“No.” A shard of pain ricochets through my skull, and for a moment I’m petrified Gage effed up my new body. “Lex has nothing to do with this.” I take a step in toward her and soak in her features as the flickering light baptizes them gold and peach. “Skyla, I really did have an epiphany tonight.” God knows if I even suggest Candace had anything to do with this she’ll bolt, and any chance of reconciliation will forever be off the table. “You and I were meant to be together.” My voice shakes as I do my best to temper it. “Anything short of you and me is an abomination and a threat from the enemy.” I reach for her arm, and her body jerks away as if dodging a bullet.
“How dare you.” Her hand connects with my cheek so fast it feels as if a firecracker just went off on the side of my face. Skyla lunges for her purse and bolts for the door. The whites of her eyes glow as she looks to me with a newfound vengeance, her chest panting wildly. “Don’t you ever refer to my marriage, my family that way again. I won’t even repeat the word. If you’re smart, you won’t either.” She ditches down the stairs. The sound of her thundering footsteps dissipates until the final slam of the door announces her departure.
Gage rumbles with a dark laugh, no louder than a whisper. “Skyla started it, but I’m going to finish it.”
My chest widens as I take a full breath. The flicker of the flames lights Gage up like a demon—like the demon that he is, but love all but blinded me from seeing it.
“Come at me,” I growl right back. “And you better bring it because I’m not holding back.”
There’s something in his eyes that suggests he’s been looking forward to kicking my ass for a while now, maybe as far back as the day Skyla stepped onto this island. But I don’t wait for him to make the first move. My entire body takes flight as I lunge over him, delivering blow after blow as we wrestle it out. My hand connects with his face, and his jaw gives way to a satisfying pop. Gage does his best to pummel my insides, but the warrior in me unleashes, and I thrash his body as if it were my sole purpose on Earth, and, sadly enough, thrashing Gage Oliver just might be that very thing. Gage pins my head to the dresser, and the force of my body launches all the candles to fall to their sides and rolling right off the back. A burst of illumination lights up the room as Gage and I suddenly work in concert to move the granite-like piece of furniture and beat the fire licking up the wall out with the blankets stripped from the bed.
“Shit,” he grunts as the room fills with smoke. Gage heads over and opens the window, allowing the fog to curl in and eat away the filth from the air. He pulls the back of his hand from his mouth and inspects it in the moonlight. “My lip is bleeding. You happy now?”
“I’m not happy.” I stagger over to the bed and take a seat next to him as a full roll of nausea boils in my stomach. I’m not sure if my newfound desire to puke is from the fact I beat Gage or he beat me, probably both. “Sorry, man.” I give his shoulder a quick pat.
“No, you’re not.” He pinches his eyes closed, the blood dripping down his chin creating a hard line like that of a marionette. “But I guess you had to do it for the same reason I had to.” He looks over at me, exhausted, that look on his face I’ve seen a hundred times before after football practice. “Dude, you’re not getting Skyla back.”
“Neither are you.” The words expire from me. They were the hardest I’ve ever had to speak and the most necessary. “You need to realize who you are and how the enemy has decided to use you. If you really love her, and her people, you’ll go against what the enemy wants. It’s only logical. I don’t know why I couldn’t see that before, but now—”
“It’s plain as day?” He lifts a brow. “You’re talking with your dick. Go home and fuck Lexy. Leave Skyla and me the hell alone. Look, you’re not thinking straight. This is me you’re talking to. I’m not out to hurt Skyla.” His gaze shoots out the window as if he just arrived at an epiphany himself. “I’m not.” It comes out as a question as if he was unsure of this himself. “I bumped into Cooper today. He said he needed to talk to you. Why don’t you do that? Find Coop, rescue Kresley. Do something productive, for God’s sake, instead of ruining the one date night I have had in a month.”
Date night. I nod as I take in the damage Gage and I have amassed in the last ten minutes. “I’m sorry to break it to you, but there won’t be any more date nights.” I bear into Gage Oliver’s blue eyes hard as iron. “There will be no more Skyla and you. Whatever you think you had, it ended tonight.”
A stillness builds between us, as thick and impenetrable as a fort. His chest bucks with a silent laugh, but he never takes that pissed stare off mine.
“So you’re going to fight for her.”
“I don’t have to fight for her. She’s already mine, has been all along. The only thing I’m doing is fending you off.”
“And Skyla?” he growls her name out low like a threat. “Does she have a say in this? Or are you dragging her by the hair to Whitehorse?”
“Skyla.” Her name curls from my lips like smoke as I glance out the window. Skyla is the wild card. She always has been.
“I thought so. You didn’t give it one ounce of thought as to what she might want because you always think you know best.” The silence hangs between us as Gage lets me recount my own misdeeds rather than itemizing them himself. Gage knows me well enough to realize no one can quite crucify me like I can. If anything, I’m a master at self-torment.
A dark smile curls on his lips, and something about the glee he’s deriving makes my blood run cold.
“You know”—I bury a laugh in my chest—“I didn’t really think you’d roll over and play dead, but I didn’t think you’d show your true colors either.”
“True colors? Wickedness?” He tips his head in amusement. “Do you even know who you’re in the room with?” His expression morphs to explicit pain, and that right there is the stake through my heart.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Gage.” A swell of emotion bottlenecks inside me, but the last thing I’m going to do is cry like a pussy. “I want to give you the world, and I did. I gave you my world. Now it’s time for me to take it back. Think on this, Gage. You know I’m right. You said yourself all Demetri wants you to do is love Skyla.” He looks away as if I had struck below the belt. “If Demetri says run, you stop. If he says go left, you go right. You of all people should be aware of his manipulation tactics. Yes, you are the pièce de résistance of them all, but now that you’re aware of it, you have the power to control it. Step away from Skyla. There is a reason the enemy wants you with her, and it’s not a good one.”
A horrible groan comes from him as if he were about to be sick. “Skyla and I are good.” He gets up and heads to the door. “I’ll be in the den downstairs. Let yourself out. And when you come to your senses, I’ll expect an apology. Do not, and I repeat, do not do this shit ever again.”
“You won’t get an apology. The only thing you’ll get is a war for Skyla’s heart.”
A smile pumps from his lips as if it were comical. “Then I guess it’s game on.”
“No, Gage. It’s game over. You’ve already lost.” I’ve played dead long enough.
He shakes his head and steps out, sealing the door behind him.
I fall back onto the bed, the scent of their sex still heavy in the air. Their love hangs in the room thicker than smoke. Not even the fog can chase it away.
Gage and Skyla aren’t married yet. There’s still hope. Gage needs to be stomped out of Skyla’s life once and for all. If you want to kill a crocodile, you do it when it’s twelve inches, not twelve feet.
Who the hell do I think I am? Skyla and Gage have a family, two beautiful boys, and I come in with guns blazing. A dull laugh thumps from me. But my good senses are back, and Gage Oliver is certainly going down.
One thing is for sure. I have no more sympathy for the devil.
Wesley
There has never been a morning that I’ve risen out of bed before Laken. I can’t help it. I enjoy watching her sleep, the sm
ile that flirts with her features, her serene expression free from worry as she lies safe in my arms. A smile twitches over my lips as my fingers weave lightly through her golden hair. Laken made love to me last night with zest and vigor, which assured me that the time she’s spending with Coop has no effect on her. And as much as I wanted to demonstrate that painful fact to Coop, I needed to see it, too. It’s true, Laken is mine—heart, soul, and body—and in just a few short months, the tangible evidence of our love will arrive, our beautiful, beautiful child. In truth, before Laken announced we were having a baby, I didn’t think I could love another child as much as I love Tobie. But this child, the one Laken and I made with an undeniable passion for one another, has already crested my heart’s capacity, and I have nothing to fear. I will love this child with the same fervor as I do my sweet little girl. Laken’s child. I shake my head at what a wonderful universe I’m living in. All those years ago when Laken left me for Coop, I was assured through a vision that I would have Laken back by my side one day, and I do. Better than that, she’s in my bed. She’s always been engraved into my soul, so it only makes sense. When the feds hit the reset button on her mind, the compass of her heart led right where she belonged—right here with me.
Her body shifts as her bottom pushes against me, and I lean in, every part of me ready to gift her a very good morning. Before I began traveling to the past, to a simpler time in Cider Plains, I had wondered what Laken would have been like in bed. I didn’t care what she knew or didn’t. It was a given that being with Laken would be like nothing I had ever experienced with Kres or Chloe.
Chloe. I wipe her from my mind before my rage has a chance to percolate. I never knew I could feel such deep hatred for anyone. I never dreamed my wife, the mother of my child, would abandon both my child and me without giving it a second thought. I knew Chloe was a bitch when I met her. I never imagined she was a monster, too. Not that I’m truly lamenting the fact she left. It’s an ego thing more than anything else on my part. It’s the fact she left Tobie in the dust—left her calling Skyla her mother until her true mother, Laken, arrived.
Laken’s presence in the Transfer, in my bed, has been a balm over my painfully scalded life. For a time, it seemed that in every direction I turned, the rug was pulled out from underneath me. First with Demetri revealing my brother as my superior, those damned markers refusing to hide, the Retribution League gaining the upper hand by taking my Viden Spectators to Raven’s Eye, and then the final blow—Laken herself taken to that godforsaken island.
Kresley comes to mind—that hideous replica of the woman I love. I knew when I made the offer, it was one she couldn’t refuse. Transforming her into Laken was nothing more than a business transaction to me. Kres thought she was doing it for me, and she was—just not for the reason she had in mind. But in exchange, I gave her what she wanted—me, all of me, and I gave it to her. I’ve slept with Kres a thousand times, if not a million, while we were dating back at Ephemeral. But after her transformation to Laken, it felt sacrilegious to do so. The irony being I had demanded that Chloe morph her features to look like Laken’s each time I bedded her and never had a problem with it. The difference was that I had made a permanent change to someone’s features, I suppose. I could never really figure out why I detested sleeping with Kres after her transformation.
A thought comes at me with the ferocity of a brick wall at a hundred miles an hour. Shit. I think I found my answer. I tricked Kres into believing I’d love her forever. That I’d keep her safe. Did I ever say those words? My gut grinds thinking about it. I merely stated that she could live in the Transfer with me, lie in my bed at night. Everything else was conjecture on her part. My insides twist in a knot because I hate how deceptive I’ve become. A part of me fears the day of reckoning. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and I’m not sure what that might be, but whatever it is, it’s worth the price. I’ve accomplished my goal. I’ve saved Laken from the monsters that hide behind white lab coats. They’ve got a license to torment gifted to them by the federal government and, as evidence by what they did to the dead that Candace resurrected for Skyla, they’re not afraid to use it. A horrible sinking feeling weighs me down as I consider what they might be doing to Kres, but I can’t help her. In fact, the day she arrived in the Transfer, it was under one condition—that she agree of her own volition to help the Barricade advance, and she very much is. If Laken were still held captive, I would be rendered useless with despair. Therefore, the Barricade would suffer. So in that respect Kresley is very much fulfilling her duty. But it doesn’t cancel out the fact I feel like shit about it.
A light tap strikes over the window, and for a moment I’m moved to believe it’s a branch rasping against it until I remember I’m not in Cider Plains anymore, or Ephemeral for that matter, and there’s not a living tree or breeze in this long-forgotten toilet the Counts own. Carefully, I untangle myself from Laken as I make my way over in the murky light. Iron sits over smoke-tinted glass, but other than that, I don’t see anything unusual in the dismal world beyond it.
Peck, peck, peck.
“Shit,” I hiss under my breath as a small dark shadow appears. Two beady eyes, a filthy cracked beak, large black feathers, a raven the size of a baseball bat. “A freaking bird.” I pull the window open and in comes that feathered Cretan of Skyla’s—Holden Kragger. “What the hell do you want?”
He hops along the windowsill, nudging my hand as if I were about to feed him, and then it hits me. Celestra shit needs to be employed here. I lay my hand over his cool back, and he shudders beneath me.
“Let’s have it. What’s up?” I do my best to keep my voice down, but Laken is already stirring to life, her lids fluttering in my direction trying to make out the scene.
The bird extends his wings a moment before those midnight eyes settle over mine. Wesley Edinger. Your presence is required immediately in the Eternal Court where you are to stand before the Justice Alliance. A portal has been provided through teleportation.
My blood runs cold. The room fades to gray as panic sets in. “Shit.” My stomach tenses in a giant knot as the world seems to collapse on top of me.
That’s right, dude. The bird does a little dance. Hope you’ve got an airtight alibi, a stellar defense, and a suit that makes you look as if you’ve got your head screwed on straight because they don’t send these invites for nothing. He starts to hop toward the window, and I tug him back by his feathered tail.
“Who sent you?” I land my hand between his wings with a little less care this time, and he lets out an ear-piercing squawk sending Laken rushing to my side.
Candace Messenger. He looks to Laken then me and lets out another ear-splitting caw that goes on and on as he escapes through the window. From a distance it sounds as if he’s laughing his ass off, and he very well might be.
Something tells me I’m about to get my comeuppance for all that I’ve done.
The day of reckoning has arrived sooner than expected.
“How do I look? Am I dressed okay?” Laken stiffens as she stands before me. “Should I put my hair up? I think Chloe has a pair of nude heels I can fit into.”
“You don’t need heels.” I reel her in and land a kiss to the nape of her neck. “And your hair is fine. You look beautiful. I wouldn’t change a thing.” I pull back and offer a pained smile. “You’re not going, Laken.”
Those cornflower blue eyes sharpen over mine. “I’ve told you ten times that in no way are you able to stop me. So help me God, if you leave without me, I’ll make sure there will be a fitting punishment employed, and you won’t like it.” Her hand drips down my shirt, lower still, and I catch it before she hits the jackpot.
“Punishment, huh?” I can’t help but twitch a smile her way. Laken is a spitfire in the bedroom. She claims the increase of hormones isn’t responsible—that it’s solely her desire to be with me—and I believe her.
I bring her hand to my lips and kiss it. “If you insist, you can come. But if for
one minute I sense it’s stressing you out, I’m returning you to the Transfer.” I glide my hand over her burgeoning belly and land another sweet kiss to her lips. “I love you. I love our baby.” I bear hard into her eyes. “The things you’re going to hear today, they’re most likely terrible.” I glance to the floor. I’m not sure how I’m going to stomach it either.
“That’s why I need to be there. I need to tell them that in no uncertain terms am I being held hostage. I want to be here. The thought of you being punished for my presence is ludicrous. We’re going in as a team, Wes, and we’re going to win. There’s not a court in the universe who will convict you of a crime you didn’t commit.”
“Coop will be there.” She flinches as I say it. “He’s gunning hard to have them nail me to a celestial wall. He wants you back in the worst way.”
“He’s not getting me back.” Her voice is sharp and clear as if she were making a promise. “In fact, this entire circus is about to backfire in his face. How dare he try to take you from me. He’s done it to me once, and I won’t let him do it again.” Her anger crests over her features like a fire ready to devour anything in its path. “Now let’s get going. I have a doctor’s appointment on the island at two, and I don’t want to miss it. You’ll be coming with me.” She presses her lips to mine. “Now do as I say and get us to court. I’m ready to get this celestial circus under our belt.”
“Yes, ma’am.” A dark laugh rumbles in my chest as I wrap my arms around the woman I love. My God, I hope she’s right. I hope to God no court will condemn me for what I’ve done to Laken. But I’m guilty of a lot of things. Holding Laken in my arms is only the tip of the wicked iceberg.
The room transforms around us, stone gray walls traded for an ethereal landscape, a courthouse built on light, a floor of clear sapphire, the framework which houses seven thrones is hewn from creamy marble. I recognize Candace, Rothello, the two Sectors who look like they could be Dudley’s brother. The other three are Fems I’ve seen with Demetri a time or two—tall, dark, and demonic in nature, Eriel, Elizeu, and Dante. Each one has their narrowed gaze set upon me, and their stoic expressions leave me with an overt feeling of foreboding. In the corner a tall, pale being that radiates defused light nods my way. Why do I get the feeling he’s the one that gets the privilege of laying my head over the chopping block?