There were days so bad, I wasn’t sure how we’d survive, and nights we couldn’t sleep because we were fighting for our lives. Yesterday and last night were one of those moments. Maybe that’s why there aren’t any tears left to cry.
The air was so dense with regret and worry it was hard to breathe, much less sleep.
I barely spoke the entire flight back to Tahoe, listening as the Alliance elite scrambled to find Johnny. Each word spoken was another icepick to the heart, spreading the numbness taking me over.
Gemini opens the passenger side door to his black SUV, allowing me through. And although he climbs inside and cranks the engine, he doesn’t immediately pull away. Instead he greets me with one of those sweet, outrageously sexy kisses he gives me when we’re alone and have no place to go.
It surprises me, given all the shit the last twenty hours have brought. That doesn’t mean I don’t welcome it and take every bit of love it carries.
He pulls away as I begin to relax, and strokes my face. “You need to sleep,” he tells me.
He’s worn. But his two wolves will keep him going for days. I don’t have a beast to energize me, and only now recognize how exhausted I am. “Okay, but with you, in our bed, and in our real home.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do,” he says, pressing another gentle kiss across my lips.
He pulls away, the SUV splashing through the large puddles created during last night’s rainfall. I might have burned a good part of South Carolina to ash, but Tahoe is freshly cleansed from last night’s storm.
As we near the end of the tarmac I catch sight of Emme and Bren. His head is bowed as he speaks to her quietly. She’s wearing his old biker jacket, the long sleeves dangling past her hands. But it’s her small smile that gives me pause.
There’s something special between them. I’m just not sure he’s ready to see or feel it, no matter how much she needs him to.
As Gemini pulls away from the airport and onto the main road, my thoughts return to Johnny. But how I wish I could will those thoughts away.
“All those people killed in the stadium were blood sacrifices,” I say. “Weren’t they?”
Gemini rubs his jaw, the longer whiskers of his goatee sliding between his fingers. It’s not an irritated gesture, not like it sometimes is. Like me, he’s in deep thought. “That’s what it seemed like,” he agrees.
“So Johnny will become one of them, won’t he?” I swallow back the anger and maybe more sadness than I should. “He’ll be the next big shapeshifter.”
“Maybe,” he says.
“Maybe?” I question. “He’s a witch and killed all those people. He could have sacrificed them on behalf of a dark deity. Babe, he would have done whatever it took to save his own ass.”
“It’s not as easy as that, Taran. Before becoming shifters, dark witches spend their lives delving in arts laced with evil and ill intent.” He curses. “As much as I didn’t like Johnny, he wasn’t evil. Those feelings he had for you were genuine, and came from someplace good. Good isn’t something dark witches are capable of, and neither is anything that resembles friendship.”
“Then what will he become?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says, his SUV barreling down the road. “It’s obvious he made a deal with them. The neophytes and shifters wouldn’t have arrived in the numbers that they did just to kill or kidnap him. Johnny summoned them, and based on the information we gathered during the debriefing, it was when you stepped onto the stage to kill him.”
“That makes sense.” I look up at him. “You know he’ll go to the shifters, right? After everything he did, there’s no other supernatural group who will take him.”
“No, evil is all he has now,” Gemini says. “There, he’ll either be used, emerge as a neophyte, or become something more.”
“Either way more powerful,” I conclude.
“I don’t know about that.” The corner of his mouth lifts with something that appears too much like pride. “Taran, no matter how powerful he was, you inflicted immeasurable damage.” He motions to my arm. “We still don’t know what your arm’s power is capable of. But Johnny does, and now he fears you because of it.” He steals a glance my way. “Just as I saw those visions Destiny presented us, I could sense his fear. He was afraid of you. He knew he’d die at your hands.”
“But he didn’t.”
“No,” he says, his voice certain. “But one day he will. Fate now knows you’ll be the one to kill him.”
Guilt fills me. “If that’s true, why didn’t I kill him? Why did I hesitate?”
“You hesitated because you’re human, my love.” He reaches for my hand and kisses it. “It’s one of your best qualities and what keeps me from fully surrendering to my beasts.” He smiles softly. “I wouldn’t be the man I am without you.”
“Don’t be nice,” I say, my voice trembling. “I don’t deserve it.”
“You do. You may not have killed Fate this time, but you saved Destiny.”
At least I can take comfort in that.
I lean my head against his shoulder when he puts his arm around me. “Do you want to stop someplace to eat?”
“No.” I rub my eyes. “Let’s go home. I want to check on Destiny, and make sure she’s all right. Then we’ll eat. Then we’ll sleep.”
“Whatever you’d like, Taran.”
We don’t say much on the short drive back. But what we say is enough, returning to a sense of normal I cling to with everything I have.
Apparently, normal is a pussy and doesn’t belong in our world. Gemini straightens and I right myself as a plethora of magic bangs into our chests when we reach Dollar Point.
“Fate,” he growls.
“Uh-uh,” I say, my heart bursting with enough joy to taste. “It’s Destiny, she’s interacting with the magic from the Lake.”
Gemini floors it. As the Lake comes into view, I see them, millions of sparkles spreading across the water and flowing in the direction of our home. He peels into our neighborhood, swerving to a stop in front of our house.
The wolves, the ones who are supposed to be guarding her, stand along our front lawn, watching in awe as the black and silver sparkles swirl like shimmering fireworks.
One of the wolves jogs toward us when he sees us hurry out. “It’s Destiny,” he says. “She’s become something stronger.” He shakes out his hands as if he can sense the power she emits. “I’ve never felt anything like her.”
The world is held in a delicate balance, and now that Fate has changed, so will Destiny, evening the odds. I don’t wait. I race up the wooden porch steps and into the house, out of my mind with joy and bearing a smile as large as life.
That smile drops when I find Destiny and Tye going at it like horny gorillas on my dining room table.
Tye’s jeans and boxers are down to his ankles, exposing an ass only partially obstructed by a pair of zebra-stripe clad legs crisscrossed over his back. He pumps away, growling deep as hot pink plumage floats away from whatever ungodly headpiece Destiny is wearing.
I don’t stick around to see it. I walk out, slamming the door shut behind me.
Gemini pauses at the top of the steps, frowning. “Are they coming?”
“That’s what it sounds like,” I reply.
His eyes round as he stares at the door, hearing something I’m more than glad to miss. I shudder as I reach the bottom of the steps, and shudder a little more when another visual of them fills my mind. Son of a bitch, we eat Thanksgiving dinner on that table!
Gemini jogs after me when I stomp down the walkway and cut into the path leading to the Lake.
He’s laughing so hard, he’s gripping his sides. “You think this is funny?” I ask. I rub my eyes, but some things you just can’t unsee.
“Oh, hell yes.” He hauls me to him by the waist. “It’s what mates do, Taran. After everything they’ve been through, they deserve to make up for their time lost. As do we.”
“I know, but why do they have to make up that time all over our dining room table?”
He shrugs. “Probably because they’ve already defiled the kitchen.”
“Oh, gawd,” I say, wondering where the hell else I’ll be finding feathers.
I relax into his chest, lifting my chin when he finally finishes laughing. “Now what?” I ask. “Where do we go from here?”
He adjusts his hold, keeping me close, his embrace and the gentle way he regards me speaking beyond the words that come. “Now, we make our own destiny.”