Warrior Enchanted: The Sons of the Zodiac (22 page)

Quinn threw the towel onto the counter. “I haven’t figured that out yet. Best I can tell, he did something to the front door.”

“No one walks up and gets into this house, Quinn.” Not even Emerson. He’d just given her the codes
months ago and only her grandmother’d had them before that.

“I’m working on it,” Quinn snapped. “The front door was locked but not fully activated.”

“Which meant it was me.” All eyes in the room turned on Rogan, a heavy silence accompanying the collective scrutiny. “I was the last one in.”

Magnus’s taunts when he’d first arrived crystallized in Drake’s mind. “Convenient.”

“How’s that, Fish?” Rogan’s green gaze never wavered as they stared each other down.

“You fuck Eris, then show up here and leave our front door unattended.”

“You think I left the alarm off on purpose?”

Quinn and Brody moved to the center of the room and placed themselves between him and Rogan, but Drake was beyond caring.

He’d trusted Rogan. Believed in him, just as he believed in all his brothers. And the man’s fucking dick had put Emerson in danger. Had put all of them in danger. “What do you want me to think?”

“Drake. That’s enough,” Emerson hissed at him.

He heard her—heard the subtle undertone in her words to stop—but couldn’t back down. Wouldn’t back down. “You’ve got a different explanation than the fact that you’ve been fucking our enemy?”

Rogan took another step closer. “Since you’re fucking the enemy’s sister, I don’t think you have a lot of room to talk.”

“Fuck you!” Drake dived at Rogan. Anger writhed through his system, coiling with the ferocity of the snake
that had attacked them. His fist connected with Rogan’s cheek on a hard thud, the crack of bone unmistakable.

No one would talk about Emerson that way. The fact it was one of his Warrior brothers made it that much more unacceptable.

“Drake!” Abstractly, he heard Emerson’s screams as he landed another punch on Rogan. The archer managed to get one back on him before Quinn and Brody pulled them off each other. Drake felt himself being dragged across the kitchen, but his gaze never wavered off of Rogan.

“I didn’t do this, Drake. I didn’t purposely let him in.”

Quinn’s grip was tight where he had him pinned against the wall and Drake shoved at him, desperate to get a few more shots in on Rogan. “Get off me.”

“Calm the hell down.”

“I’m fine.”

Their Taurus wasn’t so easily fooled. “I’m not letting go of you until you prove to me you’re not going to march straight back over there and pick up where you left off.”

“Drake.” Emerson laid a hand on his shoulder and he dragged his gaze off Quinn. “Drake. It’s okay. Stop this. Please. Just stop.”

His shoulders relaxed under Quinn’s grip and he felt the bull respond in kind. The moment he had range of motion, he pulled Emerson into his arms.

“It’s okay,” she whispered against his chest.

He pressed his lips to her hair. “I want to get you out of here. Where do you want to go?”

“Home. Take me home.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Then let’s go upstate to my aunt’s house. The one I told you about with the cows. It’s mine now. And I have the tools there I need to do some work. We need to figure out what the hell’s going on.”

“Let’s go.”

Drake had explained they couldn’t port since he didn’t have a visual of where they were going. Which was how, after the blowup in the kitchen of Warrior Central, she found herself taking the trip upstate in a sweet little Audi sports car she’d had no idea he owned.

They’d cleared the city limits twenty minutes before and his grip on the steering wheel hadn’t lessened; nor had his mood lifted above tense and distracted.

With a series of strokes that were borderline covetous, she ran her hands over the dashboard. “If I’d known you had this car, I’d’ve bugged you to let me drive it months ago.”

He glanced over at the comment and she saw his hands relax a bit on the wheel. “What makes you think I’d let you drive it?”

“You’re crazy about me, Ace. You can’t deny me anything.”

“I would have no problem denying you driving privileges in my Roadster.”

“Not if I’d employed some creative ways to convince you, involving my lips and tongue and your very persuadable cock.”

The car was a sweet driving machine, but even precision steering couldn’t keep him from veering slightly off the road at her words. Emerson couldn’t hold back
the laughter at his response, the sheer joy of being desired and wanted too wonderful to hold back.

Especially after the fight she’d witnessed.

Drake had defended her against his fellow Warrior. And while she likely would have been pissed if he hadn’t, the pure violence in his movements had caught her off guard.

He and Rogan had fought together for millennia and, despite knowing each other for only a year, he’d taken her side. Believed in her.

Defended her.

“Why’d you do it?”

The smile she’d managed to draw out with her earlier comments faded in the light of a pair of oncoming headlights. “No one speaks of you like that.”

Tiny flutters swamped her belly, but she couldn’t hold back her point. “His question wasn’t entirely out of line.”

“He insulted you and he insulted what’s between us, Emerson. It’s that simple.”

“You really are a surprise, Drake.”

“How so?”

“You’re just so…” She broke off, trying to figure out the right word. “Solid. You come off like nothing fazes you and then you have these moments where this fiery passion inside just leaps out and swamps you. I don’t know who you are.”

“I’ve told you before, I’m a simple guy. What you see is what you get. But just because I’m simple doesn’t mean I’m easy.”

No, she had to admit, he wasn’t easy at all. In fact,
he was downright hard and prickly and difficult when he set his mind to something.

Emerson was suddenly grateful for the darkened interior and the limited amount of lights on the back country roads. There was an intimacy here she didn’t normally allow, as if the lack of light and the seat belts that kept them to opposite sides of the car gave a place to comfortably sit back and observe.

To get a sense of what made him tick.

“How do you hold it back? The passion?”

“I watch and wait and I don’t feel the need to act on every little thing. But when it matters, I’m not hiding how I feel and I’m not standing down.”

“Obviously.” A thoughtful pause filled the air before she added, “You and your brothers act pretty decisively and not always in agreement.”

“We’re all different. Just because we’re immortal doesn’t make us any less human, with all the foibles and faults that come with it.”

“Are you sorry you punched Rogan?”

“No.”

“Not even a little bit?”

He turned toward her as much as the drive would allow. “No, Emerson, I’m not sorry. Not in the least. What he said was the deepest insult to you and it won’t happen in my presence.”

Not for the first time, visions of the knights and Warriors she’d read about all her life in books and stories filled her mind’s eye. This old-fashioned streak was something she could get used to.

Maybe, she admitted to herself, she already had.

With that thought came another. “What if he has feelings for her?”

“Rogan? For Eris?” Drake let out a heavy snort, the implacable stubborn streak she associated with his Warrior brothers making its appearance. “Impossible.”

“How do you know?”

“Oh, come on. He’s getting his rocks off, nothing more.”

“The same could be said for us.”

“That’s not what we’re about.”

“To you, maybe.” Or to me, she added silently to herself. “But you don’t know what goes on behind closed doors.”

“Last time I checked, you weren’t secretly plotting to bring down my family.”

“I’ll give you that, but I still don’t think it’s as black and white as you seem to want to make it.” The image of Rogan’s face as he told them about the alarm on the front door—the sheer agony that rode his cheekbones as he admitted his failure—wasn’t made up. “And it’s not like he tried to hide his relationship with her or anything.”

“He’s been hiding it for a long time now.”

The “subject closed” sign blinked in bright neon and she knew she wasn’t going to get any further this evening. She’d let him process it for a while—would think through it herself—before she brought it up again. “Just think about it.”

They spent a few more minutes in silence before he turned toward her. “Why here? This farm?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t know or don’t want to tell me?”

Emerson thought about it for a moment. They’d come a long way in the last few days. Maybe it was just
the inevitability of what had been building between them for the past year, but she found she didn’t want to hide her thoughts.

“I like it up here. I feel…comfortable here. Like I fit.”

“You don’t feel that way in the city?”

“I love the city and I love living there, but that’s my life. Which means it includes all the shitty moments and the things I don’t necessarily want to remember, along with all the things I do love and want to remember. But up here…”

She stared out the window at the passing scenery. The traffic-filled streets and well-traveled highways had given way to back roads and long stretches of fields that made it hard to believe Manhattan was less than an hour away.

“I can also access my tools. I’m a decent hand at scrying and I’d like to try to get a handle on Magnus while I’m here. I prefer to do it in the presence of another.”

“There are risks?”

She’d never been able to define it, but she’d never quite shaken the fear of getting lost in the images in the mirror. “I just like knowing there’s someone watching my back.”

“Then I’m your guy.” After a moment, he added, “Is there any other reason you picked this place?”

“I have good memories up here. Good memories of my family and good memories of who I am.”

“Tell me one of them.”

“The summer I was eight.” The image filled her mind’s eye, so vivid and crisp she could still hear the June bugs as their noise filled the evening sky. “We’d gone to a nearby dairy for ice cream and Magnus, Veronica
and I were sitting there licking cones and trying to keep them from dripping.”

“What flavor did you get?”

“What?” She broke out of the memory to look at him, bemused by the question. “What flavor did I get?”

“Sure. They say ice cream flavor has a lot to say about a person. I’m a fudge ripple man, myself.”

“Mint chocolate chip. I’ve always liked the color. Wicked-witch green.”

His bark of laughter was contagious, and she couldn’t hide her own giggles. “Is that some sort of personal statement on your chosen profession?”

“Nah. I’d call it a delicious coincidence.”

“Fair enough. So you were eating your very green ice cream. Then what happened?”

“Magnus’s chocolate started to drip, and Veronica laughed that he wasn’t eating it fast enough. And then she froze a drop from his cone, midair.”

“With magic?”

“Yep. She was twelve at the time and hadn’t yet developed her loathing for the practice of magic. Instead, she laughed and laughed as this bead of chocolate floated between the bottom of his cone and the ground.”

Emerson could still remember the moment. The carefree laughter between all three of them as they sat there on a picnic bench beside the barn. She saw the fireflies that winked in the night air and felt the light summer breeze that floated over her skin.

“Your parents didn’t mind you practicing magic where someone might see?”

“There are quite a few practicing witches in this area, so there wasn’t the need for such secrecy. And we’ve
always been careful. I didn’t fully understand it when I was younger, but my mother did. She encouraged us to practice in safe spaces, as she called them, and know when it wasn’t appropriate to let loose with our gifts.”

Drake nodded, his voice gentle when he spoke. “It sounds like a nice memory.”

“It gets better.” She smiled and shifted in her seat so she could look at him more closely. “So there’s this drop of chocolate hovering there and we’re pointing and laughing at it and, out of nowhere, I got the urge to melt it.”

“Your talent manifested itself that early?”

“Yep. I felt the fire come right out of my stomach and course through my body. For the briefest moment I thought I’d eaten too much and was going to be sick, but then it just…happened.”

“Fire?”

“A small stream of it. More than enough to melt the cold chocolate.”

“What did Magnus and Veronica do?”

“They were surprised at first. Veronica hadn’t had her abilities for very long and she was still learning the ins and outs. She certainly hadn’t had any indication of what she could do at eight.”

“But you did.”

“Yep. So after we all stared at the chocolate drip on the ground, we got over it and went back to laughing and carrying on. And Veronica and I spent the rest of the time trying to freeze and melt each other’s ice cream.”

“What about Magnus?”

“He just sat and watched and ate the rest of his cone.”