The Ties That Bind (An Ariel Kimber Novel Book 4) Read online

  The Ties That Bind

  An Ariel Kimber Novel

  Book 4

  By: Mary Martel

  Copyright © Mary Martel 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of Mary Martel, except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.

  1st Edition Published: August 2018

  Cover Design by: Mary Martel

  Stock Photo From: Shutterstock.com

  Cover Design by: Mary Martel

  All Rights Reserved: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction in whole or in part, without express written permission by Mary Martel.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  To Sara.

  Thank you, for everything.

  I probably don’t say it enough, but you are one of my favorite human beings. <3 <3

  And, to Mike.

  You put up with my crazy ass every single day and you never bitch about anything I do. I love you. You are the best thing that could have ever possibly happened to me.

  Chapter One

  Snap.

  Snap.

  Fingers snapped in front of my eyes, and I blinked.

  “Are you listening to me, child?”

  Busted.

  I sighed in annoyance. I hadn’t been listening to Adrian for a while now. Like, days. In fact, he was really starting to get on my nerves.

  I looked to the little, bald man in question, and rolled my eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I lied. “What were you saying?”

  He pursed his lips and frowned at me. Adrian was no fool, he knew when I was lying to him. I didn’t do it much, because he always saw right through me, and he had no problem calling me out on it.

  Adrian Almatiez was a member of the Council of Elders for the American Witches. I assumed there were other Councils in each country, but the one in America was the only one that I was concerned about.

  I didn’t know if Adrian was the head of the American Council or not, but he sure acted like he was in charge of everyone and everything. Bossy didn’t even begin to cover it. It wasn’t just me he bossed around on the daily, it was freaking everyone. Even the other Council members.

  He was an outrageously short man, with an extremely shiny, bald head. He was under five feet, to be sure. The top of his shiny bald head didn’t even come up to my shoulders. It was odd, but he’d somehow managed to perfect the art of staring someone down, even from his height. He was deathly pale and had a round pot belly. The amount of ear piercings he had almost rivaled my own, but instead of studs like I wore, he wore thin, gold hoops. His eyes were a light green that looked like they had started out life as an altogether different shade of green, one far more vibrant, but life had slowly bled the color out of them over time.

  He had lines that shot out from around his mouth and eyes that said he either smiled a lot, or frowned a lot. I could confirm the fact that he did both. His smile was never genuine, and never quite reached his eyes, but the lines sure did. The frown was always real, and usually morphed into a scowl. And it had absolutely no problem reaching his eyes.

  When I’d first met him two weeks ago, I’d thought he looked like a genie, and he’d scared the crap out of me with his odd and unfriendly behavior towards me. I wasn’t as afraid of him anymore as I had been, but he was still a very bizarre man, and I knew he could flip that switch, and go from nice to scary in two seconds flat. He was simply hiding that part of himself from me at the moment. But I knew his true, scary self was lurking in there and wouldn’t hesitate to come out when the mood struck him.

  “What is the matter with you today?” Adrian asked in his smooth, cultured voice. “You’ve been spacing out all day. Would you like for me to leave you alone? Because right now you’re wasting both of our time. As you well know, my time is a valuable thing and not for you to squander away.”

  Now I really wanted to roll my eyes at him. His time may be valuable, but he was only here at his own insistence. He certainly wasn’t here because I’d invited him, that’s for sure. He’d invited himself, and no one had been brave enough to tell him no or to get lost. If it were up to me (and it wasn’t) I would have told him to get lost. I couldn’t tell him to leave. Adrian struck me as the type of person who would not take to that kind of disrespect kindly. Since I still had no idea what he was capable of, I wasn’t about to disrespect him. Not yet, at least. I would make no promises for what would come later.

  I sighed and asked the question I had been dying to ask since we started this nonsense. “What is the point to this, Adrian? We come here every day, and you ask me the same questions over and over again. None of them have triggered any memories. I assure you, like I’ve been assuring you over and over again, I have no memories of Rain. Absolutely zero. This is beginning to get extremely frustrating.”

  I sat back in the chair I was seated on, and crossed my legs at the knees. I studiously stared down at the flip flops I was currently wearing on my feet. They were black with silver straps. My toenails were painted black. The polish was chipped, and I needed to repaint them.

  “Ariel,” Adrian said in a sharp voice. I knew from his tone that he expected me to look up and make eye contact with him. We went over this all the time.

  I looked up from my toes but, instead of focusing on Adrian like he wanted me to, I looked around the room we were seated in. The walls were a deep, dark burgundy. The walls were lined with shelves, and there were no windows.

  Quinton had called it his study, but it looked like a library to me.

  There were so many books in here that it would probably take me days to count them all.

  Quinton had said all these books had come from his father’s library. He’d said that these hadn’t even been a fourth of what his father had had. The rest were scattered. Some, he’d said, were downstairs in the basement in a room I’d yet to see. I didn’t go down to check it out; the basement terrified me. Some were in his bedroom, another place I had yet to see. Some had been given to Tyson, who had them goodness knew where. There was another study upstairs that apparently served as another mini library. And the rest, he’d said, were in his storage unit.

  This storage unit was starting to sound more like a mansion sized treasure chest.

  I’d fallen in love with this room the moment I’d first walked into it. I would kill to have this many books in my possession. When I’d told Quinton as much, he’d smirked at me, and told me he would buy me some more books. I wasn’t even going to argue with him about it, because it wouldn’t matter what I said to him. He’d do what he wanted, anyway, just like he always did.

  “Ariel,” Adrian snapped. “What is the matter with you?”

  “It’s not working,” I blurted.

  Adrian sighed, and I heard his chair creak as he moved around in it, getting more comfortable or tired of sitting in the same place.

  “You must have patience,” he told me.

  I had to admit, patience wasn’t exactly one of my strong suits.

  “You’ve been using the mirror how I instructed you to?” Adrian asked.

  This time, I did roll my eyes at him.

  “Yes,” I hissed. “I did everything exactly like you instructed me t
o. I’ve been doing everything you’ve told me to do, and I know how to follow instructions. I assure you, like I’ve been assuring you, I am doing everything exactly how you told me to do it. Nothing is happening. I bleed every other night into the bowl. I put the blood on me, and I put it on the mirror, and I say the words you told me to say. But I never actually see anything in the mirror. It moves, and everything in the mirror shifts, but there’s nothing new there outside of my bedroom. Sometimes the reflection grows a little hazy, but there’s nothing there.”

  “You must be patient,” Adrian repeated. “Sometimes these things can take time. We also know that you have some sort of block where your father is concerned, which could explain why you cannot see him in the mirror.” He held his pudgy hands up in front of him and spread his fingers wide in surrender. The jewels on his rings glinted off the overhead light. There were so many that it was a wonder he had the strength to lift his hands at all.

  “It is not an exact science, and, as much as I would like it to be different, we cannot force the things we want to happen to actually happen.”

  I wasn’t surprised to hear him say that last bit. However, I was surprised that the little man couldn’t simply snap his fingers and make things go how he wanted them to. It seemed like that would have been one of his life’s goals.

  “Did you know that our dear Quinton had words with me when I arrived here today?” He asked in a bland voice that masked the true nature of his words.

  I wasn’t fooled by that bland tone. I was beginning to understand parts of Adrian, and one of those parts was the different tones he used when speaking. Bland usually meant he was trying to mask anger or curiosity.

  I was betting he was going for masking his anger today. He was pissed at me for some reason, and I was willing to bet that reason had to do with whatever Quinton had said to him this morning. Since Quinton usually had a conversation with me when I arrived in the morning, and it wasn’t always a pleasant one, I could only imagine what he’d said to Adrian.

  “What sort of words?” I asked, bluntly. Adrian usually demanded bluntness from me. There was no skirting around issues with him.

  “It seems you shared with him what it is you’ve been doing. What it is that I’ve had you doing.”

  Yup, that was anger hiding there behind the blandness. I had not been wrong.

  “I sure did,” I answered him, honestly, in a sweet voice.

  I had promised Quinton I wouldn’t keep secrets from him, and it wasn’t a promise I would be breaking any time soon. Quinton and I were in this together from here on out, no matter what. Figuring out that I loved him had taken some getting used to at first. Once I stopped fighting the feeling, I stopped fighting Quinton so much, and we were getting along better. I didn’t hide anything from him anymore, and I certainly wasn’t about to keep anything Adrian said to me a secret from Quint.

  “Why ever would you do that?” Adrian demanded, in a quiet, controlled voice. “The things that go on during our time together are meant to be done and kept in private. You broke my confidence by sharing what we were doing with Quinton. I can’t even believe he’s still allowing you to do it. I also find it unbelievable that he allowed it to go on for weeks and is only now bringing it up with me. However did you manage that?”

  Quinton hadn’t wanted me to use blood magic to look for Rain. In fact, he’d been almost vehemently against it from the start. Instead, he’d wanted to use his own blood and his own magic to look for Rain, not mine. I’d explained to him what Adrian had explained to me; it had to be my blood because it tied Rain to me, and vice versa. It was the only thing we had between us, the one thing we shared that no one could take away from us. It was our link and what I had been using to search for him. Unsuccessfully, I might add. As much as Quinton hated it, he hadn’t told me I couldn’t do it, and he hadn’t once tried to stop me. But he hadn’t exactly been encouraging, either. I knew he and Tyson were looking for Rain themselves, but I hadn’t asked them about it. They were letting me do my thing, so I was returning the favor.

  “I don’t keep things from Quinton, Adrian.” I said. “I’m not sure how much he’s shared with the rest of them, and I don’t care, because it’s not like I’m trying to hide anything from them. You can be upset with me all you like for sharing with Quinton what goes on here with us. I never promised you I wouldn’t speak of what we’re doing here. Never. And, seriously, Adrian, how could you even think to ask me to keep secrets from them? They are my coven; they are my family, and those things aren’t built on lies. They’re built on trust. Don’t ever ask me to keep things from them. Not ever, because it’s a waste of both our time.”

  Adrian chuckled darkly, and I knew the urge to roll my eyes had left me for the day. When he laughed like that, it never failed to creep me out, and the hair on my arms and the back of my neck always raised.

  “My, my, my…” he drawled. “You really are magnificent, you know that, dear. You haven’t even been with them for very long, and yet, there you sit, loyal to your coven. So much so that you won’t even entertain the thought of lying to them. You won’t even mutter one little lie, or omit one truth. How truly marvelous you are.”

  I sighed, not having expected the conversation to go this way.

  “What are you on about, Adrian?” I asked in quiet voice. I didn’t think I’d like what he had to say, and I wasn’t usually wrong about these things.

  “You’re easy in comparison to some of the other women. I think it might have something to do with your upbringing and the way you were raised. The other women of our kind have become a bit spoiled, I’m afraid. We give them everything they want because there are so few of them, and it makes their expectations to be a bit unrealistic at times. I must admit, when Quinton told us about your existence, I highly doubted he was telling the truth about you. It’s why I tested you when we first met. I had to be certain you were who he thought you to be. We are very rarely proven wrong, and, normally, we would have found this to be very upsetting. We don’t like to be wrong, you see, dear. But, for you, we are happy to make an exception. You’ve fit in so well with Quinton and his coven, and adjusted so well to discovering you’re a witch, that it’s almost unbelievable. And, outside of asking for help in locating Rain, you’ve yet to ask us for anything. You’ve made no outrageous demands of us, or anything of the like. It’s most refreshing, to be honest.”

  I was glad he didn’t take offense to the way I had spoken to him. Quint had told me time and time again not to be rude to the Council members, to treat them with the utmost respect. I knew the Council members were dangerous people, and that I should really think before speaking to them. But, advice was always easier to give than to take, and even harder to put into practice.

  “We don’t like not knowing where you’ve come from,” Adrian admitted. “It’s embarrassing, and makes us look bad.”

  My eyes grew round in shock as they shot to Adrian. I could not believe he just admitted that to me.

  “I would like to put this behind us as soon as possible, and the only way to do that is to find your father. We’ve been combing through family records in search of anything possibly related to you. If only we knew what your real last name is, it would be so helpful…”

  I blew out a frustrated breath as I tossed my head back and stared up at the white ceiling. We had had this argument before, and it never changed. Adrian was even more stubborn than I was.

  “Kimber is my last name,” I said in a tired voice.

  “As I keep telling you, child, it might not actually be your last name. In fact, it most likely isn’t your name, and never has been.”

  “It’s my name,” I told him on a tired sigh.

  “Her last name doesn’t matter,” Quinton said.

  I jumped at the sound of his voice and sudden appearance.

  Quinton never interrupted my afternoon meetings with Adrian. Never. No one did.

  Quinton walked towards me on bare feet, which is how he’d managed to enter the s
tudy without being heard. He usually wore cowboy boots everywhere.

  Today, he wore dark blue jeans, a towel around his shoulders, and nothing else. His jeans rode low on his slim hips.

  I had to force myself to look up from the dark trail of hair leading down into his jeans.

  “If she needs a new last name,” Quinton said in his deep voice, “she can have mine.”

  I grinned at Quinton and shook my head. “I don’t need a new last name, but thanks anyways.”

  Quinton shrugged his shoulders, and I noticed how tense his body was.

  “When you’re ready for it, babe, you just let me know, and I will make it happen.”

  The smile immediately slid off my face.

  “What exactly are you talking about?” I asked in a rush. I had a sneaking suspicion he meant I could take on his last name when he slid a ring on my finger. And knowing Quint, it would probably be one with a really big freaking rock.

  Quinton flashed me a big grin before he wiped his face completely blank and his head swiveled to the side and he glared angrily at Adrian.

  Better Adrian than me.

  “Your driver just knocked on my front door,” Quinton growled at Adrian. “You want to explain to me exactly what in the fuck is going on here?”

  I sat up straight in my chair as I eyed Adrian. Adrian the badass Council member paled under Quinton’s angry eyes.

  “What’s this?” I asked in a careful voice, not understanding why Adrian’s driver knocking on the front door would have Quinton so upset. “His driver drops him off every time he comes here. You know this, Quinton. He doesn’t drive himself anywhere. I don’t think any of the Council members do.”

  And wasn’t that the truth. Adrian was a total snob who did next to nothing for himself. I doubted he even picked out what clothes he was going to wear for the day. He certainly didn’t drive himself places, it was beneath him.

  I wondered what I would have to do to get my own driver. It would probably be fun for a while, but then I would miss driving my Rover around.