“Are you going to mate to him again?” Juniper asked the next day as she hefted up a pair of Kenna’s socks out of a bag. “Because we need him stable. It’s just not right for Justice to be so unpredictable.” She got the no-show socks up over the rim of the bag and dropped them onto the bed.
Kenna strained something not reaching over to help the five-point-five-inch-tall pixie, but she’d already had one twenty-minute lecture this morning on how Juniper was able to do things herself. She went back to rearranging Law’s sock drawer to accommodate her things. “We’re working out how to make it official for us. Gods, Druids, and faeries.” She moved out of the way for Juniper to have a direct line to the drawer. She looked like a bumblebee flying with the balled-up socks. “It’s all confusing exactly what we should be doing.”
Juniper landed on the edge of the drawer and dropped the socks in. “You’re not leaving?”
“No.” Kenna went to the bags laid out on the bed to grab her underwear to put into the middle drawer. Bran was the tall one. He could have all the high drawers. She shook her head and smiled for Juniper because she did want to be happy, damn it! She deserved at least the chance at it. “We’re supernatural.” She reasoned out for the first time why she thought this mad feeling of love was growing between her and Bran. “We can sense things before humans would know them. We feel things on a different level.”
She dropped the clothes back onto the bed and started doing an excited happy dance. She wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t latching onto Bran because she was weak and pathetic. She was falling for him because her whole being was able to assess him and learn about him and know him in a way humans couldn’t begin to do.
Juniper spiraled up in a puff of sparkling fairy dust. She came down on top of the dresser doing a little hop and wing flutter with her Cabbage Patch moves. She laughed and giggled and then looked at Kenna with her overly large turquoise eyes. “Why are we happy?”
Kenna giggled as she all but floated over to the dresser. “It’s not destiny. It’s two beings with hyperactive senses dating. Who needs a year when we can feel and see and hear so much!” Ecstatic didn’t begin to describe her. “I have to go tell Bran!” She ran into the hall, down the steps, and into the kitchen with Juniper right behind her. She came to a stop. The men were standing just right of the center island glaring at each other.
“Is testosterone even a factor for gods?” Kenna asked.
Bran turned his head. The side of his lip curled. “We’re discussing politics.”
“Tsk-tsk,” Kenna said as she bounced over to him. She slipped her body between the two posturing males and hugged Bran tight. She grinned up at him. “While I do understand why you can’t separate religion and politics, can we keep it a little lighter?”
He huffed at her before his head dipped down for him to kiss the tip of her nose. “What is it? You seem excited.”
“I am.” She slipped her hand into his. “You and Boden can growl at each other later. Come.”
The hard lines of his face softened, and then he followed her down into the living room. “Kenna.”
She jumped up into his arms, wrapped her legs around his waist, and planted a hot kiss right on his scrumptious lips.
He laughed and kissed her back. “What’s going on?”
“We’re not dysfunctional,” she said with a laugh. “We are normal for what we are, and we are falling in love!”
*
Her joy enveloped him like its own living, breathing thing. It seeped into his pores and filled up every sense he had. Law took the opportunity to kiss her long and slow, letting her emotion sweep them both up into its heavenly grasp.
Falling in love. Is that what he was doing? With Kenna. It was what he wanted. His wish…
He held her tight and tilted his head to see up to into the kitchen.
Boden stood at the door with arms crossed over his chest. He nodded once and turned his back.
Law gave Kenna one more languid kiss before setting her down on her feet. He lightly brushed the pad of his thumb over her cheek. “We are falling hard.” He bent down and kissed the side of her mouth. “Boden and I need to finish our conversation, and then I promise you, we will go do whatever you think we need to do.”
Her eyes narrowed on him as one fist planted on her hip. “What’s wrong?”
“Considering gods aren’t really death-proof, and we both have other entities gunning for us, I need a plan, and with Rune—”
“Then call him,” Kenna said. “I know you don’t want to bother him, but tell me even if I was pregnant, you’d allow him to be in danger without going to help him.” One of her delicate brows lifted.
His eye started to twitch. His mouth opened and then closed.
“You’re growling,” she said. Her bare foot tapped against the hardwood floor.
“I do not growl,” he snapped at her. “I am not dragging Rune into—”
“You do too growl. I am not telling you to drag anyone into anything, but we have been alone for…how long?” She moved in close and touched her fingers to his shirt-covered chest. “He is your friend. You would give your life to help him. Why do you think he doesn’t feel the same?”
He dragged in a breath and then brushed hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ear. “I know, and I also know Rune would run all other possibilities out before asking for my help if you were…” He swallowed hard at the thought of him having a child with anyone, let alone with Kenna. “If we…” He decided to skip it. “He’d try to find another way first. Boden has offered his help with no strings attached.”
She gave a fierce hug and stepped back. “Include me in your plans and do not forget to tell me what’s going on, or so help me, if you go off and do something stupid on your own, I will hunt you down. Even if I have to sneak into the underworld on my own, I will find you, and I will make you wish you’d just included me in saving us.”
Law tightened his jaw to keep from laughing. She was so damn adorable when she got all protective of him, but he knew better than to even crack half a smile. “Yes, ma’am.”
Her eyes narrowed again before she let out a huff and nodded. “Go, do your manly battle planning. I am going to finish unpacking, and then we are going to find some way to start doing couple-have-fun things. I do not care if it’s just shopping for a new bedroom set online.”
“What’s wrong with the bedroom set?” he asked while secretly enjoying she was finally owning their fate together.
“It’s all gray metal! Dear Lord, Bran, you need some color and warmth in your life.” She walked off, muttering to herself about cold gray and stark white.
“I just moved in a few months ago,” he called after her. It was true. He’d settled here when Rune and Clover moved from Illinois to Pennsylvania to be closer to Clover’s aging mortal aunt.
Kenna turned when she got to the bottom step. “We’ll be ordering paint. This house is too pretty to be boring.” Then she went up the steps in a bouncing jog only a woman could pull off.
He groaned. Having her three times during the night and once this morning apparently hadn’t been enough to keep from wanting her long enough to get his battle plan solidified and implemented. He went back to the kitchen where Boden was waiting for him.
Boden leaned against the countertop. “Your wish is coming true, without the usual bullshit.”
“Aye,” Law said. He stood in the center of the kitchen for a moment before deciding to make a grilled chicken salad for lunch. If Kenna wanted to be part of the action, she was going to need extra protein that wasn’t harmful for her. The fae had delicate digestive systems, and while she was part human, Druid. She is part Druid, she still had sensitivity to some things. “If our feelings for each other are real, why did you undo the mating?”
“You would always have doubt,” Boden said. “There would always be a lingering doubt if what she felt for you was genuine or a product of magic.”
Law snorted as he went to the refrigerator to get what he needed to start making lunch. “You could grant me wishes from the pendant, but you couldn’t get out?”
“You know we are not all-powerful. We have limits, and my sister knows mine.”
Law put his collection of lettuce and vegetables on the counter next to Boden before going to get out the precut chicken. “Your powers are mine,” he said as a matter of fact. “How do I know you aren’t going to be overpowered by a band of Druids?”
Boden went to the cabinet where the indoor grill was kept. “Druantia bound us together in an effort to keep me hidden from Morrigan. What she thinks happened and what actually did happen are two different things.”
Law stilled and turned a glare at Boden. “Then what did happen?”
“You must understand,” Boden said as he placed the grill on the countertop and backed up a pace. “I didn’t do it. You were…” He let out a sigh and moved back another step. “Dagda and Merida. She was a beautiful woman and devout, and Dagda wasn’t above bedding a willing woman. Morrigan isn’t like Hera or even Sif. She doesn’t get jealous, and Druantia hid me with you because—”
“No. No!” he roared. Law gripped the knife handle he was holding so hard it cracked. “I am a bastard son, but I am not the bastard son of…” Wait. This could be useful if it was true. Being the illegitimate son of an allfather god would have perks. “Call him. If Dagda is my father, then he should be overjoyed to speak with his son.”
Boden lost a measure of color. “I-I can’t. Morrigan—”
Law dropped the knife on the counter and washed his hands. Then he bellowed, “Dagda!”
In a blink, a man of Law’s build and size appeared in the ever-shrinking kitchen as it filled up with gods. He wore a simple brown tunic, hooded cape, and leather breeches and boots. His head cocked as he studied Law, and a smile touched his lips. “You called for me?”
Law’s eyes rolled. “Are you my father?”
“Presumably,” Dagda said while slowly making a half circle around Law, studying him.
“What half-baked bullshit reason do you have for not informing me of this until now?”
Dagda laughed. “Old Celtic customs. A boy is not to be presented to his father until he is a man. Gods age slower than others.”
“God my ass,” Law snapped at him. “I have not been a boy in many centuries. Give me the truth, or you can leave.”
Dagda winced. “I knew not of ye. Your mother had not informed me, nor had she ever asked me for a favor after your birth.”
“And you accept me at my word?” Law asked, more curious than anything else.
Dagda shrugged. “Your power signature is similar to mine.”
Law nodded once in acceptance before he shook his head. “Did she know what you are?”
“No. She thought I was a warrior from the north. We enjoyed a night.” He shrugged.
“And yet you remember her, how is that?”
Dagda laughed. “She is the mother of the infamous Celt, the great terror of all those with half-Sidhe blood. Her favor is high with the god Labraid in the underworld, and she is the reason Kier was given the vision of Altair to warn ye.”
“Seen and unseen,” Law said. He was beginning to think his luck with anything wasn’t luck at all. “And Morrigan?”
“Is only a worry for Boden here. He pissed her off right well, but she is also of a more level head. She does not go hunting beings with more power than she has.”
Law went back to his task of making Kenna lunch. The word Sidhe had been synonymous with the fae folk for a long time, and he’d nearly forgotten. Language was ever changing and growing into something new. The Celtic gods hadn’t called themselves gods. They were the powerful Sidhe. Anything half-blood contained some form of powerful magic, just not as powerful as the full-blooded Sidhe. Humans needed gods and termed anything with great power as such. He chopped a green pepper. “Then Boden is safe from your wife’s wrath while under my roof?”
“Yes,” Dagda said. “The mixing of blood can create powerful beings. There is reason humans were sometimes sacrificed in ancient rituals.”
“Aye, so when you mix Sidhe with human, you get a Druid or a faery, and when you get enough of them, you have an entire race of half-bloods?”
“It’s a crude way of explaining it, but yes,” Dagda said. “I can make the food for you in a faster way.”
“Aye,” Law said. “But a mundane task is sometimes just what the mind needs to think clearly. The human blood from my mother?”
“Adds to your power,” Dagda said. “Sometimes it dilutes it, but in you, it enhanced your power.”
Next to the sink appeared a Bean Sidhe, Banshee, in maiden form. The water turned on, and it appeared as if she was washing clothes. Her wail shrieked through the house. If Law hadn’t magic-proofed the windows, they’d have blown out. Those clothes. He knew them. His eyes widened as fear gripped his heart.
It took a heartbeat for Law to fully figure out what he was looking at. A Bean Sidhe was warning him of someone’s pending death.
Kenna’s clothes.
A scream of terror echoed through the cabin from upstairs. The sound of stomping, running feet came through the ceiling. Law closed his eyes and blinked to get to where Kenna was. The blink should have taken him right into the bedroom, but he ended up in the hallway. There was a loud crash.
Law slammed into the door to get inside. It wouldn’t open. He blinked, but nothing happened. Kenna’s next scream was cut off with the sound of metal striking wood.
“Cóir!” Law bellowed. The sword appeared in his hand, and he drove it into the center of the door. Magic pulsed and rippled around it. He twisted the sword, and the wooden door exploded.
The Dain, Law’s ancient foe, held Kenna by her throat. She clutched her hands to her chest as if she was protecting something precious. “Run,” she mouthed and threw Juniper at him.
Law caught the tiny pixie and handed her behind him, knowing Boden would be there to take her. His deadly focus fixated on the Dain. “Let her go!”
The man’s head snapped up. Glowing red eyes stared back at Law for a long moment before a smile slithered across his face. The bloodred sword in his right hand shrunk down to the size of a throwing knife. He held the blade to Kenna’s throat. “Your Sidhe is beautiful. I will enjoy making her scream for me.”
Law hurled the sword at the Dain. He vanished in a plume of faery dust when the blade went through Kenna. Cóir embedded into the wall behind where the Dain had been standing. Law shot across the room and caught Kenna as her body folded downward.
She whimpered as he gently lifted her up into his arms. He was afraid to look at her. That thing in here was the Celtic personification of violence and the son of the immortal witch, Carmen. He got a man’s attachment to his mother, but Carmen’s sons took it to a whole other and creepy level. The Dain should have been in the underworld playing the perfect role of mama’s boy for the rest of eternity. Law had already defeated him.
Kenna whimpered, drawing Law back to the present.
He refused to look at her as he got her out of the room covered in a million tiny wood shards. He was going to be vacuuming for a week to get it all up. He stood in the hall with her, not sure what to do for a moment. Minor injuries he could heal, but the Dain had wailed on her, because that’s what he always did to his victims. There was no telling what kind of damage could have been done internally. While she was immortal, faeries could be killed the same way humans could, and those of Druid heritage could not self-heal. He didn’t know if Kenna could heal her own wounds. He blinked them downstairs to where Boden and Dagda were watching the Bean Sidhe.
The young woman stopped washing Kenna’s clothes and looked up at Law with a faint smile on her face before she faded out. A note of laughter followed her. Law shook his head as he gingerly laid Kenna down on the island countertop. He couldn’t put it off any longer. He had to see the damage done.
He dragged air into frozen lungs and forced himself to look at her face. His fear of her inability to heal was confirmed. A string of curses dropped out of his mouth. Her right eye was swollen shut, her bottom lip was split open, and the left side of her face was already turning an ugly color. Law pushed up her shirt to reveal the areas on her abdomen that were starting to turn colors and the two places on her rib cage where she probably had cracked ribs.
“What the…?” Boden’s voice trailed off. “You warded the house.”
“It wasn’t Altair,” Law said as he linked his fingers with Kenna. He might not be able to heal wounds this bad, but he could ease her pain. He staggered and leaned against the counter. Pain slid through every part of his body as he absorbed her pain. He held himself up by hanging onto the countertop while he panted through the worst wave.
“Eir.” He gritted out the Valkyrie’s name with a talent for healing.
She appeared in a golden flash of light. “By Odin Allfather, what did you do to her?”
Death clung to the question if Law didn’t answer it correctly. “The Dain. I just don’t understand.” And it didn’t make sense, nor did it look like Eir was going to buy it. The Dain had been imprisoned in the realm of the unseen for nearly ten centuries.
“Do not lie to me, Celt,” Eir snapped at him as she took a step forward. “You have guarded the woman bearing Odin’s great grandson. If—”
“He didn’t do it,” Dagda said. He explained to her as much as he understood of what happened.
Eir narrowed her eyes on all three men before she flicked her hand at them. “Be gone. I need room to work.”
“But she’ll feel the pain,” Law said dumbly as if Eir didn’t understand that simple fact of being beaten.
“I am aware,” she said sternly. “If you refuse to leave, all three of you can stay there until Ragnarök feeling her pain.”
Law snarled at her. If she didn’t watch it, he would start the end of the world. “This is my mate!”
Eir patted his cheek, and her expression went softer. “Then why don’t you go find out who released the Dain while I make her feel all better? It will keep you out of my hair while I work.”
“Eir?”
“I can’t do this with the other males staring at me,” she snapped. “Take them somewhere else.”
It was a way to get rid of him. He never got exactly why, but Eir didn’t like to heal anyone with an audience. He stared down at Kenna for a good, hard minute before he looked back to Eir. “Not until you are touching her.”
“Of course, Celt,” she murmured and moved in to shove him out of the way.
When one of Eir’s small hands wrapped around Kenna’s even tinier one, Law reluctantly let go. He motioned for the others to follow him. He needed to get the room cleaned up and patch the hole in the wall. And send the sword back to Tír na nÓg. He tore off up to the second floor. Never since he’d been burdened with the damn sword had he forgotten to send it home before taking care of the casualties.
His breathing was ragged when he got to the bedroom door to see Cóir sticking out of the wall. He walked over to it and pulled it out of the plaster. He spoke the words needed to send it home and scanned the room. He was going to go find every Sidhe and half Sidhe left alive and kill them. Nothing and no one was ever going to hurt his Kenna again, ever. He’d leave her with Boden. Two Sidhe should be able to protect her while he went on his mad killing spree.
This was the problem with god powers. It gave too many lunatics too much power to feed the fuel of their sadistic natures. Cóir would be left out of this. He couldn’t risk any of them living.
Dagda was standing there. “She will need you when she wakes.”
“She needs to be safe.”
“Aye, lad,” Dagda said. “And you’ll do it for her, but ye cannot do it if you’re off killing innocent blood.”
“I don’t—”
Dagda reached over to touch his shoulder, and pain expanded in his chest. Law crumpled to the floor and passed out.