Zurlo, Michele - Riley [Daughters of Circe 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (20 page)

Soren’s gaze dropped to the ground. His jaw set hard. When she heard his teeth grind, Riley set a reassuring hand on his arm. He flinched and jerked away as if she’d burned him. On her other side, Teigh squeezed her hand where it still gripped his bicep.

“It seems I’m your mother-in-law and these are two of your fathers-in-law.” She released Teigh’s arm and spread her hands wide. “Surprise.”

Desiree and Torrey ran from the house. They showed no signs of slowing down once they made it to where their men stood. Shade caught Torrey and Marius caught Desiree, halting each in their tracks.

“Father! That’s my father!” Desiree grit her exclamation from between her teeth. She stared longingly at Teigh. “Marius, let me go.”

Torrey didn’t protest Shade’s hold. She stood a little behind him and eyed Soren warily. Her light brown eyes edged in silver, and the welcoming expression on her face cracked. Her gaze flicked from Soren to Riley to Teigh and back. She turned to Riley, questions swimming in her eyes that didn’t need a voice. “Desiree, stay back.”

At Torrey’s quiet command, Desiree ceased struggling. She zeroed in on Soren, which is where everyone else’s gazes were parked. Her eyes widened in understanding. She exchanged an almost imperceptible glance with Torrey. Without warning, the two shifted and sprang forward. The sound of rending seams was lost in the inhuman squealing that followed.

Shade and Marius shifted. Each bounded in Soren’s direction. He shifted, meeting his brothers in battle. The noise of hostile snarls filled the air.

Flynn didn’t shift, but he did close the distance between him and Riley. He tried to snatch her up, but she batted his hands away. Before Soren had bitten her, she wouldn’t have been able to see his approach, much less protest it. He would have been able to take her off to wherever he intended before she would have processed what happened. Now the playing field had evened out.

He settled for herding her and Teigh away from the battle.

Riley watched as Torrey landed on one demon. She held it down with her paw and ripped the head clean off. Behind her, a fire bloomed. Demetrius knelt next to it, having used his command of fire to summon it. She tossed the body in first. A shower of sparks burst, and then she tossed the head into the orange flames.

Desiree did the same with another demon. Riley gasped in shock. She hadn’t seen that second one. Three more appeared. Torrey and Desiree made short work of two, but even more appeared. Hundreds.

“There are too many,” she said. “They can’t do this alone.”

With that, she called power to her body. She heard Flynn’s gasp at her transformation, but she didn’t pay it much mind. Her lover, her sister, and her friend were in serious jeopardy. The demons, which looked like red-tinted leprechauns without the clothes, had multiplied. Riley had no idea how many attacked Torrey and Desiree.

She jumped into the fray, systematically decapitating demons and tossing them into the fire Demetrius had built. Sharp teeth bit her legs and body. Everywhere she looked, the sea of demons threatened to overwhelm her. Renewing her efforts, she fought hard. Soren’s sanity, their future, and that of their daughters were at stake.

Her backside bumped into those of Torrey and Desiree. The demons had managed to corral the three of them, surrounding them on the edge of the valley clearing. Memories of a similar circumstance, only with humans instead of demons, surfaced. That battle had been futile. There had been too many of them, and her reluctance to use her magic to harm them had led to their defeat.

Well, she had no such compassion this time. The magic she used to transform them all had worked on the humans as well, turning them into something befitting their actions. Gathering all the iron in her will, she sent forth a pulse of magic. It behaved as a blast wave, knocking them down. Those closest to her incinerated. The she-wolves attacked those that remained. The tide of the battle had turned. Never again would these souls have the chance to attack her or those she loved.

When everything settled down, Riley searched the tangle of wolves for Soren. She found him pinned to the ground. Shade’s jaw opened, unclamping from Soren’s neck. He and Marius backed away. Riley rushed between them and shifted. She fell to her knees next to Soren. He stared up at her, his expression unreadable.

“Are you all right?” She smoothed her hands over his neck where Shade had bitten him, but she found no injuries.

“He didn’t fight me.” Shade’s voice came from behind Riley, but she didn’t turn around. She didn’t take her eyes from Soren, whose fathomless eyes stared at her with an emotion she couldn’t name.

After far too long, Soren shifted back to his human form. He sat up, hooked his hand around the back of her neck, and pulled her to him. The post-shift, wolfish scent of him held her just as much as his hand. He paused with his lips one tantalizing inch away. Tension and anger vibrated from him. She didn’t understand why he wasn’t turning handsprings over the fact they had freed him from the demons.

He exhaled hard and released her. “I barely had the energy to shift back. What the hell have you done to me?”

She reached for him, but he pushed her hands away. Anguish constricted her chest and she had to force herself to breathe. “Soren, please don’t do this.”

Slowly, and with a great deal of difficulty, he lumbered to his feet. She rose with him, careful to keep her distance. Once vertical, he scowled at her. “I trusted you, Riley. All this time, I thought I was a danger to you, and it turns out you’re the greater danger. If losing myself is what it takes to be with you, then I don’t want to be with you.”

She licked her lips, desperately trying to bring feeling back to them. “Your compulsion is gone. We killed hundreds of them.”

“I’m barely a wolf anymore. This is what you’ve planned all along, isn’t it?”

“No.” She nearly choked on the word in her rush to reassure him. “I didn’t plan any of this. Soren, I love you.”

“
Riley
loved me. You’re not Riley anymore. You’re Circe, and I don’t know her. I don’t want to know her.” His gaze slid past her and his body followed. “Shade, can I borrow a pair of pants?”

Blood drained from her face, leaving it so cold the tear that fell burned as it slid down her cheek. Teigh’s arms engulfed her. She turned and buried her face in his chest. Once again, he held her as she cried over Soren.

“He’ll come around, Circe. Give him time. Losing his ability to shape-shift isn’t easy. He’s defined himself as a wolf for as long as he can remember. He needs time to come to terms with it, especially now that you’ve gained that ability as well.”

She lifted her head to stare into his warm brown eyes. “Teigh, we don’t have time. We have until tonight, and then we lose Caiden forever. All this time, all this pain and sacrifice will have been for nothing. I can’t let that happen. I can’t lose you or Caiden or Soren.”

He smoothed his thumb down her temple and across her cheek. “Let me talk to him, babe. Let me see if I can get him to see reason.”

With that, he turned her over to Torrey and Desiree. Torrey wrapped an arm around Riley’s waist. Desiree squeezed her hand. Together, the three of them headed to the house into which Soren hadn’t gone.

Soren slid into a pair of Shaden’s jeans. They fit perfectly. He eyed the wall full of shelves that held all of Shaden and Torrey’s clothes. Out in the open like that, they probably didn’t trigger Shaden’s compulsion like things put away in drawers always did.

Compulsion
. Soren had always hated his compulsion, but he had worn it like a badge of honor anyway. Having one meant he was one of the most powerful wolves in his pack. Average wolves didn’t have compulsions, and Soren had always taken pride in his exceptionalism.

“Torrey made you build these, didn’t she?”

Shaden smiled. If Soren had been able to muster one, they would have been mirror images. The only real difference in their physical features lay in their coloring. Where Soren had blond hair and teal eyes, Shaden had black hair and brown eyes almost as dark as the night sky. A day’s growth of stubble stained both their jaws.

“It seems my soul mate prefers a home where things are picked up. I’ve learned to clean up my messes.”

Soren raised a brow. “It’s a compulsion. You can’t help it.”

Shaden’s lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “If you don’t learn to control it, it will control you. Torrey and the kids help clean stuff up after I have an episode, which happens much less frequently than they used to. She doesn’t get mad or pissy about it, but she does find it frustrating. Soren, you’re stalling. I think the real issue is what the hell did you do to Riley out there?”

The brightness of midday drew Soren to the window. Being on the second floor, the window offered a breathtaking view. A long yard led down to a stream. Across the way, the tree-covered slope rose to impressive heights. Wanderlust seized him just from looking at the vastness. The image of Riley as a wolf came to him. Full of reds, golds, and oranges, she displayed all the colors of the sun, as befit the daughter of the sun. He pinched the headache starting between his eyes, generated by shades of regret and pangs stemming from the bleakness of her eyes as he walked away from her.

 
“I spent ten years looking for her. I wanted to apologize. I wanted to make it up to her. I wanted…” He pressed his forehead against the cool glass.

“You wanted to make a life with her.”

Soren nodded. “I never thought I would meet a woman that made me feel like I could be more than I am. But she did. I wanted to kick this compulsion for her. I left Lyton. I gave all of my responsibilities to Tiffany and I left the pack. I had no power and no way of getting any. I thought it was gone.”

Shaden flopped down on the bed. He settled back against a bank of pillows and crossed his legs at the ankle. “Compulsions don’t go away.”

The moment that demon had appeared, the truth of his curse had come crashing down on him.

“No, they don’t, especially not when you flip for someone who turns out to be a minor Goddess.” He sat on the edge of the bed opposite his brother. “Shaden, she took some of my power. I understand why she did it. I dragged her here to have you guys perform the ceremony to restore her immortality, and then I planned to harvest her power. I’m barely a wolf now, and I’ve never been much of a man.”

Shaden scooted across the bed to sit next to Soren. “Stop beating yourself up. She fell in love with the man, not the wolf. When you had her at the house, she had no idea you were a wolf. She spent that time getting to know you. Believe me, I’ve spent years watching her hold on to her anger toward you because that’s all she had left.”

Anger indicated strong feelings. It hadn’t taken much for Soren to convert her feelings to positive ones. He knew the point Shaden tried to make, yet he couldn’t get over the way weakness constricted his chest. He’d always been the strong one. He was the pack leader. Nobody had more developed senses. If he no longer held claim to any of those things, what did he have to offer a mate?

Soren waited, knowing his brother hadn’t finished speaking. When the silence stretched, he turned and found Shaden rubbing his jaw, deep in thought. “You don’t seem upset about what she’s done to me.”

Shaden laughed briefly, and then he regarded Soren with a somber expression. “She’s given you back to me. If that makes you a weaker wolf, so be it. I can’t find it in my heart to be angry at a woman who made it so that my best friend and brother can be part of my life again.”

A knock at the door interrupted anything more Shaden might have said. Soren should have been able to identify the scent of the person standing on the other side of that slab of wood, but his senses failed him. He growled in frustration.

The door opened to reveal Teigh. The handsome man rested a hand on each side of the door frame. “Does that growl mean I should come in or go away?”

Soren’s heart pounded. Would Teigh reject him now, subjecting him to the same heartbreak he had dealt Riley? “Come in.”

Teigh crossed the room and held his hand out to Shaden. “I’m glad to see you made good use of that address. Torment is exceptionally happy, and those girls are just lovely.”