Their Unexpected Mate [Paranormal Protection Unit] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (16 page)

Nodding, Sully took it upon himself to explain the rest. “The Ear of Truth is just that. As explained, the Fae line ensures that only words of truth are spoken at any time, usually during council meetings and important functions where absolute truth is required. But the Ear is unique to the fae royals since they can literally hear any and all untruths. Now while if I said the sky was orange you would know that because you can see it’s not, the Ear of Truth can hear the little things. Like if I said to you that Bulldog there is a wolf, what would you say to me?” he asked her quietly.

“That you are not being honest,” she whispered and then her eyes widened. “Oh God, how do I know that?” She had always been able to tell when someone wasn’t being exactly honest, but to blurt it out like that was something that she had never really done.

“That’s because you are the Ear of Truth. The council is going to drop a load because they have gotten used to being able to tell half truths,” Quincy said with a quirk of his lips. “And as for your people.” He shrugged. “Don’t be surprised if they come forward and the royal guards once more want to take over helping your mates protect you.”

“My who?” Her head was going to explode. She knew it. Her head was going to blow up and they would be cleaning brains off of each other, her floors, walls, and ceiling.

“There is a royal guard, the guards who were the best of the best of the fighters. They all took it very hard when your grandmother ‘died,’” Talon said. “We have to figure out how she did that.”

“Might be in her journals,” Katherine murmured. When every eye in the room turned to her, she gasped. “What?” she demanded. “Grams Mab loved to write. She was forever scribbling in these weird journals from what my father told me. I asked her when I met her where she got them and she said that the world provided, so I didn’t think anything about it,” she murmured. “They are, like, these leather-bound things,” she told them all with a shrug.

“Jesus H,” Trey said, shoving a hand through his hair.

Mac snorted, shaking his head. “Just wait until she reads them,” he muttered. “I’ll bet your Grams had something big to say. Might even explain more of this a lot better for you than we’ve managed.” It was hard. They all knew the truth of things, how things were and how they came to be. Explaining it to another was hard because it was all the fine details that made someone truly understand.

“Are they here?” Bulldog asked, leaning forward. “If they are, you should read them. Start at the beginning and work your way through them. Though, knowing your grandmother and just the way of the Fae, I’ll bet they are written in the old tongues so that if anyone stumbled on them they’d be indecipherable. But don’t panic. Once you lay hand to the page they should rearrange into modern English so you can read them.”

“I…” She gulped and shook her head. “I need a moment. Will you gentlemen please excuse me?” she whispered and jumped up, running from the room and toward the bathroom. It was too much.
Words that rearranged? Royalty?
Oh God, she needed a moment. She had to have a breather.

Stepping onto the porch, she looked unseeingly over the rolling green hills and breathed in the scents of the air around her.

“It’s going to rain,” Talon said from behind her. “Your mates will be out here shortly but I wanted to come to you to let you know that it’s going to be all right,” he assured her. “Somehow it will be all right.” He leaned against the wood railing and watched her.

“You have the look of Mab,” he told her with a smile. “I met her once. I was I think five.” He shrugged. “She was an amazing woman and I can see a lot of her in you,” he told her. “Just go with your gut. You will know what to do for your people because I have a feeling that your grandmother left you far more than just a lineage.”

“What do you mean?”

“When you are a royal you have the ability to transfer your power to another in your line. Since your father died of cancer he didn’t receive the power or he would never have died,” he told her softly, hating to hurt her like he was but needing to give her the truth. “I imagine that your grandmother poured her power into you and then that was when she truly ceased to be. She could likely only hide for so long before Gaia would force her to take back her place as a royal.”

“Why would she walk away from her people?” That was bugging her a lot.

“Well.” Talon looked to the plains and then back to her. “Keep in mind I was only five when I met her but I watched people. Her husband was not her bond-mate. He was a man who wanted power, craved it, and had trapped Mab into marriage. When a child was never born of the union, that was when all heck broke loose. He was killed and then she supposedly died.” He shrugged. “And the rest, well, there were those that tried to take power but Gaia wouldn’t allow it to happen. She has one set and true royal line, and since the Earth felt the death of the last royal, the council reacted. They put the remaining faeries in stasis, Mother Earth opening for her children and taking them to keep.” Until her. “You are more than just the princess of the Fae. You will be crowned their queen, your bond-mates your consorts, and you will bring life to that line that has been ‘dead’ for far too long. It’s good that you have been found. Maybe now a little more truth can spread across the land.”

Nodding, she looked to Talon. “So you are a Dragon Royal, right?”

“We won’t talk about me. You know the truth for what it is, my faerie queen,” he teased with a smile. “Now, let’s get back inside so that your bond-mates don’t want to tear my head off for allowing you to remain out here when we know there are eyes on this place.”

“Is it because of the money or do you think that someone has somehow found out what we just learned?”

Now wasn’t that a bitch? Talon hadn’t even thought of that, but now that she put it out there. “Shit.” He took her inside and said just what she had. “It’s more than the money, more than the brother. Maybe someone has learned who she really is and that’s why the hit man was out there. Someone sure as hell had him scared shitless. Now we have to figure out why.”

Everyone just stared at him for a long time before they all looked at one another. “Who would know?” Trey said even as Skittles scrambled to pull his iPad into reach. “Only Gaia would realize she was alive, and wouldn’t be running around telling anyone. I could see if Katherine had already been to the cave to awake the faeries. Sure, there could be a spy there, but otherwise…”

“I’ll bet someone else has been paying attention,” Skittles muttered, pecking away a mile a minute and then stopping dead. “Son of a bit…biscuit muncher,” he amended with a quite apologetic look to Katherine. “It looks like someone else has been digging into the past, not just on her side of things but on her brother’s. They figured out the lineage and then came back up the line to find her. Ten to one we all know just who’s after her head.” He didn’t have to say it. He could see it on everyone’s faces.

“Do you really think that old bastard is still alive?” Trey asked in a shocked tone and then he murmured “Sorry, kitten,” at her look. He said, “The queen’s former husband. He wasn’t her king because he wasn’t her bond-mate, and he wasn’t even a consort for the same reason,” he explained. “We will be your consorts. We can’t be king because the faeries are a matriarchal society, unlike the shifter royals, such as the felines, canines, and bears, which are patriarchal societies.”

“Momma’s baby, Daddy’s maybe,” Sully murmured. “A child born to a woman will always be that woman’s child, no question. However, the actual father of the child can’t be one hundred percent certain. For example, when you have our child we won’t know which of us fathered the child and we won’t care. It’s our child.” It would be a child made of love and that was all that mattered.

She nodded and swallowed hard. “All right,” she whispered. “I really think that I need a break from all of this, please?” It was too much to take in.

Talon stood and pulled Quincy up. “Come on, Skittles, we will continue to dig. I need to call a council meeting.” He looked to the three men. “I’m sending in one of the other teams to protect you as well. When this gets out.” He sighed. “Well, shit’s going to hit the fan.” Mostly because when Katherine was outed as being the faerie missing heir, the magic that had been sent from her line and into others would funnel back to her. Some people were not going to be too happy about this at all. “Watch over and protect her, boys,” he said and pulled his tech guru out.

“It was nice meeting you, Katherine,” Skittles called over his shoulder as he was bum-rushed out the door. “See you again soo—” The door cut him off when it shut.

Getting up to pace around, Sully stopped by the window to watch the other two leaving. Bulldog had been right on one score. The shit was going to hit the fan. There would be those that were not going to be happy letting all that extra power go. “We need to beef up the perimeter,” he said to the others.

“Agreed,” Mac said, moving to Katherine to lay a light hand on her back. “As soon as the other team arrives, we beef everything up.” He looked to Scythe, who was pacing the other side of the room and nodding in agreement.

“We’ll need to pull a watch or two as well. One of us is with Katherine every hour of the day, except bathroom time,” Trey said as he turned to look their way. “We never leave her alone until the royal guard arrives and even then we don’t let them too close to her.” Sometimes the guard figured they had more right than bond-mates to be closest to the royal. Cocky asshats.

“Do I get a say in it?” Katherine asked and looked at each of the men before her. “I really would like not think about any of this right now, okay? I swear if I have one more thing tossed my way I might just implode,” she stated bluntly. “I need, please, to not think about who or what I am.” She knew that it was cowardly but she needed not think about anything else. This was so very, very much to take in and right now. She only wanted to think about the men that were there with her. “I just want to focus on us, the four of us, all right?”

“What you are is ours, Katherine,” Mac said, gently pulling her into his arms. “First and foremost you will always be ours, little darling,” he told her honestly. Rubbing his hand up and down her back, he pressed a kiss to her hair. “Why don’t you go and have a nice, long bubble bath? You can just relax for a while and me and the lads will do some chores if you want a few minutes alone.”

“That sounds like the best idea ever,” Katherine told Mac and looked up at him with a smile. “I love you, Mac. I truly do love you.” All of them. She was in love with twin bears and a wolf. Yep, life would never be boring.

“If you boys need me, holler,” she said and pulled out of Mac’s arms, walking past Sullivan and touching his hand and then Trey and touching his. “I will let you talk to your friends. I know that you are all itching to talk to the extra men that I’m sure are here by now.”

“Not yet, but soon,” Trey said, squeezing her fingers as she moved past them. “Go and have your bath. We’ll check on you in a bit,” he murmured softly, “if we don’t see you, that is.” He smiled. “Go. Enjoy your bath and try to clear your mind. I know this was a lot, kitten, and I’m sorry for that. Unfortunately you have a bunch to learn in a short amount of time,” he murmured quietly.

Leaning back in the tub filled with bubbles, Katherine simply tried to let everything slide past her. She didn’t want to think about anything, didn’t want to really feel much of anything because she hurt. She ached to the deepest part of her soul. It hadn’t been so much all that she had been told so much as it was the fact that her Grams Mab could have saved her daddy and yet she had let him die.

Sinking deeper into the suds and water, she let the silent tears fall. She was absolutely heartbroken. Her father could have been saved, could have been there with her now, but instead the woman had pushed the power into her. Katherine didn’t want the power. She wanted her father. She would give everything that she had if only she had her father back.

Lifting a handful of water, she splashed it into her face and cried. She had to find out why the woman hadn’t saved her own son, a son whose father she had loved enough to give up her immortality for. She wanted to know why she allowed Wilder Douglas to die instead of allowing him to live. Katherine prayed that the information was in her grandmother’s diaries.

Walking forward, Mac touched his hand to her head and shook his head. “Hey, baby,” he whispered and bent down so that he could be at eye level with her. “See, I told those two that you needed us but they didn’t listen to me,” he murmured and tipped her chin up so that he could look at her. “Talk to me, baby.”

“She could have saved him.” She sniffed. “She could have saved my daddy but instead she pushed this on to me? Why?” She moved from under the suds to him and wrapped her arms around him. Burying her face against the side of his neck, she held on to him. “I could have still had my daddy but instead he’s gone, and why?”

“Shh, it’s okay, baby,” Mac murmured and pulled her out of the bathtub. He didn’t care how wet he was getting, or the floor for that matter. He simply needed and wanted to hold her. Grabbing a towel from the heating rack, he wrapped it around her and held onto her. “We are here now, baby. Somehow we will figure out why Mab did what she did, darling.”

Pulling back slightly, Katherine looked up at Mac and whispered, “I need you, Mac.” She didn’t speak again but instead moved to kiss him. Moving so that she could wrap her arms and legs around him, she held onto him and kissed him with all the desperate and hungry need that she had.

Mac wasn’t about to turn her down, but he knew that he should at least hesitate. “Baby.” He brushed her hair back from her face. “Baby, are you sure that you want me and it’s not because of how you are feeling?”

“No, Mac, no, it’s because I need you,” Katherine said simply. “I want to make love with you, Mac.” Her hands began to tug at his shirt and she pushed the material away from his chest. Running a hand over his chest, she sighed. “You are so very handsome.” And he was. Mac was built like a brick outhouse. He had muscles and those muscles had muscles. His abs were more of a ten-pack than a six-pack and, lord love a duck, she was amazed each time these men looked at her with the need and want that they always seemed to.