By the Embers Dies the Fire Read online

  “I guess the old bitch won’t be able to keep her promise to me, then.”

  “What promise was that, dear?”

  “I asked her to make sure that, if there was ever a time they were in mortal danger and were going to die, to snap their threads quickly so they didn’t suffer.”

  He didn’t reply at first.

  “You aren’t exactly jumping in to take up the slack, are you?”

  “Honestly?” He stared at Brighton’s grave. “I don’t think that’s ever going to be an issue.”

  “Why do you say that? I can’t see much about them anymore. Not about the Triad as a whole.”

  “Let’s just say that once they finally quit doubting themselves and their powers and have reached a point where they have mastered them, the Triad will be the most dangerous body on the face of the planet.”

  Lacey shivered. “Why’d you say it like that?”

  “Because I have a feeling there are some beings who don’t know that, and who will have a seriously painful realization once the Triad steps in to keep the balance.”

  Silence fell between them for a few minutes.

  “May I ask you a favor, Lacey?”

  That startled her. “You? Ask me a favor?”

  “It happens.”

  “Sure. What’s the catch?”

  “No catch. Just a pledge of your discretion.”

  “Seer Says?”

  “Seer Says.”

  “Why not? What do you need?”

  “Confirmation.”

  Lacey frowned. “Of what?”

  He held out a hand to her. “Of something Elain told me.”

  She stared at his hand for a long moment before finally wrapping her fingers around his wrist. A series of images flashed through her mind, one of them popping to the top and, as she’d learned with her particular way of seeing visions, it flared a bright pink before fading.

  Meaning it was what would happen.

  She released him. “Elain’s vision is correct.” She met his gaze. “I don’t know when, how, or why, but it will come to pass.”

  He nodded. “Thank you.”

  With that, he disappeared.

  Alone again, Lacey stood and stretched and headed over to a corner of her garden where two rose bushes were planted. Standing there and staring at the ground, she allowed herself to openly weep for them for the first time in years.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Elain had hoped, upon their return to Florida five days after Brighton’s presumed death, that Brodey might finally begin to emerge from his shell of pain.

  No such luck.

  Two weeks later, and he was still as withdrawn, sullen, and quiet as ever.

  Elain knew she had to do something. Brodey had driven into Arcadia to pick up a part they needed for one of their tractors, which had broken down. She pulled Ain and Cail aside before Brodey returned from his parts run and had a talk with them, asked them to please take care of the babies that night.

  Brighton’s death had taken all the progress she’d made with Brodey since Ellie’s birth and drop-kicked it backward by a couple of country miles, and even Ain and Cail saw it.

  If she didn’t short-circuit Brodey’s emotional tailspin now, right now, they might lose him much in the same way Ain had retreated after the deaths of their sisters.

  She had an idea how to do that, but it would mean sacrifices on her part as well.

  Fitting, since it was largely her fault Brighton was dead in the first place.

  Ain and Cail actually did one better than giving them some time alone, packing overnight bags and going to Elain’s mom and dad’s house for the night. Elain sat on the front porch and was waiting there for Brodey when his truck pulled into the front yard.

  He carried a small box in his hand she assumed was the part for the tractor. “What are you doing out here?” he asked as he walked up to her. Even his voice sounded…wrong.

  Soft. Sad.

  Clouded by grief and misery he was growing far too comfortable with.

  She held her hand out to him. “Waiting for you, cowboy.”

  He didn’t even smirk, her gentle, tentative emotional probe meeting a concrete wall.

  He finally reached out and took her hand and helped her up, not even attempting a playful grope under the hem of the sundress she was wearing, which would have rewarded him with the discovery that she was wearing absolutely nothing under it.

  Holding his hand, she led him inside and locked the front door behind them.

  “Where is everyone?” he asked.

  “Gone for the night.” She draped her hands over his shoulders. “The whole night.”

  He wouldn’t meet her gaze. “Babe,” he softly said, “I know that this isn’t going to sound like me, but I don’t think I’m in the mood tonight. I’m sorry.”

  His statement was correct, but not in the way he thought. He literally did not sound like himself, the pain in his soul already darkening his tone, his speech.

  She took the box from him and set it on the dining room table, then led him into the living room. On the coffee table between the sofas lay a couple of old journals.

  “What are those doing out here?” he asked.

  She sat, gently tugging on his hand to get him to sit with her. “I brought them out here.”

  “I should have tossed those decades ago.”

  “Don’t you dare.” They were his, his writings, poems, old journals that she’d discovered when she’d first moved in with the men, practically hidden on a lower shelf in Cail’s office, where a curtain partially concealed the bottom shelf on one of the shelving units along the wall.

  She reached for the one on top and then stretched out on the sofa, her head in his lap. She’d marked several pages in the journals with sticky notes, things she wanted to hear him read out loud to her.

  “What are you doing?”

  She reached up and gently caught his chin and made him look her in the eyes. “We’re going to spend tonight together, just the two of us. No one to distract us. No one needing our attention. Just you and me. I miss you. I miss us, and I want us back.”

  “I’m right here.”

  “No, you’re not, and you and I both know it. Just like you and I both know there was a period of time where I wasn’t really here, and a period of time when Ain wasn’t here. Even though he really didn’t come back to all of us until after Connor.”

  He stared at the journal in her hands. “What do you want me to do?”

  She opened it to the first page she’d marked. “I want you to read to me, Brodey.”

  “Those old things? I—”

  “Code of the Ancients, we’re supposed to make our mate happy, right?”

  He nodded.

  “I know you’re not very happy right now. I’m trying. Let me try this. Please?”

  He finally took the book and stared at the poem she’d marked. “Why? Why this?”

  “I want to hear you say the words.” She reached up and stroked his cheek. “I want to imagine the young, half-wild Scotsman who wrote them.”

  He took a deep breath as his eyes skimmed over the writing, by her best guess and Cail’s help probably written a decade or more before their sisters’ murders.

  She knew he probably didn’t realize it, but while he started reading it in the slight Florida drawl he used now, by the time he was halfway through it, she’d started to hear hints of his native Scottish burr bleeding through.

  “Nae I wept no more

  that cold and bitter day.

  Ye bonnie lass, ye saw me

  as I went on my way.

  O, wert ye lone and longing,

  ’tis true ye have another.

  Else would we have ye fairly

  me and my two brothers.

  Some would call me daft

  for feeling such relief

  but ’tis knowing out there somewhere

  be a lass our hearts will thief.”

  Elain smiled up at him as he stare
d at the page, the words he’d penned there in a distant past. “Tell me about her,” she asked.

  He didn’t look away from the page. “Why? She’s probably long dead, and she wasn’t our One. There’s only you.”

  “Because I want to hear you. I want to know you. You know about twenty bazillion sexual tricks to blow the top of my head sky-high, you’ve taught me how to be a wolf, but you and I haven’t really ever sat down and talked about your past. Your history.”

  “Did you talk to Ain about the past? When you were in Bolivia getting Connor?”

  “He told me about some things, yes. Cail’s talked to me. You and I end up…not talking. Doing other nice things with our mouths, yes, but not talking. If you weren’t trying to teach me how to protect myself or about being a shifter, we were having sex. And now we have the kids. Tonight, I want to talk about Brodey. About the man who got to this point. I don’t think it’s silly that you used to write. I wish you still did.”

  “I’m just the bonehead. I’m the fighter. The tracker. The fixer. The wolf. That’s what I do and what I’m best at. Well, used to be.”

  “You still are. And that’s not true. Well, not totally true. You do more than that. You are more than that and I want to know as much as I can about my husband. You’re learning about me as I live. We’ve spent lifetimes apart, literally.”

  She wasn’t sure he was going to answer her at first, and she wasn’t going to force him, either. His finger played with the edge of the page.

  “Her name was Holly. Human. Long red hair, not as red as Lina’s, more honey-colored. Her father was a farmer who lived in a town we didn’t get through very often. We just happened to be on our way back home through town on market day, and I was sitting there and she walked past me.”

  His eyes dropped closed and she felt his mind reaching for the distant memory. Elain gently wrapped her fingers around his other arm, giving him a gentle mental nudge to help him dust off the memory from the shadows of his past.

  “It was a warm day, gorgeous summer day. Light breeze. Perfect day we didn’t get a lot of in that part of Scotland, even in the summer. I scented her immediately and sat up straight, looking at Ain and Cail. Ain hadn’t even noticed her. Cail looked at me like I was daft…”

  He smiled. “I see what you did there, babe.” His voice was dropping back into the lilt. “Ye want Braveheart tonight, do ye?”

  “Only if you want to.”

  Another sigh escaped him, and the burr softened, but didn’t disappear totally. She suspected this would be his normal accent if he hadn’t worked so hard to sound like a native Floridian after spending decades trying to sound like a Maine native.

  “It happened quite a bit then, aye? Our region, lots o’ shifters, lots o’ wolves. The three o’ us, I canna tell ye how many times one or two o’ us scented but she weren’t…she weren’t our fair bonnie Elain.”

  He opened his eyes and stared down into hers. Adjusting his arm draped over her so he could stroke her cheek with his free hand, he said, “Thank the Goddess none o’ them were ye.”

  “So why did you call it a cold and bitter day if it was summer?”

  He smiled. “It sounded better. Kind of matched how I felt. Poetic license, all right?” He turned the pages to the next one she’d marked with a sticky note. “I suppose ye want me to read this one next?”

  “Please.”

  It took a while to finish with that journal, and there were still two more she wanted to go through. Not even all of the journals he had, but the ones she’d wanted him to read to her from that night.

  She sat up and took the journal from him and set it on the table. Then she stood, turned, and straddled him on the couch, draping her arms over his shoulders. “Let’s go take a shower and then I’ll make us dinner.”

  His hands rested on her hips. He still hurt. This wasn’t an instant fix. But she felt a breach in the wall, a thinning of the veil of pain surrounding his soul.

  She’d take the win.

  Stroking her fingers through his hair, she rested her forehead against his. “I know it hurts. I know it’s going to hurt for a long, long time before it feels like it’s okay to breathe again. But don’t shut me out. You’re my mate and my husband and the father of my children, and I love you.”

  He pulled her in for a long, slow, tender kiss. “I love ye so much. It’d kill me to lose any o’ ye.”

  She knew he wasn’t just talking like that for her benefit. She’d finally drawn him into the center of the hurricane with her, the calmer eye, not quite a type of hypnosis, but she had him focused on her, and that was what was important.

  Follow my instincts.

  She reached between them and unfastened his belt and jeans.

  “Elain—”

  “Shh.” She kissed him as her hands worked, freed his cock, and stroked it until he finally started responding.

  Closing her eyes, she let her mind wander, and swirling around them she felt it.

  The Ether.

  She knew damn well what time of the month it was. And she wasn’t nursing Ellie anymore with the damned sharp teeth the little pup had on her.

  And she hadn’t gone back on the pill yet.

  Thankfully.

  Elain wouldn’t let him break their kiss. Rising up, she aligned his shaft with her pussy and slowly sank down onto him as his hands slid around to cup her ass. Around them the souls swirled and she searched, sorting, finding and plucking the one she wanted from the mass as she sent the others away and closed the Ether.

  Only one.

  That particular one.

  She draped her arms over his shoulders and rode him, reaching out to Brodey through their mate bond and wanting him to really be into it.

  As she slowly fucked him, he started bunching up her dress until his hands, warm and callused, caressed her ass cheeks, fingers digging in as he took over and started setting the rhythm.

  Yes!

  The soul circled around them as she rode Brodey, her body responding to him, her clit rubbing perfectly against his body at this angle.

  And then he slid one hand up, to the back of her neck, and cupped his hand around the nape of her neck.

  Thank you!

  He spread his legs a little wider apart as he took full charge, thrusting up into her, setting the speed, crushing her lips with his as he met her through their mate bond.

  “Hold it, mate. Wait for me.”

  She mentally whined, wanting and needing it now, and still keeping the soul lassoed to them, ready to take its place inside her.

  But her hopes soared.

  Brodey took his time, hard, deep thrusts, rough strokes he wouldn’t have likely tried early on in their relationship before he knew she was an Alpha shifter and could easily take that much and more.

  A good, hard fucking, slamming her body down onto his cock as his release built and grew closer.

  She felt it, felt him, felt how hard he was and felt it through their mate bond.

  He finally broke their kiss and pulled down the left strap of her sundress, baring her shoulder, nuzzling her flesh with his lips.

  And she knew what was coming.

  “Mate, come for me!”

  He bit down, hard, making her cry out as her body responded, exploding with pleasure. He thrust up into her, deep, fast, adding his growling roar as he climaxed to her cries while the soul slipped through her fingers as it sought out its new home.

  Breathing hard, she kept her eyes closed even as her pleasure slowly ebbed, his cock still semi-hard inside her, his teeth still in her flesh, his tongue and lips caressing her.

  “My beautiful mate,” he said through their mate bond.

  Time for a little insurance on her part. She gently raked her teeth along the side of his neck. “Again, please,” she begged through their bond, hoping he wouldn’t spot the edict.

  Faster than she could even process, he stood with her still wrapped around him and turned, pulling out and flipping her over so she was on her
hands and knees over the seat of the couch. Immediately, his cock was back inside her pussy, hard and fucking her.

  He shoved her dress up and off her, tossing it to the floor. Sliding his arms under her, he cupped his hands around her shoulders and licked a trail up her spine. The soft, worn denim of his jeans rubbed against the backs of her thighs and ass as he fucked her, and his shirt brushed against her back.

  “You’re in trouble now, mate,” he whispered in her ear, making her shiver in the good way. “You wanted to edict my cock hard again to fuck you? You got it, babe.”

  Busted.

  She didn’t care, because it felt good. Not just the fucking, but finally feeling the faintest hints of her Brodey starting to re-emerge. She gladly let him take over as he edicted her, building her next orgasm but not letting her come, making her beg for it as he alternated between hard, deep, driving thrusts and slow, sweet, sensual, teasing ones.

  “Is this what you wanted, mate?” he rumbled in her ear. “A good, long, hard fucking?”

  “Yes!” she gasped.

  “Why me? Why tonight?” he growled.

  She was barely holding on to her sanity and knew she had to be careful how she answered. “Because I wanted you tonight. I needed you.”

  “Why—” He stopped, his cock deep inside her. “Babe,” he whispered. “Why didn’t you—”

  “Please, Brodey! Please finish me off!”

  He started fucking her again, fast, deep, and as she felt him start to come, he edicted her. “Come, mate!”

  Her hands balled into fists as the orgasm washed through her, blessed relief as her body clamped down on his cock and she felt him fill her again.

  He didn’t move at first, his breath warm against the nape of her neck. “Why?” His voice sounded ragged, broken. “Why didn’t you say so before? Why not just tell me?”

  “Because I wanted you.”

  He finally lifted his weight from her and pulled out, turning her to face him. “How did you know this would happen?”

  “Because I’m a Seer, Brodey. And I know my body.”

  He kissed her, hard, his fingers tangled in her hair, his breath coming in heaving gasps as he broke their kiss and pulled her in for an equally crushing hug.