Olivia paused for a second before continuing. “You okay?”
“No, Olivia. I just saw innocent people die. I am the exact fucking opposite of okay.” Mordred hung up. The fact that he’d had a meeting with Elaine about the prophecy just before she’d vanished was far more of a coincidence than Mordred liked. Even if Elaine hadn’t been his aunt, finding her was now at the top of his list of things to do. He glanced back at the end of the alleyway before continuing on. Whoever the people behind My Liege were, they were now happy to kill humans by the dozen, and do it in the open, in a busy city. Mordred could be certain of one thing: things were going to get a lot worse before they got better.
CHAPTER 2
Nate Garrett
New Forest, England
I woke to the smell of cooking and smiled. It was rare that someone cooked for me, rarer still that it was breakfast. I pushed the quilt aside and stood, stretching and making various parts of me click with the effort. The blackout curtains allowed almost zero light into the room, but the clock on the bedside table told me it was just after 8:00 a.m. I’d slept for five hours, which for a sorcerer was about as long as we ever needed, and for me practically a blasted miracle.
I opened the dark-blue curtains, letting in the gloomy sunshine. December in the UK is a mixture of cold, wet, and those weird days when it’s sunny but it feels like the weather is just trying to lull you into a false sense of security. Today was apparently going to be overcast and drizzly. A combination either you got used to, or that made you move.
My bedroom window overlooked the large garden at the rear of my four-bedroom house in the middle of New Forest. At a point a few hundred feet from my bedroom window, my garden became New Forest, and then there were hundreds of square miles of woodland, heathland, and grassland. It was a beautiful place to live, and more importantly a quiet one.
My house was built in the late eighteenth century, although it has been modified and modernized over the years. A new two-story addition was built onto the side of the property, and I’d made a few arrangements to the interior so that I could call it home. One of the four bedrooms housed an extensive collection of weaponry and armor I’d acquired over my sixteen hundred years of life, and I’d made sure to install security detectors that covered the multiacre property.
I felt safe there. Secure. Somewhere in the distance, under the darkness of the forest, I built a small one-bedroom building. It was new and housed Remy—a good friend of mine who happened to be a fox-human hybrid. Turned out pissing off witches was a bad idea. Something he probably should have known before they used a ritual to turn him into said fox. Fortunately for Remy, they were also incompetent and ended up killing themselves and giving him their life force. Hence the fox-human hybrid. He did well with what life had dealt him, and it was nice to see a friendly face when I went outside.
A memory of Remy’s friendly way with people flashed into my head. Well, usually friendly . . . Okay, sometimes friendly.
I grabbed a black dressing gown from the en suite bathroom door and put it on, covering the fact that I was only wearing black boxer shorts. I might have been able to conjure magical fire to warm myself, but sometimes it was just easier and safer to add an extra layer of clothing.
I walked downstairs, my mouth watering at the smell of cooking meat, and eventually entered the kitchen.
“Morning,” Selene said from in front of the oven. Several pans were on top, all of which contained some type of food. “English breakfast okay with you?”
I smiled. “That sounds like a plan. Also, wasn’t aware you’d learned to cook.”
Selene looked back at me, a grin on her face. “I watched some Internet videos. And did some practice runs at home. Black pudding?”
I nodded. “Only if it’s cooked. Cold black pudding is just weird.”
Selene was one of the few women in my life I could say with certainty that I had fallen in love with. We’d been together for a few decades back in the early twentieth century, but Hera and her cronies had blackmailed her into leaving me and marrying Ares’s son. A nasty little wankpuffin by the name of Deimos, who was about as pleasant and charming as rabies. The last time we’d met, he’d used his power to get inside my head and make me relive one of my worst days over and over again. It hadn’t gone well for him, and when I’d last seen him, he’d been curled up in a ball on the floor after wetting himself.
Selene was just over five-four and was frankly the most beautiful woman I’d ever met. The top half of her hair was black, while the bottom, which was currently tied in a ponytail, was silver. Her eyes were an incredible green color and held both amazing warmth and a wicked temper that I’d been the target of several times.
As she cooked a fried breakfast, she wore one of my old black T-shirts that stretched down to her thighs. She turned back to me and winked. “I hope you’re hungry,” she said, putting down a plate in front of me. It was covered in sausages, bacon, poached eggs, french toast, black pudding, beans, and mushrooms. There were also several slices of regular toast and a full pot of tea. With this much food, there was a good chance I wouldn’t need to eat anything else for a week.
Selene had even more food than me, with at least an entire pack of bacon and sausages just for herself. Dragon-kin, like most nonhuman species, ate a lot and often. The fact that Selene and I hadn’t left the bedroom except to shower in the better part of a day meant we were both hungry.
I took a bite of food, and a happy noise left my mouth involuntarily.
“Nice?”
“Mmmm,” I managed through a mouthful of bacon and french toast.
Selene chuckled. It was a beautiful sound.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I told her when I was capable of speech again.
“Me, too,” she said with a sly grin.
After Selene left her husband, she’d needed time to herself, to figure out what she wanted to do with her life and the freedom she finally found she had. I told her I’d always be there for her if she decided that she wanted me in that life. Two months ago she had asked me to meet her in Munich. I was in the city a few hours later, and since then we’d gotten together on a regular basis. It wasn’t quite what we had back in the early 1900s, but the best things evolve over time. You can never go back to what you had with someone, and it’s pointless wishing for it.
“I want to talk to you about something,” Selene said. “I’m thinking of moving to the UK. On a more permanent basis. Tommy offered me a job working at his security firm.”
Tommy, or Thomas Carpenter, was my best friend, and an exceptionally powerful werewolf. He was also the head of a security firm that had, over the years, become the place to go if you needed help but didn’t want to use Avalon. A lot of people didn’t trust Avalon, often for very good reasons.