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  Sean nodded, "Still, I, I should have known better. I don't know if it's right for me to drag you along to help, if it's right for me to drag any of you along! I shouldn't be risking your lives on my problems."

  "I'm sorry, Hon, but you don't get to make that decision."

  Sean's eyes got wide, and he felt his lion rising up at that statement, "What?" he almost growled it out.

  "We're your women, your mates, your wives, and no matter how you look at it, we outnumber you three to one. We voted on it, you're overruled and outnumbered. We're not packing it in, we're not hiding, and we're most definitely not going to let our man face this alone!"

  "But..." Sean started and Roxy waved her hand at him cutting him off.

  "Hon, we all love you, and honestly? You wouldn't last a day without us. So just shut up and accept it. And that goes for your lion too!" She warned with a grin.

  Sean sighed; he wasn't going to argue with her now, not after everything that they'd just gone through.

  "So how are you feeling?" he asked instead.

  "Better, a lot better. Though yesterday when I woke up," Roxy shivered again, "it's going to take a while to get over what happened. You hear stories about what it's like, but until it happens," she shook her head; "Nothing can prepare you for that. It's like your soul is on fire."

  Sean nodded, "So, you'll be up soon?"

  Roxy smiled at him, "Oh, I'd be up now, except for one thing."

  "Oh? What?"

  Roxy raised the cover and Sean could see she was naked underneath.

  "How about you get out of those clothes and join me? Love."

  It didn't take long for Sean to strip everything off and join her; however he fell asleep while kissing his way down her body.

  Roxy just smiled and cradled his head between her breasts. She was sure that the pain of being shot with a silver bullet was going to haunt her for a long time. But she suspected her almost dying was going to haunt Sean a lot longer. She'd have to keep an eye on him and make sure he didn't do anything stupid. Daelyn had already told her how he'd been working hard and not sleeping at all since they'd got back Wednesday.

  As for where he'd been all night, well, she wasn't in any kind of rush, she'd ask him when he woke up.

  "Come on, Lazy. Time to hit the shower!" Roxy said and gave Sean a shake.

  Sean rolled over onto his back and yawned as he stretched, a shower sounded good right about now.

  "How long was I asleep?"

  "It's after eleven," Roxy said and getting out of bed she slowly stretched, smiling as Sean watched her naked body with rising interest.

  Getting out of bed himself, Sean followed Roxy into the bathroom, eyes locked on that nice ass of hers. When she stopped he didn't, until he was pressed up against her back, wrapping his arms tightly around her.

  "Somebody's finally up," Roxy giggled.

  "Oh, most definitely," Sean chuckled and lowering his head he kissed the side of her neck as he cupped a nice full breast with his left hand while letting his right hand slowly stroke down Roxy's flat belly.

  Leaning back into him, Roxy closed her eyes and sighed happily, letting her own hands reach back to run along the sides Sean's body as well.

  "Somebody want something?" Sean whispered in her ear.

  Spreading her legs a little, Roxy reached between them and back to stroke Sean's hardness.

  "You tell me," Roxy giggled.

  Sean's right hand dipped lower to tease lightly over Roxy's sex, causing her legs to spread even wider, as she arched her back, bending over just a little. His fingers quickly zeroed in on her target, and the slickness he found there confirmed her own excited state.

  Roxy shivered as Sean's fingers started to tease her. She wanted him, she wanted her man, and she wanted him now. Opening her eyes a little she saw the sink in front of her, so putting her left hand on it, she spread her legs a little wider, and arching her back more she latched onto him with her right hand and gently tugged him towards her entrance.

  Sean didn't need anymore prompting than that, and moving closer he let Roxy guide him into her depths, nibbling up her neck until he reached her right ear, as he moved his hands to her hips, to grab them and steady himself as he slid in to the hilt.

  "I love you, Rox," Sean whispered, "I love you so much."

  Roxy sighed and ground her hips slowly back against him, keeping him seated deep inside her.

  "I need you too, Love. I need to feel you in me, loving me, taking me. I need to know we're alive, I need to be yours," she gasped.

  Sean gave a little growl and started off slowly, holding her tightly with his hands as he moved against her. Using his lips and tongue, he teased and tickled her ear, causing her to shiver and buck back against him as he thrust. As always, making love to Roxy did things to him that he couldn't put into words, but rekindled deep inside him the absolute necessity of her being his. From the very first time he'd made love to her, Sean had known that she was now his, and always would be. And he didn't hesitate to whisper his love and devotion to her as they moved in time with each another, sharing their pleasure, sharing their love.

  Roxy normally wasn't a big fan of getting bent over a cold stone sink, but as Sean's strong arms wrapped around her body as she bent over further and used her arms to brace herself against the wall, she wouldn't have changed a thing about this moment. Sean wore his heart on his sleeve when it came to her and the others, and right now as he was getting more and more physical with each passing moment, the words of pure love and desire for her coming from his lips grew stronger and more heartfelt. He was well and truly hers, and she was without a doubt, his.

  By the time Sean finished inside her, they had both gotten rather loud, and Roxy reached a very satisfying conclusion to her own passions at the same time that Sean reached his. As they laid there panting and enjoying the afterglow she felt his hands start stroking her sweat covered body. As he was still rather excited it wasn't difficult to figure out just what he wanted.

  "Why don't you sit over there and let me be on top this time?" Roxy purred.

  Giving her a kiss on the back of the neck, Sean withdrew and sat on the seat watching Roxy as she straightened up and turned to face him.

  Smiling down at him, she moved to straddle his legs, and putting her hands on his shoulders, Roxy slowly lowered herself, allowing Sean's hands to guide her hips until he was buried inside her insides once more as she settled onto his lap.

  Giving a little twist of her hips and enjoying the way he felt inside her, Roxy took his head in her hands and leaning forward she kissed her mate long and luxuriously, just enjoying the heat of his lips on hers, as his tongue slipped past her lips to tease her own.

  They made love slowly and languidly this time, savoring each other and enjoying the simple state of being alive and in love.

  Sean was sitting at the kitchen table, wrapped in a towel as they all ate a late lunch together. Roxy had dragged him into the shower when he'd finally woken up that afternoon, and of course they'd both ended up making love several times in the bathroom before they even made it into the shower.

  Not that they had stopped when they finally got into the shower either. Sean really couldn't stop himself, and Roxy obviously didn't want him to stop either. It was only the scent of food that finally got them to stop and leave the bathroom.

  Sean was incredibly happy, and not just because of the sex. Roxy wasn't upset with him, didn't blame him, and best of all, she was back in perfect health, though she did have a scar now where the bullet had hit her. It was just above her hip, three inches to the left of her belly button.

  "So, just what were you out so late doing last night?" Jolene asked.

  "It looks like Totis Viribus needs a new leader," Sean said, between bites while grinning.

  "You killed their leader?" Daelyn said, looking surprised.

  "Now, would I do something like that?" Sean teased.

  "Yes!" They all replied together.

  "Really, I'm hur
t," Sean laughed. "The truth is, Chad said I should kidnap him and turn him over to the gals in the Sorceress Guild."

  "You didn't!" Jolene said, her eyes wide.

  "Course I did!" Sean grinned. "I had him all nicely tied up and I left him with them sometime very late last night. Chad thinks if they kill him, it'll put Totis and them at war, which not only takes two of the larger minor houses out of play and leaves the Ascendants more isolated, but the gals over there just might decide not to side against us."

  Jolene nodded, "He got that right. Two things about those women are that, first they never forget an insult and second, they never forget a favor. You just handed them their biggest enemy on a silver platter.

  "Now I definitely need to make some phone calls today!"

  "So why did Chad think this was a good time to go after him?" Roxy asked.

  "With my killing that guy in the coven house, who Chad thinks was someone important by the way, he figures that they're probably starting to realize just what they're up against and we might as well drive home the point that I can do to them, what they've been trying to do to me."

  Roxy nodded as she finished up her food, Sean had noticed that she was eating about as much as he was today.

  "So, what next?" Jolene asked as she finished eating.

  Sean shrugged, tilting his head, "I don't know. Until I crack the password on that encryption on the tag, I can't tarball it. Even then," Sean spread his hands, "I don't think I can make one, as the power to do it is going to be massive."

  "Are you sure about that?"

  Sean nodded, "The recipe for the lycan necklace was in my dad's book. It takes about sixteen days to create it. Now, my father looked at things in a way that I gather was a lot different than other enchanters did. I don't know how or why he came up with this, but he looked at creating things and casting magic as an energy management problem."

  "That's interesting," Jolene said.

  Sean nodded, "So I've gathered. Basically, a standard human magic user can put about fifty watts of energy into an item a day without overly tiring himself, if he's in good health. Basically a healthy adult produces about a hundred and fifty watts of energy a day, and a great deal of that can be used for magic. A trained athlete can produce four hundred watts, and probably use two to three hundred of that a day, to imbue an object."

  "What about lycans?" Roxy asked.

  "We do about eight hundred to twelve hundred a day. I think dad was still working on the numbers there, and before you ask, Daelyn, dwarves are four hundred for the average woman and eight for the average man."

  "I bet I do more than that," Daelyn grumped.

  Sean smiled, "I do too, you're anything but average, Hon."

  Roxy and Jolene giggled as Daelyn blushed, but she looked happy all the same.

  "So, what does this have to do with enchanting?" Jolene asked.

  "Well, my father did a bunch of work to figure out how much energy it took to create items, and he pretty much based everything on putting fifty watts of effort, per day, into enchanting an object. So a lycan necklace takes sixteen days, or eight hundred watts to produce."

  "So, by that math, you should be able to make one yourself in a day then, right?"

  "Only in the same way that nine women working together can produce a baby in a month," Sean grinned.

  "I was talking about your tarball program," Jolene sighed while this time Daelyn and Roxy laughed.

  Sean nodded, "Now that I'm fully developed, yeah, and because I get a bunch of energy back after making one, I might be able to make two, but then I'd be exhausted."

  "We made what, a dozen of them that one time?" Roxy asked.

  "Yeah, and we were all pretty beat when we finished, plus it took all day and we were getting the benefit of Jo's tantric magic enhancing our recovery."

  "So, just how much does that tag," Jolene pointed to the tag on Sean's collar, "take to make?"

  "According to the book, fourteen kilowatts," Sean sighed.

  "Didn't we do ninety-six hundred making the necklaces?" Roxy asked, "I mean eight hundred times twelve, right?"

  Sean shook his head, "Remember, we got about two-thirds back after we made each one, so we used a lot less, overall. Also, all this energy has to be there at the time I use the tarball to create it. Yeah, I'll get a bunch back, but I still need that amount up front."

  "Why do you get energy back?" Daelyn asked, "And what's a tarball?"

  "The tarball is a spell I came up with that allows me to make copies of the enchantments put on any object. It appears to take the same energy up front to create the item, but because you're putting it all in at once, the energy that is used each day to preserve the work on the item until the next day comes back to you when you're done.

  "Also," Sean sighed and looked at Jolene and Roxy, "because the necklaces were gold and got transmuted into something else, about half of the energy we got back was from that transmutation process."

  "Well that doesn't sound too bad."

  "Actually, it means the three of us got a dose of radiation," Sean sighed, "just how much I'm not sure. At least my father seemed to understand the phenomena because of the way the tag works, and he had a method for curtailing the radiation. I'll be adding that to my tarball spell."

  "Eh, lycans are immune to radiation's effects," Roxy said.

  Sean looked at Jolene, "You're not, are you?"

  Jolene shook her head, "No, but again, I have magic that gives me control over my body. So cancer isn't something I'm concerned with."

  "That's a relief!" Sean sighed.

  "So you need an energy source." Daelyn said, returning the conversation to the original question.

  Sean nodded, "A magical energy source."

  "What's the difference?"

  "Between what?"

  "Magical energy or say, electrical energy?"

  Sean shrugged, "I've only been doing this a couple of weeks, I don't know, ask Jo."

  Jolene shook her head, "I'm not really into any of that advanced sciences stuff, I'm just a tantric witch."

  Daelyn nodded and thought about that a moment, "Sean, can I see the tag and Roxy can I see your necklace for a moment please?"

  Roxy nodded and undid the necklace and handed it over to Daelyn while Sean unclipped the tag from his necklace and handed that to Daelyn.

  "What are you doing?" Sean asked, curious, as Daelyn looked it all over.

  "You said this was a gold chain?" Daelyn asked him.

  Sean nodded, "Yeah, we bought it at a pawn shop. Not sure how pure it was."

  "Well, it's a tungsten alloy now, that's why it has that almost bronze or tan look to it. The tag," she said fingering it "is also tungsten, but a slightly different alloy."

  "Really?" Sean said surprised. "Why would my father use tungsten? I thought it was some version of gold."

  Daelyn shrugged and handed the necklace back to Roxy, who put it back on, and handed Sean back the tag.

  "Tungsten is a lot cheaper than gold. However, it's still a transition metal, which is what you guys need for enchanting, right?"

  Sean nodded.

  "Well if your dad was looking at making ten or twenty thousand of those, using gold would have bankrupted him. But tungsten?" Daelyn shrugged, "I think a metric ton is less than five hundred dollars."

  "You'd just need someone to stamp it into those tags," Jolene said.

  Daelyn grinned, "I just happen to know a large group of people with a machine shop who do that kind of work all day long, too! I bet you could get them to make those tags, for a few bucks each, plus the cost of the materials."

  Sean grinned back at her, "Well, that's half of the problem then, but still, I'm at a loss for how to power this."

  "Wait a moment," Daelyn said, "what did you say happened to the silver in Roxy when you put that tag on her back when we were in the van?"

  "It was turned into Rhodium."

  "How'd it do that?"

  "Alpha decay," Sean told her, "it then uses t
he energy from that to build the shield up and recharge a lycan's regeneration."

  Daelyn stopped and thought about that, "That's a fair bit of energy. I'd have to do the math, but maybe we could just push a bunch of silver through the shield, would that work?"

  Sean stopped and pondered that a moment, "It might, but I'd have to know just how much energy I'd be dealing with. The silver tag device turns the excess into heat and makes the shield solid against fast moving objects. I'd be afraid of what too much energy would do to me."

  "So build a device to do it for you." Roxy smiled, "Isn't that what alchemists and enchanters do?"

  Sean shrugged, "Maybe? I'd have to figure it out, go through more of my father's notes. But there's still one major problem, before I can even start on that, I still have to figure out the password to crack my father's encryption on the device."

  "That's only stopping you from using your spell on this one. Not from building the device to replicate them," Roxy pointed out.

  "But if I can't replicate them, what's the point?"

  "Well, you can still replicate these collars right?"

  Sean nodded, "True."

  "And you can always make a tag from scratch; it'll just take you what, nine months?"

  "More like a year for the first one," Sean sighed, "but yeah, I could make one."

  "Then what's the problem?" Roxy smiled and leaning into him she rubbed up against him, her bare skin on his.

  "Ummm," Sean suddenly felt a little self-conscious, Roxy had a point, he couldn't do this all in a day, and he doubted anyone was expecting him to.

  "I guess you're right, Hon," Sean said, leaning back into her a little as well.

  "Of course I'm right," Roxy smiled. "So, you fix your tarball spell like you mentioned and then start figuring out this new device. Daelyn and I can run over to her friends and see about getting them to make more of these necklaces and tags, so you'll have a supply when you need them."