“Now what?” I asked anyone who had an answer while peering down at the four broken pieces of red gemstone lying on the table in front of me.
“Try, uh, putting them together?” Wesley suggested, and I arched a brow at him. Seemed awfully easy, but couldn’t hurt to try.
Shrugging, I picked up two of the pieces and turned them around to see how they might fit together. “Is now a good time to mention I suck at puzzles?” I commented, finding no common grooves for the bits to fit together. “Anyone else want to try?”
“Nope,” Austin shut my suggestion down, tapping the stack of papers Yoshi had given him on his amulet research. “Needs to be you, Princess.”
I sighed heavily, placing down one of the pieces and picking up a different one. It’d be just my luck, there would still be a piece missing or something. “Okay fine, someone grab me coffee, and then if everyone could please stop staring at me? You’re making me nervous as fuck.”
Caleb snickered a laugh but shut up quick when I glared death at him.
“I’ll just go grab that coffee, shall I?” he murmured, quickly retreating back to the kitchen and rattling around for mugs. The rest of the guys respected my request and went through to the living room to watch some sports game on TV while Wes sat down beside me at the table.
“He said you had to physically do it, but I can give pointers, right?” Wes grinned, and I nodded appreciatively. “Cool, try that piece with that one.” He pointed to one in my hand and one on the table. “Turn that one around; try that? Hmm, turn a little further?” And so it continued until some time later when we had a completed amulet on the cloth in front of us.
“Well, now what?” I asked after a long moment of us staring at the amulet, which looked complete… until you bumped it. “Does it need some sort of magical superglue?”
“Probably.” Wes shrugged. “Cal! Aus! What’s next?”
The twins got up from where they’d been hanging out and eating popcorn on the couch and came over to look at the amulet.
“Next,” Caleb announced, flipping through the notes, “it needs to be bathed in the essence of magic from each guardian as well as a Ban Dia.”
I frowned up at him. “The essence of magic?” I repeated, wrinkling my nose. “That sounds dirty.”
“Blood, Kitty Kat. You’ve got such a dirty mind these days, honestly. I feel like we have corrupted you.” Caleb chuckled and whacked me on the head with the notes. “So, based on this, I would assume we all need to add some blood to a mixture and then, like… pour it over the amulet?”
“Let me see,” Austin ordered, taking the notes from his brother. “Your translation skills suck, bro. It needs to soak in the blood, not have it poured over. Ugh,” he groaned and rubbed at his forehead. “It needs to soak under the light of three full moons before the shards will re-bond.”
“What?” I exclaimed, shooting out of my seat and grabbing the notes. Even though I couldn’t read a lick of Mage text, myself. “But we don’t have three full moons! We need this to work now. Like… today.”
“I’m not really sure how we missed that part,” Austin muttered, but the glare he shot Caleb suggested he was blaming his twin’s shitty language skills. “There has to be a work around we can come up with for it. Surely. I’ll give Yoshi a call quickly and see what he says.”
Austin whacked his twin with the back of his hand, and the two of them left the room to call the former Ink Mage for his expertise. Hopefully he had a solution because otherwise we just totally screwed up what little time we had left to prepare for my evil bio-mom’s bid for world domination.
“What are you guys watching?” I asked Cole, dropping into the vacant couch seat beside him and leaning into his side.
“Baseball,” he replied succinctly as he draped an arm over my neck. “Want me to elaborate, or will that all just be gibberish?”
“Ack,” I groaned. “Gibberish. I never could get into team sports, so yeah, don’t even try.”
Cole snorted and used the remote to flick channels to another sports station, but at least this one was showing a UFC fight. One of the few sports I could actually get into as a spectator.
“Hey!” Vali protested the change of channel, but Cole threw a piece of popcorn at him.
“Quit crying; your team was losing anyway,” the gruff ex-fighter teased, and his older brother grumbled something under his breath.
I laughed at their easy teasing and snuggled into Cole’s side a little more, tucking my feet up on the couch. It was only a few minutes later that Austin and Caleb came back into the room looking… hopeful? Please let that be their hopeful expressions.
“Yoshi thinks he has something that can help,” Austin announced, and my heart soared. Thank god for that! “We need to pop by his place to collect the spell parts though. Are you all okay here if we portal in and out? Shouldn’t take too long.”
“Do you mind if I come along and we stop by our house?” River asked, standing from the armchair he had been half-asleep in. “I want to get that bugger stored safely.” He kicked a toe at the chest that sat beside his armchair. It was full of all of the wolves’ most precious artifacts, which were now his responsibility. He was probably right about storing them in our house; it had a pretty impressive vault built into the basement that would be perfect.
“Good thinking,” Wesley agreed. “If we have some time to kill, I might start taking notes from Cam about what all those items are. This whole records stored by memory thing doesn’t really work for me.”
“Probably a good idea,” Caleb agreed. “Okay, Alpha, you’re carrying that fucking box though. It’s heavy enough transporting three grown men, let alone that thing too.” He grimaced as he eyed the heavy chest.
The twins had confessed some days ago that constantly portaling multiple people over great distances was exhausting as all shit, so we had been making an effort to use the talent only when needed—which was why we had flown to Harrow on the Omega jet.
“Need us to do anything while you’re gone?” I asked, and Austin shook his head.
“Nope, just take it easy for a bit. Watch a movie or nap or something, Princess,” he ordered, giving Cole and Vali a sharp look. “Understood, you two?”
Vali coughed a laugh and pushed up from his own seat. “Don’t look at me; I’m going to take a nap myself.”
Cole’s only response to Austin’s attempt at telling him what to do—or what not to do—was to tug me a little closer and place a hand over my breast.
“Real mature, Drake,” Austin sneered, and Cole extended his middle finger at him.
“Quit it, you two,” I scolded, slapping Cole’s hand off my boob—for now. “We will be fine. I’ll make Cutie watch a chick flick with me.”
With a suspicious glare, the twins left with River and the chest of treasures in tow. Wesley took off to find Cam at Granny Winter’s house, and Vali disappeared into one of the bedrooms to nap.
“Alone at last, Vixen,” Cole observed, handing me the TV remote. “Pick whatever you want to watch; I’m easy.”
“Seriously?” I squinted up at him. “Why?”
He gave a mischievous sort of shrug. “No reason.”
Contrary to his words, when I turned back to the TV and started scrolling the guide for the cheesiest, most cringeworthy rom-com possible, his fingers started flicking the buttons open on my shirt.
“Uh-huh, I see what you’re doing here, Cutie,” I murmured, settling on an old Hilary Duff movie and grinning. “You’re thinking you won’t have to watch it if you’re busy doing something else?”
He hummed a sound, kissing the side of my neck as he swept my hair aside. “The thought crossed my mind, yes.”
I groaned as his rough hand scooped into the cup of my bra and tweaked my nipple. “Well then, it’s a damn good thing I’m not wearing any panties to begin with, isn’t it? Seeing as you still haven’t replaced any of the ones you’ve destroyed.”
“Really?” He paused to look at me like he thought I wasn’t serious or something.
I shrugged and gave him a naughty sort of grin. “Why don’t you check for yourself?”
My Cutie did not need telling twice, and within seconds he was kneeling on the carpet with my legs over his shoulders. The stretchy tube skirt I’d been wearing scrunched up to my waist, and I sighed with satisfaction with the first touch of his hot mouth to my naked cunt.
Fuck yes. This is the way all women should watch their rom-coms.
Sagging back into the couch, I moaned my approval and clasped Cole’s head tighter to my pussy while Hilary fell in love on the flat-screen.
Austin and Caleb mixed the potion together in the kitchen as Yoshi had instructed them while I sat on the kitchen counter watching with fascination. For all my various acquired powers, I still found every aspect of magic fascinating, so I was thrilled to just sit and watch as they went through the motions of magecraft.
“So, what is this supposed to do?” I asked, sipping my coffee as my heels drummed a tune on the cabinet doors.
“Well,” Caleb replied, slicing his inner arm to add his blood to the inky mix Austin was stirring, “the idea is to paint the bowl with this Blood Ink potion, then let it dry. When we add the amulet and all of our blood, we should be able to speed up the process and eliminate the need for three full moons.”
“That’d be useful,” I admitted. “So how quickly will it work?”
Austin wiped his hands off on a cloth and swiped my coffee from my hand to take a sip. “No idea.” He shrugged and handed my mug back before I could hurl a fireball at his head.
“Playing dangerous games today, asshole,” I muttered, glaring at him as I clutched my mug with both hands.
“Who is?” Vali asked, joining us in the kitchen. “Oh, with the potion?”
Austin snorted a laugh, and Caleb shook his head while his fangs slowly retracted. “Austin is,” he explained. “He just stole a sip from Kitty Kat’s coffee.”
Vali’s eyebrows shot up, and he gave Austin a look like he was a dead man walking. Smart. At least the big Romanian knew what was what.
“Don’t look at me like that, Princess,” Austin scolded me. “You’re becoming too dependent on coffee these days. I swear, when we cut you for this spell, it will just pour out pure espresso.”
“Mmmm,” I hummed, picturing what that would look like and smiling.
Austin snickered and shook his head at me. “You’re a twisted bitch, Princess. I’ll give you that much.”
I was spared from trying to decide if he was complimenting or insulting me by Vali poking at the inky, bloody mix. “So, is this finished?”
Both twins leapt at him, swatting his huge hand away from the bowl and corralling him out of the kitchen. “Don’t touch half-finished spells you big lizard!” Caleb snapped at him. “You could lose a finger!”
“Or grow one,” Austin added, picking up his sticky, black mix defensively. “Cal, grab a bowl and let’s get the spell completed before anyone else messes with it.”
I sat back and watched them pull a pottery mixing bowl from Vic’s cabinet, and then Austin set about painting the inky goo all over the inside of it while murmuring in his magical tongue. When it was done, he set it on the bench and rinsed the excess down the drain.
“So, we need it to dry before we add the amulet and blood?” I asked, and both twins nodded. “Can I help?” They glanced over at me, and I ignited warm orange dragon fire on my palm.
“Huh, that’s pretty useful,” Caleb commented and held the painted bowl out to me. “Just don’t get it too close. I’d hate to see what would happen to the spell if we added dragon fire to it.”
I grinned, but followed his advice, holding the flame only just close enough to dry the ink in a few minutes rather than who knew how long at room temperature.
When it had lost the wet shine, I extinguished my flame and smiled to the Mages in front of me. “Done!” I announced. “Do we do the amulet thing now?”
“Yep, I don’t see why not,” Caleb agreed, carrying the bowl through to the dining room where I had left the pieces assembled on the table.
Austin held out his hand to help me down from the counter, which I accepted, but I clutched my coffee a little tighter. Just in case.
“Paranoid,” he snickered. “That’s a result of all the coffee, you know.”
I gasped dramatically. “You shut your lying face, Austin King. I won’t have you speaking badly of my one true love.”
This seemed to amuse him to no end, and he grabbed me around the waist, tugging me against his body as I made to follow Caleb. “Oh, baby girl, we all know that’s not coffee.” His words oozed with sex, and a deep shudder ran through me, causing my nipples to harden.
Damn him.
“Quit fucking around, you two!” Caleb called from the dining room. “Go wake the others up so we can get this spell done.”
I glanced up at Austin, and he scratched his chin thoughtfully. “You take Cole; I’ll get River and Wes.”
“Hah,” I laughed. “You scared of the big bad dragon?”
“Rightfully so,” Austin muttered, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “That fucker has decked me for waking him up before.”
“Scaredy cat,” I teased, leaving him and slipping into the room I knew Cole had been napping in. We’d all been up for most of the night and it was well past dawn now, so I didn’t blame them for needing to sleep. Truthfully, I was half-dead on my feet as well, but I was too anxious about completing this amulet to actually sleep.
Austin’s worries about waking Cole were totally unfounded, of course. Unless he was worried about being hauled under the covers and ground against Cole’s hard cock—both of which did happen. But that was what Cole did most mornings, so I was prepared for it.
“Come on, Cutie,” I coaxed, trying not to grind back against him.
Down girl, this is magic time not play time!
“Come on what?” he murmured back with a sleep-thickened voice. “I’ll come anywhere you want, Vixen.”
I was so torn between laughing and taking him up on the dirty offer. But magic waited for us in the dining room, so coming on things would have to wait until later. “Come on and get up,” I clarified. “The twins require your dragon-y blood for this amulet superglue spell.”
“Oh,” he grunted, blinking sleepy gray eyes at me. “That’s a shame. Fine, I’m getting up.” He paused, narrowing his eyes at me. “I mean, out of bed. You’re such a flirt, Vixen.”
This time I really did laugh. What had gotten into everyone today? It was like ever since River’s fight against Cam, they were all on happy gas or something. It was fun, don’t get me wrong, but it was also weird as hell.
Back out in the dining room, the guys were all gathered around the table looking decidedly sleep-rumpled, so I went straight to where the bowl had been laid out beside the amulet pieces and a stupidly sharp-looking dagger.
“Just… slice and drip?” I checked with the Mages after carefully transferring the pieced-together amulet into the base of the painted bowl. They confirmed, so I took the dagger in hand and gritted my teeth as I cut a deep slice into my forearm. Dropping the knife to the table, I used my hand to squeeze as much blood into the bowl as possible before the wound sealed over again.
Hopefully it didn’t require a full bowl, or I would be standing there cutting myself all damn night. When the slice closed over, no one told me to try again, so I sighed in relief.
“All right, who’s next?” I asked brightly, wiping my arm off on the cloth that Wesley handed me.
One by one, my bonded guardians each deposited their own blood into the bowl until the amulet pieces lay in a shallow pool of crimson.
“So, that’s it?” River asked, and Austin nodded.
“Pretty much,” he sighed. “We don’t know how much our spell has accelerated the process, so it’s just a matter of waiting now.”
River hummed his understanding, folding his arms over his chest. “Makes sense. In that case, Kitten, it’s time to sleep.”
“Huh?” I blinked up at him, wondering when he had moved so close. “I’m fine. I was just going to make another coffee, and then I can sit here and watch for any, um, magical gluing.”
“No more coffee,” River ordered with a scowl. “Sleep. You’re exhausted, and we need everyone at full strength. That includes you, love.”
“But—” I started to argue with him but was silenced by a stern glare from his golden eyes.
“But nothing, love,” River finished for me. “Sleep. That’s an order.”
Huffing at being ordered to bed like a toddler or something, I glowered up at him. “Yes, sir,” I muttered, then glanced around at the rest of the guys. “But I’m not the only one who needs sleep. Who is joining me?”
“Kitten,” River warned with a wolfish growl underscoring my nickname, “sleep. I mean it.”
I tried to think of another stalling tactic, but my thoughts were interrupted by a yawn that stretched my jaw so wide I could have swallowed a hippo. Yeah okay, so maybe I was a little tired.
“Fine,” I grumbled, leaving the dining room in search of a bed. “Wake me up if anything happens!”
If anyone replied, I didn’t hear them when I fell face first into a pile of still-warm bedding that smelled of pine trees. Delicious.
