Page 1 of War Games (Jacky Leon #11)

PROLOGUE

SUBIRA

S ubira stood in the darkness. Inky and pitch-black. She didn’t look around, didn’t wonder why it was so. She felt no fear of the expansive dark and had no reason to. She waited, knowing the only reason there was darkness was because the door was closed, and she had only just knocked.

He would answer. He always answered.

Her faith in him was unshaken, but she had a rueful smile as she waited longer than normal.

Oh, you know you can’t run from me. We both know who will lose this game first.

She sent those words to him, as if she was whispering through a crack, knowing his sharp hearing would always hear her, no matter the distance.

It was still a few minutes before the surrounding landscape began to change, and light began to push away the darkness.

He opened the door.

Like a watercolor painting that her daughter Mischa would paint, the scene formed around her, colors clashing together until they reached the perfect hue, capturing detail that was also smeared. In her daughter’s paintings, that smear was from water.

For them, it was because their memories of this place were old.

So very old, just like they were.

She turned, not seeing him immediately. She found him quickly enough, sitting on the dirt floor, stomped flat with bits of straw and other debris that helped soften the floor of this space. She didn’t speak when she saw him, though, taking in the image as she did every time he opened the door for her.

They were in a hut, one she hadn’t seen in some time. It no longer existed. It hadn’t in over five thousand years, yet the details were still clear enough. Her fingers twitched at the urge to touch a weaving her mother had made for the space. She wondered if she opened the clay jars, if the smells of the herbs would still be clear. The walls were mud and thatch, the earliest building tools of humanity when they left the caves. The roof was thatch or straw as well.

This place, rough and lacking charm to anyone with modern sensibilities, was a special place, a powerful place. Her place.

This was the place where she had learned her first magic from her mother, starting with the magic that kept this very hut standing as long as it had endured. This was the place where she had grown up under the oppressive rule of her father. This was the place where her mother had died, blood between her legs, covering the floor, while Subira held her dead baby brother, stillborn and lost before she could ever properly greet him. She buried them both just outside, together in eternal peace. This was the place where her father attacked her, forcing her to survive the Change or die. This was the place where she hid from the monstrous men her father led into war, making potions and charms to attempt to help them at his direction.

This was the place where she had tried to do great magic for the first time, stretching her ability to control and use magic to the breaking point to master it.

This was the place where she had all the power, all the control, even over the men who once terrified her. Something her father despised but couldn’t challenge, not at the time.

Something this man knew from the moment her father decided she would be his wife.

She looked at her mate, the husband her father chose in an offhand decision to reward his greatest warrior, thinking his warrior was just like him. Just another monster who would help control her, and she was also to control him.

He had known the moment her father told him they would be married that she had all the power here. He respected it from the first day. He never crossed a single line. Never made her know fear.

“We haven’t visited this place in some time,” she commented softly, finally looking back at her mate.

Hasan was on the ground, and the only modern thing in the room, the only thing that broke the illusion of this place, were the chains wrapped around him. His loincloth did very little to protect him from the burns he let those chains leave on his skin. They were new and wrong . They weren’t supposed to be in this place.

He didn’t speak, but she knew it could take some time to reach that point.

Here, deep in his mind, he was punishing himself. He knew she saw what he was doing. The scene was the same for him. His silence was another piece of his punishment for himself. She had to wait it out. Here, in his mind, she was a visitor, even if she was given free will to do as she pleased.

She stepped out, deciding he could continue to stew in his self-loathing for a moment as she went to see just how far his memories reached in this place.

The fire she kept outside her hut was still there. Around her, the grass was green due to a recent rainy season, and the land was flourishing. It was her favorite time of year as the wildlife returned to feast on the bounty. The nearby river was running strong, the sound loud enough that it was permanently embedded into the scene. The birds were loud, their symphony of sound music to her ears. Somewhere, a lion roared, warning off other potential challengers to his pride. A leopard hung lazily in the tree, no kill with it, but it was watching for a potential fool to pounce on.

Such detail. He always had such detail about the mental landscapes he could form when she visited him like this. Even absorbed in his self-loathing, he always gave her this gift.

“Well, you did promise you would,” she whispered, mostly to herself, but knowing he would hear. “When we discovered I could use the mate bond to enter your mind at any distance to be with you, you promised you would always remember as much as you could, so I could be with you no matter where you were. The originals were rougher, but you mastered it. You always had a keen eye for detail.”

They never told their children about some of her more dangerous innate witch abilities. Entering another’s mind was dangerous. It was so very dangerous. She wasn’t the only witch born with the natural skill to do this without a spell, but with her power, she could rip someone’s mind to pieces, torture them with nightmares until they went mad. It would be too easy to do so.

There were also beings who could defend themselves from her if she ever decided to attack them on this front. She could name a few, whispers of names on the wind, like the young Queen of the Nagas. Names powerful enough that they impacted the very magic of the world, forever marking the invisible landscape with their abilities.

Her father had been one of those beings, the curse so greatly shielding him that she found it impossible to even brush up against his mind and its defenses without him noticing. She had learned that early on and never made the mistake again. She also never used it in war, not wanting to reveal it due to the downsides. It left her vulnerable. Her body was home sleeping because she was not in it.

She had only shared a hint of this great power with her eldest son, and she had been careful not to show too much, only doing what was absolutely necessary to save her son’s heart and the woman who held it. Jabari was uncurious about magic and that was the only time in his life she had been grateful for that. She had never wanted to show too much to her children.

Subira had never wanted them to fear her. There was always some intelligent fear they had for her, but she was so very careful not to give them enough fear to run from her. A flash of fear could be overcome. If they knew how easily she could crack through the natural defenses of someone’s mind and rip their sanity to pieces from the inside, they would fear her beyond what a mother’s love could soften and heal. It would permanently destroy the bonds she so desperately wanted to have with them.

She and Hasan decided to keep this between them. She used her power to close the gap between them when the physical distance was too far for them. He was once a rogue, wandering the world until a small soul needed his help, and he brought the child home. She never needed to miss him. He was always right there, just across the mate bond, and her mind could so easily slip into his, and they could share this together.

She looked back at the hut and sighed.

Due to some quirk of her ability, the mate bond, or the two combined, she couldn’t actually read Hasan’s mind. He opened the door, and while she was in his mind, she didn’t have full power here to change the scene or to know his thoughts. Others wouldn’t be able to defend against her knowing everything, but going through the mate bond didn’t give her full access, and she had never entered his mind any other way. It could have been a number of other things as well, like an accidental limit she had put on herself and found no way to overcome. It wasn’t an active attempt on his part, that much she knew with certainty.

She knew what he had done here, communicating enough without opening his mouth. This was her place, a place he was invited to, not the other way around. It might be in his mind, but the hut, the river, and the land were still all hers .

You deviously intelligent man. You can’t say anything, but you have shown me everything I need to see right now. You are very lucky I love you as much as I do.

She went back into the hut, finally ready to deal with the problem.

“Enough of this,” she snapped, grabbing one of the silver chains and pulling. It didn’t burn her hand, but the smell of what it did to him hit her nose, the memory changing to account for that detail. “You will not soil this place with your self-loathing,” she snarled, yanking harder.

He didn’t fight, letting her begin pulling the chains off him, but something was fighting her. Not him, but something else. She couldn’t see what, and that made her realize something new.

“Crafted this place for us to hide the truth from me, coward?” she hissed as she leaned close to his face. He closed his eyes as he shook his head. She knew that wasn’t his intent, but they were meant to be harsh words, not true ones. He had brought her to the place where she had all the power to say the harsh things. Whatever those chains meant, he needed her power and control over him to finally deal with them. That’s what the memory had needed to tell her because he had no idea how to ask for help.

“Look at me, Hasan, and show me what really plagues your mind. Show me the truth. Show me where these chains came from. Don’t make me force it from you.”

When his eyes opened, they were full of dismay, full of pain, full of hatred for himself, and they were a brilliant and unique gold only three werecats ever had. There were other shades of gold, all more natural, all easier to stare down, but they weren’t this gold. The gold eyes of her father, her mate, and her daughter were only theirs.

The scene finally changed, the watercolor scene of their past dripping away as darkness consumed it, and she saw the wraith of grief holding the chains on him. Hands reaching out of the darkness of his mind, forcing him to be chained and alone, attempting to drag him into the darkness, forever lost to her and under the power of the wraith. The wraith wore their daughter’s face, warped by rage, betrayal, and pain.

Subira looked at Liza’s face on the wraith and felt cold claws rake her heart as it attacked her. It couldn’t do real damage. It wasn’t a real wraith in the world but a manifestation of the damage her death did to Hasan, one he had kept so carefully hidden from Subira for over a century. Because it had been so carefully hidden, it had become a powerful thing in his mind, and…

“I failed her,” he whispered. “And now I’m failing Jacky.”

And it was being fueled by the damage it wreaked through him.

“No and yes,” Subira growled, staring at the wraith. She had loved Liza. Sweet Liza.

This was not Liza.

Grief and guilt had eaten at Subira for a long time as well, but she grew up in a harsher reality than Hasan. Hasan believed he could keep their children safe, and when they weren’t, it was directly his fault. Subira was not so foolish. She knew if her children got themselves in a dangerous position, she only had so much power. She could train them and pass along what wisdom she had, but it was their job to use it.

Once they demanded independence, they had to deal with the consequences of that independence. She could pick them up, brush them off, and offer help when and where she could, but she couldn’t be everywhere and do everything. She expected that of no one, not even herself. They had to face their own challenges, to overcome and grow from what they faced in life or fall.

Liza had fallen. It had broken their hearts.

But in the end, she had fallen, not because they had failed her, but because she did not heed them.

“I told her that her soft heart was beautiful, but she needed to be ready to defend herself,” Subira snarled. “I told her to stop skipping training sessions because her heart wasn’t in the violence. I told her that she had to be willing to fight for those she loved and for herself. You told her all the same, Hasan. While it was tragic, it was not our fault she died.”

“You will not blame?—”

“It was hers!” Subira roared in his face, cutting off the weak, loving father argument he wanted to counter her with. “She had years of training. She had years of education. She grew up in our family. She thought her name and relation to us would let her live peacefully. She was a na?ve idealist, and we loved her for it, but we never looked away from the truth of our world, even in our most hopeful moments. She did .” Subira yanked the chains harder, gaining ground on the wraith. She could remember the arguments with Liza. She would stomp her foot and say she hated training, thought violence was unnecessary, that she could just talk to people, and that there was no reason she had to hurt anyone. “She didn’t want to face reality.”

“How could you?—”

“Hasan, listen to me. No, she didn’t ask werewolves to attack her. No, she didn’t want to die and leave us like that. She didn’t deserve any of it. Not the pain she faced or left behind.” Subira grabbed his face with one hand while the other kept pulling the chains against the wraith. She was an old werecat. Her form was small in both forms she could take, but she was over five thousand years old. There was very little that could match her power physically, not just magically. With one hand, she could force a standstill.

“None of us asked for this,” she whispered to her mate. “But you cling to responsibility and guilt that went to the grave with her. There was nothing we could change. We tried, Hasan. We tried. We did our very best for her.”

“I could have killed all those werewolves first,” he whispered, his gold eyes glittering queerly in a way she despised to her core, as the wraith reached down and sank claws into his chest instead.

She slapped him, which shocked him and the wraith enough to let her pull an entire coil of chains off him. The claws left his chest.

“That is enough of that,” she said, her menacing tone making him rock back in fear that filled her nose. It would fade. She was never worried about making him too afraid of her. “Don’t think I won’t completely obliterate you if I have to.” The fear grew a little stronger. “Don’t think I won’t turn you to dust if it means protecting everyone else from this .” She yanked the chains hard, nearly pulling the wraith over him. “This is killing our family more than anything else, Hasan!”

“I don’t know how to let go,” he said, his voice suddenly rougher, his eyes filled with tears he would never shed in front of his children.

She saw yearning in those tear-bright eyes.

Oh, he wanted to. He wanted to let go so badly. He knew what this wraith was doing. The knowledge was there. He was a smart man. He knew, and he felt powerless.

“I’m sorry. I hurt my daughter,” he said. And then the broken sob, revealing just how powerless he felt under the weight of everything he carried for all of them. “Like he hurt his daughter. I’m so sorry.”

The words made her heart hurt in an incomprehensible way, but it was a pain she could endure. She had endured worse. There was also a measure of guilt in her heart.

He might feel powerless, but that’s why I’m here.

He was spiraling in despair. The wraith was the most recent haunting, but it wasn’t the most powerful. She had accidentally fed the real monster that kept the world dark for her mate. In her rage at the incident in Germany, she had fed an insecurity in him that she had watched him battle for thousands of years. Now, she needed to fix that, taking her sense of ownership over this problem.

“No, not like he hurt his daughter,” she whispered. “I will kill you before you ever hurt one of our daughters the way he hurt me. I will do the same for our sons. I’ll be their protector from your darkest instincts and feelings, the ones you hate in yourself.”

Something in her mate eased, and it was all she needed. She exercised her power in a way she never had in his mind. She changed the world around them. He had already given her permission to do so when he took her to that hut. She boxed the wraith and threw it into the darkness. That would mute the pain and feelings it represented until he could naturally step away from it. Then she found the other monster in the dark, forever watching, forever reminding him. Gold eyes that were previously hidden by the wraith lurking in the darkness. They could have been Jacky’s eyes or Hasan’s.

The cruelty in them made them her father’s eyes. Only he had so much vicious, destructive malice.

“You have no power here. I do,” she whispered over her mate’s shoulder. Her father’s cruel eyes changed as a rumbling snarl echoed around them. She couldn’t dismiss him as she had done the wraith. So, she built the hut once more, forming it around them, blocking the view of that monster. Once again, the hut was a private world away from him . Out of her father’s sight, where they could make new memories and discuss their plans for their beautiful future. A place where her power and their love reigned supreme.

“And I will be your protector as well,” she whispered as she kissed him, giving him all the love and power she had loved him with for roughly five thousand years.

She should have expected it but was still stunned as he turned that kiss into something more sexual than she intended. Without the chains, he began to reach for her, but the hut was wavering, the image fighting hard to hold itself together.

Her mate was insatiable. Everyone knew it.

He was also exhausted. She could stay, but he was going into dreams, and those were a different thing altogether to deal with.

“Stop that,” she murmured, now that they were safely in her hut, no chains in sight. “Go to sleep, love.”

His weak protest didn’t even form a word.

With a smile, she saw the scene collapse, and the dreams began. She stepped out, her mind and magic slipping back through the mate bond.

Her eyes opened in her home, staring at the ceiling. If she successfully brought some balance to him, they had a chance of winning the war to come without losing everything they held dear in the process. She could only wait and see now if she had been able to do enough.