Powerful Awakening [L.U.S.T. 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (14 page)

Andrew adjusted his hold on her, pulling back a bit so he could really see her. “How much have you figured out?”

She puffed a breath up her face, causing the hairs that had fallen over her forehead to flutter. “Not nearly enough.”

“She knows what we are, but not who we are,” Michael answered him as he came across the parlor. He held out the brandy snifters to Andrew and Chrystal, waited until they took them, then lifted his wine glass to his lips for a sip. “And you, lover, do not yet know what she is, do you?”

Chrystal answered for him before he had the chance. “No. I haven’t told him.” Her gaze seemed to search his, for what he didn’t know, but finally she took a deep breath and filled in the blank. “I’m a were-chameleon.”

Andrew felt his eyes grow wide.
Holy shit! She’s a shifter?
“But how come—” he started to ask before the answer to his own question slammed into his mind. “You can’t be sensed by others with power.”

She slowly shook her head.

“Then how could you sense us?”

“The connection.” Michael’s tone held a trace of amusement. “It seems we are bound more tightly together than we realized.”

Chrystal eased out of Andrew’s embrace, walked a few steps to the center of the room, then turned to face them. “This connection the two of you keep talking about, would that have anything to do with why I felt like I was repeating something I’ve done before when I walked through that front door?”

Andrew exchanged a startled look with Michael. “You remember that, this house?”

Chrystal angled her head at him. “Is that what it is, a memory? I hope you can tell me because, for the life of me, I sure as hell can’t figure it out.”

“When we came here tonight,” Michael began, “is that the only time that you have felt that sort of déjà vu?”

She lifted her brandy snifter to her lips, shaking her head vehemently as she took a large swig. “Last night at the club when I saw the two of you walking toward me, for a moment, I saw you, but it wasn’t you.” She frowned and made a frustrated sound. “It was you, duh, but your clothes were different.” Her gaze shifted fully to Michael. “And your eyes were like Gideon’s, not black as they are now.” She looked at Andrew again. “And, when you and I made love, for a moment, I had this kind of out-of-body experience. I saw you, but it wasn’t me you had pressed against the window. It was another woman. Beautiful, long auburn hair…”

Andrew slowly walked toward her, holding out his hand. “Come sit with us on the sofa and we’ll explain.”

“No.” She took a step back, the vehemence in her voice surprising him. “The two of you can sit if you want, but I’ll stand.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Over here, away from you. No touching. Every time one of you touches me we get caught up in the moment and no explanations are given.”

Andrew let his hand fall to his side. “Okay.” He took a deep breath, shot a look at Michael, then wondered where in hell to begin. “Michael and I were in love with a woman, the same woman, likely the one you saw with me last night, before we became the men we are today.”

“What was her name? What did she look like?” Chrystal asked the question in rapid-fire.

“Rebecca Tucker,” Michael answered. “She had brown eyes and long hair the color of autumn leaves. She was, how shall I put this? Her curves were more significant than yours.”

“Except for her breasts.” Andrew couldn’t stop himself from chiming in.

The corners of Michael’s lips twitched and Chrystal actually laughed, her gaze dropping quickly to her cleavage.

“So I’ve got bigger boobs, but I’m skinnier,” she said, lifting her amused gaze to Andrew. “Got it. In other words, she didn’t look like me? But, I already knew that if that was her I saw last night.”

“Both of you are beautiful women of your time,” Michael said.

“What happened to her?”

Silence fell like a heavy blanket over the air in the room. Andrew knew they had to tell her everything, but reliving that night, admitting how he had been the one who had gotten her killed was going to kill him all over again.

* * * *

Michael waited to see if Andrew would answer, but saw the man’s pallor turn paler than his. He believed Andrew should be the one to explain this part. To this day, even after all the decades of longing for Andrew and Rebecca, he didn’t know exactly all that had happened that night himself. Still, when it seemed Andrew didn’t intend to speak, he decided to explain as much as he could.

“A man by the name of Regulus Le Mort claimed to fall in love with her.”

“I take it that love wasn’t returned?” Chrystal asked.

“It was not. Rebecca saw through Le Mort’s facade. She could sense—” Michael stopped himself and shook his head once. “That is not the correct word. She could tell Le Mort’s soul was dark, but she did not comprehend the true extent of his evil.”

“He was a vampire,” Chrystal guessed correctly. “And neither of you told her.”

“She wouldn’t have believed us,” Andrew chimed in, his tone empty of all inflection. “She thought things like power, other beings, and such were merely fiction.”

“At the outbreak of the Civil War, Le Mort had plans of his own,” Michael continued. “He intended to take over Atlanta, to rid it of human population, to turn those he deemed worthy and make them his servants. All others would be sentenced to death, whether immediately or held in captive as food for his followers.”

Michael paused, sipped from his wine glass, and studied Chrystal over the rim. He had her undivided attention, but he didn’t detect any memories in her expression. To her, she was simply listening to a story from the past, not a recollection of one she had been a part of.

“Shortly before all hell broke loose, he gave Rebecca a necklace.” Andrew took over the conversational ball as he moved across the room to refill his snifter. “It’s probably the only compassionate thing the bastard ever did.”

Chrystal turned slightly to shoot Andrew a half-amused look. “Because it was such a sweet gesture?”

Andrew let out a humorless laugh. “Because it was powerful. He didn’t intend to change her, but he wanted her immortal, nevertheless. The necklace he gave her rendered her that power.”

“She brought the necklace to us after he insisted she take it,” Michael said. “I recognized the significance of it on sight. Four individual pieces crafted of the most powerful gems, each with different properties that when fixed together to create the whole and fastened around one’s neck, gave the wearer immortality.”

Chrystal lifted a hand to her throat, her next words turning Michael’s veins to ice even as it filled him with hope. “You insisted she wear it. Even though it came from Le Mort, you knew why he’d given it to her. You knew it would protect her when the war broke out.”

Andrew turned swiftly from the bar, his knuckles turning white on the snifter in his hand. His gaze slammed into Michael’s and Michael saw the man was wondering, just as he, if she were guessing or remembering.

“She agreed to wear it because we asked her to.” Michael watched Chrystal closely as he continued. “We explained the powers of protection the necklace held.”

“But you didn’t tell her Le Mort was a vampire.” Chrystal’s tone held a hint of accusation. “You didn’t tell her
why
you wanted her to wear it.”

Michael sighed. “Not in precise detail, my sweet. No, we did not.”

“She went to Le Mort, to his house.” Chrystal’s eyes widened and her face turned pale. “How do I know this?”

“What else do you know?” Michael prompted, the blood he had drank pumping furiously through his veins, speeding his heartbeat.

Chrystal rubbed her temples with the index finger of both hands as she started to pace. “She went to give the necklace back to him. She was wearing it, but she intended to take it off, to return it even though the two of you wanted her to keep it. It bothered her to wear a gift from another man when her heart belonged to both of you.”

Michael waited to see if she would say more. When she fell silent, he went on. “We got word that she was spotted heading to Le Mort’s plantation. Andrew, Gideon, and I followed her.”

“Gideon went, too,” Chrystal whispered, briefly closing her eyes.

“We all knew we were likely walking into an ambush. We fully expected to have to fight our way to even get close to Le Mort.” Andrew raked his free hand through his hair. “We were right.”

“Many of Le Mort’s followers were surrounding the place when we arrived,” Michael said. “As humans with an inadequate knowledge of how to fight and kill such beasts, we were little match for them.”

“We’d come up with a plan before we got there,” Andrew recollected. “Gideon and I were going to hold them off, while Michael got inside to Rebecca. It worked, to a point. I think only because Le Mort wanted Michael for himself.”

Chrystal spun to face Michael. “He believed you were the one standing in his way of having Rebecca. He didn’t know about her relationship with Andrew. That was kept a secret from public knowledge.”

“Relationships such as ours were not looked upon fondly in those days.”

Chrystal’s gaze remained locked with his as she spoke and he knew, whether she had truly accepted it or not, that she was indeed remembering. “You got inside. You got to Rebecca and Le Mort. A fight broke out. You knew Le Mort was going to kill you and you told Rebecca to run.” Her eyes clouded over, her focus no longer on him, but inside herself. “I was terrified. I saw his fangs and I didn’t understand. I ran, but what I ran into only made it worse.”

Michael exchanged a glance with Andrew and saw the man wondering as he was if Chrystal realized she was speaking of Rebecca in the first person.

“A wolf the size of a man was on top of Gideon outside and another was going for Andrew. I tried to stop him, jumped between him and Andrew, and someone yanked at me, going for my neck. He caught the necklace instead and one of the toggles broke. It fell off just as the one going for Andrew reached me.” Chrystal’s eyes filled as her hand returned to her neck. “He killed me.” Her head turned toward Andrew, but her eyes remained clouded, seemingly unseeing. “But he didn’t kill you.”

“He was not ordered to,” Michael realized in a sudden rush of clarity. All the endless decades since, he had never understood the full extent of that night.

Andrew’s head snapped toward him, his eyes imploring. “What?”

“Le Mort never intended for us to be killed. He ordered his men to change us, not to slay us. That is why he changed me, rather than killing me inside the house. He did not want to be rid of us. He intended to make us serve him.”

“But he didn’t intend on me being killed,” Chrystal added in a whisper. She blinked, seeming to come out of her trance, and her eyes grew wide, filling with shock. “
Me.
I was there. I’m Rebecca?”

Michael slowly nodded. “Yes, my sweet. You are, were, Rebecca.”

Chrystal swayed and Michael and Andrew lunged for her, both catching her, Michael’s arm around her waist and Andrew’s around her shoulders. “I think I’ll sit down after all.”

* * * *

Chrystal remembered so much and she understood. She, in another life, had been Rebecca Tucker. The visions of Andrew and Michael, the intensely powerful draw she had felt to both men upon sight, were all part of the memories from that life, of the love that had carried over to this incarnation.

“Are you alright?” Michael had sat down with her on the sofa, one hand resting on her thigh, while the other pushed her hair behind her shoulder.

She leaned into the touch of that hand, thankful when it lightly closed over her nape, and smiled, albeit shakily. “Yes.” She realized as the word left her lips it was the truth. She was alright. She was better than alright. She had been given a second chance, a second life with the men she loved, and, as a were-chameleon, she had been given the ability to stay with them always.

She turned her head, looking for Andrew. He’d helped her to the sofa a moment ago, but hadn’t stayed the way Michael did. He stood across the room now, his back to both of them, his head bowed. “He’s not.”

Feeling steadier again, she got to her feet, and walked to Andrew. He flinched when she put her hands on his shoulders, but didn’t try to move away from her touch. “You blame yourself, don’t you? You feel guilty because you think you caused my death, Rebecca’s death.”

“I should’ve acted faster. I should’ve gotten you out of the way first.” His shoulders rose and fell on a ragged breath, his voice cracking with emotion, and unshed tears. “I saw you run out of the house. I should’ve known what you would do. I—”

“Was already injured,” she interrupted, finishing for him. “You were fighting for your life, getting attacked on all sides, and losing the battle. It’s not your fault I thought I had balls big enough to take on a bunch of overgrown wolves.”

“That is why you have hidden yourself away all these years,” Michael guessed as he came up next to her. Chrystal let one of her hands drop from Andrew’s shoulder so Michael could replace it with his. “You blamed yourself for her death and you thought I would blame you, as well.”

“I couldn’t face you. How could I come back to you knowing I had killed the woman we loved?”

Chrystal saw Michael’s eyes fill with tears. She hadn’t known a vampire could cry but, if there was ever a time for him to develop the ability, she figured now was definitely it. Her throat tightened as tears blurred her vision, too. All the decades since that night, Andrew had been living with this guilt, denying himself the love he had left in the world because he felt responsible for her.

“Look at me, lover.” Michael closed his hand over Andrew’s shoulder and turned him around. He hooked a finger beneath Andrew’s chin when his head remained bowed and pulled his face up, forcing Andrew to meet his gaze. “We were young, foolish, stupid enough to think we could take on forces we did not understand.”

“Hey, guys. Rebecca’s not totally out of the woods here, you know? She was too set in her own beliefs not to listen when you tried to warn her about Le Mort, when you insisted she keep the necklace.”