He cut her off with a kiss so passionate it took her breath. By the time he broke off the kiss, she was dazed. “You’re safe, and that’s all that matters.”
She looked over at Hunter, who was kneeling, head bowed, next to a dead MoonBound male she recognized but didn’t know. All around, the surviving clan members were patching up the severely injured or gathering those who hadn’t made it. The clan had taken a hard hit, and it would be a long time before they recovered.
“What language were Kars and Hunter speaking? What were they talking about?”
“Fuck if I know. I’ve never heard that language before. And I’ve never seen him like that.” Riker sounded as shaken as she was as his hands roamed her face, her neck, her arms, as if he couldn’t believe she was alive and in one piece. She knew the feeling, because she couldn’t keep her hands off him, either. “It sounded like a negotiation, but whatever it was, I get the feeling we didn’t exactly win the battle.”
She got that feeling, too. And it had nothing to do with the fact that so many had been injured or killed. Whatever Hunter had done, the consequences were going to be with them for a long time.
Hunter came over to them, his expression grave. “Are you okay?”
She nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said. “What Kars said about me breaking the deal . . . it wasn’t that simple. It was—”
Hunter silenced her with a gesture. “I know. He’s a bastard with no sense of honor. He shouldn’t have tried to keep you . . . or anything that belongs to you.” He gave her a look charged with meaning, and she knew he was aware of the life she carried in her belly.
Riker tucked her into the curve of his arm, and she settled against him as if everything was right with the world. It wasn’t, but for now, she needed this, even if it only lasted a few minutes.
“What did you do to end the battle?” Riker asked.
“What I had to do,” Hunter said in a clipped voice that dripped with a drop it vibe.
Nicole had never been very good at dropping anything, but in this case, there were more pressing matters. “Did you bring first-aid supplies? I can help with the injured.”
Hunter shook his head. “Jag’s handling medic duty. I want you out of the way.” He shot a pointed look at Riker. “Take Nicole back to the clan, and have Grant see to your wounds. I’m sending some warriors with you.”
Riker’s wounds would be mostly healed by the time they got back, but Nicole kept her mouth shut. Hunter was trying to get her pregnant butt to safety, and she knew it.
“Hunt—” Riker started, but the clan chief rounded on him with a hiss.
“It wasn’t a suggestion.”
Riker popped a sarcastic salute. “Heading home as ordered, sir. Moving out now.” As Hunter strode away, Riker uttered a curse. “Whatever went down between him and Kars is going to come back to bite us in the ass.”
“I’m thinking the same thing.” She glanced in the direction she and Aylin had come from, hoping the ShadowSpawn female was okay. How much had Aylin risked to get Nicole back to MoonBound? Nicole doubted that Kars would let his daughter’s actions go unpunished. The question was, how severe would the punishment be?
“Let’s go.” Riker took Nicole’s hand and started toward MoonBound’s headquarters.
Instantly, several clan members fell in with them. Most of the warriors kept to the rear, but a few scouted out ahead and to the sides in a well-coordinated tactical maneuver. Nicole didn’t miss the way Riker watched them all, nodding his approval and, once, barking out an order to one male who fell back a little too far.
For a long time, no one said anything, and the farther they got from the site of the battle, the more distance came between Nicole and Riker. The things they’d left unfinished were like an invisible crowbar prying them apart, until they weren’t holding hands anymore.
“Did they treat you well?” Riker finally asked, although he kept his attention focused everywhere but on her, even as he spoke.
“They didn’t hurt me, if that’s what you’re asking.” A squirrel scolded her as she stepped over a gully, waving away Riker’s offer to help. “Have you seen Bastien?”
“Not since I left ShadowSpawn.”
She hopped another stream, loving how effortless these things were with her new vampire body. Even at an easy jog they covered almost twice the amount of ground a human could at a run. “I’ve missed him.”
“Me, too,” Riker admitted. “I have a lot of time to make up to him.”
“I’m sure you’ll develop an amazing relationship with him.”
“I hope so.” He slowed as they approached a giant, moss-covered boulder she recognized. They were close to headquarters. By her estimation, they’d traveled a hundred fifty miles in just over three hours, and they hadn’t been moving at full speed. “Who knows what kind of damage was done to him, though.”
She hoped Myne had used her intel to make Chuck pay for what he’d done. She wasn’t going to apologize to Riker, though. Not again. If he didn’t know how deep her regret ran by now, he never would.
A low, steady hum vibrated through her bones as they approached headquarters, and she realized the buzz had been there all along, like a signal from a homing beacon that grew stronger the closer she got to MoonBound.
“I can feel the clan,” she murmured. “Wow.”
Riker grinned, a stunner that made her heart flip. “It means you associate the clan with home. Helps you find your way back.”
Emotion gripped her so tightly she forgot to breathe. She hadn’t had a home since she was a child. She’d had houses, but not homes. Now she had something worth finding her way back to.
Speaking of finding her way back . . . “How is Lucy doing?” Nicole asked. “ShadowSpawn didn’t hurt her, did they?”
“Not as far as we know,” Riker said darkly. “She won’t talk about it.” Nicole’s thoughts went to really bad places. Riker seemed to know, and he came to a stop outside headquarters. He waved everyone off, leaving them alone under the light of the rising moon. “She’s okay. But I’m not sure you are. Hell, I’m not sure I am.”
Something was different about Riker, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. What she did know for certain was that she wanted to tell him about her pregnancy and beg him to take her to bed. But a child wasn’t going to change anything. Oh, she knew he’d be an incredible father, and there was no doubt whatsoever that he’d be by her side. But if he wasn’t over Terese, he wasn’t getting Nicole in a two-for-one with the baby.
“If you’re talking about my health, I’m fine.”
“And if I’m talking about your emotions?”
“Not so fine.” She sighed. “Nothing has changed, has it?”
“A lot has changed. You were right about my guilt over Terese.” He shoved his hands into his pants pockets and spoke quickly, as if he was afraid he’d forget what he had to say if he didn’t get it out. “I was blaming you, and it wasn’t fair, because none of it was your fault. I blamed myself but didn’t want to, and you were an easy target. I never felt like Terese had the life or the mate she deserved while she was alive, because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t love her. Not like I love you.”
On the heels of that admission, Nicole could barely form a coherent thought. “You . . . what?”
“You heard me,” he said gruffly.
She thought back to the day he’d kicked her out of his bedroom. He’d been so full of festering poison. Something must have lanced the wound. “What changed?”
A breeze filtered through the tree branches, and a single snowflake drifted to the ground between them. Riker turned his face into the wind, and she had a feeling he was looking for an excuse not to meet her gaze. “I realized I was a fucking idiot.”
“When?” she asked, suddenly suspicious. “After I turned?”
“Before.”
She didn’t see how that was possible. He’d kicked her out of his bedroom, and the next time he saw her, she was a vampire. “Bullshit.??
?
“It’s true.”
“Then why didn’t you say anything?”
He turned back to her, his sandy hair mussed from the breeze, and her fingers itched to comb through it. “The thing with Bastien and Chuck. The bedroom. It all came down on me at once, and I freaked out. Instead of giving in to my need for you, I pushed you away. I was a huge jerk. A total bastard. I’m not proud of it, but there it is.”
What he was saying made sense, but there was something more going on here. Nicole wasn’t sure how she knew that, but her new vampire senses were tingling. “Ah.”
“You don’t believe me?”
She wanted to. God, she wanted to. How easy it would be to say yes, to take Riker at his word. She wouldn’t even feel foolish about doing it, since he’d been nothing but honest with her from the beginning.
But if she’d learned anything at all over the course of the last two weeks, it was that she should never ignore her instincts. She’d disregarded her gut feelings about Daedalus, had trusted others far too easily, and the results had been disastrous.
“Nicole?” Riker prompted, and she winced at the slight crack in his voice. He sensed her doubt, and she hated that her hesitation hurt him.
“I want to believe you,” she croaked.
“But you don’t.” His expression shuttered so completely that he looked like a different person. A stranger. “Then there’s nothing left to say.”
Throwing her words from the day he’d kicked her out of the bedroom back at her—he was good at that—he stalked off, leaving her standing at the entrance to headquarters.
Heart aching, grief leaving her frozen to the cold ground, she waited a long time before she went inside . . . but to what, she had no idea.
AFTER MAKING SURE his surviving warriors were being cared for, Hunter made a beeline for his quarters. He hit the wet bar before his door even gave the soft whoosh of air that signaled it was halfway closed. In a single, fluid motion, he grabbed a bottle of vodka and a glass in one hand and then sank down onto the couch.
Blindly, he splashed liquor into the highball and knocked back three huge gulps. The powerful burn didn’t even come close to scouring away the echoes of the dead.
He’d lost six warriors today. Six more were seriously wounded. More than a dozen would spend a couple of miserable days recovering.
Then there was the conversation he’d had with ShadowSpawn’s leader as he bargained to get Nicole back.
Hunter had made a deal with the devil, and payment would be due soon.
Fitting, he supposed, since a pact with a demon was what had led to the creation of vampires in the first place.
Hunter sprawled against the cushions, legs spread, eyes closed. He hadn’t spoken the ancient language of the Elders in almost a century, since the last time he’d traveled through mystical vortexes to Boynton Canyon to meet with said Elders. Every time he spoke the inherent language that he, and every first- and second-generation vampire, had been born with, it rattled him. Drained him. Reminded him that he was very different from everyone else in the clan.
He wondered if Kars was right now feeling the same way. Not that Hunter gave a rat’s ass if Kars was as drained as he was. It would just be cool to know Hunter wasn’t alone.
There were times when Hunter liked being one of the special few who knew the true history of vampires, but this wasn’t one of them. How lucky those like Grant, Riker, and Myne were, to attribute the vampire curse to a scientifically explained virus or two tribal chiefs who were bled on by a raven and a crow.
Very few vampires knew the truth, thanks to carefully crafted legends and half-truths fabricated by the first- and second-generation vampires, all of whom had sworn an oath of silence to the demon that had bestowed the gift of vampirism on them.
As a second-gen, Hunter was sworn to secrecy, but every time he drank, he wondered why he bothered. Why anyone bothered. All but two of the Originals were dead, and more than half of the first-generation vampires were gone. At this point, no one would believe the truth, anyway.
Demons? Even Hunter wasn’t convinced. At least, he wasn’t convinced that they still existed. Maybe the demons of the Native American beliefs had faded away, victims of a lack of education of the old ways and gods. If no one believed, how could demons exist?
He started to pour more vodka into the glass, but screw it. A bottle was glass, right?
Tossing the glass aside, he put the bottle to his lips and chugged. Ancient curses and oaths, demons and devils, none of it was important. What was important was the deal he’d made today. A deal that saved Riker from going mad with need for the female he’d imprinted on and that might have saved the life of Nicole and her unborn child.
But it was also a deal that would tie MoonBound and ShadowSpawn together forever. Kars was finally getting what he’d wanted, what he’d been pressuring Hunter to do for decades.
Nuh-hun esu . . . vedi.
I’ll mate your daughter.
SOMETHING WAS WRONG. Nicole didn’t know what it was, exactly, but something was making her chest hurt. She’d gone to Grant for a checkup, but he was useless. He could perform advanced first aid, but when it came to examining the female body, he got all flustered and fidgety. He could barely listen to her heart through a stethoscope without hyperventilating. And it only got worse after she told him she was pregnant.
He’d finally fetched Katina, but all Nicole and the other female had done was drink Grant’s Kool-Aid concoctions. Nicole decided she liked whatever flavor blue and purple made.
“So.” Katina sat back in the rolling desk chair she’d planted herself in. “You broke up with Riker, and your chest hurts.” She shrugged. “I’m no rocket scientist, but even I can see that those two things are related.”
Nicole huffed. “It’s not a broken heart.” Yes, she had that, too, but the ache in her chest was physical. “There’s something . . . weird. Maybe it’s the pregnancy?”
Katina’s placating smile had Nicole bracing for the other female’s sarcasm. “Honey, I know you’re some sort of vampire physiologist, but you must have missed the class about babies growing in your belly, not your chest.”
Nicole glared at Katina before doing the same to Grant, who sat at a nearby computer and snickered. “You two are no help. I could be dying.”
“And I could be sleeping.” Katina yawned. “Is your crisis over yet?”
“No.” Nicole nudged Katina with her foot. “Wake up. This is payback for wanting to eat me.”
“You used to be food,” Katina pointed out, without an ounce of contrition.
Nicole threw her head back and let out a sound of frustration. She wasn’t truly upset with Katina and Grant; she was upset with herself. She was pregnant, her chest hurt, and she’d probably ruined her relationship with Riker. He’d tried to tell her he loved her, and she’d doubted him. No wonder every time he saw her, he’d turn and walk the other way. Or even worse, he’d pass her by with nothing more than a polite nod. A polite freaking nod.
They’d kissed. They’d fed from each other. They’d had sex against a wall. And in a dungeon. He’d used his tongue on her in ways that gave her hot flashes just thinking about.
And he was politely nodding at her.
“You know,” Grant said, “Riker’s pretty miserable, too.”
“Could have fooled me,” she muttered.
“It’s true.” Katina downed a test tube filled with orange liquid. “That one’s nasty.” She plunked the tube into an empty wooden holder. “I sparred with him this morning. He’s all sullen and broody, like one of those emo TV vampires that were popular a while back. So lame.”
“Well, he’s never been a load of laughs,” Grant chimed in. “But yes, he’s even less mirthful than usual.”
Mirthful? Who used that word? “He said he loved me even before I turned into a vampire, and I wasn’t sure if I should believe him or not.”
Katina thought about that for a second. “Yeah, you know, I’d be skeptical
, too. He had a lot of reason to hate the human you.”
“I think you should have believed him,” Grant said.
Both Katina and Nicole turned to him. “Why?” Nicole asked.
Grant went back to whatever he was doing on the computer. “Because males don’t say sappy things like that unless they mean it.”
“Then why was he so quick to walk away from me?”
There was a loud sigh, and then Grant pushed away from the table. “Okay, let’s say you accepted him at his word, even though you had some niggling doubt. Then later down the road, humans do something stupid and heinous to vampires, the way they always do, and he gets angry. Starts railing about how awful humans are. How self-conscious are you going to be? Are you going to wonder if, deep down, he still thinks of you that way? Even if you don’t worry about it, he will. He needs you to know he’s past it and that he loves you for who you are. Not what you are.”
Nicole stared at the scientist, floored that he was so in tune with relationships when he was so out of tune with pretty much everything else.
“Damn,” Katina said as she eyed him up and down. “Sometimes you actually make sense.”
“I always make sense.” Grant stood, yanking the bottom of his jacket to straighten it. “Everyone else needs to listen better.”
Nicole watched him gather up empty test tubes. People accused Grant of not playing with a full deck, but she was starting to suspect that his deck was full—he was just playing a different game.
“Does he know about the baby?” Katina asked.
“I haven’t told him.”
Katina tsked. “You need to. And if you believe what he said, you need to tell him that, too.” She leaned forward and patted Nicole on the knee. “It’ll make your chest feel better.”
So many emotions brewed close to the surface, leaving Nicole on the verge of breaking into a loud, sloppy bawl. Love for Riker. Sorrow for hurting him. Anger that he’d taken so long to come around. And joy that he’d given her the chance to find a real home among the least likely people she could ever have imagined.