Their Unexpected Mate [Paranormal Protection Unit] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (15 page)

“Sent,” Mac told them as he pocketed his phone. Taking one of the cloths from the sink, he moved to wipe the counters, stove, and table. “Especially that door,” he said, shaking his head. “A will to get ice cream is one thing, but heaving open that damned door, there’s no way she should have gotten it open. Hell.” He did a quick peek at the door to ensure she hadn’t snuck back in. “Even the bikers have a time getting it open and they outweigh her easily a hundred pounds.”
The smallest one, at that.

Setting the last of the dishes into the rack, Scythe sighed. “We’ll know soon enough.” Skittles wouldn’t rest until he’d unearthed every last possible relation to her. It was both a blessing and a curse to have a tech guy that dedicated. Sometimes they worried for him and his seemingly unstoppable compulsion to dig to the bottom of everything.

After rinsing the sink and ensuring everything was back where it should be, they grabbed up some glasses and went out to sit with their mate and team members. Time to see what Bulldog thought about it all and learn what Skittles had found out in the last while about big brother.

Katherine was happy to have her men surrounding her. She had a feeling that when Quincy began to talk she was going to need their support.

Clearing his throat, Quincy, aka Skittles, began to report. “All right, so here is what I came up with so far.” He whipped out an iPad and began to move his long and regal fingers over the top screen. “Your brother, sorry to tell you, doll, has already gone through his entire trust fund, and if not for your daddy and the layers and layers of law that he wrapped around yours, would have already drained you dry as well.” He was a firm believer in blunt truth.

“Who’s he in with?” Mac asked the hard question. Putting a hand on her shoulder, he squeezed gently. They all knew that her brother was in deep with someone big, but
who
was the question everyone, except maybe Kat, was dying to know.

“Well, you see.” Skittles actually looked a little uncomfortable, and it was Bulldog who spoke next.

“He’s in bed with the Drakonian Mafia,” Talon murmured. “The dragons typically don’t deal in drugs, but those twins I think were maybe dropped on their heads when they were still kids and have therefore decided that running a mob is a good idea.” He snorted. “That’s why we are here, actually.” He looked between the men. They knew the leads that they were all tracking down when Alpha team met their bond-mate. “They are the ones that we are in this town to take down. They have found that using the Hell’s Angels as muscle is something bright. You see, they can’t seem to keep those of the other races working too long for them. The Drakonian Mafia tend to eat them.” At her look he said, “I wish I was kidding.” He sighed and rubbed a hand over his head.

“So they eat people?” Katherine knew she was squeaking but couldn’t help herself. “And did he know that they were…” She paused. “Oh God, did you say dragons? He’s gotten himself mixed up with dragons?” She was shaking. Yep, she needed her guys and was glad they were there to lean on but continued. “So it doesn’t matter what we do. If he goes to jail he will soon find himself dead, and if he doesn’t he will still be dead.” No wonder he was desperate for her money. “What about all of the money that is wrapped up in the house accounts? The money that was set aside for the care of the properties and pay for the salaries of the people that work there?”

Skittles looked to everyone and then said, not looking happy to admit it, “He’s managed to siphon off a bunch of the money. I have a number of transactions that show he’s been basically defrauding the accounts. The salaries are still being paid out for the employees of your family’s estates, but if he continues as he has been that will only last another six months, tops.”

“We need to stop his access to the accounts,” Sully said, looking to Katherine. “I know he’s your family and all, kitten, but he’s bankrupting everyone,” he said quietly. “If we put a stop to him now, the accounts, with a little creative investing, should recover enough to keep everyone employed for a number of years more.”

“Do it,” she said softly. “Take money from my trust to supplement the properties. God only knows I’ve got more than enough of it. I refuse to allow Daddy’s homes, his sanctuaries, to be killed because of petty envy,” she muttered. “And I will not allow those people that have been in my father’s life longer than I’ve been alive to be harmed.”

Skittles nodded. “Damn, girl, you are loaded,” he muttered and then frowned. He looked to Bulldog and then the other men. “What’s your daddy’s name again?” he asked and typed out a quick message to the men as well as his boss.

“Wilder Douglas,” she told him. “Why?” She wasn’t so stunned that she didn’t notice Talon grabbing his phone, or the guys as well. “What am I missing?”

Skittles began to tap some more and then looked to Talon. “Bulldog, does this bank look familiar?”

Talon frowned and said, “Isn’t that one that the faerie royals created before they were wiped from the Earth? Wasn’t it taken over by the magi?”

“Yeah, but let me show you something else,” he said and dug past the banking security codes and basically turned back banking time to the root of Wilder Douglas’s money, his family’s money. “I think that we can figure out why a human was able to open the door to The Bar.”

Talon swore. “Fuck me.” He looked to the trio of men and then the little woman. “Did you ever meet your grandmother?”

“Grams Mab?” she asked with a frown. “Only once. I think that it was right after Mom died.”

As three of the men cussed, realization dawned.

Talon sighed. “Well, Katherine Douglas, your grandfather might have been fully human, but your grandmother, who was in some deep fucking hiding, gave up her immortality to be with him. As far as we know, in this very second, you, my dear, are the last of the Faerie line, a fucking goddamn princess at fucking that.”

“Don’t cuss in my house,” she snapped, in shock. “Never curse in my home, or you can leave now and not look back.”

“Holy crap,” Trey whispered, turning to stare at her, vaguely noting the brothers had as well. Turning his head back around, he looked at Skittles. “Lock the brother out of everything. He has no more claim to anything of hers. Make sure the lawyers are aware of his financial dallying and get it through to the courts fast. He is forever to be cut off from any of her monies,” he said softly.

Bulldog just stared at her and then slowly smiled. “She’ll do. She’s got some spunk to her. But she’s never going to be able to stand the others if she can’t take a little bit of cursing around her.”

“Not now, Bulldog,” Mac said, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck as he paced up and down behind the sofa where Sully, Katherine, and Trey sat. The implications were astounding.

“Yeah, well, I will tell them just like I’m telling you. Those aren’t sentence enhancers you are using, but vulgar words that need to be stricken from your vocabularies when around me. It…” She sighed and gritted her teeth. “It makes the backs of my teeth ache. My jaws hurt to hear someone cursing.” Always had and always would. “I hate to hear it.” It was part of the reason why her father had removed her from her stepmother’s care when she was younger and sent her off to school, so that she didn’t have to listen to the woman’s venomous words hurled at her.

“So now that we know that Mab was your grandmother…” Skittles shook his head. The implications of this were un-motherfucking-believable. “We have to let the council know.” He stated the obvious.

“I know. Shut up, Skittles.” Talon grumbled and leaned back. “Fae royalty, after all these years. It’s going to be a freaking nightmare.”

Katherine smiled. “See, was that so hard?” she asked and then, “Why will it be a nightmare? I’m still only me. I’m just human.”

“No, kitten,” Mac said softly from beside her. “You are so much more than human, baby. You are of a royal line of a race of beings that everyone thought had been wiped from the face of the Earth. We should have known something was up because you were given three Alpha males as your mates, a bonding that honestly would have hurt most humans, but you aren’t really hurting, are you, baby?”

“No,” she whispered softly with a full-on blush spreading over her cheeks.

“What all have the boys told you about the races?” Talon asked.

“Just that Gaia was the one who selected the bond-mates and that they were also wolves and bears as well as humans.”

Talon nodded and sighed. “It’s more than that, Katherine. When Gaia chose to leave the Earth, she created races, her children. Each race had a royal line, a line that was always more powerful than the others of their race. Each royal line was cherished and their happiness and needs came before anyone else’s. They were good to their people and their people good to them.” He tried to explain. “Think of the royal family in Great Britain, only the people would willingly die for their royals of Gaia’s children.” He watched her and when she nodded, he continued.

“We have the Dragons, whose royal race is alive and well.” He shot a look to the men. “Not a freaking word.” He growled. “The Bear royals, Wolves, Warlocks, Magi and so on are all alive and well. Some of the races, however, were thought to have been wiped from the world. The Fae being one of those races,” he told her softly. “Honey, the Fae, while small, were some of the fiercest fighters that we had but even that couldn’t save them,” he explained. “It was thought that when the queen of the Fae, Titania, or Mab as most knew her, lost her mate that she withdrew from the world, and without her magic to hold her people together, they began to infight and soon destroyed themselves.” He was trying to explain the importance of this and was failing.

“What the big guy is saying is when Gaia birthed the races she gave them each a specific type of power. The royal lines commanded that power. The power that the Fae wielded was one of truth. When around the Faerie royals, you had to tell the truth. No matter how much it hurt you, you had to tell the truth,” he told her. “Yes, they were fighters, but they were better diplomats,” he said. “Which from what I’ve read about your father fits and just from knowing you, well, fits. Stupid truth,” he grumbled. “I like my shadows, thank you very freaking much.”

“All right, but you said they were all dead,” Katherine cut in.

“Well. Not technically,” Skittles said and keyed up a code and passed her the iPad. “You see, if a race’s royals are lost and the remaining ones begin to infight, the council chooses to put them down. But it’s not really putting them down or destruction like you are thinking.”

Katherine took the tablet and frowned. “What is this?” It looked like a cave, with hundreds of small, well, what looked to be fallen trees surrounded by flowers.

“That, my dear, is where the Fae are held in stasis,” Talon murmured. “When a race loses their royal line and the council decides that it’s time to put them down, they are placed in stasis. The stasis is something that Gaia herself gave to us. Surrounded by nature, they sleep but don’t dream, don’t age, simply rest until the day that somehow a royal is found.” He sighed. “In the time since she left you are the first found royal,” he put out softly.

“Me?” She gripped the iPad so tight she was sure she would crack it. She felt Quincy take it from her and she clasped her hands together tightly. “But I’m nobody,” she whispered.

“No, darling,” Mac said, stopping behind her. Dropping his hands lightly to her shoulders, he massaged gently. “You are very much somebody,” he assured her. “Not only our bond-mate, but you are also the only living royal of the Faeries,” he told her.
Un-fucking-believable!
Their bond-mate, of all people, was a royal.
Could this get any more complicated?

“She’s going to have to go to the cave, you realize,” Bulldog put out. “Now that she’s bonded with you three, Gaia will see her power base as being strengthened. She’ll need to go and see to their awakening. She won’t need to stay. They’ll take a while to awaken and get reoriented with this timeline. But they will end up gravitating here to be closer to her for at least a while, so you’ll need to figure out arrangements for them as well.”

“Not only that, but the council is going to have a freaking heart attack,” Skittles put in ever so helpfully. “Because now the Ear of Truth is returning to sit at their table. Oh man, I so want to be there when you vid them, Bulldog.”

“Do you have, like, medical people or something that will help these people wake up?” Katherine asked, and gulped audibly. “And who will teach them? How long have they been like that?”

“Five hundred and ninety-six years,” Talon said. “That’s how long they have slept. I would love to know how your grandmother pulled it off.”

“Why? You thinking of ducking out?” Skittles asked honestly.

“Don’t start with me,” Bulldog said with a growl. “I can and will char you. I’m sure that I can find another tech geek.”

“Yeah, but no one has my mad skills.” Skittles looked to Katherine. “I’m a warlock, mage, magic user,” he said, and ended on the one that she seemed to understand. “There are all kinds of magic and it just so happens that electronics love me. They react to my innate magic and that makes me utterly and completely indispensable to the council and to this squad.”

“Magic?” she asked, “You mean like David Copperfield?”

Skittles snorted and pulled out his candy. “Another?” he offered to her. At the shake of her head he shrugged. “Copperfield is an illusionist. He’s not a true magic user. He’s just learned how to use smoke and mirrors to pretend that he’s magical.”

Katherine nodded dumbly. “But is there a medical staff, and what do you mean, the ‘Ear of Truth’?”

“There’s no need for medical staff,” Trey told her. “We are of the Earth and the Earth will tend to her own. Gaia will see to their awakening once you’ve started the process, and when they reach a certain point in the awakening, she will basically download all the information they’ve missed out onto them so they are all caught up. They’ll still have to process it, which will take about a week, and then the process of awakening will finish. That’s when they will come here to be closer to you while they sort out their places in the world once more.”