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  “You better be damn glad ya sister was a quick thinker, or who knows what level of fuckery we coulda landed in from that tracking spell, yeah?” Donal glowered at Arlo and he finally dragged his intense gaze away from me.

  Sucking in a deep breath, I realized I'd all but stopped breathing under the combined weight of Arlo's, Reece's, and Killian's stares.

  What the fuck was going on? And did Donal just say that Caley was Arlo's sister?

  “Here, sit.” Killian gestured to the couch and I hesitantly perched on the edge of it. He sat himself down on the coffee table, but he was so huge his knees ended up pressed to mine. “You're pretty badly beat-up, especially for a fae. We heal so quickly as it is … They must have used a lot of iron.”

  Whips tipped in metal, cutting through my flesh like it's made of butter. Blood. So much blood.

  I flinched as the memory slapped me in the face. What the hell had happened to me? What had I done to deserve such violence?

  “Make sure ya sort 'er voice box, Kill,” Reece added, “so she can tell us who she be. And what.”

  “She's fae. What makes you think she's anything more?” Arlo scowled, coming to perch on the other end of the couch.

  “Ya didn't see 'er without da glamour,” Reece grunted. “She ain't no fae I've ever laid eyes on. And she triggered my magic with jus' a touch of 'er thumb ta my lips.”

  Both Killian and Arlo jerked back and glared at Reece while Donal sighed wearily.

  “Reece, you didn't …” Killian exclaimed, looking mortified.

  “Nah, I'm old enough fer a bit more self-control than dat. Old Reece jus' did what was needed for da magic—nothin' more, nothin' less.” The heat in Reece's gaze spoke volumes on the more that I still so desperately wanted from him.

  “Get on with it, Kill,” Donal interrupted. “I'm going to take care of some shit, but I expect this one healed and singin' like a bird by the time Fionn gets back. Understood?”

  “Oui, sir,” Killian responded, and the bearded man left us alone.

  Curiously, only Reece and Donal spoke with the thick Cajun-Irish mix. Killian sounded French, while Arlo and Caley just sounded straight-up clean American, with maybe a hint of a Southern accent.

  “Ready, cher?” Killian murmured to me, recapturing my gaze in his frosty ice-blue stare. It sounded like he said sha but my complicated brain knew it was cher. I nodded hesitantly and his lips pursed. “Alright then, let's begin.”

  His huge palms cradled my face as he brought his own close enough to mine that everything else was blocked out around us. All I could see was the bottomless, cool blue of his eyes, and smell his crisp, fresh scent. Like early morning frost on a dead still forest.

  “This is going to feel strange. Don't fight it.” His words echoed around my head and I was unsure if it had been said aloud or not. I tried to nod my understanding but my face was held firm in his hands.

  Killian sucked in a slow, deep breath, then as he exhaled it seemed like his breath rushed all through my body from head to toe and everywhere in between. He was inside me, exploring every inch of me with ice-cold mist. As he travelled, he paused routinely, paying extra attention to various injuries on my body, both old and new.

  Time passed, I don't know how long. All I could see was blue, for miles. All I could feel was cold. But despite this, I felt safe. My mind watched with fascination as Killian's magic worked its way through my psyche, healing my physical form from the inside.

  Eventually, he reached my throat and I watched as his misty magic showed me the damage that had been done. My vocal cords were shredded, like wet cheese, and the tissue surrounding my voice box was inflamed and raw. There was no doubt in my mind that without Killian's magic, I would have never spoken again. How I had even managed the small noises Reece had coaxed out of me was a mystery.

  Gently, Killian smoothed my damaged throat back together until it was as good as new, then paused. For a timeless moment, his magic stared into my soul and a sharp stab of pain filled my head.

  My consciousness slammed back into my physical form and I cried out as the pain chased me. My hands clutched at Killian's where they still held my face firm, clawing and desperate to make the pain stop.

  Make it stop!

  Even as my fingernails dug into the skin of his hands, he pulled me closer, sealing his mouth to mine and breathing his magic back into me once again. That cold mist raced straight to my head and soothed the pain, wiping it away and leaving me light-headed and dizzy.

  Killian retracted his magic almost as fast as he had sent it out, but when we both returned to our corporeal forms, his lips were still on mine. Slowly, his mouth moved but not to pull away as I had expected. Instead, his lips coaxed mine apart and his tongue slipped into my mouth, reigniting the fire in my belly which had started with Reece earlier.

  I sucked in a gasp, my breath catching as Killian took the kiss deeper. His hands still held my face firm and his mouth dominated me like he was staking a claim.

  “Kill!” A deep voice cracked across the room like a whip, and I jerked backward out of the dark-haired man's grip.

  “Sir, you're back already?” Killian responded, with his eyes still glued to mine. His voice sounded breathy and exhausted, and there were dark circles under his eyes.

  “Already?” The man grunted. “Boy, you've been healing this pauvre bête for near on six hours now.”

  “What?” I gasped, then flinched at the sound of my own voice. It was the first time I had really heard it, to my knowledge.

  “You heard me, girl,” the man replied from his position seated in an armchair across the room from us. Killian stood from his perch on the coffee table and stretched. His arms rose up above his head and almost bumped into the lazily turning ceiling fan, and his shirt rode up to expose a chiseled expanse of abs.

  “Look like Kill 'ere sorted out yer voice situation,” the man continued, and I refocused my attention on him, rather than on that delicious V just above Killian's low-slung black jeans.

  The newcomer was yet another huge man, but magic and danger rolled off him in waves that I could almost see. His hair was long, brushing his thighs as he sat forward with forearms braced across his knees. His beard was as long as Donal's but Fionn's hair had a dark, bloodred shade not dissimilar to the color Reece's had gone when his glamour was dropped.

  “Um, yes,” I responded, but my voice came out in a thin sort of whisper and I glanced up at Killian in panic.

  “Don't stress yourself, cher,” he reassured me, sitting himself down on the couch close enough that our thighs were touching. “It's healed but just needs a bit of use to get back to normal. Right now your vocal cords are still tight from the healing.”

  “That's good work, boy.” Fionn nodded to Killian. “Girl musta been in a right state for six hours o' healin'.”

  “She was,” Killian murmured, and draped an arm over my shoulders to pull me in close to his side. “Where'd the boys go?”

  “Sent 'em out to deal with the rougarou.” Fionn spat this word like it was a curse. It wasn't one I was familiar with, so I kept my mouth shut. “Bastards have been acting up again. Forgetting their place 'ere in the bayou.”

  He stared at me for a long, quiet moment, his eyes the color of mud mixed with blood. Where did an image like that come from? It disturbed me that I had a thought like that so readily available and yet … no idea where it originated from.

  “Rouga—” I coughed out, struggling to get past the feeling of words slipping from the tight, painful confines of my throat. I had the feeling these words weren't just the first ones I'd spoken since waking up in the alley … but my first words for a long, long time.

  Years.

  “Rougarou,” I whispered, just to hear myself talk. My voice was as smooth as broken glass in gravel. It was almost as painful to listen to as it was to speak. But to have a voice again? There wasn't a gift in the heavens or the many hells below this earth that could make up for that. “A werewolf?”

&nbs
p; I wet my lips and then felt my entire body go stiff when Caley handed me an ice-cold can of soda. This, I remembered. But from where? And how?

  I stared at the lid of the can for a long, quiet moment, the sounds of the bayou fierce and wild outside the walls. I could hear the distinct grunting of gators, the calls of night birds, and the terrified squeaks of those who were nothing but prey.

  “Sort of,” Killian said, his voice kissed with the slightest hint of a French accent. Not Cajun or Creole, but Parisian. Parisian. What was Parisian? The thought had popped into my head seemingly unbidden. I didn't know what Parisian was, only that Killian had that air.

  Clearly there was something wrong with my brain.

  “A rougarou is a magicked wolf as opposed to a born one,” he told me, leaning back into the couch with his leather vest slung over his shoulders, his muscles smooth and hard, inked with designs similar to the markings I'd seen on Reece's unglamoured face.

  “A magicked wolf,” I whispered and felt the sudden urge to sing. Something old and ancient flittered through my mind, like the long forgotten words in a crumbling book. I began to hum and the air around me shivered, like pavement on a hot day.

  “Whoa, there, bebette,” the long-haired man said, leaning over and putting a hand on my knee. As soon as his fingers touched my bare leg, I felt a rush of power and a spark of fear. Whoever this man was, he was powerful. “Don't go throwin' 'round that kinda magic unless you know what yer doing, you.”

  “What's your name, mon cher?” Killian asked, studying me with white-blue eyes, like an Arctic sea, an endless stretch of nothing that somehow meant everything.

  “My name?” I asked, blinking heavy-lidded eyes at him. I felt … almost content, sitting here in this strange old room in the middle of a swamp. There were men on either side of me that I didn't know, and as far as I knew it, my entire world had changed.

  Years of torture.

  Endless pain.

  And now … blissful silence. I knew then that even if these men killed me, put a knife to my throat and spilled hot red blood across the tattered floor, that it would be a better outcome than staying where I'd been.

  And where had I been exactly?

  “I don't think I have a name,” I said as the big man—Reece's dad if I'd overheard the conversations correctly—stood up. He snorted at me, adjusted himself, and put his steepled hands to his lips.

  “Everything has a name, petite fée,” Fionn told me as I took a deep breath and read truth into his every word. “We da fae—if you lost your name, then someone probably stole it. That, or you done gone and hid it from yourself.”

  Fionn walked away and left me to contemplate his words.

  Stole it.

  Or hid it.

  Either way, I was intrigued.

  For years, I'd known nothing but darkness. And not the sort of darkness with stars, not like shadows cast by a smiling sun. True darkness. Real and complete. It was a void, that darkness—at least most of the time. I learned to shut out the pain and the horror, to close my eyes and drift away.

  My mind was my sanctuary, a playground of memories that skipped and teased, that twirled away from me like dancers on a ballroom floor. I hid from the whips and the chains, the shackles and the acrid scent of burnt flesh by running as fast as I could after them, trying to catch them like fireflies.

  Sometimes, I caught them.

  #

  “Ciarah O'Rourke, you get your ass back in here and clean this fucking house!” My mother's voice followed me out the front door and down the steps, into the rain where her shouting was finally drowned out by the rush of water.

  Compared to the stink of the city, the rain smelt refreshing, cool and clean against my face. I knew Mom was still standing on the stoop of our house, eviction notice in hand, screaming into the night, but I didn't care anymore.

  I was getting the hell out of there—for good.

  Nineteen years old and nothing to show for my life, not even a high school diploma. My mom was a heroin addict and her boyfriends were bad enough to make up for the few good ones I'd managed to have. But I could never keep them. They always left and moved on without me.

  Well, now look who was moving on?

  Crossing the road, I headed toward Frenchmen Street—the only spot in downtown New Orleans that the locals liked to hang out. Bourbon Street was just fucking gross.

  Dressed in knee-high leather boots, tight jeans, and an old jean jacket I made my way toward my favorite bar, this charming little dump called Spirits. I was going to have one last night of fun in town—after all, I did love New Orleans—and then I was going to leave.

  It wasn't that this place didn't hold any opportunities, just that I needed a change of scenery. I'd been living here my whole life with a toxic family and missed opportunities. I was too comfortable living in the familiar squalor of my own existence.

  All I needed was a change.

  I just didn't expect to get the one that fell in my lap, violent and bloody and awful.

  I didn't expect to die.

  Sliding into my usual spot at the end of the bar, I handed the bartender my flawless fake ID then ordered a hurricane. Pulling out my phone, I powered up the screen and started tapping out a message to my current boyfriend, asking him to come and meet me for a drink. Right before hitting send, I hesitated. If I was leaving this town, I was leaving Brad and all his baggage behind, too.

  Deleting my message, I started again. This time, it was a short and sharp break-up message. Thanks for the memories, sort of thing. The last thing I needed was Brad and his psychotic ex-girlfriend causing drama before my new life had even begun. Just the fact that he'd remained friends with the girl was strange enough, but at the end of the day I didn't really care enough about Brad to be jealous. He was hot, and fucking exceptional in bed, but that was about the end of it.

  When Brad's message came back, it was nothing terribly surprising. Just a bunch of profanity about what a shitty human I was, but that wasn't exactly news to me. I knew I was a shitty human. So were a lot of people. At least I was trying to do something to change it though.

  One hurricane turned into three, and before I knew it, I was making out with a sexy, green-eyed biker in the hallway to the bathrooms. As small as I was, it never did take much to get me drunk and those hurricanes packed a punch.

  “We should take this back to my place,” the guy panted in my ear as we came up for air. I blinked up at him through the haze of rum and considered what he was saying. Did I want to fuck a stranger tonight? He was more than handsome enough for it, and if his kissing skill was any indication of what was to come, then I had no doubt he'd perform in the bedroom …

  But he wore a leather jacket with a motorcycle club patch on the back—one with a skull and wings that everyone knew to steer clear of—and my mama didn't raise no fool. A useless heroin addicted waste of oxygen she may be, but one thing she did right was teach me to always be suspicious.

  “No.” I squinted at him, feeling the numbness in my lips from my intoxication. “No, I think I'm done for the night. This was fun, though.”

  Pushing off the wall where we had just been climbing all over one another, I slipped past him as he gaped in surprise. Clearly, not the sort of guy that had ever heard no from a girl.

  Less than a minute after leaving Spirits, the sexy, well-muscled biker was already forgotten, and I made my way a little unsteadily down the street toward the Mississippi. As antiquated as it seemed, I was departing the city of my youth by boat.

  Seems funny, that after nineteen years in New Orleans—a city well-known for its crime—I'd never once felt afraid when walking the streets at night, and that night was no different.

  Taking a turn off Decatur, I ducked through an alleyway which took me through to the empty French Market. It was one of my favorite nighttime make out spots when I couldn't go home because I knew Mom would be smacked out on the couch, so when I saw a shadow moving to the left of me, I thought nothing of it. Probably
another couple making out in the darkness.

  Such was my confidence that night that I never saw it coming until it was too late. Until that shadow stepped out into my path and slid a blade into my stomach like a warm knife through butter. Until that knife ripped upward to my sternum and my guts spilled onto the cold concrete at my feet.

  My knees buckled, no longer able to hold my weight and I crashed to the ground in a cold shock of pain and blood. There was just so much blood.

  “Don't worry, Ciarah,” the familiar voice sneered, “stomach wounds are nasty things. They take ages to actually kill a person.”

  “Caroline,” I croaked, her name like a curse on my lips. I didn't need to ask why. Brad's ex had always given me the creeps, and obviously my dumping him by text tonight had tipped her over the edge.

  “I should thank you. You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do this.” Her voice was excited and breathy, like she was getting off on killing me. Hell, she probably was. “I’ve dreamed about it so many times, but Brad thought he was in love with you and I couldn’t do anything to hurt him. Now though … well, you’ve gone and broken his heart which makes you fair game, bitch.”

  I was facedown on the dirty ground, a pool of my own blood spreading around me, and she grunted with the effort required to roll me over. Deadweight was a hell of a thing, or so I heard.

  “Perfect,” she panted, once I was on my back and staring up at a hastily drawn pentagram on the roof. Caroline fancied herself a voodoo priestess, like so many other fanatics in New Orleans. No one actually took her seriously though. She was hoodoo, not voodoo. Little more than parlor tricks and con jobs.

  Until now.

  The deranged chick began chanting in French, placing small objects on the tips of the pentagram that I then realized I was lying on top of. A direct mirror image of the one above me.

  This was bad. Was this honestly how I was going to die?

  There was no pain, which was a blessing, but my educated brain knew it was because the wound was that bad. My body had gone into shock and all I could feel was cold.