Blood Reign (#4): Alpha Warriors of the Blood (The Blood Series) (6 page)

She was Singer, vamp, and Were enough to be distracted by the parts of her that were
other
.

And fey enough to be driven insane by that missing chunk of her lineage. Whole only as long as she lived in Faerie.

Jacqueline would finally be coming home.

“We've got about a half-hour lead,” Slash told the group. Julia’s head felt like a crushed watermelon. Whatever that Were had used had scrambled her brains, but her survival instinct was still on board. She was smart enough to understand she was hurt too badly to move.

Jason, free of the silver bindings, came to her side. “Jules.” He touched her head, and she winced. “That fucker,” he whispered, his gaze rolling around the confines of the rail car.

“Don't,” Julia told him. “We don't have the time.”

She followed his gaze to the colorful blur of the landscape as it rushed by.

She could see from his face the frustration she shared.

Jason gave a miserable chuckle. “What? We gonna toss the girls out the side door and hope they land in one piece?” Jason's palm indicated Julia. “She's hurt. She'll never make it.”

He stroked the hair back from her face. “Can't you get a talent like 'floater'?” Jason asked, trying to lighten the mess of their circumstance.

“Sounds like a turd,” Adi said, as Slash was busy trying to cover his nakedness.

Julia flicked her eyes to Slash, too hurt for laughter. He'd managed to steal a pair of pants off a Were, one of the enemy Reds now coming to without the benefit of jeans.

They were ill fitting, short, and tight, but better than naked, Julia supposed.

“Commando?” Cyn asked with interest.

“God—can it, Cyn, we've got to take a leap!” Adi said, her hands on her hips. Julia thought there might be a twinkle of jealousy in that gaze.

Cyn didn't smile. Humor had always been her defense. Instead, she moved to the open sidecar. “We can't. We'll break every bone in our bodies.”

A low groan sounded behind them.

“You'll have to change,” Slash said with urgency.

Jason helped Julia to her feet. She swayed. “I think I'm going to be sick,” she whispered.

Jason helped her to the door, gripping her waist while she heaved out the side of the train.

Her vomit hit the walls of the box car and ran down the side. Julia closed her eyes as a roaring pain lit into her skull like claws of pain.

“I can fix you,” Cyn said, standing behind her.

Julia didn't respond and wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her shirt. Cyn wove her cool hand between her and Jason's bodies, coming to rest against her nape. Icy, insistent energy leaked through Cyn's touch.

The headache receded. The nausea stopped revolting.

A sigh of pure gratitude escaped her.

“We need to go,” Truman said. “If we're doin' something, let's get hot.”

He took Cyn's wrist, and she resisted.

“No.” She shook her head and backed away.

His hold tightened, unapologetic, yet his eyes were sorry. “No guts, no glory.”

Julia gasped as he grabbed Cyn's hand, Truman flinging himself out of the car and tumbling down the embankment in a changing ball of sinew, flesh, and fur.

“Shit,” Adi said in a shaky voice, even as she moved into the line of Slash's body.

“Ready,” his voice rumbled, and Adi said nothing.

Slash swooped her up and threw her ahead of himself.

Julia had never seen the wind snatch a body and throw it backwards.

Nor had she ever seen another follow it so closely.

Julia bent her head, and Jason kissed the top of it.

“’Til death do us part,” he whispered.

Yeah, it was the
parting
bit that Julia
feared
.

They leapt.

*

The dreams where you fall forever and never land came alive for Julia. She was in a freefall without end.

When the end came she felt crushed, every piece of breath stolen from her lungs in a tearing vacuum upon impact.

She looked up into Jason's half-wolfen eyes and nearly cried in relief. Instead, the emotion stayed stuffed in her throat. Julia couldn't even gasp.

She was suffocating. His grip bruising, the breaking of her fall into his arms had done something to her ribcage, and her shoulder was a yawning chasm of pain.

It dangled from her side, hanging unnaturally.

More eyes joined her husband's. Cyn's were a strange green-gold. Stars burst in front of her vision like fireworks.

“She's not breathing!” Jason said in a concerned, staccato bray.

“Here.” Cyn laid her hand on Julia's chest, and precious oxygen filled her lungs.

She took a breath and screamed from the pain. She could breathe now but didn't want to. Ever.

“Fuck! What the hell is this?” Jason yelled.

“Put her down, Jace... ya hurt her from the catch.”

Looking at Jason's confused expression would have been funny. None of it translated well on his half-wolf form.

But there was no humor left; the pain was like hot, broken glass every time she breathed. Julia reached out to Cyn.

They gripped each other's forearms.

“Hang on, Jules.” Cyn released Julia's arm and pressed both hands to either side of her ribs.

“Cyn—don't, hurts!” Julia wept.

Jason growled.

“Pipe down, stud, I'm fixing her.”

The pain bled to an ache, the ache to discomfort.

The first breath without pain was a slice of heaven on earth. Julia opened her eyes. “Thank you.”

Cyn gave a grim nod. “There's the shoulder now.”

Julia's head whipped to Slash, who was suddenly there holding her arm.

“You got it?” Cyn asked.

“Got what?” Julia asked.

Slash turned her arm and Julia shrieked as he rotated it and shoved upward, slamming the joint back into place.

She must have blacked out for a moment, because when she came to, they were moving.

She was in Jason's arms again.

*

Julia and Cyn returned from their little trip to wipe their parts with moss, after taking a much-needed bathroom break, when Cyn piped up. “I am not digging this camping in the woods while we run from the freaks mode.”

Julia laughed. “Yeah, it's getting old for me, too.”

“I want a hot shower,” Adi said from behind. Julia and Cyn waited for her to catch up.

“Me three,” Cyn lamented.

“We'll be home soon,” Julia said, though that was almost too optimistic a viewpoint.

Adi shook her head, her brown hair in wild shape from their journey. “Nah, those Reds go hard in the paint.”

“Basketball!” Then Cyn’s face fell. “Kev used that expression before...”

Julia couldn't take the brave one of the two crumpling. “Ah, Cyn, come here.” Julia wrapped her arms around her friend while she cried.

Cyn cried for many things, and Julia knew exactly what they were. She'd shed her own tears long ago for the very same losses. She could bear Cyn's.

“I'm sorry, Jules.” Cyn sniffed. “I know you've had your own cross to bear. And I should be grateful. I have you and... Jace stopped being a dick hole.”

Adi barked out a laugh. “Oh, I don't know, there's always time for regression...” She winked.

“No.” Julia held up her palm. “Negatory. I don't want any more yo-yo love life. I'm a one-man woman.”

“You are, are you?” Jason loomed before them.

Cyn smacked him in the arm. “Stop that, you lurker, I about peed myself again. Gawd.”

Jason laughed and looked to Adi. She threw her palms up. “I like surprises. Cyn doesn't have her wolf on yet, or she would have smelled you a mile away.” Adi waggled her brows.

“Am I that rank?” Jason took a whiff of his armpit.

Julia laughed. “I think we're all a little ripe right now.”

“Showers later,” Truman announced, stepping out from behind the trunk of a tall cedar tree. “They're going to be up our asses.”

“Nice visual,” Adi said in a sour voice.

Julia looked around, expecting a battalion of angry werewolves to meld suddenly out of the tree line. The guys had kept a little bit of original clothing, but the Were in her group were all in various states of half-naked. And for extra fun, the weather wasn't cooperating, a light drizzle beginning to fall.

Slash stood in the middle of their group, his nose in the air. His nostrils flared once. “They're coming. We need to run.”

His gaze took in the three women then the men. “The females slow us down...”

“Hey!” Adi said. Slash went to her, and if Julia had been Adi, she'd have backed up from that huge Were. A strike of pulverized flesh like a beaten rope bisected his face. He looked angry, hard, and vicious.

When he cupped the back of Adi's head, his expression was molten, revealing nothing and everything, utterly changing his expression.

His love for Adi was plain, and Julia couldn't believe she'd missed it. Or maybe he'd been that good at hiding it.

“You know you have my greatest respect. But you are female, and they will take you. Trust in my protection.”

Adi's face flamed under his scrutiny, and he chucked her chin. “You may bite me later for this. But for now, defer to me.”

She glared at him.

“Please, Adrianna.”

The smallest of the three women came into the circle of his arms.

His face grew tender with Adi against him. It completely changed the Were.

Made him steely.

Where there was love, there was violence, the two inextricably linked in the supernatural world of which she was now a part of.

“I don't know. She's malnourished and weak... I can't condone this. She shouldn't travel,” Cyrus said.

“She is not this fragile.” Tharell cupped his chin.

Patches of deepening emerald spread over the typically aloof Domi’s cheekbones. “She is stronger than she appears.”

Domi's discomfiture amused Tharell. Only recently had Queen Darcel deigned to go forward with the acquisition of the Rare One. As self-deluded and grandiose as the rest of the pureblood Sidhe, her guts a churning mass of self-consumption, she had finally conceded the need for out breeding.

With Darcel gone, royal blood no longer remained in the courts, and a thin thread of advisers held the Sidhe together. One being the dragon-shifting Sidhe, Kiel. After the briar, he was their most stringent protector of Faerie and a logical replacement for the interim.

A royal or someone of that caliber must take the throne. Subterfuge and other nefarious events could transpire in the interim. It was why he pressed this endeavor forward.

He must.

“Is there anything you can do to...” Tharell spun his hand, and Cyrus followed the movement, swallowing hard.

He checked his impatience, his eyebrows rising.

“I can... bolster her immune system, but you must understand, she is with child, and the physical demand on the host is relentless.”

“Like a parasite,” Victor commented.

Tharell pivoted, hands loose by his side, ready. “Speak your mind, Combatant.”

Victor smiled. Tharell knew the quality of it. A mere baring of teeth, like a wolf on a short leash.

“You have used one of our women, and I'm not...” He seemed to think it over. “A fan,” he finished, the smile disappearing like it'd never been.

“None of you were worried when she was left in our care, so we entertain this line of commentary no more.” Domi turned to Jacqueline, her dark eyes following the exchange but saying nothing.

“Nourish her, then we go,” Tharell instructed. “If there be any that think there is a better solution than the one I've brought forward, share it now. Or”—his gaze automatically went to the Combatant—“shut the pie hole underneath your noses.”

Scott stepped forward, along with Lucius and the Feeler, Angela. “I'm going, and Victor.”

“We don't need another female.” Tharell asked, “It is true? You know the perpetrator from aura alone?”

She nodded. Soft platinum hair curled around her shoulders, and pale blue eyes stared back into his without guile. She was telling the truth. He would have staked his immortal life on it.

“All right.”

Tharell tried not to let Domi's intense gaze that followed Jacqueline disturb him.  “Domiatri,” he called out.

Domi hiked his eyebrows, moving his hand away from the hilt of his sword and knotting it with the other behind his back.

“Brother?” he answered so automatically that Tharell held his smile in check, keeping the resolute and austere expression glued to his face like the mask it was.

“Let us convene outside.”

Domi inclined his head, and they walked out together under the watchful gaze of the Singers.

They moved down the broad steps without looking around them. Faerie's absence had not yet hindered their energy. However, Jacqueline was near.

“What troubles you, Tharell?”

Their strides matched as they strolled, as did their height. Domi blended perfectly with the surrounding landscape. The green pastures stretched out before them. If not for the deep shock of long blue hair that carved a pathway of vibrant, deep oceanic blue between his shoulder blades, Domi would look as one with the rolling hills upon which they trod.

“You're becoming attached to the Singer, Domi,” Tharell said.

He sighed, swiping a dexterous hand through his hair and smoothly banding it at his nape. He gave a frustrated exhale. “Yes.”

At least he conceded the problem.

“You know that she bears children. She will have to be shared.”

Domi was silent. They had come to a small lake, little more than a pond, where swans revolved in lazy, floating figure eights on the surface, paying them no mind.

“I do not wish to.”

Domi gazed at him with eyes that rivaled liquid mercury. “You are the lucky one, Tharell.”

Tharell held his tongue, Goddess knew he'd done it plenty of times before.

“You do not breed. You never will take a woman as mate.”

Tharell had been with many females yet never to mate. A male had needs, a biological imperative that spared no species. Yet physicality was a manifestation of the body. His soul longed for edification as well. Tharell kept his own council.

“True,” he said as the chasm of his loneliness grew with Domi's words. Not ill meant but accurate.

Only pure Sidhe could breed with the sanctioned Singers. It was a very good sign Jacqueline had gotten with child, though her mind was sick from the time away from Faerie.

“I ask you let me self-delude for this journey, Tharell. Soon enough, we will return to the sithen, the debauchery of the court and Jacqueline will become a brood mare for all that would have her.” His eyes stayed on the lake while his heart bled silently between them.

“I will. Of course, you understand the importance of the Singers being cloudy on our motivations at present.”

Domi gave a solemn nod.

The day ended before them in a gasping loss of daylight, as though night had held its breath until that moment. And on its exhale, Domi's bright green skin deepening to emerald, his cobalt hair shedding its color and falling to night's influence.

The two fey stood shoulder to shoulder, two colored shadows, lost in their thoughts of choiceless deceit.