Chapter 8

With Maeve and Orion on their way to the diner, Leander jogged over to Cleona’s trailer, climbed the steps, and knocked on the door.

Hearing a thud on the other side, he pushed his way in. “Reanne, are you okay?” he asked, scanning the living room.

“I’m fine,” she called from the small, round table in the kitchen. She took hold of her wheels, backed away, and rolled out into the living room.

Her eyes shone with a vibrancy he’d never seen in them, and she smiled. Rolling to a stop before him, she folded her hands in her lap.

Her steady hands.

“Where’s Lucy?” he said, glancing around. An eerie silence filled the room, and the temperature remained cool despite the heat kicking up with the rising sun outside.

“Oh, she just ducked into the bathroom,” Reanne said, her gaze sliding away.

Something seemed off, but he couldn’t put his finger on what. He listened for the sound of Lucy moving about in the bathroom, but heard only a still silence. “I’m supposed to head over to the diner, but Cleona wanted me to check in on you and see if you were alright.”

“Cleona, such a sweet girl. Loyal,” she said, again without meeting his eyes.

He took a step toward her, and the moonstone at his wrist warmed and pulsed against his skin. “Yes, and worried about you, especially after the conversation this morning,” he said feeling her out.

“Yes, yes, that. She need not worry, it’s water under the bridge,” Reanne said with a flip of her hand.

“Well, I guess it is, for Cleona. She’s forgiving like that.”

“For Cleona?” She shook her head, and her lashes fluttered. “Yes, forgiving. A lovely girl.”

She was talking like she barely knew her. Every other day when she talked about Cleona, there was this tinge of wonder and pride in her voice.

“Are you on any new medications, by any chance?”

“Do I seem like I’m on any new medications, Leander?” she asked with a tilt of her head.

The sound of shuffling coming from the kitchen caught his attention. He shifted his eyes toward the noise, just the briefest glance, while keeping his face aimed at Reanne.

A foot twitched from where it peeked out from under the dining room table.

Lucy wasn’t in the bathroom.

And he wasn’t talking to Reanne.

His gaze snapped back to Reanne. Well, Reanne’s body. He had nothing. No spells, no idea how to fight something inhuman, and no back up coming to help. But Belen didn’t know that. “Let her go.”

Reanne’s eyes flashed red before returning to their normal brown color. “You stupid, stupid boy…you think you’re any match for me?”

“While you’re in the body of a frail woman, yeah, I think I can handle it.”

“Well, how about this? I’ll come out, but before I do, I’ll squeeze this old bat’s heart until it never beats again. Lucky you, you get to watch. And how will Cleona feel when you let that happen? She’ll never mate with you then,” Belen seethed.

He didn’t know. He’d been watching, at least to some degree, but he didn’t know the mating had alrady been done. How was that possible? When they mated, it was as if worlds collided. How did Belen not feel it?

Maybe because Leander hadn’t tapped into his magic. Maybe that was the way he’d been keeping close thus far, but with Leander, it didn’t work.

And maybe that was the key to the first mating for the future.

Leander lunged, but skidded to a halt when Reanne’s eyes went from gleaming with arrogance to anguish.

Reanne’s frightened gaze met his as a dark smoke rose from her chest and she let out a blood curdling scream of agony.

“Don’t!” Leander bellowed reaching for her.

“Don’t what?” a voice taunted, rising from thin air as Reanne’s back bowed and the blood drained from her face.

“Stop, you son of a bitch!” Leander said as lunged for her in an attempt to wrench Reanne out of her wheelchair.

The thick, black smoke shifted, rising our of Reanne, and swirled into the image of a man who hovered between Leander and Reanne’s slumped form.

“I’ll make a deal with you,” he said, his sinister smile a cloud of smoke in constant motion. “The old lady for the cuff.”

“No.”

“The old lady it is then,” Belen said in a grating voice, followed by a sinister laugh that shook the trailer.

Belen spun on Reanne and her body lifted out of the chair as the fist of the demon took hold of her, his hands sinking into her chest, holding her by her heart.

Perspiration dotted her ashen skin. Her mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out.

“Stop. Stop, dammit! I’ll give it to you!” Leander yelled, already untying the leather strap from his wrist. He yanked the leather and dangled the cuff in the air, hoping it was enough.

Belen’s hands pulled free, and Reanne crumpled to the ground before him, her chest still, her eyes open and unmoving.

Leander dropped to the floor next to her and felt her neck for a pulse. Moving his fingers over her skin three times, he finally found it, but it beat slow and weak as though her life were trickling out of her in that very moment.

He breathed into her lungs and pumped her chest. Glancing over his shoulder, he spotted Belen. His form took a more solid shape as he held the cuff in his smoky hands.

Leander breathed into Reanne’s mouth again, desperate to get her lungs working on their own before Belen stopped worshiping the stone and turned his wrath on Leander.

Reanne rasped below him, her eyes blinking, as she brought her shaking hands up to her face.

“It’s okay, you’re going to be okay,” he said, patting her hands and pushing up to his feet.

He spun on Belen and his jaw dropped.

Standing before him was…

Him.

“Jesus,” Leander whispered, looking Belen up and down. His skin, his hair, and the steely eyes matched to a T. Hell, even the clothes were carbon copies of the ones Leander currently wore.

“Jesus can’t help you now,” Belen said, his smile too wide, his eyes too wild.

The trailer door slammed open, and Cleona burst inside. As she lunged over the threshold, and shifted, her clothes tearing and the shreds drifting to the floor.

She stood between them, at least four feet high, her silver coat wavy and thick. Her green eyes shot with silver in wolf form, like a core of liquid steel within her.

She cast a quick glance to her mother on the floor, a whimper rising up from her throat, before swinging her head back to them, her gaze snapping back and forth and a feral, low growl vibrating from her throat.

Behind her Maeve burst through the door, in the same wolf form, a bit shorter, leaner, but from the sound that tore from her throat, no less formidable.

Orion joined a second later, taking a spot between the wolves, a hand on each of their backs as he took in the scene.

“What are you waiting for? Take him out,” Belen ordered with a sneer toward Leander.

“He’s not Leander. I am,” Leander said, meeting Cleona’s eyes, willing her to believe him.

“The fuck he is,” Belen bellowed.

“Come here, you piece of—” Leander said as he lunged for Belen’s throat. The fucker was human now. A human he could put his hands on.

Locking his hands around Belen’s throat, he squeezed, pressing his thumbs into Belen’s Adam’s apple, the image of Reanne being tortured before his very eyes fueling his fire.

Belen’s hands came up, one locked on Leander’s ear, and his thumb heading for his eye socket.

They yanked at one another, losing their balance, then gaining it again. Leander shoved Belen down on the couch, pinning him there. “Hurry up. I can’t hold him much longer,” Leander yelled over his shoulder.

“Don’t listen to him,” Belen choked out.

Cleona glanced at Leander before fixing her stare on his wrist. He never should have given up his cuff.

She growled and took a couple steps, her head moving with the every jerk and shift in the commotion.

“Cleona, it’s me!” he shouted, turning toward her, his grip slipping from Belen’s throat for just a fraction of a second, but that’s all it took.

Belen flipped him over onto the couch and braced his hand across Leander’s throat, cutting off any chance at a breath.

“Easy, Cleona. Remember what I told you,” Orion said from behind her.

Cleona’s eyes narrowed. She turned and shared a look with Maeve before they lunged, each locking their jaws on Belen’s shoulders and dragging him to the ground.

“No! He’s the one you want!” Belen shouted from the floor as Cleona and Maeve shook their heads with their teeth sunk into his flesh.

Orion reached between them, snatched the cuff from Belen’s wrist, and reached a hand out to Leander. “Get this back on your wrist.”

Leander coughed while he tied the cuff back into place. Rising over Belen, Orion raised Leander’s arm, touching his moonstone to Orion’s as he chanted. “From smoke to flesh through clandestine tricks, I banish you back to the place betwixt.”

Heat surged through Leander’s blood, and his brand on his back burned.

Smoke rose from Orion’s back, in much the way Leander figured it did from his own as Belen’s human form faded into a haze and slid away into the floor.

Cleona circled him, sniffing, and nuzzling his hand. Tucked on the other side of him, she stood on hind legs, and shifted back into human form.

Naked.

And glorious.

He wrapped his arms around her, absorbing her heat, and protecting her privacy as sirens wailed in the distance. “Normally, I would be bothered by your saving me, but that was pretty damn hot,” he said into her hair as she clung to him.

“Yeah, well, it didn’t feel so hot.” She tipped her face up to his. “If Orion hadn’t told me what Belen could do with the cuff, I would have attacked you. Do you have any idea how close—”

“Shhh,” he said, and pressed his lips to hers. “We were lucky.”

“Damn right you were,” Orion said over his shoulder, keeping Maeve in his grip.

Lucy stumbled out of the kitchen holding her bleeding head. “Reanne?”

“Down here,” she said from where she had pushed herself up on her elbow and surveyed the room.

Her cheeks had pinked back up, and she reached for the afghan on the chair next to her and handed it to Cleona. “Cover yourself and give your mother a hug.”