Midnight Reckoning

“Trust me,” the man in the doorway said, “she read everyone the riot act. If anyone had a problem before, they’ll be keeping it to themselves now. Lily’s got a mouth on her when she feels like using it.”



His silver eyes glinted with humor, and an obvious love for his wife. Lyra had to admit, Lily and Ty made a striking couple. As she passed him, he nodded at her.



“I’m Ty MacGillivray. I remember you too. I’m sorry your troubles have followed you so long,” he said, his voice touched with a lovely, lilting brogue.



Great, more kindness, Lyra thought. Her eyes watered threateningly. Fueled by her fatigue, no doubt. Still, she managed a smile as she walked into a beautiful, high-ceilinged entranceway with a wide staircase directly ahead. Lily started toward the stairs.



“You’ll be staying up here,” she began, but Jaden’s voice, rough from the trip and his own stress, cut in.



“I already told you, she’s staying with me. I’ll take her up to my room.”



Lily narrowed her eyes and turned around to address him. She kept her voice reasonable, but Lyra could hear the irritation beneath.



“And I thought I told you that Lyra can make her own decisions on that. I’ll give her a room. If she wants to stay with you later on, that’s up to her. She’s a big girl, Jaden.”



It was interesting to hear herself argued over, but all Lyra really wanted was to get upstairs and fall into bed. She must have looked it, too, because no one argued with her when she spoke up.



“I appreciate it, Lily, but I’d just as soon room with Jaden. I need to get some sleep. And anyway,” she muttered, embarrassed by Jaden’s obvious pleasure at her decision, “I’ll never hear the end of it if I don’t.”



That was as close as she was going to come to saying she needed him near her right now, in case she started to fall apart and she couldn’t put herself back together. It would be a lot better than simply crumpling up in front of Lily and whoever else lived here.



Lily’s expression was kind when she looked between Lyra and Jaden. She nodded. “Okay. I understand completely. Jaden can get you settled. Obviously I’d like to hear about what’s going on, and maybe talk about what you want moving forward, but that can happen whenever you’re ready.”



Lyra nodded, grateful that Jaden had pegged Lily and Ty correctly—they wouldn’t press her. At least not tonight.



“I think,” she said quietly, “I’ll be turning in, actually. I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve barely slept. But wake me up if, you know, anyone comes looking for me.”



She knew how pathetic it sounded, but she couldn’t give up on the faint hope that her father would change his mind, that the pack could be swayed. That she could somehow go home.



“We absolutely will,” Lily said. Lyra took some solace in the woman’s calm strength, which seemed like a beacon in the miserable storm her life had become.



“I’ll show you where you’ll be staying,” Jaden said, slipping his arm around her waist. Lyra let him, mainly because her legs had gone wobbly and weak, and she wanted to make sure she actually made it up the stairs. She didn’t want to lean on him—but it was hard not to when her body refused to have it any other way.



Lily watched the two of them go up, and Ty came to stand beside her as they vanished around the corner and onto the second floor. Jaden’s room was on the third level, where he preferred it, so Lyra would be well tucked away from the curious eyes of the rest of the Lilim and Cait Sith if she wished to be.



Ty looked in the direction they had gone, and moved behind his wife to wrap his arms around her. She leaned back into him, comforted by his strength. He rested his chin on the top of her head.



“You’ve a good heart, Lily.”



She gave a short, humorless laugh. “For what it’s worth. I don’t know if I’m ever going to understand the way your world operates, Ty.”



“Our world,” Ty said gently. “And the wolves are, in some ways, even more rigid than our kind. Some of that is the vampires’ fault. And some of it just is. We’re changing. Maybe they will too.”



“They have a big, unpleasant change coming if Damien was telling the truth.” Lily shook her head. “The Ptolemy are like a vampire wrecking crew. They destroy everything they touch.”



“They didn’t destroy us. Their time is coming, Lily. They’ll meddle in one thing too many, and it’ll bite Arsinöe right in the ass. You’ll see.”



“I hope so. She didn’t stay down for long the last time. And with a pack of wolves at her disposal, she could make a lot of trouble. It doesn’t help that the Council is afraid of her.”



Ty rubbed his chin against her hair. “She’s very old, very clever, and very powerful. But she’s afraid of you, my lovely Lily. So we continue to build, and we wait for the right time to stop her permanently. The rest will stand with us, when it’s time.”



“I hope so. For now, I just want to be of some help to poor Lyra. She’s lost everything,” Lily said. She knew how it felt to be alone all too well. But it hadn’t been quite as blood-soaked as Lyra’s separation from her pack. Her human best friend hadn’t deserted her, though Bay was still getting used to hanging around with a bunch of vampires. And she had Ty, one of the greatest gifts of her life, greater, even than the gifts her blood had given her.



“I don’t know about that,” Ty said. “Jaden seems to want to be something to her, that’s certain.”



“It’s good to see him attached to someone,” Lily admitted. She’d seen the way Jaden looked at Lyra. His heart was right in his eyes. “But a vampire and a werewolf… it seems like that comes built in with a whole lot of issues. And that’s even before her specific baggage, which is probably considerable.”



Ty chuckled. “I wouldn’t have expected him to choose someone without issues. Jaden never does anything the easy way.”



“Yeah. I guess you weren’t kidding about that,” Lily said, though she didn’t see much humor in it. She loved Jaden like family. And she knew firsthand that even impossible problems could sometimes be gotten around. But this… she just wasn’t sure.



“Jaden will be down before long,” Ty said. “There’s a lot to talk about.”



Lily nodded. “We’ll wait in the kitchen. Jaden’s most comfortable in there.” She gave his hand an affectionate squeeze, and the two of them headed to the back of the house.



Chapter TWENTY-TWO



THE DAYS immediately following her expulsion from the Thorn were a blur.



Lyra woke and slept, ate little and moved even less. Her pack, her father, had declared her a ghost wolf, and that’s exactly how she felt. She had no interest in anything. She didn’t want to die, but she wasn’t quite sure how to go about living, and there didn’t seem to be any energy in her reserves to figure out a solution.



Jaden watched her like a hawk, the concern etched ever deeper onto his preternaturally beautiful face. At first she found it as frustrating as she did reassuring. It wasn’t simply that she could see his worry… she could feel it whenever he was near, flowing from him and into her, upsetting the comfortable cocoon of numbness she had settled herself inside. What did he want from her? Didn’t he see she needed space even if she wasn’t sure she wanted it? And yet he was always there, waiting with his steady, reassuring silence. He pushed food at her and made sure she ate enough to keep going, prodded her with suggestions to get up, to bathe, to re-engage.



She hadn’t been ready for those things. But that didn’t stop him from trying.



She watched sunrises and sunsets, wandered like a wraith through the mansion when the sun shone and stayed curled in the secluded cave of Jaden’s room at night. She didn’t want to see anyone. They might want to talk about what came next.



And for a woman who had lived her entire life with a single goal in mind, those conversations frightened her most of all.



She’d known, however, that the fugue state she was in couldn’t last. And finally, after six days of wallowing in the depths of herself, she surfaced.



She awoke not knowing what time it was, her eyes opening in the darkness that she’d made sure was no indication of what time of day it was outside. Lyra blinked, then gently lifted her hands to rub the sleep from her eyes. Something was different.



She could feel again.



Lyra breathed in deeply, as though she was awakening from a long and unpleasant dream. She felt… grimy. And wrung out. But sadly, that was an improvement. Slowly, she raised herself to a sitting position in the midst of the tangle of covers she’d spent many of the last days burrowed in. As her eyes adjusted to the dark room, she could see the Spartan trappings she’d become accustomed to: the long, low dresser, the simple nightstand and lamp, the battered and ancient chest that squatted at the foot of the massive four-poster bed that had been her nest.



Then she looked down and saw the figure on the floor. He slept, perfectly still, on a featherbed that had been dragged in here by a couple of nervous-looking vampires. She had some vague memory of gazing blearily at them from beneath the covers while they worked. His slim figure was curled into a loose fetal position, one arm tucked beneath the shaggy head and the other pressed against his chest. In the silence, Lyra could hear the soft and steady sound of his breathing, occasionally punctuated by a light snore.



Jaden.



Feelings she had buried rushed back to the surface all at once with a painful swiftness, but for once, she welcomed them. Images flickered through her memory, of being watched, cared for, looked after. Loved.



He loved her. Even when she had done nothing to encourage it, or to reward him, he’d stayed by her side. And what she felt in return, flooding her until it felt as though she might burst with it, was both painful and beautiful. In all this darkness, she would never have expected that he would have been her light. Yet here they were.



She steeled herself and sat up, slowly swinging her legs over the side of the bed. Her body felt odd, rusty from disuse. She lowered her feet to the plush Oriental rug that covered the floor and then stood, swaying unsteadily in the darkness. Nothing stirred. Lyra decided that no matter what hour of day it was, she had enough time to at least get a head start on her plans.