Were-Devils' Revenge [Were-Devils of Tasmania 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) by Simone Sinna

scarf wrapped around her head and heavy jewelry shimmering around her neck and both wrists. She now raised her head.
    “I have dreamed of you,” she said, her voice rich and deep. “Each night for seven nights.”
    Edmund, who would rather have left, was compelled to look at her, as strongly as if she had grabbed him by the chin and turned his head by force.
    Zelda looked at him and then at Alice, shaking her head. “I do not know the meaning. That is for you to decide.”
    “It’s clear to me,” said Alice. “My sons are about to go to war, and you see deaths.” She went to her son, hand clasping his shoulder so tightly Edmund winced. “You are no use to her or me if you die on some battlefield in some country that isn’t ours.”
    “Sit, Alice,” said Zelda, the only person there who would have dared to order Alice to do anything. Even then she obeyed reluctantly.
    “There will be deaths and many of them,” said Zelda, “with the traces of your blood on each one.”
    Edmund looked at her and felt his soul start to freeze.
    “The deaths will go on for more than fifty years and two generations before there is a chance of redemption.”
    “And you say this will be on my conscience if I marry the woman I love?” Edmund’s voice was barely more than a hoarse whisper.
    Alice went to interrupt, and Zelda put her hand up to stop her.
    “This will happen if you do not heed the prophecy.”
    “Which is?”
    “In my dreams you are strong and virile,” said Zelda. “Often you have transformed, a fine, large, black beast, the strongest of them all. You have less of the white streaks that my people gave your kind after you stole their babies.”
    This they all knew was an Indigenous legend, one that the town of Tarrabah had been named for.
    “You have a choice, and it is the choice you make that leads to a curse or the final end to the feud between you and the ghosts.”
    They called the Karlssens and their kind ghosts because of how pale they were, but they were also known as the false vampires, a nod to their distant cousins in the Northern Hemisphere.
    Zelda took her tea cup and swished around the dregs before turning it over on the saucer. She did the same with Edmund’s cup. Turning hers back over, she looked thoughtfully at the tea leaves that remained and those on the saucer. “Here I see the bared teeth of your kind,” she said. Next she looked at Edmund’s and frowned. “Here,” she said slowly, “I see a rose.”
    Edmund stiffened. His thoughts went immediately to Larissa and where they had made love, the scent of the roses still mixed with her scent in his memory. He blocked the thoughts but not fast enough.
    “It’s her,” said Alice. “Don’t you see?”
    “The prophecy gives you a choice,” said Zelda, ignoring the interruption. “Between your own kind and the rose. But the choice that brings bloodshed is the one where you do not heed your instinct.”
    “You’re a were-devil whether you like it or not,” said Alice. “To go against that is to destroy yourself and us with you.”
    Edmund buried his head in his hands. Every pore of him wanted to be with Larissa. But was this lust rather than instinct? Certainly his mother thought so. Certainly every instinct he had had before falling for Larissa had been for his own kind.
    “You have always been destined to marry Kaitlin,” Alice continued, referring to a girl he had met and liked well enough from the south. “Do it now and put an end to this. Marrying into the ghosts will only inflame the situation.”
    Edmund thought of Larissa’s brothers and her cold father. He had always known they would never accept him, but it had not seemed to matter. He thought of Romeo and Juliet and how disastrous their love had been. He loved Larissa too much to ever condemn her to that. He would make his choice and be true to his kind, but he knew he would never forgive himself and that, as far as he was concerned, his life was now over.

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