Chapter 1
This is it.
Scotty, her face streaked with blood and her clothes shredded by demon claws and teeth, stared down the last obstacle in the test she needed to pass to join the Demonic Activity Response Team’s Special Forces Division.
If she took out the ogre in front of her, her dream of working with Blade and Mace in their elite unit would come true.
What if they don’t want me?
She shook her head clear of that idiotic thought.
Sure, it had crossed her mind a few times over the last twenty-four months, pretty much from the very first day she’d begun regular training with the two.
Unfortunately, she had still been in school, while they’d been employed by DART for years, so she hadn’t been able to do anything but train.
No missions, no real battles. Also, no pay.
You’re too young, they’d all said. From her parents to her aunts and uncles, to even Mace and Blade, they told her she wasn’t ready.
Didn’t matter that she was trouncing trained Ramreel warriors twice her size by the age of fourteen.
Everyone insisted she needed to finish school and turn eighteen.
Her father had flipped out hard that one time she’d said she was going to drop out of school and join DART.
So, the very day she graduated from Hellmouth Academy, she’d moved out of her parents’ island manor and into her own private residence next door and applied to DART.
Obviously, they’d hired her. That had been the plan since she was old enough to say, “I don’t wanna be a dumb doctor or astronaut. I wanna be a DART agent.”
But a spot in the Special Forces Division wasn’t a given. There were tests, and if she failed, she’d be washed out of the running and sent to a different DART department.
Screw that. She didn’t want to push paper, work in a lab, or be put on a low-risk investigative team.
Bo-ring. She wanted to be on a special forces team.
She wanted to be on Mace and Blade’s team.
They were the best of the best. Seminus demons with extraordinary fighting skills and innate healing—and killing—abilities.
And she wouldn’t settle for anything or anyone less.
“You gonna take down that ogre, or just stare at him?” Mace called from the spectator area.
The ogre, a pretty decent guy who worked for her father and volunteered now and then to play the big-boss-final-battle role for DART trials, tapped his foot impatiently. Each tap in the arena’s sand made the ground beneath her quake.
“Me does not have all day,” he grunted.
She grinned. “Me, either. I have a victory party to attend.”
They met in a clash of training swords and mallets, and two hours later, Scotty finally won the match by putting the ogre on his back.
Everyone who’d come to watch flowed down from the bleachers to congratulate her. Her aunts and uncles, cousins, family friends, pretty much everyone. Even her mother’s hellhound protector gave Scotty a gross, sloppy kiss.
After she showered, there was cake, balloons, streamers, and all the expected celebratory nonsense—which she appreciated.
But when Mace and Blade took her for the promised video game marathon at their place, well, that was what she’d been waiting for.
An all-nighter with pizza, popcorn, and energy drinks.
It would be her first time spending the night with them.
Butterflies flitted in her stomach at the thought. Of course, nothing inappropriate would happen. They were all just friends. The boys had never even looked at her sketchily, which she’d assured her father over and over.
But what if they did? What if, while she sat between them on the sofa, they reached over and took her hands? What if one of them leaned over and kissed her? How would the other one react?
Heat flooded her cheeks as she set their drinks on the coffee table and grabbed a game controller.
“You sure you’re not too tired for this?” Mace asked. “You had a long day.”
She loved how they looked out for her, even if she didn’t need it.
“So did you,” she pointed out. “You guys went through the first six hours of the trial with me.” The guys had been part of the teamwork evaluation portion of the tests, designed to ensure they all worked well together.
“I still think it was stupid to make us go through it,” Blade said. “They know how well we work together.”
True. All of them, along with their brothers, sisters, and cousins, had been training for the End of Days since they could pull themselves up in a crib.
Heck, the very first toy she remembered getting was a plastic sword.
Then, when Scotty was ten, she’d been paired up with Mace and Blade during a training session, and within minutes, it had been clear that the three of them were special.
Individually, they were all excellent fighters, but together, they formed one powerful, well-oiled unit, each with unique abilities that synced with the others.
Their strengths complemented the others’ weaknesses. They were a dream team.
Their first mission would exceed DART’s expectations. She just knew it.
A door slammed, and a moment later, heavy footsteps grew louder, until one of Blade’s triplet brothers, Rade, entered the room, his dark, unnerving gaze fixed on her.
“I heard you’re officially on DART’s payroll now,” he said in his signature deadpan voice. “Congratulations on being stuck with those two.”
“Hey,” she said, annoyed. “I’m happy to be part of their team.”
Rade nodded absently. He wasn’t a team player, and most attempts to force him to work with others ended in disaster. But what made him difficult to be around also made him DART’s best interrogator. “You guys gonna set some ground rules?”
“Ground rules?” Mace chugged half a can of an energy drink. “What kind of ground rules?”
“Like, the romantic kind.”
“We’re going on missions, not dates, bro,” Blade said. “I doubt we have to worry about Scotty demanding to mate bond with one of us while we’re investigating the gory site of a brutal demon massacre.”
“Exactly. That would be ridiculous.” She grinned. “I’d have to bond with both of them while we’re investigating a brutal demon massacre.”
She’d been joking—she loved messing with Rade, who was as humor-impaired as one of his other brothers, Stryke.
But her joke must not have landed right, because Blade and Mace looked startled.
Rade just gave her a dead-eyed stare. She could never tell if he thought she was an idiot, or if it was just Rade being Rade.
“Two Sems can’t bond with one female.” Rade’s voice was flat as his gaze.
“I was kidding. Sheesh.” But seriously? She’d have to choose only one of them? No way. That would be impossible. Call her greedy, but she would want them both. “Just curious, but how do you know that?”
“I know Sems who’ve tried. All three did the ritual, and fate only chose one of the males.”
Ah, fate. Her father always said that strong leaders made hard choices and didn’t leave anything to fate.
But her grandpa, Reaver, had pulled her aside once, after her father had given her the choice-fate lecture again.
“Scotty, someday you’re going to face an impossible decision.
There will be no winner if you choose. So, let fate make the choice.
” He’d lifted her off the ground and hugged her tightly.
“Sometimes, the right decision is the one you don’t make. ”
He was apparently such a strong believer in fate that he’d sent Mace and Blade gifts of daggers with the word FATE engraved in the hilts when they were hired by DART.
Rade looked at each of them in turn. “Maybe you guys should make an agreement not to get involved now. Save yourselves the trouble later.”
She was about to say it wasn’t necessary when both Mace and Blade nodded.
“Probably smart,” Blade said.
Mace responded with an agreeable, “Yup. We gotta swear to be friends only.”
They both gave her expectant looks, and her heart sank. She’d kind of thought that they’d all just…be together. Always. For everything. In every way.
She’d been a fool. She was exactly what Aleka always said she was. A silly girl who lived in another reality.
“Yeah,” she muttered. “Friends only.”
Mace produced his FATE blade and slashed his palm before handing the knife to her. “I swear…”