State of Independence Read online

  Lucian sits down on the small loveseat with his signature unbutton of the coat, flaps brushed to the side.

  He settles one leg over the other, twirls his ring around his finger. All without lifting his gaze from Grayson.

  “You have been called back to the Faolain pack, Independence.” Lucian states.

  I snort. “They can’t just call me back. I left of my own free will.”

  When he doesn’t give me the satisfaction of acknowledgement, I lift my eyes to the Queen.

  “I’m afraid...the contract you signed with us is at an end, Independence. Your services, while appreciated, are no longer needed.” She stands.

  The room is still silent. I might as well be a wall for as much attention these two are paying me.

  “Our business is concluded.” Kaida nods at Grayson while standing.

  She comes to me, embraces me in a hug.

  “I’ll forever be indebted to you, Independence. Should you ever need anything…” She pulls back and smiles at me somewhat sadly. “Lucian, please attend me.”

  He stands, gets the door for her with barely a glance to me.

  I grab his arm, stopping him from stepping through the threshold. His suit is soft butter under my fingertips.

  “Loosh?” I ask.

  “It’s better this way, Kid.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  I stare into his eye. It’s a kind of resolute sadness I’m getting from him.

  Kaida turns from where she is waiting by the open elevator door.

  “Do you need a minute?” She asks.

  “No.” He strides forward and my hand drops back to my side. The elevator doors close on him and Kaida.

  I’ve been cast aside. Just like that. Suddenly all the fight as left me. All the anger.

  Well. Maybe not all of my anger.

  I spin to the man responsible.

  His arms are crossed over his chest. His green eyes are sparking.

  “This is just fucking fantastic.” I spew sarcasm at him as I draw closer.

  He runs a hand through his hair, sighing deeply. “C’mon. Get your stuff. We have to get on the road.”

  “Are you kidding me? You want to leave this morning?” I step to him, getting close enough I can fight if I have to. The coffee table is now the only thing separating us, as it was him and Lucian moments before.

  “No. I’m not kidding. And I don’t want to leave this morning. I want to leave now.”

  It’s barely four-thirty a.m.

  It’s not like I’m going to stay here after that dismissal from Lucian and Kaida. I don’t beg or cry after men. No. Definitely not after that harsh breakup. I sit down. Contemplating.

  I have my pride. I can’t stay here. And I don’t want to go with Gray. I’m stronger now. Capable of taking care of myself. But. A vise squeezes around my heart. A physical ache in my chest. I’m unwanted and have no home. Where would I go if I had any choice? I’d been happy here. I have to swallow my pride and accept that I’m not wanted here.

  It only makes sense to go with Grayson. Temporarily. Just until I figure out the next steps. The next place I can call home. My logic is frustratingly...logical.

  “Fuck!” I smash my fist down on the coffee table.

  The glass top smashes into a tiny million twinkingly pieces of glass.

  “I’m not leaving without my Ducati.” I point my index finger at Grayson.

  He inclines his head, giving me the tiniest acknowledgement.

  Chapter 22

  I watch the sunrise through the window of Gray’s Tahoe. It’s going to be a beautiful day.

  I don’t want to talk to the man in the driver’s seat. I don’t want to acknowledge the feelings of attraction weaving in and out with heartache.

  Being inside this car with him. It’s like snapping a puzzle piece back together. It’s comfortable, secure silence. A relief to that constant burn in my chest. I’d thought I’d cured myself from wanting him. But even with the embarrassment of Lucian’s rejection sitting fresh and ugly, I can’t help my eyes from drinking Gray in.

  He’s changed. And in more than the physically longer hair. He’s changed on the inside. He’s harder. Is it the tattoo I see peeking out the neck of his shirt? I roll my eyes mentally, hating the base girly reaction such ink brings out in me.

  Dude got some tats. Doesn’t mean anything.

  My eyes are heavy, drooping. For the last two years, I’d been working the night shift. And my internal clock is telling me it's time to sleep.

  I give in, cranking the seat into recline and shutting my eyes.

  I open them when I feel the car slow hours later. It’d been a blissful few hours, lost in a dream world were none of my inner turmoil existed.

  “What do you want to eat?” Grayson nods his head in the direction of the three fast-food restaurants off the exit.

  “A burger is fine.”

  He gets gas before pulling through the drive through.

  Once we are back on the highway, we eat in companionable silence.

  I suck my pop down to the bottom of the cup, making that annoying slurp noise at the end.

  Grayson sighs at my antics. “Can we talk?”

  “You can talk all you want. I have nothing to say.” Petulance comes out in my voice.

  A muscle ticks in his jaw. “Good. Just sit back and listen to what I have to say then.”

  I didn’t mean to play into his hand so easily. Still I am curious as to what he might say. What reason he might have for bringing me back. Will I be accepted back into the pack?

  “First. We found your sister, Glory. She’s currently living in Wyoming, outside Bozeman.”

  I’d love to hear just where they found her and when. I already knew she was well and living in Bozeman. Kaida has her own contacts within the werewolf council. A swell of guilt closes in around my heart. I should have reached out to Glory. I should have kept in contact with Justice. But, her life had been pulled to work for the council. To work with Locke. I could see her attraction to him and I wasn’t gonna be the one to get in the way of that. She needed her time. She needed to find her place.

  Tremendous guilt. I have it. Justice took care of me for thirteen hard years. I wish our lives hadn’t been that way. I wish she could have just been my sister. Just like Glory. But too often she was a mother.

  “She’s doing well. Helping our cause.” He sets the cruise control.

  Their cause. Keeping the supernatural on the other side.

  I wasn’t totally dark on that either. After all, I helped with a lot of Kaida’s political maneuverings. She was growing her vampire army. When I first came to her two years ago, she was queen of a single territory. Now, she’s queen of three.

  The vamps experienced the same fading away of magic just like us. The youngest vamp I’d met had been one hundred years old.

  Lucian explained to me they weren’t on any particular side. That if the gates opened, and the Otherside came through, it would simply mean they might have more enemies AND allies.

  Their main mission was to protect the status quo as it was. Kaida wanted to be queen of it all.

  “Justice is well also. Desdemona too. She had a baby girl. Named her Morgan.”

  I flash back to that night, what just a year ago? The night I’d sent Des to find Glory.

  My shoulder still aches at the memory. I lift my hand to it, rotate it, roll my neck for good measure.

  I wanted to leave them all behind. I burned that life. I escaped. And here I am.

  “Enough with the social updates. Just tell me the reason you’re yanking me back to Colorado.” I demand.

  “A gate’s been opened.”

  I don’t say anything for moments. Absorbing his words.

  “Where?”

  “Scotland.”

  What news had I heard of from there? God. I can’t even remember the last time I’d checked world news.

  “How bad is it?”

  “Not...as bad as we
expected. A thousand missing. Eight hundred dead. It’s possible it only opened for a short time and is closed again.”

  “It’s possible?” I can’t help the disbelief in my tone. He knows everything. And his words are weirdly nebulous on this.

  “It’s currently under investigation.”

  Right. I hold in my flash of ire. A gate to the Otherside opened temporarily in a country five thousand miles away and I have to go back to live with the pack. Silence reigns as I let my anger and the fresh hurt dissipate.

  “Your place wasn’t with them.” Grayson breaks in. “Not with him.”

  His hands are white-knuckling the steering wheel. The muscles in his jaw tensing.

  “Oh? And it’s with you?” I fire back angrily.

  “I did what I had to do.” He growls.

  I lift my hand to my temple, determined not to do this. “I don’t want to talk about it. Ever.”

  A tidal flood of embarrassment at the memories rolls through me.

  “Agreed.”

  The afternoon passes with Grayson’s favorite old-school country twanging through the speakers. I have just about had enough and am ready to pull my hair out, punch the radio, or jump out of the moving vehicle, when he reaches over and lowers the volume himself.

  He takes the next exit, and pulls into a newer hotel.

  “We’ll stop here for the night. Get a room, and have some dinner.”

  We get checked in, and since I’m still on silent-mode, I don’t protest Gray’s decision to get one room with two beds.

  What does it matter anyways?

  When he opens the door to the room, he motions me to stay in the hall while he steps through first, doing what I can only imagine is a sweep.

  “Really?” I say when he opens the door to let me in. Does he think magic goons have followed us and somehow managed to find out what room we are in in the few minutes since the reception lady assigned us the keycards? His serious face says he does.

  I throw my duffle bag on the bed and close myself in the bathroom.

  A nice, long hot shower is in order. I turn the tap, adjust the heat level to the highest setting.

  Off with last night’s workout gear. I’d been in the yoga pants, sports bra and a long tee going on eighteen hours. And that was after I sweated in it.

  A few measly hours of sleep in the car, and the emotional marathon I was on had me feeling muddled. Confused. Exhausted.

  I try to file the feelings away under the spray of the water, but Lucian’s last words, the look on his face keeps dueling with Grayson’s all too real presence.

  Hot, near lightheaded, I step from the shower. I wrap a towel around my head, one around my body.

  I open the bathroom door, letting that cool air refresh my overheated face.

  Grayson is sitting on the edge of the far bed, his phone clasped loosely in his hands.

  “Let’s hit up the restaurant across the street.” He says without looking up.

  “How about we just order in?” I counter. I am not in the mood to sit across the table from him.

  His eyes lift. From the bottom of my toes, along my legs, to the top of my chest and finally, finally settling on my face.

  His look burns in my chest. Indefinable.

  “What?”

  “Why do you oppose me on everything?”

  I reassess. “Fine.” I yield. I want these next few hours, these next few days over with and with the least amount of turmoil. I have a lot to figure out, and I don’t need to add drama to any of it.

  Don’t rock the boat.

  I pull open my duffle and grab the first pair of jeans and a top I see.

  Chapter 23

  “Your mother made a prophecy about you.” Are his first words after the waiter drops our drinks, takes our order and leaves.

  My mother. I can’t remember her face. I can remember her funeral. That sort of thing sticks with a five year old. I remember him at her funeral.

  “You wore a dark blue tie with a pin.” I murmur the words while seeing it in my inner mind’s eye.

  “A tie-bar actually. And it was black.”

  “It was blue. Navy blue.” I assert.

  “I wore a blue tie to marry your sister. To your mother’s funeral I wore black. Black shirt, black suit, black tie.”

  “Huh.” Could I possibly remember him from their wedding? I was, what? Three or four? And this man made an impression on me.

  The memory pulls back, and I do see him in his suit, navy blue tie standing at the altar.

  He’s right. I can see it clear as day.

  “Whatever. My mom?” I prompt. I can examine the mysteries of my mind later.

  Justice had explained to me how she had been some kind of priestess for an old, dead religion.

  “This is an actual quote from her journal.” He reaches into his suit coat pocket and pulls out a piece of paper. He slides it out across the table to me. I don’t pick it up.

  “What is this? Some kind of bad fortune cookie?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. His green eyes are tired. I pick up the paper.

  Two shields and the sword. The light, the dark, the in between. In the final war, one death to win. One death to lose. One death to go on.

  I freeze over the word ‘sword.’ A tumble of extraordinary conclusions hits me then.

  I crumble the paper up in my fist and drop it in the middle of the table.

  “Why can’t you just…” I stop and suck in a breath to hold back the anger at him.

  “I hate that you’ve manipulated me.” I finally get the words out.

  “What did you honestly think, we’d let you go without tracking you? Without being aware of your whereabouts? What you were doing?”

  Flash of pain. Flash of outrage. The proverbial ‘we.’

  “It’s not your fucking call, Grayson! It’s my life! And I’ll be damned if I let some Harry Potter mumbo jumbo tell me how to live it.”

  The ire is behind his eyes now. That spark of annoyance.

  “Whether or not you believe it, doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we’ve got to work together to - “

  “Just what is your ultimate end game here, Grayson?” I cut him off. “ You still want me to marry Marc?”

  “Well. You do know everything, don’t you, Independence?”

  I don’t miss the sarcasm in his voice.

  His eyes are laser beams focused on me. I don’t like the study. I squirm in my seat a bit, because his eyes have gone from angry to curious. Watchful.

  “Lucian said your boxing skills have come a long way.”

  “So what? You got regular report cards or something? A in Boxing. A in swordsmanship, A plus in - ”

  “Don’t say what it is I think you are about to say.” His voice comes out deadly quiet.

  Scary.

  I had been about to say ‘killing vamps’ but, I guess he thought I was going to say something about that topic we agreed not to talk about.

  I take a sip of my drink to cover the awkwardness. We sit in silence until the waiter drops our food off.

  I eat, but with all the zeal of a robot. I don’t give Grayson my attention.

  The trek back up to the hotel room is quiet. We don’t speak. And every minute of the silence is a knoll of heartache in my chest.

  The next day is much the same. I doze on and off in the passenger seat, silent and heartbroken.

  Even if Lucian only ever took me in and trained me because Grayson asked him too, or because he believed I was some kind of prophesied martyr - I can’t deny we shared a rare friendship.

  I won’t say ‘love’ cause it was a more mutually beneficial exchange than anything. I got to experience fantastic sex and he got - well, even in my wildest dreams I don’t pretend to be humble - fantastic sex too.

  But I had been sure there was a deeper loyalty between us. I have no illusions that there was never a ‘together forever’ in there; it might have been just another year or two, but I believed he would always gi
ve it to me straight.

  Maybe more than painful than his nonchalant brush-off is the fact that he knew who I was from the very beginning and hid the fact. Lie by omission.

  And to top it all off? Some deep-buried, very stupid part of me feels like I betrayed Grayson by sleeping with Lucian.

  What a cluster.

  Chapter 24

  “C’mon. Come out for a drink with me.” Marc’s voice is stable. Neither whiny or begging. A simple request.

  “What? You don’t want to hang out here?” I ask sarcastically.

  My apartment has zero furniture. I’d stayed one night at Gray’s before realizing that’d never work. So, I dumped a deposit on the first available apartment I could find in town. It isn’t the Taj Mahal of apartments –or even a swanky hotel room with room service – but it’s my own space. I’d zipped over to the local Costco after getting the keys.

  I’d gotten the essentials for my stay: an air mattress, bedding, and a supply of frozen pizzas. A bottle of red wine may have found its way into my basket too. I hadn’t been aware that Lucian had such a profound effect on me until I found myself craving a glass. It’d be nice to sit on the little balcony and enjoy.

  But, first I’d have to get wine glasses. Until then the bottle is sitting unopened on the counter.

  “No. I want to hit that sweet looking Mexican place down the street. It smelled divine.”

  Figures. But I’d been wanting to scope the place out myself. So two birds with one stone.

  “Fine. You’re buying though.”

  He smiles and I put on my cross trainers before sliding my leather jacket on.

  I lock up, and we head over to his jeep.

  “You still got the Harley?” I ask him when I buckle in the passenger seat.

  “You know it.”

  The restaurant is packed. It’s an early dinner crowd, but I like the noise, the bustle. Must be excellent food. Two spots open at the bar, and we elect to sit there instead of waiting on a table. I order a top shelf margarita and fajitas. Our conversation swirls around easy things. The Ducati. Marvel movies. Snowboarding.

  “I went to Vegas last year. Got to tour the speedway.”

  His words, said innocently, put the breaks on the easy flow of conversation.