She eyed Casey and Geoff laughing near the fireplace, throwing marshmallows at each other and smiled. “This is a special place. We are honored to come and help protectit.”
Protect it. Because for a single moment I had forgotten we needed to protect ourselves from the constant threat of thedruids.
“Isabella was just telling me that she and her brother have done extensive military training,” Logan told me. “They’d like to work with the members of thepack.”
Two more skyborn who could fly and fight when the time came? “Sounds good to me,” I told them. That final decision of course rested withKeegan.
They smiled. Dee called them over, and they excusedthemselves.
“Where’s Eva? Has she had any more issues with the border?” I asked mymate.
He shook his head. “No, thank God. They seem to think we did in fact have our stronghold in Lake Tahoe. But now she’s working on an issue with BabyLily.”
My whole body clenched. “What’swrong?”
Logan frowned slightly. “Well … nothing yet. Eva said the baby is fascinated with shifting and is doing so too often, which is wearing down her spell. Pretty soon, we’ll run out of ingredients and she won’t be able to hide heranymore.”
It was like someone had knocked the wind out of me. Even Isaac made a choking noise to myright.
“Well … get more supplies. Let’s make extra batches and have them onstandby…”
Logan put out a hand. “Sloane, we’ve thought of all that. The reality is there isn’t enough unicorn blood left in this world to keep up thischarade.”
I’m sorry, did he just say unicornblood?
“Unicorns are real?” Why didn’t anyone tell methis?
Logan gave me a sly grin. “They used to be. In Faery. But only a small precious amount of that ingredient made itout.”
I looked at Isaac. “Got any unicorn friends you haven’t told usabout?”
He chuckled. “No, Iwish.”
Logan sighed. “At some point we will need to decide whether or not to keep Lynn and the baby here, where we can all protect them. Or … have them go on the run with a small group and hope for thebest.”
“They will leave this land over my dead body,” I said, through gritted teeth. There was no way in hell I was letting a new mother and her innocent child go on the run infear.
Logan’s eyes flashed a glowing green. “I agree. Whatever happens will happen. We’ll do everything in our power to protectthem.”
Isaac raised his staff and stamped it ceremoniously into the ground. “I concur. My land is a place of safety for the skyborn. If the baby leads the druids here, then the war will begin and end on this land, for better orworse.”
For better or worse. I was really hoping for the better. I didn’t know why, but ever since Ardan snatched me to his Ireland safe house, I’d envisioned this ending with us storming his castle and killing him in his own home. Something about showing him he had nowhere to hide appealed to me. But the reality was I wasn’t going to be able to control any of this. Like I couldn’t control what had happened in Lake Tahoe. I was at the mercy of fate. I just had to beready.
* * *
Iwokeup the next morning feeling stiff and out of sorts. We’d stayed up late partying with everyone, but there was an overlying doom and gloom once Eva informed us that her spell to contain baby Lily’s shifts was wearing off. How fast? We didn’t know. But word had spread throughout the party and now it was a waiting game. After all that work to draw the druids away, they would eventually find us here. In ourhome.
At least I’d rid the Earth of Steven. Ardan had to be feeling the loss of power from his second in command. I’d taken a ton of dragon magic back, magic that Ardan could no longer pull from. So much so, that my dragon felt stronger and closer to thesurface.
I was just finishing up breakfast with Logan when there was a knock at thedoor.
“Come in!” I yelled, withoutlooking.
The glass door to our tiny shipping container house slid open, and Casey peeked her head in. “You promised.Remember?”
I grinned. “I thought you mightforget.”
She pushed the door wide and showcased her workout outfit, hands wrapped in cloth strips like aboxer.
