Marked

  “I—” Dana choked back a sob. “Please,” she whispered. “I can’t.”

  A look passed between the two just before they lunged.

  Dana never had the chance to scream.

  Theron was not in a mood to go a round with this half-breed. He suddenly wanted answers that had nothing to do with Nick or the colony.

  “I asked you a question, hero,” Nick snapped. “Of what interest is Casey to you?”

  Theron’s jaw clenched, and impatience bubbled through him. He needed to find Acacia and figure out what in Hades she was up to, but the aggression flashing across Nick’s face held him up. The half-breed was itching for a fight, and from the looks of it, he wasn’t about to let Theron out of his sight until he got his answers.

  Theron decided that being honest—to a point—was the best way to handle Nick so he could get the hell out of here and go find Acacia. “The king’s health is failing. He wants to meet his daughter before his time is up. I’m to take her to Argolea unharmed.”

  Nick’s amber eyes grew wary. “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  “Bullshit.” Those amber eyes flashed. “Either tell me the truth or I’ll have my soldiers throw you out by the scruff of the neck and beat you to a pulp in the process.”

  Theron’s muscles flexed. “Try it.”

  Nick’s upper lip peeled off his teeth. “Argonaut or not, you don’t scare me. We’ve existed for hundreds of years without your help. I doubt there’s anything good ol’ King Leonidas wants that Casey could provide. And I don’t for a second buy your load of bull.”

  Theron didn’t answer.

  Nick crossed the room in two long strides and got right up in Theron’s face. They were roughly the same height, close to the same size, and as the man got close, once again Theron had that strange recognition he’d had back in Acacia’s store.

  “You’re dangerously close to death, half-breed,” Theron warned in a low voice. “I’d rethink what you’re about to do.”

  “I don’t know what the hell is going on here or what you really want with Casey,” Nick said, his face inches from Theron’s, “but I intend to find out. And that means she’s not leaving here with you or anyone else until I’m satisfied with the answer.”

  “Nick!” The door to the study burst open and two women spilled into the room, saving Nick from dismemberment.

  The first Theron recognized from earlier—Helene, the one who’d taken Acacia to her room. The other was of average height but thick around the middle, with dark hair pulled into a braid at the back of her head. Both looked upset, but the dark-haired one was frantic.

  Nick’s gazed snapped to them. “What’s happened?”

  “It’s Dana,” Helene said. “No one’s heard from her or seen her since yesterday.”

  Nick’s focus shifted to the dark-haired woman. “Leila, when did you talk to your sister last?”

  “Yesterday morning.” She ran a nervous hand over her hair, unknowingly pulling strands from her braid. “She called from town. I thought she’d stayed over at her blasted apartment, but now I’m not so sure. Something was wrong. She didn’t sound like herself, was talking about new starts and making changes. She said to call her on her cell if I need her. I’ve been trying all afternoon and can’t get through to her. Nick, something’s happened to her. I feel it.”

  Nick moved behind his desk and flipped open a laptop Theron hadn’t noticed earlier. Beneath all this rock, it had to be wired to a satellite somewhere on the surface. Nick’s fingers ran over keys and his eyes scanned the screen as he searched. His brow lowered. “Her phone’s at Casey’s house.”

  “Whose house?” Leila asked.

  “The woman who came in with Nick today,” Helene volunteered.

  Leila’s frantic eyes flicked between Nick and Theron, as if she’d just realized Theron was there. “What is Dana doing there? She knows she has to check in.”

  Nick closed the laptop with a snap and jerked his jacket from the desk chair. “I didn’t say she was there. I said her phone was there. I’m heading over to take a look.”

  For the first time, Theron noticed the dread darkening Nick’s features. Whoever this Dana woman was, she was out there alone, and if she’d gone to Acacia’s house, odds were good she could have run into daemons.

  He grasped Nick’s arm as the half-breed brushed by. “I’ll go with you.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  His grip tightened. “Don’t be an idiot. You’ll need my help.”

  “I fucking doubt it.”

  When Theron’s grip didn’t lessen, Nick turned his fiery eyes Theron’s way, and in them Theron saw disgust and a hatred bred for hundreds of years. “I know your kind, Argonaut. And I’ve seen your help.” He pointed toward the door. “Every Misos in this colony has seen the way your kin helped us. They have the scars to prove it.”

  The mutilated faces Theron had seen in the colony outside flashed in his mind. Followed by the king’s admission that the half-breeds’ existence had been kept secret because there weren’t enough of them to make a difference.

  He looked deep into Nick’s eyes. “I knew nothing of this colony or ones like it until I came here to find Acacia. When I return to Argolea, the Argonauts will look into this matter fully.”

  “How do I know you won’t send your kin to kill us all?”

  It occurred to Theron then that Nick’s hatred for the Argonauts and Argolea as a whole ran much deeper than what was evident on the surface. Somehow, this Misos was connected to Theron’s world in ways no one in this colony could begin to understand. And Theron intended to find out what that connection was.

  But not now.

  “You have my word as leader of the Argonauts. No harm will come to you and your people by our hands.”

  Nick searched Theron’s face for some sign he was lying. Both women in the room were silent as the seconds ticked by on a clock somewhere on the wall. Theron released Nick’s arm, but he didn’t avert his eyes. And neither did Nick.

  “You’ll stay here, hero,” Nick finally said. “But only because I don’t want to have to watch my back with you around.” He pulled on his jacket. “Casey has to willingly go across the portal, and considering everything that happened to her earlier today because of you, I think it’s safe to say she’s not going anywhere with you right now. You sit tight until I get back.” His eyes flared again as he stepped around the women. “And you better fucking believe we’re going to finish this then.”

  He glanced toward Leila. “I’ll call when I find her.”

  When he was gone, the woman called Leila finally turned her attention Theron’s way. “Are you really…?” Her gaze swept to Helene. “Is he really…an Argonaut?”

  Helene nodded slowly. “It looks that way, doesn’t it?”

  Leila seemed stunned stupid. Both continued to stare at him as if he had a third eyeball stuck smack in the middle of his forehead. Neither appeared to know what to say.

  And then Leila stepped toward him, spat in his face and rushed from the room.

  Theron wiped a hand slowly down his cheek and looked toward the one woman who had the stupid sense to remain in the room with him. “Where is Acacia?” he asked as calmly as he could.

  Helene regarded him with flat eyes. And he saw then it wasn’t stupidity but strength born of circumstance. “Upstairs. Sleeping.”

  He headed for the door and paused only when he realized she wasn’t about to stop him. “Why are you not afraid of me?”

  “I’ve seen too much to be afraid of someone like you.”

  “I sense your hatred for me and my kind. You could have kept me from her.”

  “Could anything keep you from her?”

  She knows. He turned and stared at her. Then slowly shook his head.

  “Then my helping you is irrelevant,” Helene said. “But you’d be wise to remember one thing, Argonaut. Even the original heroes were part human like us. Misos from the very beginning. She’s no
t all that different from you. And neither are we.”

  The woman brushed past, leaving him standing alone in the doorway to contemplate her words, a strange sense of unease and foreboding mixing in his veins.

  Half human. Like me.

  He glanced toward the stairs. His human side had been repressed for over two hundred years. Could that be what he was tapping into? And if he was, did that mean Acacia was the cause?

  As he climbed the stairs two by two, he rubbed the heel of his hand against his sternum. And felt that pinch all over again.

  After mere minutes of searching, Theron found Acacia in a room near the end of the hall. Helene had been right. He’d have found her without the woman’s help. He could have located her simply by breathing deep and focusing.

  As soon as he stepped in the room and smelled the familiar scents of lavender and vanilla, his blood heated, and the dream that had become an unfinished reality back in her small house by the lake flared bright.

  A warm glow from the dying embers in the fireplace fell over her body. She lay on her side, snuggled into her pillow, the thick blankets twisted in her long legs. Her shirt had ridden up, and the slightest hint of flesh was visible between the low waistband of her jeans and the edge of her blue cotton tee. His eyes ran over her bare skin, lower to her hip and over to the soft sweet mound of her ass. Thanks to their sultry night together, he knew exactly what that ass looked like…bare and beautiful and marked. His blood pulsed low and hot in response.

  She is the One.

  He frowned at the strange voice in his head. Yeah, well, he knew that already, didn’t he?

  Forcing his gaze away from her beautiful backside, he ran his eyes slowly up her body, across her abdomen, over the swell of her breasts to her face, trying to tamp down the arousal turning him into a rocket launcher. Exhaustion lines marred her perfect skin, and blue smudges had formed beneath her lashes, but to him she was just as stunning as she’d been the night she rescued him from the daemons outside that club.

  Just as beautiful, but thinner.

  For the first time, he noticed Nick had been right. She looked exhausted. Her skin had lost its rosy color and she’d dropped several pounds in just the past few days.

  She’s the One.

  The voice grew stronger as he stood there staring at her. Would the Fates really be so cruel as to give him a half-breed destined to save his race as a soul mate?

  His heart pounded in his chest as he turned for the bathroom and took a cold shower that did nothing to cool him down. Of course the Fates would curse him. Because he was of Heracles’s line. The one hero that was still, to this day, revered by some and reviled by most others. Heracles’s indiscretions were as numerous as his accomplishments, and every Argonaut of his line had been dealt a blow because of his selfishness. Why would Theron think he’d be any different?

  Of course, it was still possible he was only attracted to Acacia because of the way they’d met and who he knew she was. And the fact she was a forbidden and tempting treat he’d never sampled. If she was his One, however, there was a sure way to find out.

  He grew hard and hot at just the thought. As he toweled off, he debated his options. The one that stood out strongest wasn’t ideal, but he had to know, didn’t he? Once he got this absurd thought out of his mind, he could refocus on the real reason he was here.

  Decision made, he pulled on his pants and quietly walked back into the bedroom. Acacia was still out, having shifted only slightly since he’d first stepped into the room. Tired to his bones, he slid into the big bed beside her and gently pulled the covers up around her waist. As he rolled to his side, he fingered a lock of hair falling over her shoulder and brought it to his nose.

  He smelled grapefruit and remembered the shampoo in her shower. Her hair was soft and silky between his fingers. As silky as that between her thighs. The roar returned to his head. His erection responded to the visual in his mind, and he hissed in a long breath to tamp down the renewed arousal zinging along his nerve endings.

  Even if she is your One, she’s sick. And she’s the king’s daughter. It won’t make a difference.

  Yeah. There was that. And the fact that honor and duty came first with him, no matter what.

  Though it nearly killed him, he forced himself to let go of her hair, and in the process brushed her shoulder with the slightest touch. In sleep, she groaned and inched his way, as if searching for more contact. And before he knew it, her beautiful backside came into full contact with his hips, and the erection he’d been trying so hard to keep in check grew rock hard.

  The blood rushed out of his head with a screaming roar and went due south.

  Take her. Now. Find out, right here.

  His cock wedged its way into the crease of her behind as if it had a mind of its own, where it pulsed and pounded and begged for release. A moan slipped from her lips, a mindless act of approval. His lust for her grew to explosive levels. He slid one of his arms around her belly and tugged her back to his bare chest. It was all he could do not to tear off her jeans, flip her to her stomach, lift her hips and plunge hard and deep to discover just what it was about her that left him in such a frenzy.

  And oh, he was ready. He wanted. Needed. But just as he shifted to turn her, her scent drifted into his nose, that sweet and familiar combination traveling through every nerve in his body and all the way into his soul.

  Where, oddly, it calmed him. The way it had in her little house. Enough that his brain kicked into gear and common sense came flooding back. His cock still jerked with a rabid desire to explode inside her, but he found he could control the urge. That he could lie here next to her and enjoy the warmth of her body against his without the burning need to overpower and take what he wanted by force.

  He wanted her to come to him as she had in her house.

  His heart rate slowed. He closed his eyes and drew in long, deep breaths, more tired than he remembered being in…ages. And that’s when he heard the voice. Again.

  She’s the One.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Casey knew she wasn’t alone even before her eyes drifted open. The rhythmic breathing at her back was a dead giveaway. As was the hard arousal nestled against her backside.

  Any normal woman would have panicked, especially considering the circumstances. But she wasn’t normal—not anymore—and even before she looked she knew it was Theron up tight against her back. His dark, spicy scent flooded her senses. In the stillness, the solid weight of his arm across her hip became as real as her pulse pounding in her brain.

  What the hell was he doing in her bed?

  Carefully, so as not to wake him, she rolled to her back. The movement made his arm slide across her belly, sending sparks along her nerve endings. She sat up slowly and reached for his hand to free herself from his gasp, only to falter when their fingers touched.

  A jolt of electricity shimmied through her. The room spun. And suddenly she wasn’t in a bedroom anymore, but in a dark and cold forest, surrounded by the undeniable sights and smells of death.

  She gasped. Turned a slow circle. Wondered how she’d gotten here and where Theron had gone. Cannons exploded behind her, the loud sounds making her jump and whip around. Dried leaves crunched beneath her feet. Shouts and curses and bloodcurdling screams came from far off in the distance.

  Dear God, she was in the middle of a war zone. Her adrenaline spiked. She looked right and left as her heart kicked up to rival the roar of a 747 on takeoff. Where was Theron?

  Gunfire echoed. Followed by a voice Casey knew intimately, booming from the trees no more than twenty yards away.

  “Patéras!”

  Without questioning her common sense, Casey tore off in that direction. Then pulled up short when she reached the small clearing and the scene laid out before her.

  Two daemons lay mauled and incapacitated on the hard earth near a small bubbling brook. Fresh blood oozed from their wounds to run down their grotesque faces, staining the ground with the vileness in t
heir veins. A man—the one from Casey’s dream the night she’d met Theron—lay on the ground mere feet away. More blood gushed from a gaping wound in his chest, his eyes and mouth open as if he was in shock. Across the small stream, a boy who looked no more than fourteen, wearing a ratty gray coat, stood slack-jawed, with eyes as wide as saucers. In his arms he cradled a smoking rifle.

  Theron bolted through the trees at Casey’s right and dropped to the ground beside the older man, his own features twisted in disbelief. “Patéras. No.”

  “Theron,” the man gasped, reaching a shaky, bloody hand up to grip Theron’s shirt. “You must finish them.”

  “I will. I…Patéras.” He placed both hands over the wound in the other man’s chest. “We have to get you back. Now. We—”

  “Ochi,” the older man barked in a weak voice.

  Theron’s muscles froze as if he hadn’t heard right.

  “Ochi,” the older man said again, softer this time. “My time has already come and gone. You must”—he cringed in pain—“finish them.”

  Theron lifted grief-stricken eyes to look toward the daemons, who, Casey realized in horror, were starting to revive, bloody stumps and all.

  “This is what you were born for,” the older man said, pulling Theron’s attention back to him. “You will take my spot—”

  “No.”

  “You will do as the king commands. You won’t question his authority. Trust him as you trust me. Remember we are”—the older man took a shuddering breath—“of the same line.”

  “Patéras,” Theron whispered.

  The older man’s hand fell against the dirt. His eyes flickered, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “To peproōmenon phugein adunaton, gios mou.”

  Then his head rolled to the side, and in the silence that followed, Casey watched a single tear slide down Theron’s cheek, roll across his chin and drip onto the older man’s face.

  Though the daemons were now growling low in their throats and groaning as they righted themselves, Theron’s motions were slow and methodical. He carefully closed the older man’s eyes, then looked up across the river to where the young boy, still frozen in place with the whites of his eyes showing all around his dark irises, stood immobilized, staring at the scene.