A Dangerous Legacy Pt. 14

I saw sadness in his eyes, regret mingled with an almost helpless look, and yet he clearly hated such feeling. My precious alpha. I stroked his cheek with my thumb and tried to divine what I should say further.

"Anna, this is too much. Promise me, after you solve this paradox, you will tell the council to stuff themselves for at least four months."

I laughed. "I would love to, but what about the wolves? What about your brothers and sisters out there? Shall I leave them in chains while I take time to myself?"

"Free them in a sweeping proclamation."

"Oh, Andre. You know better than that. To make a sweeping change and walk away leaves chaos in my wake, and I cannot be that cruel or callous."

He pulled from me then and stalked over by the ornate dresser. "I don't like this."

That niggling feeling became a burrowing worm in my skull. I tried a simple spell to end headaches but it only made it worse.

A vision suddenly appeared in the room and seconds later I was transported. One moment I stood in a posh suite and the next I was standing on a cool nearly arid plain surrounded by culled fields. The sky was daylight, the most pure blue I had ever seen. The air smelled amazing, like being in the north of Canada in one of the wild places, but more...primitive.

"I've called you into a time past, before humans began to record history."

I turned and found a beautiful but familiar looking woman facing me. She wore roughly woven cloth and pounded animal skin boots tied with rope made of plant fibers. She was tall, nearly my height, and like me she had dark blonde hair, similar green eyes. It shook me: she and I could have been sisters.

"I am your ancestor. I do not know what our people call me in your time, but in mine I am Agant, Aggie to y friends."

I reached out to her, trembling. "You're the first."

"Your great-great a thousand times over great-grandmother."

So I had gone back far enough there were probably a few Neanderthals hanging around. I felt lightheaded and swooned, but she waved a long-fingered hand and sighed, steadying me with magic.

"Anna, do you know why I called you here?"

"Because apparently fro now on not a single damn thing in my life could be simple?" Oh, sarcasm, my favorite old defense mechanism. To say I was freaked out was a serious underestimation of the awe and terror and wonder coursing through me. If her magic wasn't so pressingly powerful, I would have fallen to my butt laughing to simply try and expel some of the emotion.

"Open your senses. Do you feel it? The magic?"

As both Alessandra and Valerius had taught me I opened my senses and the spill of magic was incredible. It was new, it was in fewer hands, it was raw, and there was no technology...whatever the reason, it was potent, and heady, and filled the entire world.

"Anna, it could be like that in your time. It should be like that."

I brought my eyes to her again from the sky where I thought madly I might see the magic. "How? You know, don't you? You know who has changed the timeline and why."

"Shin-Zan," was all she said. "Only he is old enough to take you safely into the past. Ask him to take you back to Chengzhou, to the massacre."

"Why?" I asked, confused. "Why tell me this when you have all the answers?"

She just smiled at me and then I blinked. The world had changed and I was on the floor with all five of my wolves staring down at me.

"Anna?" Liv asked.

"I'm okay. Don't ask, it's a witch thing." I only knew two things as I came to and sat up with ten hands helping me: I wasn't to speak of this to anyone but the eldest council member, and the niggling headache was gone.

Andre stood above us all. "Jericho, Olivia, leave us. Guard the door."

They obeyed their alpha without question and closed the door behind them.

Julian helped me to my feet though I did not need it. "Where is Shin-Zan?" I asked and kissed his cheek in thanks.

"Abed already," Pierre announced. "I met some of his staff while I walked."

"I need to speak with him right away."

"You need to wait until morning, Anna. You need to relax right now or you're going to burn out," Andre said imperiously.

I started to argue, but realized he was right. Truthfully I wanted sleep, but my body had become spoiled, and accustomed to their affections. "All right then."

Stepping from them I went to the bed. I had a direction, a mission, and best of all no Malachai in it to confuse me about strange possible futures. Oh, and I had been touched by one of the fist, a woman I suspected as more goddess than witch.

God, I was weary. I had crossed too many time zones and the last one had spanned probably close to one hundred millennia. Shin-Zan could wait until morning. Peeling off my clothes I looked at them, so handsome, but I was suddenly too weary.

"Come to bed when you wish," I said as they still watched me. Oh, cuddling sounded like heaven, a big wolf pile with me at the center was what I wanted, but I wasn't about to order them.

"Not yet," Andre growled, and suddenly all three crawled over the bed to follow me.

Surprised instinct forced me to back up to the pillowed headboard but they kept coming. It was a fast tumble into deep ecstasy: there was no artifice, no cool seduction, just four hungry beings in the midst of insanity clinging to one another.

I gave up and surrendered to their demanding kisses and questing hands. If tender flesh was bruised I didn't care for the pleasure was too great. Julian's tender caresses were desperately fast; Pierre's playful ministrations became furious explorations, and Andre's command shredded into pure possessions.

Not an inch of my skin was unattended. My nipples were sucked to aching points, my pussy was filled with multiple fingers from different hands, often at the same time. Even my anus was teased, and I had a shattering peak with two long, slender fingers pressing darkly into my anus and a thick mismatched pair curling into that spot in my pussy that made my entire being gasp and clench.

I touched what I could and only knew by texture and bulk of muscle which lover I caressed. I licked and stroked, greedily sucked each cock that came near my lips, and was filled over and over. In the end, I didn't get much sleep, but I did get the relaxation I needed.

In the morning an old tradition was reawakened. Julian served me in bed and delayed my breakfast playfully sliding beneath my breakfast tray to pleasure me with his sweet, gentle mouth. I nearly crumbled my bacon in my fists though the orgasm was smooth as silk and left me shuddering sweetly.

"You cry out like a kitten," Julian wryly observed and moved back and up to claim me in a kiss.

I tasted my juices mingled with his unique flavor and damn if my aching body didn't flare to life anew. "Gah," I managed when he pulled back.

"Pierre has gone to Shin-Zan to request an audience, and Andre is meeting with the other alphas to discuss any security worries with Malachai's favored sorcerer consultants due to arrive today."

I was too sleepy to make sense of all that yet, and I was glad they somehow operated better on almost no sleep than I did. With a sigh I zapped some more caffeine into my system with magic, thanked Julian, and finished my breakfast after he left me alone. I'd had to chase him out, Julian was feeling playful and that made it too difficult to eat.

Just as I finished my eggs I heard Pierre enter the suite. Without only a flash of guilt I used magic to dress and groom myself. I chose black trousers and a slightly greenish white silk blouse, tucked in. I added a belt, large earrings, and a pair of expensive and fancy green pumps. Beneath it all was lacy green lingerie, because I had some thoughts of revenge with my lovers that afternoon. The gods only knew how much talking it would take with Shin-Zan before action.

I tied my hair back in a French twist and kept my makeup light. All this took just five seconds and felt already like second nature. I heard a yip and a scratch at the door and when I opened it Diego bounded in and snuffled at me until I scratched behind his ears.

So I emerged to find the oldest council member sitting with my pack while Diego walked beside me and tried to cuddle at the same time. "Down boy!" I commanded but it was Andre's low growl and snapping fingers that brought my dog to him to lay at his feet.

"Your highness," Shin-Zan said and executed the stiffest, most formal, yet friendly bow I had ever seen.

"Call me Anna," I said reflexively and sat so all the men would. That much chivalry was making me slightly uncomfortable.

"You requested my presence? I was given to understand some urgency."

Liv and Jerry came in then and mumbled apologues, but it was clear they'd been having some of their own morning delight so I waved off the apologies. "Shin-Zan, I need you to take me back to Chengzhou."

All the wolves raised their brows, but Jerry and Shin-Zan gasped, visibly shaken.

"I know it's a massacre, but this is very important. It has to do with this issue with the timeline."

Shin-Zan collected himself quickly and shook his head like a dog tossing off water. "You want me to take you back into the distant past to witness nearly endless death? Why?"

"It is something I must do."

"But your higheness, we witches had nothing to do with Chengzhou."

Then why had my ancestor directed me there?

Jerry cleared his throat and rose to his feet from the arm of Liv's chair. "Anna, Chengzhou is the site of the final battle in the war between werewolves and vampires. It was there we took no prisoners. It was there we extinguished vampires."

Everyone's face reflected this was common knowledge. Damn, I was a history major back in college, but there was an entire alternate history I was clueless on.

That niggling feeling exploded in my head and the pain knocked me from the couch to me knees. It was whispering vices, but there were millions of them. It was more sound than I could comprehend, more sound than I could bear, and I wailed.

No! Wrong! I thought and they quieted.

"Anna!" Everyone shouted as they crowded me.

Wincing I forced them back but only Andre wouldn't budge. He pulled me up and wrapped me in his arms. "Anna, what happened?"

I twisted to look at Jerry and Shin-Zan. "What if that's it?"

"What?" Jerry asked.

I broke from Andre after squeezing his shoulder.

"Magic is weakening. Dragons are almost gone, and vampires are long dead. What if that is what is wrong?"

Shin-Zan stared at me. "But a rogue magic-wielder could change a single event, not exterminate a species. And why would they do that?"

"Why would they do that and then kill an entire line of queens?" Pierre asked thoughtfully.

"I don't know, but I think...I think the vampires aren't supposed to be dead." I faced them all and nearly jumped at a knock at the door. "Don't answer that," I told my pack and then turned to the other witch. "Do we go now?"

"Anna, we cannot change such a drastic thing of the past. We could destroy the wards themselves."

The sensation in my head only fully quieted when I demanded action. "Now!" I ordered him, using the voice I thought fit a queen.

Shin-Zan began a spell and suddenly an owl appeared to land on his shoulder. He glanced at all of us and then began another. "My queen, have you considered that if we do this, even if you're right, you may never become queen, indeed you my never have been born."

"Fuck that," I said smartly and called Diego to me.

"You cannot escape time, my queen."

"Call me Anna, and don't tell me I can't do something, buster." I looked at my lovers, seeing panicked eyes. "No matter what happens, I won't lose you. Ever."

That old fear was in their eyes, and as we entered that passageway through time, for the first time in a long time, I doubted my own words. So we stepped into the past to face an uncertain future.