Ultimate Urban Fantasy Bundle

Chapter One

 Tell me I’m wrong, Garion. Tell me this isn’t yours.

We faced each other in the deserted hallway behind The Rain’s kitchen, me holding my breath and hoping, Garion tilting his head and frowning. Until his gaze dropped to the black, palm-sized object in my open hand.

All at once, he went rigid.

I became a broken body squeezed in a giant’s fist, caught up in a story I never wanted to be part of. The only things
grounding me to reality were the door-muffled clanks of dishes on the other
side of the wall to my right and the rhythmic thump thump of laundry tumbling in a dryer in an alcove behind me.

“You shouldn’t have that.” Garion’s voice was almost inaudible, yet it hit me like a gut punch from a friend, bruising my heart. And he was right. I shouldn’t have a djinn token in my hand, a token that I’d promised to give to a fey king in exchange for the key to open the envelope my parents left me.

“Nora and I were cleaning out my parents’ room,” I said. “It was hidden in—”

“Did Nora see it?” Garion demanded.

“No.”

“Good.” He folded my fingers around the token. “Tell no one about it.”

“Garion—”

“Pretend you never found it.” His dark eyes were too urgent. Too serious. “It’s nothing. I’m no one.”

“You’re dji—”

He struck fast, slapping his hand over my mouth and pushing me against the wall.

“I am nothing!” he growled, eyes now
fierce. This was even worse than I’d expected. Garion was one of the most
steadfast people I knew, his calm confidence respected by everyone. He wasn’t hurting me, and I wasn’t scared, but I felt the future tilt, everything I’d been fighting for, the changes I’d made to the status quo, all of it was being
dismantled by one manipulative fey king.

Garion lowered his hand. “Hide it.”

He didn’t understand. I couldn’t fulfill my bargain while keeping Garion and his secret safe. Every scenario flashing through my mind ended one way, with me learning what it felt like to betray a friend.

“I made a bargain with a fey.”

Though my words had been quiet, Garion flinched as if I’d lashed him with a whip. “What?”

“On Beltane,” I said. “I went to the fey’s dimension because my parents left me an envelope sealed with fey magic. I found the person who gave it to me, but the only way he would tell me how to open it was if I found something for him. He described…” I lifted the unnaturally heavy token. “…this. I didn’t know what it
was.”

“You…” The way his voice broke made me feel like I was twisting a knife in his back.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I agreed. My memory—”

“You agreed to find an artifact you knew nothing about.” His voice remained as quiet as a killing frost.

“I didn’t know it was yours. I didn’t know it was a…a relic. He described it more like a piece
of jewelry, a challenge coin. Something belonging to him that he wanted back.”

Garion shook his head as he stared at me, and I
remembered what he’d told me only a few days ago. I’d
asked him to diffuse tensions if Arcuro took the bait I’d set and descended on
The Rain, but Garion had refused to step forward and lead. When I’d pushed
harder, when I demanded to know who he was and what he was hiding, he’d
erupted, claiming the knowledge would change our relationship.

Just like it had changed his relationship with my parents.

I looked at the token, blinked, then looked back up at my friend. “My parents used this? Used your magic?”

His mouth tightened. “They didn’t want you tied to The Rain.”

Astrid, my childhood friend who’d
disappeared over a decade ago, had said the same thing when I’d tracked her
down in Cincinnati. The claim hadn’t made sense then. It made even less now. “I am tied to The Rain. More tied to it than before.”

“I know.”

“That can’t be what they wished for.”

“It was,” he insisted. “A djinn’s magic comes at a cost. The changes we make to reality have to be balanced. Usually, the cost is distributed among hundreds to thousands of people, diluting the impact to the point where it’s barely noticeable. My magic is…broken.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He ran a hand through his thick black hair before he turned and walked a few paces away.

“Garion.” I took a step toward him.

Deep lines creased his face when he turned back to me. “You made a bargain?”

“I shouldn’t have,” I said. “I knew that before and after I made the deal. I don’t
understand why I agreed with his offer in the moment, but I did.”

His head bowed toward the ground. He looked so…defeated. So weary and drained. It hurt to see him like this. Aside from Nora, he was the only paranorm at The Rain who’d known me before college. He’d always listened when I needed to talk, and he’d been there for me after my parents’ deaths. His quiet wisdom had always fortified me. I couldn’t betray him.

“Here.” I held out the djinn’s token. “Take it. Hide it. If I can’t find it, I can’t give it
away.”

Garion’s hands fisted at his sides. “You made a bargain with a fey, Kennedy. There are consequences if you break it.”

“There are consequences if I don’t. My parents kept your secret for the past five years. I’ve been here three months and all I’ve done is create chaos.” Deliberate chaos for the most part because I’d
refused to maintain the status quo.

“Who did you make the bargain with?” Garion asked.

“Canyon.” I grimaced. “That’s not his real name. He’s the king—”

The door at the end of the hall slammed open. I shoved Garion’s token into my pocket, sure that Canyon was barging in to collect it. Lightning highlighted the silhouette of a tall figure, a figure who flung something large into the hall. I didn’t have a chance to see what it was before Garion swung me behind him.

A rumble of thunder followed another flash of lightning. I looked around Garion’s shoulder and saw that the something was a someone. Deagan.

Garion grabbed my arm when I rushed forward to help.

“It’s Deagan,” I told him, attempting to pull free. But Garion wasn’t focused on the unconscious vampire; he was focused on that vampire’s master.

Jared’s chest heaved. The left side of his face glistened with blood, some of it pooling into his eye, the rest disappearing under his collar. That, coupled with his cold expression and the eerie shadows that seemed to wrap around his torso, made him a menacing and monstrous sight. There was a reason he had been Arcuro’s enforcer for well over a century. Jared had the ability to instill bone-deep terror into anyone who crossed his path.

Thank God he was an ally.

After a deep inhale through my nose and a slower exhale out, I erased my instinctive fear and removed Garion’s
hand from my arm. He allowed it this time.

Moving cautiously, I kept my attention divided between Jared and Deagan. When I reached the unconscious vampire sprawled out on the cold floor, I knelt down. “He’s not any better?”

“No,” Jared said.

“What have you done for him?” Deagan no longer wore the tattered clothes from when I’d found him in the compound, but this new set was just as bloodstained and ruined.

“I have fed him,” Jared said.

I looked up. “Blood?”

“He is a vampire.”

“Who was abused by vampires,” I said, but Jared’s response didn’t surprise me. He was more of a kill someone than care for someone type of person.

I turned my attention back to Deagan. He still hadn’t moved or opened his eyes. His fingernails were broken, his flesh gouged and scratched, and his dry, cracked lips stuck together. “Why isn’t he healing?”

“He is blood-crazed.” Jared took a step further inside. “Delirious. He cannot control himself enough to make up for what he lost. He spills more blood than he ingests. I have fed him from my own veins. I have brought him young and Aged vampires. I have brought him humans, and he has ripped them all to shreds.”

“Have you—” Wait. What? “Are you kidding me?”

“I do not kid.”

I shot back to my feet. “You think Deagan is going to be happy he killed people?”

The skin around Jared’s eyes tightened. “It was a figure of speech, Ms. Rain. They live.”

The tension in my shoulders eased. My irritation, however, did not. “So you exaggerate and use euphemisms, but you don’t kid?”

He answered with a stare so impassive, most people would claim he didn’t care about anything let alone Deagan’s fate. Those people would be wrong. Jared had suppressed his emotions for so long, and he was so locked into the rules and traditions of the paranormal world, he no longer remembered how to be vulnerable.

“You need to clean him up,” I said, my voice softening. “Give him real food. Treat him like he’s human.”

“That is why I have brought him here.”

Well, damn. I’d walked into that one. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to help Deagan, but I wasn’t sure if I had the capacity to add him to my responsibilities. I was fighting for The Rain’s independence, and that was pissing off the powerful paranorms who wanted me to just sit down and shut up. I also had a murderer to identify. Someone had killed Jasmine, the first werewolf to sign her name to my guest list, and left her body in the hallway outside my third-floor residence.

And then I had my new catastrophe. I needed to decide how to handle Canyon and the token…

I looked over my shoulder. Sometime in the past few minutes, Garion had slipped away.

“Deagan is a weakness,” Jared said. “There is nowhere else I can take him.”

Heavy. That’s how I felt lately. Jared’s words draped over my shoulders like a metal shawl. I hadn’t built enough muscle to carry around the weight of my responsibilities.

I turned back to Jared. “Don’t you have dark houses spread across the country?”

“They are outside the Null, and Deagan is the only vampire I would trust to take care of…Deagan.”

The corner of my mouth lifted. Then lowered as I took in Deagan’s pale face and cracked lips. “Is he dangerous?”

“He is weak.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I would not have brought him if I thought your life was at risk.”

Probably true. I was the last Rain. Most of the paranormal world believed my life was linked to the existence of the Null. “What about the staff? What about Christian and Astrid and—”

“Look who deigned to show up.”

Jared’s gaze shot behind me, and I turned to watch Nora stride toward us, her heeled boots clapping against the cement now that she’d left the lobby’s thin, carpeted floor.

“Nora.” Jared’s voice came alive when he said her name. The way his eyes took her in, the way he stepped toward her… His desire was almost tangible. I envied it, envied them.

I do want you, Blake had said in the
cabin in the woods. It’s a problem.

A huge damn problem, and one I’d
attempted to solve by shutting him down when I last saw him. I’d pushed him
away before then. Each time was more difficult than the last, but after the
mountain? I was trying to convince myself those kisses hadn’t meant anything, that I’d only initiated them to keep him human and sane, and that anything he felt for me was just a fleeting infatuation.

And anything I felt for him? It had to be the same. I couldn’t notice the similarity between the way Blake looked at me on the mountainside and how Jared looked at Nora now. I was a Rain, a human, and Blake was an agent of one of the most powerful alphas on the planet.

An alpha who would kill him if we had anything more than a business-like relationship.

I pushed Blake’s image from my mind and focused on Jared, who suddenly stopped his approach three steps away from Nora.

“Did you plan to ditch Deagan and run?” Nora’s voice was as icy as the look she speared him with. That was…unexpected.

“No,” Jared said.

Nora crossed her arms. The posture wasn’t defensive. It was confident and condemning, a warning that Jared obviously didn’t get, but I was beginning to. Days ago, he’d left The Rain to save my ass, and he’d been fighting for control of the compound ever since. As far as I knew, he hadn’t called Nora. She likely felt ignored, which was something
werewolves, especially the more dominant ones, didn’t tolerate.

It was also something Nora would never admit to.

Jared stood unmoving another moment before he reached for a towel folded on the wire shelving beside the now quiet dryer. He wiped the blood from his face, from his hands, then he tossed the red-stained towel into one of the industrial-sized washers.

“You are angry,” he said.

Not angry—hurt—an emotion Nora concealed by taking an aggressive step toward him. “Why would I be angry?”

Because Jared came to The Rain for Deagan, not for her.

“I do not know.”

I grimaced. Deagan really needed to wake up. He was going to miss Mr. High and Mighty get his ass handed to him.

If we’d been outside the Null, Nora’s eyes would have been ringed in a sharp, lethal gold. “Better get back to your vampires then.”

“They are not yet my vampires.” His head tilted slightly. “They are why you are angry?”

“I am not angry.” She bit out each word. “I am enlightened.”

Jared grabbed her arm as she turned away. I watched Nora’s right hand, waiting for it to form a fist to slam into
Jared’s too often blank face.

“I will lose the compound if I remain gone too long,” he said.

Her fingers curled inward.

“I have not called,” he continued, his voice deepening, darkening, “because I would rather be here with you than be away. I want to stay, Nora.” His grip on her arm loosened, and his hand slid down to hers. “If I do, if I have you beneath me tonight, I will not leave before sunrise. My enemies will strike while I am with you, and neither you nor my people will be safe outside The Rain.” He stepped closer. “I do not want you to be imprisoned in the Null. I want you at
my side. I want you in my bed.”

Well, hell. I was wrong. He wasn’t
going to get his ass handed to him. His words were perfect. Passionate. When he wrapped his arms around her waist, Nora didn’t resist. She initiated the kiss,
and their hunger and yearning hit me as if we were standing outside the Null,
their magic pulsating and tangible.

I turned away to focus on Deagan instead of the hollow ache in my stomach, which was there because I’d
chosen to maintain The Rain’s neutrality, to focus on making it the oasis it should be. And I wouldn’t give Lehr a reason to kill Blake.

“Help me get Deagan to a room,” I said. Maybe I was a bitch to interrupt Nora and Jared’s moment, but I needed to finish my conversation with Garion. I couldn’t leave Deagan here, and I couldn’t carry him on my own.

When Jared and Nora finally ended their kiss, he cupped the nape of her neck and pressed his forehead to hers. Another moment passed before he drew in a breath and stepped away. By the time he looked at me, his normal, dispassionate expression had returned.

“I must ask for another favor.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out an envelope.

The small white rectangle might as well have been a weapon. Nothing good ever came from them, not the bills I could barely pay or the magically sealed treaty Canyon had handed me. Envelopes were my nemesis, and I could think of only one reason Jared would be holding one now.

"What," I demanded, my voice as quiet as a sharpened sword, "the hell is that?"

She made a deal with a fey. Now, she’s determined to break it.

Kennedy thought she’d finally found her footing in the paranormal world, but a fateful discovery threatens the peace she’s tried so hard to build. Hidden within her mother’s jewelry box lies a rare artifact linked to Garion, the Rain’s bartender and Kennedy’s friend. It’s also the object Kennedy vowed to give to a fey king in exchange for his previous “help.”

Handing over the token feels like a betrayal, but breaking a bargain is no small matter. Kennedy needs advice, so she turns to her small circle of allies, including Blake, the relentless werewolf she can’t let herself fall for.

With her options running out, Kennedy must navigate around the rules of the paranormal world while also solidifying Jared’s position as the new master of the local vampire compound. She’s pulled deep into cutthroat politics, and once again, she faces an impossible choice: surrender the token and betray her friend, or defy the fey and risk unimaginable consequences.