“That’s not true,” she started to argue but got no further.
“It is true. You were not prepared for an ancient evil like Adrian.”
Okay, now she was mad again. She jumped to her feet. “You were just as naive as I. You sold yourself for me.”
“And counted on you staying with the Knights. Adrian counted on your guilt. Thus why I say it’s evil. He used it to capture you again, Kresley.”
“Being here does not make me captured again. I'm going to make this right. I am.”
“Well, you better do it fast. You have two weeks, Kresley. Two weeks and then it's all over.”
She blinked, her heart racing for some reason that reached beyond the heat of the moment; it spoke of dread. “What are you talking about?”
“They marked you again. A temporary mark that will fade in two weeks, if we give them what they want. Otherwise, you become theirs, just as I am. And so does your firestarting ability.”
“What?” she gasped, stunned into stillness for several seconds before she held her wrists up and searched for the mark of the Guardians that one of her wrists had once born, but finding nothing. “I’m not. I’m not marked.”
“The marks will appear if they become permanent.”
She shook her head, backed up, and sat down, suddenly unable to support her wobbly knees. “How?”
“You touched my bracelets. You touched them, the Guardians. They are devious. They knew I would not help you get the ring to save myself, so they ensured that I had further incentive. They knew I would do whatever it took to save you.”
She was shaking, she could feel herself shaking. She told herself not to think about the horrible hallucinations the Guardians had given her, about the snakes. She was strong; she could endure. Adrian’s words slid into her mind. “Because we're mates,” she said, searching Lucan’s face. “That’s why you traded yourself for me.”
Color washed from his face and he went completely, utterly still. His response was slow, a measured avoidance and nothing more. “My time has come and gone. Yours has barely started.”
She hugged herself, chilled to the bone for reasons she couldn’t explain. Feeling alone, so very alone. She barely contained the urge to demand an answer, to yell that demand; her emotions were wild, despite years of practiced containment. And years of her emotions setting fires she couldn’t control. She almost yelled back. Her nails were digging into her arms, her eyes locked to his face, searching for the truth she didn’t want to find, didn’t want to be real.
Mates. Obligation. Her parents had felt obligated to care for her. They had blamed her for the financial distress of medical expenses and moving time and time again, even though they’d moved by choice, to hide their fear and embarrassment over her. And though she’d known she’d caused Lucan’s captivity, somehow knowing it was an obligatory sacrifice hurt more than she'd imagined possible. She couldn’t say why. Just that it did.
She finally managed a hoarse, strained voice that she barely recognized as her own. “You traded yourself for me because I am your mate.”
“Kresley–"
The thin shell of control slipped and she yelled. “Are we mates?”
Defeat flickered across his face, telling her the truth before he spoke. “Yes. We are mates.”
She drew a harsh breath. “And neither you, nor the Knights, thought to tell me this little piece of critical information?”
“I didn’t know until it was too late,” he admitted softly, “until the Guardians had you under their command.”
“But the Knights knew.”
He nodded. “After I was gone. Not before.”
And Laura, too, she bet. Everyone knew but her. Or maybe on some level she had known Lucan was her mate. Maybe she had felt obligated to save him. Wasn’t that what made the world tick – obligation?
“Adrian told me,” she whispered, trying to contain her anger, but it didn’t work. “Adrian! Is that how you all thought I should find out?” She inhaled and let it out again, calming herself the tiniest bit. “Do you know how that makes me feel?”
“Listen to me, Kresley." He held up his hands in a calming fashion. “Adrian is manipulating you. If you think this through, you will see that. The Knights were protecting you. They didn’t want you to come after me and get hurt.”
“Huh,” she said, unable to keep the bitterness from her tone, somehow uncurling her arms and pressing them into the mattress again. “That sounds an awful lot like manipulation to me. What else don’t I know?”
The tormented look on his face twisted her stomach in knots and told her that yet another bombshell was headed her way. “What?” she demanded. “Just tell me. I can’t take this not knowing.”
Still he hesitated, hands on his hips, tension radiating off of him. He looked up at the ceiling, seemed to grapple with how to say what he had to say. “When I kissed you,” he said, leveling her in a dark stare, his voice, gravely, strained, “I wanted to claim you as my mate. I . . . to … bite your shoulder and mark you. If that would have happened, if I had lost control, your destiny would now be linked to mine. The Guardians would own you as long as they own me. I … can’t touch you. Not without risking that again.”
Kresley felt as if she’d had the wind knocked out of her; she felt out of control. As if nothing was as it seemed, nothing was safe, nothing was secure. Even in Lucan’s arms, there was danger – there was a façade of passion that was controlled by Demons. It was a feeling she hated, a feeling her firestarting had forced on her most of her life.
Her eyes prickled with unshed tears. I will not cry. “Where does this leave us?” she managed in a remarkably unaffected voice.
He studied her a moment, seemed to size up her ability to deal with what he had to say. “We’re in this together, Kresley,” he said. “And we are in it to win, but we have to make sure we don’t hurt anyone else in the process. I wouldn’t put it past Adrian to use us to get to the Knights. We need to know what connection Cullen has to the Knights.”
She gave a jerky nod, still emotionally unraveling inside and mad at herself for it. “I’ll get it. I’ll get the book.”
He held up a dismissive hand. “Oh no. After everything that has happened tonight, you are not going back there.”
That set her off and she leapt to her feet, going on the attack. “I most certainly am, too,” she spat back. “You have no right to make my choices, and don’t you dare say a word about the mating thing. An invisible link neither of us chose does not make either of us bound to the other.” She pointed at her chest. "I make my choices.”
Lucan simply stood there, unmoving–so close, she could see the tick in his jaw. Too close. She inhaled the spicy male scent of him and felt her body warming. Unaffected, nonchalant, his blue eyes half-veiled, he replied with obstinate finality, “You aren’t going back.”
“Oh my God!” she ground out between her teeth. “Where is the gentle, understanding scientist I met a year ago.”
“Buried beneath the man trying to keep you alive despite your insistence on putting yourself in harm's way.”
A frustrated sound slid from her lips; her hands balled by her sides. “Two weeks, Lucan,” she ground out. “Two. Weeks. I am going back to Cullen Moore’s offices. We need the book and we need that ring.”
His chest lifted with a deep inhalation. Finally, he gave a hint of compromising– he didn’t completely say no to her returning. “You said they caught you looking around. What if you walk into a trap?”
“Then you can rescue me but not a second before.”
He studied her a moment, looking as if he would again refuse. Then he ran his hands through his hair, seemed to measure his options. His lips thinned, his stare penetrating, intense. “You have no idea how much I hate you being near Cullen Moore.”
Possessiveness brushed his words, settled in the deep blue depths of his eyes. And to her absolute shock, a tiny sizzle of alluring fire rocketed down her spine. She had no idea why, only that it exi
sted, and confused her. “I just want to get this over with. I want this entire year to end and have all of this go away.”
She didn’t give him time to reply, desperate for some space to think and process, to reel her emotions back into check. She cut a quick look at the clock on the dresser and noted the late hour. “It’s three in the morning." She walked around the bed, putting distance between Lucan and herself, turning to face him with the mattress between them, the sword still lying on the mattress. On the bed. Her throat was dry. Making the bed the centerpiece wasn’t the brightest idea. “I am going to try to sleep.”
He stood there, so still it seemed as if he wasn’t breathing, staring down at the sword lying on the bed. Then, abruptly he moved. He grabbed a pillow and tossed it on the floor. A second later, he disappeared out of sight, taking a position on the floor. Kresley gaped at the surprising action, crawling across the bed to find Lucan stretched out on his back, arm over his face.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
He didn’t look at her. “Getting some rest.”
“Don’t you think the couch would be more comfortable?”
“The couch is in the other room. You’re here. You’re the one I’m protecting.”
“I thought you said we were fine for the night.”
He lifted his arm and peeked up at her. “I’m not taking any chances.”
Oh good grief, he was impossible. Couldn’t he understand a need for space? For privacy? She snagged her pillow and started for the door. “Where you go, I go,” he said. “Might as well stay and enjoy the bed. The couch will be uncomfortable. For me, a floor is a floor.”
She stood at his feet, glaring down at all six-foot-plus, gorgeous, muscular inches of him. All of which had been pressed close to her, holding her, darn near making love to her, only a few hours before. Yes. Space. She really needed space. Time to think. Time to get a grip on herself. She was confused, hurt, overwhelmed. “I believe I’ve proven I can take care of myself at least long enough for you to get from the couch to the bedroom.”
He peeked out from under his arm again. “You aren’t winning this argument.”
She glared, and considered her next move. Throwing her hands in the air in surrender, she walked back to her side of the bed. Yanking up the covers, she climbed beneath and pulled them to her chin, resentful of the invasion of her private space.
This past year had brought some soul searching and her decision to stand alone. Lucan had saved her from the Guardians. She’d wanted to save him, even do the mating thing – whatever. But she would not have Lucan hovering over her protectively, just because of this bond. She knew in her heart that standing alone protected everyone. Her fire had caused all of this to start with. Her fire had even made her doctor a target of the Beasts.
Depending on someone in a forced relationship was heartache that she didn’t want any part of anyway. She peeked toward the edge of the bed, hoping she could see Lucan, though she couldn’t say why. But he was out of sight. With a resigned sigh, she glanced at the fire escape once more for safe measure and then reached over and turned off the light.
Snuggling into the pillow, Kresley cringed at the instant images of snakes flashing in her mind. She barely kept herself from jerking to a sitting position. Instead, her hand went to the sword – right – as if that would stop the hallucinations if they came. Nothing stopped them. She remembered that all too well. She hated those snakes. Hated them so much.
Two weeks. She only had two weeks. She’d been prepared to take Lucan’s place, but she’d dismissed that option, so this news of being marked had sideswiped her. Her mind raced with the "what if’s" that could make this situation end badly. The words of the Seer took on a fiercer meaning. Removing that ring will destroy you, she had said.
“I won’t let them have you. You have my word.”
Lucan’s words came without warning, washed over her in welcome promise. Her heart squeezed with understanding. He wasn’t protecting her from what was outside this apartment. He was protecting her from what was inside her head, the fears over the snakes, the doubts of escape. He’d held her through it all, and he knew the terror those snakes had created in her. She was reminded of how she’d felt accepted and understood with Lucan. Here in the dark, this night, this moment, she was not alone. She had Lucan.
A vow came to her lips. “And I won’t let them have you,” she whispered. “You have my word.”
Chapter Eleven
Lucan paced the tiny apartment living room, waiting for Kresley to finish showering and packing, trying to get his emotions back in line.
I won’t let them have you.
The irony of those words spoken by Kresley the night before replayed in his head over and over – replayed during hours of staring at the bedroom ceiling, his body hot and hard, taunted with the sweet jasmine scent of Kresley. There was an inner innocence about Kresley, perhaps more an inner good. Even before he’d realized she was his mate, he’d been drawn to the sweetness in her. The sweetness of her voice, her smile – a smile lost to this hell they were in. A smile he wanted her to find again. It would just have to be without him. He could not be saved. He knew that now.
Which was why he’d had no intention of telling Kresley they were mates. What purpose did it serve? Kissing her had awakened the vicious beast within him. And it was clear – the Guardians had simply been suppressing and controlling that beast, holding it as captive as he was. They had released it only to serve their own purposes – to claim Kresley as their own. Over and over, in his mind he played the horrid "what if" questions. And "what if's" were dangerous. They spoke of lost faith. They spoke of self-doubt. But still he asked them. What if he were ever freed from the Guardians; the beast within him would be too strong to defeat. What if it sucked up the little bit of human soul he had left, and he became a Demon, and he became the death of the woman he was trying to save.
The woman he could not seem to stop hurting, the woman who had spent a year blaming herself for what had happened to him; that tore him up inside. Demons were to blame, not her. Some of which were man made, his own personal choices, rather than those possessing him. Lucan had convinced himself he was saving her, and it seemed he’d destroyed her will to find the "purpose" she’d claimed to have.
So how, now, did he free her from that guilt, and send her back to the ranch, without leaving her in pain and bitterness? How did he erase the fear she had of her own abilities, so that she could use them for good?
Those questions danced along his nerve endings like little zaps of energy. He was edgy, coming unglued.
He paced some more, but there wasn’t enough room in the small space to expend enough energy to deal with the turbulence of his emotions. He shook his hands by his sides. God, he was jittery. Kresley’s cracker-box apartment wasn’t helping. The kitchen and living room were separated by nothing but the distinction of tile versus carpet. It was like a prison. This city was a prison – his prison.
Lucan cursed, and stormed toward the kitchen, white hot anger at his predicament coursing through his veins.
He yanked open her refrigerator just to do something, anything – stared blankly inside, blinked, inhaled, blinked.
It killed him to think about becoming one of those Beasts that had killed his family, as other unmated Knights had before him. And he knew he couldn’t risk mating, if Kresley would consider him in the first place. She resisted anything that bound her to him, or anyone else. As if she were the Demon, not he. She was running, as he had, and he had to stop her before she destroyed herself– no, before he destroyed her by the choices that had brought them to where they were.
An image of his sister running, as well, flashed in his mind, running from the Beasts as Kresley was running, in so many ways – running like his sister. He didn’t know how to save her. He slammed the refrigerator shut, cursing under his breath, hands on his hips. Three hundred fucking years and he couldn’t get that image out of his mind. He could still see his sister’s
wilted body in his arms, still see her on his medical table as he feverishly worked to mend her wounds, as he begged her to breathe. But medicine couldn’t save her, only a sword could have. Exactly why he’d left medicine for damn near a century after that. He’d lived for his sword.
He abandoned the kitchen and walked to the scuffed, brown coffee table, grabbed the remote and flipped on the television. Anything to get out of his own head. Somehow, he managed to force himself to sit down and focus on what the newscaster was saying and it wasn’t good news.
The female body pulled from the Dumpster is unidentified and police fears mount as a recent string of murders ...
“I know that street,” Kresley said, drawing Lucan’s attention. He found her standing in the doorway of the bedroom, her face pale, expression shaken. She wore a slim-cut, black skirt and emerald green silk blouse that made her eyes shine. “That’s the street behind the bar we were in last night. They killed the Seer, didn’t they?”
Grimly, he nodded. “Probably. I plan to find out.”
“Because of what they thought she might tell us.”
He agreed. “Yes. Someone didn’t want her to tell us something.”
“The wolves?”
He nodded. “Probably. They were there, but then we also have to consider the stranger with the painted face.”
Her brow furrowed. “You said he didn’t mean us harm.”
“I said he didn’t mean us any harm last night, but he sure proved he was capable of doing harm.” He pushed to his feet. “Let’s walk and talk. We'll grab some food on the way, and I’ll check into the hotel while you are at work.” She nodded in silent agreement and Lucan added, “For the record, I still don’t want you to go to that place today, but I know you won’t listen. It’s clear those wolves came for me last night, and if there were more than the four I saw killed, you might have been recognized.”