Gideon. Jacquelyn Frank
he shouted to the high ceilings after her, even though he was pretty certain she couldn’t hear him.
He stepped toward the fireplace, starting a blaze within it with the merest whisper of thought, and sat down in his favorite chair.
“A nap indeed,” he muttered under his breath. “I can give or take energy with the snap of a finger!” he announced proudly to the empty room. “I do not require sleep in the middle of the night like some babe. I will teach that girl a lesson in respect one of these days.”
The thought was interrupted when he yawned ferociously. Catching himself doing so, he loosed a sheepish laugh. Glancing around quickly, sealing off his home with a few spare thoughts, he settled back deeper into his chair and allowed himself the luxury of closing his eyes.
Chapter 2
Isabella turned and looked over her shoulder when she felt the air pressure in the room change with a distinct pop. She instantly knew who her guest was, even before the smoke had cleared. Bella cried out happily, dropping her watering can onto the window shelf and flinging herself through the remaining mist of sulfur to hug her newly arrived friend.
“Legna!”
“Bella, it is so good to see you,” Legna greeted her happily, hugging the petite Druid carefully in order to avoid squashing her rounded belly. They were acting as though they had not seen each other in ages, rather than a week. It was probably because Bella was so happy to see another woman that she was projecting it enough to affect the sensitive empath. Sometimes Legna got swept up in others’ enthusiasms, and she did not mind. It was one of the better emotions to get caught up in.
Isabella laughed, pulling back to look at her friend, tossing back her heavy head of pitch-black hair, the tresses gleaming like raven’s feathers as they immediately snaked down the length of the Druid’s spine. Isabella barely reached Legna’s shoulder, so petite compared to the empath, who was very close to being six feet tall. All Demons were tall. Bella often complained that talking to them gave her a crick in her neck, but Legna had noticed Bella’s neck never seemed to hurt when she had to reach for her mate’s kiss.
“You are such a liar,” Bella accused without zeal. “I look like I am carrying a small basketball under my dress. I’m only five months pregnant and I’m already tired of waddling around.”
“Well, far be it from me to remind you, but that baby is half Demon. Five months is only a little bit over first trimester, by Demon standards.”
“Okay, just for reminding me of that, you are no longer my friend. Poof yourself out of here right this minute,” Isabella commanded, her hands on her hips in mock indignity as she glared at the beautiful woman across from her. Magdelegna chuckled, moving with her fluid grace in order to circle the little Druid’s shoulders with a comforting arm. “And,” Bella sighed wistfully as her arm circled Legna’s waist, “you have to go and have a perfect figure on top of it.”
“Now, now,” Legna soothed and scolded her. “How is Jacob?” she asked, guiding Bella to a comfortable couch in a cozy conversation area near a beautiful window of stained glass picturing the wilds and wildlife of a forest. The empath felt the care that had gone into the piece, saw the detail, and it was all very breathtaking. Moonlight struck through it, sending silvered colors over them as they sat on couches close to but opposite one another.
“Busy.” Isabella exhaled hard, trying to shove her heavy hair behind her ear with impatient fingers. “I should be helping him. I am supposed to be his partner. It says so in black and white…or…well, actually it’s kind of a grayish beige scroll with little red—” Bella gasped, then growled in frustration at herself because she had found a tangent. “The point is, I am destined by this wondrous lost Demon prophecy I discovered to be the one that changes all of Demon destiny by working at his side. Instead, I’m stuck here, sitting on the couch, watching and feeling everything that happens to him from a distance. It really bites.” Bella pulled up her legs, crossing them in a meditation position. “I’ll tell you this, if he gives me one more order with that W word again, I’m going to divorce him before we even finish the wedding.”
“The W…? Okay, Bella, as usual you have lost me. W word?”
“Yeah. W,…as in Wife. Ugh! He’s always saying or thinking things in this high and mighty way and tacking the word ‘wife’ onto the end like it’s some kind of password that lets him order me around.” Bella noted her friend’s still perplexed expression, so she screwed up her face, attitude, and voice into an uncanny approximation of Jacob. “‘I do not want you hunting in your condition, wife. It is too dangerous for you and the babe to accompany me, wife. I have told Elijah that there are to be no more training lessons until after the birth, and do not argue with me about this, wife, because my mind is set.’” Isabella sagged back with a frustrated sigh. “Oy! It’s just so obnoxious and so…high-handed! You know the honeymoon is over when you go from ‘my love,’ ‘my little flower,’ and ‘my heart’ and become simply ‘wife.’”
Legna smothered the urge to chuckle. Her little friend’s famous sarcasm always tickled her, and it was meant to tickle. Bella had a way of hiding behind her wit and humor. She was stating things that clearly disturbed her, but she mocked them in such a way that anyone who did not know her would treat it as little more than a comedy routine.
Legna knew her better.
“Now, Bella, you know Jacob adores you. He naturally wants to protect you. He literally worships the ground you walk on.”
“Ha ha,” Bella said dryly. “Earth Demon. Worship the ground. Cute. Really cute.”
“Well, come on now. Seriously. As a Demon of the Earth, Jacob has a great affinity with nature. Of all of us, he is the one who knows the most about life and death and the way nature replenishes and selects her perpetuation. He has a respect for it that transcends every feeling he has with perhaps the exception of his love for you. But he is also a hunter, born with the ability to capture any prey by using the senses of the most skilled predatory animals. Knowing the nature of such beasts, carrying their insight with him always, it is part of him to understand the dangers that lurk in the tall grasses.
“Like it or not, Bella, you are vulnerable right now. I know you are powerful and becoming quite skilled in your own right, but what position would Jacob be in if in the course of your work, in a dire circumstance, you should come into danger, be held hostage, or even become mortally injured? I can come up with dozens of scenarios, and Jacob can imagine far more with four centuries of experience as Enforcer to draw on. You have been Enforcer for five months; he has four hundred years behind him of this, the Vampire wars for a century, the Lycanthropes for three…There is unusual peace now, save for the necromancers, but there are many variables and you are very precious to him.
“And anyway, what self-respecting male would not be anxious for a beloved mate who is carrying his child—a child who by being born will represent the first of its kind? Human and Demon DNA have never combined in any way before. Yes, you are half Druid as well, but still…I could understand why Jacob would be a little concerned…and a little overcautious.”
“Well.” Isabella nibbled on a nail, a sure sign of her own state of nerves. “Maybe I wouldn’t mind so much if I were really his wife.” She laughed wryly because she knew that the Imprinting went far deeper than ceremonial words could reach. She knew that Legna was aware of this as well. “We still have about a month to go before we can finish our rudely interrupted wedding ceremony. If my sister teases me one more time about being the ‘out-of-wedlock, impregnated tramp’ of the family, I am going to have to murder her and dump her body in a cornfield somewhere.”
“Bella,” Legna scolded, giggling softly at her friend’s pique. “Your sister Corrine is no paragon of virtue since she and Kane Imprinted, I assure you. She and Kane came to our home for a meditation training session with me, and I was occupied a few minutes longer than I expected. Well, by the time I got to the parlor, I could sense…” Legna’s head dipped and she blushed softly. “Let us say it would have been imprudent of