ROMANCE: Mason (Bad Boy Alpha Male Stepbrother Romance Boxset) (New Adult Contemporary Stepbrother Romance Collection) (163 page)

“You don’t think it’s strange?” I asked.

Kyle shrugged again. “Sure it is. But it’s not really in my job description to follow up, you know? No offense or anything, man, but we all know what happened to you because you didn’t stick to protocol. Besides, Miss LaGrange is boss. If she says a week off, she means it.”

“Did she phone it through herself?” I asked. I needed something, anything, that could give me a clue. I was starting to see what had happened. I was pretty sure witches were involved. They could place someone under a spell, make them do things they wouldn’t have done otherwise. Depending on the strength of their will it could be anything. Gemma was strong, but phoning the guards wasn’t a big thing. And the witches I’d seen the other night, they’d been stronger.

I flashed back on the night I’d gone after them. I’d crept right into their lair, right into a meeting, and none of them had seen me as a threat. Because they already had her, that’s what they’d told me. I wasn’t a threat now, because compared to her will power when she decided she wanted something, I was nothing.

And they’d been right. I was no match to her will power. I was just wondering how on earth they were a match.

There was no doubt now. They’d taken her, I knew it. They’d taken her, and my body had fought through the battle this morning when I’d woken up. I turned and jogged away.

“Where are you going?” Kyle called after me, but I was focused on what was going on inside me. If I got her back and we both lived to tell the tale, maybe I could answer him.

At home I paced the small living room, trying to figure out a way I was going to go forward. I had no idea where she was. I racked my brain for anyone I could ask, anyone at all I could get to admit something. For that I needed a witch, which I wasn’t going to find now, a shifter which would rather die than talk – they were impossibly loyal – or a human that helped them.

Mike.

I flew out of the apartment to the place where he lived when he wasn’t on duty. The only reason I knew this was because I’d helped in handling his paperwork when he was first employed. He’d arrived after me. With a little bit of luck he was still living in the same place.

I smelled him before I could see him, and I thanked my lucky stars that I’d found at least something to go by. I broke down his door. He stormed into the living room with a baseball bat, looking terrible.

“Really?” I asked him. “Years at the academy and  you run out here with a baseball bat?”

It took him a moment to register who I was. After he realized he was safe – well, in his opinion – he jammed his thumb and forefinger in his eyes.

“I have a hangover, man,” he said.

I had him up against the wall in a flash, my arm against his throat.

“Where is she?”

“What the hell man,” he said with a raspy voice. I pressed harder. If he could question me he wasn’t scared enough. His eyes widened and fear trickled into them. Good, we were getting somewhere.

“I asked you where she is,” I said and my voice sounded dangerous, even to me.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, and I could smell his fear, and through it, his honesty. He wasn’t lying to me.

“Gemma. She’s not at home. Your witches have taken her, and I want to know where she is.”

He groped at my arm with his hands, but I was much stronger than him, and my rage fueled my strength.

“I don’t know, I swear. After they’d paid me to get you out of there they left me alone. I don’t know anymore. I was just doing it for the money.”

All of it was truth. A lie smelled sour, there was none of it around him. I slowly eased up, and when I let him go he fell to his knees and coughed.

“You sold her out for money?” I asked. I hadn’t heard something so petty in a long time. Money was the least of my worries. It hadn’t been something I’d thought about since before I’d been cursed with being a wolf.

“Things are tough all over, man,” he said.

“Sure they are,” I said. “Because of you, she might die. Worth the money?”

He swallowed so hard I could hear it.

“Tough all over,” I said and shook my head. I left the apartment. Mike could pay for the repairs to his door with that money. I cursed loudly when I stood on the pavement outside his apartment. I had nothing else.

Nothing else but the bond between me and Gemma because we were still married. I looked at the golden ring on my ring finger. I closed my eyes and focused on her, on what I felt for her. Love and protection flowed through me like I was a tuning fork. And with that, a faint pulse. One that wasn’t my own.

It was hers.

I was picking up on her, feeling her pulse next to my own. A mix of emotions passed through me, and I knew they were hers too. Nervousness, fear, discomfort. And with that a strange excitement. And magic, a lot of magic. I could feel it. My entire existence pulled in a direction, like a magnet. That’s where she was. I could find her.

I moved around the building into a dark alley where I would be alone. I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself. I slowed down my heartbeat. Her pulse became clearer as the difference in pace grew. I focused on becoming very quiet, and turned into a wolf again. The wolf was happy to be released, just as eager to get going as I was. It was just as protective over her now that she was my mate.

I checked in with my feelings, and found as a wolf she was clearer inside of me now that I knew what to look for. And the pull was stronger, too. I started running in the direction she was taking me. I was going to get my woman back.

Gemma

I stood in a foyer wearing the amazing dress they’d put me in. I shivered like it was freezing, but it was from nerves. This feeling, this dress, I’d always associated with my wedding day. A pang shot through me, the wedding day with Colt had been so quiet, warm and gentle. No nerves at all. Instead I was trembling to meet my mother.

The woman I hadn’t seen since I was a little girl. The one I had treated in my mind like she’d been dead all these years. I’d expected to have more of an emotional reaction to it all, to have felt somewhere in my life like something was missing without her.

Instead I’d felt a whole lot of nothing. Even now I wasn’t worried about what she would think of me, rather about the fact that I was surrounded by hundreds of witches and she was tied in the middle like a stake keeping it all together.

Tall double doors were closed shut in front of me, the entrance into a life that I didn’t know. A witch I hadn’t seen before, with short red hair, glowing green eyes and freckles. Aadri had disappeared. I didn’t know how I felt about it. She was my enemy because she'd taken me away, but she was the only person here that I knew.

“Raven will see you now,” the redhead said to me, and she stepped back. Raven. How had I not known that that was my mother’s name? Had I pushed it out of my mind somehow?

Raven and Peter LaGrange…

I tried the names together, trying to see if the relationship fit. But it didn’t. Raven and Peter? Raven sounded exotic, outlandish, like a fantasy. And Peter sounded… average.

A clicking sound traveling from the other side of the double doors, like a lock was being turned, and then the doors slowly opened by themselves. There must have been servants behind the doors, pulling them open. I fought the urge to pop my head around and check. I had to be as elegant and graceful as I looked. As perfect as they all were.

I walked into a great big hall. The walls were wood paneled and intricate leaf-and-floral designs were craved into the pillars that reached up to an arched ceiling every couple of feet. Grand oil paintings of beautiful people – witches? – hung on the wall, and there were candles in candle holders against the wall. A giant chandelier hung from the ceiling with candles and crystals, casting tiny diamonds of light everywhere.

And in the middle of it all, on a throne that looked like it was carved from gold, sat the slimmest woman I’d ever seen. She had soft green eyes and black hair that gleamed in the light that danced around the room. She wore a white dress with a dipped neckline and it cinched around her tiny waist. Long sleeves hugged her arms, and from her wrists it expanded out in a waterfall of lace that fell to the floor. I wondered how she got anything done in those sleeves.

“Gemma, you’re so grown up,” she said. She smiled warmly and it surrounded me like a hug even though she hadn’t moved to touch me.

“Mom?” I asked, taking another step closer. There was something awfully familiar about her. The way her black hair fell over her shoulders, the milky white color of her skin that somehow complimented the material of the dress,  not the other way around. And the smile wrinkles around her mouth and her eyes. It was like meeting a friend.

And still I didn’t know her at all. She was a stranger.

She held out her hand and I walked closer to her. I stopped just beyond arm’s reach. The warmth drained out of her smile a little, like she’d expected a warm embrace. But I wasn’t ready for that yet. What kind of mother had her daughter kidnapped?

“How ladylike you are. I’ve kept tabs on you, all these years. But I never could have imagine how you glow from the inside, like you’ve swallowed the sunrise. How are you?”

The question was so simple, so normal, I opened my mouth and moved it around without a sound for a moment.

“I’m alright,” I said. Really, what else was I going to say?

“Come, would you like some tea? I want to hear everything about you.”

She stood up and walked to a corner of the room where I noticed lush red couches that I hadn’t noticed before. A fireplace crackled happily in the corner and there were plants scattered around, making everything look very homely. Raven snapped her fingers and a servant appeared. She ordered some tea.

I felt awkward and uncomfortable, and I perched on the edge of the seat, but Raven sat down and when the tea arrived she poured us both a cup. She asked if I wanted milk and sugar and it all seemed so normal. It was like she understood that if she kept on acting normally, I would start to relax. And I did.

“You know, one of the things that hurt me the most after I’d lost you was that I would never see your first date. Or your prom. I wouldn’t be able to help you with  make-up or the things that make you a woman. As a mom those are the things that really help you bond with your daughter.”

She spoke about losing me like it was such a simple thing. So normal, just another event. I remembered learning everything she was talking about from the internet. I did my research. I didn’t want my friends to know that I didn’t know what to do, so I never asked. Instead I found out for myself. And still I’d never wondered what it would be like to have a mother instead. I tried to figure out why I’d never missed her in my life, why there had never been a whole where she belonged.

“I made it easier for you,” she said.

“What?” I asked.

“A life without me. I knew that I would be hard for a girl to grow up without a role model. So I made sure you wouldn’t miss me.”

This was the first sign that my mother wasn’t just an ordinary mother, but a witch.

“You cast a spell? So that I would forget you?”

“So that you could have a full life without me,” she said.

“And what about dad?”

It felt like we were suddenly frozen in time. When I looked up her, her eyes were a deeper green. A sea-green.

“Your father did what he thought was the right thing,” she said. I frowned.

“And he died for it,” I said. I still wasn’t sure what had happened, but I knew that his death wasn’t what I’d thought. And I was having my doubts about my mother’s involvement. The way Raven had sat on that throne… she was the High Priestess. I knew it.

I could feel it in my bones.

I changed the topic.

“Why haven’t you come to see me?” I asked. “You said you kept tabs on me.”

“If I wanted the spell to keep working, for you to have a normal life without me, I had to stay away.”

I looked down at my hands. I felt ridiculous so dressed up, even though it all fit in here, in this room with my mother dressed in something equally elaborate.

“Maybe the spell wouldn’t have been necessary if you’d dropped in for coffee once in a while. You can’t have a hole when nothing’s missing.”

She turned her face away and it gave me time to study her face without feeling like I was offending her. She was like an older version of the person that stared back in the mirror at me every day. My bottle blond hair was the only difference. I had her height and build and bone structure. It was like I was a carbon copy. And still…

I couldn’t just assume that her and I were the same. Would I make sure my child didn’t know about me for years?

“Why now?” I asked. “Why did you send for me now, when you’ve been trying to stay away for so long?” The question burned under my skin.

“Because you’re ready, my darling,” she said. The pet name didn’t make me feel warm. Instead dread dragged down on me, and I couldn’t place it.

“Ready for what?”

She smiled but it didn’t reach her eyes. “To join us.”

I opened my mouth to say something but nothing came out. I leaned back, trying to get away from her without being rude.