Page 44 of Happily Undead in Dark River

“Probably the fact someone tried to shoot me with an ash arrow the previous day.”

Well, the stunned mullet soon gave way to anger, outrage and everyone talking at once. I thrust the phone at Brody, so he could field the questions. He pressed his lips together in a thin line, his eyes promising retribution of the sexiest kind.

“Enough!” he shouted, and it echoed down the mountain. “She's fine. I have people looking into these attempts on my Mate’s life. She didn't want to burden you lot with this extra worry and she is too kind-hearted to drag away Angeline’s last hope for survival because someone was trying to kill her. Again.”

X just began to laugh. “You know. When I left the Enforcers, I was worried I’d be bored. But I gotta give it to you, Love. You are never, ever boring.”

Well, I was glad that my ability to inspire murderous urges was keeping one of us entertained.

I wrapped up the conversation quickly after that. Not because I didn’t want to speak to them anymore, but the more they asked questions, the more dire the whole thing seemed. Plus, I didn’t want to look like a complete sissy and cry about how much I missed them.

I got an update on Angeline’s case, and when their faces all went completely blank, I knew it wasn’t going as well as they’d all hoped. Titus had taken some persuasion to help their cause, which meant Angeline had been trapped in the Vampire Nation dungeons for nearly a week. I shuddered to think what they did to prisoners, given what they did to Dark River when they were just ‘investigating’.

My heart ached for my old friend. I had been the herald of nothing but pain for her. I just had to hope she was strong enough to hold out until they were persuaded to release her. I had no doubt in my mind the guys would get her out one way or another.

After they’d extracted several promises to stay out of trouble – they said it like I chose to get blown up – I hung up. I looked up at Brody, and his face softened. He wrapped me in his arms and held me close to his chest.

“Don’t give me those big sad eyes, Rainey. They’ll be back before you know it.” He kissed me softly, and a wave of contentment washed over my body. I could get used to this Mate thing. It was a dose of valium when my emotions ran riot. “Let’s go. Ghost will be starting to fret like a mother hen if we don’t get back soon.”

Ghost had indeed lived up to his title of Protector. I don’t know when he slept, but he only left me when I was with Brody. We walked back down the hill hand in hand, Brody not shifting forms. I could have picked him up and ran home in half the time, but I was discovering that in Nîso, all I had was time, so why not walk home average-joe slow?

I had to admit, before being turned into the undead, I wasn’t much of a nature girl. The idea of camping gave me hives. Once, when I was seven, I ran away from home because I was a brat and my parents wouldn’t buy me a Ken Doll, those monsters, and I packed a backpack of barbies and underpants and ran away to the back yard. I slept in my play teepee for thirty-five of the longest minutes of my life before I packed up my barbies and my underpants, decided Ken just wasn’t worth it and went back to my room. The whole thing had scarred me against the outdoors forevermore.

But walking through the mountains around Nîso was beginning to change my mind. The whole place was beautiful; rugged and wild, just like Brody. I could appreciate the thought of sleeping under the stars, surrounded by my shifters, and making love under the moon. Maybe one day soon, when I wasn’t being targeted by a psychotic murderer. It was a situation that was turning out to be more common than I’d like.

When we reached the back porch of the temporary house we were staying in, Brody stilled when he heard the low hum of voices inside. He sniffed the air, then relaxed. Whoever it was, it was a friend, not foe. We strolled into the living room, and I grinned when I saw Annie was sitting on the couch beside Ghost, talking animatedly to the huge Protector without drawing breath. Tex was sitting on the other side of the room, looking like he was trying to hold in a laugh.

“And I said to him that just because he weighed as much as a Mack Truck didn’t make him a better Protector than me, and that everyone knew you were the best one we have which was why you were guarding the Alphamate, and that he was like our twenty-fifth best Protector so he needed to shut his mouth. Then he took a swing at me!” She clutched a hand to her chest like she was still outraged, but she seemed to miss the murderous look on Ghost’s face. Whoever they were talking about was going to get his ass kicked before he knew it. “So I kicked him in the balls so hard he’s still talking in falsetto! Talk about delusions of grandeur, amiright?”

Ghost nodded, and then he seemed to realize we’d returned. Tex had known all along, and now he wasn’t even trying to hide his grin. He bounded over, knocking his leg into the couch and hip checking the kitchen table. He was still learning the layout of this house, which meant a few bruises for a while. I’d already promised to kiss every single one better.

“How was everyone?” he whispered as he came over and kissed me. I wrapped my arms around his chest and heaved out a sigh. I missed them so badly it hurt, but with Tex’s arms around me and Brody’s hand still in mine, the burn in my gut wasn’t quite as intense.

“They’re fine. They look exhausted but they are working hard to free Angeline. Brody totally let it slip about our troubles,” I pouted. Tex kissed me tenderly.

There was a distinctly feminine sigh in the room, and I looked around Tex’s shoulder to where Annie was watching us from the couch. “God, you guys are so sweet. Don’t you wish you had a Mate, Ghost? This lucky bitch gets two. I’m so jealous,” she laughed. Ghost’s face was so full of painful longing as he stared at her, but she didn’t notice, she was too busy looking at us. Before she could see, Ghost had his face schooled back into that nonchalant mask.

I smiled at her. “Trust me when I say that sometimes it's right there, under your nose the whole time.” At Ghost’s furious look, I grinned. “That's what happened with me and Tex, anyway. We were friends since we were children. Then one day, boom. It was like every feeling I’d ever had about him suddenly made sense.”

Ghost was still giving me a stern, slightly panicked look, so I let it go. I’d planted a seed. It was up to him to make it grow.

Brody just shook his head and walked into the living room. “What have you got for me, Annie?”

All the jovialness left her face, and in her place was someone else. It was like someone else had possessed her body. She was cold, unemotional, all business, no hint of the teasing woman that had been sitting in her place a moment ago.

“We have dissidents.”

Brody waved a hand at the window toward the rubble that was his house. “Duh.”

Annie rolled her eyes, a little bit of her normal personality leaking into her professional demeanor. “I mean more than one, Jackass.”

“Alpha Jackass to you,” Brody growled, but there was no heat in it.

“There is a whole subgroup of dissidents who want you out. They were trying to arrange a coup and set your mother up in your place until one of the younger Alpha contenders could step up. Someone they could shape to their… ideology.”

Tex was sitting cross-legged on the armchair, his long legs creating the perfect armrests. I wanted to crawl between them and curl my body into his. “How do you know this?”

Brody looked between Tex and me. “Annie is my best spy. It is stupid to think that everyone is in love with the status quo. Annie is my ears on the ground. She blends into the background almost as well as Ghost.”

---