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He’d known her for years and could even remember a time when as a kid she sat on the bar, throwing darts at the dart board clear across the room. This misuse of the darts had brought her father in from the backroom, his face red with rage.
‘You could hurt someone, girl.’ He always called his daughter ‘girl’ when she was in trouble. Hannah had gotten in big trouble and because Jude had encouraged her to misbehave, he’d gone after her.
Finding her sitting on the back step and crying her eyes out, he’d slid an arm around her young, boney shoulders until she hiccupped through a couple of sobs and finally let go of her girlish pain. He’d then given her a piggy-back ride until she was laughing again.
He’d always liked her spirit.
He still did.
But he needed to keep thinking of Hannah like that, young and innocent. However, it was really hard when her shirt had just enough of a v-cut to reveal a line of cleavage he’d been lusting after for several months now.
The whole messed up situation had begun in that stupid supply closet. He’d gone there to ask her something about one of the access centers and had somehow gotten lost in her beautiful breasts that grew puckered then and there. And from that point, his cravings for Hannah had all but taken over.
He’d tried to keep his distance, but every time he promised himself to skip a visit to the Gold Rush, he’d head there anyway.
Something had erupted between them in that moment, something new, vital, and damn sexual.
And he absolutely loved the new perfume she’d taken to wearing. She smelled like roses and seashells, which didn’t make a lot of sense, but she did, like if he walked through a rose garden right by the water’s edge, that’s what she would smell like. The trouble was, when he caught the scent of her perfume, his body lit up and he wanted nothing more than to pick her up in his arms and fly her to his home in Kellcasse. Maybe keep her there for a decade.
He’d had several ‘moments’ with her in recent weeks, when her gaze caught and held or she accidentally brushed up against him in the bar and he couldn’t seem to catch his breath.
He also knew whatever was going on was mutual to the point that lately he’d started thinking about actually asking for a date. He held back, though. She was little Hannah, the one called ‘girl’, the human, for Goddess’s sake.
And he wasn’t into long-term anything. He’d made that decision a century ago when his wife and daughter had died. He didn’t ever want to feel that kind pain again, not until the ancient fae was dead and the last of the Invictus burned on a funeral pyre.
But right now, she wanted him to talk about what was troubling him.
He debated the matter in his head for a full minute and to her credit, she let him be, let him live with his own thoughts and sort this one out.
Finally, he drew a deep breath and decided to open up. “I never talked much, to anyone, about what happened in Walvashorr with the shifter packs.”
Her arched brows rose, but she made no comment, which once more encouraged him to continue. “I saw the ancient fae. She was surrounded by a strange powerful golden light, but she smelled evil, like something rotting behind a dumpster.”
Hannah grunted softly. Glancing at her, he saw that she’d wrinkled her nose. “Was the imagery too strong?” he asked.
“If it was accurate, then you couldn’t have said it better. We all know that smell.”
“Yeah, we do.” He nodded several times. “Mastyr Seth has a woman now, his blood rose, and I’m sure Lorelei has shared things on your loop.” He waved a hand to encompass her computer monitor. “You know, the one with all you women.”
“Yeah, all us women.” She smiled. She had lovely teeth, white, perfectly straight, nicely shaped incisors. Shit, he even liked the woman’s teeth.
He frowned at Hannah for a moment, searching those violet eyes again. She’d struck up a serious friendship with several of the women bonded to mastyr vampires and the email loop seemed to be blazing or at least simmering all the time.
He knew she’d switched tabs the moment he’d arrived on the threshold to the room. She’d done that before, protecting everyone’s privacy, so he wasn’t surprised. He’d once asked her about it, teasing her, but she’d lifted her chin. “What we women say in confidence, especially about you men, you don’t need to know. It’s a sacred, womanish thing.”
‘A womanish thing’. Another reminder that the child had grown up. And she really wasn’t a child. She was twenty-eight, but against his two-hundred-years she was considerably younger in life-experience.
He forced his thoughts back to what it was he wanted to say to Hannah. “Here’s the thing. Margetta planned this attack on Walvashorr Realm, really planned it. And when Seth and I went to rescue Lorelei, I saw the ancient fae’s army encampment. The level of military organization astounded me because wraith-pairs, aren’t by definitions, soldiers. They don’t group together and form joint goals.”
Hannah nodded. “Which means, Margetta has somehow taken charge of the wraith-pairs and can control them.”
“She’s being very deliberate and I’m worried for Kellcasse, and concerned that Margetta will come after us and we won’t be ready. It’s been months now and everything’s been quiet in all the realms.”
Even as he spoke the words aloud, he wasn’t sure what was prompting him to share this with Hannah. But because of her association with the communications center and with the other powerful women bonded to a few of his fellow mastyrs, she knew a lot about the current war with Margetta. “The problem is, I don’t know what kind of strategy she would devise against Kellcasse, what her goal would be. With Seth’s Realm, she’d intended to invade and conquer the shifter lands, thinking the packs volatile and unable to work together as a unit. With a foothold in the northern part of the realm and the packs decimated, she would have headed south and taken over the rest of Walvashorr.”
“But Lorelei and Seth worked together to change that.”
Jude scowled now, his arms tight to his chest. “Yes, that’s exactly what they did.” Lorelei had become Seth’s blood rose during the time Jude had helped out. Stunned at how the packs had worked together to destroy so many wraith-pairs, he’d fought in the battle against Margetta until she’d called a retreat.
