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Exhausted, but a bit excited, I pulled out the candles. After my shift and eating, it was a little after three in the morning, and that struck me as the perfect time to call upon a goddess or rather, the descendent of one.
“Come on, boys. That’s our cue,” Storm said. Each of them kissed my forehead before leaving the room. Bishop made awooonoise and then flicked the lights off. If he didn’t do that or something similar, I would be concerned. It was simply his nature and I loved that about him. He could always, always make me laugh.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on the images I’d seen the last time we called on the goddess. My memory had her ingrained in it. All of them. While my mother was taken from me, those women were the closest I had to one. Them and Josephine.
But that night, the goddess of or her descendant Diana didn’t come.
I spoke aloud, telling them of what was happening and why I needed their help, but I received no answer.
Despite my history with this sort of thing, I blew out the candles disappointed. They didn’t answer or come to me. I knew that they had ways that superseded floating in front of me and answering my every desire but sometimes, I still hoped they would.
I leaned my head back against the couch and let out a long sigh. Onyx was better at this. She had known who she was longer. Maybe that was it. A bit of my human side whooshed in once in a while and doubted everything.
“All chanted out?” Fox came in and sat next to me.
“All chanted out,” I answered, feeling the effects of the long day tear at my senses.
He kissed me on the lips. “Any answers? Did they tell you who killed Diana?”
I shook my head. “Nope. But maybe in a dream. They came to Onyx in a dream.”
“Then let’s not delay in getting you to bed. We’ve been waiting for you. A nice, long shower should ease those aches and get you to sleep.”
“That tone doesn’t suggest sleep, my love.” I reached out and ran my hand along the line of his jaw.
“That’s the easing-the-aches part,” he teased then picked me up as though I weighed nothing and took me to bed.
Chapter Nine
Onyx
Such a beautiful afternoon. We had only been here a day, but so far it was going well, I thought. Asher’s moms had been so gracious, his father, Richard, no less, and I was having a better time than I ever dreamed this holiday season. The whole trip here, I’d been close to panic and afraid that I would let my mates down. That his family would hate me for not being a wolf or for some other reason. I might come from the line of a goddess, but on the other side, things were not nearly as rosy or glorious. My father had oozed evil, something I hadn’t realized until I was fully grown. Although, how I could be so dense as to have no idea what I lived with, not only in him but in my brothers who were far more his spawn than I would ever be.
Thank my goddess ancestor.
“Do you see them?” Olivia, one of my new mothers-in-law stood beside me looking down. “The woods are so bare this time of year.
“No, but I’m—there they are!” Since I couldn’t shift, and it was a little chilly to stand around and watch out in the woods, Olivia and Caroline had invited me to have a little tea party with them in the blue salon at the back of the mansion. The sky currently was blue with fluffy white clouds scudding across it, giving the illusion of summer until my gaze fell on the woods, which, as Olivia had mentioned, was largely made up of deciduous trees whose bare branches offered a view of what lay or ran beneath that I’d never get at any other time of year. A few pines and other evergreens softened the vista, as did the light snow that had come down while we slept last night and that had just managed to stick.
Caroline joined us. “Oh yes, Asher knows the land well, of course, and I believe Raven participated in some of the young people’s runs we held, back when they were both just children. How did they ever get so grown up to be mated and starting a home of their own.” Her cheeks colored. “Of course, I mean your home, too.”
“Sometimes I don’t know how it happened, either.” The two wolves moved through the woods, romping in the snow. “Because I certainly wasn’t looking for a mate—much less two. But I will be eternally grateful for it.”
“Let’s sit down and have our tea, shall we?” Caroline stood by a floor-to-ceiling window. “We can keep our eye on them from there.”
“All right.” I took the chair nearest the glass panes just as a footman or some sort of servant wheeled in a cart laden with all the accouterments of what I’d call a traditional English tea. Not exactly the sort of late-afternoon snack our masculine-dominated household had indulged in while I was growing up. Or the kind of thing I’d sought out even after leaving home. I closed my eyes briefly and prayed to my goddess ancestor to help me not to spill something or break a piece of what was probably priceless heirloom china.
“Just leave it there, Frederick,” Olivia instructed. “I will serve. It’s just family.” The server nodded and left. I’d half expected him to bow.
Family. Did she really think of me that way? Already? Shifters truly did have their own ways. In my family, we’d—actually I had zero idea what we’d do since neither my brothers nor I had brought home anyone we wanted to make a life with. If they’d ever been in love or dated someone special, they kept her away from our father. Did they think he’d try to take them away or be rude to them? Hurt them? Hell, knowing Dean as I did now, he was capable of anything. And I was not allowed enough freedom to date; little assassins in training are busy girls with no time for fun and romance.
“How do you take your tea, dear?” Caroline held a pair of tweezers over a bowl. Actually, I took my tea with boba and coconut milk, handed to me in a tall, lidded plastic cup with a thick straw, but that was not likely to be an option here.
“Umm, sugar, please, and cream.”
“How many?”
I peered into the bowl to see lumps of sugar. Just like in an old movie I watched once. My fingers itched to pick one up and feel it, put it in my mouth and let it crunch between my teeth. If they only knew what a total boor they’d welcomed into their home. “Two, I guess.”
