“In his own way, yes. Keep in mind the responsibilities of his job. You yourself know sometimes tough love is called for. He understands his failings. I made those blatantly clear to him back when…” He sighed. “He understands he is no longer in charge of The Firm because he doesn’t make the soundest of decisions at times. He is too emotional.”
“Ha! Not a word I’d used to describe him.”
“He is, in his own way.”
“Kind of funny how he retired around the same period of time Abbey was killed, and Ellie and Charles Lyall were murdered, hmm?”
“Marston wasn’t responsible for Abbey’s murder. And he wasn’t working with Bera. That was all on her. Two unrelated incidents.”
Baba Yaga gave him time to take another swallow from his drink before her next question. “Why’d he pick me for this job? Why was I the lucky one? Didn’t he have a shitload of nameless others running around he could have tagged for this?”
“I don’t know any more than you do in that regard. I probably know even less than you do. It’s a topic he’s declined to discuss with me in the past. Although I dare say with the recent events he might be a little more…forthcoming. For the sake of the greater good.”
She glared at him. “I spent a lot of years hating him, you know that?”
“I don’t blame you.”
“Does your mother even know?”
He swirled his drink in his glass again. “She is aware of his past…dalliances, yes.”
Baba Yaga snorted. “Dalliances? That’s one way of putting it, I suppose.”
“Many eons have passed. How long will you hold on to your bitterness?”
“As long as I need to. As long as Talgan still remains in my mind and heart.” She took hold of the amulet around her neck and disappeared.
Ryan waved his hand, setting a barrier in place around his condo. He’d had more than his fill of discussions that night, especially with Baba Yaga.
And not so much because of the woman, but because he still needed to digest everything they’d talked about earlier that night upon her return from her off-Earth journey.
All he wanted to do now was try to sleep, and not ponder the meaning of the visions Elain had seen, which he’d witnessed through her.
To keep his mind from wandering into emotionally dangerous territory after Elain’s revelations to him.
To avoid trying to second-guess the future in hopes of avoiding it, because that usually led to far worse problems.
A result he’d seen occur first-hand far too many times.
Chapter Five
Elain gave up all thoughts of trying to go back to sleep. Instead, since it was now going on close to four o’clock in the morning, she poofed herself into their bathroom, stripped, dumped the T-shirt and bathrobe into the clothes hamper, and climbed into the shower.
All while maintaining the “don’t wake them up” bubble around her.
To her surprise, it still worked.
As she stood there under the warm water, she tried to shut her brain off. Usually the only thing that managed to do that anymore was sex, but she was feeling anything but sexy right then. In fact, despite her Alpha mates’ abilities to edict her into feeling sexy if they wanted her to, she had a feeling she’d literally bite their heads off if they tried right at that moment. She had too much to think about, too much new information to digest to afford a distraction like that.
And I still don’t know what to name my baby.
No, Mercedes wasn’t on the short-list or even the long-list of names. She didn’t mind her baby having been Mercedes in her previous life, but Elain didn’t want to name her baby that. She was leaning heavily toward Ellie for her first name, honoring her mother-in-law who literally died with the intention of helping hide Elain and Maureen, her birth mother.
Ellie Maureen kept edging toward the top of the list, but still wasn’t smoothly rolling off Elain’s tongue.
Ellie Maureen Lyall, get your tail into this house right now!
Nope. Didn’t have an authoritarian, parental ring to it.
She’d also given thought to perhaps honoring one of her men’s three little sisters, all of whom died at the same time at the hands of a cockatrice. Colina, Adair, and Sulwen. She was partial to Adair, but still hadn’t decided.
She knew her men wouldn’t honestly care what she named their little girl. They were simply happy to become fathers.
For a second time, counting Connor.
Although, they were all in agreement Brodey didn’t get final naming rights, in case he came up with something colorful like Stabby McFluffykins.
It was only after she’d climbed out of the shower that she let the “stay asleep” bubble around her fade out. This being a working cattle ranch, it wasn’t uncommon for the men to rise before their morning alarm anyway.
Moments later, Brodey blearily stumbled his way into the bathroom. “Oh, hey, babe.” He gave her a quick kiss on his way over to the toilet. “Why are you up so early?”
“Couldn’t sleep. Wanted to walk around a little.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Not popping yet. Not today.” She made her way out of the bathroom and into their walk-in closet before Brodey could finish and get his paws on her for a better good-morning kiss. She didn’t want him trying to distract her or coax her back into bed.
The disappointment on his face would break her heart.
She did want coffee. After pulling on another long T-shirt and a clean bathrobe that wouldn’t bear the lingering scent of the cologne worn by the leader of what was collectively and incorrectly referred to as “Hell,” she ambled into the kitchen and started a pot of coffee brewing. Then she heard Connor begin to fuss and headed for his room.
Juju and Bea never moved from their comfy spots on the couches.
That’s the life.
Ironic that she envied them now, when not even two years earlier she’d been desperate to keep her job as an on-air reporter at the Venice TV station she’d been working at when she met the Lyall triplets.
This was a full-time job. Motherhood, plus the Triad, and being the Clan’s Seer.
And juggling three wolf-shifter men.
And…
She smiled when she picked Connor up. “Ready for the day, are we? You morning people have something wrong with you.” She rubbed noses with him, enjoying how he smiled and cooed at her.
He smelled like a wolf baby. Specifically, like a mix of her and Ain.
As he should, considering he had Gigi’s energy, as well as her own and Ain’s, running through him. And…
Ew.
He also smelled like he was in need of a fresh diaper.
After changing him, Elain carried him out to the kitchen and put him in his baby seat while she prepped his bottle. Brodey, now dressed for work, emerged from the bedroom first.
“There’s my little cowboy.” He scooped Connor out of the carrier and practically snatched the baby bottle from Elain’s hand to feed him.
She leaned against the counter and smiled as she watched him. “Fatherhood looks good on you, mister.”
His smile widened as he walked back to her and kissed her. “Love you, sweetheart. And yes, I will never again question you when you tell me something’s better than sex.”
“My sweet bonehead,” she teased, reaching up to ruffle his hair. “Remember you said that when we’re dealing with two sets of midnight feedings and diapers at the same time, and I elbow you out of a sound sleep to help.”
“Anytime, babe. You know that.” He stared down into his son’s face. “He’s a little miracle. And he’s all ours.”
She rubbed her arms against the chill that swept through her. Connor was a miracle, all right.
But Brodey could never learn how much of one he really was.
* * * *
With Elain so close to her due date, and with her father there to help out on the ranch, at least one of Elain’s men now stayed back at the house. They alternated d
ays, and today was Ain’s turn.
After breakfast was over, everyone had cleared out, and her mom had taken over baby duties for the morning so Elain could get off her swelling ankles for a little while and rest, Ain joined Elain on the back lanai where she’d settled into one of the loungers.
“Thanks for being so patient with me and all of…this,” she said.
He wore a confused scowl. “Why wouldn’t I be patient? I love you.”
“I mean even in the beginning. I was grouchy and temperamental back then, and don’t think I don’t know it.”
He shrugged, a playful smile transforming his expression. “I’m not stupid enough to argue with my very pregnant Alpha wolf wife.”
Elain stared at the pool. “I think I figured out something else.”
Ain reached over and laced fingers with her. “What’s that, babe?”
“Why I was so bitchy and feisty when we first met. Prone to tantrums. Because I didn’t know anything about my shifter side, had no outlet for that energy other than sports. I always felt like I had this deep internal itch somehow. A driving focus. With no way to satisfy it. Then after high school and college I started working and really didn’t have much time for running or any of that anymore, and it sort of…built up. I didn’t know I was an Alpha. I spent a lot of time holding myself back so I didn’t come off as a ‘bitch’ at work, when the truth was that I really needed to be in charge.”
“I think that’s probably right. I sort of wondered that myself after we realized you were a shifter.”
“How did I go so many years without it coming out before?”
“Because you weren’t around shifters growing up. You were isolated. That was kind of the point, because had you been around other shifters, Rodolfo Abernathy would have located you long before he did.”
Elain gave an involuntary shudder at the mention of the man’s name.
He noticed, his whole body language changing as he watched her reaction. “I’m going to ask you something,” Ain softly said, “between you and me.”
“You can’t make that condition. You can’t lie to Brodey and Cail, and neither can I.”
“I know, but this can be filed under ‘Seer Says.’”
She shifted in the lounger to face him. “You, looking for a loophole?”
He smiled. “I know.” He finally met her gaze, his grey eyes piercing through her soul. “We were in Bolivia—”
“Fricking Bolivia.”
He chuckled. “Fricking Bolivia. We were there when Rodolfo died, weren’t we? When we went down there with Ortega so we could adopt Connor. Ortega held Rodolfo captive longer than he let on. Right?”
She swallowed hard. “Yeah.”
Ain had been sworn to secrecy as a mega-Clan Council member to not to mention to anyone that Rodolfo had been Ortega’s prisoner and had died. Not until Ortega himself brought it to the mega-Clan Council and publicly announced it. Which would hopefully happen in the next couple of weeks.
“No one’s told Brighton any of this, have they?” she asked. “I don’t want him spreading this rumor when we promised Ortega to let him break the news.”
“No. Everyone’s been sworn to secrecy, and no one will dare break a pact with the mega-Clan.” Ain composed his thoughts. “But I’m no idiot,” he continued. “I know Ortega and his brothers were probably torturing Rodolfo for a while, longer than they’ve let on.” His tone darkened. “Not that I blame them. Except that they didn’t let me have a whack at him, too.”
Deep discomfort filled her. “Yeah?”
He leveled his gaze at her. “Seer to Clan council member. Do you have direct personal knowledge of how Rodolfo died?”
“Yes,” she whispered. She couldn’t lie to him. She might not have to answer him, which would be an answer in and of itself, but because he was her mate, she couldn’t lie to him.
He frowned. “Does Ortega know exactly how Rodolfo died?”
Her heart pounded, thudding in her chest. “No.”
He squeezed her hand. “Okay.” He settled back in his chair and stared at the pool.
It took her a moment to realize that was…it. “That’s all?” She was thinking about her conversation earlier that morning with Ryan.
And about what she’d done for Mai and her men without them knowing it.
Hopefully, she could get through things without them ever knowing her direct involvement.
“I can hear your pulse, Elain. Your breathing. You’re tense and scared. I feel it. I don’t want to push you into a corner where being my mate contradicts being our Seer. If at any time there is ever anything else you’d like to tell me, under the umbrella of Seer to Clan council member, then I hope you would understand that you can tell me and I would hold your confidence.” He focused on her again.
Ain’s soul was no longer darkened by the burden of what he’d done so many years ago. Elain had erased his memory of accidentally killing the cockatrice infant when she’d performed the spell to remove his knowledge of Marston and Rodolfo and all of that from Ain as part of clearing his memories and rewriting them to protect Connor.
But it was as if…
“Seer to Clan council member?” she asked.
“Yes. I do not have to reveal the secrets our Seer gives to me. Not even to my brothers.” He smiled that smile, the one that always melted her. “Seer Says. I can’t lie to them, but they also won’t push me if I tell them it’s not something I can talk about. Not anymore, they won’t. As you and Lina like to joke, perk of the rank.”
She clumsily sat up and moved to his lounger, taking a moment to get her baby belly and herself situated, curled in his arms, draped over his body, her lungs filled with the scent of him, his heart beating in her ear.
“I’m scared,” she whispered. “I don’t want to become like her.”
“Baba Yaga?”
“Yeah.”
“You have a good heart, a good soul. No matter what you say, I will never be afraid of you. Seer or not, Triad or not, you are above all my mate, my One. The mother of my children. I will love you ’til my very last breath, and I will never fear you.”
“I knew Rodolfo was there,” she admitted. “That Ortega had him. I went to Bolivia before, when I took my solo road-trip to Maine. I flew down there to talk to Ortega, because I knew he had Rodolfo and I wanted to see Rodolfo face-to-face. To see the bogeyman in a cage. As Ortega’s Clan’s Seer, I swore to keep his secret.”
“Lacey went to Bolivia, too, didn’t she? Her little unexplained vacation?”
“Yeah. Seer Says again. It was a personal trip for her.”
Elain knew she needed to stay away from the topic of Marston/Martin and Connor’s true origins, for fear of jarring loose the spell she’d placed on Ain.
“Ortega told Lacey he had Rodolfo,” Elain added. “Rodolfo killed Lacey’s cousin, Colleen, a Seer. That’s why it was so personal for her. Colleen was like a sister to her.”
“Was it Lacey who killed Rodolfo?”
“No.” Another sigh escaped her.
He didn’t press for more details. They sat there in an easy silence for several minutes without him speaking or interrupting her thoughts.
“I did it,” Elain finally admitted. “It was after you and I arrived and were settled in our room for the night. You were asleep. I figured out…” She realized this meant being forced to admit to him she had a new power he didn’t yet know she had, unless she trod carefully.
“I figured out where Rodolfo was. Where in the dungeon they were torturing him. I wanted to look into his mind for myself, see directly from him what it took to drive someone to the point of utter evil and madness. Get answers I’d been wanting ever since I found out about what and who I am and why Maureen died.”
“Did you find those answers?”
“Yes.”
“Can you share them?”
“Seer Says?”
“Seer Says.”
She felt it was safe admitting this much to him. “It wasn’t
just one thing that warped him, but a long progression of events, including how he was raised. The first point of madness was that he didn’t know about his cockatrice lineage. His birth mother was murdered by his father right after Rodolfo was born. She didn’t bleed out following childbirth—he slit her throat. Rodolfo didn’t know that until the day he told his father he’d met and marked his One. His father went batshit, told him why he’d insisted on pure Alpha wolf lines, and then ordered Rodolfo to leave for a few days and never speak of her again. And he…”
She remembered it, the images she’d seen, like watching a TV show. “Rodolfo’s father murdered her. It broke Rodolfo’s heart and snapped his sanity. Later, when he met Mercedes’ mother, he didn’t know she was a cockatrice. She used dark magick, a spell to occlude herself and fool him. He fell in love with her and she got pregnant and had an Alpha wolfatrice girl.”
“Mercedes?”
“Yeah. Then she used Mercedes to bait Rodolfo. Rodolfo just wanted his daughter. He wanted to raise her, to love her. But then Mercedes’ mother fell from a cliff and died.”
Ain scowled. “He didn’t murder her?”
“It was an accident. He had loved her, magick or not, and still didn’t want to believe she’d tricked him. That finished off what few shreds of decency remained in Rodolfo. He’d lived under his father’s thumb for so long, it’s like what little good was left in his soul gave up and rolled over, and from that point on…”
“He went to the Dark Side and made Darth Vader look like a Teletubbie.”
“Basically. Yeah.”
“How did you do it? Or would you rather not tell me? You don’t have to.”
“I don’t know how I did it.” She thought about it. “When I finished going through his thoughts and knew I had all the pertinent information I needed, I told him I forgave him. That it was time for him to rest and be at peace. And I just…”
She swallowed. “It was like sending out a pulse of energy to short-circuit his brain. Painlessly, like turning off a light switch. I didn’t want him to suffer any longer. And he went. I sent his soul to the Ether and he was finally at peace.”