Repairer of the Breach (Stones of Fire Book 4) by Sarah Ashwood (free biff chip and kipper ebooks .TXT) 📕

Eric was trustworthy? At this point, Carter wasn’t sure he could rely on anyone except himself. Tracy, probably. Sean.

Could he, though? He couldn’t help recalling Ellie’s warning about Sean using him. Ellie telling him that she was the only one who definitely had his back. He’d tried to joke it off. But there was a lot of truth to what she’d said. She wasn’t a shifter, so she had no stake in this war. She didn’t care about the Stones of Fire or other worlds or the Talos’ blood or any of it. She merely wanted him safe. With her.

Right now, standing there with his boss, forming plans, Carter could think of a lot worse things than being somewhere safe and solitary with Ellie. However, he wasn’t a quitter and he wasn’t a coward. He’d never run from a fight before. He wasn’t going to now.

Shadows deepened as Sean and he talked. Night drew on. Soon, it would be time to leave for the game preserve. This late in the evening, traffic shouldn’t be bad and they could make good time.

Why am I thinking about traffic?

It was impossible to live here and not be concerned with traffic, since the ebb and flow of traffic dictated when a person went anywhere. Still, it felt almost weird to be considering mundane things like traffic, considering the situation they were heading into. His mind couldn’t settle. It couldn’t settle a short while later when he climbed into his car and pulled away from the burnt, broken mansion, winding down the long drive, beneath the trees, and out the gates. Possibly for the last time. Three more vehicles trailed him, but Carter paid no attention to them, trusting them to keep up as he navigated the streets of Fort Worth.

As he made his way out of the city, he couldn’t help studying his surroundings with a renewed sense of appreciation, coupled with a sense that this could be it—this could be the last time he saw the place he’d spent most of his life. He loved this city, this city that spilled out into dozens of smaller cities surrounding it, eventually bleeding over into its twin sister, Dallas, creating the gigantic Metroplex. As a child, going from Greece to the United States was a big switch. Going from his home to Texas, from his parents to Sean, from all that he’d known into the unknown was a change he’d thought he would never get used to. That lonely kid cried himself to sleep more times than his tough, outward exterior would ever admit. In time, though, he’d forgiven his parents for sending him away; appreciated, in fact, what they’d done.

Even if it had ultimately led to this outcome.

Carter, as the Talos, going out to face Sean’s enemies in a war not of his making, but in which he’d long been involved.

The crazy curves of the road ahead were the living, thrumming veins of the city, packed with red taillights like Texas fire ants scurrying into and out of their ant hills. Carter could appreciate the glow of city lights reflected on the shimmering glass of downtown skyscrapers—the tallest things around for hundreds of square miles. He could make sense of the up-turned spaghetti bowl of bridges and highways, spilling out in a tangle of concrete and asphalt every which direction. He knew the good parts of the city, as well as its underbelly. The crime, white and blue collar, which he’d seen firsthand or brushed up against as Sean’s associate. He knew firsthand the secrets most didn’t, of the world inside worlds, of shapeshifters and their struggles to survive. Struggles centered here, in this part of Texas where Sean’s family had fled persecution so long ago and wound up establishing an empire.

He was now a part of that history, that empire as he drove towards the culmination of the feud between his mentor and his mentor’s rival. But what the culmination would be was anyone’s guess. Carter ran over multiple scenarios in his mind during the drive out to the nature preserve, trying to outwit and outguess their opponents mentally, from the safety of the car, before he had to face them in person.

Safety.

It wasn’t that he feared death. He’d faced it down once, coming out on the other side. Literally. The other side of who knew where. He didn’t even fear pain. In fact, there wasn’t much he’d ever feared, since coming into his own as the Talos. Unless it was something happening to the folks he was meant to defend. Sean. Jackson. Even Ciara. As the Talos, he’d been sworn by Sean to protect her. In the heat of the moment, could he betray that trust, despite what she’d done?

The fear that he couldn’t consumed Carter. He didn’t hate Ciara. In fact, understanding as he did what it was like to be captive to your alter, to its strongest drives—she to the sea, he to protect those he was bound to protect—Carter felt a certain sympathy for her. What she’d done wasn’t right, but, as much as he hated to admit it to himself, he could understand her motivations. And he couldn’t hate her for it, except for how it had endangered his wife.

Ellie.

That was the sticking point. Carter’s vehicle swung up to the gates of the Fossil Edge Nature Preserve, headlights playing across the shiny metal. Putting the car in park, he waited while one of his people climbed out of the car behind him, a pair of bolt cutters in hand. A quick snap, a squeeze, and the lock fell into the dust. The gate swung open. Headlights off, using parking lights and the glow of the moon to guide him, Carter passed through. The last car had instructions to wire the gate closed so none of the exotic animals could escape.

They were shapeshifters, but they weren’t animals, he’d told them with grim humor. There’d been a few obligatory chuckles, since some of them were, in fact, animals. The kind