Wild and Free by Kristen Ashley

“Wish I could take that back,” he whispered in return. “Wish like fuck I could turn back time and make it so that didn’t happen. I can’t. The only thing I can do is tell you I hate that you felt that, I hate it more that I did somethin’ to make you feel it, and repeat how fuckin’ sorry I am.”

  She held his eyes before she again looked the fireplace. He watched her and he sensed her. She was pissed, there was fear, and last, there was hurt.

  His jaw tightened.

  Her throat convulsed and he put all his energy into fighting the urge to go to her and, instead, gave her time.

  He won the fight not to go to her, but he had shit to share and he was forced to stop giving her time.

  “You seem okay now,” he observed, and she gave him back her gaze.

  “The pain went away,” she shared. The words were hard but at least they were relatively calm.

  “When I was out of danger,” he surmised.

  She stared at him in a new unhappy way at getting the knowledge he was in danger, then she shook her head.

  But she said nothing.

  “We had a meeting with one of Lucien’s men,” he informed her. “Callum and Lucien planned the whole thing. Gregor got his people involved, so we were actually safe the whole time. The goal was to draw them out or ascertain if they’re watching. They are. They had cameras at the meeting place, which is way the fuck in the middle of nowhere so no way they could know where we were to meet unless someone on the inside told them.”

  “Fabulous,” she hissed. “More shit to worry about.”

  She was right, but he couldn’t get into that just yet.

  “You gotta know all that because you deserve me comin’ clean, but it’s more important you know something else,” he continued.

  She took her hand from her hip to flick it out. “That would be…?”

  “We didn’t know about the cameras until a flash of blue light fried ’em.”

  She stared again, this time not angry, astonished.

  “Say what?’ she asked.

  “I got a pain in my head that was so bad it took me down to a knee. Then a flash of blue light lit up the place and fried the cameras. If that hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t have known they were there. We were being watched and probably listened to.”

  “What the fuck?” she whispered, her brows inching together. “You were in pain?”

  “Yep.” He nodded, not dwelling on that. “And, pussycat, I’ve seen that blue light before.”

  “Where?” she asked.

  “When you forced me out of your dream.”

  Her mouth dropped open.

  “Don’t know for certain,” he kept going. “But I figure that pain in my head was you locating me. What I do know for certain, that light was you. You got an ability, Lilah. A fuckin’ powerful one. Spans miles as long as it’s connected to me.”

  “Holy shitoly,” she breathed, and he allowed himself to smile.

  “Could do without feeling my head was gonna explode, but yeah, that shit rocked.”

  “So, what you’re saying is, I’m not clingy. I’m so hyper-attuned to you, I can locate you in my subconscious from miles away, unknowingly sense you’re in danger, and actually do something about it?” she asked.

  “That’s my take,” he answered.

  Slowly, she grinned and whispered, “Right on.”

  Abel relaxed.

  Then he asked, “You gonna let me put my arms around you and show you how sorry I am that I pulled an asshole stunt, or you wanna throw more shit at me?”

  “Don’t piss me off, Abel, or I’ll blast you with my blue light,” she shot back, and it wasn’t entirely a joke.

  He smiled at her and said quietly, “Baby, wanna hold you.”

  “Then do it,” she returned.

  He moved instantly and took her in his arms.

  She didn’t wrap hers around him. She lifted her hands and laid them on his chest. He sensed it was to keep distance but, being Delilah, doing it still gave him what he needed.

  “Still pissed at you,” she told his throat.

  “I’d still be pissed at me too,” he told the hair on the top of her head.

  She took in a breath that was rough, exposing she was still feeling emotion and doing it deep.

  “Hate a lot of what went down this morning. Figure Lucien and Callum are right now dealing with shit of their own making too,” he said, still speaking to her hair because she wasn’t giving him her face and he wasn’t going to force her to. “But we got shit happening within these walls so there’s shit to be done.”

  “Right,” she mumbled. “Go.”

  “Before I go, don’t need you to assure me we’re good,” he told her. “Just need you to tell me we’re inching that way.”

  At that, she tipped her head back and caught his eyes.

  “Abel.” She slid a hand up to curl it around the side of his neck. “You did something you had to do. You fucked up doing it. You apologized. A lot has gone down, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t still getting to know one another. Not to mention all this supernatural shit we don’t have a lock on. I know you didn’t have any clue your fuck-up would be that huge. It was. It’s over. You promised it won’t happen again.” She took in breath and finished, “What I’m saying is, let it go. I am. Which means we’re not inching toward good. We’re there.”

  Simple as that. She blasts it out, says it like it is, he takes his licks, then she’s done. Over it. Moving on.

  Jesus, he loved her.

  She wasn’t a dream come true.

  She was a fucking fantasy come to life.

  “Abel?” she called, and when she did, he realized he’d been staring at her for longer than he thought.

  “Can’t say how much it means to me, you bein’ this cool,” he told her quietly, and she grinned a feisty grin.

  “You don’t have to. I know I’m totally awesome.”

  She was.

  His Delilah.

  Totally awesome.

  He grinned back.

  Then he dipped his head and kissed his mate. He did it hard and as thorough as he could when shit needed to get done.

  And when he was finished, he didn’t leave the room alone to get shit done.

  He took her hand and pulled her with him so they both could see to it.

  Together.

  * * * * *

  Yuri

  “Told you,” Aurora stated after lifting her eyes to him. “Cuckoo.”

  Yuri stood back from the women, arms crossed on his chest.

  He did this because he was allowing Aurora to work. He also did this because it meant her mother, with the shockingly unworthy witch name of Barb, was at his front.

  Not at his back.

  To say his meeting with Aurora’s mother was thorny was a vast understatement.

  Luckily, she was well aware of The Prophesies and trusted her daughter wasn’t an idiot.

  She would know. She’d raised her.

  And after spending the last several days with the both of them, Yuri now knew that neither of them were.

  Barb Lenox was sharp, no-nonsense, blunt-speaking, affectionate with her daughter through actions, not words, and she utterly detested vampires.

  Aurora Lenox was intelligent, humorous, talented, energetic, openhearted, quick to smile, and unconsciously appealing, which made her infuriatingly alluring. Thus, with all this being her, along with her body and beauty, she was damnably fuckable.

  In other words, the last four days had been torture, and not simply because Barb eyed him like he was manure on her shoe at the same time she did things, like sharpen a wooden stake, something she knew didn’t work on him, but that was not her point, even if she was making one.

  And also not simply because he was forced to procure bagged blood, which was hideous, but he couldn’t feed nor take the time to find a Feast where there were hundreds of mortals with The Dominion’s stamp of approval he could partake from.

  It was because he wanted his errand to
be done since the information he sought was important to the cause, and also because it would mean Aurora would be out of danger and he was free to turn his mind to other things.

  Like how to get her in his bed.

  But right then, after exhaustive efforts, which were exhausting because they needed to be clandestine and because no one had seen her in years, they’d found the witch who’d scarred Abel.

  And when they did, Yuri found further proof that Aurora Lenox didn’t have a deceitful bone in her delicious body because she was right. The witch, known as Sula, was a recluse, a hoarder, existing in a vile, cramped, putrid pit so far removed from civilization she was unintentionally (or subconsciously) and very effectively hidden.

  And she was completely mad in a way that was not natural.

  “Brother brother brother brother brother,” Sula chanted, this being all she’d said since they’d arrived and Aurora started her gentle work.

  Except her first communication, which was a shotgun blast. This meant Barb had to do her not-gentle work, magically disarming her and doing it cursing under her breath and sticking a finger in her ear and wiggling it, since the blast was loud.

  Sula didn’t like visitors. She’d made that plain. And her panic at being confronted with witches was difficult to witness, even if Yuri gave not that first fuck about a witch who had, when she had a minute level of sanity, readily carved into a vampire.

  She was tormented and had been for years. Demons in her head that had had enough time to eat away anything that was healthy left nothing but a walking, breathing, but only existing shell behind.

  “Brother brother brother brother brother,” Sula chanted again.

  “Shh, sweetheart,” Aurora cooed. “Shh. Feel my hand. Feel it, Sula. Look into my eyes. You’ve got dark in there, honey. Look into my eyes. It’s okay. You’re safe. I just want to show you light.”

  “Devils,” Barb muttered as Aurora kept trying to coax Sula’s vacant stare to meet her gaze.

  Yuri looked at Aurora’s mother. “Pardon?”

  She kept her gaze steady on her daughter’s work but answered, “Knew of Sula. Never met her. Reckon you’re as old as Aurora says you are, you know witches. So you know, just like anyone, they can be born good, bad, or crazy. Even before all this, word was Sula was born crazy.”

  He had no doubt about that. Strong magic was working behind the insanity of the wild-haired, wild-eyed, unwashed woman Aurora was crouched beside, but that took root and bloomed outrageously because the ground was fertile.

  “Pretty thing,” Barb went on, talking like she was speaking to herself. “Never saw it. Heard it. Exceptionally pretty, they said. It was a waste, they said. That’s all gone now.”

  Yuri looked to Sula.

  She was right. It was all gone. But it had to have been there at one point for her to get close to Abel at a bar in order to drug him.

  “But they’re devils,” Barb continued, and Yuri turned his gaze back to her only to see, to his surprise, she was looking over her shoulder at him. “You protect those who are vulnerable. You don’t use them. And you absolutely do not ever punish them when your plans go awry because you’ve manipulated a human instrument to do your bidding when they’re not equipped to handle it. They sent her to kill a hybrid vampire werewolf knowing full well he could have cottoned on and torn out her throat. Then, when she only half succeeded with their scheme, which was a miracle in itself, they took the mind she had left away.”

  She looked back to Sula, as did Yuri.

  “Devils,” she whispered, and he was again surprised by Barb. This time it was hearing the sorrow mingle with anger in her tone.

  But hearing it, Yuri felt one side of his lips hitch up, knowing fortune favored him, guiding him to allies who might be uneasy (in Barb’s case) or tempting (in Aurora’s) but were true to the cause all the same.

  “Brother brother brother brother brother,” Sula droned.

  “Okay, bear with me,” Aurora urged, lifting a hand to Sula’s chin.

  This made Barb tense and start to move to her daughter.

  Which made Yuri shoot forward to hover over her back, making it there in a millisecond.

  Aurora glanced up at him, smiled, then whispered, “It’s okay,” and turned back to Sula.

  Yuri looked to Sula as well and then went completely still.

  Because she was looking up at him, right in his eyes.

  “Blue-brown, blue-brown, blue-brown,” she intoned.

  “Dear goddess,” Barb breathed from his side.

  “Blue-brown, blue-brown, blue-brown,” Sula kept at it.

  “What?” Aurora asked Sula. “What does that mean?”

  Sula looked to Aurora and regressed. “Brother brother brother brother brother.”

  “Sula, honey, look back up to Yuri. He’s okay. He’s not going to hurt you. Look to him,” Aurora urged.

  Surprisingly, Sula looked back to him and switched again. “Blue-brown, blue-brown.”

  Aurora snapped her fingers low between them and a delicate rise of gold and silver glimmers drifted up before it rained down over Aurora and Sula.

  “Give us more,” Aurora coaxed.

  Sula’s chant changed but only slightly. “Brown-blue, brown-blue.”

  “More, Aurora. Gently,” Barb advised, and Aurora snapped again. The glimmers rose and fell.

  Still holding Yuri’s gaze, Sula went back to, “Brother brother brother brother brother.”

  “You’re telling us something. We just don’t know what it is,” Aurora whispered.

  “Blue-brown, blue-brown, blue-brown…brown-blue, brown-blue, brown-blue.”

  “What does that mean?” Aurora asked.

  When she did, with a suddenness that had Yuri tensing and fighting back baring his fangs, Sula snapped her mouth shut and focused acutely on Aurora as if she wasn’t mad but as sharp as a blade.

  She then lifted her finger and touched the cheek under her right eye. “Blue.” She moved it to the cheek under her left eye. “Brown.”

  Yuri watched, understanding hitting him, so he did it murmuring, “Bloody hell.”

  Sula touched under her right eye again. “Brown.” To the left. “Blue.” She blinked, jerked her chin back, then chanted, “Brother brother brother brother brother.”

  Bloody fucking hell.

  Abel wasn’t looked after by his mother. Or his father.

  But his brother.

  “We have what we need,” Yuri told Aurora.

  “We do?” Barb asked, and he looked to her.

  “Abel, the hybrid, has one brown eye, one blue.”

  “Sweet goddess,” Aurora whispered as she straightened, which brought her very close to Yuri’s side.

  Without hesitation, Yuri took her hand and moved them away from the mad witch.

  Barb watched this and Yuri knew what she saw.

  He also didn’t give a fuck.

  “Mom, can you give her some relief?” Aurora asked, her gaze pointed to Sula.

  Barb tore her eyes off their still-clasped hands and nodded her head once, sharply. “Take the vampire to the car. I’ll be out in ten minutes.”

  “Just ease, Mom, and peace,” Aurora pushed.

  “I’ll take care of her, girl. Take the vamp to the car.”

  “As you know, my name is Yuri,” he reminded Barb, something he was staggered he had not tired of doing considering he’d done it approximately five hundred times since they’d met.

  “You’re all the same to me. Vamps,” Barb returned. “So I don’t really need to know your name, seeing as we get this done, we’re done with you.”

  She was right, except the part where there was a “we.”

  “Now, you got hold of her, take my daughter to the car,” she finished.

  Yuri didn’t make her ask again. He pulled Aurora out of the house, enjoying the fresh air so much, he took as much of it in as he could get.

  “It stunk in there,” Aurora mumbled.

  “That, my sweet, is an un
derstatement,” Yuri muttered in reply.

  He felt her eyes and looked down to her as he stopped them beside the car.

  “We should, you know, call one of those hoarder programs so they’ll come and sort her out. Mom will get her so she’s functioning, if still not all there, but that’s serious magic and even Mom doesn’t have the juice to undo it all. Still, they’ll probably see the state of this place, and her, and commit her or something.”

  “You can likely do that a lot quicker if you didn’t call the producers of a television program and instead called someone who works for the state,” he noted, and she grinned.

  “Yeah, that’s probably a better plan.”

  Yuri’s gaze dropped to the pulse in her neck before he looked away as he released her hand.

  “You know, Mom’s pissed,” she remarked.

  “I sensed that,” Yuri replied.

  “We heard Sula was messed up, but we had no idea it was that bad.”

  Yuri said nothing.

  “She’s not going to let that stand,” Aurora announced.

  Yuri looked down at her but still didn’t speak.

  “What are you going to do now?” she asked.

  “Assist you and your mother and likely the bevy of witches you’ll need to accumulate to take on that coven in order to deal with the retribution your mother feels appropriate to unleash on her sisters who perpetrated that anguish on one of their own.”

  Her eyes lit, and the instant he saw it, Yuri wanted that light when he was covering her, his cock still buried deep after he’d made her come and given it to himself and they were laying connected, a time when he’d allow her again to be charming.

  “A vampire acting out of the kindness of his heart,” she teased.

  “Hardly. That coven guards implements that are dangerous to immortals. I’ll be doing it in order to get those weapons out of the hands of witches who intend harm and into the hands of a witch I slightly trust. Namely your mother. And I’ll note an emphasis on slightly.”

  “Mom wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Aurora assured.

  “She would if that fly hurt you,” Yuri returned.

  “Well, yes, there’s that,” she murmured, grinning at her shoes, which were ridiculous since they were high-heeled boots and the last thing anyone should wear in an uncertain situation.

  They were, however, attractive.