When at last the silence seemed like it would linger on forever, Marquis cleared his throat. “So, there we have it then, the truth of our father’s life. The question is: what are we going to do about it?”
Nathaniel sat forward, his elbows propped on his knees, and his coal-black eyes glistened with unconcealed anger and resolve. “We are going to kill these lycan bastards, one by one, slowly, painfully, and we are going to take Keitaro out of that damnable slave district.”
Marquis’s expression hardened, ever the unmovable one. “Yes, but the question is how.”
Nachari laid the map of Mhier out on the floor between them, illuminated by the firelight. “I think our greatest chance to get to him will be on Sunday, either right before he’s taken into the arena, or right after the games begin.”
Marquis stared pointedly at the map. “What is your reasoning, wizard?”
Nachari sighed. He pointed to the various entrances and the U-shaped stands. “There will be a lot of chaos, and Thane will be sitting here.” He pointed at the icon drawn to indicate the raised royal platform and inadvertently snarled with disdain. “With all the commotion going on, the inevitable excitement of the crowd, they won’t be expecting an invasion, for anything to go off other than as planned. And they won’t be in any position to react quickly, to marshal forces in the midst of chaos. I think it all comes down to the element of surprise.”
“And what if we are a moment too late? If we misjudge…by even five seconds?” Nathaniel asked.
“We won’t be,” Marquis said forcefully. “Your plan has merit, Nachari. I was thinking something similar myself.” He pointed at the diagram and began to expound on strategy, yet his words drifted into the ether…
“Excuse me, brothers,” Kagen said softly, rising from his bedroll. “When I return, you can impart all you’ve discussed in a psychic stream, so I’ll be instantly up to speed. But for the moment, I have some fences to mend.”
Nathaniel looked over at Arielle and nodded with quiet understanding. Now that they all knew who she was, what she had done, what her childhood in the slave camp had been like, there would be no objection to seeing to her comfort. For truly, she was the daughter Keitaro had never had, and they were forever in her debt.
“I’ll give you this indulgence, healer,” Marquis said in an authoritative tone, “but don’t take more than a half hour. Your presence is needed here, and not just to hear the briefing, but for your input as well.”
“As you wish, brother,” Kagen said, declining his head with respect. And then he headed toward the mouth of the cave where the isolated female was waiting.
As he approached, Arielle drew her blanket tighter around her shoulders and sidestepped a few feet away. She fixed her eyes on the ground.
“What can I do?” Kagen asked, not wishing to play any games.
Arielle tried to force a smile, however insincere, and then she looked out, over the ridge, at the beautiful valley below. “What is there to be done?” she finally said. “I am as good as naked before you.” Before he could protest, she shook her head and held up her hand to silence him. “And it’s not just the…physical piece…what happened. It’s the spiritual piece, the emotional exposure.” She sighed then, her unique aquamarine eyes growing cloudy with regret. “You know my deepest fears, my greatest regrets, my unvanquished demons…even my unfulfilled longings. You know everything. And I know nothing. I just feel like being alone.” She turned to meet his eyes briefly, and her soft gaze was more penetrating than a brandished sword. “If you don’t mind.”
Kagen exhaled slowly. “I do mind, Arielle. I mind because I’m the cause of it.” Strolling to her side, he leaned back against the outer arch of the cave entrance and gazed up at the stars, following her lead. “This is an oddly beautiful land, for a place of such incredible cruelty.” He let the words linger, a mere observation.
Arielle nodded, and a piece of her thick, copper-colored hair fell forward into her eyes. Without thinking, Kagen reached out to tuck it behind her ear, and Arielle flinched.
He drew back his hand and frowned. “You fear me?”
Her voice was as hushed as it was hesitant. “A little. Yes.”
He swallowed his pride and looked away. And then he crossed one ankle over the other, both arms across his chest, and leaned back, once again, against the stony wall. “Let’s see: My deepest fear is letting my family down, my people down, not being able to heal someone who needs it—letting another warrior, wizard, or healer experience what I have endured—the grief or the loss.” He angled his body to face her then. “Right now, my deepest fear is leaving this land without my father, knowing that I could never live with the outcome.” He thought about her words, the various points she had made, and tried to be as candid as he knew how. “And as for my deepest regret, there are two: the fact that I couldn’t save my mother on the night the lycans came to our valley, and the fact that I let my baby brother Shelby die at the hands of Valentine Nistor. It would have been so easy to have just been there for him, to have sequestered Dalia until the end of Shelby’s Blood Moon…to have prevented the whole thing by being just a little bit prepared for the enemy. Not a lot. Just a little.”
Now this got Arielle’s attention.
She cast a sidelong glance at him and nodded with sympathy. “I was going to ask, earlier, when I only saw the four of you, about Keitaro’s blond-haired son, about Nachari’s charming twin, but I was afraid to intrude on a matter so personal; and I figured, if he could have been here, he would have been.” She looked away and sighed. “I’m sorry, Kagen. I…I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you, Arielle,” he whispered. “So am I.”
Silence seemed to settle between them like dew on morning grass, until finally, she shook her head, raised her chin, and found the courage to continue. “Earlier…when you bit me…you weren’t really in control, were you?”
“Not at all,” he said, a bit ashamed by the admission. “Not even a little bit, and perhaps that is what scares you the most.”
She nodded. “How do I know it won’t happen again?”
Kagen looked off into the distance. How could he answer that? There were simply no words. Besides, he didn’t have the answers himself, and that brought him back to her third admission. “You know my unvanquished demons, too. You saw one tonight.”
Arielle frowned. “But I thought you said you’ve never done anything like that before, lorded your power over a female.”
Kagen tried not to recoil: lorded your power over a female…
Damn.
“That’s true, never over a female. But…” He tried to find the words to say what he was thinking—he felt he owed her at least that much—after all, she could not take back or hide her vulnerability: Why should he have the privilege of hiding his? “There is something dark inside of me, Arielle. Something that doesn’t belong in a healer.”
She stared at him pointedly then, urging him to continue with her eyes.
“It’s rarely a problem. In fact, it so seldom rears its head that it’s almost forgotten…until it’s not.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to collect his thoughts. “And then there are those rare, incalculable moments when it stirs, this darkness, and I know that there is just something so incredibly…broken…at my core that it frightens me.” He glanced over his shoulder instinctively. “My brothers call it Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, this rare but terrible temper, but I just think of it as a demon. And the thing is—the really disturbing part—I don’t hate it. In fact, I nurse it. I need it. The reason I can function as well as I do is because I know he’s always there.”
Arielle tucked the same errant locks of hair, the ones that Kagen had almost touched earlier, behind her ear and straightened. “It can’t be as bad as all that, not if you’re aware of it. Not if you can talk about it.”
Kagen chuckled softly then and met her gaze with one of contrition. “I am just over a thousand years old, Arielle Nightsong, and you are the first person I have ever told
this to.”
Arielle’s expression belied her surprise—she looked positively taken aback. “Why?” she exhaled. “I mean, why me?”
He took a cautious step in her direction, placed a gentle hand beneath her chin, and lifted her head so that her gaze met his. “Because you are the first person—no, the first woman—I have ever known on such an intimate level.”
She inhaled sharply. “But you don’t really know me.”
“Ah,” he mused, “but I do.” He became all at once serious. “What happened earlier…to you…it was an inexcusable intrusion, and I’m sorry for that. I really am. But for me, it was one of the most intimate moments of my life, and that’s not so easy to regret.” He leaned in, far too closely, but he just couldn’t help it. “I know you felt dishonored, sweeting, but I felt…privileged. As crazy as that sounds.”
Arielle stared at him intently, as if she could measure the truth of his words by gazing into his eyes. And then, all at once, she turned a deep shade of red, blushing from her head to her toes. “Have you never…been with another woman, then?”
Kagen laughed aloud. He didn’t mean to. It was just—her question caught him off guard. It was so sweet, so pure…so honest. “I’ve never been with you, Arielle.” The corner of his mouth turned up in a smile. “But seriously, yes; I have been with other women, many over the centuries”—he thought he might just fall into her eyes and get lost—“but never with anyone as lovely as you. With a soul as beautiful as yours.”
Arielle swallowed hard and turned away. She seemed positively flustered. “Just tell me that it won’t happen again, and I’ll feel a lot better.”
Kagen frowned. He wanted so badly to just say yes, to tell her what she wanted to hear—and why?—he couldn’t say. Maybe it had something to do with how she had cared for Keitaro over the years, or maybe it had something to do with the purity of her heart. Either way, he just couldn’t do it. He had begun this conversation with truth, and that was how he intended to end it. “I will tell you this, Miss Nightsong: Nothing physical will happen between us again without your consent, or at least, not until you clearly express a desire…” When she practically tripped over her own two feet trying to back away from him—it wasn’t possible; there was a wall behind her—he tried to gentle his voice. “But as for some crazy, impulsive need to claim you, to taste your blood, to feel you beneath me, to mold your passion to match my own, I will try very hard to restrain it, because I don’t know where it’s coming from; and I don’t want to make your life harder than it already is, especially when there is nothing I can give to you long term.” He pushed off the cave wall and took several measured steps backward, forcing himself to give her some room to breathe. “But pray that I never meet this Walker Alencion, the human male who placed his hands on you so possessively, without your consent. This rebel who forces his affections on you with such callous disregard. Because that I would have a hard time ignoring.”
As if her throat had suddenly become dry, Arielle swallowed convulsively. “Walker isn’t a threat to anyone. He’s—”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“He’s my friend.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“But what right do you have—”
Kagen shook his head, repressing the instinct to snarl. “Arielle, it doesn’t matter if I have every right or no right at all.”
She blanched. “And how is that different from what happened with you…what Walker did?”
This time, Kagen did snarl, low in his throat, and his ire began to rise. “Because Walker has no claim to you, and I do.”
Arielle blinked so rapidly she looked like she had dust in her eyes, yet she swallowed her fear and pressed on. “How can you say that? How can you believe that? We only just met.”
Kagen shook his head in frustration, wishing he could articulate something he could hardly understand. Finally, when the words continued to elude him, he said the most honest thing he could. “How doesn’t matter.”
Her mouth dropped open, and she stared at him blankly, her face a mask of confusion and alarm. “Then you will do whatever you wish, and no matter how much you desire to restrain your impulses, that doesn’t matter. Because you are not in control.”
Kagen felt utterly helpless: Now that had turned out well. Instead of mending fences, he had pretty much torn them all down. Instead of making the woman feel better, he had made matters worse. Much worse. “That’s not true, Arielle.” How the hell did he explain? He took a generous step forward, cupped her face in his hands, and bent his head until his mouth hovered only inches away from hers. “If I were to do whatever I wished, I would take you into my arms, carry you into the night, and make love to you beneath the moonlight, until you no longer knew your name, until you no longer cared to know your name…until you could no longer speak any name but my own. I would make you feel things and want things, need things and plead for things, you cannot even imagine in your lovely innocence.” He swallowed hard and backed an inch away. “But as it stands, I will go back into the cave and join my brothers—because I am in control.” He bent over and placed a chaste kiss on her forehead. “Do not stay out here long, Arielle. The night is dark, and there are shadows all around us. You are safe in our care—in my care—perhaps safer than you have ever been before, whether you know this to be true or not.”
With that, he turned and walked away.
Arielle struggled to catch her breath as she watched the powerful vampire retreat. Her heart was thundering in her chest; her good sense was laid out on the ground; and she was certain that her knees were going to give way any moment. She shivered, trying to come up with an explanation: What had she done to provoke this primitive male so deeply? Surely, she had not led him on…
She watched as he crossed the dark expanse, his lithe form becoming one with the shadows he spoke of, and she tried to control her trembling.
Kagen Silivasi was more than just an enigma—
He was a dangerous, dangerous man.
And if she thought Ryder Nightsong had left a hole in her heart, then perhaps she didn’t know what true heartbreak felt like, for this male was capable of creating a crater the size of the Mystic Mountains.
She cringed at the very thought of the damage a male like Kagen Silivasi could leave in his wake, at the very idea of being hopelessly in love with a being from another realm. By all that was sacred, a careless moment could leave Arielle pregnant and abandoned, just like her mother, pining away a lifetime of possibility over the memory of a ghost…one who had never been anything more than a thief in the night.
Oh yes, Kagen Silivasi was dangerous, all right.
He was powerful beyond measure; handsome beyond reckoning; and seductive beyond what was safe. And he took whatever he wanted—just because he could.
Arielle Nightsong resolved to remain wary. She would do everything in her power to help Keitaro Silivasi, but she would keep a safe, safe distance away from his son.
twelve
For a male accustomed to sleeping on a king-sized mattress, with memory foam and a pillow top to boot, Kagen was sleeping as soundly as he could on the thin, rollaway pallet when he heard soft but distinctly human footfalls approaching the narrow cave opening. His eyes shot open, instantly alert, as he measured the faint patter of gravel shifting beneath heels and toes—they were walking softly, carefully…deliberately—and the steady, shallow inhales of breath betrayed no less than four strangers approaching the temporary dwelling.
He immediately sent a gentle pulse of energy into his brothers’ minds, all three at once, conveying the imminent presence of the intruders, the presumed number of the entourage, and the obvious need to remain silent as they watched the scene unfold. All four Silivasis rose from their pallets like ghostly apparitions rising from shallow graves. Without hesitation, they rendered their formidable Vampyr bodies invisible and slinked noiselessly into the numerous shadows of the cave, becoming one with the jagged rocks, melting into the shallow crevices, an
d blending into the stony walls.
They waited.
Perilously alert and listening.
To see what was coming their way.
Kagen swept his eyes across the dimly lit cavern, making note of the single lantern that flickered in the otherwise dark, ominous space, noting how Arielle slept soundly, if not peacefully, on a pile of blankets toward the back of the cave.
Discerning in an instant what would be required to confront the enemy, neutralize the threat, and protect Arielle—all three things at once—he prepared to act with unerring lethality. He had no doubt that Marquis, Nathaniel, and Nachari had just done the same.
As the smell of human sweat and fear drew nearer, he practically held his breath. His fangs slid down from his upper gums, and he prepared to strike in defense of their territory. Their mission. Their unwavering determination to live long enough to rescue Keitaro.
The first intruder to round the corner of the cave entrance was a tall, slender male, about five-foot-eleven, with flame-red hair and pale gray eyes. He held a crude battle-axe in his right hand, and he crouched low on the balls of his feet, prepared to attack at the slightest provocation. Kagen immediately recognized the human from Arielle’s memories—it was the rebel called Walker Alencion, the one who had placed his hands on Arielle so crudely. His lips twitched involuntarily, and he suppressed a rising snarl, even as he unconsciously licked his lips like a salivating wolf.
Steady, healer, Nathaniel intoned psychically from across the cave. Let’s see what all awaits us before we dispense of our enemy.
Kagen blinked several times and nodded. He measured the three strong males at Walker’s back: The blond directly behind him, brandishing a heavy sword, was called Kade, and Arielle had described him as forty years old, deliberate in his thinking, and strategic in all his maneuvers. He was a thinker, and he did nothing rash or impulsive. Kagen’s eyes darted to the male on Kade’s left, a sandy-haired youth of twenty-two years named Echo, with a barbaric, spiked club in his hand. According to Arielle, he was a fierce and unafraid fighter, known for his quick temper and brazen attacks. This one was not afraid to die, and that’s what made him dangerous. To the far right was the fourth and last rebel, Neil Potter. His locks were trimmed so close to his scalp, he appeared to be wearing a helmet, and he was, without question, the most experienced fighter of the group. He held a pair of sharpened triangular daggers in both hands, and he had the unmistakable look of a hawk in his dark, brooding eyes.