Claiming Valeria (7 page)

As he entered the quarters reserved for unmated males, his best
friend Chico hailed him. “Tee. Wait up.”

Tiago lifted a hand. Despite his name, Chico was as American
as they came, his mother a fada who’d grown up in Rhode Island, his father the first
child born at Rock Run after its founding some eighty years ago. He had his mother’s
clean-cut Anglo features and his father’s dark hair and olive skin, and like Tiago
and the other younger members of the clan, spoke English for the most part.

He reached Tiago and bumped his shoulder in silent sympathy.
“Sorry about your brother.”

A hot rush of guilt made his reply curt. “We’ll get him back.
And if the Baltimore shifters try anything, we’ll be ready.”

“Hell, yeah. There’s no fucking way Baltimore can take us. They’re
nowhere near our size. They were smaller than us to begin with, and they’ve
been killing each other off for years.”

The tightness in Tiago’s shoulders eased. Chico was right. For
the first time since he’d burst into Dion’s quarters behind the other warriors and
seen Cleia, Adric and a group of sun fae standing over his unconscious brother,
he felt better. They’d get Dion back. And if the earth shifters attacked, they’d
send them back to Baltimore with their mangy tails tucked between their legs. Hell,
everyone knew it was easier to defend territory than take it.

“Damn straight.” He reached for his doorknob. “See you in the
morning.”

“Tee?” Chico’s expression was a mixture of excitement and fear.
Although they’d been training for years, neither of them had made warrior
yet—and they’d never been in a real battle. “You afraid?”

“A little,” he admitted. “But I’m ready.” His animal bumped against
his skin in agreement. He was a young, unmated male. He’d willingly die to protect
the clan, especially the children.

Their eyes met, both their animals to the fore. Tiago knew his
eyes had changed to a feral silver, while Chico’s glowed a spooky green.

“Me too,” was the reply.

Their arms came around each other in a tight hug. They half-nuzzled,
half-butted each other in the way of male animals before breaking apart and entering
their separate rooms.

“Mama, Mama!” Merry pelted down the hall to Valeria.
“Guess what? We’re all going to a party.”

“
Sim
?” Valeria scooped her up for a kiss. “That’s nice,
querida
.”

She glanced at Sabela, who was following close behind, having
offered to pick up Merry from the creche. “A party?” she mouthed as she set her
daughter back down.

The base was on lockdown. Only a few heavily guarded men had
gone out fishing. The whole clan was readying itself for war—with the sun fae, the
Baltimore fada, or both. Valeria had dropped Merry at the creche and spent the morning
helping the healers inventory medical supplies.

Rock Run had been awash with rumors.

Dion’s dead
.

No, he got away from the sun fae.

No, he had the shit beaten out of him by Cleia’s guards.

Finally Justino and Ed had returned with the information that
Dion was safe in Cleia’s apartment. Justino had scaled the four floors to the queen’s
balcony and seen with his own eyes that the alpha, although bound tight in a
fishing net, was unhurt. Justino had hung around as long as he dared, hoping to
speak with him, but Cleia hadn’t left his side. In fact, she’d fussed over him—giving
him food and water, releasing him from the net. Since it appeared Dion was safe
for the time being, Justino and Ed had returned to base to report what they’d learned.

Sabela’s grin was almost as big as Merry’s. “Dion sent a message
to Luis. He’s fine. He promised to stay with the sun fae for a couple of days, but
he’s fine.”

“Thank the Goddess.” Valeria’s shoulders sagged with relief.
And yet…
“Why? Why does he have to stay?”

She could think of only one reason the alpha would’ve agreed
to remain with the sun fae—and it wasn’t good. Surely he hadn’t fallen prey to Cleia’s
glamour?

Sabela shrugged. “
Who knows? But he swore an oath
to stay with the sun fae until midsummer day. Cleia wants him to attend the ritual.”

Valeria’s brows lifted. The midsummer ritual was
normally for sun fae only. “But why?”

“Who knows?” Sabela said again. “But he’ll be safe
enough. Queen Cleia has promised.”

Valeria nodded. Neither the fae nor the fada found
it easy to lie, and reneging on a promise was even worse. If Cleia went back on
her word, she’d be left weak and ill for days, an easy target for any rival fae
clan. And she’d be a target for the Rock Run assassins for the rest of her days.

Merry was chanting, “We’re going to a party. We’re
going to a party.”

Valeria shook her head. “Not us. Lord Dion.”

“Us, too,” the little girl insisted.

“She’s right,” said Sabela. “The entire clan is invited to the
midsummer ritual—and the festival, too. Rui and the
tenentes
are conferring
with the elders right now.” The sun fae’s midsummer festival was a three-day celebration
famous throughout the fae and fada worlds.

“Why would she want us there? Unless she wants another chance
at our men,” she added a little bitterly.

“She says it’s to show there are no hard feelings between the
sun fae and Rock Run.”

Valeria pursed her lips. “And we’re going to go.”

“It looks that way,
sim
. You can always decline. But if
you’re worried about Lord Adric, only Rock Run and the sun fae are invited to the
ritual.”

They both looked at Merry’s excited face. It would break her
heart to stay home, and there was no way Valeria was letting her leave the base
without her
.

She blew out a breath. “No,” she said. “We’ll go.”

* * *

Goddamn fucking fae.

Adric lifted the quartz that dangled from a leather cord around
his neck and stared at the screen in disbelief. All the data they’d gathered about
the Rock Run base was gone, wiped out as if it had never been, his quartz still
vibrating as it did after an energy surge.

“Hang on.” Adric looked around at his four lieutenants—his sister
Marjani and three young but battle-hardened men who’d earned his absolute trust
during the Darktime: Lucas, Jace and Zuri. The five of them were seated at a circular
table in his den twenty feet below Baltimore.

“Something’s happened,” he told them. A few quick taps on the
screen contacted the clan’s head surveyor. “Mason. Do you still have the data on
the Rock Run base?”

Mason was one of the few older men who’d accepted Adric as alpha—which
was why he was still alive. Now he was silent for a long moment before shaking his
head. “The file’s empty. Damn it, that’s impossible. I encrypted that file myself—three
times over. Nobody but you, me or Jace should’ve been able to access it.”

“Nobody but a fae.” Adric let out a vicious curse. It had to
be the sun fae. They could do things with energy that would make an electric eel
green with envy. “Dion got to their queen. Hell, you’d have thought the woman didn’t
want to be rescued.” When he’d arrived with the sun fae, Cleia had been naked and
on her knees, about to be fucked by the Rock Run alpha.

“I’ll do my best to retrieve the information,” Mason said. “But
I can’t make any promises.”

“Don’t waste your time. The sun fae are forgetting one thing;
I was at Rock Run. I know where the entrances are.” Including the single entrance
that could be reached from land.

Adric was a Gifted tracker. He only had to be somewhere once
for the location to be imprinted in his memory.

Except—his hand clenched on the quartz. “I don’t fucking believe
this,” he breathed. “They messed with my mind as well. I remember being there, but
everything else is gone—its location, what it looked like. All I can remember is
its scent.”

He frantically searched his memory, but all that remained was
the odor of Rock Run Creek: lush, moist, organic. Which probably applied to every
damn river in the world.

He growled. “How the hell did they do that—get in my mind like
that?”

“I’m sorry,” Mason said. “I’ll keep trying, but it looks like
it’s been wiped clean.”

Adric expelled a breath. “Not your fault.”

He cut the connection and looked around at the others. The four
lieutenants stared back with varying degrees of shock and anger—except for his sister,
whose expression was carefully blank. He knew damn well she was pleased, though.
Marjani had been against invading Rock Run from the start.

Lucas spoke first. He was Adric’s right-hand man and a shifter
with his animal so close to the surface, he was basically a human wolf. “I’ll tell
the clan to stand down.”

Adric’s jaw tightened. “Not yet.” He refused to accept they’d
been cut off at the knees. Not when he’d been dreaming of this day ever since he’d
first heard the stories about how the clan had almost taken Rock Run sixty years
ago. He’d decided then and there that was what his people needed to become whole
again. “Maybe Jace can recover the data.”

Jace was the clan’s ace hacker and the main architect of the
quartz smartphone technology. “Already on it.” He frowned down at his own quartz.

He wouldn’t touch Adric’s quartz except in a dire emergency.
No one would. Earth fada had a direct connection to their quartz. Each piece was
attuned to its owner’s energy, a unique vibration that fed both the owner and the
quartz. But as their go-to tech guy, Jace had a backup copy of every important document.

“Sorry.” Jace shook his head, scowling. “No can do. Whoever did
this didn’t even bother breaking the encryption. They just wiped the whole file
clean.”

Adric’s hand went to his own quartz again. The gray-and-orange
crystal vibrated in a short, agitated pattern, attuned to his emotions in a way
that was eerily sentient. “I’d say the S.O.B.s broke our agreement, but they never
said I could keep the data on Rock Run.” In fact, the sun fae had been careful to
make no promises beyond the large sum they’d paid for his help in tracking their
queen.

Fucking fae.

They were so damn clever with their promises. Well, at least
he had the payment safely tucked in a bank account that could only be accessed by
him or Marjani. It was money his clan desperately needed. They’d been nearly destroyed
by the fighting during the Darktime. They were poor, hungry and demoralized. As
alpha, his first priority was to rebuild their crumbling homes, make sure the children
had food in their bellies.

“It’s for the best, Ric.” Marjani leaned forward, hands on the
table. “We’re not ready. The clan’s still recovering. Even if we took Rock Run,
we’re not strong enough to hold it. We have the money—more than we ever dreamed
of. Be grateful for that.”

“You’re wrong. We could take their base—and if we did, we’d damn
well hold it. Even if we have to kill every male above the age of ten—and the female
soldiers too, for that matter.”

Female fada were less likely to have the aggressive instincts
necessary to make soldier, but every clan had women like Marjani who fought alongside
the men. Two years his junior, she was slim, almost delicate-looking with an oval
face and large dark eyes. But she’d guarded his back with a pit-bull-like determination
as he’d fought his way up the hierarchy on his way to becoming alpha.

She dragged a hand through her short black hair. “This isn’t
us,” she asserted. “We don’t go into people’s homes and murder them. Not since—”
She looked away, throat working.

They all knew what she’d almost said.
Not since the Darktime
.
When their parents had been executed by an alpha brutally consolidating power. When
a few years later the two of them had almost been murdered in their beds by their
own uncle, who had assassinated the previous alpha. When Jace’s sister had been
raped and murdered, and Lucas had been imprisoned and tortured for over a year—simply
for being Adric’s friends.

The stories went on and on. The end result was their clan had
split into a number of small, weak factions which had nearly ended in them all being
exterminated, hunted by one another and the more nasty fae.

Adric crossed his arms. “We need that territory. Our cats and
wolves need the space, need the room to run. Even deer need more space than they
get here in Baltimore.”

Marjani’s full lips thinned, but she kept silent. Adric might
be her brother, but he was also her alpha.

He glanced at Zuri, who as usual hadn’t spoken, preferring to
listen to the others as he weighed options. The man was frankly beautiful, with
curly black hair and brown skin touched with gold—but he was a lieutenant because
of his cool head.

“Well?” Adric asked. “Is it worth a shot?”

Zuri lifted a finger. “One—we know the boundary of their territory.
The spell concealing the base’s actual location is functional again, but we can
work around that. We already knew its approximate location even before the sun fae
neutralized the spell. They may have wiped our memories of the exact location, but
those are recent memories. An older, more-entrenched memory may still exist.”

Adric narrowed his eyes. “You’re right. I can still picture the
area we’d narrowed it down to. We can start from there, use scent to locate the
entrance.”

Zuri inclined his head and raised another finger. “Two, their
alpha is with the sun fae. They have to be upset, off-balance. They may even be
challenging each other for leadership.” A third finger. “Three, we’re young, hungry.
It’s their home ground, but our people
want
this. A year ago I wouldn’t have
thought it was possible, but you’ve got the whole clan behind you, Ric. If we can
just find a way in, this may be our best chance in a long time to take them.”

Adric smiled. “My thoughts exactly.”

“I don’t know why the hell we’re wasting our time talking,” Luc
inserted. “We need to strike now, before they recover from the loss of their alpha.”

Jace and Zuri nodded agreement. Only Marjani abstained, her face
carefully blank. But he scented her dismay.

Adric came to his feet. He didn’t like upsetting his sister,
but this time she was wrong. They might never have a chance like this. His animal,
coldly ruthless, was in full agreement. It was time. He was opening his mouth to
give the order to invade when a white mist formed in the palm of his hand.

He jerked even as he smelled the silver that was the mark of
a fae spell. Words in a formal script formed in the mist, one elegant black letter
at a time.

Queen Cleia requests the pleasure of your company and that
of a guest at a Summer Ball to be held at Rising Sun on Midsummer Day at two in
the afternoon
.

His jaw went slack. “Well, hell.” He looked at his lieutenants.
“I’ve been invited to a fucking ball. The sun fae.”

There was a stunned silence. No member of the Baltimore clan
had been invited to a sun fae celebration. Ever.

Luc recovered first. He snorted. “Probably a trick.”

Adric shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He read the invitation
aloud to the others; a fae message was only for the recipient’s eyes. Already the
invitation was dissolving, leaving behind only the faint, metallic odor of silver.

He stared down at the fading invitation in disbelief. Wasn’t
that just like the fae? “They wipe our minds and our crystals of data and then they
invite me to an effing ball?”

“You’ll go,” said Marjani.

He scraped his fingers through his spiky hair. “Will I?”

“You don’t refuse a fae invite without a good reason,” Zuri pointed
out. “Not unless you want to piss them off. And you’ll be safe enough. Hospitality
is sacred to the fae. They’d be shunned if they treated a guest dishonorably.”

Another message appeared.

Lord Dion and the Rock Run Clan will be in attendance as our
special guests.

“Fuck,” Adric said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” He could almost hear
the crack as his plans collapsed around him like a castle built on a fault line.
He stared at the words as the message slowly dissolved.