Kalina ~ Book Four

Sylvie sat squished between Rowan and Kian in Magnus’ Cadillac while Elias took the front. They all insisted she should sit shotgun position, but sitting next to Magnus wasn’t her idea of a restful ride home after incapacitating half a dozen vampires. Well, incapacitating some. Her mates tore the others to shreds.

“The two you left alive will stay with me in the cellar until I can get some answers,” Magnus said, catching her eye in the rearview.

She leaned back between the two warm arms of her mates and closed her eyes. Who cared? What he decided to do with them wasn’t her concern.

“Where’s Kora?” she asked. It had been weeks without contact, which was completely unlike her. Even though Sylvie preferred not to interact with the woman who looked more like her sister than her mother, she hadn’t heard anything. At all. It was weird.

“Busy.”

Magnus’ aloof tone grated her, and she cast a scowl at the back of his head.

“Do you even know where she is?” She couldn’t help the faint worry in her tone. Kora often seemed ‘away with the fairies’ after Sylvie roused her from a twenty-seven-year slumber in a tree; she didn’t think she should be alone.

“Coralie is a grown woman, Kalina. She can look after herself, and I will thank you to stop worrying about her like she is a child. She isn’t. You are our child, and our job is to look after you.”

She lunged forward, but Rowan dragged her back, pinning her arms as she spat.

“Look after me? Look after me? Are you fucking joking? If you ‘looked after me,’ I wouldn’t be in this fucking situation, and I wouldn’t be so fucked up! Or maybe I was better off. You two have been a prime example of absent parenting for a decade-”

“Kalina-”

“Enough,” Elias growled, his gaze fixed on Magnus. He was the only smart vampire. Every word out of Magnus’s mouth filled Sylvie with unbearable rage. Soon, her Vīs would take over, and even Rowan couldn’t hold her back.

“Shut the fuck up and drop us off at the border. We asked for a lift, not a fucking conversation.”

Magnus’ knuckles turned a death white on the steering wheel, and Sylvie snorted, getting a look from Kian. She rolled her eyes and snuggled back for the last few minutes of the ride.

“Head in, Princess, Rowan and I will check the border.” Sylvie nodded and dragged her feet up the steps of their home, turning her back on her father’s terse conversation with Elias and her other two mates retreating to the edge of the wards.

She was spent. Vīs was good in the moment, but afterwards, she needed the longest nap of her life. Pushing the door open, she stepped inside and kicked off her sandals, taking two steps before freezing.

She sniffed the air. Huh? She sniffed herself, her hand picking out Fraser’s scent and sniffed the air again.

“What the hell?” The house was cool and empty; her hearing would pick up on anyone if there were a hiding intruder, but the place was silent. The scent, though. It was unmistakable.

She followed it through the house, ending at her office door, and it disappeared. She shook her head. Was she hallucinating? She followed it back to the centre of the lounge and spun in a circle.

“How the fuck?”

It was impossible. Literally, it was physically impossible. Fraser couldn’t have been in her house, but his scent was everywhere. Her mates wouldn’t see it as impossible, and it would likely spell disaster if her mates thought Fraser or his pack had infiltrated their home.

She darted to the bathroom and grabbed a deodoriser spray. Ocean breeze and sprayed it over every scent in the house. By the end of her frantic spraying, she had a headache but couldn’t smell Fraser anymore. She couldn’t smell anything anymore.

Opening every window in the house, she headed to the bathroom, satisfied. They weren’t into keeping secrets, but just this once, Sylvie wanted to do a little investigative work without her mates jumping on the murder train.

There was no way Fraser was in her house, but someone had been. Someone with the skills to plant a scent and leave without a trace. Someone who could get past the wards without setting off the border wolves. Something wasn’t adding up.

She showered, washing out the last glass fragments from her hair and letting the scalding water burn her skin as she created a different hypothesis.

Elias climbed in behind her, turning the temperature down slightly and washed her back.

“Magnus will let us know if he gets anything from those vampires.”

“Whatever,” she mumbled.

Elias spun her and pulled her in close, pushing the hair from her face and kissing her pouting lips.

“Care to explain why our house now smells like a can of febreeze?”

She shook her head and leaned against his chest, toying with his nipple before he gripped her wrist and pulled the hand away.

“The house smelt musty. I may have been a little heavy-handed on the spray.”

“A little?”

She laughed and leaned into the spray, washing the suds off. “Hey, I opened the windows at least.”

He smirked but helped her from the shower, drying her and threading an oversized shirt over her head before tucking her into bed.

“You let your Vīs get the better of you tonight, Kitten.”

She shrugged, pulling the duvet up to her chin. “He pissed me off.”

Elias suppressed a smile and stroked the scar down her cheek. One of Lazuli’s gifts. She had at least twelve other scars on her body from her aunt’s iron-dipped nails the night she killed her in Argyncia. Taking Lazuli’s hands after that and the damage she had caused Kian was worth the years of therapy she needed afterwards.

“He doesn’t know what to make of you.”

“Not my problem.”

She closed her eyes and let the gentle laughter and light stroking of her cheek lull her to sleep.

“Sylvie!”

“What?”

“What did you do to the house?”

She padded from the bedroom in her running clothes and stared around as Rowan pouted at her from the front door.

“Nothing. What?”

“It stinks in here.”

She buried a smile and rolled her eyes at him. “You’re being a baby.”

“It’s giving me a fucking migraine.”

She grabbed an energy bar from the cupboard and dashed past him, slipping into her trainers. “Just keep the windows open. It’ll fade.”

“I can’t sleep in here.”

She darted down the steps and blew him a kiss. “Alright, fine. How about we camp under the stars tonight? Like old times.”

That seemed to ease his discomfort. He offered her a wide grin. “Okay then.”

“Great.” She turned back to the forest and started running, looping past the cabins and jumping onto the rugged dirt trail. After ten years, the shifter’s feet had carved the perfect path around the entire pack’s borders. There was no chance she could overshoot the track and get lost or fall outside the wards.

The steady thrum of her feet on the earth and the golden root trails her dryad magic offered calmed her mind, and she could let herself think.

The Vampires accused her of ‘taking what was theirs’, and the only thing she thought they could be alluding to was the matebond bullshit. They clearly believed she was in control of the kindred bonds and were now so desperate they wanted to harm her for them.

It made sense, but it was also a fool’s errand. The Fates, Moirai, first Fae or whatever the fuck you wanted to call them had that gift, and they had been AWOL since she brought Elias back from the dead.

Maybe she could try to contact them again. She hadn’t spliced in a while, and though she didn’t have an exact location, it could be worth a try.

Then, she could ask them to clear her name. Give her some tangible proof to the vampires that she had nothing to do with the matebonds, kindreds of bonded ones.

Her footfalls slowed, and she contemplated the idea. She quickly thought better of it and tucked the plan in her back pocket for later.

It would do as a last resort, and what she really needed was a friend—someone she could trust. Sitting on the side of the trail, she leaned against a juvenile tree and closed her eyes. She found splicing entirely by accident, but it had become one of her favourite skills.

She quickly melted into the energy of the tree, her body staying in the earth realm, but her spirit shooting to the Fae realm right out of her favourite tree and onto the throne room floor.

“Hart?”

She landed on all fours and craned her neck towards the voice. “Hey, Kerensa.”

“You alright?”

Kerensa glid across the room and sat beside her. The room emptied after that, except for one person. Someone Sylvie hadn’t officially met yet. Sylvie sat back and peered at the sunny Fae behind her friend.

“I’m fine.” She glanced back at Kerensa. Well, she wasn’t really fine. She relayed the last few weeks to Kerensa, well aware her bonded Wren was hearing every word, and when she finished, the Sun Fae wandered over, sitting at Kerensa’s side.

“That’s quite a tale,” Wren said.

Kerensa nodded stiffly. “Why didn’t you call on me sooner?”

“Because you have your own life. Your kingdom and your bonded. It’s not your job to fix my problems, K. I just wanted a friend.”

“Rosie’s still upset?”

“She hasn’t said as much, but I can tell. I worry she’ll start to blame me, too.”

Wren tipped their head to the side, the light in their orange eyes flaring. “Is that your real worry, or are you fearful she will resent you.”

Sylvie stilled, or at least the shadow that Kerensa and Wren saw stilled. She rubbed a ghostly hand across her mate marks. “I’m impressed.”

No one else had ever voiced the source of her anxiety so succinctly she didn’t know what else to say. But Wren was right. Having three mates always felt like the epitome of greed. No matter what the Fates planned and the reasons behind it, she always wondered if the other species looked at her with a sense of resentment because of it.

The Vampires sure did. And after Rosie saw her laughing so casually with Fraser, she saw the flare of disbelief in her eyes— the shade of jealousy that tinged her cheeks red.

She already had three men made for her and her for them, and now she was recklessly flirting with another. Did Rosie think she was being unfaithful to her mates? Sylvie wasn’t even sure it was possible. No one ever did that, at least not in her pack.

“I am a sun Fae. I’m good at highlighting the truth.”

“I see that.”

Kerensa looked up at Wren with adoration in her indigo eyes, and Sylvie’s heart melted. She squeezed Kerensa’s knee and stood, drifting around the room.

“I’m happy for you. You deserve the world, Kerensa.”

“And you deserve to be safe, Hart. Do you want me to come?”

Sylvie’s throat constricted, but she eased it with a soothing breath. “Not yet. If things get any worse, I might call on you.” She spun and peered at the beautiful pair. Light and dark. Day and night. “Both of you. If that’s okay, highlighting the truth might be exactly what I need to end this stupid drama.”

Wren nodded, offering a closelipped smile, but their kind eyes twinkled. “You are far more than meets the eye, Blessed one. and I am honoured to meet you.” Wren stood and inclined their head in a bow. Sylvie returned it despite the name they used for her, sending a chill down her spine.

“And I, you, Wren.”

Wren gave her one last lingering look. “Trust your instincts.” And with that, they turned and left Kerensa and her alone.

“Cryptic, huh? Match made in the heavens,” Sylvie murmured with a smile.

Kerensa sighed and stretched. “I’m not cryptic. You mistake me for my mother.”

Sylvie laughed and dropped back against her tree, shivering as a rustle sounded in her ear. She shook her head and searched for the noise as it echoed again, this time in her opposite ear. Something was circling her. Something was circling her body.

“I have to go,” Sylvie said, letting the energy take her back.

“See you soon, Hart.”

“See you. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

Her heavy lids blinked open, and she instantly found the noise's source. The wide, red-rimmed gaze, hollow cheeks and mud-crusted blonde hair were only a foot away from her face. She stood, a scream locked in her throat, and the creature, the girl, jumped back, terror in her shaking limbs.

Sylvie softened and let out a sigh. It was harmless. She was harmless. Under the scent of grime, blood, and shit was the flowing essence of a human. She was a human inside Kian’s wards. Wait a minute…

“Who are you?”