Three Kings for Sarah by Noa Xireau

adopted a
stone-hard expression. “I don’t cheat. I’ve never slept with your sister and
never will.” He kept his voice low and controlled. “Are you okay?” he asked
Deborah.
    “Was that really necessary?” she asked, looking at her
brother from the floor, her face reflecting her pain as she rubbed her butt.
    “You’ve never been this friendly with him in the past, why
now?” Duncan kept studying them with clenched fists and taut muscles.
    “I’ve stayed with him every weekend over the last five
years—”
    The low growls started again.
    “Deborah, it’s time to tell him everything. Everything!”
Gedeon ordered, without taking his eyes off Duncan and Xiu.
    “Mom’s with him,” announced Deborah.
    “What?” Duncan’s jaw dropped and his wolf seemed to recede.
    “When he rescued her, he took her with him and he has protected
and cared for her since then. She’s still living at his home and I visit them
each weekend.”
    “Mom’s alive…with him?”
    “Yeah!”
    Duncan stared at Gedeon, obviously baffled.
    “Yes, she’s with me. She makes me go to mass each Sunday
evening and I have to mow the lawn myself because that’s my role as the man of
the house,” Gedeon said with a grimace.
    “Yeah, that’s Mom.” Duncan smiled faintly. “Is she all
right?”
    Gedeon searched in his pocket and took out his mobile phone.
He made the call before he passed the phone to Duncan. “Here, you can ask her
yourself. She’ll be elated that she can talk with you again,” Ged added when
his lover seemed to hesitate.
    Turning to Deborah, who now stood beside the bed with her
arms crossed, he just said, “Behave while I’m out. It’s not a good time to
provoke him.”
    “Where are you going?”
    “I must feed, and while I’m gone I need to check out…some
things.”
    Deborah nodded but kept her mouth shut. She’d known him long
enough to recognize when he didn’t want to share information.
    * * * * *
    When Gedeon returned two hours later the room was in
semi-darkness, illuminated only by what little light came through the windows.
Xiu was still in the same position he’d been in when Ged had left and Duncan
sat broodingly in the armchair. Gedeon felt exhausted and worried. The
atmosphere at the hospital was tense, as if something was happening, but he’d
been unable to find out what. He approached the window, gazing out at the
street lamps’ weak glow.
    “Did you discover anything?”
    Gedeon shook his head. “I don’t like it. There are too many
people controlling their thoughts. They’re not blocking them. They just direct
their minds toward artificial reflections. Currently, outsides our door is a
young wizard counting the stripes on the tiles while he’s mopping the floor. If
he was nuts, I’d be combing his mind; but I have access only to his conscious
mental activity—the rest is protected by magic wards.”
    “I’ve managed to detect the scent we detected yesterday in
Sarah’s world. It’s all over the place. But whoever was here yesterday to drain
her was already gone when we arrived this morning. I lost the trail in the
parking lot.” Duncan’s voice sounded as strained as Ged’s did.
    “We ought to talk to Samgar, tell him what we’ve discovered
and ask him to restrict the access to this floor… Even the number of hospital
staff they allow in here should be limited.”
    Duncan nodded absently. They stayed silent for a long time
before he took Gedeon’s mobile phone out of his pocket, glanced at it and then
threw it to him.
    “You never returned to tell me what happened. Why?”
    It was the question Gedeon had been expecting. “At first, I
couldn’t.” He shrugged, looking out the window. “I had more than enough skill
to fight with your pack mates, but when the vampires arrived your mother was
already down. They realized how I protected her and used it in their advantage.
They overpowered me. When Samgar appeared, I was already half dead. It took
weeks for me to