Undying Hope (17 page)

She snorted and then tilted her head back. Her mouth was turned up in an impish grin. “So get a morning home on the West Coast and have Memphis open a portal for us.”

“You’re distracting.” He growled the words, but his hand moved lightly across the skin on her back.

She leaned up and took his bottom lip into her mouth before she pushed off his chest to straddle over him. “Excellent.” Then she slipped off him to stand. Her hair fell down around her in a beautiful cascade of fiery sunlit waves. “No girl wants her man to be able to easily extract himself from her the morning after.” She sashayed over to the recliner. “That would be insulting.” Her impish grin went wicked. “I’d make you breakfast in the buff, but since you’re worried, I’ll take it easy on you today—you might not fare so well tonight.” She slipped his shirt over her head and pulled it down before flipping her hair out of the collar. “Re-heated Chinese coming up.” She picked up the unused plates off the coffee table and walked out of the living room like she owned the place.

Donovan dragged a hand down his face. He was sweating. A perpetual hard-on was his until the end of time. How was he supposed to concentrate on anything if she was going to walk around naked? The only reason he was able to drag his ass off the floor was because she wasn’t in the same room with him anymore. He couldn’t ever remember following a woman around like a puppy. He snagged his jeans and huffed when he realized he’d torn the zipper getting out of them last night. He shrugged and just let them ride low on his hips.

“Something’s coming!”
the
treòir
roared in his head.

His body stilled as he felt a vibration through the air.
Shit!
He was moving by the time the kitchen flashed with a vibrant purple light. Haven screamed as the sound of ceramics crashed on the floor. Donovan ran into the kitchen with the wolves on his heels.

Donovan skidded to a stop at the kitchen door. “Haven, don’t move. I don’t want you getting cut.”

She made a soft whimpering sound as her head bobbed up and down. “There is a tiny purple woman hovering over the counter.”

He didn’t have to look to know who was invading his home. Laila. Maybe he’d finally be able to get some answers about exactly how and why his people were two thousand years ahead of their time. “Don’t talk to her. I’ll be right back.” It took him seconds to grab his boots and get them on before he was back in the kitchen. His sharp gaze tracked around the room.

Laila was the epitome of a beautiful pixie creature. She had the perfect Tinker Bell hourglass figure with large innocent eyes, sharp, pointed ears and a round angelic face. Dragonfly wings fluttered, keeping her above the counter top at a hover.

He moved slowly and with great precision into the room. He scooped Haven up and sat her on the countertop near the pixie. “I’ve been trying to contact you for fifty years. What the hell are we doing here? How did we get here? Can we get back? Where are my missing people? Start talking.”

Laila huffed at him. She stepped off the side of the counter as her body grew to roughly the size of a ten-year-old girl. Her wings beat faster than the eye could see to keep her hovering. “I don’t have time for this. I am dealing with a huge problem in Atlantis right now. If I don’t get back to it soon, we won’t recover from the cataclysm.”

Donovan ran his hands down Haven’s legs before he inspected the bottom of her feet to make sure she hadn’t stepped on any broken pieces of the plates or been cut by a stray shard. “Then what the hell are you doing here now?”

“Your mother’s pendant. Your Reannon needs it. The power inside rightfully belongs to her.” Laila held out her diminutive hand with her fist closed and facing down.

Haven reached for the necklace.

Donovan wrapped his large hand around Haven’s to keep her from touching the foreign object. He trusted Laila only to an extent. Haven’s life was something he would never willingly risk. “Do not accept pixie gifts until you know for sure what they are.” He put his other hand out instead.

Laila didn’t seem offended by his assessment of her trustworthiness and opened her hand to drop the ancient jewelry into his palm. “You will have to guide her in how to use it. Now I must go.”

“Laila wait!” he roared, but the room was already awash with the vibrant purple glow before a light flashed.

Quinn coiled his body tightly around hers. “I think she’s gone. Just because they feel gone doesn’t mean they are.”

Haven drew in several deep breaths before she pushed lightly at his chest.

Another thirty seconds passed before his muscles relaxed and thirty more before he unwound himself from her body. He dropped the necklace on the counter and captured her face between his hands. His mouth took hers with savage possession before he pulled back. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” she said on a dreamy sigh. Her pale green eyes fluttered a few times before her gaze focused. “What was that all about?”

He studied her, making sure nothing nefarious had happened before he let her go and went back to the necklace sitting on the countertop a few feet away from her. He turned the silver wolf head pendent and chain over in his hand. He clenched his fist around it. “I believe this belonged to my mother.”

“Hello?” She waved at him. “Yeah, hi, um, what’s going on?”

He rubbed at the back of his neck and examined the necklace again. “Confirmation you’re the Reannon, the Queen of all the Undying. It’s yours as soon as I have Maverick and Brogan check it out to make sure it’s safe.”

She sputtered. “This is real? Quinn, that’s—” She dragged in several rapid breaths. If he didn’t do something, she was going to hyperventilate.

Donovan moved in front of her. His large hands rested on her hips. He was cheek to cheek with her. “Breathe, baby, breathe. You’re all right.”

“How can I be the queen?” she demanded. “I haven’t balanced a check book in over four years. I kind of caught that yesterday, but you want me to be their queen? Quinn, I am going to die. I can’t be their queen!”

Donovan’s quandary went exponential. Conversion would kill his Haven. Not converting her into an Undying would eventually lead to her death. Laila didn’t lightly gift the kind of power imbued into the stone suspended in the necklace. He absently turned the ring around his right index finger Laila had given him two thousand years ago when he’d acquired Cadeyrn status. All the power once embedded into the ring was now a part of him and a part of his
treòir
. The ring itself was useless except for its sentimental value. The power of Cadeyrn, added to his own and that of the
treòir
, made him the most powerful being currently to walk the Earth.

“You are already their queen,” he murmured. “I—I know you’re human. I’m sorry.” He backed away from her and shoved the necklace into his pocket. Needing to be doing anything else than have this discussion with her, he went to work cleaning up broken plates on the floor.

“Quinn.” Her voice hitched up. She slipped off the counter and took a step toward him.

“Don’t move!” he roared at her.

She froze. “I know you’re afraid.”

“You don’t know anything!” He reached over and snatched the garbage can from its place and slammed it down on the floor next to where he worked. The metal side cracked.

“Quinn…”

“We are not discussing this.”

“Yes,” she yelled at him, “we are.”

“Haven—”

“I wasn’t expecting this,” she rushed on. “I reacted badly, but it did bring something up that we need to talk about. Nikon told me you would be difficult to convince to change me.”

“He’s right.” He finished picking up all the large pieces and went to get a broom. “We are not discussing this.”

“Why?” She took another step toward him.

He snarled at her. “I told you not to move!”

“If I want to step on bits of broken pottery, that’s my business. You will not talk to me this way.”

His head lifted and his lip curled. “I am controlling my temper, woman. Do not push me right now.”

* * * *

Pushing him was exactly what she needed to do. It was insane, and probably dangerous, but they had to talk about this. The end of her life meant the end of his, and after literally being part of the man last night, in no way would she ever believe Quinn’s death was acceptable. “What exactly are you going to do other than bellow at me and try to shake down the building?”

“Haven!” he roared again as the apartment shimmied.

She squeaked and moved back a step against her will. Maybe she wasn’t nearly as brave as she thought she was. Quinn was scary as hell when he was yelling like this.

Quinn gritted his teeth together as he doubled over on the floor, his hands clutching his head.

She blew out a breath. His memories were now hers. Quinn had never, not once in his vast years of experience, lashed out at someone in anger he considered unable to defend against his massive physical power.

“Damn idiot,” she chided him in a softer tone. She wasn’t supposed to talk to the
treòir,
but she had to do something. “You’ve gone and gotten your power all riled up again.” She gingerly worked her way over to him, because getting a tiny bit of pottery stuck in her bare foot wasn’t appealing, and got down on the floor next to him. “
Treòir
,” she whispered, “he’s upset. Yeah, it’s kind of scary to deal with when you compare our size difference, but really, do you honestly think he’s going to hurt me?”

“He scared you.”

For a moment she had no idea what Quinn was talking about until she realized his eyes had that eerie red glow of the
treòir
. She really wasn’t talking to Quinn, but his source of power. She hesitantly put out her hand to stroke the side of his face. “Being yelled at by a man your size is a little scary.” She wasn’t exactly sure what to say to make this better, but she needed to try. She had no idea exactly what was going on inside of Quinn, though the struggle that she could feel inside of him made her edgy. “Married people argue.” She tried a different tactic. Her parents did. Never once had her father hit her mother no matter how bad some of the arguments got. They didn’t happen often, but she’d learned two people had to yell at each other sometimes. Shouting didn’t mean anyone was going to get hurt. It just meant things were going to be loud for a while. “It’s not always pleasant, and this is something he feels strongly about. I was expecting some yelling.”

“He’ll kill me to keep from harming you.”

“I know he would, and he and I need to work this out. I don’t want him—or you—to die any more than either of you want to hurt me.” She winced when she realized Quinn had fallen on the dustpan. Trickles of blood trailed down his arm from pieces of the broken plate cut into his arm. “But you did hurt yourself. Come on, let’s go get you cleaned and patched while we continue talking about this.”

* * * *

Quinn’s body trembled as he slowly uncurled himself from the ground and stood up.
Treòir
had absolutely no idea how to handle this. He knew his human, but he’d never had to deal with his human being afraid like this before. The best thing to do was to keep him trapped deep inside where he didn’t have to deal with the fear or with the possibility of killing their Haven. He wasn’t going to allow a conversion to take her away from them. Keeping the essence of Quinn trapped in the compartment he’d lived in for so long was no easy feat. His head cocked as he assessed the situation. There was still danger to her tender and precious little feet from the broken plates. His hands clamped down around her waist in the next second.

She sucked in a breath. “
Treòir
?”

“Your feet,” he said in a tone that didn’t sound the same when Quinn used it.

“Oh. Just move me to the doorway, and I’ll go get some shoes.”

He did exactly as she instructed him. Nikon growled at him as he set her down. She rubbed her sides. “You don’t have to hold on so tight next time.” She put her hand on Nikon’s head. “Stop that. I agree this is weird, but it is what it is. Tell him to go to the powder room, and I’ll be right back down to get him patched up.”

“You tell him,”
Nikon said. “
Quinn is already going to skin me for allowing this to happen.”

“But he doesn’t want me talking to his power,” Haven said with exasperation in her tone.

“Yes.”
Nikon did a wolf shrug. “
But his
treòir
likes you, and you were just talking to it.”

“I’ll deal with them, I guess. Just…” She planted her hands on her hips. “You,” she said to
Treòir
-Quinn. “Get your ass in the bathroom and wait for me.” She stepped closer and looked into his eyes. “Quinn, stop whatever you’re doing. I’ll get this all worked out, but you’re not helping anything by fighting with him.”

To
Treòir
’s utter surprise, Quinn stopped struggling. He prowled the back of his mind in much the same way he used to do to Quinn, but making his body follow Haven’s command to go into the bathroom was no longer a battle. “Nikon, go with her.”

“It’s your life,”
the wolf said and darted up the stairs after Haven.

A few moments later, she had on a fuzzy pair of slippers and was standing next to him in the cramped powder room.

“Let me have a look at your arm,” she said in the same silvery tone that had soothed both of them over the last day.

“He can heal himself,”
Treòir
said in his gravely tone.

“Then I don’t have to worry about infection, but I’d feel better if he wasn’t dripping blood all over the place. That has to hurt.”

Treòir
shrugged. “I guess so.”

She shook her head as she opened the cabinet and pulled out a pair of tweezers. She grimaced. “Not that I don’t enjoy talking to you, but if I have a chance to save your life, I kind of need to talk to Quinn.”

“He’ll yell,”
Treòir
warned.

“I’m sure he will,” she agreed. “But we both know he’s not going to hit me.” Her eyes went wounded as water collected in them.

Treòir
shuttered as a violent flash of her memory tore through him.

There had been no warning. Not even the feel of anger. One moment Haven was begging Mason for her dinner because he enjoyed watching her grovel, and the next she felt the hard sting as the back of his hand connected with the side of her face.