MENA - ONE MONTH LATER
I roll over in the warmth of the bed and feel cold sheets where my husband should be. I slowly open one lone eyelid, irritated, until I smell the coffee. The other eyelid finally decides it’s okay to open. Asher is sitting shirtless, just in his gray pajama bottoms, in his new reading chair, bare feet crossed on the ottoman I made him get.
“Got any of that for me?”
“Me, the book, or the coffee?” he asks his eyebrow raised not looking away from the page until he can blindly locate the bookmark on his left armrest.
“The coffee. Duh,” I quip as I roll mostly naked from the bed and pad over the hardwood to sit in his lap. I kiss him on the lips before reaching across him and bring the sweet nectar of life to my lips, the large diamond of my four-carat, cushion-cut, pink diamond wedding ring winking at me in the morning light.
“Well, at least you paid the toll,” he murmurs against the sensitive skin of my neck, and the beginnings of an exquisite make-out session that will most definitely lead to more sex is interrupted by the doorbell. Grumbling, Asher presses one last kiss against my lips before setting me off his lap and padding out of the room to answer the door of our new house on the outskirts of Denver. It serves as a Phoenix headquarters of sorts with the new Wraith hub just forty-five minutes away in a high-rise downtown. It has been a month, and Nicola still hasn’t resurfaced, so Aurelia and I took the mantle as leaders. We have had feelers out almost everywhere looking for her, but when an Oracle doesn’t want to be found, she doesn’t get found.
I refused to set foot in the house in Oregon, and Aurelia said since we’d both been tortured there, setting the motherfucker on fire was a viable option. We didn’t, but it was tempting. We’re still working out the kinks, mostly with the Oracles, but it is getting better. Or it would if I could get Aurelia’s head out of the toilet.
For a woman who claims to be psychic, she sure doesn’t realize when she’s pregnant very quickly. Rhys and I are still trying to persuade her to take a test, but she’s stubborn. She can be stubborn all she wants, I’ll get Ian to take blood on her tomorrow.
We’ll just see who trains while pregnant.
I throw on a bra, a tank, a fuzzy grandpa sweater and some jeans, pop in the bathroom to tame the sex hair and brush my teeth and head for the stairs.
“Mena!” Asher yells for me as I hit the landing and by his voice, I’m running for my husband before I can blink.
Asher is kneeling next to a large man lying on the cold tiles of the foyer. He’s bloody and dirty and enormous. He lays there nearly naked, only wearing tattered jeans, no shoes or shirt at the start of a Colorado winter, and his hair and beard are wild and dirty as if he’s been inside the walls of a cell for a while. The part that concerns me is, he keeps repeating a name - the name of a woman I owe my life to. The woman we’ve been searching for.
“Nicola… They took her from me. They took her over… They put Iva in her. They took her over… Nicola…” he rasps before he loses consciousness right there on the cold tile floor. I look up to Ash, but he’s already answering my question.
“This is Kyle, Nicola’s mate.”
Son of a bitch.
THE END
Don’t miss the next book in the series!
RISING ASHES
