LAST NIGHT’S SNOWFALL had crystallized the wildflowers growing out in the meadow. Summer Lautner gazed at them through the kitchen window. It was entirely appropriate weather for the end of winter in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, but the flowers? They were her fault. Thanks to her presence, every tree, shrub and plant around her rustic mountain home defied the coldest season by greening up and flowering. As long as she stayed here nothing growing would wither or die. It was one of Summer’s Wiccan powers to transform the landscape around her into the lush, green bounty of warmer months.

Summer smiled a little as she pressed her palm against her flat belly, where she would soon be growing, too. It would be eight and a half months before the wisp of life inside her would be born, but she already felt completely in love with her tiny daughter. She also couldn’t wait to see what she looked like. Would she have sun-streaked brown hair, and dark opal eyes like Summer? Or would her little girl resemble her dark, Welsh father Troy, or her fair, French father Michael?

How am I going to explain to her that she has two fathers?

Growing up in near-complete isolation on a grand estate, Summer had thought it was perfectly normal to have three parents: one maman and two péres. Now that she thought about it, she couldn’t recall her mother, Marie, ever explaining her relationship with her lovers. Summer’s dark father, Christien, had been very mysterious as well. Her fair father, Jean-Paul, had once promised that she would someday have two lovers like her mother, and that all Lautner women did.

She rubbed a circle around her navel. “I hope you are as lucky with your loves as I’ve been with mine, bébé.”

She could stand there all day whispering to her little girl, but she had to get a move on. She picked up her purse and the to-do list, and pulled on her jacket.

Before she left for town she walked out to the barn, where she heard the sound of water splashing, and smelled the incongruous scent of a cool, moonlit night. As she entered through the open doors she ducked to avoid a stream of icy water floating in a circle above the head of a tall man dressed in a black T-shirt and dark gray jeans. He’d tied back his mane of midnight hair, and as hard muscles flexed over his long limbs Summer felt her heart beat a little faster.

A warlock with the elemental power over all forms of water, and a former major in the Magus Corps, Troy Atwater was an impressive man—and all hers.

“Still scouring out the stalls?” she asked him.

“I finished that yesterday.” Troy flicked his wrist and directed the hovering stream back into a huge wooden barrel. “Today I’m cleaning out the cobwebs in the rafters.”

“After first relocating all the spiders?” Summer guessed, and saw wry humor light up his gorgeous blue eyes. “You’re such a marshmallow.” When he reached for her she stepped back and shook her head. “Not a chance, mister. I have to go shopping in town, or we’ll have peanut butter crackers for dinner.”

A wicked smile curved his beautiful mouth. “We won’t kick you out of bed.”

“I’m eating for two now, remember? And baby wants some baked apples.”

Summer swallowed hard as her body lit up with longing. Troy could arouse her with just a look, and he knew it. Then again, she could do the same thing to him simply by walking into a room.

“Come on,” he murmured. “I have to drop by the pavilion to pick up a letter from Wilson, and I’ll take you to the market after that.” He let his gaze wander down the front of her. “We can have crackers for lunch, if you want.”

“You’re shameless. Stop it.”

She blew him a kiss before she forced herself to walk out of the barn and head for the chopping stump. The big man working there was as fair as Troy was dark and, despite the cold, stripped to the waist. His huge, heavily-muscled frame gleamed in the silvery sunlight like a statue of some heroic god sculpted from pale bronze. His once short-cropped blond hair had begun growing out. She loved the white-gold streaks in it from all the hours he spent in the sunlight. What Michael Charbon radiated was heat and brute power, and plenty of it, thanks to all the centuries he’d spent as a Templar. But Michael had not been born to the priesthood. The order had stolen him as an infant from his Wiccan family.

Summer could never sneak up on her other sentinel mate, either. As soon as she was within a hundred yards of him, Michael lowered his ax and turned. His jade-green eyes warmed with pleasure.

“I’m heading into town,” she said. Summer didn’t have to repeat what she’d told Troy. Her two sentinel mates shared their thoughts with each other and her, so Michael already knew. “Is there anything you need?”

“Baked apples,” the former Templar said, and reached for the shirt he had tossed beside the massive pile of wood he’d already chopped. “I will go with you.”

Summer suppressed a sigh. She knew her big, battle-hardened warrior didn’t like letting her out of his sight. Michael had been the one to find her, after all. Her mother’s murder had triggered a series of events that resulted in Summer living in Central Park as a homeless amnesiac, where she still might be if not for him.

Michael had saved her from a rapist, and brought her to Troy so she could take sanctuary with her dark lover’s family in Silver Wood Coven. Despite his efforts Summer had still been stalked and attacked and nearly killed by their enemies, until Troy and Michael had bonded to her as her sentinel mates, and she finally came into her power and regained her memories.

To say Michael was devoted to her was the understatement of the millennia. The man had turned his back on his life and his beliefs to help her, and once had even taken an ax in his side to save her life. But together with Troy, they had defeated all their enemies. She refused to live in fear anymore.

“I’ll be back in an hour,” Summer said. She watched the signs of Michael’s internal struggles flicker across his rugged features before she added, “I can’t stay here forever.”

He touched her cheek with his big hand. “I should not worry but I do. You are likely the most powerful Wiccan on the planet. But I cannot think that when I look at you. I see only my Beauty.”

As usual his nickname for her sent a rush of aching desire through her body. “Troy tried the same thing, you know, and it didn’t work. Or are you two tag-teaming me again?”

“Always,” Michael murmured as he stroked his thumb along her bottom lip. “If you kiss me, Pagan will feel it, too.”

Summer pursed her lips against his thumb. “That will have to do until tonight, Paladin. See you two later.”

Michael watched her as she left in the little pickup truck they’d bought for their supply runs into town, and when she drove out of sight Summer still felt his unease. She was partly to blame for that, as bonding with her and Troy had changed Michael from a solitary witch hunter to part of their sacred Wiccan triad. Chosen for her from birth, the former Templar had never had a choice in the matter—and neither had Troy or she.

The blame for that lay squarely with the Emerald Tablet.

As Summer drove down the mountain she felt the Tablet’s presence shift inside her. What had once been the oldest and most powerful grimoire in the world had evolved into an intelligent being determined not to be used for evil. To hide itself, it had long ago transferred all the knowledge and magic it contained into the body of a dying Wiccan girl. Then, after transforming her, it had used her to create a female bloodline of Guardians for itself, each of whom bonded with two warlocks fated to become her sentinel mates.

Summer still felt some resentment about her guardianship. While the tremendous power of the Emerald Tablet gave her innumerable abilities, her mother had been murdered before she could teach Summer how to manage the power properly. Marie Lautner had instead branded her daughter’s skin with protective spells that did everything from compelling people to help her to reflecting evil intents back on an enemy. One of them had even condemned an entire Templar garrison to slowly go mad.

A horn blasted her out of her thoughts, and Summer grimaced as she saw in the rearview mirror that a huge logging truck was tail-gating her. Before she could react the driver swung out to pass her and blasted his air horn a few more times as he barreled by.

But then time twisted.

Summer’s eyes widened as she saw a vision of the future: a mini-van was coming around the blind curve up ahead. A mother and father sat in the front, and both were singing a silly song to their three giggling children in the backseat. Their laughter turned to screams as the van smashed head-on into the truck.

“No!” Summer screamed, clearing her mind.

She jammed her foot down on the gas. Her palm hit the horn in the center of the steering wheel.

“Stop!” she yelled, as her little truck picked up speed. She had nearly caught up to the semi-trailer’s cab. “Stop!” she screamed, this time flashing the headlights.

In the giant semi-trailer’s side mirror, the driver’s surprised eyes looked at her.

“Stop!” she yelled again, but it was too late.

She and the truck driver saw it at the same time: the minivan had rounded the bend.

The sound of screeching brakes filled the air. The giant tires just outside her window smoked. As terror billowed inside her, the Tablet spoke in her head with the voice of a querulous old crone.

We may put a stop to it, but not all the innocent shall survive.

“Oh, yes, they will,” Summer said through a clenched jaw.

Just as her hands clamped down on the steering wheel, the trucker swerved right. Pure instinct kept them from colliding as Summer steered away. As her truck sped onto the dirt shoulder, the logger moved back into the right lane. Rocks and dirt pinged crazily under her vehicle as the van passed within inches of the truck’s front bumper. Both parents’ faces were frozen in paroxysms of terror, but they were clear.

Summer exhaled a whoosh of relief and checked the rearview mirror. Though she’d hoped to see the van, all she saw was wood. Confused, she stared for a fraction of a second, until she realized what she was seeing.

The logger was jack-knifing.

“Goddess, no,” Summer whispered.

The front right tire of the semi-trailer hit her door. The sound of a forest being leveled shattered the air as forty tons of snow-covered logs spilled onto the road behind her. She tried to steer away but there was nowhere to go. Her truck was trapped between the semi-trailer and the mountain. The logs smashed the bed of her truck, sending a huge shock through her body. The window behind her shattered, spewing glass, as she launched into the steering wheel. Before the seat belt could restrain her, she took the steering wheel in her midriff, forcing the air from her lungs. The body of her vehicle was flattening, pinched between the semi-trailer and the stream of massive lumber. She couldn’t get a breath. The weight from behind was crushing her.

Suddenly a green glow suffused the air around her. With one enormous burst of power she shoved the metal and wood away. But then fire and power backlashed, just as the world exploded.