Total pages in book: 194
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
He shook his head. “No, there’s nothing, but we know they’re not gone.”
“Rats,” she grumbled. “Well, keep me informed.”
“Always. But that’s not the real reason you’re here, right? My midnight girl is never up at such an early hour.”
She shot him a self-deprecating look. “You know me too well. It’s Ethan,” she confessed. “I went to see him earlier this week.”
His eyebrows rose. “You got inside?”
“The head Druid owes me a favor or two.”
“The head Druid wants to bang you,” he quipped with a wink.
She snorted. God, she had missed Nate’s easy humor. “That’s beside the point. Ethan has been brainwashed. I sort of worry about what happens when his isolation is up.”
“For him, or you…or Corey?”
“Yes,” she said honestly.
Nate sighed. “Would he leave of his own accord if we broke into the place?”
Kierse thought about it for a second, the mischievous smile tugging on her lips. Then she lost the thread of it all. “No. No, he wants to be there.”
“Well, fuck.”
“Yeah. Everyone else is like ‘give him space.’ I’m glad you went straight to ‘kidnap.’”
Nate chuckled. “Fuck everyone else being reasonable. We have chains down below the club. We could chain him up and run a deprogramming.”
Another laugh bubbled out of her. “He’d hate us.”
Nate mimed holding up a picture. “This is a Druid. They are bad guys.”
Full laughter hit her in her belly. “You’re ridiculous.”
“I know. But it helped, didn’t it?”
“Yeah. It did.”
“I know you hate hugs, but you look like you could use another one.”
And the hug was worth it. Worth the early morning and the trek to Chelsea and all of it. Nate was her family. He’d reminded her that he always had her back. Which was exactly what she needed.
A knock at the door pulled them both out of it, and in strode a tall Desi girl in sky-blue nursing scrubs. Nate’s girlfriend, Maura, was a nurse at a local not-for-profit hospital. Her long brown hair was up in a messy bun, and she had circles under her eyes that mirrored Nate’s and Ronan’s. She must have been out all night during the full moon.
“Kierse!” she gasped. She strode forward, knocking her boyfriend out of the way and wrapping Kierse in her arms.
“Hi, Maura.”
“You need to stop this disappearing act.”
“Working on it,” Kierse told her.
“And perfect timing.” Maura released Kierse and thrust her left hand out. Kierse stared down at the glittering diamond ring on her finger in incomprehension before she realized what it meant.
“Oh my God! You’re engaged?”
“Yes!”
“Who’s the lucky guy?” Kierse joked.
Nate glared at her, but Maura just snorted. “Nate did say he wasn’t marriage material,” she agreed.
“I didn’t say those exact words.”
Maura laughed. “‘Perpetual bachelor’ was probably your exact phrasing.”
“Aye, baby,” Nate said, wrapping arms around his fiancé. “You changed my mind. I’m a changed man.”
Maura snorted again and pushed her hand into his face as he tried to kiss her. “I bet.”
Kierse laughed. “I’m so happy for the both of you.”
“Actually,” Nate said as he went back to his desk, “Maura would kill me if I didn’t give you this.” He handed her an envelope of starch white paper with her name across it. “Wedding invite.”
Kierse tore into the letter. Inside the card was all white with swirling gold font:
Please join us for the wedding of
Maura Vendashi Bhardwaj
&
Nathaniel Gabriel O’Connor
Saturday, June 29th
6:30 p.m.
Five Points, Chelsea
Reception to follow.
“This is in only a few weeks,” Kierse gasped.
“Yeah. Just decided to do it if we’re doing it.”
“Damn straight,” Maura said.
“I can’t wait,” Kierse said truthfully. She wanted the best for them. She’d known longer than Nate that Maura was the real deal, and if he didn’t settle down, he’d lose her. She was glad that he’d figured it out, too. “Were you on the night shift?”
“I…yes,” Maura said. Her gaze shifted to her fiancé. He nodded. “But I got off at midnight. I was looking into something else. Something I thought maybe you could…bring up with Graves.”
Kierse’s eyebrows shot up. “With Graves?”
“Tell her, baby,” Nate said.
Maura took a breath and let it out. “I can’t have kids.”
“Oh, Maura, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“No one else knows really. When I was younger, before the Monster War, I was seduced by an incubus.”
Kierse gasped, covering her mouth with her hand. “Maura, no!”
Tears glinted in Maura’s eyes. “Yeah. I didn’t know about monsters then and just thought I was falling in love and rebelling against my parents. But as you know, once you’re…intimate with an incubus…”
“They put the curse on you.”
She nodded. “Yes. They feed on your sexual energy.”
Kierse’s gaze shifted to Nate. “I can’t believe this. I’m so sorry. But how do you think Graves would help?”
“He might know a cure,” Nate said. “Maura jokes, but she didn’t want to get married because she thought I deserved to have children. I told her she was out of her mind, but I have been looking for a way to help her. The pack even tracked the incubus and killed him. It didn’t change anything.”