Chapter Eighteen
She felt warm. Not like…on fire, villagers-want-to-burn-me warm but…toasty.
Safe.
Valerie cracked open one eyelid and realized exactly why she felt so cozy. She was in the arms of her shifter. He was still sleeping, but even in sleep, he held her tight. She liked that. He held her so close, as if she mattered.
Maybe she was starting to matter to him. Wouldn’t that be something? Her big, bad beast. Falling for someone like her.
“You’re watching me sleep.”
Surprise rippled through her. “No, I’m not,” she instantly denied. “Because if you know I’m watching, then you can’t be asleep.”
His eyes opened. No sleepiness there. Absolute awareness.
For some reason, a blush stole across her cheeks. She could feel the heat filling her face. “Hi.”
He smiled. “Hi.”
“Um, you stayed.” Which was awesome. “And I don’t think I screamed again.”
“You didn’t. No levitations. No more claw marks.” His fingers trailed over her shoulder. “Maybe…maybe it doesn’t happen if you aren’t alone. Maybe I can keep you safe.”
That was something to consider. To wish for. “Don’t know.” She rolled away from him. Rose from the bed. “I’ve never let a lover stay the night, so I don’t know if I scream when someone is with me or not.”
“You’ve…damn, you have a great ass.”
She’d paced to the window, but she glanced back at him, smiling. “Glad you noticed.”
He’d sat up in bed. “You’ve never spent the night with a lover?”
Not since Tomas, no. “When you sleep, you’re vulnerable. It would be too easy for a lover to slit my neck with a knife. Or shoot me. Or—”
“You didn’t trust your lovers.”
She glanced back through the window. Sunset was coming. “No.”
“My claws are sharper than any knife. You don’t worry about me slitting your throat?”
Her brow furrowed. “You can’t kill your own mate. You’d go crazy.”
The bed covers rustled. He padded toward her.
Then he wrapped his arms around her. “Is it really so hard to just say that you trust me?”
It was. Yes, incredibly so. “I don’t think you fired the arrow that hurt Rio.”
“Good. Because I didn’t.”
“But I think a shifter did. If you want my top three suspect list, it’s Goldilocks, Warren, and Elliott.”
He’d gone tense behind her. “Why them?”
“Because Goldie, um, Lucinda hates me. If someone made me think half my hair fell out, I’d probably want to get some revenge, too.” She kept her gaze on the water. The waves were really quite beautiful. “And while you told me that only you and Carmichael knew about the witch poison in your tower, it’s obvious Warren and Elliott are your best friends. They’re the top power after you, aren’t they? I’m betting they both know your secrets.”
“I never told them about where the poison was hidden.”
“Maybe you didn’t. Someone else could have told them. Like your brother.” Now she glanced over her shoulder. “You’ll notice, he wasn’t in my top three, even though you banished him.” That still didn’t sit so well with her.
Griffin turned her in his arms. “Why don’t you suspect him?”
“Because he’s too obvious of a bad guy.”
The faint lines near his eyes deepened. “You’re underestimating him. Don’t do that. Carmichael is dangerous. He hates witches. He knew about the poison.”
“In case I’m wrong, I have Edgar tailing him.” She smiled. “Didn’t see that coming, did you? You just saw my gorgeous ass and overlooked my scheming mind.”
He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I love your scheming mind.”
“Edgar is also there to protect Carmichael. Not just to spy on him.”
Griffin’s brow furrowed.
“Because if I die, and someone does want you to think it was Carmichael, then I suspect he’ll be meeting a bad end before you can get to him.”
“It’s not Gold—I mean, Lucinda. She’s not the one who shot the arrow. She was devastated when she realized Rio had been hit. The girl was crying hysterically.”
“Could have been because she missed her target. I don’t think the shooter ever wanted Rio hurt. The shooter didn’t expect him to be brave enough to try saving me.” The jerk had underestimated her henchman.
My friend. Wait, nope, she would not think of him that way.
His voice low, Griffin told her, “I’ve known Warren and Elliott since I was a child. They’d give their lives to protect me.”
That was the point he seemed to be missing. “But would they protect me? Or would they try to protect you from me?”
And there it was. The faintest flicker in the depths of his eyes. “That’s what I thought.” She waved her fingers, instantly dressing herself. Tight jeans. White top. Some cute sandals. Why not look fab when she faced the vamps? Better for them to underestimate her. “And just because you’ve known someone since you were a kid, it doesn’t mean that person can’t turn on you. Speaking from absolute personal experience here. When we were little, Devon used to tell me that we were going to grow up and get married.” Her chest ached a moment. “Instead, he spends most of his adult time trying to kill me.” She eased away from Griffin and paced back toward the bed.
Silence. The uncomfortable kind. She could feel a new tension in his body. She turned and found him studying her. “What?”
“He wants to marry you?”
“No, I imagine that would be his worst nightmare now.” She waved this away. “When we were kids—you know, little kids just imagining life. He wanted to marry me back then. Before everything went to shit.”
“Before Tomas.”
“Yes.”
Griffin seemed to mull that over in his mind. “You never considered that he stopped you from saving Tomas because Devon wanted you for himself?”
She laughed. “No, he was way over me by that point. In case you didn’t know, he and Genevieve have a big on-again, off-again thing happening.”
Griffin’s expression remained tense. She probably shouldn’t have brought up Devon. Good thing she hadn’t mentioned their brief span as lov—
“Did you ever sleep with him?”
She rocked forward onto the balls of her feet. “So, I’m trying to keep up the honesty thing with you, but I have a feeling my answer is just going to piss you off.”
His lips thinned. “You slept with him.”
“I may look like I’m twenty-five, but I’ve been around for a very long time. I’ve got a lot of lovers out there. So if you’re going to be jealous—”
“I am.” He stalked toward her. Totally naked. All muscle. All sexy. “Very jealous. Because I hate the idea of anyone else having you.”
She was not supposed to find that sweet. And it wasn’t. It was possessive. Growly. Shifter to the core. “You can’t have my past.” She lifted her hand and pressed it to his chest. “And I can’t have yours.” Did she dare say it? Would it reveal too much? Don’t say it. Don’t say it, but… “You can have my future.”
Valerie wished she hadn’t said that. He might laugh at her. Might throw out some mocking comment that made her feel like hell. “Forget it,” she added quickly as she tried to sound dismissive. “That’s not what I meant to say.” She pulled her hand away.
He caught her wrist. Brought her hand right back to his chest. Pressed her palm over his heart. “You are my future. You think I don’t know that?”
She hadn’t realized… “That’s good.”
“No, I don’t think ‘good’ is the word. ‘Good’ is too tame for us.” He smiled at her. “But our future will be earth shattering. Epic. Incredible. And maybe even a little terrifying.”
She found herself returning his smile.
“Now are you ready to face the vamps and find your missing witch?”
“Absolutely.”
“Anything I need to know before the big meet up?”
“Enzo can’t be trusted. He’ll turn on us in an instant if he has the chance.” She considered this. “And I think he and Calliope are sleeping together. Blood, sex, and magic are a dangerous mix.”
His brow furrowed. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“If he’s drinking from her and having sex with her, Calliope will be his drug of choice. Vamps get addicted to witch blood. It’s one of the reasons I made sure they wouldn’t like my blood.”
“A junkie denied his fix can be very dangerous.”
She nodded.
“But not as dangerous as shifter who wants to protect his mate.”
He seemed to be warning her. Well, no seemed about it. He was.
She could see the hard warning in his green eyes as he said, “Your life matters more to me than anything else. Remember that.”
He turned away, giving her a very nice view of his ass. She admired it for a moment, then wiggled her fingers, sending clothes flying to cover him. “And you matter to me, shifter. Remember that.”
He’d slipped his way past her guard. For the first time since Tomas, a man had started to make her wonder if there was more to the world than power and magic.
Maybe…maybe there was love out there.
Love for someone like her.
***
Griffin entered the study. He opened the safe and took out the golden bracelets that Devon had given to him. Elliott had been safeguarding them for Griffin, and then, when they’d gotten to the island, securing them in the safe had been Elliott’s first job.
“What are they?” Warren spoke from behind him. Griffin had known the guy was there, of course. Not like another shifter could ever sneak up on him.
“A present for your witch?” Warren pressed. “I have heard that witches enjoy gold. Are they your attempt to buy her love? Because, hate to break it to you, but I don’t think love is an emotion that Valerie Storm can feel.”
Griffin pocketed the bracelets. He turned toward his friend. Valerie’s words played in his mind. “If you want my top three suspect list, it’s Goldilocks, Warren, and Elliott.” His gaze swept over Warren’s tense features. “Why do you hate her?”
“Uh, because she’s a witch? Supposedly the most evil witch ever born? Do you want me to name all of her kills? All of the people she’s cursed?”
Griffin stalked toward him. “How has she hurt you?”
Warren opened his mouth, then frowned. After a moment, he swallowed, then said, “Are you forgetting what she did to my niece? Working her illusions, terrifying Lucinda?”
“You talked to the other shifters there that day. You know what Lucinda and her friends were doing.”
“So that made it okay for Valerie to torment her? Like two wrongs make some shit right?”
That wasn’t what Griffin was saying. “Are you truly going to stand before me and act as if you’ve never done anything wrong in your life, my friend?”
The target hit. Warren stumbled back. “I’m fucking sorry.” Pain flashed on his face. “You think I don’t regret what I did? Every single damn day? I know I cost them their lives. I know I screwed up and your parents died, I know—”
Griffin fisted his hands in Warren’s shirt-front. “I wasn’t talking about that.” Now he could only shake his head. “You don’t seriously still blame yourself for what happened to them, do you?”
“I let the witch into our world.” Warren’s gaze had turned stark. “I trusted her. I led her to our land. She couldn’t get in without me. She needed a shifter. I killed your parents.”
“You were a kid. Shit, man, you were—”
“I wasn’t some kid. I was sixteen. I was old enough to shift. Old enough to make my way through the portal. I believed her lies. Believed her stories. I let that woman get in. I let—” He broke off.
Griffin could only shake his head. “Valerie isn’t the witch who killed my parents.”
“My witch put a spell on me,” Warren whispered. “I thought she was the most perfect woman I’d ever seen. I didn’t realize how dangerous she was. Not until it was too late.”
“Valerie isn’t—”
“Valerie isn’t Lorena. You’re right. Valerie is a hundred times more powerful. A hundred times more dangerous. And you don’t see the threat that she is.” Warren’s eyes glittered with fury and fear. “Are you under her spell? Because I swear, I think you are. I wasn’t free from Lorena’s magic, not until she drew her last breath.”
Griffin stiffened. “I’m not under a spell.”
“I said the same damn thing. You don’t know you’re under a witch’s spell. Not until you’re free. And then suddenly you realize your witch isn’t so perfect. Not so beautiful. Not the center of your world. That’s the moment when you realize you’ve done terrible things, made terrible mistakes, and you’d give your soul to make things right again.” Warren gave a jerky nod. “Listen to me. Just listen. What if you and Valerie aren’t even mates? What if she’s just screwed with your head? Used more of her magic to make you think that she’s the one for you? You don’t have any way of knowing for sure. Not unless you bind her magic. That’s what Devon said. Devon—”
“Devon wants Valerie dead.” And Griffin didn’t have time for this. “You’re going to trust him over her?”
“He’s not the one with a kill list a mile long. He’s not the one who was going to be executed by his own kind. Every single thing points to her being the enemy. But you’re too blinded to see that.” Warren’s cheeks flushed. “She’s going to destroy you. Do you really just expect me to stand by and watch it happen?”
“Valerie is my mate. Not my enemy.” The weight of the bracelets seemed far too heavy in Griffin’s pocket.
“Devon gave you a tool to use. He said you could stop—”
“I’m not using the fucking bracelets on her!”
Warren blinked. Then his gaze flew down to Griffin’s pocket. A furrow appeared between his brows. “If you’re not using them, why are you taking the bracelets with you?” His eyes widened. “You are starting to see the truth! You realize she could be screwing with you. Good, good! We can stop her together.”
Griffin could hear the roar of the boat’s engine. “Go home, Warren.”
“What?”
“I don’t want you around my mate. Go back home, to the shifter realm. Wait for me there.”
“But you will need my help, you’ll need—”
“Stop.” A guttural command.
Warren swallowed.
Griffin studied his friend. “She thinks you’re trying to kill her.”
A frantic shake of Warren’s head.
“She doesn’t trust you,” Griffin added.
“The witch is trying to turn you against me, she’s—”
“You want me to bind my mate. You talk about her as if she’s our enemy. You look at her with hate in your eyes.” Was it any wonder Valerie was so hesitant around the other shifters? “She saved Rio. She saved my ass in that witch dungeon. She’s not perfect, I’m not claiming that she is, but you know what? I don’t want her to be perfect. I’m certainly not perfect. I’m a killer. I’m a beast. I’m absolutely savage. And she is the thing I want most. Screw any spell. I don’t care about spells. I care about her.”
Warren had gone statue-still.
“So either you accept my queen or you get your ass away from me.” Griffin didn’t want to lose his friend. But he would not lose Valerie. “If I have to choose, it will be her. Always her.”
“You’re under a spell,” Warren whispered.
“I’m not you.” He should have seen that Warren still carried the heavy weight of guilt. “Valerie isn’t Lorena. She’s not trying to destroy the shifters. Stop blaming her for something that another witch did. See her for who she is.”
He shouldered around his friend, heading for the door.
“I do see Valerie for exactly who she is,” Warren threw after him. “Everyone sees her that way. Everyone but you.”
Griffin reached for the doorknob.
But Warren wasn’t done. “Shouldn’t that make you suspicious? Shouldn’t that make you stop and think…why in the hell do you see her differently?”
He looked back. “I see her perfectly.” And he knew why. “Go home, Warren. I don’t need you.”
“You don’t need anyone but her, is that it? She’s going to destroy—”
“Don’t fucking talk about my queen again.” They were done. Dammit.
He yanked open the door and stalked into the hallway, fury filling his body. He hadn’t realized how much animosity Warren held for Valerie. All of the shifters had kept their distance from her when she’d been at his castle. Everyone but Rio. They’d whispered about her, stared at her with fear…and hate?
And he’d just let that shit happen. What in the hell had been wrong with him?
He marched from the mansion. Headed straight for the yacht. Valerie was already on board, her dark hair blowing in the breeze.
When she saw him, a wide smile slid across her face, and she hurried back onto the dock. “Starting to wonder if I’d have to hunt for you!”
He pulled her into his arms. Put his mouth on her. Tasted. Savored. Claimed.
“Hello to you, too,” Valerie murmured against his mouth.
His head lifted. He didn’t let her go.
A faint line appeared between her delicate brows. “Is everything okay?”
“It will be.” He’d make it better than okay. He’d make up for every single slight she’d ever received.
“Sunset is coming,” Elliott called out, his voice bland. “But, you know, if you two want to keep making out and just ignore the vamps waiting, we can do that. My schedule is wide open.”
They jumped onto the boat. Griffin helped to cast off the lines.
“Is Warren coming?” Elliott asked, glancing toward the house.
Griffin locked his back teeth. “He’s going home. I need someone there to keep an eye on things.” A partial truth.
Elliott cut him a sharp glance.
“Take us to the vamps.” Griffin felt his incisors sharpen. “And if things go to hell, be ready to claw your way through them.”
Elliott steered the boat away from the dock. “Always love fighting with a vamp. Been too long since I kicked some undead ass.”
Griffin looked back at his island. Warren had stepped outside. He stared after them.
“He doesn’t appear happy,” Valerie announced. She lifted her hand and gave Warren a cheery wave.
He didn’t wave back.
“It’s a pity he hates me.” She waved once more. Sparks danced above her fingers.
Griffin caught her hand. “Don’t.”
She blinked innocently. “What? You think I was going to hurt him?” Another flutter of her lashes. “He looked so mopey and down. I was just going to give the man his own personal little raincloud. You know, so it could follow him around.”
Elliott barked out a laugh.
“Do not,” Griffin warned her.
She nodded. “Right. I should save my energy for the vamps. Good plan.” Though she did look longingly toward Warren. “Someday.”
“What’s that?” Griffin asked, narrowing his eyes.
“Oh, nothing. I just feel like Elliott. Totally agree with him. Can’t wait to kick vamp ass.” Her smile was huge.
“And what happens after we kick that ass?” Griffin wondered what Valerie’s next step would be.
Her smile dimmed. “We find Calliope. We get her help. And I take down the witch council. Easy.”
It didn’t sound easy.
But then, he’d learned that when Valerie was involved, nothing was easy.
***
“You bring Valerie to me, just Valerie.” Calliope Briggs was absolutely sick of fear being a heavy weight in her stomach. “She’s the one I trust. Only her.”
Enzo cast a fast glance toward the window. “It’s almost sunset.”
“Then you need to go.” Valerie is back. That means I have a chance. “She can help me. She can help us both. Bring her to me.”
The vamp leader hesitated. “She wanted you to be on that beach—at the club, Daybreak.”
Calliope shook her head. “I can’t be out there. I’m not as strong as she is. If the wrong person sees me first, I’m dead.” Just like Hurst and Fiona. “You lead her here. Only Valerie, understand?”
“That shifter isn’t going to let her out of his sight.”
He was a problem. Griffin Bastien. “Griffin was hired by the witch council. He’s an assassin. He’s just biding his time, trying to figure out a way to end Valerie. You have to get her away from him.” She closed in on Enzo. She’d found that the vamp would do just about anything for her. “When you see him, before he even has a chance to speak, kill him.”
Enzo whistled. “He’s not going to be easy to kill.”
She reached for his hand. Pressed two objects into his palm. “He will be if you use a little magic.”
Enzo glanced down. “Silver bullets? Those aren’t exactly magic.”
Not normally. “These are magic. These bullets are enchanted. They won’t miss their target. I don’t care how fast he is. How big of a beast he can be. You aim these silver bullets at him, and you won’t miss.”
His tongue swiped over his lower lip. A dead giveaway to his nerves. “If I kill the shifter king, then I start a war.”
Time to give Enzo some perspective. “If you don’t kill him, then I’m as good as dead. And you don’t want me to die, do you? If I die, you won’t be able to have my blood any longer.” Her fingers trailed down his chest. “You won’t be able to have me.”
His gaze fell on her throat. “I do like you. You’re fucking delicious.”
Wonderful. What every witch wanted to hear. “So kill him for me. And bring my friend to me.”
Enzo nodded. His fingers closed around the bullets. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Then he was gone. Marching out of the room as if he was heading to battle—which, well, he was. She hurried to the window and glanced down, watching as he filed out with a line of vamps. Vamps liked to live in dens. They thought there was safety in numbers. They were usually right.
They were—
Something hit her from behind. A sharp, stabbing pain. Her hand lifted, and she grabbed at her shoulder. Calliope’s shaking fingers pulled out some kind of…dart?
“What in the hell?” Calliope whispered.
Her knees—her legs—gave way. She slammed onto the floor.
And she heard a man laughing.
Someone was in the room with her. Someone she hadn’t even seen. She hadn’t sensed anyone, hadn’t felt the stir of magic in the air—
“One witch down…” His mocking voice drifted to her.
A heavy, numbing lethargy swept through her. Calliope couldn’t even lift her lashes, much less her head. She couldn’t see the man who stalked toward her.
“One down,” his hand brushed over her cheek. “One to go.”