The beautiful log house peeked out from behind a crop of cherry blossom trees. Bran moved the truck at a creep down the long, graveled drive. Kenna caught herself holding her breath when the truck came to a stop. Woodlands surrounded the manicured lawn. She slipped out of the truck before Bran could make it around to help her down. He didn’t say anything while they walked up the few steps of the wraparound porch. A woman with white-blond hair and bright purple eyes answered Bran’s knock. She waddled toward them with her arm wrapped round the large swell of a baby belly.
“Welcome!” She rushed to Bran as quickly as her waddle would allow and hugged him tight. She slipped a pair of balled-up socks into his hand. She pulled back and searched his face. Her excitement drained away. “Gypsy will be here soon. What happened?”
Bran shrugged a little, even as his usual expression lost its confidence.
“I’m half faery,” Kenna said, hoping it would explain something. “And he thinks he needs to protect me.”
“Oh,” the woman said as deep worry creased her brow. “Oh my. Okay, well, welcome. I am Clover, and the huge man behind me is my husband, Rune. Why don’t we go have a seat in the kitchen, and I can fix us all something to drink while we wait for Gypsy.”
“I don’t mean to cause your friend trouble,” Kenna said.
Rune was as huge, if not bigger, than Bran. He was all blond hair and blue eyes. She suspected he could be a Viking, which should be impossible, but Bran was an ancient Druid. Impossible had started to lose its meaning. Rune appraised her before shaking his head. “You’re no trouble at all.”
The men exchanged looks in some unspoken communication. It didn’t take a psychic to know. She was a problem. They were all just being too polite to say it. It took her a moment to force her feet into motion and follow Clover to the kitchen. “So you’re the one who knits him socks.”
“Yes,” Clover said with a nervous giggle. “I’ve been meaning to make him a couple of cotton pairs for the summer.” She rubbed her large belly. “I’ve been busy making blankets and booties.”
“I see,” Kenna said. “I knit. I could do it.” She winced, having no idea why she’d just volunteered to make Bran a set of summer socks.
A wide smile stretched across Clover’s face. “Absolutely wonderful! I can take you yarn shopping in my yarn room later if you’re serious. He loves his socks, and anyone willing to make him a pair will earn his undying loyalty.”
This wasn’t awkward; well, maybe it was, but she could get through it. If she could only understand the attraction she had for Bran, maybe she’d be able to ignore it so she didn’t get him killed. She took the seat where Clover indicated. “I can help.”
“No,” Clover said. “I am ready to have this baby, and the more active I am, the sooner I hope it happens.” She went to the cabinet next to the refrigerator. “What did he tell you about us?”
“Just how you and Rune are his friends,” Kenna said as she laced her fingers together and tried not to appear nervous.
“I’m a Valkyrie, and Rune is Thor’s son,” Clover said. She turned to pour iced tea into the glasses she’d just gotten out of the cabinet.
“Oh,” Kenna said, trying to absorb the bit of information. “That would be why Bran isn’t worried about an order of Blood Druids?”
“A what?”
Kenna twisted in the chair to look at the kitchen door where a woman who could pass as her family stood. The woman had bright red hair and vivid green eyes, but instead of the softer points at the tips of her ears, they were sharper and showcased by how she wore her hair. She rushed into the room to Clover. “Go sit,” she insisted. “I’ll handle this. Go,” she said, giving Clover a pointed look before looking over her shoulder. “I am Gypsy. Whatever Bran told you about me is probably all true, but I will need details to make sure. Did you really say Blood Druid order?”
Kenna bit her lower lip and then let out a slow breath. “Those are bad, even for, um, what they are?”
Gypsy shooed Clover to the table. She took an absurdly long time fixing the iced tea, almost as if she was trying to make Kenna as nervous as she could possibly get. Then she brought the three glasses over to the table and sat down next to Clover. “Bran is powerful, but he is one. An order is many.”
Bran had said basically the same thing. She was toast. Damn it! “I can’t stay here.” Kenna stood up. “Thank you all, but, Clover, you’re going to be a mother, and it’s not right I put anyone in danger.”
Gypsy caught her by the wrist. “Tell me everything that happened since you met Bran.” Gypsy flashed a pretty smile. “Trust me, Bran will not be easy to get along with if he has to hunt you down to bring you back.”
Kenna looked between the two women before sitting down. The story started out stilted and slow until she found herself babbling at them about everything, even the steamy kiss in the parking lot.
Gypsy’s eyes were large by the time Kenna finished the story. “Druid’s blood! He’s your mate!”
“What? Wait, no!” Kenna’s heart hammered in her chest. “No, I am not doing the fated-mate thing with some man who gets no choice in the matter!” Fated love only worked out in storybooks and movies. Her life was too messed up to get a happy ending, if such a thing did exist. “I have to go. The Order will kill him, and it will be my fault. I can’t let that happen.”
She stood up and turned in a circle looking for her car keys and then remembered her car was eight miles away. “Can one of you take me back to my car?” She sat down hard in the wooden chair. She was dead. James’s power kept getting stronger. The last time she’d faced him alone, she only barely escaped him. She’d been trapped in a warehouse with James and the rest of the Order one moment, and the next she’d appeared in her car. It was unexplainable, but at the time she hadn’t cared how she’d managed to do it. Everything about her was wrong for Bran. She willed back the sting of tears in her eyes. “I can’t do this to him. He doesn’t even like faeries.”
Clover reached over the table to wrap a hand around hers. “Kenna, sweetheart, you need to calm down. You need to talk to him about this before you make any rash decisions.”
“The stupid man would let himself get killed.” It wasn’t something anyone had to tell her. He’d said he protected innocents. In her head, it meant he was the type to martyr himself if he thought there was a reason to do it. “Why would he let himself get killed?”
“He can’t die,” Gypsy said in a calm tone. She settled against the back of her chair before she sipped at her tea. “The man has been cursed for the last two thousand years. Druids are not supposed to be immortal.”
“It just makes it worse if he can’t die.” She gritted her teeth before she finished. “He knows. It’s what he meant in the car on the way over here! He’s sorry because we’re stuck with each other. Stupid man.” She stood up. “Where is he? I need to talk to him.”
Clover pointed at the back door. “He and Rune usually hang out in the garage when Gypsy is here.”
Kenna snorted and then bolted out the back door. She’d apologize for being rude later. The garage door was open when she got there. The men stopped talking. Rune looked worried while Bran looked as if he’d just lost his last friend.
Kenna didn’t enter. She stood at the door. “Hi.”
“My cue to get out of here,” Rune said.
Kenna didn’t enter until Rune was in the house. She slowly walked over to where Bran stood staring at the concrete block wall with his arms crossed over his chest. “You should ask Gypsy whatever questions you have about faeries before we get out of here. I’d rather the Order not find you here with Clover in her condition.”
“I can talk to Gypsy another time.” Talking to a faery didn’t seem as life changing anymore. Knowing what was happening between her and Bran took precedence. “She said you’re my mate. Is it true? Did you know?”
His shoulders rounded, and he didn’t look at her. “I suspected. You need to understand this, Kenna. Nothing has to be done about it until the Druid problem is handled, but you are not backing out of this thing between us.”
He wasn’t possessive before, and his change in attitude confused her. If she thought she could get away with it, she’d smack him in the back of his head just to try to get some sense into him. “No one says you have to do anything. I mean, God, you don’t even like what I am, do you?”
He moved so fast she had no chance to get away from him. He had her up off the ground and locked between him and the wall with his hips pinning her there. His face was right in close to hers as his hands held her head in place. His voice was raw. “I control this, sweetheart. It’s your sanity on the line if I decide to walk. I have no faery blood. It won’t affect me.”
She swallowed hard and pushed at his chest.
It took a moment before he let her slip to the floor and took a step backward. “A crazy faery is a deadly faery.”
Her face crumpled as she slowly nodded. It all made perfect sense. He was stuck with her or he’d have to kill her because of what she’d turn into without her mate. Just exactly what she didn’t need. She squeezed her eyes shut to keep tears from falling. “All right,” she whispered. “I’ll go tell the others we need to leave.”
“Kenna,” he said in the same raw tone as she walked out of the garage. “Wait.”
She put up a hand and waved him off. She couldn’t talk to him right now without crying. Everyone she’d ever cared about ended up stuck with poor little Kenna and her mysterious issues. The last blow to her fragile heart was that all the heat and magic between her and Bran wasn’t real. He’d picked up on the screwed-up magic connecting them. She needed him, and he was prepared to sacrifice himself for her. It wasn’t right.
Was there such a thing as a good faery if she trapped a man against his will simply by existing? She didn’t know, and at the moment, she wasn’t sure she could face the answer.
*
Law watched her walk away. Pain constricted his chest. He couldn’t stand the devastated look in her eyes, but he didn’t know how to cope with this. In no way should a faery ever have to depend on him for her life. He always said the wrong thing at the wrong time. His reaction to things could be harsh, and faeries were too damn sensitive.
She might fare better having him walk away when she was safe from the Order. It might make her less crazy than having to deal with his failings for the rest of forever.
Either way, he had to get Kenna away from Clover. He took the chance to give Kenna answers. Between him and Rune, they’d easily be able to handle Druids, even of ancient bloodlines. To risk pissing off the Norse pantheon of gods would be a fatal mistake. Odin, the allfather of the Norse pantheon, would be the great-grandfather of Rune’s child. While he knew it wouldn’t mean much in a couple thousand years, for now, the Norse gods and goddesses were fiercely protective of the coming child. Dragging Clover into any kind of danger was stupid.
The Celt gods were just as petty and idiotic as the Norse pantheon. Now that he had a mate, they could find new and sadistic ways to torment him. He’d known this was going to get bad, but he just hadn’t counted on screwing up with her this soon. If he’d had more time to wrap his head fully around getting his very own faery as a mate, maybe he could let her know just how very lucky he thought he was to be stuck with a half faery for the rest of his unnaturally immortal life.
He closed up the garage before heading up to the porch. The best thing about having Rune for a friend was he knew when to leave things alone, and right now, Law needed to be left alone to figure out how to get his head screwed on straight. Kenna’s life depended on him being able to pull it together. Law sat down on the steps and pulled his mother’s pendant out of his shirt. He wrapped his hand around the metal, warm from touching his skin.
“I know you gods have no love for me. I’m still not sure what I did to earn the fate you gave me, but Kenna didn’t do anything.” He hoped beyond all things she hadn’t done anything to deserve death. “She deserves something better than what I have to offer.” He opened his hand and looked down at the complicated knot. He closed his eyes and clenched his fist over the pendant. “I need to be everything Kenna needs. I want her to be exactly as she appears to be. I can protect her. I can be a good mate. I can. I just need for the seen and unseen to stop screwing with me.” He let out a slow, shuddering breath.
He clasped his other hand over his fist as he braced his elbows on his knees and rested his forehead on his knuckles. He was opening himself up for a devastation he’d never be able to recover from, but he had to try. Rune had risked an eternity in Norse Hell for Clover to have a happy life, and it had worked out. Maybe, just once, the gods would take pity on him, not for his sake, but for Kenna’s. She was of the favored faery. They had to grant him this one thing. For two thousand years, he’d done their bidding, knowing they’d never give him reprieve from the curse. He’d done it because serving justice had been the right thing to do. They had to grant him this one thing because it wasn’t for him.
It was for her.
His shoulders trembled as he drew in a breath. “I wish.” His voice shook, but he forced himself to put himself at the complete mercy of the gods. “I wish Kenna and I could share a real love, the self-sacrificing kind. The kind that never gives up and eventually works. She deserves it.” He whispered the last part. I deserve it. But he didn’t say it because the gods would never give him something good if it was for his benefit.