My aunt slipped her arm around me for the briefest of hugs. “Good luck with everything you’ve got coming,” she gushed. “I know you’ll be great.” She walked out the door, brushing past Grayson when he wouldn’t move for her.

  “Okay, now she’s gone. What were you saying about getting out of here?”

  Eleven

  “I’m not fighting with you on this. The Darklands could start to twist you the second you step through the portal.” We’d been arguing for fifteen minutes. Gray still blocked the door, and my patience was paper thin.

  We danced in the doorway, him reaching out, me keeping just out of reach. “Stop it, Mo. I’m not trying to stop you, I just want to touch you.”

  I stepped back again. “No way, Jose. You touch me, then I break down and tell you how I lost my lunch just before my aunt walked in, and I’m losing my goddamned mind and I can’t do this anymore.”

  Lightning fast he lunged and wrapped me in a bear hug. “You will not go alone, my love. At least try to trust us the way you expect us to trust you.”

  His grip loosened enough for him to slide his hands down my arms and around my back. I moaned softly and leaned into him, breathing him in like that first inhalation of home after a long time away.

  “I don’t want anyone to get hurt. We’re supposed to protect them, not put them in danger.”

  He laughed aloud and kissed my forehead. “I can’t wait until you say that to them.”

  I pushed away from him. “When exactly did you expect me to do that? I’ve got to go, Babe. I can’t stay here and do nothing until something else happens.”

  “I can’t let you put yourself in danger. What if you can’t beat Tryst without your Fae power?”

  He followed me into the living room. “Gray, what if the changes we saw in the shifters started automatically the moment they entered the Dark Court territory? Who would you resign to that?”

  “And who would you resign to that fate?”

  He grabbed my shoulders and leaned in, his eyes only inches from mine. “Not you, Morgan. Anyone before you. Would you do any differently for me?”

  “I would take every shifter from every continent into the darkest, farthest corners of Arcadia to protect you,” I whispered, my chest so tight I couldn’t catch my breath.

  He lifted me, his hands slipping under my ass with practiced ease as I climbed up him like a lemur and wrapped my arms around his waist.

  "I'd go with you, my love. No one can conquer us together." I pried his mouth open with teasing lips and tongue until he moaned into me.

  “You’re not distracting me, wife.”

  “Can’t blame me for trying.”

  He dumped me on the floor with a groan. “It was a nice try. Later, I’ll make you finish what you started.” I adjusted the sheath that somehow had pinched my thigh between the buckles.

  “Another meeting?”

  He shrugged and opened the door.

  “You know, Gray, I always thought being a shifter would come with more moonlit hunts and less bureaucracy.” I let him shoo me out of the apartment, but dragged my feet as we went down the hallway. “I don’t want to be the reason our people get hurt.”

  Gray jabbed the call button on the elevator and waited silently. When the doors whooshed closed I felt his eyes on me in our shared reflection. “I get it, Morgan. You’re our heavy hitter, the one who goes in and closes when no one else can. But you’ve got to stop thinking you’re alone. You are pack, and while I am happy to fight at your back and watch you burn our enemies to the ground. Rest assured, you will never be alone again.”

  The elevator gently bumped to a stop and still my eyes stayed on the golden glow of his. “I’m kind of a pain sometimes, but I know it, Gray. You are my home. My pack is my family. I’m not ungrateful, just unsure of how much I’m asking, and where it’s too much.”

  We exited the elevator to a crowd, every member of the pack lined up for us like paparazzi on a red carpet. Unlike those human parasites, however, our audience was silent, waiting upon their alphas to direct them. The weight of their expectations used to feel like the world on my shoulders. Walking past them into the ‘big' conference room, I realized somewhere it had taken a new form. It wasn't a burden, but a mantle, as comforting as it could be disconcerting.

  Once the door shut on the conference room and I laid out my plan, the mood instantly changed from respectful silence to clamoring uproar. Everyone argued about who should go, until it deteriorated to the point of challenges being called out.

  “Whoa. Guys,” Niall laughed as he threw open the door and sauntered in. “You’re going to get S.W.A.T. out here again with all that noise.”

  “Morgan’s going to the Fairy Darklands and she wants to go alone.” Rachelle chimed in. “I know,” she continued in a deadpan tone, “we’re all so very shocked.”

  I shot her a glance of irritation, but with Bonnie on her lap, she looked so content that even her smug grin couldn’t keep me mad. They were who I was fighting for, after all, two shifters who had found each other after hard lives. The kind of lives I wanted us all to leave behind forever.

  “I’ll go with her, but I think the alpha must stay. We can’t lose you both, and we all know Morgan will just conjure a fucking door and walk through it even if she’s commanded to stay.” Niall folded his arms, his face grim. He hadn’t even asked a question about the plan or why we were going.

  Gray shook his head. “No. We must both go. The Darklands steals away the power of light Fae. Morgan will need me to strengthen her.”

  The room erupted in noise again, everyone talking over everybody else, and no one talking to me, or asking my thoughts or feelings.

  The all-too-familiar anger bubbled up inside me, drowning every other voice. I pressed my palms to the table in front of me, breathing hard. "Stop. Stop it. Shut up!” The wood split under my hands and the table fell in on itself as the room fell into silence. “Damn it. Have you forgotten I’m no longer just the alpha’s Fae girlfriend? We will go into the Darklands how and when I want to. Because none of you has a clue what we are to face, and none of you has the power to beat Tryst when he refuses a peaceful option, which I’m sure he will.”

  Gray stood with his hands clasped in front of him. “Morgan’s right. You’ve all had your say, but this is a pack, not a democracy.”

  As quickly as it had come, the frustration faded, leaving me light-headed and dizzy. I shook my head to clear it, but the room spun, and without the table to lean against, I fell.

  This time, when I came to, the faces that looked down on me were smiling and sympathetic, more than concerned. “I passed out again.”

  “You fainted, for maybe twenty seconds. It’s all right. Just don’t move too fast. This happens with some women.” Bonnie slid a folded shirt under my head, hissing when her hand brushed Caorach. “You might be more comfortable without your sword under you.”

  Mentally I commanded Caorach to my hand and the wolves jumped as she appeared there. “Okay, no sword. So again…why does this happen to female shifters only”

  “Not female shifters, females in your condition. I guess the meeting is over now though, huh. Can’t be running around sword fighting while you’re pregnant.”

  Twelve

  I groaned and pushed her back as I sat upright. The nausea and dizziness were mostly past, but the room gave one swooping spin when the blood rushed out of my head before everything came back into focus. “I am pregnant, not just suffering from being a new shifter.”

  “Some of us had been thinking so, but now I can smell it on you. In a few weeks, even the men will be able to,” Bonnie quipped, to scattered laughter.

  I glanced at Gray, but he shrugged. “Part of that polite pack society stuff we’ve talked about. We spend a great deal of time not noticing the cycle of a female.”

  “Or the lack thereof?” I finished. “Crap, even I hadn’t noticed that. We’ve been a bit busy lately.”

  “It’s early,” Bonnie reassured me. “You’d have noticed soon enough, I think. Sorry you are the kind that gets sick.”

  “I’m sorry morning sickness isn’t a more accurate descriptor.” I sighed. “But at least now I can treat it.” I thought back to my aunt’s hug and her cryptic goodbye earlier. “Shit. Portia thinks I knew and just didn’t tell her. Gray, Portia wouldn’t orchestrate the murder of a pregnant witch. It isn’t done.”

  “Agreed. We’ll take her at her word for now and send wolves to find those responsible.” He held out a hand to me and I let him help me to my feet, if only to avoid another embarrassing collapse.

  I waved my arms, forcing everyone back a few paces, and stared down at the broken table. “Do I get to blame my temper and my vandalism on the zygote in my belly as well?”

  Niall coughed and looked at his shoes. Renewed laughter broke out as every shifter in the room avoided my eyes.

  “No one will ever blame you, wife,” Gray sighed. “Everyone’s too afraid of you.”

  The laughter subsided into an uncomfortable silence that I didn’t want to unpack right then. “Well, let’s hope that our enemies are more afraid…I don’t think my ego could handle going into battle just to be laughed at.”

  “If you go with a huge, pregnant belly, you will be.”

  “That won’t be happening, because there’s no way we’re taking any pregnant woman into the Darklands, let alone an alpha.”

  I smiled and brushed myself off. “Of course, no one but me gets to decide what I do, pregnant or not.”

  “I will not put my unborn child or his mother in jeopardy.” Gray growled, kicking at the mahogany on the floor.

  “Her mother.” I corrected him.

  He shrugged. “Maybe, whatever. The point is,”

  “The point is, that you don’t know enough about me to make decisions about what I get to do. My line births only daughters. We always have, we always will. I am the only one who must speak with Tryst, convince him that peace is still the only option. Anyone else who goes, unless they’re catching a ride in my uterus, needs my permission.”

  “So what, we wait until some fancy Fae holiday and cross over when the portals are all open?” He was pacing, shoving a table leg out of his way so hard it bounced off Niall’s leg before spinning away into a corner.

  Two of Niall’s wolves carried the broken pieces of the twelve-foot table out with them and we sat in a circle on the leather executive chairs. “I don’t think we can do this at the usual Fae pace.” I admitted. I won’t be showing because as soon as this meeting’s over I’m leaving with as few pack members as we deem necessary.”

  “She’s right,” a soft voice interjected as the arguing started again. Geallta stood in the doorway where I used to hover, not pack, but with no home anywhere else.

  “Sit with us, Gee. You’re pack, if anyone is. You’ve earned it. Right Gray?” Without waiting for him to reply, I patted the empty chair next to me. “You can tell everyone how right I am, before they forget and try to bar the doors.”

  “No. No one will argue.” Gray scrubbed his palms over his face. “Morgan and I will go and try to talk Tryst out of starting a magical war that would decimate humankind along with the rest of us.”

  “I’ll go to Portia and get herbs to hide it, and more for my stomach. I doubt vomiting on Tryst would help diplomatic matters, even if it seems apropos sometimes.”

  No one was laughing anymore. Going to the witches for aid meant it was serious, that real danger was involved. One day, perhaps witches and shifters would stop automatically fearing and despising one another, but recent events proved we weren’t even close yet.

  “I’ll stay in the city for now, but we must be prepared. The police were ready to start a war with us based on hearsay. Everyone keep your heads down. If you aren’t ‘out’ to your bosses, your friends, you should be fine, but if you’re a known non-human, especially if you’ve ever tangled with the cops, stay home. Call in sick, don’t even go out to eat.”

  I hated grounding so much of the pack, but the last thing we needed was for someone to get caught out and be outnumbered by trigger-happy law enforcement.

  Gray stood. “You heard your queen. We will ride out the storm here, have some games in the ring.”

  The Ring of Blood is our challenge arena, where shifters fight for honor, or just to blow off steam. It keeps them sharp and allows them to keep the tight control needed to repress the beast when among humans. Using our house arrest as a moment for training and to create camaraderie instead of fear and unrest was brilliant.

  And that’s why he’s the boss, I smiled to myself. Our eyes met and he gave me a wink. I felt a tiny flutter in my stomach, not from the rapidly dividing cells inside me, but for the man who had helped to create it. My father had to be told, as did all the Seelie Court. A new child was hope for the continued immortality of the Fae, if her rulers were fertile, everybody was. We needed new vessels for wild magic that could be tamed and trained, and now I was carrying one inside me.

  The thought was sobering, a little terrifying. Like Gray had teased me, we were experts at the practice of making a baby. But actually doing it… My hurt from trying to imagine how I’d keep a tiny, perfect person safe from the world that despised us.

  I rolled up my jacket sleeve and looked at the delicate vine tattooed around my wrist. Since the goddess had blessed Portia and I with the magical symbols, she’d softened by degrees until we almost felt like friends somedays. But the third tattoo had gone to my cousin, Annabelle, and it was her I thought of as I activated a call to my aunt.

  Annabelle, who had children, and a life in the coven until her resentment for me had gotten so big, had poisoned her so badly, that she’d broken away from her mother and turned warlock.

  Portia knew who it was who had sparked a new fear from the humans. Even if, like me, she couldn’t prove it yet.

  “Niall,” I called out as he and Geallta turned to leave. “Do you still have the bit of cloth I took from Annabelle when she was arrested?”

  He nodded, “I’ve already pulled it out and had my men memorize her scent. They’ll find her.”

  “You already thought of it, huh?”

  He sighed and shrugged at me, his shoulders sagging. “I told you, Morgan. I don’t have the luxury of forgiving and forgetting. Somebody’s gotta watch your back.”

  “I haven’t forgiven or forgotten Annabelle, Niall. I just gave her credit for being too smart to come back for more.”

  I texted Portia to meet me at Ferry building down in the financial district. It was neutral ground, difficult to listen in on our conversations and to public for shenanigans on either side. And if our Fae kids happened to be watching from the pier, no one needed to be the wiser.

  “How did you know I was, you know,” I stammered, still wary of what could hide in the shadows.

  “Have you forgotten that I was the coven midwife for more than fifty years? I know it when I see it, from the first spark.”

  I scoffed. “Well I didn’t. I’ve been blaming my beast for making me sick for three weeks now.”

  “It might make things worse for you.” She handed me a sweet, clean smelling pouch of herbs. “I made you all the tinctures to prevent shifting, and something for your stomach.”

  I tucked the pouch inside my jacket. “Thank you.” The silence stretched between us as we walked in the sunshine, both of us avoiding the topic at hand. “Has she been in contact?” I finally asked.

  “In a manner of speaking.” She hesitated, but I waited for her to continue, my heart sinking as the tattered shreds of our relationship rent again. “Annabelle left the children at the coven when I wasn’t there.” Emotion filled her voice. “She just abandoned them without even a message.”

  As if she was going to war and planning not to return.

  “Well, at least she’s sane enough to try to protect them, but is it from the violence she plans, or her new coven?”

  “I wish I knew. I didn’t raise her to be this. She was meant to be a great witch.”

  “Maybe, but you taught her to hate me, and she hated nothing more than how much more powerful I was. She wanted to be you, and she never could be.”

  Portia sighed. “No. She wanted to be you.”

  “Everybody’s favorite kid to beat up?”

  “She was so upset that her own Fae blood never made her stronger, or more beautiful.”

  I swallowed a few choice curses. “She tormented me and called me a freak. She was an evil, spoiled little bully. She doesn’t deserve wild magic.” The words spilled out before I could think of them, and the twisted band around my wrist tingled.

  Portia gasped and wrapped her hand around her own tattoo. “All right, I get it. The Goddess doesn’t approve of my parenting.”

  “I never would have said that, Aunt. I’ve never doubted how much you love your daughter.”

  “She was my only family, after my sister died. I hated you for taking her from me, stupidly, I blamed an infant for a woman’s choices.”

  “No.” I stopped walking and looked her in the eye. “You hated me for being a constant reminder that you couldn’t save her. But Tracy knows that the corruption in the coven had already taken root then. She’s been on their trail for a long time.

  She sighed and muttered, “I don’t know, it was long ago, I was so broken.”

  “You couldn’t save her, Aunt, because she was murdered. The same people attacking me now, were the ones attacking us then. Not your fault, and definitely not mine.”

  Portia nodded. “If she comes to us, I won’t hesitate to turn Annabelle in, Morgan. I won’t turn a blind eye to this evil. It affects us all. Humans will be caught in the middle, and it will be the dark ages all over again. Witches and human women alike burned at the stake… I can’t let that happen.” Her jaw was tight as she hugged herself.

  “I’m sure they’ll use modern methods, like the hexed bullet and the electric chair, but yeah, I had the same thought.”

  “Let others fight this time, Morgan. You’ve got someone else to worry about. This,” she placed a hand over my stomach, “is what they’ve been trying to prevent. Proof that we’re all the same, no faction better than the others.”

 

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