Prologue
Rini
Mated. The word echoed through my head as I stared at the moving shadows on the ceiling. I’m a mated female. When Ciarán had burst into my rooms a few weeks ago, I had assumed it was to reject me again. To tell me I wasn’t enough. Instead, my proud, stubborn Celt had knelt tearfully to the ground and apologized. To me and my bears. Apparently, a little heart-to-heart with Nix had given him a new sense of purpose, and he had told me there was nothing he wanted more than to mate with me, with us, and to form the family he had always wanted. In his adamant declaration, his Puca had risen, and together they’d shifted into a new form, a bear, to show his love for me and his commitment to our family and his promise. Shock and elation warred inside me, even as he had scooped me into his arms and kissed me until I melted. He wanted me. He really, truly wanted me.
I hadn’t even had a chance to thank Nix before our lives exploded. With the appearance of Tao as a Qilin, and the arrival of a true invitation to war, our lives had been one emergency after the next. But Ciarán had worked his magic, cobbling together a small ceremony with our friends and family for the five of us. Now I lay in bed, listening to my bears snore like chainsaws, as a sense of utter warmth and peace washed across me. This was exactly what I had been waiting for.
“Can’t sleep, little bear?” Ciarán’s arm wrapped around me, tugging me against him as I squeaked.
“Just thinking,” I admitted with a sigh, snuggling closer. Heat built in my body as his hard, bare chest rubbed against my back. The man was ripped as hell, and he knew how to use that body well.
Ciarán turned me over, tilting my head up to search my eyes. “Are you having regrets?” Although his voice was calm, I could see the nerves in his eyes, the way the pale jade green swirled with shadows at the thought. My sweet Puca. He put up that shield with everyone else, hiding the man he truly was. The sweet, sexy, violent man that was wrapped up in layers of false humor, manipulation, and stoicism.
“No,” I assured him immediately, pressing a gentle kiss to his lips. “No, of course not. I was just thinking of how happy I am. How much I owe Nix for this.” I’d never stop owing her for this. If I had formed the bond with my bears, there never would have been a way to add Ciarán to it. I would have lived my life with a missing piece, all because we were both too trapped by our own insecurities to be honest with each other and hope for a future.
Ciarán ran his hand through my hair, his fingers toying with the strands as though they were the softest silk against his skin. “She loves you very much.”
“You as well,” I reminded him. I laughed as a thought occurred to me. “You know, when she mates with her men, we’ll end up as sisters-in-law.”
A bright smile swept across Ciarán’s face as he considered that. “I think she’d be very happy with that idea.” He nuzzled my neck, nipping gently as I sucked in a breath. “Just a few weeks left until their ceremony.”
I murmured my agreement, even as he sought to distract me. “I still wish she had agreed to a double ceremony,” I told him, my voice husky and breathy as he traced small circles across my lower back, his fingers dipping into the dimples at the base of my spine.
“I don’t.” His lips found mine, his tongue darting into my mouth to taste me, consuming me before he pulled away to stare into my eyes. “Today was for us, Serena,” he purred, and my bears stirred, waking up and murmuring their agreement to Ciarán’s sentiments. “To show you how much we love you, how much we will always love you. No matter what happens, teddy bear, no matter what this war brings, you are the sunshine of my life. I am lucky to have you. We all are.”
Desperation crashed into me at the idea of losing him, losing any of them, and I fused my lips to his again. Slowly, other hands began to stroke over my back, my thigh, my arm, and I smiled against Ciarán’s lips as I pulled away to look into the eyes of my other mates, Barrett, Donovan, and Cayden.
“I love you all,” I told them with a smile as they caressed me.
Ciarán tossed me into the arms of my bears, making me squeal and laugh. “Then let us worship you, mate, for all the time we have.” I was definitely not fool enough to say no to that kind of offer, and I let them take me, pleasure washing away my worries as we all exhausted ourselves once again. For tonight, the future didn’t matter. For tonight, there was no war, no plots, no debts owed. Tonight was for myself and my mates, and I was going to enjoy every moment of it.
One
Nix
Sending people an invitation to their death took self-centered, passive aggressive behavior to an extreme I never would have believed existed. I tapped the embossed card against my head, leaning back in my chair as I stared down at the elegant script scrawled across the thick paper.
“You ready, sweetheart?” Damien rumbled in my ear, and I angled my head to look up at him with a sigh. His dark eyes searched mine, but he didn’t push, waiting for me to reach out to him rather than tearing at my mental walls to dig for my thoughts and emotions.
I held out my hand for his, tugging him down for a quick kiss. “Just waiting for you,” I murmured, before pushing to my feet and setting the card aside. Nerves gnawed at my stomach as Damien led me from the room and toward the prison we had set up.
It had been two weeks since our stronghold had been invaded by Birdman carrying this invitation to our so-called demise—not to mention dropping a bomb on all of us by claiming I was Stepanov’s daughter. A shudder raced across my skin, and my Phoenix screeched both her denial of the possibility and her fury at the hybrid who had invaded our sanctuary.
I had expected him to attack, to lash out with the poison he had used on me before, but he had simply settled into a seat and waited for us to read the invitation before we dealt with him. He hadn’t fought, hadn’t spoken, had simply allowed himself to be bound and taken hostage without complaint—not that he had much to complain about really. We weren’t cruel like they had been to me. Theo had taken blood samples and scans of the other shifter in an attempt to figure out what he was, but we hadn’t tortured the man—we didn’t need to, not with Damien. Or at least that was what we’d first believed.
Damien had tried over and over to search the hybrid’s mind, to question him, with no success, much to his frustration. “I still don’t like this,” Killian muttered, stepping up beside us as we walked.
“None of us do,” Damien replied shortly. “But she’s the only constant in his mind. If I can’t find something I can use as a focus, I can’t search him.” A grimace worked its way across his handsome face, and I stroked my hand down his arm.
“Hey, it’s okay,” I soothed, reaching out my other hand to repeat the gesture on Killian, trying to comfort both my mates. “You’ll all be there, right?” I reminded them. “Nothing’s going to happen.”
“I don’t understand his mind.” Damien’s eyes were slightly unfocused, though his feet never faltered in their path. “It’s like I’m looking at the minds of multiple people at once, and none of them are whole or stable.” I squeezed his hand, encouraging him as he tried to sort it out. Theo, Ryder, Hiro, and Joshua were waiting for us outside of the sealed rooms that served as our prison, and I offered them a smile, unwilling to interrupt Damien’s train of thought to greet them all.