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  “Is that . . . the Mother crystal?” she murmured.

  Wyatt nodded, sliding his arm around her. “I told them they could have it,” he said, grinning. Grinning. Wyatt was grinning.

  Remy felt her insides explode into a burst of warm, delicious butterflies. “So you can smile,” she managed to say.

  He looked down at her, that devastating smile enough to make her knees weak. Then it faded a little. “You weren’t running away with Ian . . . you were leaving me,” he said. “Weren’t you?”

  She frowned, uncertain what he was trying to say. Dimly, she realized the others had edged away, some toward the shimmering orange crystal and others toward the Humvees.

  “I was setting you free,” she said, not sure if it answered the question. Regardless, it was the truth.

  “And if I realized I didn’t want to be free . . . ?”

  “Then I wouldn’t be leaving.”

  “Ever?”

  “Ever.”

  “Look,” he said, and pointed. She saw the crowd of people around the stone, but none of them could get close enough to touch it. Even from where she and Wyatt stood, she could see the heat wavering, and fancied she could even feel it. It was a stalemate. A checkmate.

  “How long has it been like that?” she asked.

  “Since I tried to destroy it,” he told her.

  “What? Wyatt, no.” Shocked and horrified, she pulled away, but he was shaking his head. “God, no, you didn’t—”

  “I said ‘tried.’ ” He took her by the shoulders and looked down at her with sad brown eyes. “I thought I could do it for you—to save you. But then I realized . . . not only that I couldn’t, but that you would never forgive me for doing it.”

  “No, no, I wouldn’t want that,” she said, her pounding heart settling. “Never.”

  “I know. And so I couldn’t do it. So I got mad and threw it in the drawer next to the Jarrid stone . . . without thinking and without wrapping it in asbestos. I can only guess, but I think they must have reacted with each other and . . . wow.”

  “Wow is right.”

  He slid his arms around her and pulled her close, then, looking down at her, eased away. “Aw, Remy, I’m so sorry,” he said, his brows furrowing with chagrin.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “You’ve had a lot to work through. I knew—”

  “No, no . . . no that.” He was grinning again. It was as if once released, his smile could no longer be contained. “I’m sorry about that,” he said, and gestured to the front of her darling new sundress . . . which was now black with soot where he’d grabbed her.

  He brandished the hand that had been holding the crystal, and she saw that the blackened flesh was already peeling away, and that the skin on his wrist and arm was puckered.

  Remy couldn’t quite hide her cry of dismay. After all, it was her new dress. She’d worn it once. She shook her head.

  Life with him would never be easy.

  But . . . oh, life with him would be wonderful.

  Epilogue

  Once he’d made his point, Wyatt collected the crystal, fisting it in his phoenixlike hand as the spectators gawked.

  He walked over to Liam Hegelson, who prudently backed away from the proximity of the stone, and said, “Here’s how it’s going to be. You remember M.A.D.—from your history lessons, wayyy back before you destroyed the fucking world? The Cold War?”

  Hegelson, whose face had gone rigid and a little frightened, replied, “Yes, of course. Mutually Assured Destruction. The U.S. had the bomb, and so did the Soviet Union. So neither of them were going to use it, knowing that the other would do the same and both would be destroyed.”

  “Exactly. So this little gem,” Wyatt said with a steely grin, “is going to be kept in a very special place inside Envy. If there is any breath of a threat from you or your . . . minions—living, immortal, or undead—the crystal gets annihilated. Instantly. And you know what happens then. Understand?”

  Hegelson glared at him. “How do I know you won’t just go ahead and destroy it anyway?”

  “I already had the chance. Unlike you and yours, I’m not into genocide. Even to protect the ones I love. And as you can see . . . there’s no one else who can get close enough to the stone but me. You’ll just have to trust me.” Wyatt bared his teeth in a very unfriendly smile.

  “Very well,” Hegelson said. And with that he turned and stalked away, calling his men to follow him.

  “And that,” murmured Wyatt, “is the end of that. At least for a while.”

  Amid the sound of Humvee engines starting up and the rumble as they drove away, Wyatt walked over to Ian. “I’m not certain whether I should thank you or beat the hell out of you. So maybe it’s best if you be on your way. You’ll never get the crystal, and you sure as hell won’t get her.”

  Ian gave him a cool smile. “If I’d wanted her, I could have had her. But as it is, I wish you the best. Both of you.”

  He turned and walked away.

  “It took me a long time to fall in love with you,” Remy said, teasing her finger through the patch of hair on Wyatt’s chest. “You were such a jerk.”

  “I believe the word you preferred was dickhead.”

  “Right. You wouldn’t even tell me your name when you were trying to keep me from leaving Envy.” She yanked gently at a few hairs for emphasis.

  “I was pissed at you. The last time I’d seen you, you put a damned bullet in the wall above my shoulder.”

  “I told you not to move, and you did. I wanted you to know I wasn’t playing around.”

  “I breathed.”

  “So you say. I think you were about to lunge at me and try to disarm me. You had that look in your eye.”

  His lips twitched. “I would have succeeded if you didn’t have such a happy trigger finger.”

  “So I was right! You were testing me.”

  “Damn straight. I don’t like anyone pointing a gun at me. Even you.” He combed his fingers through her loose hair, then gave his own little yank.

  “Ow.” She smiled and kissed his jaw. Bliss. Absolute bliss. For the first time she could remember, Remy felt safe. Relaxed. And home.

  “But it wasn’t until you threw that damned snake at me that I realized what a piece of work you were,” he said, still playing with her hair.

  “Is that when you fell for me?”

  He shook his head, seemingly distracted by the way her dark hair looked against the pale skin of her breast. He stroked his hand gently over skin and hair, making the two textures slide against each other. She gave a luscious shiver as he said, “Hell, no. You just made me more annoyed. I almost fell on my ass down those stairs. Could have broken my neck.”

  “So you’ve claimed. But it wasn’t a very big snake, there were only a few stairs . . . and you’re much more coordinated than that,” she said, arching toward him a little. She smiled in gratification when his gaze shifted down to her breast and he leaned in toward her.

  There was silence for a while, broken only by the soft sounds of gentle suction, the quiet, delicate smacks of mouth to mouth. A soft sigh, a low groan.

  When he pulled back, using his tongue to take a quick swipe at the corner of her mouth, Wyatt said, “When I found you . . . under the truck, I was still pretty pissed off at you. Especially when you took one look at me—through your puffy, black eyes in a battered face—and said ‘You’ through your cut and swollen mouth. Like you’d’ve been happier to see anyone else but me—when you couldn’t even stand up.”

  “You just kept showing up—how could that be? The fact that you were the one to find me . . .”

  “That was all Dantès.”

  “Well, he wouldn’t have been there to find me if you hadn’t had him with you. And besides, you didn’t seem pissed. You were . . .”

  “The word is horrified.” All of the gentle teasing left his voice and he tightened his arms around her. “It’s a wonder—a miracle—that you survived . . . both physically and emotionally.
That you had room for . . . this. With me.”

  She buried her face in that warm section of his neck and throat, drawing in the familiar, comforting smell of him. “I love you,” she said. “So much. But you were a dickhead for a long time.”

  The side of his face moved against her temple as he smiled. “And you were a pain in the ass.”

  “And then we fell in love.”

  About the Author

  JOSS WARE has an English degree and an MBA from the University of Michigan. After more than fifteen years in sales and marketing, she owned her own business and worked in a variety of roles for two startup companies. She’s traveled to London, Paris, and Tahiti, and currently resides with her family near Ann Arbor, where she writes full-time.

  Joss loves to hear from her readers, and encourages them to visit her website for updates and sneak peeks of future Envy books.

  www.joss-ware.com

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Romances by Joss Ware

  Night Resurrected

  Night Forbidden

  Night Betrayed

  Abandon the Night

  Embrace the Night Eternal

  Beyond the Night

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  NIGHT RESURRECTED. Copyright © 2013 by Joss Ware. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub Edition MARCH 2013 ISBN: 9780062096654

  Print Edition ISBN: 9780062018670

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