Wild and Free by Kristen Ashley
“I have an excellent memory, Gregor, so there’s no purpose in repeating yourself,” Callum returned.
Gregor took no offense and looked to his son. “Our vampires?”
Yuri nodded curtly, visibly still impatient and annoyed. “They’re amassing fifty miles south of town, to the wolves’ north.”
“I have hope Mrs. Jin will impress upon her son that he should meet with us, but there may be a need to prove we’re trustworthy,” Gregor murmured like he was talking to himself. “I just hope the losses are few should that occur.”
“Me too,” Leah muttered.
Sonia looked to her friend and gave her a reassuring smile.
“We should have sent in the women,” Lucien noted. “Leah’s human. She would be no threat and might be able to establish camaraderie with The Third’s mate.”
“Again, no use going over old ground,” Yuri said.
“I’m not,” Lucien replied. “I’m mentioning it again because it’s still a play we can make.”
“And you wish your bride and my sister to go into the den of a hybrid vampire werewolf who doesn’t trust his own kind enough that he’s dispatched every one he’s encountered, save one who didn’t meet that fate only because he ran away?” Yuri asked.
“I’d trust The Third with my wife because he did the same thing I would do if someone had touched her. He tore them apart. Even if he doesn’t know who he is and all that means, he’d not harm Leah if she caused no threat. No one could say the same for those he slayed,” Lucien retorted.
“Give them until tomorrow,” Gregor cut in before things escalated as the look on Yuri’s face said they would. Then again, Gregor had raised Sonia since she was a child, Yuri a part of that, so he too was protective of the woman Yuri called “sister.” “Then we’ll discuss Leah and Sonia being involved.”
“I’ll reiterate at this point,” Leah said, “I’m all in.”
“Me too,” Sonia threw in.
Lucien sighed and looked down at his bride, who was looking at Sonia. “I have a taste for some Chinese food anyway.”
“Me too,” Sonia repeated on a grin.
Lucien moved his eyes to Callum, who had dropped his head back and was looking at the ceiling.
“He’ll sense you as wolf, Sonny,” Yuri reminded her.
“I know that, Yuri,” Sonia returned. “And he’s half wolf. He’d never harm a she-wolf that he senses as anything but a threat. And, it goes without saying, I’ll be no threat.”
“You can’t know that,” Yuri fired back.
“I live with wolves, Yuri, one in particular who is king because he’s the shining example of all the rest,” Sonia volleyed. “I can know that.”
Yuri clamped his mouth shut when Gregor ordered, “Enough. Tomorrow we’ll discuss this again. Today we hope that Mrs. Jin will talk sense into her…” His lips curled very slightly, then he said, “Son.”
Lucien felt Callum’s eyes and he looked that way.
What he saw was that Callum was hoping.
Lucien was too.
The time was nigh. The last of The Three had been found.
That meant they were all destined to save humanity from being enslaved by immortal beings.
Or they would die trying.
And they needed to get on with it.
One way or another.
* * * * *
Abel
“So, why don’t you have an accent?”
This came from Delilah, who was lying naked on top of her naked werewolf vampire.
Suffice it to say, they had not gone down to their space to think on a change of mind of staying in Serpentine Bay and putting the lives of everyone they loved at stake. They also had not cuddled close and shared their histories.
They’d gone down to their space and fucked all afternoon.
And most of the evening.
Now, finally, Delilah had had enough and wanted to talk, this being only thirteen short hours after Abel suggested they do just that when they woke.
He wasn’t complaining. He had a more than healthy sexual appetite and it would factor that the mate destiny chose for him would have the same.
Still, he was glad they were finally talking and not fucking. They needed to get to know one another.
She was also wearing him out, albeit pleasantly, and that had never happened in his life.
“Would you like something to eat before your interrogation?” he asked.
“You swiping that lemon chicken destined for someone else’s table between round four and five was enough for me,” she answered. “And by the way, your crazy-cool speed is awesome when it comes to theft, which is something we’ll be talking about too…your non-messy ‘business.’”
She said the last word while pressing her tits deep into his chest since she’d lifted her hands to do air quotation marks.
He moved his hands from her ass to wrap his arms around her and replied, “Yeah, we’ll talk about that. But as to your lead question, you’re in a country for a century, pussycat, your accent tends to fade.”
“Mm,” she purred. “So do the boys speak Mandarin too?”
“They did. Ming, Jian-Li, and I all spoke it as well as English while they were growing up. As they got older though, they rebelled. Wanting to be like the kids around them, not wanting to be different, not understanding the importance of history and embracing your culture, even if your family decided years ago to leave the old world behind, they quit speaking it and stopped responding to it.”
He tilted his head on the pillow, tightened his arms, and held her gaze before he shared the rest.
“I think they all regretted doing it when Ming died, but that made it worse for some reason. It was like they didn’t want that reminder, the rebellion against the father they loved. Especially since Ming thought their understanding and respect for their heritage was important. I’ve no idea how much they take in now. They never use it.”
“That’s sad,” she noted.
“It is,” Abel agreed.
Since it was sad, and he was learning Delilah wasn’t about sad, she changed the subject.
“So, you speak very, well…contemporary,” she remarked.
He got her, so he explained, “You adapt, Lilah. I don’t talk like I talked when I first learned English, or when we endured the sixties, or that valley girl bullshit, though I never talked like that.” She grinned and he kept going. “You soak in what’s around you. You probably don’t talk like you did ten years ago either.”
“This is true,” she muttered, her eyes dropping to his shoulder.
It was Abel’s turn for questions.
“Where did you live?”
Her gaze shot back to his and she let out a surprised giggle before her question shook with the same. “What?”
“Before we met, where did you live? Where is the life you’re leaving behind?”
Her eyes went huge before she burst out laughing, her head falling so she could bury her face in his chest, her dark hair all around, her mirth vibrating through his skin, his flesh, straight into his heart.
Another dream come true, seriously so much better as the real thing.
Christ.
His arms tightened further.
She jerked her head back. “I can’t…” She choked, giggled again, then made another attempt. “I can’t believe you don’t know that about me.”
He grinned into her laughing face. “Well, I don’t.”
“New Mexico,” she answered, gulped back more laughter, and went on, “Between Santa Fe and Taos, but I work in Santa Fe.”
“What do you do, bao bei?”
“I’m PA to a lady who owns a string of boutiques,” she replied immediately. “Two in Albuquerque, two in Santa Fe, one in Taos. They’re pretty successful. She travels around a lot, dealing with things hands-on, going to buying shows, shit like that. I manage her travel schedules. Make reports of how the shops are doing. Stuff like that.”
She drew in a breath, her face t
“She’s nice, but the job isn’t that great. Kinda boring. The same thing over and over again. She pays me okay. I do better than some of my friends.”
Her attention sharpened on him, and when she continued, she did it openly if still somewhat guardedly, as if needing to tell him what she was going to tell him but doing it concerned about his response.
“I didn’t go to college. School just wasn’t for me. Neither my mom nor my dad lived in a great part of town with a good school system. So Dad says it was because I was smarter than the system and I was bored.” Suddenly, she grinned. “I like that he thinks that, but he knows better. So do I. It was mostly me being my father’s daughter, hating authority, schedules, assignments, people telling me what to do.” She shrugged. “That said, it wasn’t a challenge and I got good grades. Just didn’t want to buy into more even though Dad said he’d put me through college if I wanted to go.”
Nothing about this surprised him, but two things about it troubled him.
He started with the hardest.
“You seem okay with leaving your life behind,” he noted carefully.
She shrugged. “I am, but I’m not. I don’t have a job I love, though I dig my apartment and will miss it. But it was just a place to live and I didn’t suspect I’d live there forever. So I guess now’s the time I’ll be saying good-bye to it, though I hope there comes a time when I’ll get my stuff back.”
Abel decided that time would come soon, no matter how he had to manage it.
Her sadness filtered into her features and he braced before she went on.
“I’ll miss my friends. That’ll suck. And I hope we get to a place where they can be back in my life, even from a distance. But I’ve been waiting for you my whole life and I learned early that life is not a tiptoe through the tulips. Shit happens. Life changes. If it’s important, you deal.” Her eyes grew soft on him before she gave it all to him. “You’re important. So I’ll deal.”
Her words meant he gave her another squeeze and he did it lifting his head to touch his mouth to hers, to show her just how much they meant.
Her eyes were softer when he dropped his head back to the pillow.
She knew what her words meant.
“Until just now, you haven’t mentioned your mother,” he remarked.
The grin left her face entirely.
Not a good sign.
He gave her yet another squeeze. “Lilah?”
“Mom and I aren’t tight. She…” She shook her head. “She and Dad didn’t get along and neither of them hid that from me, but she was bitter about it and she really didn’t hide that from me, even knowing I totally adored him.” She bit her lip, pausing before she carried on, “She also knew about the thing, that thing we share, that feeling of missing something. She thought I was crazy.”
His brows drew together. “Crazy?”
“Bona fide take-me-to-three-shrinks crazy.” She’d lifted up three fingers but dropped them when she finished, “I was in therapy for four years.”
“Jesus,” he muttered.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “She also tried to have me medicated.”
Her breath blew into his face in a whoosh when his arms contracted at her words.
He forced himself to loosen his hold, but his voice was dangerous when he asked, “Medicate you?”
“Yeah,” she confirmed hesitantly. “She was convinced I had an eating disorder and other mental disorders besides.” She curled her hand at his neck, her thumb sliding along the column of his throat in order to soothe him as she assured him quietly, “Dad stopped that part of my therapy before it ever happened, baby. I never was on meds. He totally got what was happening to me. I mean, not totally, but he didn’t think I was crazy. Just missing something I’d eventually find.”
Abel was beginning to understand her bond with her father.
“So you grew up with her and him?” Abel asked, and Delilah nodded.
“Yep. They had joint custody at first. But when Mom started the whole ‘you’re whacked in the head’ thing, Dad stepped in. He was never a fan of having me only half the time. But when that happened, he fought for full custody. Even got a real job to pay for it.”
Yes, he was beginning to understand their bond.
“I moved in with him when I was fifteen,” she shared. “But I’d pretty much checked out on Mom way before then. If I wasn’t at Dad’s house for his week, I was with my friends. Mom and me never really recovered from that even though I didn’t cut her out. I just keep…” Her head tipped to the side as she thought how to finish, then said, “Distant.”
Abel said nothing, mostly because he didn’t want to say what he had to say. That being that a mother not attempting to understand her daughter, instead sending her to others who would force asinine theories (he’d been with her for days and his woman had no eating disorder and certainly no mental ones) and unnecessary medications on her, was no mother at all.
She must have read this in his expression because she defended her mother by stating, “It isn’t like what I felt was normal, Abel.”
“Your dad seemed to get it,” he pointed out.
“Dad loves me,” she replied.
“As should your mother,” he returned firmly. “No conditions, Delilah. I know. I turned from a puppy into a human who tried to sink my fangs in her flesh, and still had a mother who took me on, loved me, and accepted me, no conditions. In fact, I had two.”
“I see your point,” she muttered.
He was glad because he had another one to make which was almost as important.
“For your safety and everyone else’s, she does not know about me or about us. When you start to break ties down there, she doesn’t get the story and you share it with others in a way it won’t get back to her.”
“Okay, honey,” she agreed.
Abel fell silent.
“Uh…speaking about that,” Delilah started, “for everyone else’s sake, what are we doing?”
“What are we doing?”
“About taking off,” she clarified.
Abel drew in breath and let it out, noting, “Their reaction was violent.”
“Yes,” she agreed.
“Even more than I expected it to be.”
“Yes again.”
“And I haven’t even mentioned it to Jian-Li.”
Delilah made no response. She just pressed her lips together and widened her eyes, giving her unspoken opinion that Jian-Li’s reaction would be what it was going to be—that being even more volatile than the rest—and his mate didn’t even know Jian-Li very well
“Your father will follow us, his boys with him,” he stated.
She kept stroking his throat. “He will, Abel. To be honest, I thought he’d give in. When he didn’t, I was surprised. But even if I didn’t guess his response, I know one thing for certain about my dad…when he digs in, he digs in.”
Abel had that impression about Hooker Johnson too.
Not to mention his crew.
Abel looked from her to the ceiling, muttering, “Fuck.”
Delilah said nothing, and when this lasted for some time as he contemplated the ceiling, it occurred to him there was something about that he liked.
They were talking about something, it was important to both of them, it weighed heavy on their minds, and even as she lay atop him, when he needed a moment in his head, she gave it to him.
He’d met many women in his life, not all he fucked, obviously, but both varieties, this trait was rare. Especially if what was being discussed was something important and she might have her point to drive home.
On that thought, he tipped his eyes back to her. “What’s your vote?”
“Obviously my vote is not to have anyone I care about in danger, but that’s been taken out of my hands by the evil supernaturals who want us dead. It’s also been taken out of our hands by the people we care about, seeing as they’ve made it clear they won’t accept a decision that they
“Which means they may sacrifice their lives?” he asked, but he wished he hadn’t when he caught her trying to fight a flinch.
His arms again grew tighter around her and he started stroking the skin of her sides with his fingers, something that worked and the flinch went away.
“That’s our sacrifice, baby,” she replied gently. “Our peace of mind for theirs. They need this to have peace of mind that they’re doing what they can do. To have all the time they can have with us, even if it’s short.”
On these words, she dropped her head and rested her forehead against his jaw. She took her own moments in her thoughts and Abel returned the favor, being silent and letting her.
After a while, she kept going.
“No one likes this situation. But the one thing we’ll all have as we go about navigating it is each other. So I guess that’s not a bad thing.”
She was not wrong.
And Abel had discovered something else about his destined mate.
Delilah Johnson was far from dumb.
Very far.
“Then we’re decided,” he muttered.
She lifted her head and looked into his eyes. “Are we?”
He slid his hands up to under her arms and clamped tight. “Not sure we have a choice.”
“No,” she agreed.
He rolled her to her back with him on top, murmuring, “Think I gotta fuck you again.”
“Gotta?” she asked, her green eyes, which had been tinged with sadness, starting to light with humor, something he liked a fuckload better.
“Prefer to have my mind on your tight, wet cunt than this shit,” he answered.
“With this I wholeheartedly agree. Though, for my part, I prefer you to have things in it, rather than your mind on it.”
He dipped his head and grinned against her lips. “Goes hand in hand, pussycat.”
“Uh…speaking of your hands…”
She let that hang.
He did as told.
And it worked. Being all about her and her body and her noises and her sweet, tight pussy while she was all about him and his body and making him growl with her growing devotion to his cock. It was much better than considering their future, which was clouded with an unknown threat.