“Fine, I belong to all of you, as long as you know you belong to me also. And … Louis is part of that. He is my brother from another mother. We are cool in that way.”
Braxton placed his huge, warm hand on the center of my back, his thumb ever so gently rubbing up and down my spine. “I like brother much better than when he was trying to date you, which could only end one way: blood, guts, and magic splattered all over the floor.”
I snorted, surprised Louis didn’t call Braxton on that statement. The sorcerer must have noticed my expression. He gave a nod, his demeanor content. “I will not argue with his possessiveness. I would not have accepted any less strength from your mate. Braxton is a good fit, he is worthy.”
“I concur,” said my father, and my heart warmed that Jonathon was happy with my mate.
He wasn’t actually that over-protective most of the time. Really, he had spent a lot of my life grieving for Lienda, or absent running his packs and council. But he was a wonderful father, and I would never ask for anything more. And speaking of wolf-mother, in a smooth motion mine stood and walked over to me.
Seeing the look in her eyes, I started to protest, but she swooped in before I could. I was pulled into the warmth of Lienda. And it was kind of nice. I let myself have a real mother-moment for just a few seconds.
I pulled away when I reached the limit of my hug-time; Lienda looked really happy.
Mischa was practically bouncing in her seat now. “Can we unlock the dragon mark? I’m so ready.”
I growled as my thoughts were dragged to that moment my mark was released, to that vampire who’d had his hands all over me. The emotions were dulled now. I was mentally healthier, and thought myself lucky I had been saved before anything worse had happened. As a shifter, I was naturally resilient, my wolf stepping in when I needed a break from human emotions.
“You might want to take her outside,” Braxton said. He curved an arm around my waist and lifted me back into him, his expression shuttered. “There was a veritable explosion of energy when Jess … when I found her in that room.” That explained the expression, he was having the same dark thoughts as me.
“That is a sound idea,” Louis said in his I’m-an-ancient-supe dialect.
My dark thoughts continued further along the path. “Did Kristoff go to prison?” We’d left Stratford before his trial.
Scents of unease trickled through the room. I stepped forward, Braxton’s arm sliding off my waist. “What happened?”
Jonathon rose off the couch and met me halfway, face to chest. Even though he wasn’t tall for a supernatural, he was still taller than me. “Don’t panic, sweet wolf, but there was a bit of a mess-up with the Kristoff trial.”
A mess up? What the hell did that even mean?
“The reason it was so easy for Vlad and his cohorts to knock you out and move you around Vanguard was because they had help … help from Kristo–”
“No shitting way.”
“Fuck off.”
“What?”
The roars came from the Compasses. I was too pissed to speak. We’d all thought Kristoff’s plan to imprison the quads had been a separate incident to the attack-crap which had happened to me inside Vanguard. But now it seemed they had been connected. Jonathon’s eye’s shifted across the snarling quads and his growl reverberated around the room. He did not like them interrupting, so his wolf popped up to let them know who was boss.
Maximus was clenching and unclenching his fists at his side. “Tell me that you killed that slimy dickbag sorcerer.”
Jonathon’s words flowed from him in a gale. “We were on our way to do that. Louis, Lienda, and I gained entry to Vanguard, but he wasn’t there. No one had noticed yet, but upon investigation he’d been gone for about twelve hours. And … he managed to free Vlad and Scarface.”
“I thought they were dead!” I finally found my voice, it was hard enough to shatter glass.
Jonathon’s resonance matched mine. “I thought so too, but there is corruption in Vanguard. We need to have a mass turnover of the guards again. It’s generally required every few hundred years, and is the most effective way to break the cycle.”
I rubbed at my nose. “So you’re saying the motherfuckers who tried to rape and torture me, along with the sorcerer who schemed and murdered other supes to frame my boys, are out there running around free. And this is because someone on the inside helped them a second time?” The sort of rage which quite frankly scared the shit out of me rose up through my body. My dragon and wolf were straining with the need to kill, fight, maim.
“They won’t be free for long, Jessa babe,” Jacob said, the fey’s voice less musical than usual. “As soon as we deal with this dragon mark thing and the rise of the king, we will make it our mission to hunt them down.”
Some of my red-hot rage subsided, Jacob’s words reminding me that I needed to focus on our current problems. Kristoff would just have to take a back seat. But I would not be forgetting. Giselda was going to be minus a father very soon, and if I found out that bitch had anything to do with his scheming, well, she would be in the shallow grave next to him.
Grace rose from where she’d been sitting in the corner of the room. “Why do I get the feeling that I’m the only one here missing a vital piece of evidence?” Clearly she’d had enough of being the quiet mouse in the corner. “Why am I even here, Louis?” She turned her delicate ire toward the sorcerer, who was hovering between the living room and the front door. “You said they would need a healer.”