elemental 08 - elements of war Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Free Book for You

  About Elements of War

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Free Book for You

  A Special Note to Readers

  Other Series by Larissa Ladd

  About Larissa Ladd

  Elements of War

  An Elemental Series Part Eight

  Larissa Ladd

  Copyright © 2015 Larissa Ladd

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

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  ABOUT ELEMENTS OF WAR

  Betrayal. Loss. A deadly war. Dylan is caught between the woman who sets his blood on fire and the need to protect his brother and new sister-in-law, Aira, leader of the air elementals. Leigh is all he could ever want in a woman—alluring, sexy and as hot for him as he is for her. She’s never lied to him, even confessed that she’s a spy. He trusts her with his life, but can he convince Aira to do the same and risk the future of the elementals on an allegiance forged in his desire for Leigh?

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Free Book for You

  About Elements of War

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Free Book for You

  A Special Note to Readers

  Other Series by Larissa Ladd

  About Larissa Ladd

  CHAPTER ONE

  AIRA WOKE WITH A START, shivering at the cold that wrapped around her in spite of the presence of Aiden next to her in the bed. Cold? She hadn’t been cold in months; ever since she and Aiden had begun sharing a bed regularly, she’d adapted to the radiant heat of his body next to her. She opened her eyes and saw that she’d kicked the blankets off of her body in the night—which would have partially explained the chill if it was even supposed to be cold out. Irritably, she grabbed at the blankets and pulled them over her, trying to understand what was happening. In a rush of fear she turned over and touched Aiden; he was radiating his usual warmth, breathing easily, sleeping heavily—just as she could expect after a long night of making love. So how had she gotten cold?

  She pondered as she listened to Aiden’s steady breaths, confused and alarmed. Aiden’s energy flowed into her from the proximity of his body, completing the job of waking her that had started with the sudden sense of cold. Cold. Aira closed her eyes, wishing she could fall back asleep. It wasn’t impossible, but it was so unlikely that she would experience cold, sleeping next to Aiden; it would have to be something very unusual to overcome the effect of Aiden’s natural heat, the gentle warmth of her own air-aligned energy. Aira chewed her bottom lip, trying to think of the ways in which something like that could happen.

  Her awakened, active mind hit on the cause in a rapid flash—the sound of her grandmother’s voice filling her mental ears. “Earth and water elementals tend towards cold natures; the elemental energies have a cold alignment. When they combine, the effect is magnified.” An earth and a water elemental. Aira sat up in bed. There was an earth elemental and a water elemental in her apartment. Dylan and Leigh. Her eyes widened. Leigh was supposed to be contained in the living room, sleeping on the couch. They still had to question her. There should not—in a million years—be a reason for Dylan and Leigh to be so close together that they brought the temperature down; the only way that Aira could think of for them to have such a strong effect on the local climate would be for their energies to be mingling.

  Anger replaced confusion. Aira slipped out of the bed as quickly as she could and threw on a nightgown, grabbing a thick robe as she shivered in the chilly air that had infested her apartment. Another thought occurred to her: the cooling effect might not only be in her apartment. She opened the door, not even bothering to try and wake Aiden up, and ran to the stairs, padding down them as quickly as she could.

  Skidding to a stop, Aira took in the sight of Leigh and Dylan curled up in each other’s arms on the couch, a blanket draped over them concealing most of their nudity—but leaving very little to the imagination otherwise. For a moment, she simply stared, not sure whether she felt betrayed by the fact that Dylan had slept with someone who was an avowed spy, who might have played a role in the deaths of innocent elementals; relieved that he had found someone—even someone as potentially dangerous as Leigh; or shocked at the certain knowledge that their energies were mingling.

  Anger at the betrayal rose to the top of her mind; Dylan had lost his mind. He had put himself in the same position that she and Aiden had been in with Dolores and Alex. He had potentially compromised any chance they might have of catching the people who wanted to depose her and kill her.

  “Dylan!” she shouted, moving through the wards that she, Dylan, and Aiden had placed around the living room to prevent Leigh from leaving. She was pleased to see that they were still in place, but no less perturbed at what Dylan’s betrayal suggested. “Dylan! What. The. Hell.”

  Dylan and Leigh both started at the sound of her voice; Dylan’s eyes opened first. They widened in surprise and dismay and Aira watched as he shifted out from underneath Leigh’s body, keeping the blanket carefully draped about his hips as he moved between her and Aira. “Aira,” Dylan said, swallowing hard.

  “What the hell, Dylan?” Aira crossed her arms over her chest. She shook her head. “How fucking stupid can you possibly be?”

  “Stupid?” Dylan blinked rapidly, awakening fully; behind him, Aira could see that Leigh was waking up as well, her green eyes losing the dull sleepy sheen and assuming their normal luminosity. “This wasn’t—I’m not stupid, Aira.” He glanced at Leigh and then turned his attention back onto Aira. “I didn’t move the wards, we were perfectly safe.”

  “My apartment is freezing. You bonded with her! What the hell is wrong with you?” She took a deep breath, exhaling sharply. “How many times am I going to have to ask that before you answer it?” Dylan’s cheeks flushed and he looked down at his knees.

  “We are perfectly safe,” Dylan said firmly. “Leigh and I are both behind the wards. Leigh couldn’t have left the apartment. You can still question her.” Aira shook her head. “Right, because I’m totally going to find it easy to question someone you obviously have feelings for.” She felt her anger cresting inside of her again; after she had been so careful to guard Dylan’s feelings—to keep her mind open to Dylan’s judgment, to accept that he might be right about Leigh not being involved with the elemental terrorists who had dedicated themselves to overthrow her, he had slept with someone who was a potential enemy, someone who had admitted to being a spy, whose allegiance they had not actually established.

  “Wh
at were you even thinking? You couldn’t keep it in your pants long enough for us to make sure Leigh isn’t going to hand us over to her cousins?” Aira’s throat ached as her shouts came louder and louder. She began to feel the buildup of energy inside of her, the persuasive gift that had come to her along with the final rush of elemental essence that had solidified her fate as the ruler of air. “Tell me what the hell you were thinking because right now I’m pretty sure it’s that you want me dead!”

  Aira heard fast, heavy footsteps on the stairs behind her, but didn’t look away, shaking from the force of her anger at both Dylan and Leigh. She watched Dylan fighting against the compulsion she had thrown at him, but the impetus of her anger had given it much more power than it would normally have had.

  “I had my first power surge last night and I didn’t want to share it with you and Aiden; the only person I could talk to was Leigh,” Dylan said, the words tumbling out. “I was thinking that I’ve been lonely for months and that the only person in this fucking apartment who might possibly understand what I’m going through is her.”

  Behind him, Leigh sat up, holding the blankets modestly around her nude body. “Aira, I—”

  Aira turned her attention onto the earth elemental; her anger hadn’t subsided, even with Dylan’s emotional words. “Shut your mouth right now and do not open it until I give you permission,” she said, her persuasive ability rushing out in a crackling flood of energy. Leigh sagged against the couch, her eyes going wide in surprise at the force of the compulsion. Aira watched with grim satisfaction as the woman started to try and move her lips, and then found that she couldn’t.

  Aiden appeared at her side, flushed and wide-awake. “What the hell is going on down here?” he asked, looking from Aira to Dylan and Leigh. “Wait—Dylan? What the hell!” Aira took a deep breath, suppressing the trembling of her arms and legs. She had to get her emotions under control; the cold was dissipating, but she could hear the wind picking up outside, beginning to howl. “Dylan did you just—did you sleep with her?” Aiden’s hand went to his head and he combed his mussed hair back with his fingers, shaking his head. “What the hell is going on in here?”

  “I am going to make some coffee,” she said slowly and steadily, keeping her voice level. Aira took another deep breath. “I am going to make some coffee and Aiden is going to stay right here and then we are going to get to the bottom of this.” She looked at Leigh. “Now you can answer me; would you like some coffee, Leigh?”

  The earth elemental sighed with relief. Yes, please.”

  “Aira glanced from Leigh to Dylan.

  “Both of you put some damned clothes on. Aiden, find a way to watch Leigh without ogling her.” Aira finger-combed her hair, shaking her head and turning resolutely towards the kitchen. She definitely—definitely—needed coffee to get through whatever it was that would happen to her that day.

  By the time she had made the coffee, pouring it into four cups and adding cream and sugar to each person’s taste, Aira’s sense of anger began to fade. She was still irritated at her brother-in-law, but as minutes passed, Dylan’s admission of how he had been thinking when he had gone to Leigh the night before began to filter through her brain, past the rage of betrayal that had consumed her. She had to admit that she could understand Dylan’s loneliness—she had been worried about him before she and Aiden had even started to plan their wedding. Dylan would be vulnerable to the charms of someone who could understand; he was just as vulnerable as she had been when she had first met Alex. The fact that he had had the first power surge that would presage his final stage of development into a full elemental would also play a factor. Leigh was, Aira knew, newly come into her own abilities—just as Aira had only reached her full inheritance a little more than a year before.

  “Okay,” she said, sitting down and taking a long sip of her coffee. “We are going to do this the easy way unless one of you decides to start acting like an idiot.” She glanced from Leigh to Dylan.

  “We’re not going to interrogate Leigh?” Aiden asked her.

  Aira shrugged. “Not unless we have to. Aiden, Dylan’s partially bonded with her. I don’t exactly like that fact, but it’s not as though I can ignore it; pain to Leigh would be pain to Dylan.”

  “They aren’t fully bonded,” Aiden pointed out, glancing at his brother with an emotion that Aira readily saw as a mixture of resentment and anger. “Besides, if Dylan thinks it’s such a great idea to take up with someone spying on us…”

  “Aiden, kindly shut up for a second and let me handle this; it’s my life at stake here.”

  “It’s mine too!” he turned his scowl onto her. “How exactly do you think things are going to go down for me if they kill you? At best—the absolute best-case scenario—I lose my mate. How would you feel losing me? And if they’re going to kill you they’ll have to kill me too.”

  Aira sighed and set her coffee cup down. She closed her eyes for a moment. “Aiden. Which one of us has the ability to force someone to talk? Is it you or is it me?” She opened her eyes to meet Aiden’s gaze levelly.

  “You,” Aiden said begrudgingly.

  “So for right now we’re going to give Dylan the benefit of the doubt and assume he doesn’t want to get us all killed.”

  “That’s convenient, because I don’t,” Dylan said, smiling weakly. “Guys, if I didn’t trust Leigh you know that I would never have come out here, and I sure as hell wouldn’t have slept with her.”

  “It’s not that I don’t think you trust her,” Aira said, picking up her coffee once more and taking another long sip. “It’s that I seriously question your ability to be objective right now. You said it yourself; you’re lonely, you’re coming into your full powers, you’re just as vulnerable as I was when I met Alex.”

  Dylan chewed his bottom lip and looked at Leigh, frowning slightly.

  “But Alex didn’t tell you outright that he had a… conflict of interest,” he pointed out. “Leigh told me from the beginning that she was a spy.”

  “Which makes you a stupid idiot for screwing around with her,” Aiden grumbled.

  “The same kind of stupid idiot who gets all heated up over a sexy air elemental who suspiciously shows up when her cousin wants to date Aira?”

  “It’s not the same thing!” Aiden said. Aira sighed once more. “Okay,” she said slowly. “Dylan, you are going to explain to me why you think Leigh is trustworthy, and then we’re going to find out what Leigh is doing in this whole mess.” She glanced at the earth elemental. “You’d better already know that there’s no way you can actually keep anything from me and Aiden, even if you managed to fool Dylan.”

  “She didn’t fool me!” Dylan protested. “She was honest from the beginning! She didn’t even want to be with me at first. She wanted me to wait until after everything had settled down…”

  “That doesn’t exactly paint her in the most innocent light,” Aira pointed out.

  Dylan took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

  “The reason I think she is trustworthy is because she’s never—yet—hidden anything about her involvement. Not really. She told me about her cousins, she told me about the fact that she was a spy, and hell; she was imprisoned by them! Why would they lock her up like they did if she was on their side?” Aira shrugged. “Maybe she backed out. Maybe she has different goals. I can’t say for sure right now.”

  “But she’s never lied to me about anything.”

  “You’ve known her what—a week? Two?” Aira realized with a shock that she’d only been married for that long; the wedding and reception seemed a million years ago, not less than a month in the past. It hadn’t been quite two weeks since the tragedy.

  “It’s not about how long I’ve known her,” Dylan said firmly. “All three of us know that you—you and Aiden knew how things were between you long before you actually got over yourselves and got together.”

  “This isn’t about Aira and me,” Aiden said.

  “He’s right. So you trust her be
cause she hasn’t lied to you—yet.” Aira took another deep breath. “Dylan, go sit over there in the other chair.” Aira gestured to the armchair next to Aiden, several feet away from the couch where he and Leigh sat together.

  “Aira…” Dylan looked at her and then at Leigh, pressing his lips together in concern.

  “Dylan, go sit in the other chair. I don’t need you to get between Leigh and me. For right now at least I have no intention of hurting her.” Aira saw Leigh reach out and touch Dylan’s arm, giving him a gentle push.

  “I need to talk anyway, Dylan,” Leigh said quietly.

  CHAPTER TWO

  DYLAN CRADLED HIS COFFEE CUP in his hands, not quite willing to look at Aira or Leigh as he settled in the chair to which Aira had dismissed him. He glanced at his older brother; Aiden was still looking irritated, angry even. Dylan knew that to some degree he had lost his brother’s trust—and he could even understand why. From the perspective of Aiden and Aira, Leigh was dangerous indeed. But in spite of the short time he had known her, Dylan trusted Leigh. Aira’s quip about how short it had been still bounced around in Dylan’s mind; could he be losing his discernment? He knew that Aiden and Aira had very good powers of insight—and yet they had lost their ability to see through falsehoods with Dolores and Alex.

  “I am going to give you the opportunity to tell me what you want me to know,” Aira said. Dylan looked at the woman he loved and his new sister-in-law. From his long association with Aira, he could feel her energy; she wasn’t pushing the persuasive ability she had—she was being as upfront and as non-confrontational as she could. “But if I decide that what you want me to know is not as much as I need to know, I’m going to have to use other means.”

  Leigh nodded. “I understand, Regina Sylphaea. I told Dylan last night that I wanted to tell you all a great deal.” Aira spread her hands wide and sat back in her seat. “Then hopefully everything will match up the way it should.” Leigh nodded slowly, taking a deep breath before she spoke. “When it was announced that you took Aiden as a mate—as part of the conditions to become ruler of air, my family became concerned.” Leigh glanced from Aiden to Aira, and Dylan forced himself to stay silent, in spite of his worry for what she may have to reveal to them. “I’m sure you can understand—you were both highly unstable and very powerful.”