ROMANCE: Mason (Bad Boy Alpha Male Stepbrother Romance Boxset) (New Adult Contemporary Stepbrother Romance Collection) (162 page)

I ordered a late supper from Francois the cook, and made sure that the maids would have my bed turned down and ready for me. I hadn’t been home in a while and I wanted everything perfect. I was never this strict, this demanding, this serious. They shook their heads when they thought I wasn’t looking and it took everything I had not to chew them out for it.

Fifteen minutes later we were rolling out the mansion gates, heading towards the address they’d sent me. I had questions, and I wanted to get answers. I couldn’t do this anymore. When we drove I looked at the quiet streets, the lights strobing by, and drenching the car in light for a moment before it fell dark again. I wondered where Colt was. Had he stayed behind in a place that held nothing for him?  Or had he gone home, wherever home was for him, finally released from the promise that had bound him to me? I imagined him being around, following me, keeping me safe even though I didn’t want it from him, and suddenly I was emotional.

No, I thought biting back tears, it would be better for him to just forget about me. It was all that was left. I was a mental case, a lost cause.

Claude pulled up in front of an intimidating gate before I was ready and I fought to compose myself. The last thing I wanted to do was go in there vulnerable. I had to have my game face on, no matter what. Claude leaned out of the car and talking into the intercom, and a moment later the gate slid open and he pulled through the gate onto a winding drive way.

When we drove through the gate it felt like we were moving through a screen, a prickle that moved over my skin like a blanket before we were through it and left it behind. The drive led to a large Tuscan style house with tan walls and arches over first floor balconies. Hanging plants completely the picture. Yellow lights set in the wall at intervals lit up the garden so I could see all this.

When I got out of the car a man and a woman came out of the house.

“So good of you to come,” the woman said politely. She had a friendly smile, but when I looked into her eyes they were ice cold and empty. A witch. She looked very familiar and when I looked at her carefully I realized she wasn’t a stranger. It was the witch I’d spoken to in Reno. Except she didn’t look the way she did then at all.

Then she’d been old, skinny and wrinkly, with gray hair and a voice that had cracked at the end of every sentence. Now she was young and beautiful, with curves and honey blond hair that matched the same smile she’d thrown at me then. When she held out her hand to me I reached out my own to take it, but stopped when magic crawled over my skin.

“We’d hoped you’d come,” the man said. I looked at him carefully, but he was no one I’d seen before. But he had some kind of magic as well. It wasn’t hard to tell that the woman – she hadn’t mentioned a name – was the one with the power.

“Call me Aadri,” she said like she’d read my mind. “And this is Dave.”

Aadri, Dave, such normal names.

“Please, come in,” Aadri said and I couldn’t help but feel like maybe this was a mistake. But it was too late now. I was in the witch’s lair. Literally. I followed them inside to a living room that was decorated in shades of beige with dark brown leather couches. They perched on the edges, the picture of grace, and a maid brought in cups of tea on a tray. So normal. So very, deceitfully normal.

“Why don’t you tell us why you’re here?” Aadri asked while she was pouring me a cup of tea I hadn’t had the chance to say no to.

“I want to know about my mother,” I said, the words tumbling haphazardly out of my mouth. I was overpowered here, no matter how much magic I still had the ability to hold onto.

“What about her?” she asked casually, like we were talking about the weather and not the woman I hadn’t seen since I was five.

“Where is she?” I asked. It was the most insignificant of my questions, but suddenly here, with these two people sitting across from my pretending to be so subdued, I suddenly felt like I would collapse. I wondered if it was a trick of the magic or not.

“In Phoenix, I believe,” Dave said and looked at his wife with questioning eyes. She looked at him and nodded her confirmation.

“Yes, that’s right,” she said. “Sugar?” I didn’t have the chance to answer before she dropped one cube into the liquid and handed me the cup. “She’s the head of a coven there.”

“All these years she’s been in Phoenix?” I asked, my voice sounding small like I was a child. I cleared my throat. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

Aadri looked up and her cold eyes slid over me. I felt her like a shiver. “You never asked,” she said. And I realized she was right. There hadn’t been once in my life that I’d wanted to know where she was. I hadn’t asked this question because I hadn’t wanted to know. It was easier to believe the mother that I thought was willing to give me up, just like that, was dead. That way I didn’t have to worry that I’d run into an older version of myself and have too much in common.

“Can I go to her?” I asked. Aadri looked at Dave, who l looked at her and shook his head like she had been the one to ask.

“I don’t think that’s wise,” he finally said turning his head to me. “No one sees the high priestess unless they’re summoned. And you, well, you don’t even belong to a coven.”

“But I’m her daughter,” I countered.

“Only when you want to be,” Aadri answered me smoothly. It irritated me and I was suddenly angry.

“You have been fighting to get to me, and now that I willingly come you’re pushing me away. Why.”

“Because you don’t want this, Gemma.” When she said my name her voice crawled over my skin and I wish she’d take it back.

“Since when do I have a choice?”

“You always had a choice,” Dave said. “You just don’t seem to know what it is you really want.”

“Are you telling me I’m not allowed to see my mother? What if I just go there and try to find her myself?”

“You won’t,” Aadri’s voice was calm as it had been the whole time, but it had ice in it now. It was horrible. “No one finds the High Priestess unless she wants to be found. There’s a reason you haven’t seen her in so many years.”

The room felt like it was spinning around me. The magic that was obviously flowing from now like a waterfall made me feel dizzy, like I’d been spinning too much and I wasn’t sure how far the floor was.

“You made it sound like she wanted me, like my disappearance was a pain to her.”

“It was,” Aadri said, and suddenly I didn’t believe her. Suddenly I didn’t think that she’d meant anything she’d said on the bench in Reno. She’d just needed to get me here.

“How?” I asked, even though I knew the answer to that question. I stood up and felt unstable. Still I fought it and held my footing.

“I’m leaving,” I said. I looked at them both, challenging them to stop me, but Dave stood when I did, and Aadri looked disappointed.

“I was hoping you’d stay for dinner,” she said. “More witches were going to join us.”

“No thank you,” I said and my voice was hostile, but neither of them looked offended. I turned and walked, and a maid appeared, leading me to the door. It was strange being let go so easily when I kept having the feeling that all they wanted to do was lock me up. Claude got out of the car he’d been waiting in and held the door for me. I slid onto the leather seats and only looked back when the door was closed. Aadri and Dave stood next to each other, his arm tentatively around her waist like it wasn’t natural for them to stand like that.

Claude turned around and we drove down the driveway. Somehow the night was pitch  black now, with the lights hardly making a dent in it, and no moon or stars in the sky. I felt incredibly alone when we drove home, knowing that no one would wait for me.

No one but my guards who didn’t care for me in any other way that doing their jobs the way they were taught. I had no one I could talk to. No one I could ask what I had to do next.

My mother was suddenly in the middle of everything. The woman I had wanted to be dead so ignoring my roots were easy. The mother I’d refused to talk about because I hadn’t wanted to feel like throwing everything I had of her away was wrong. I’d colored my hair so she wouldn’t be staring back at me. And for a very long time it had worked.

Now I wondered how long I would have been able to keep thinking that I wasn’t a part of her in some way. They who I was would eventually catch up with who I was desperately trying to be.

And I wondered if the witches had meant what I’d heard when they’d said that it had hurt my mom to give me up. Hurt her career.

tails.

Colt

I woke up in a cold sweat, feeling like half of me was on fire and the other half was ice cold. The sensation was driving me crazy. I couldn’t place what was causing in. In two seconds I’d stripped of my clothes and dropped the floor, forcing the change faster and harder than ever before. I would pay for a change this fast, but anything to get away from the feeling that was crawling across my skin like I didn’t have any control over my body.

I got out of the apartment and managed to get away without anyone seeing me. The sun was just reaching it golden fingers tentatively over the horizon and most of the city was still drenched in shadows. I ran away from people, from houses and cars, until I was emerged between the trees and finally I felt like I could breathe again.

It wasn’t gone, it was still there under my fur, letting me know that something very big was wrong. But it was better as a wolf, and when I ran it got better still. I didn’t know what it was, but I did know that the magic inside of me was telling me something. I hadn’t felt this lost about what I was feeling for a long time, not since before Peter had taught me the secrets of my own curse. I’d gotten to know myself.

I shook myself out as the rays of the sun fell on me. From the hill I could see everything, the city lay stretched at my feet like a blanket. I could see Gemma’s house, too, a big property that covered most of the one hill top. And it was still shrouded in darkness, like the sun had never risen for it. The light touched everywhere else, illuminating LA, but Gemma’s house was dark as night. This change in light was caused by magic, I knew. And only I would be able to see it, because I had magic in me.

I suddenly realized what it was I was feeling. Something was terrible wrong. With Gemma. And I hadn’t put two and two together. I set off, running towards the Mansion. I couldn’t believe I’d been so stupid. I cursed myself. And then I cursed her for being so stubborn, for refusing my protection even if it meant that we wouldn’t be together anymore. She knew what I was, what I was capable of. That I could keep her safe from harm because of it.

And still she’d pushed me away. Love conquered all, I believed that. But without it, nothing was safe in this case.

There were more people in the streets now and I had to be careful. I slipped from one shadow to the next. Twice someone looked my direction but I managed to curl out of site. There were times that we tried to come across as stray dogs, but in the area I was that wouldn’t be good enough. There weren’t stray dogs around these parts, especially not any ones my size. When I reached Gemma’s house, I watched it for a while. Kyle was on duty as always, but the house seemed quiet.

It felt quiet. Like no one was home. I needed to talk to Kyle, but I couldn’t without clothes and I’d shed it all at home. So I ran home and threw on training clothes, slacks, a shirt. Running shoes. And I headed back to the Mansion.

“Morning, Colt,” Kyle greeted, hanging out of the guard house and waving at me.

“Everything okay here?” I asked.

Kyle shrugged. “Nothing strange with crazy fans or anything, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Sort of,” I answered. Not at all, actually, but Kyle wouldn’t get it. He was a sharp human, but still he wouldn’t understand any of this.

“She out today?” I nodded toward the house, trying to sound casual. I wasn’t supposed to be prying into Gemma’s private life. The rules were pretty clear to the guards. Kyle narrowed his eyes at me, and he kept quiet for long enough for me to think he was going to chase me away.

“You know I’m not supposed to tell you that,” he said, looking at me like I was a stranger. I wondered how long it would take for everyone else at the house to feel that way about me too. For Gemma to start thinking that. “But, seeing that it’s you… I don’t think everything is fine, no.”

That made something inside me jump, and an iron fist of nerves clamped down on my gut. I swallowed hard.

“What do you mean?”

I pumped my hands open and closed, trying to keep a hold on the adrenaline that filtered in my body. I’d just changed, my body still raw, and the wolf inside me was ready for round two.

“Miss LaGrange gave everyone a week off.”

“A whole week?”

He nodded. “She phoned it through early this morning.

“Who’s everyone? You’re still here.”

“The kitchen staff, the body guards, the butler. You know us gate staff, we never get lucky that way.” He chuckled and under any other circumstance I would have laughed and joked about it. But this was all wrong. A whole week? Just after she’d gotten more guards because she’d known without me she wasn’t safe? When we’d separated she’d covered herself. With human guards. In my books that wasn’t covering herself at all, but she’d tried.

And now?