Immortal Becoming (36 page)

“The females you helped to save. The Aquaties are teaching them to create fabrics from underwater plants. They wanted to thank you. They designed and made this piece for you. Every thread and stitch was made by grateful hands.” Innana finished tying the sarong. “There you are. Beautiful.”

Jess turned back, tears in her eyes. She was overwhelmed by the victims’ generosity. After all they had been through, to go to the effort to make something so exquisite for her mating was beyond appreciation.

“Don’t start that, girl. That male of yours is already holding on by a thread. He feels you crying and nothing will keep him from you,” Innanna teased, touching a finger to the tip of Jess’s nose.

“Why isn’t he here?” Jess finally brought herself to ask.

“He is waiting for you to call to him.” Innanna gently cupped Jess’s cheek. “Make your reunion special. You both deserve it.” Her wings fluttered, and she floated in her fairy way back over to sit in the chair. “Invite me to the wedding. I’d love to come.” With that she was gone.

Grinning, Jess slipped her feet into the flip-flops and opened the bedroom door to the familiar hallway, following the smell of coffee. She passed by Moira’s office at the top of the stairs and descended to the bright and cheery kitchen. Napoleon was tickling Jorie. He stopped the minute he saw Jess in the doorway, and Jorie’s giggles faded to silence.

Following her father’s gaze, Jorie finally saw Jess too. “Jess!” Jorie threw herself into Jess’s arms.

Catching the girl, Jess chuckled. “I missed you too, JorJor.” She didn’t know why she called the girl that, but it felt right. “That coffee better be for me.” She resumed where Napoleon had left off, tickling the child until she squirmed away.

Napoleon was pouring Jess a coffee when the kitchen door opened. Sara, Moira, and Nathan walked in. “The permanent housing should be done by then …” Sara was saying.

“Jessica,” Moira whispered. Her face still had light, fading scars, the only outward sign that she’d been hurt. Jess stepped into the open arms of her aunt. She could feel where her tiny wings were healing.

“Will they grow back, Aunt Moira?” Jess asked, stepping back from the embrace to look up at the mirror image of her mother.

“They were never really much to begin with. In time they will be fully healed.” Moira shrugged, looking at Jess’s clothing. “You look beautiful. Where did this come from?”

“Innanna.” She told them what had just taken place between herself and Innanna before she came downstairs. Taking the cup of heaven Napoleon held out to her, Jess sat down at the table. They brought her up to speed on what had happened with the operation while she ate breakfast.

Once they’d finished eating, Sara took Jorie and Nathan out to work in the farm, leaving Jess alone with Napoleon and Moira. “Thank you for taking care of me. I didn’t know where else to go. I wish I could have asked before just showing up on your doorstep.”

Moira took Jess’s face in her hands. “You are family, Jess. You are loved. You should know that to the best of my ability, I have always looked out for you, watched over you. You have never been alone.”

Jess swallowed her tears, turning her face from Moira’s grasp. It would take time and understanding before she would truly believe that. “Did you know I killed a man?”

“I found out about it after. Over the years I have broken into every secure system necessary to remove or modify your records with the State, the Court’s, and the hospital’s. I even modified your business and Jeep loans to keep you a phantom. I promised your mother I’d help you grow up free of all of this. In keeping that promise, I have protected you from discovery by the Volaticus, all of them, whether good or evil. But I couldn’t help you nearly enough with the humans. I read the details of the police report on the man’s death, including the parts that weren’t made public. I am proud of you. You saved those girls. So many times over the years I wanted to send for you, wanted to claim you and raise you, but life with my ‘causes,’ as your mother put it, was not what she wanted for you. She wanted you to live as a human for as long as you could. I knew once you’d Become, I would have no choice but to bring you into this world.”

“How did Jorie connect to me, then?”

Moira smiled. “Jorie was able to link to you through a blood-bond your mother and I created between you as infants before your mother took you to the U.S. to find Ben. We wanted you two to be able to find each other should anything ever happen to your mother or me.” She sighed, the smile fading. “You are smart, Jess, always have been. I am committed to answer any question you have for me, openly and honesty. I’m aware that you must feel some level of betrayal after all you have come to know. Honesty is the only hope I have of building the bridge between us now.”

Jess was far from done asking her aunt questions, but she was satisfied for the moment. It would take time for her to feel like she was not alone and dreaming when in her aunt’s presence. The reality of family had not yet sunk in. Right now the only person who completely filled the lonely void in her was waiting for her call. During breakfast she’d been thinking of how to make it a special reunion.

“I need a favor, if I could.” She glanced from Moira to Napoleon.

“Name it,” Napoleon answered.

Blushing, Jess plunged ahead. “Shane and I bonded at the spring.”

Moira and Napoleon glanced at one another, sharing a secret smile. Napoleon pulled Moira so that her injured back was gently leaning on his chest and wrapped his arms around her. “It’s a perfect place,” Moira said. “So did we. Three days ago.”

“Really? Congratulations!” She couldn’t help but be happy for them, remembering the tormented look in Napoleon’s eyes when he’d seen Moira’s tortured face. “I hope I’m not being rude. Can I ask why now?”

“I am not psychic, Jess. Napoleon will never be able to have with me what he could have with someone who is. He deserves a bloodmate, though he always maintained that he loves me anyway. It just took me some time to believe it. I’ve always wanted him to have it all. I still do. If he ever finds a bloodmate, I will step aside. I love him. When he asked me again to be his mate, I couldn’t say no.”

Napoleon interjected, “What your beautiful aunt doesn’t realize is that she is my bloodmate. She always has been. Her lack of psychic ability keeps her blind to the fact.”

“So Shane and I aren’t the first Hulven and Elven to bloodmate. You two have too.” The possibility of more pairings raced through her mind. “There are probably lots of couples out there like us. Shane and I are just the first to find and recognize each other.”

Napoleon grinned from ear to ear and placed a kiss to Moira’s temple. “What’s the favor?”

“I want to resume our mating, where it was cut short. Could you maybe make sure we have complete privacy for the day?” She thought about the clothes that had been left on the rock. Shane might be fine with people seeing them in intimate moments, but it made Jess uncomfortable.

“It is yours. You have my word that no one will come anywhere near the spring this day,” Napoleon said. Moira nodded in agreement.

That detail taken care of, Jess asked Moira, “Do you think Jorie would help me braid my hair?”

Moira’s smile beamed. “I’m sure she would love that.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Fualth stared up at the ceiling of his cell. The Council had just completed what it considered a round of questioning. What a joke. They were too politically correct to do what was required to get the answers that they seemed to need desperately. Threats. That was all they could stomach. Threats. Oh, he had no doubt that regardless of whether or not he answered their questions; they would put him to ground for centuries. There was no threat in that. It was a fact. Why would he answer questions to avoid what was inevitable?

This was the problem with the SOSC. This is why his mentor would someday rule the world. They were just too fucking
nice.
If the SOSC had their way, Elven would starve to death. All it would take would be humans deciding that they didn’t want to share their blood anymore. Ridiculous. Elven were created to rule the planet and all of the species within in it.
All of them.

This might have been a setback to his mentor. Regardless, Fualth had no doubt that by the time he awoke from whatever punishment the High Ones imposed, he would be in a world ruled by the only Volaticus male who was ruthless and powerful enough to deserve to rule. The stupid SOSC thought Fualth was the mastermind, the originator of the movement they thought they had crushed. His ego appreciated their confidence in him, but it was more of a testament to his mentor, the true mastermind, who they continued to be unaware of.

If they thought threatening Fualth would get him to betray his mentor, they were even more stupid than he gave them credit for. With a practiced, superior grin, Fualth turned to the wall that slid away, prepared to give a taunting expression to whoever entered. That expression fell away as the hooded figure entered, the wall closing behind him.

Fualth was already moving to kneel before the figure before the hood lifted. “Osiris. My liege.” He bowed on bended knee in respect.

“You have failed me, Fualth.” The voice was pitched one octave too high to be considered masculine. The true-form face was covered in tattoos. Fualth’s mentor peered down at him with disgust.

“I will rise anew to fight at your side. This is a small setback,” Fualth argued.

“No. You won’t.” The statement was laced with meaning.

“There was a siphon …” Fualth never completed the sentence. He felt the punch of a needle in his neck, and the immediate paralysis and debilitation of the mercury cyanide injected into his body followed. He looked at the face of his mentor once more when he fell to his side, his skin red and his eyes glazed over. He never took another breath.

****

Osiris elevated Fualth’s legs on the bed and withdrew an ivory-blade knife from within the folds of his cloak. It was unlikely that a full blood transfusion would save his protégé, but why take chances? Slicing through the male’s neck to the spine he stood watching the blood flow toward the drain in the center of the room.

Osiris had known that Fualth’s inclination for cruelty, a trait Osiris had long fostered and exploited, would be Fualth’s ultimate downfall. He’d used Fualth to oversee the original breeding programs, which Fualth ran with fear tactics, a practice Osiris had long abandoned in all his current endeavors. Of course, Fualth never realized his was not the only iron Osiris had in the fire. Oh, far from it. Osiris had discovered some time ago that humans were far more amenable to doing what he wanted the way he wanted. Their short life expectancies made them easy to kill. They were also predictable in their greed and gluttony. Grease the right human politician’s hand, call whatever you’re doing medical or scientific research, and the sky’s the limit of what you can do. Few if any of them lived long enough to catch a glimpse of the entire processes. Most of his so-called research had been going on for generations.

Luckily Fualth’s home base in Maine had been destroyed before the SOSC had accessed the communications room. All of Fualth’s monitors were destroyed, and the SOSC had been unable to trace the signals to any other viewing location, allowing Osiris to remotely watch the cameras still in operation.

He’d watched Fualth’s people surrender at the African nest during the seven-day clemency. He’d watched the strikes against the locations. He saw the two siphons and had already identified them. Siphoning was one of the few talents that left him vulnerable while in full shield and shadow. He had known of the male but had thought him long dead. The Morsdente Osiris had arranged to kill the male’s mate had accomplished its goal. Why had the male not followed his mate in death?

The female was a surprise. He was still trying to figure out how she could exist. To his knowledge, there were no females from Enlil’s and Ninlil’s bloodline. The last one had died within its mother’s womb. One thing was sure: This Jess was a powerful threat.

He still remembered the prediction the pre-cog seer had told him all those centuries ago:
Your justice will come at the hands of a shadowed thief of energy. Under a new order, uniting age-old enemies, before the final enlightening.
He’d never fully bought into what the pre-cog had said, considering it was said under torture, but an unknown siphon and learning Enlil did not follow his bloodmate in death did bring the prediction back into Osiris’s thoughts. Since the female was only twenty-six years old, Osiris would concern himself with her at a later date. For now, he would continue with his original plans.

Seeing the last drops of blood leave the body of his former protégé, Osiris could only sigh at the waste. He raised the hood. Calling on his talent to shadow his image, he stepped back out of the room, sealing the opening behind him, and slipped into the night. A ghost. Always a ghost.

****

Seventeen days, twelve hours, fourteen minutes. Shane could feel the stiffness of his muscles from sitting in the same spot hour after hour. He didn’t trust himself to move. He’d felt twinges of Jess’s emotions the past few hours, nothing to indicate she was upset or in any pain or danger. Just the knowledge that she was awake and aware, and a few times he thought she was missing him. Perhaps the bonding didn’t work on her side. Maybe she didn’t take enough of his blood for a full bonding. Perhaps it was only enough to initiate her Becoming. What if some male had gotten to her during estrus and she no longer wanted Shane? His heart knew the truth. She loved him and would call for him. It was his mind turning him into knots of insecurity. What could she be waiting for?