Authors: Charlotte Boyett-Compo
Cynyr’s eyes widened. “But why would She do that?”
“To force the issue of my lady becoming a Reaper,” Arawn said, looking away.
“Why? Only She knows but it makes me even more beholden to Her for Danni’s life.”
“It’s going to be all right,” Cynyr said, and when Arawn met his eye, “with Danielle.”
A sad smile tugged at the corner of the Prime Reaper’s mouth. “I hope so, my friend. By the gods, I hope so.”
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Chapter Nine
Danielle stayed in her apartment, refusing to see anyone. Her meals were left at the door and—thankfully—were eaten but no one saw her for several days after her first Transition had occurred. Once Aingeal had gone by with the determination to make her friend open the door and talk to her but she had heard chuffing noises that told her Danielle had deliberately reverted into Transition. Surprised and concerned, with her fist raised in preparation of knocking, she had decided against it when she heard what sounded like a laugh coming from behind the door.
“Danni?” she called out, and when there was no answer, she started once more to knock but a low voice from the other side of the portal stopped her.
“Go away, Aingeal. I’m not ready to come out yet,” Danni said.
“We need to talk.”
“We will, but not now. Please respect that,” the newest Reaper requested. Against her better judgment, Aingeal had left, her brow furrowed. She had gone straight to her husband’s second-in-command who was working out in the room set aside for the Reapers. She walked up to him where he lay on a bench pushing a bar of heavy weights up and down, grunting as he strained, his biceps flexing in such a way she wanted to run her tongue up and down his bulging arm.
“That is doing strange things to the area between my legs, Coure,” she complained with a flick of her long braid over her shoulder. “Stop it this instant.”
Bevyn blinked, his mouth dropping open as his face turned a particularly strange red color. He quickly dropped the bar of weights into the stand at the top of the bench and practically levitated off the bench, grabbing a towel to hide his naked chest from her. He clutched the towel in front of him as though it were a shield. “W-what are yyou—?”
“Where the hell is your lady?” she demanded with her hands on her hips and her foot tapping out a dangerous rhythm. “Why isn’t she in here protecting you from women flooded with hormones who might leap on you and have their way with you for looking too damned good?”
Coure swallowed and backed up another step, putting distance between himself and the wild woman who was glaring at him. “Aingeal, what the hell has gotten into you?” he asked nervously.
“Cynyr Cree got into me, that’s who!” she yelled. “And look what he did to me. Again!” She pointed to her burgeoning belly that seemed to get bigger with every passing day. That said, she broke down crying, her hands covering her face. 91
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At a complete loss to know what to do, Bevyn just stood there—his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.
“She’s in there reverting back and forth like a gambler flipping a coin and I don’t know how to help her,” Aingeal sobbed.
Bevyn’s dark brows drew together in confusion. “Who?” he asked. “Lea?”
Aingeal lowered her hands to give him a vicious look that made him take another step back. “No, you moron!” she shouted. “Danni! Danni! Danni! Who the hell did you think we were talking about?”
The Shadowlords had warned Bevyn that the closer to term Cynyr’s woman got, the stranger her behavior would be, and he now understood what they’d been talking about. As much as he would have liked to have gone to her and taken her in his arms as Cyn would have done had he been there, he was just a little bit wary of getting too close to the raging termagant. She was looking at him as though he were a tasty side dish and that was doing strange things to his own libido.
“Stop sweating!” she bellowed. “You have no idea what watching the sweat dripping down the side of your neck is doing to me, Coure! Are you taunting me on purpose?”
Eyes wide, Bevyn yanked the towel farther up his body and swiveled his head from side to side, looking for an answer—and failing that—an easy way out of this situation. Lord Kheelan appeared behind Aingeal, his face grave. He glanced at Bevyn and cocked his head to one side in an unspoken command for the Reaper to make his exit quickly.
Bevyn obeyed, rushing past Aingeal without bothering to retrieve either his shirt or his boots.
Aingeal spun around—prepared to scream her rage at the fleeing man—but when she saw the High Lord, she stiffened, and her eyes narrowed into dangerous slits.
“What did you do to Bevyn?”
“I think you should go see Healer Dresden and have him give you a posset to get you in a better humor, wench,” he stated.
If it were at all possible, Aingeal’s eyes narrowed even more lethally. “Would you like me to tell you where you can stick your posset, Ben-Alkazar?” she growled. Not at all concerned with her attitude, the High Lord just looked at her. “What ails you, Aingeal?” he asked in a soft voice.
She opened her mouth to insult him again then her anger deflated and her shoulders slumped. “She’s…” She waffled her hand back and forth then sat down on the exercise bench Bevyn had left and hung her head.
“Not everyone will embrace the Transitioning as you did, sweeting,” Lord Kheelan said. “Each must deal with the change in her own way.”
She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry. I…”
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“You are experiencing the vagaries of your hormones,” he said, sitting on another bench across from her. “It is perfectly understandable.”
“I’m being a bitch,” she complained, her head down once more.
“Well, you surely scared the shit out of Lord Bevyn,” he agreed, and when she grinned, he chuckled. “He needs someone to lay the law down to him from time to time. Lea doesn’t seem inclined to do so.”
Aingeal sighed. “I’ll go apologize to the poor man.”
They were silent for a moment and when Aingeal looked up, she found the High Lord staring at her with an expression that she would have had to be blind not to see. Her face flamed and both of them looked away.
“Danielle will come around,” Lord Kheelan said. “When she realizes two very important things occurred with her Transitioning, she’ll open her door and come out to join us as though nothing ever happened and she’ll not speak of it again.”
Aingeal’s brows came together. “What two things?”
The High Lord doubled his fist then stuck up his thumb. “First, she will realize that had she died, Arawn would have been destroyed completely. She is his mate and he would mourn himself to death for want of her.” He extended his index finger toward her, making his hand look like a child’s imitation of a six-shooter. “Second, she will begin to see that she will now be able to be with Arawn as it was meant for her to be. They will live a long and happy life and she will bear him the children they desire.”
“I hope you’re right,” she said, unable to look him in the eye.
“I am always right, wench,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes. “Just ask me and I’ll tell you.”
She smiled at his conceit. “Then all will be well with the world then, eh,
mo tiarna
?”
“Not quite,” he replied. “The problem lies with Lea.”
“How so?” she asked.
“She is terrified of becoming a Reaper and her fright is all-consuming. It was bad enough before Danielle’s conversion. Now Lea believes that should the opportunity arise, Bevyn will go back on his promise not to bring her into his world. She has made up her mind to leave him.”
Aingeal flinched. “She can’t!” she said. “Doesn’t she realize what that would do to Bevyn?”
“I doubt she has even considered his feelings in this,” he replied. “She thinks only of herself and always has. It won’t be the same devastation to him as if she were to pass away but it will, nevertheless, devastate Bevyn Coure. A Reaper has a mate but once in his lifetime and should Lea decide to take another man into her life, into her bed and body, Coure will tear that man apart with his bare hands.” He shook his head. “I don’t think Lea has thought out the ramifications of her leaving him.”
“This isn’t good,” Aingeal said, and then blinked, looking past the High Lord’s shoulder.
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Lord Kheelan turned to find Danielle standing there with her hands on her hips.
“So what do we do to convince Lea becoming a Reaper isn’t so bad?” Danni inquired.
* * * * *
Mumbling to himself, Bevyn took the stairs up to his apartment two at a time. Grateful each Reaper had his own floor—actually one entire side of one floor in the fivepointed structure—and that his was on the same level with Arawn’s, Cynyr’s, Owen’s and Glyn’s with Phelan and Iden one rung below them and housed with the healers, there was no one about save Aingeal and Danielle to make noise. At the moment he believed Danni locked in her apartment and he knew Aingeal to be in the gymnasium wreaking havoc upon the High Lord.
The thought of Lord Kheelan being scourged by Aingeal Cree’s tongue caused Bevyn to laugh out loud. If anyone could set the High-and-Mighty Ben-Alkazar back on his heels, it was Cynyr Cree’s lady.
As it always was when Lea was with him at the Citadel, the door to their apartment was wide open. Like him—and every Reaper—Lea had a dislike of closed-in places. Even with the expansive apartment nearly as large as a grand house, the door was always wide for few ventured up to the Reapers’ abodes without an express invitation to do so.
“Lea?” he called out, turning left and heading toward the bathing chamber, unbuttoning his pants as he went.
There was no answer so he made for the shower. Just as his fellow warriors dearly loved to stand for as long as they could beneath the onslaught of warm water, Bevyn was looking forward to stripping off his pants and allowing the water to beat the kinks out of his muscles. He came up short when he saw Lea standing at the end of the hall.
“Didn’t you hear me calling you?” he asked, going on into the shower area.
“I heard,” she said. “I just didn’t care to answer you.”
Bevyn paused as he started to push his pants down over his hips. He frowned then went back to the door and looked down the hall at her. “What did I do now?” he asked with a loud sigh.
“Take your shower then we’ll talk,” she said, turning and going into their bedchamber.
Putting his hands on his hips, Bevyn let his head sag to his chest. He knew that tone of voice and when his lady used it, his ass was in trouble. Forgetting about the shower, he padded barefoot to the bedroom they shared and found her sitting on the side of the bed.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, coming to stand in front of her. When she didn’t answer, he squatted down in front of her and put his hands to either side of her on the edge of the mattress. “Did something happen?”
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“You smell,” she said, pulling back from him. “Go take your shower then we’ll talk.”
He looked at her for a long moment then got up and went back to the bathing chamber. Turning the water on as hot as it would go, he shucked off his pants, kicked them into the corner of the room then snatched open the glass doors that never failed to amaze him. Stepping inside the tiled area, he ducked his head under the water and just stood there with his hands on the wall in front of him to allow the water to drum against his shoulders, closing his eyes to keep the hot liquid out. Several thoughts went through Bevyn Coure’s head as he ground his teeth to the fiery blast of the water. It was a punishment now and not the relaxing interlude he’d been looking forward to. His agile mind touched on the glass doors that had been found stacked in a storage room deep beneath the original foundation of the Citadel. There had been enough of the doors for the chambers of the Shadowlords and the Reapers with a few left over for senior healers. From the strange doors, his wanderings took him to the confrontation with Aingeal in the exercise room and he sighed deeply. He’d never liked confrontations and especially not with women. Opening his eyes, he straightened up, grabbed the soap and began lathering himself. He took the shortest shower of his life and when he stepped out and jerked a fluffy white towel off the rack to dry himself, he called to Lea. She didn’t answer.
A sickening dread twisted in his belly and he hastily wrapped the towel around his hips and stalked down to the bedchamber. He knew before he entered that she was gone.
The closet doors stood open and all her hanging clothes were gone. He knew if he went to the armoire, the dresser, the chest of drawers, he’d find only his own clothing. Hurt entered his dark eyes and for just a moment he stood there, uncertain what to do. He knew she couldn’t have left the Citadel for from the moment the team had left for their mission, the entire facility had been placed on lockdown. There would be no visitors in and no residents out—for any reason. That meant she had made arrangements for some other place to stay and that pissed him off as nothing had in a long, long time.
With his jaw clamped tight, a muscle working furiously, he stomped over to the closet, grabbed a pair of black jeans off the shelf, snatched a black T-shirt from the dresser and dragged the garments on. Not bothering to put on any boots, he left his apartment in search of his woman.
* * * * *
The silver-haired Argent was sitting alone at her desk with her fingers threaded together. She looked as though she had been expecting Bevyn and smiled gently at him.
“You may go on in, Lord Bevyn,” she said.
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The High Lord was standing at the windows, looking out into a misty rain that had speckled the panes. Storm clouds were rolling in from the ocean, turning the middle of the day dark.
“Where is she?” Bevyn asked without preamble.
Lord Kheelan didn’t turn around. He continued to stand with his hands behind his back, watching the coming storm. “She asked for privacy, Lord Bevyn, and I have granted her request.”