching at the sides of her head as blood pooled from her nose onto the carpet. Tears seeped from my eyes as I brought her head into my lap. “I’m sorry, Gem. I’m so sorry. Please make it stop. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I love you. You’re all I have. You and Aunt Delia. You’re all I have. Please don’t die. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” I pet her head as the tears from my eyes fell onto her forehead.
Their screaming had become such a white noise that when it stopped, it took me a moment to clue in. I glanced down at Gemma and she blinked up at me. My bottom lip wobbled, and I cradled her harder against my lap. “W-what happened?” she stammered.
The vampire and bear were no longer screaming in pain either.
Despite having just met them, I did feel a significant amount of guilt at not rushing to help them. The pull I felt for all three men was so bizarre and foreign that I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I certainly didn’t want them to die or be hurt, but Gemma was my person, and right now, she needed to be my priority.
“Demon powers vary,” the mage said. “But because you are the heir to the throne, and now the ruler of the Realm, your powers will be the strongest of all demons. However, since you didn’t know you were a demon and just came into your powers, you don’t know how to control them. Usually, demons have the power of persuasion. They can delve into the minds of others and manipulate them to make decisions that suit the demon.
“They prey on fear and can hear fear thoughts more than any other thoughts. But they can also plant ideas, like telling someone to kill themselves. And when enraged, and in this case not in control of their power, they can cause a person’s brain to begin to hemorrhage.
“That’s what happened here. Your confusion and anger over everything came to a head. You snapped at your friend and tried to blow up her brain.”
I grabbed a pillow from the couch and tucked it under Gemma’s head. “I didn’t mean to. I would never hurt her.”
The mage nodded. “I know that. But you did because you can’t control your powers.”
“W-what does all this mean?”
“Well, I’m not sure about the three Fated Mates, but mating with your mate will help. It will also give your mate some of your powers, and you some of theirs. It will also link your emotions. He’ll feel what you’re feeling and vice versa. He can help you manage your emotions so you don’t try to fry people’s brains. You need to learn how to control your powers. That’s number one.”
I glared at the redheaded man and the way he so cavalierly explained everything. At some point, he’d moved over to the couch and was sitting there, playing with rainbow-colored flames and making them dance across the tops of his fingers.
My eyes fell to the vampire and bear who had picked themselves up off the ground and now sat there, the bottom half of their faces covered in blood.
Fear shone back at me in Gemma’s green-hazel eyes. My heart hurt seeing the way she looked at me, like I was some kind of monster. Just like these three.
What is wrong with my friend? Why did she hurt me?
Now I could hear her fear, just as much as I could see it on her face and in her eyes.
Agony filled me. I’d hurt her. I’d hurt one of the only people in the world who loved me.
I was a danger to her now. To all of them.
“I . . . I need some air,” I said, heading to the front door and opening it. “I just need to take a walk and sort out my head.”
“You can’t leave,” the vampire said, using a white, embroidered monogram handkerchief to wipe up his face. Because, of course this pompous prick had an embroidered and monogrammed handkerchief.
If she leaves, it’ll hurt again.
Dammit, was I hearing his fears now too? What did he mean if I left it would ‘hurt again’? I glared at the man as he wiped his face with the handkerchief. He winced. Shit! Was I spit-roasting his gray matter again? “I can do whatever the fuck I want,” I said quickly, before opening the door and slamming it shut.
I sprinted down four flights of stairs, then burst out into the cool, May evening. It’d stopped raining, but the smell of rain on flowers and pavement soothed me. Everything would be so fresh, green, and alive tomorrow.
I wasn’t sure where I was walking, but I headed down to Fourth Street and took a left.
I’d nearly killed my best friend.
My only friend.
And the way she looked at me was something I’d never forget.
Gemma and I met our first year of college at Chase City University. We moved into dorm rooms on the same floor, right across the hall from each other. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to study, but I was set on mathematics. I’d always had a keen mind for numbers. What I would do with a math degree, I wasn’t sure, but it was what I wanted.
We bonded on day one and became inseparable after that. She even transferred into a couple of my classes so we could spend more time together. We rarely fought, and even when we did, they were more differences of opinions than actual fights, which we sorted out by talking like adults .
She came from a middle-class family and had one younger brother. Her parents didn’t make a ton of money, but what they lacked for in things , they made up for in love.
But right before Christmas during our sophomore year, her parents and brother were returning home from a ski trip and died in a car accident, leaving Gemma with no one—but me.
Of course, she inherited everything from her parents’ estate, but it wasn’t much. It paid off their mortgage, the funeral fees, and for the rest of her sophomore year. But by the second semester of our junior year, she made the tough decision to drop out. Her parents had a fair bit of debt and the remainder of her inheritance went to cover that.
So, I dropped out with her. We’d already been roommates since sophomore year, and I couldn’t go to school knowing she wasn’t going to be there too. I had a scholarship, but I gave it up so that Gemma and I could be together.
At first, we tried regular jobs, but I knew early on that I wasn’t cut out for retail, or any kind of customer service. People suck. They’re rude, entitled, and really fucking stupid.
Then I tried bookkeeping, which suited me better, but it was boring.
It wasn’t until I was bookkeeping for a bar downtown that I stumbled across the backroom poker games. I observed at first, but even just when observing, I could pinpoint the winners and losers. I could read their emotions. I could intuit their moves.
When I finally saved up enough scratch for a buy-in, I asked my boss if I could play and he said it was my money to lose.
But I didn’t lose. I won. Again, and again, and again.
I quit my job as their bookkeeper and started playing as many nights as I could, winning nearly every game. Then we went to Seattle, and Portland, even down to San Franscisco, where we heard about big underground games, and I won a lot there too.
After about six months of playing and winning, I heard about a big underground game in Vancouver. Only, I didn’t have a passport, and there wasn’t enough time to apply for one. So I went to a friend of a friend and had one made. Eventually, he roped me into his business of forged documents and IDs. When he decided to move to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting, he left me his business, clientele, and all of his equipment. But Gemma wasn’t comfortable with having something illegal like that in our home, or being part of it at all. So I gave it up.
I didn’t need the extra scratch that came from the side hustle, and it kept us both honest and aboveboard. The last thing we needed was some butthurt bozo I beat at poker, getting his thong in a twist and sending the cops after me for some asinine and bogus reason. Because if the cops showed up to search my apartment and found the forgery equipment, then we’d be toast.
I kept coming back to what Gemma said about me earlier.
That I was special.
I knew she meant it as more than just a compliment. And the more I thought about it, the more all the unexplainable things in my life started to make sense.
I was rarely ever sick. I could probably count on one hand the number of colds or flus I’d had in my life. And even when Gemma would be bedridden for days, stuffed up and hacking up a lung, I’d be completely fine. I’d always had this intuitiveness when it came to people, too. It was something I used when I played poker. It allowed me to feel my opponent’s feelings. Play the player, not the cards. However, it also attributed to my general disdain for most people, because I could feel deep down not only their lack of empathy or kindness, but also their stupidity. People were really stupid. Mob mentality was real and I could usually pick out of a crowd those that would follow the crowd like lemmings off a cliff, trampling anybody in their way, and those who would question the crowd, ask to see who was leading, and stop to help those who had fallen.
There weren’t a lot of those kinds of people out there.
Then there was growing up with Aunt Delia. She’d always been a bit of an odd duck. Eccentric and charismatic. Her outfits were out there with crazy patterns and designs, and she wore the weirdest earrings and jewelry. She had a full collection of actual animal bone and horn jewelry too. One pendant was the skull of a squirrel. She said it kept away bad energy.
I chalked that talk up to just a kooky old spinster who was Wiccan and weird. But now . . . now I wasn’t so sure it was so much kooky as it was magical. Maybe she was of this realm, as the fire mage predicted.
But then, why didn’t she tell me? Why did she keep so much from me?
By the time I stopped walking, I was eight blocks from home, out of the hipster borough and in a part of town I rarely frequented—the club district.
Ugh.
More people.
And worse than that, they were drunk people.
I rarely knew what day of the week it was. I didn’t give a shit. Gemma knew, because she liked people more than I did and wanted to work in a coffee shop a couple of shifts a week. So she needed to know what days she was on the schedule.
I guess today was a weekend. Friday maybe? Because the bass from a few clubs clattered the windows of a nearby office building, and the closer I got, the more I could feel it in the ground beneath my black tennis shoes.
The sidewalks were peppered with people out for smokes or vapes, or waiting in line to get into the club. Most bars with a dance floor and DJ didn’t close until four in the morning here, so it was still early. A lot of partiers remained at home, pre-drinking or getting their fake eyelashes on to go out.
Although, Gemma had dragged me to a few raves over the years, neither of us were into the club scene. We went once when I turned twenty-one and lasted all of thirty minutes before I insisted that we bounce. There were just too many people and I wanted to punch nearly every single one of them in the throat.
We went to a quiet pub instead, where we gorged ourselves on nachos, cheap shots of tequila, and gave in to the temptation of karaoke, despite how much neither of us can carry a tune.
A sharp pang filled my chest at the thought of her.
I hurt her.
My best, and only, friend in the world, and I hurt her.
I nearly fucking killed her.
Whatever was going on with me, she needed to steer clear, because I was obviously sick or something. I still didn’t believe I was some heir to a throne I’d never heard of. Or that the three sexy lunatics who knocked on my door were anything but humans who needed to be medicated and committed. They were not my Fated Mates, and I was not a queen.
“Hey, Little Demon,” came a rough and smoky voice from down a dark alleyway. “What are you doing out here all by yourself?”
I paused, squinting to see who was speaking.
The orange burn of a cigarette told me where he was, but I couldn’t see his face.
How did he know I was a demon? Nobody had ever said that to me before. There were people around, but none so close that I could join their group and pretend I was with them for the whole “safety in numbers” thing.
“What? Too good to talk to someone below your station ?” he asked.
Station?
“I-I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I stammered. I continued walking, eager to get out of this place and the unending noise that pounded into my eardrums, threatening to burst them.
I elbowed my way through a drunk and laughing crowd of twenty-somethings, but was pulled back by a rough, powerful hand on my elbow. “I’m talking to you, Demon ,” he growled.
Tingles of fear raced down my arms. I tried to jerk away, but was hauled backward toward a dark doorway just around a tight, narrow corner, and thrown up against a wall.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I repeated as he gripped my wrists, pressing them back against the wet, mossy brick wall. “What do you want with me?”
Finally, from the glow of a streetlamp across the road, I could see his face.
It was pale—too pale, perhaps? And his eyes glowed a startling yellow. Not like he had cirrhosis of the liver, but the irises themselves were a cat-like yellow, and they shone bright and eerie. He ran his nose up along the side of my neck, inhaling deeply. What was this man?
“Demons,” he said with so much contempt I actually got a little offended, even though I still didn’t believe that I was one. “You think you’re the top of the food chain? You think you’re better than everyone? You’re hunting us. Killing us for sport. Well, how about we turn the tables, hmm?”
“I . . . I don’t,” I said, hating that I had a quaver to my voice. “I’m not hunting anybody. I don’t know what you mean. I don’t think I’m better than anybody.”
“You all do. You’re so confident . . . so cocky. You’re out here all alone. Not a guard, not a mate, nothing.” He sniffed me again. “You’re not even mated.” A feral purr rattled in his throat. “Even better.”
Pulling his head back just enough so I could see his face a little better, he smiled like the devil himself, and two long fangs descended down past his top lip, nearly touching his bottom lip.
“Just a taste, hmmm?”
Oh, fuck no. Not like this.
I’d already been through hell over the last twenty-four hours. I was not going to have some psycho who cosplayed as a vampire, plunge his teeth into me in some dark doorway.
Mustering all the strength I could, I leaned my head back into the wall and smashed it forward against his, head-butting him hard in the nose.
My ears rung, but not so loud that I couldn’t hear his scream.
He released my wrists. “You bitch!” Then he screamed again and fell to the floor, clutching at the sides of his head as blood poured from his nose, just like it had with Gemma, the bear, and the vampire at my house.
I stared at him, frozen in place. Still plastered against the wall, watching as his brain hemorrhaged in front of me and he shrieked and pleaded for his life. But nobody besides me could hear him over the heavy, unrelenting beat of the music.
And then he stopped.
He stopped moving, he stopped screaming, he stopped . . . living.
My hand flew up to cover my mouth before I could start screaming.
Oh god. What did I just do?
I just killed someone. And there were witnesses everywhere. They’d seen him and I go into the dark doorway. They’d find the body and know that I was the one who killed him .
I spun around, determined to pry my feet from the concrete and run. But when I did, I ran smack dab into the brick wall that was the bear’s chest, still covered with that ridiculous, red crop top. His hands fell to my shoulders.
I’d never been so glad to not be alone in my life.
He took one look at the man on the ground and nodded, then stepped forward. That’s when I saw the vampire and the fire mage behind him.
Gemma wasn’t with them though.
The four of us stood there over the body.
“W-what was he?” I stammered.
“Phaceanesh,” the vampire sneered. “Nightwalker.”
“Best way to deal with the body is to burn it,” the mage said, completely unfazed.
The bear nodded.
“What is a Phaceanesh ?” I asked. “And what do you mean ‘ burn it’ ?”
The mage looked at me like I didn’t know what fire was. “I mean, I have to cremate him right now, so nobody finds him. Even though you’re the Queen, a murder has been committed and if we don’t get rid of the body, there’d be a hearing and . . . trust me, you don’t want that drama. Give me thirty seconds and he’ll be your favorite Kansas song.”
Zandren scrunched his nose in confusion.
The mage rolled his eyes. “Dust in the wind.”
I gaped at him. Not only was he cracking jokes, but he spoke like he was telling me to give him thirty seconds to brush his teeth and tie his shoes before we headed out to go grocery shopping. Not half a minute to scorch a body to ash.
“What did I do?” I couldn’t peel my eyes away from the lifeless body, the blood still running out of his nose and onto the damp and cracked pavement beneath him.
“You killed him,” the vampire said plainly. “He probably deserved it. Phaceanesh are an abomination and troublemakers.”
“H-he was going to bite me.”
The bear’s head snapped my way. “Did he say that? ”
I nodded.
“Well then, he should be glad you killed him and I didn’t. Because I’d have ripped him into pieces with my paws.” He growled low and deep in his big chest before turning to me and cupping my jaw in the gentlest way and the paradox startled me. He was so big and scary, but the genuine concern for me in his eyes hit me in a weird place in my chest. “Are you okay, Little One?” he asked. “Did he hurt you?”
I stepped out of his embrace and shook my head. “I’m fine.”
The mage walked over to the body. “Keep watch.”
The vampire and bear nodded, then turned to face outward. But I couldn’t tear my eyes away as black flames emerged from the mage’s palms and he blasted them at the dead body, covering it in nothing but gorgeous ebony fire, unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Just like he said, it took about thirty seconds, then the flames withered out on their own. He put his hands down at his sides and when the last ember died out, there was nothing left but a pile of smoking ash.
My jaw dropped.
“All clear,” he announced, returning to me. “Taken care of. Now we need to get you home, my Queen.”
“Don’t,” I said, swatting away his hand when he tried to cup my elbow.
The briefest flash of hurt flickered through his amber eyes, but he stowed it quickly, plastered on an easy-going smile, and shrugged.
“We need to go home,” the bear said. “It isn’t safe here.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “I’ve lived in Chase City my entire life. I’ve walked these streets at night alone hundreds of times. I don’t need you.”
“You’ve never walked them as the Queen of the Realm or a demon without a shield, and who can’t control her powers,” the vampire said in a tone that had so much judgment and almost disbelief that I couldn’t understand something so simple. I wanted to punch his chiseled face.
My anger at him must have done something because he winced and blood seeped from his nose.
Guilt swamped me. “I’m sorry.”
He blinked a few times. “It’s okay. ”
No, it wasn’t. Anytime I got mad now, was I going to kill someone?
I was a walking time bomb.
“You’re not safe with me. If you piss me off . . . which we all know you will, I could kill you.”
“Then we need to mate,” the vampire said. “It will keep us safe.”
“Absolutely not. You should just go.”
His nostrils flared. “Absolutely not,” he mimicked. I growled. “You are my mate. I’m not leaving you.”
“Well, then you’ve got a death wish because I’m going to get pissed and try to broil your brains at some point. You’re insufferable. It’s inevitable.”
His gaze narrowed on me and I did everything I could do not to squirm beneath its intensity. I also really hated what it was doing to my lower belly and between my legs. “You’re not being smart about this, Omaera. It’s the safest way to protect you and everyone else. To bring you into your full power.”
Even though the more I thought about all of this, the more there was less deniability, I still wasn’t ready to just accept it all. I was stubborn and a lot had been thrown at me in the last few hours. “I don’t believe in any of this shit,” I said. “I don’t believe in Fated Mates or powers. There has to be a scientific explanation for this. Magic isn’t real. It’s all smoke and mirrors. Illusions and sleight of hand.”
“There isn’t a magician on this planet that wasn’t a mage,” the fire mage said. “We make a lot of money fooling humans.”
I glared at him, knowing that I could at least get mad at him and not turn his brain into hamburger.
“Please, let us return home so we can figure this out. We don’t need to mate right now, but we do need to figure out how much of the Realm knows the King is dead. We also need to find his brother, Lord Lerris.” The bear sidled up to me, but he didn’t touch me. The man had to be twice my size, at least.
“What kind of a bear are you?” I asked.
“A grizzly.”
“And how do you . . . turn into one?”
He smiled in such a sweet way it settled down my building ire almost instantly. “ Tomorrow, I can show you. We can go out to the woods and I can show you. It’s not safe here though. If people saw . . .”
“Right.” I exhaled. “Was Gemma there when you left?”
The mage nodded. “Yes. She seemed fine.”
“H-how do I make sure I don’t hurt her again?”
The vampire made an impatient noise in his throat, as if to say, “I already told you how. Mate us.”
I glowered at him. He just averted his gaze, but I could see him wince a little.
Dammit. I didn’t like him, but I didn’t want to hurt him. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.
“What do we do with the . . . ash?” I pointed to what was left of the Phaceanesh or Nightwalker.
“He’ll be washed away with the next rainfall,” the mage said. “I doubt anybody will miss him. Serves him right for assaulting a woman. For assaulting the Queen.”
“Come on, Little One. Let’s get you home.”
I glanced up at the bear and the tenderness he looked at me with. “Okay.”
Flanked by the mage and bear on either side of me and the vampire behind, we walked back to my apartment. I had no idea what time it was, but just as we reached my front door, it started to rain again.
“Down the drain he goes,” the mage said with delight, referring to the Phaceanesh’s ashes. “Fish food.”
I punched in my code for the door and it clicked open.
“What is your code?” the vampire asked. “So that we may come and go as we need.”
I glared at him.
He stared blankly back at me.
“I’m not giving you that,” I said.
“Why not? We are your mates. Where you go, we go. And we may need to enter the apartment without you.”
“Get a fucking hotel. You’re not crashing in my place.”
He shook his head. “Not happening. You are not safe without,” he cleared his throat and his gaze shifted side to side to take in the bear and mage, reluctance clear on his face, “ us .”
I was too tired to argue with this black-and-white thinking, impeccably dressed, bloodsucking robot. I simply opened the door and let them file in ahead of me.
Even though the elevator said it could accommodate eight adults, it was crowded in there with the bear. He took up space for at least four people, but the way he stood there, just content with a small smile on his face, pulled so strangely at my heartstrings, I took a half-step away.
I wasn’t sure what I was going to walk in on when I got home. Would Gemma already be packed up and gone? Did she lock herself in her room and bar the doors? Would there be a pentagram in the middle of the floor, garlic everywhere, and wooden stakes ready to be plunged into my heart?
I absolutely wasn’t expecting her to run up and hug me the moment I walked in, that’s for sure.
“Oh, I’m so glad you’re okay,” she said, squeezing me tight, bringing the familiar scent of her lavender shampoo.
“Me?” I squeaked, not hugging her as tight as I would have liked because I just couldn’t risk hurting her again. “I’m the one that hurt you. Are you okay?”
We pulled away from each other, still hanging on though.
A voice cleared behind us. “Can we come in, please?” the vampire said with impatience.
I was beginning to really not like this guy.
Gemma and I stepped further into our loft, our sanctum sanctorum, as we called it. The bear, mage, and vampire followed, and the door shut.
“I’m okay,” Gemma said. “I took a couple of extra-strength Tylenol, but I’m okay. What happened though?”
“She can’t control her powers, and her anger triggered one of her powers. It nearly boiled your brain like soup in your skull,” the mage said, opening up our fridge and pulling out a sparkling water. He read the flavor, made a face, and put it back. “Eww, strawberry? Do you have any like . . . lime, or something citrus?”
I glared at him for a half-second. “I think there’s unflavored club soda in the back of the fridge, and a lemon in the crisper.”
He grinned at me and went to work.
“What happened to you?” Gemma asked me, taking my hand. “Are you okay? These three booked it out of here like you were in mortal danger. I’ve never seen men move that fast if it didn’t involve pizza, beer, or a blowjob.”
“I could go for some pizza right now,” the bear said. “May I borrow your phone again, please?”
“If you don’t have pockets for a phone, how do you have pockets for a wallet?” I asked him.
“I know my credit card number, expiration date, and CVC by heart.” He held out his meaty palm for my phone. “May I borrow it, please?”
This guy was so freaking polite it was impossible to say “no” to him. I reached into my back pocket and handed it to him.
“Thank you very much.” He wandered away, punching the screen with his giant fingers.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the mage in my kitchen, cutting up a lemon with a knife. He plunked the thin round slices into the glass with the club soda, then picked up the glass and put it on his left index finger. Suddenly, the water began to bubble and steam. He was boiling it right in front of our very eyes.
“That’s cool,” Gemma said. “Even if these guys are freaks of nature, that’s a cool party trick. He’s who you want when you’re out camping. No need for a propane stove. Just use the freak’s finger.”
“That’s Mr. Freak,” the mage said, taking a sip of his now-bubbling sparkling lemon water.
Gemma snickered.
“We don’t camp,” I said. “We don’t rough it .”
Gemma shrugged. “But if we ever did, we could just bring him along to cook up our baked beans straight in the can.”
That made me chuckle. She always knew how to bring me out of my funk and make me smile.
The vampire was sulking in the corner, sitting in the green velvet chair, staring at his phone.
I took a deep breath just as the bear returned and handed me my phone.
“Can we start from the beginning, please?”
They all nodded.
“Good. Because even though the three of you are starting to become less scary, don’t for one second think that means I’m going to let you all gang bang me so we can swap bodily fluids and powers. I might have had a dream where I was getting tag teamed by three guys, but that was a dream, and this, unfortunately, is real life. And I’m . . . way too freaking small to even consider such a thing.”