Gabe watched Vance. There was something so sad about him that her heart hurt for the man. She had a feeling that he was fighting demons, larger than his dragon could handle all the time. When he just sat there for several minutes, his food in front of him, for several minutes, she got up to go and sit beside him. He just stared at her, and she had a feeling that he really wasn’t seeing her.
“Vance?” He nodded. “I’m here if you need me. I know that you think I can’t handle whatever is going on in your head, but I want to help.”
“She’s coming.” Gabe knew what he was referring too. Lewis had announced at dinner that he’d spoken to Warrior. “I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with her. Or how to…I can barely keep my head on straight. What will a female think of me?”
“She might surprise you.” He laughed. It was bitter and cold. “You’re running again, aren’t you?”
“I have an assignment to do. You would understand that more than most, I think.” She did. Gabe wasn’t sure what she really knew, but in her heart, she knew that Vance was a man that did what was expected of him all the time. “I don’t know when I’ll be back. I can talk to the others, my brothers, keep tabs on them, but.... Your friend, Jeff, He’s going to be able to reach me quicker than anyone.”
“He told me.” He nodded as if he already knew that. “He’s happy to be working for you. Jeff told me that you were a good man, dealt a shitty hand.”
“He would know about that more than others, I think.” They had met, Jeff had told her. Late one night after much back and forth, Jeff told her that he had let him know where he lived. “He’s a good man. A smarter man than anyone that I’ve ever met.”
“He said the same about you.” Vance looked around the room, then back at her. She wanted him to tell her; whatever he was thinking, she wanted to know. Before she could ask, because she was sure he wasn’t going to speak, he did.
“There is a man, one that I’ve known since I was a teenager, who is out to have me killed. He’s fucked me over for the last time, and I need to take care of this before she comes here. Because I know, if he has any inkling that I might have someone in my life, he’ll use her and kill her to get to me.” Gabe asked him if he was going to go there now. “Not today. I have…these trackers are going to get me killed if I do. I know that you’re aware of that, but you have no idea who this man is, what kind of things he controls.”
“I can help you.” He shook his head. It was perhaps the saddest thing she’d ever seen. “I can help you, Vance. I want to.”
“At what risk? There are risks. More than even you can imagine, and I have a feeling that you can see more than most. You can, can’t you?” She asked him if he meant something magical. “No, I just mean with people. You have this gift, I think. One that lets you see not just the person, but everything about them. Pain. Hurt. Even when they’re terrified out of their mind about something.”
“I don’t know. Perhaps.” He nodded and looked at the door. “Don’t go, Vance. We can help you if you let us.”
“I know that. And I believe it too. Believe that my family, you and the other wives included, would do everything in your power to help me. But I’m afraid that I have to fight this one on my own.”
Gabe told him that she understood. And when he stood up, she did as well. “At least let them know this time. Don’t just disappear in the middle of the night.”
He looked around the pretty restaurant, the one that Lewis had worked very hard to get finished, and then at her. She loved this man. Perhaps more than she did the others, excluding Dalton. And when he opened his arms to hug her, she went right to him.
“Don’t change. I love you, Gabe.” Tears fought and won as they spilled down her cheeks. “When she gets here, I’ll be back. Until then, I have to plan and make sure that she’ll be safe with me.”
“I understand.” He kissed the top of her head and moved back. It was the hardest thing she’d ever done, letting him go. Then he left her standing there.
“He’ll be all right.” Gabe leaned back against Dalton when he came up behind her. “He will be all right. More than any of the rest of us might be.”
“Vance said he was going to make his mate was safe. I wonder…do you suppose he means to take care of this thing with the trackers now?” Dalton said he’d wait for a little while. “Why is that? I mean, I think he knows who it is.”
“He does, but timing is everything.” She wasn’t sure what that meant and asked him. “If he goes in too soon, things would go badly for a great many people. I don’t know why I think that, but I do. Also, and this is the most important thing, he needs to make sure that he isn’t bringing things down on top of us. He feels, and probably rightly so, that the thing with the warehouse was wrong.”
The dragons had destroyed everything. Not just the building, but the men and the trucks as well. The place looked like a bomb had gone off there, and Gabe shivered when she thought of the amount of heat that had been used to do that.
“The governor was found dead there. Do you think that ended it? I mean, for this town.” He told her he thought it would make someone think twice before coming here again. “Once this hits the paper, with the evidence found on the mayor and him, things will never be the same around here.”
“No, a lot of people will be brought to justice by this. A lot of people were receiving those stolen goods. It’s not going to go well for them once the Feds step in.” She knew there were several in town, all of them asking questions no one was answering. Especially not them. “The dragons, they saved us a lot of time, but they did a great deal of damage as well.”
The warehouse and the buildings on either side of it were destroyed. The one that she’d been held in, the building where she’d been taken, was gone as well. She wondered if Lyna had done that, made sure that it wasn’t there as a reminder to her. Turning in Dalton’s arms, she asked him how he liked the restaurant.
“Unbelievable, isn’t it? I mean, this was what Lewis dreamed of his entire life. And now he has it.” Gabe had given him a list of names for wholesalers after talking to Jeff. He had an insider look on just about anything. The pack was going to set up a list of potential employees, ones to come in and help with the cooking, as well as to wait tables. Aisha had given him a working list of what sort of things she’d do to improve the overall look of the place. Mostly it was small things, but Gabe thought them to be great ideas.
“He’s going to be a success.” Dalton said he thought so as well. “I cannot wait to see who his mate is. I’m betting she’ll have him whipped into making a profit the first day she’s here.”
“I hope you’re right, I just hope that she’s as loving to him as he needs. Lewis is extremely insecure.” Gabe thought that all the McCade men were, but said nothing. “I love you, Gabe. I think we should get married.”
“I agree. How about tomorrow? Here?” He laughed and said that Lewis might need more time than that. “Oh, I don’t know. I bet he could pull off about anything right now.”
They were still laughing about it as they made their way home. Gabe wondered, not for the first time tonight, if the new mate was safe. And if Caelin was helping this woman like he had her. She’d bet that he was, but also thought she’d not be as easygoing as Lewis was. They were going to be a pair.
~~~
Caelin sat and watched the woman. She was a beautiful person, but sad. He had been watching over her family and her kind for many centuries, just waiting for this child to be born. And now that she was here, his watching had turned to so much more. When she sat beside him, not asking for permission at all, he had to smile, but inwardly. She was touchy about such things.
“I don’t like you.” He nodded. Raven had said this to him many times since he’d approached her about the brooch. “You told me when I took it that it would lead me down a merry path. I thought it would be a merry one, not one filled with trouble.”
“All life gives you trouble, young Raven. It is not my fault that you didn’t ask more questions at the time.” She snorted at him, a habit that she’d picked up from her mother, no doubt. “What bothers you more? The fact that I was right, or that you had fun while doing this thing I asked of you?”
“Both, but I didn’t care for what I had to do to get it for you. His magic, black as the coal that heats my home, will destroy a great many people before this is done.” Caelin agreed. “This man, the one you said I was set for, does he have any idea what is coming to him? What sort of magic, white and black, will be his for the taking?”
“I have told you, I cannot give you information that will change your future. I could have gone to you both, ended this before it began, really. But it has to play out the way it plays. I have only…I think you called it tweaked, a few things to make sure that the children were not harmed.” She nodded and looked around her yard without seeing it. “You have done well here, Raven. It will only get better as time goes on.”
“My mother and father are buried here. My sisters too. All generations of my family are right here on this land, land that you told me would be helpful in my studies. It’ll be hard to leave them behind.” He nodded, his own heart painfully full for the same reasons. To lose someone that filled your heart while alive hurt more than anything, he thought. “This man, he’d better be a good one, or I shall hunt you down and end your life.”
“Not a threat I take lightly, Raven, but I assure you, he is the best there is, and he will care for you like none other.” Nodding, she leaned her head back and let the sun shine on it. “I could heal you.”
“Nay, you cannot. I suppose you could, but at what cost to you? You told me, long ago, that my lack of sight was what made me powerful. Do not take that from me now when things are coming so close to the end.” He nodded. “I will go to the family soon. Not to meet them, but to feel them. You’ll go as well?”
“No, I cannot. I have things to do. Another bride to keep safe.” She nodded again and said nothing. Asked none of the questions that he was sure were circling around in her head. “When this is done, you’ll be happy, Raven. I promise.”
“Do not make promises that you cannot keep, my lord.” He nodded, then told her he was sorry. “Your sire, he is around. I can feel him. His blackness is as much a beacon to me as your scent is. He will try his best to kill the two of us when he finds out what we’ve done.”
Caelin had worked hard for this moment in time. His father lived still not because of the magic he thought he had, but because it was important to the family, all McCades from now to all time, to have him here. His father, his sire, played a great part in this. Sadly, Caelin didn’t know what it might be just yet.
“No other family has gotten this far before.” Caelin told her that he was aware of that. “I’m afraid. Not of the coming together of them all, that will be wonderfully beautiful, but that I might be the one that fails them.”
“I don’t know how you think that to come to pass. You have been prepared for this for the whole of your life.” She told him that was the point. “You will do us all well, Raven. There is no worry from me on that.”
When they parted ways, her going to her little house that sat in the mountain, him to his place in the town that his children’s children lived in, he sat on the rocking chair that had been in the castle when he’d been but a child. There was still much to do, many things that could go wrong, but he wasn’t as worried about that as he was the young woman he’d just left.
Her blindness was what she’d suffered when she helped his father attain his magic. Her sight having been forfeited when she had agreed to help. Caelin’s father had treated her poorly and had nearly killed her. When Raven came to Caelin with a plea to bring him down, Caelin decided to return her sight when all was completed. To her, it had been a small price to pay. To Caelin, it had been too much, but it was done now, and he would repair her when the time came.
Caelin hadn’t foreseen that some things—not all, but some things—were hard for him to see. His mother had given him this gift, the ability to see into the future, when he’d been but a child. Her warrior, he’d given him gifts as well. The dragon in them all was only the single thing that Warrior knew about.
Putting out his hand, he called for the dragon that was on his body. She pulled from his fingertips and sat very still on his palm. The blueness of her defied description. The strength that she had belied the smallness of her. She was, Caelin was sure, the strongest dragon of all time.
“They will need you soon.” She nodded, bowing her head low. “Go to the female now and keep her safe. She knows of the jewel, but has yet to touch it. I wish for you to keep her safe for them.”
I shall, my lord. When she didn’t move, he waited. There was much she could ask him, but only a few things he had answers for. I can feel him. His magic is stronger than it was just a fortnight ago.
“Yes, he’s getting stronger. But it will do him little good when the time comes.” She looked at him, questions aplenty on her face. “I will take care that he is where he needs to be, my lovely. Then when he is gone, you will rise again.”
I have missed you. He nodded, his heart full for the pain of missing her as well. When this is done, what will happen to you, my lord? To me?
“I know not, and you know that as well.” She nodded. “I hope we can live with them, enjoy them close up. But I cannot look to my own future.”
I shall go now then. Protect her with my life. He nodded, knowing that she’d do that without her confirming it. My lord? When you have the pieces together, do you think your mother, the queen, will come?
“I have not seen her.” He had, and he was pretty sure that the little dragon knew that. “Go now, before I beg you for a game of chess and lose to you.”
Caelin rocked back and forth, clearing his mind of all thoughts save the man who had planted the seed that made him. His father was going to die, but he had a destiny to complete first. Putting out his hand again, the sword of his family appeared. He’d have to make sure that it was in the hands of the right person before too much longer. The magic of it, which no one knew about, would be the only thing that would bring the family to a whole. The magic of the McCades.
“Go to him.” The sword hummed its magic at him. “You will know the time to show what you are to him. Until then, I need for you to make him safe as well.”
After the sword left him, Caelin went into his home. It was nothing like the façade that it appeared to be from the outside, but the grandest castle ever built. He was both excited and nervous to know that soon Grady and his bride would be there to awaken the magic within. Caelin smiled.
“So much going on and nothing complete. Soon. But for now, I must watch and wait.” He reached for Warrior to make sure that he was doing as he asked him to do. Wait as well. Things were soon going to come to a head, and everyone had to be patient.
“Soon, my children. Soon.” Caelin went to the room where he’d last seen his mother. He lay upon the cold stone, thinking about her. And when the tears that fell for her and only her hit the cold stone, he wrote her name there, as he did every night. “I love you, my mother. More than I could ever show you.”
Caelin slept there, the stone warming under him so that he’d not be chilled. Thanking the castle for its protection, Caelin slept. It was draining to him to have so much of himself spread around, but in the end, he knew this was going to be worth it. Or so he hoped.