Free All Knight Long, Book I: One Warlock's Love Story by Shad O. Walker Page A

now. His family has to be his priority. Maybe he’ll feel differently after he calms down. In the meantime, he probably needs to keep the ruby to help him try to find his family. And don’t worry about the room. I’ll fix it later.”
    “I’m sorry about the headboard and the wall,” Tau said sincerely.
    Giovanni rolled his eyes. “Just go get dressed.”
    “I left my clothes in the bathroom, and I think Zander is still in there,” Tau whispered. “I don’t think he is ready to see me yet.”
    “Yeah, right. I’ll go get your clothes for you. You had the polyester shirt and JC Penney jeans, right?”
    They both laughed.
    “Hey, Ginger Snap,” Tau said, before Giovanni exited the room.
    “Yes, Panthro?”
    “Thank you,” Tau said, bowing his head.
    “Don’t mention it. Just don’t leave any fur balls in my bedroom.”
    Tau paced back and forth in Giovanni’s guest bedroom like the lion that he was.
    “Dammit!” Giovanni yelled from the living room. Hung and Tau raced into the bathroom.
    “What is it?” they asked in unison.
    “Zander’s gone!”
     
     
    Chapter 9
     
    Despite the fact that magic came easier to Zander when he was angry, leaving Giovanni’s condominium under the cover of a cloaking spell had been much more difficult than throwing Tau across the room. Tears welled up in Zander’s eyes as he remembered the look on Tau’s face when he took the ruby stone back. He kept telling himself that Tau had lied to him and that Tau had gotten exactly what he deserved, but being separated was breaking Zander’s heart.
    His thoughts drifted from Tau to his family, and then the tears began to flow. His family had to be fine. Worst case, they would be mad at him for lying and ground him. He picked up his phone from the passenger seat and dialed each of their cell numbers. Neither his father, mother, aunts, uncles, nor cousins answered their phones. He dialed his Grandmother Zoe last. She always answered before the first ring -- she had to. By the time her phone rang the seventh time, Zander was bawling.
    What would have normally been a four and a half hour drive from Atlanta to Zander’s home in one of the southernmost towns in Georgia, only took three and a half hours driving at seventy miles per hour. He wondered if they had any idea that he had left the Litha. He wondered why they weren’t answering the phone. He wondered if it was his family’s caravan that had been attacked on the way to Atlanta.
    “Think positive, think positive,” he told himself, but that didn’t console him.
    He remembered the time that his Grandmother Zoe morphed into a replica of his Grandmother Nasha and did the Stanky Legg dance in the front yard, and he burst out laughing through his tears. She would call him back any minute -- she had to.
    When Zander zoomed by one of the speed traps that southerners always warned their northern relatives about, a police car pulled out after him with lights flashing and sirens blaring.
    “I really don’t have time for this shit right now,” he mumbled, and turned his wrist several times, instantly flattening all four of the officer’s tires.
    As he gripped the steering wheel, he looked down at the ring finger on his right hand, saw the ring that Tau had given him, and immediately remembered everything -- especially the sex. It was amazing. He was sore in muscles that he didn’t know he had, his legs had just stopped trembling, and his ass was still humming. It didn’t matter now. He had probably blown any chance of ever seeing Tau again after his little temper tantrum. It occurred to him that Tau could have defended himself; Tau could have shifted and attacked him, but he didn’t. Instead, he looked as if his heart had been ripped from his chest. The tears came again.
    Zander glanced over at his phone. No one had called.
    “Dammit!”
    It was as much of an emotional roller coaster for Zander as it was a race home to find his family. He was sixty miles out when he