My Warrior (Bewitched and Bewildered #12) - Alanea Alder Page 0,26

so when a short woman with a pixie wearing sweats and a hoodie, walked up. "I got this one, Cord," the woman offered.

Cord placed a hand over his heart and gave a slight bow.

The woman turned her green eyes to her. "Don't think of them as servants, think of them as Super Moms. Like, they always make sure you're comfortable and have food."

Brie thought about it for a moment and turned to Cord, who was nodding. "Little Meryn has on more than one occasion called squires Super Moms. It has to be the highest form of a compliment we can receive."

"In that case, it does feel a lot less weird." She looked around. "Do you have a squire?" she asked the infamous Meryn.

"Yup! The gorgeous Japanese one is mine. His name is Ryuu. He kicks all kinds of ass."

"Cord, could I please have a glass of rosé?"

Cord beamed. "Of course." He immediately left to retrieve their drinks.

"Meryn, is it?"

"Yeah, Meryn McKenzie."

"I thought it was Evans?" Brie asked casually.

Meryn shrugged. "After I mated Aiden, I took his last name…" Her voice trailed off as she stared up at her. "How did you know my maiden name?"

"I sat through a training class once about cyber-terrorism; your name came up quite a bit."

Meryn paled and took a step back. "I totally squared up with the government!"

Immediately, Aiden and her squire Ryuu were at her side. Aiden looked over at her. "What's this about?"

Brie laughed. "Meryn, calm down. I'm not going to haul you away in cuffs. You were actually mentioned as a good example—an exasperating and annoying example—but a good one."

"Government?" Aiden asked, his eyes wide.

"Yes, please explain," a regal voice demanded.

Ari gave a half bow. "Your Majesty, I have the pleasure of introducing my mate Deputy Brie Wilson and her father Doctor Chris Wilson. As you know Brie was an enormous help this afternoon. Brie, this is Queen Aleksandra Vi' ÉirDan and her consort Brennus Eirlea."

"You have my thanks once again Brie," the queen replied in greeting. Brie gave a half bow copying Ari.

"Aunt Aleks, are you feeling better?" Meryn asked.

"As well as I can possibly be. Now, what's this about you and the government?"

Meryn winced. "Well…"

"It's an entertaining story," Brie added. She accepted her glass of wine from Cord and took a sip.

Aiden placed his large hand over his mate's head, covering it completely. He bopped it around. "Meryn."

"Fine! Remember how I told you I used to help Law kill people?"

Aiden frowned but nodded, so she continued. "So, after college, I ran a bit wild on the interwebs. One day, there was a knock on the door, and a bunch of suits were there to take me in. They drove me to this huge building and sat me down in the middle of this sort of office to await processing. Evidently, I skipped normal jail and went right to federal 'they check in, but they don't check out' kinda establishment." Brie watched as the color in Aiden's face drained away. She took another sip of wine. She knew the story after all.

"So, I was like, freaking out and kinda mad, because they didn't stop to grab food on the way to the office, when I heard a bunch of raised voices down the hall. The giant they had watching me was looking away, so, I slipped past him to go in the direction where I heard people yelling and panicking.

"The door to this high-security room opened, and this guy ran out, so I snagged the door and went in, thinking I could hide from the Sasquatch guarding me. I went to the corner and looked up. They had all of these monitoring stations mounted everywhere. At first, I thought they were watching some kick ass action movie, but then I realized that it was real life. The reason why they were freaking out was because one of their teams was stuck behind enemy lines in this huge corporate high rise.

"I wasn't going to do anything, I mean these guys were about to send me up the river, but then I saw the sleeve of one of the soldiers. It had a battered looking US flag on it, and on his vest was a patch showing one of my favorite comic book character logos. I couldn't let him go down, ya know?

"So, I walked up behind one of the useless pencil necks and kinda shoved him away from his workstation and got busy. I grabbed his headset and turned on the mic