Through the Ether (Force of Nature Book 5) - Amber Lynn Natusch Page 0,1

king and queen had reunited—which was clearly a bad thing.

We just weren’t yet sure how bad.

“Hey, how’d you get the marker off your forehead?”

She flashed me a disappointed look. “You didn’t think I’d used permanent ink, did you?” Yes. Yes, I had. My lack of response made her laugh. “So, what brings you down here, Piper? No wait, let me guess: you needed to escape the testosterone movie fest of denial as much as I did, so you volunteered as tribute to collect snacks?”

“…Maybe?”

She grinned. “Clever girl.”

“But not clever enough,” a male called from just outside the kitchen. Seconds later, Jase and Dean walked in, arms folded across their chests like they were prepared to read me the riot act as they had so many times before when we’d gone to the bar—like they had before their brother, Merc, had returned to New York City and upended my life. Before I’d fled the city and found Knox and his pack, and everything else that had followed. It had been such a short time since then, but it was filled with too many clusterfucks to count.

Judging by the looks on the boys’ faces, they were silently thinking the same thing.

Or having a telepathic conversation about it.

“You worried about the fey?” Dean asked before he walked over and looped his arm around my shoulder.

“I mean…aren’t you?”

“I’m worried there won’t be enough of the queen to go around,” he replied with a smile, “because I’ll be pissed if I don’t get to take a round out of her.”

“Agreed,” Jase said.

“Oh good, the testosterone we were trying to avoid has arrived,” Kat said, her tone particularly acerbic.

Jase wound his arm around her shoulder and pulled her in close. “Don’t worry, Kat. We’ll leave some for you, too.”

Kat scoffed. “I forget how funny you two chuckleheads can be when you want to…”

She ducked out of Jase’s hold just as Brunton, Foust, and Jagger walked in with Knox right behind them. Kat studiously avoided their stares, and I tried to ignore the way Brunton glared at Jase’s arm slowly dropping to his side as Kat walked away.

“Told ya,” Jagger said with a satisfied look on his face. “You owe me twenty bucks.” He reached his hand out to Foust, who begrudgingly dropped two bills into his palm.

“Thanks for that, Piper,” Knox’s second grumbled. “I thought you really were coming to get food.”

“I mean, I kinda was—”

“—but you’re worried about the fey,” Knox finished for me. The others parted so he could walk over to my side. “It’s okay to feel that way, Piper.”

“I’d feel better if we had a plan—”

“Which is what we need to devise,” Merc said as he entered the kitchen. Liam followed him in, and I couldn’t quite get past how strange it was to see the fey king’s former minion so close to a being who would have, only days ago, torn him limb from limb if we hadn’t needed him. How quickly enemies had become allies in this war with the fey.

If Liam wasn’t enough of a testament to that, our alliance with Kingston, my once arch-enemy, surely was. Thankfully, he was with Reinhardt and absent from our impromptu strategy meeting. Neither one would have been especially welcome. It was a toss-up as to who was more despised at the moment.

Before I could let my mind wander down that path, Merc’s words dragged me from thoughts of the two warlocks and back to the matter at hand. “Since it is apparent that none of us can focus on anything else, we should discuss the fey royals.”

“They made it pretty clear that they’d be coming for us soon,” I said, cringing at the thought.

Merc walked over to my side and let his gaze linger on my face before turning to Knox.

“I do not believe they will attack us here—yet. Their power is strongest in Faerie. Larken is too smart to abandon that advantage.”

“Unless she knows something we don’t,” Knox countered.

“Which is pretty fucking likely,” Brunton added, “especially if the fey king is adding fuel to her fire.”

“Brunton’s right,” Foust said, his voice tighter than I’d ever heard it before. The laid-back wolf was nervous, which didn’t bode well. “Phineas is a master of tricks, and if his power has been restored by his reunion with his wife, I can’t even imagine the shit he could come up with to use against us.”

The group was silent for a moment, undoubtedly remembering the golems the fey king had sent to collect witches to power