Brodey reached over and grabbed his hand, squeezing it hard, a grin spreading across his face. “Remind me of this day next time I get growly and don’t trust your judgment.”
Cail snorted. “Another first.”
“Yes, he was right, okay?”
Wearing a sweet smile, Elain cleared her throat.
Brodey leaned in and kissed her. “And, yes, you were right, too, sweetheart.”
“Thank you.”
As tired as she was, she knew she couldn’t deny her men their fun. It wasn’t like it took them long to get her into the mood, anyway. Brodey took over, eagerly kissing her, his joy overflowing into his aura in brilliant blue waves.
“I’m sorry, baby,” he hoarsely said. “If you don’t want to, say so. But…I’ve just never felt this happy in my life. I thought meeting you was the best day ever, but this tops it.”
“Yeah,” Cail agreed. “No arguments there.”
She wiggled her hips against Brodey. “I don’t mind, sweetie. Ain and I had our celebration already. I don’t want to deny you yours.”
That’s all Brodey needed. He rolled her on top of him, onto her knees, straddling him while his cock slid deep into her pussy with a content sigh from both of them.
As Ain looked on with a smile, Cail got behind her, arms around her, cradling her full breasts in his hands as he rubbed the pads of his thumbs over her nipples.
Brodey took over, easily fucking his cock up and into her, his hands clamped around her hips. “A little edicting?” he asked with a playful smile.
She nodded. “A little,” she said.
His green eyes grew darker. “Come for us, baby,” he whispered.
Thankfully, Cail was there to support her. She closed her eyes, throwing her head back against his shoulder as the orgasm washed through her.
“Yeah!” Brodey grunted, fucking her harder, faster, record time even for him. His cock stiffened and swelled inside her, throbbing as he pumped her full of his cum. His eyes fell closed and he went still under her.
Behind her, Cail snickered. “Wow. Talk about a quick draw.”
“Shut up,” Brodey muttered. “I was being considerate. Asshole.”
She was still trying to catch her breath. She reached down and tweaked his left nipple.
“Ouch! What was that for?”
Ain was no help, laughing at his brother.
“Be nice,” she warned. “You guys have to watch what you say, now that you’re fathers. You can’t banter the same way. Can’t set a bad example.”
“We’re in bed!”
“I know, but you do it other times, too. Watch your language. Aunt Lina will be a bad enough influence on our kids as it is.”
His irritation transformed to joy again. “Yeah, we are fathers, aren’t we?”
“Move, daddy-o,” Cail grumbled. “Poppa wants to bust a nut.”
“Now who’s the romantic?” Brodey groused as he helped Elain off him.
Cail and Brodey swapped places. When Cail smiled up at Elain, she was glad to see he, too, was filled with joy.
Brodey knelt behind her, cradling her against him.
“Again?” Cail asked her.
She nodded, relaxing against Brodey as Cail’s cock thrust up, deep inside her.
He stroked her thighs as he fucked her. “Our sweet, beautiful mate,” he whispered. “Come for me.”
Okay, edicts gooood. The orgasm his words called forth swept through her, Brodey tightening his grip around her, keeping her cradled against the warmth of his body.
“Yeah,” Cail grunted, speeding up, deeper, harder, until he, too, climaxed.
The scent of their lovemaking filled the bedroom. And still, she knew, she wasn’t done.
She finally pried her eyes open and crooked a finger at Ain, sending him a sultry smile.
At least, she hoped it looked sultry.
He leaned in and kissed her. “You sure? You’re not too tired?”
She reached down and wrapped her fingers around his cock, which stuck out rigidly from his body. “Of course I’m not too tired, silly. But I think you will finish me off perfectly.”
Looking back at Brodey, she said, “You and Cail get overnight bottle and diaper duty, FYI.”
He kissed her. “Gladly, baby.”
Brodey kept Elain upright while Cail and Ain swapped places. As she settled onto Ain’s cock, she stared into his eyes and saw nothing but love and peace there.
Yeah, keeping this secret was well worth it to see that look in his eyes, to feel it in his heart.
“Rev me up, Prime,” she softly teased.
He caught her hands, lacing his fingers through hers, gently squeezing. They rocked together, his cock sliding easily along her clit with every stroke. After a few minutes, he whispered, “Mate, come for me.”
The orgasm seemed to split the center of her core wide open. She didn’t know why this one felt so much stronger, harder than the other two, but she clamped down on his hands and held on as he sped up, fucking her, thrusting and trying to get there as she rode each wave out. Finally, he let out a satisfied groan of his own before falling still.
Brodey gently lowered her onto Ain, who carefully rolled them to their sides, mindful of her belly.
Now she was ready for sleep.
“Love you,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to her forehead.
“Love you, too.”
“Love you,” Brodey and Cail parroted.
She smiled. “Love you both, too.” She sighed. “Don’t forget, you guys get midnight duties.”
Both men chuckled, and she knew they didn’t mind in the least.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Cail couldn’t have gone to sleep if he wanted to. He lay there on the outer edge of the bed, almost hoping Connor would cry out.
His son. Their son.
He wondered if the grin would be permanently plastered to his face.
He didn’t care.
It was a little after two a.m. when Connor cried out. He felt Brodey tense next to him, but was already up and on his way out.
“Hey,” Brodey said. “I wanted to.”
“No one’s stopping you. You can help.”
He heard Brodey hit the floor, nearly running over him in his attempt to get out of the bedroom and into the one where they’d put Connor’s travel crib.
Cail snapped on the small lamp in the room before they walked over to gaze down at him. The baby stared up at them with blue eyes Cail would almost swear looked just like Elain’s.
How perfect.
The two men clunked heads together as they both leaned in to grab the baby.
“Ow!” Brodey said, rubbing his head.
“He’s not a cell phone,” Cail teased as he leaned in again, carefully cradling the baby. “Go get a diaper, and the wipes.”
Working together, they got him changed. Cail let Brodey carry him into the kitchen and hold him while Cail prepared a bottle of formula.
Brodey radiated joy. Both his brothers did. “Geez, he’s gorgeous,” Brodey whispered as he held the bottle while Connor fed.
Cail reached over and stroked one of Connor’s hands with his finger. The baby’s fingers clamped down around his.
“Yeah,” Cail said. “And he’s all ours.”
When he heard Brodey sniffle, he looked up. His brother’s eyes were filled with tears.
Brodey stared at him. “You tell anyone I cried, I’ll beat you up.”
Cail grinned and sniffled as he slung an arm around Brodey’s shoulders. “Brother, I’d have to admit I cried, too.”
They watched him feed. “I kind of wondered if they’d gone down to Bolivia,” Brodey mused. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Cail’s attention snapped away from the baby. “Huh?”
“Oops.”
“What?”
“Now, don’t say anything,” he frantically whispered. Brodey told him about finding the luggage tag after Elain’s previous trip. “It was probably Seer crap.”
; Cail pondered it. Come to think of it, he had noticed something different about her since that trip, and not simply the pregnancy either. He’d thought it was either just him, or it was the weight of her responsibilities weighing on her mind.
“Don’t tell Ain, and don’t tell her we know,” Brodey insisted. “I don’t want her thinking I was spying on her or something.”
“No, I won’t,” he said. “I promise.”
“Good.”
But now that the idea was in his mind, it didn’t want to let go.
Why had she gone to Bolivia without telling them?
And where else had she been, what had she done, that she couldn’t or wouldn’t tell them? Trust wasn’t the issue. He absolutely trusted her.
It just killed him that one day he might not be there to protect her when she needed him the most, and he wouldn’t even know where she was.
* * * *
The next morning, Elain and her guys drove over to Blackie and Callie’s to introduce them. Blackie wasn’t there, having stepped out to Jocko’s to make a conference call with him to the Yellowstone Gathering to attend to mega-Clan Council business.
Upon hitting Spokane and finding out what happened, they’d both immediately taken the next flight they could get back to Maine.
Callie had just put Elise down for a nap, giving Elain the perfect excuse not to hold her.
Elain was glad to see for herself that Callie was all right. “I’m sorry you had to give up your powers,” Elain said.
“Eh, no biggie. I think the only one I’ll really miss is the poofy thing.” She smiled. “Hopefully, with the extra boost from me, Mai will be able to do it soon.”
“Couldn’t she have done it eventually anyway?”
“Eventually. As her powers grew. Remember, we’d been working on that for a looong time. You can’t order those kinds of special gifts through Amazon Prime.”
Elain hoped she didn’t blush. She didn’t want to reveal what she could do yet.
She also couldn’t exactly reveal it to her guys without trying to Seer Says her way around the explanations as to how she now had a shit-ton of powers she hadn’t had a few days earlier
She was just glad to see for herself that her friend was all right.
“So you decided to shortcut the whole first-time mom thing, huh?” Callie asked with a grin.
“Yeah. Sorry for the secrecy.”
“No, I get it. Better that way. Now everyone can come spoil the little guy rotten.” She shook her finger at Elain’s guys. “And he’s not a damn cell phone, Brodey!”
“I’m never going to live that down, am I?”
“No,” everyone else told him.
* * * *
Carl Shupe stared at the computer screen, at one of the scans Aliah had taken of the book and stored in her laptop, which his guy had stolen from her truck. He’d guessed right by having his men follow the three people he knew Aliah had contacted.
If nothing else, his fellow cockatrice were predictably underhanded and would turn on a fellow in a heartbeat if they thought it would give them an advantage of power or money.
Carl had just been lucky enough to correctly guess which cockatrice to proactively bribe last fall to keep an eye out for Aliah. All three of them had contacted him about her, earning them another handsome payout.
Although he suspected they hadn’t lived long enough to enjoy their windfalls, if he was right about what he’d heard.
Aliah had ridden with them on their mission, leaving her truck in a shopping center parking lot three mornings ago. No sign of Cameron with her.
By Carl’s best guess, he had at least half of the book’s contents. Pretty damn good scans, too. Very clear.
She must have stolen a good scanner.
The details were exquisite, each page clearly visible. That was not what he wanted.
What he wanted was the fucking book.
Unfortunately, Aliah and the three men had apparently dropped off the face of the planet after leaving the shopping center that morning. There was nothing in the truck to indicate where she’d been holed up the past several months. Not a damn clue.
She hadn’t just vanished. Especially not without her laptop. He suspected she’d died. The baby his men had seen her transferring to the other vehicle was also missing, likely dead, if he had to guess.
His men, no matter how well paid, had refused to follow the group onto the Maine wolves Clan territory, where they lost them.
But he suspected Aliah and her three cohorts would never leave that territory.
How many times you have to warn those idiots?
He sighed. The book, what he had of it, was worth a bloody fortune.
Literally. According to lore, only five copies of the Grimoire Lilitu had been created over seven hundred years ago. The authors were five cockatrice siblings reputedly experts in the dark magicks. Supposedly, the covers were bound with the skin of a virgin female dragon shifter, her blood mixed with the ink used to pen the tomes. They had taken all their knowledge and combined it, written it down for future generations.
The books, which most thought were more legend than fact, had been lost to time. Although people had claimed to see them throughout the centuries, no one had, until Aliah, produced proof.
Apparently, they did exist. Well, at least one of them did.
Now what the hell am I going to do?
With the book on his mind, he couldn’t shake it. He wanted it. Wanted the potential power that would come with owning it. He wasn’t able to shift and hadn’t gotten into the dark magick like some of his nestmates, but he was powerful in his own right. In the modern world, money was equivalent to making magick happen. You just had to have enough of it.
Having a Grimoire Lilitu in his possession would mean a lot of other nests suddenly sitting up and taking notice of him. In respectful ways. It would be possible to use it as a rallying point to finally join many different nests into one cohesive force that might stand a chance against the others.
Even if he couldn’t perform the magick in the book himself, he could buy the people to do the hoodoo for him.
What he couldn’t buy was that fucking book. Not when he couldn’t find the damn woman.
He’d heard rumblings amongst his contacts about a skirmish with the Maine wolves on their land. It wasn’t difficult to connect the dots.
Yet another stupid fucking mistake on Aliah’s part.
People should know enough by now not to fuck with those guys. They are too damn powerful. They had all sorts of crazy ties throughout the world and different shifter species. They’d formed that mega-Clan.
That was like walking into the Pentagon and pissing on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
No, if you want to gain power over those fuckers, you have to do it one of two ways—either very sneakily with a lot of money, or with a lot of fucking firepower.
He had the first.
He could buy the second, if he wanted to and called in enough favors.
Picking up his cell, he quickly thumbed through his contact list to find his realtor’s number.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Getting back to Florida was a relief. Mai and Lina were not only forgiving of the secrecy, they understood. And they’d been busy, trying to research if there were still more of those horrible books out there. They’d originally thought the cockatrice spellbook was a one-off, not counting a scanned and laser-printed duplicate of it Lina had found in Brussels a couple of years earlier, which she’d promptly destroyed. Now that they knew there were two distinct books, maybe there were more.
They hoped there weren’t, but Kael and Zack were frantically on the search for any mention of more books in all the old texts they had.
Elain also hadn’t had a chance for a private sit-down with Lacey about her garden. That was still percolating in her brain.
She still wanted answers if it was really Mercedes she’d been talking to that day, or something else.
As with so many other
things in her life, that had to be put on hold until her baby was born.
And then there was Brighton, who returned the day after the Gathering was supposed to have ended. She kept him at arm’s length, not wanting to delve into his psyche to see why he was batcrap crazy.
At least he wasn’t the bad kind of crazy, like Rodolfo had been.
As life settled down, Elain wanted a little alone practice time with her new powers. The poofy stuff especially. She wanted to be sure the incident in Bolivia wasn’t a one-off, a fluke.
So one afternoon, while Mai was watching Connor for her, Elain took a quick amble through the patch of woods behind the house.
No witnesses.
She worked her way around to the pond she liked to visit. There on the bank, she stood next to a fallen long she frequently used as a bench. Across the sandy spit of area was another fallen log.
Holding the image in her mind, she closed her eyes. I am over there.
When she opened her eyes, she’d transported herself across the clearing and next to the log.
Clapping a hand over her mouth to stifle her happy scream, she did a clumsy little jig in place, happily celebrating her win.
What she didn’t notice was someone watching her.
* * * *
Brighton had seen Elain depart the house and intended to call out to her, wanted to talk with her. Wanted to confront her, away from his brothers, and see what she knew about Liam Pardie’s brothers’ rumored involvement with Rodolfo Abernathy…and one Carl Shupe, a man he suspected was a cockatrice.
Until he witnessed her little…whatever it was.
Eyes wide, he watched as she seemed to disappear and reappear a few feet away. She did it several times, celebrating with an awkward dance that would have been amusing had he not felt like his bowels were about to let loose.
He knew his brothers’ mate was someone special, in addition to being a Seer. He had heard rumors.
He hadn’t really believed any of them, either.
Not wanting to know he’d seen her, he quickly turned and made his way back to the house as quietly as he could.
* * * *