Chapter 85: Briana
The growl of the engine cut through the morning calm, a dissonant vibration that made the air itself feel tight. Everyone on the patio froze. Oy’s growl deepened into a snarl, the fur on his back ridge standing straight up.
Bruce was on his feet in one fluid motion, putting himself between the courtyard and the approaching noise. The children were swept up—Susannah had Roland, Lena grabbed Rafael, the others instinctively corralling the newborns into the villa’s interior. It happened in seconds, a silent, rehearsed ballet of protection.
The vehicle that ground to a halt beyond the main gate wasn’t a military truck. It was an old, beat-up Land Rover, caked in dust and dried mud. The driver’s door creaked open.
A girl stepped out.
She was about Jake’s age, maybe a year or two older. She moved with a wary grace, her eyes scanning the high walls, the open gate, and finally landing on the group assembled on the patio. She was stunning. Warm olive skin, long black hair like spilled ink falling in waves past her shoulders. Her eyes were a devastating, clear blue-green, like tropical shallows, and they were bright with an intensity that wasn’t just fear—it was searching.
Ketut, standing beside Bruce, went very still. Her hand touched Bruce’s arm. Her voice spoke directly into his mind, a cool stream in the tense silence. She has power. It’s… raw. Unchanneled. Like a radio tower broadcasting static. She came looking for the power she feels from here.
The girl took a few steps forward, stopping at the open gate. She didn’t enter. Her gaze swept over them all—the formidable gunslinger in Susannah, the watchful mothers, the massive, shirtless man at the center—and settled on Bruce. Her eyes widened, taking him in. His height, his broad shoulders, the sharp hazel of his eyes. She stared unabashedly, drinking in his features as if recognizing a landmark.
“My name is Briana,” she said. Her voice was clearer than expected, steady despite the visible tremor in her hands. “I… I felt the power here. For months, it’s been a hum in my teeth. A pull. I don’t want to be alone anymore.” She swallowed, her brilliant eyes locked on Bruce. “I dreamt of a place that was safe. Walls that weren’t just stone. And then, two nights ago, I felt… you.” She pointed a finger directly at him. “It was like a beacon lighting up. So I followed it.”
Jake watched her, a cold, sharp twist in his gut. She was closer to his age. She was beautiful in a fierce, untouched way. And her eyes were fixed on Bruce with a naked, desperate hope that went beyond seeking shelter. It was recognition. A gravitational pull. He felt a spike of something hot and ugly—jealousy, pure and simple. Then he breathed, feeling the echoes of the bond, the memory of ten different women in his mind, the shared strength of the night before. I have ten wives, he reminded himself, the thought a stabilizing anchor. Nothing to be jealous of. We are family. And we share everything. The heat receded, leaving behind a calmer, more observant chill.
Bruce stepped forward, past the gate, stopping a few feet from her. He didn’t speak with his mouth. He let a trickle of his own power bleed out, not a shield, but a gentle, resonant pressure in the air—a handshake made of force.
Briana gasped. Her own power, unseen but palpable, surged in response. A ceramic pot on the patio wall cracked with a sharp ping. A loose shutter banged against the villa. Her control was nonexistent.
“Easy,” Bruce said, his voice low, a rumble. “You’ll bring the whole place down. You can feel it. Can you try to pull it back? Just here.” He tapped his own sternum.
Tears welled in those stunning eyes. “I don’t know how,” she whispered, ashamed. “It just… happens.”
“We can teach you,” Camille said, walking up to stand beside Bruce. Her tone was matter-of-fact, curving around the edge of the tension. “But first, you look like you haven’t eaten in a week. Come inside. The kids are scared enough.”
Later, with Briana settled in the kitchen under Camille and Ketut’s watchful care, a different kind of tension sought release. The noise of the newcomer’s arrival, the shock of her raw power, the restructuring of their silent world—it all needed an outlet.
The villa’s private gym glowed under a single, high-wattage track light, the polished concrete floors reflecting the muted pre-dawn light that now bled through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The air smelled of clean sweat, leather, and the faint metallic tang of the weight rack.
Bruce stood under the barbell, his hands wrapped around the cold, knurled steel. Two hundred and fifty kilograms sat loaded on each end. His muscles were already pumped, veins cording down his arms and across his shoulders. Sophia stood behind him, her hands on his latissimus dorsi.
“One more,” she commanded, her Spanish accent thickening with focus. “Deep. No half-reps. You’re not some office boy.”
Bruce grunted, exhaled, and pushed the massive weight off the rack. He descended into a squat, his thighs parallel to the floor, the strain evident in every fiber. He drove up, the plates rattling.
“Good,” Sophia breathed, her hands sliding down the sweat-slick channels of his spine. “Now hold it. Feel the burn. That’s where the real work starts.”
He held the weight at the top, his body trembling with the effort. Sophia moved around him, her own athletic body showcased in tight leggings and a sports bra. She wasn’t just spotting him. She was orchestrating. Her hands lingered on his quads, feeling the muscle jump. She traced the line of his iliac crest, her touch clinical and intimate all at once.
“You’re holding tension in your glutes,” she murmured, her hand cupping the firm muscle of his ass. “Release it. Let it flow.”
Bruce let the bar settle back on the rack with a thunderous clang. He turned, chest heaving, his hazel eyes dark with more than exertion. Sophia’s bright espresso eyes held his. The shared arousal was a live wire between them, crackling in the sterile gym air. It had been building for weeks—her rigorous training of his body, the proximity, the sheer physicality of it.
“You’re a brutal taskmaster,” he rasped.
“You’re a man who needs brutal,” she replied, a sly smile touching her lips. “Otherwise, you get soft. In every way.”
She closed the distance. Her hand went to the waistband of his shorts, her fingers dipping beneath the fabric to brush the coarse hair below his navel. He was already thick and heavy against her palm. “See? The body doesn’t lie. All that blood, all that power… it needs direction.”
She sank to her knees on the rubberized floor, right there between the weight bench and the rack. Her fingers hooked into his shorts and briefs, pulling them down in one firm motion. His cock sprang free, fully erect, thick and long and already leaking a bead of pre-come at the slit.
“Fuck, Sophia,” Bruce groaned, his hands gripping the uprights of the squat rack for support.
“Quiet,” she said, her voice dropping to a husky whisper. “You just hold on.”
She didn’t tease. She opened her mouth, her tongue flat, and took the broad head of him inside. The heat was instantaneous, shocking. She pushed forward, taking more, her lips stretching obscenely around his girth. She worked him deeper, her throat relaxing in practiced swallows until her nose was buried in the coarse hair at his base. She held him there, buried to the root, her eyes watering, looking up at him.
The sight was devastating. This powerful, dedicated woman on her knees, her throat bulging around him. Bruce’s knuckles were white on the steel. A low, animal sound rumbled in his chest.
Sophia pulled back, dragging her lips along his length with exquisite friction, then plunged down again, establishing a ruthless, deep-throating rhythm. The wet, gagging sounds filled the quiet gym. Spit slicked his shaft and dripped from her chin. One of her hands came up to cradle his balls, rolling the heavy weight in her palm, while the other worked the base of his cock in tandem with her mouth.
“Gonna come,” he warned, his hips giving an involuntary jerk.
She took him deeper, urging him on with a muffled hum that vibrated through his entire body. The sensation was too much. With a raw shout, Bruce’s climax ripped through him. He pumped violently into her mouth, his release flooding her throat in hot, pulsing jets. Sophia swallowed desperately, her throat working, taking every drop until he was spent, twitching and sensitive.
She pulled off with a soft, wet pop, gasping for air. She stayed on her knees, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, a look of fierce satisfaction on her face. “Now,” she panted, standing up on slightly shaky legs. “Now we do my workout.”
She turned, bending over the same weight bench, presenting herself. She tugged her leggings and thong down to her knees. Her ass was a perfect, round sculpture, glistening with a faint sheen of sweat. She was already wet, her folds glistening and swollen.
“You’re not done,” she said, looking back over her shoulder. “I need to feel that inside me. Right now. No gentle shit. Fuck me like you mean it, Bruce. Fuck the new girl out of your head. Fuck everything that isn’t this.”
The raw need in her voice, the command, was irresistible. Bruce, still semi-hard, stroked himself back to full, painful rigidity. He aligned himself with her entrance, the head nudging against her slick heat. He didn’t pause. He drove into her in one long, brutal stroke, burying himself to the hilt.
Sophia cried out, a sharp, punched-out sound, her fingers scrambling for purchase on the bench. He was enormous, stretching her impossibly wide. He didn’t let her adjust. He pulled back and slammed home again, setting a punishing, piston-like rhythm. The slap of his flesh against her ass echoed off the concrete walls.
“Yes!” she screamed, pushing back against him. “Right there! God, use that fucking power! Fucking break me!”
He gripped her hips, his fingers digging into her flesh, and hammered into her. Each thrust was a claim, an annihilation of the morning’s uncertainty. The bench screeched against the floor with their force. Sophia’s cries grew fragmented, sobbing with each penetration. She reached between her own legs, rubbing her clit in frantic circles.
“Come for me,” Bruce grunted, his own second orgasm building, a tighter, deeper coil. “I want to feel you come all over my cock.”
Her body clenched around him, a series of violent, fluttering spasms. She shattered with a wordless scream, her inner muscles milking him relentlessly. It tipped him over the edge. He buried himself deep and held there, pumping another hot load into her depths, groaning as she milked him dry.
They collapsed over the bench, a tangled mess of sweat and spent passion. The only sound was their ragged breathing.
Eventually, Sophia shifted. “Okay,” she breathed, a shaky laugh escaping her. “Okay. We’re good.”
Bruce pulled out, turning to sit on the bench. She straightened her clothes, then came to sit beside him, her head on his shoulder. The silence between them was comfortable, charged, clean.
Down in the kitchen, Briana was on her third helping of eggs. She listened to the distant, familiar sounds of a large household waking up fully—a baby’s cry, a woman’s laughter, the clatter of plates. Her terrifyingly bright eyes kept drifting toward the hallway, waiting for the tall man with the hazel eyes to return.
Jake watched her from the doorway, sipping coffee. The jealousy was gone, replaced by a cold calculus. She had power. A lot of it. And she was here. That changed the game. It wasn't about possession. It was about integration. The family was about to get louder.
The family was about to get louder.
The next morning, sunlight streamed into the informal sitting room, clean and sharp. Bruce, Camille, Ketut, and Lena sat on the worn, comfortable couches, a deliberate council. Briana entered, freshly showered and dressed in borrowed clothes—one of Lena’s simple sundresses that hung perfectly on her slender frame.
Her damp black hair fell in waves around shoulders that seemed less hunched with fear. The sleep and food had worked a profound change, smoothing the desperate edges from her face and letting her devastating beauty shine through unobscured. The blue-green of her eyes was clearer, brighter, like sunlit sea glass.
“Well, don’t you clean up nice,” Lena said, her voice a low purr. She leaned forward, her gaze a frank appraisal roaming over Briana’s body. “Seriously. You look edible.” She shot a wicked smile toward Camille.
Bruce sighed, a long-suffering exhalation. “Lena, for Christ’s sake. Let’s not try and scare her off in the first five minutes.” He gestured to an empty armchair. “Sit, Briana. Please.”
Briana sat, folding her hands carefully in her lap, her posture taut as a bowstring. She looked from face to face, her eyes lingering longest on Bruce, a faint flush coloring her cheeks.
“So,” Bruce began, his tone deliberately neutral, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “You’ve had a bed and a meal. You’re not vibrating any plates off the table. That’s a start. Now tell us about yourself. And just what you want here.”
Briana took a shaky breath. “I’m from a small town in northern New Mexico. Nothing special. My parents are… normal. Accountants.” She spoke slowly, choosing her words. “The powers started when I was sixteen. Little things. A emotional surge would shatter a glass. A nightmare would make the lights flicker all over the house.”
She looked down at her hands, as if they were foreign objects. “Then men came asking questions. Not government. They wore no badges. They had a… a feel to them. Like oil on water. They scared my parents. Scared me. We moved. They found us again.” Her voice tightened. “I left. To keep my family safe. I’ve been moving for two years. The hunting stopped about eight months ago. The… pull started instead. It got stronger and stronger, leading me here.”
“Now I just want a safe place,” she finished, her eyes lifting, shining with a desperate hope. “With people who understand what this is. Who won’t look at me like I’m a monster. Who can maybe show me how to not break everything I touch.”
The room was quiet for a moment, save for the distant sound of Rafael’ laughter from the courtyard. Ketut, who had been silently observing, her dark eyes unblinking, shifted slightly.
“While all that’s true,” Ketut said, her voice a soft, melodic intrusion, “you’re holding back.” She tilted her head. “The fear of the hunters is a surface stone. I feel the river moving beneath it. What do you really want, Briana? Not safety. Something more.”
Briana’s breath hitched. Her eyes darted to Bruce again, then away, a wave of shame and want crashing over her features so plainly it was like watching a door blow open in a storm.
Lena smirked, crossing her legs and leaning back. She didn’t look at Briana. She looked at Camille, her expression knowing and full of mischief. “They already know damn well what the girl wants.”
Camille’s lips curved into a small, unsurprised smile. She didn’t contradict her.
Bruce watched the realization dawn on Briana’s face—that she was transparent, that her deepest, most secret desire was laid bare in this sunlit room by people who traded in truths far stranger than hers. The want wasn’t just for sanctuary. It was for the source of the beacon. For the man whose power had called to hers across hundreds of miles. For the anchor in the storm she’d been living.
Briana looked at Bruce, her defenses gone, her raw need exposed. Her lips parted, but no sound came out.
The family had just gotten louder.
The silence that followed was heavier than any barbell Bruce had ever lifted. Briana’s unspoken confession hung in the sunlit air, thick and undeniable. Her gaze was a physical weight on him.
“Well,” Bruce finally said, his voice a low rumble that seemed to vibrate through the floorboards. “Safe is a relative term around here.” He stood, a massive silhouette against the bright window. “But understood isn’t. We can work with understood.”
He walked toward her, not with a predator’s stalk, but with the deliberate pace of a man approaching a skittish, powerful animal. He stopped before her chair, looking down. “That raw power of yours, Briana. It’s a live wire in a rainstorm. You’ll hurt someone. Probably yourself.”
“I know,” she whispered, her eyes wide and fixed on his.
“Good. Knowing is the first step.” He held out a hand, palm up. It was the same gesture he’d used with Roland. “Show me. Right now. Don’t push it out. Just let me feel the shape of it.”
Hesitantly, she placed her hand in his. Her skin was warm, her fingers long and fine. The moment they connected, the room seemed to dip. A ceramic vase on a shelf across the room shattered into a thousand pieces, not falling, but exploding outward in a silent burst. The lights flickered violently.
Briana flinched, trying to pull her hand back. “I’m sorry! I didn’t—”
Bruce tightened his grip, holding her fast. “Don’t pull away. Breathe. Look at me.” His eyes locked onto hers, the hazel depths seeming to swirl. “Follow my breath. Out.”
He began to breathe slowly, audibly, a steady rhythm. She matched it, her panicked gasps gradually deepening. As she focused on him, on the anchor of his presence, the chaotic energy emanating from her began to coil inward, becoming less a shockwave and more a contained, turbulent heat in their clasped hands.
“There,” he murmured. “It’s not gone. It’s just… focused. Now, we direct it.” He nodded toward the broken vase. “Put it back.”
Her brow furrowed. “I can’t.”
“You shattered it by accident. Now do it on purpose.” His voice held no room for argument.
Briana stared at the scattered shards. Sweat beaded on her temple. She squeezed Bruce’s hand, a conduit, and let the contained energy flow—not out, but through a lens of intent. The fragments trembled. They lifted from the floor, hovering. Slowly, painstakingly, they began to knit themselves back together in mid-air, the cracks sealing with faint, golden whispers of light.
When it was whole again, it settled gently onto the shelf.
Briana exhaled a shuddering breath, her whole body slumping. A wild, disbelieving laugh bubbled from her lips. “I didn’t break it.”
“No,” Bruce said, releasing her hand. A faint, approving smile touched his lips. “You fixed it. That’s the difference between a weapon and a tool. Control.”
Lena watched from the couch, her head tilted. She tapped Camille’s knee. “See? He’s already got her wrapped up.”
“He’s teaching her,” Camille corrected softly, but her eyes held a familiar, knowing gleam.
The lesson continued outside on the training grounds, under the hard afternoon sun. It was basic shielding, the same Bruce had shown Jake. Briana’s attempts were volatile. A deflection exercise sent a training dummy not just sideways, but hurling into the villa’s outer wall with a sickening crunch of plaster and wood.
Jake watched from the shaded bench, Oy at his feet. He saw the frustration on her face, the fear of her own strength. He also saw the way Bruce stood close behind her, guiding her wrists, his chest almost touching her back as he demonstrated the flow of energy. He felt no jealousy now, only a cold clarity. This was necessary. She was a bomb that needed disarming.
And he was fine. The hum of the bond was a steady, grounding presence in his blood. He had his place.
Later, as the long shadows stretched across the compound, the energy sought its familiar outlet. The bond, stretched thin by the day’s new intensity, pulled them together like a physical law.
Bruce found Briana on the eastern balcony, staring out at the darkening sea. She jumped when he leaned against the railing beside her.
“It’s a lot,” he stated.
“That’s one word for it.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “They all look at me like they know something I don’t.”
“They do.” He didn’t sugarcoat it. “They know what it’s like to be pulled into this. The fear. The wanting.” He turned to face her, his expression unreadable in the twilight. “The bond isn’t just psychic, Briana. It’s physical. It demands integration. On every level.”
She swallowed, her brilliant eyes searching his face. “What does that mean?”
“It means you can’t just live here. You have to join. The family has a rhythm. A way of balancing the noise.” He reached out, his thumb brushing a stray tear from her cheek. The contact sent a jolt through both of them, a static shock of pure, undiluted power. Her breath caught.
His hand slid to the back of her neck, his grip firm, possessive. “This is part of the lesson.”
He kissed her. It wasn’t gentle. It was a claiming, a searing press of lips that demanded surrender. She melted into it, a desperate, hungry sound escaping her throat. Her hands came up, clutching his shoulders, her untamed power flaring around them like a heat haze.
He broke the kiss, his own breath ragged. “You have to learn to channel this too. Or you’ll burn the house down.”
He guided her, not to a bedroom, but to the large, open bathing chamber attached to the main suite. It was tiled in smooth, dark stone, with a sunken pool in the center. Steam rose from the heated water. Candles flickered, placed there earlier by a knowing hand—likely Camille’s.
Susannah was there, soaking in the pool, her dark curls piled atop her head. She watched them enter, her expression calm, assessing. Lena reclined on a lounger, completely nude, idly fanning herself. She didn’t sit up, just smiled a lazy, welcome smile.
“See?” Lena purred. “We share everything here.”
Briana froze, her desire warring with sudden, sharp vulnerability. Bruce’s hands were on the hem of her borrowed dress. He pulled it up and over her head, leaving her bare. The candlelight played over her olive skin, the elegant lines of her body, the tight peaks of her nipples already hardened.
“In,” Bruce commanded, his voice leaving no room for refusal.
She stepped down into the sunken pool, the hot water swallowing her thighs, her waist. Susannah watched her approach, then stood, water sluicing off her full breasts and powerful curves. She came to Briana, cupping her face.
“No fear,” Susannah said, her voice low and steady. “Fear makes it wild. Let it be what it is.”
Then Susannah kissed her, a softer, more exploring kiss than Bruce’s. Briana moaned into it, her body arching. Lena joined them, her hands sliding over Briana’s back, kneading the tense muscles there. Bruce descended into the water, a looming presence. His hands replaced theirs, his touch rougher, more demanding.
He turned Briana to face the pool’s edge, bending her forward so her hands were splayed on the wet stone. He positioned himself behind her. She was trembling, but not from cold. It was a vibration of pure, overloaded need.
“This is channeling,” he growled in her ear. “You feel everything. You take it. You don’t let it break you.”
He entered her in one deep, brutal thrust. She screamed, the sound echoing off the tiles, her back bowing. He was too big, stretching her beyond any previous experience. The pain was a bright, sharp line, instantly blurring into a torrent of overwhelming sensation.
He didn’t wait. He set a punishing rhythm, each drive pushing her against the rough stone. Her power erupted uncontrolled—the candle flames roared three feet high, the water in the pool churned as if boiling. Susannah moved in front of her, capturing Briana’s mouth in another kiss, swallowing her cries. Lena’s hands were everywhere, teasing her nipples, stroking her belly, sliding down to where Bruce was pounding into her.
“Let it out through us,” Lena whispered fiercely. “We can take it. Come on, darling. Let go.”
The pleasure built, a terrifying wave amidst the pain and the raw, electric energy crackling in the steam-filled air. It was too much. Briana shattered. Her climax ripped through her, a convulsive, screaming release that made the lights throughout the villa dim and flicker. As she clenched around him, Bruce followed, roaring as he emptied himself deep inside her, his own release triggering another, smaller quake from her over-sensitized body.
She collapsed forward, only Susannah’s strong arms catching her. They lowered her into the water, letting the heat soothe her shaking limbs. Bruce stayed behind her, inside her, for a long moment, his chest heaving against her back.
Slowly, the chaotic energy in the room settled. The water grew calm. The candles returned to a gentle flicker. The hum in the walls faded to a peaceful, harmonious drone.
Briana floated, supported by Susannah, her mind blissfully, perfectly empty. The static was gone. For the first time in years, her mind was silent.
Bruce pulled out and moved to sit on the submerged bench, pulling her into his lap. She went limp against his chest, utterly spent. He stroked her wet hair.
“See?” he said, his voice a low vibration against her ear. “The noise is gone. Now you just feel the signal.”
From the doorway, unseen, Jake watched. He saw the peace on Briana’s face, the satisfied calm on the others. The bond thrummed, satisfied, stronger for the new thread woven into its fabric. He turned and walked back down the hall, towards the nursery wing. The cries of a newborn—Mateo, perhaps—were fussing. It was his turn for the night feed.
The rhythm continued. The maintenance of the miracle demanded it. The family was louder, yes. But the signal, for now, was clear.