by Laura Wright
While Kate bit her lip to keep from laughing, Lucian flashed his fangs at his older brother. “You. Shut it.” Then he turned back to Bronwyn. “And you, my beautiful raven-haired vixen,” he said in a far gentler tone, nuzzling her neck. “Don’t pretend you like all that sappy shit. When I know the truth. When I know exactly what you prefer.”
He leaned in then and whispered something in Bron’s ear. Instantly she gasped, her cheeks turning bright red. Bringing a hand to his mouth, she tried to silence him, but Lucian only growled playfully and nibbled at her fingers. Pulling her hand free, Bronwyn broke out into a fit of laughter.
Phane watched the entire display, his gut aching. He turned away from them and focused on Helo and Lycos. This was becoming too familiar. This jealousy, this growing need for a mate of his own. He wanted what his Roman brothers had. What his Beast brother, Erion, had. Shit, he would even go into Hell and remain if it meant he had a chance of finding someone like Hellen or Bron or Sara or Kate.
His gaze moved back to the family, to Dillon in particular. His half sister, the one who had also been headed for the Dumpster when Cruen had decided to rescue them, adopt them. Use them. She was eyeing her own mate, the Impure male Gray, but not with flirtatious abandon. Instead, the female mutore looked thoughtful, concerned even. Phane crossed his arms over his naked chest and waited for whatever was to come. Because clearly this wasn’t a social call, no matter how much the couples were using it as one.
“Dillon?” He said her name softly, but firmly.
She looked up, found his gaze.
“What’s going on?” he asked her, his voice carrying above the small crowd, snagging their attention.
When all conversation had ceased and all eyes were on D, she puffed out her cheeks and blew a weighty breath that caught in the cool night air.
“We have a slight problem,” she began. “Unfortunately or fortunately because of my illustrious and very unwanted position on the Order—”
“We get it, baby,” Gray said, giving her a smile and a squeeze on her shoulders, trying to ease her tension. “You have a love/hate thing going on with those Pureblood bastards.”
She turned and glared at him. “Yeah, laugh it up. It should’ve been you.”
“True that,” Gray said. “Mouth closed over here.”
She shook her head and turned back to the group. “Anyway. The Order has learned about the shifter community where Sara’s sister and her adopted family live.”
“Shit . . . ,” Helo muttered. The Order had only recently found out about the trip into Hell, and the origin of Erion’s mutore side. What would their reaction be to another group who’d had influence over their vampire blood?
“How?” Phane asked, drawing closer.
“Feeyan informed us,” Dillon said. “I don’t know how she found out. But that’s not the problem. Well, not the biggest part of the problem.”
“What do you mean?” Helo asked.
Lycos sneered. “Are the big, blustering vampires scared of the wee animals?”
“The Order can’t see the shifters as a threat to the Eternal Breed,” Phane said, wondering where this was all going. “Not like the mutore were.”
“Are,” Lycos corrected, his tone dripping with ire. “Mutore will never be accepted by the Purebloods even if one happens to be on the Order.”
Dillon turned her gaze on him, but said nothing.
“The shifters have kept to themselves forever,” Helo said, remaining close to the water. “They’re peaceful beings. It was Cruen’s interference that started this, taking their DNA, using it to make a more perfect specimen of vampire.”
“Now she knows where the mutore came from,” Lycos said. “If that isn’t a threat to their perfectly pure blood I don’t know what is.”
“It’s not about the blood,” Dillon said at last. “At least not yet. Feeyan believes the shifters aren’t so peaceful after all. In fact, she believes they’re holding Pureblood vampires against their will.”
“You mean Petra?” Phane said. “That’s bullshit.”
Seated beside Alexander, a very pregnant Sara nodded. “Of course it is. Petra wants to be there. Her family”—she paused for a few seconds—“the family she grew up with, at any rate, is there.”
“Do they know this?” Helo asked Dillon. “Do they know the truth of the situation?”
“No.” Dillon took a deep breath, shook her head. “I didn’t want them to know the connection between Petra and our family.”
“Why not?” Lycos asked coldly. “What is there to hide besides her asshole of a father, and how he conned Celestine, a desperate veana, into screwing over her mate and fucking him instead?”
A low growl rumbled in Alexander’s throat, but Sara put her hand on his arm to quiet him. She looked at Lycos, her eyes steady, her voice clear. “My mother made a mistake, a grave mistake, going to Cruen for help. She’s paying for it. We’re all paying for it. But the Order isn’t going to profit from it. Do you understand?”
The female held the wolf shifter’s narrowed gaze, her chin lifted. Sara was a tough female, and loyal above all else. She took no shit, and every male gathered around the pool thought twice when going head to head with her. Even Lycos. Growling, he nodded and turned away.
“We need to go to the Rain Forest,” Nicholas said, breaking the tension with a call for action. “We need to speak with the shifters.”
“I say we explain things to Petra,” Helo suggested. “She can come here. At least for a while. Until the Order understands that she’s not being held captive.”
“Problem is, it’s not just Petra,” Nicholas said tightly.
Phane’s brows drew together. “What do you mean?”
It was Gray who spoke this time. “It seems one of our elite Purebloods was abducted from his home and taken there by shifters.”
“Who?” Helo and Phane said at the same time.
Lycos growled. “Syn, right?”
Lucian turned and glared at him. “How’d you know?”
The wolf shifter rolled his eyes. “You three couldn’t get that British bastard to go help poor little Petra, so a few of her loyal family members did it.”
“Cool it, Lycos,” Alexander warned, his eyes dimming with irritation as he pulled his pregnant mate closer.
“Yes, it’s Synjon,” Dillon confirmed. “And the Order is demanding his release.”
“So what do you want from us?” Lycos asked, his jaw twitching with tension.
“You know what they want,” Phane said without looking at the male. “We’re part shifter. We should go. The community might take it better coming from their own.”
“We’re not their own,” Lycos said.
“What is up your ass today, Ly?” Helo asked with irritation. “Christ.”
“Not a thing,” Lycos said, pulling off his jeans. “Just opting out of the visit to the homeland, that’s all.”
Once naked, the male shifted, his wolf springing forth easily. The powerful animal snarled at them all, his eyes snapping with irritation, his gray pelt bristling. Then he took off past them, disappearing inside the house.
“We don’t need Ly. I’ll go,” Helo said, then turned to Phane. “It’s a helluva lot warmer there, and I wouldn’t mind seeing where we began. What about you, Phane?”
Phane didn’t say anything at first. He wasn’t siding with Lycos, abandoning the whole mess, but he wasn’t sure he wanted any part of where his cells originated. The idea filled him with unease. Then again, how could he refuse his family? Their call for help? And, truly, that’s what the Romans were to him now.
Family.
He turned to Dillon, lifted one sharp eyebrow. “When do we leave?”
* * *
He listened to the water running as she showered.
Then waited when it shut off.
He listened closely for the sounds of cotton brushing wet, heated skin.
Then abandoned the bedroom when the door to the bathroom silently crept o
pen to reveal five and a half feet of naked female.
Now, Synjon stood just a millimeter outside the patch of sunlight that had burned him not long ago, the patch Petra had once occupied, with his narrowed gaze taking in every bit of perfect flesh he could manage to see through the open doorway down the hall.
Unable to stop himself, he moved his gaze over her, pink and smooth and lush as she stood near the small bathroom window, gazing out, towel in hand. Her long legs gave way to a tight, round ass, and her beautiful belly was the perfect complement to large, heavy breasts with puckered, succulent, rosy nipples. Swell agreed with her. So did his blood. It was a good thing he had no emotional feeling—a brilliant move by all parties involved—or the sight before him, coupled with the recent memory of her fangs inside him, might have caused him to reconsider his plot to torture and kill her father.
And that long-held goal would be met at all costs.
She eased the towel between her legs and patted her inner thighs and her sex. His tongue felt dry in his mouth. He knew just where he could wet it.
Behind the zipper of his jeans, his cock was straining and pulsing, begging to get free—to get at her.
Never going to happen, prat. You’ve been there once before, remember? It’s a terribly addictive place to be.
As soon as the sun sank, as soon as the sky turned from lavender to gray, he’d be off, past the pussy brothers and that witch of a hawk shifter, and back to his penthouse balcony. An emotionless paven seated behind his white and black keys waiting for fate to find him.
“Admiring your handiwork or cursing it?”
He glanced up, caught that pale blue stare. “Neither.”
“Oh, yes.” She wrapped the towel around herself. “It would take an actual working heart to feel one or both of those things.”
“You know you don’t have a working heart either, right?”
Decently covered by the long white towel, she left the bathroom and walked through the living area toward him. “I may not have blood pumping through that particular muscle, but I have and give and show the true meaning of the word. Goodness, kindness, thoughtfulness.”
“I remember,” he said evenly.
“What?” She came to stand in the patch of sunlight in the hall, her skin pink and glowing. “What do you remember? Me pulling you into that cave? Feeding you? Taking care—”
“I remember the night we created the balas.” The words weren’t said in a soft, sentimental, romantic tone. It was only fact. Though he wasn’t sure why he would bring up such a fact.
Petra’s eyes were shuttered as she stared at him. Perhaps she didn’t like it when he spoke of the child. Or perhaps it was about sex. The memory of the two of them together. He couldn’t tell.
He shouldn’t care.
“I also remember waking up to an empty tree house,” he added. Once again, fact.
She sniffed. “You couldn’t possibly be looking for sympathy.”
He hesitated in answering. Was he? He didn’t think so. But there was something about the memory that poked and prodded at that dead muscle behind his ribs. “I told you who I planned to kill and you ran away to warn him.”
“Yes. Of course I did. He’s my father.” And with that, she walked past him into the bedroom.
He turned and watched her. Watched as she pulled out a drawer and dug through a stack of clothing.
“How do you call that paven, that monster, torturer, and wreaker of havoc, ‘Father’?” he asked evenly.
“Because that’s what he is.”
“No matter what he’s done?”
“Yes.”
“What will you call me, then?”
She froze, her hand deep within the drawer, her wrist covered in denim. For a moment she just stared straight ahead, breathed in and out.
“What will you tell the balas I am?” Syn continued, unemotional but oddly curious.
She didn’t answer him.
“That I’m a cock-up without feeling, but Cruen is a good and worthy parent? Is that what you’re going to say, Petra?”
Finally she released a breath. “I don’t know what I’m going to say. I don’t know what Cruen is. I never got the chance to know.” She glanced over her shoulder at him, her eyes stormy. “But I do know this: I won’t let my child go through anguish and pain.”
“What does that mean?” Syn asked, walking over to the dresser.
She grabbed a pair of jeans and a blue tank, then turned to face him. “The child won’t even know about you, Syn.”
His brows drew together and he looked down, at her swell.
“This balas will have someone else to call Father. Someone who knows how to love. Someone who wants a family, wants . . . us.”
His breath caught in his lungs and his eyes returned to hers.
“Feeling something now?” she asked softly.
He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure what was happening inside him. It seemed that even though his emotions were no longer there to access, his physical body was throwing off some serious sensations. His mind told him there was nothing here to care about, no anger, no sadness, no love. Her words were only that. Letters, syllables strewn together, her version of facts. But his hands weren’t acting right. They were clenched into fists at his sides, and his gut was pulled in uncomfortably tight.
What was this? What was happening to him?
“Pets!”
Both Synjon and Petra turned toward the door, expecting to find someone in the hall. But no one stood there.
“Petra?” called the female voice again.
They both went to the door, stared out into the hall.
“Come pick up the two-way!”
“Who the hell is that?” Syn said. But Petra was already out of the room, running down the hall and through the living area.
When she reached the bathroom, there were a few minor crashes before Synjon heard her speak.
“Hey,” she said, then paused a moment before explaining, “I was taking a shower.” There was another pause. Longer this time. “No, he’s fine. I’m fine. We’re getting along splendidly and he never wants to leave—” She was cut off. Synjon stood in the doorway, straining to hear. Maybe there was something he could use later. Something about the brothers or the hawk female. “What?” she said, her tone different, quiet now. “Why? Oh. Okay, fine. Yeah, I’ll come. But I don’t like it.”
For several long seconds the only sound was the river trees gently scraping the exterior of the house. Synjon wondered if Petra was still listening on the two-way.
When a good minute had passed, he called out to her. “Problem, love?”
Supreme quiet met his query, then a sigh and, “The Romans are here.”
Syn’s skin hummed with tension. “For you or for me?”
“Not sure. But either way they’re going to be leaving this place alone and unhappy.”
And with that, she closed the bathroom door. Completely and forcefully this time.
6
“You drank from him, didn’t you?” Dani called over her thickly feathered shoulder to Petra as they flew past a stand of teak that housed three of the Avian’s twenty-two nesting grounds.
Avoiding her best friend’s massive wings, Petra leaned forward and wrapped her arms around the hawk’s neck. “Of course I did.”
“Well, I hope you drained him dry. I hope he could barely breathe. I hope he was coughing and sputtering and losing consciousness—”
“I get it, Dani,” she shouted over the wind. “You want him to suffer.”
Dani glanced back, her hawk eyes flashing with ire. “Did he tell you how close he came to having sex with me?”
“No, you told me, remember?” Petra returned.
“Of course, for me,” Dani went on, “it was all part of the act. We needed to get him alone, get him as vulnerable as possible. He’s a total manwhore, and last night I made sure he chose me.”
This wasn’t a subject Petra felt all that comfortable with. Especially a second tim
e. And yet she couldn’t seem to stop herself from asking, “So, if Sasha and Val were late or hadn’t shown up, were you actually going to—”
“Fuck him?” Dani called back, sounding appalled before she actually snorted. “Hell to the no.”
“You make it sound like a fate worse than death, Dani. The guy’s incredibly hot. And the things he can do . . .” What the hell am I saying? She shook her head. It felt like someone else was running her mouth.
“I don’t want to hear about his magic tongue,” Dani shouted.
Heat flared in Petra’s cheeks. “You can stop now.”
Dani laughed. “Fine, then. His magic penis.”
“Okay,” Petra said, completely mortified now. “I think we should play the quiet game. Don’t you?”
“No. I don’t.” And just to send that message home, Dani dive-bombed into the forest, pulled up right before they would have hit the ground, and then started serpentining through the trees.
Petra gripped the hawk’s feathers, her mouth dry as she panted with fear. “That was unnecessary,” she called through gritted teeth.
“I don’t think so,” Dani called back. “You need your brain shaken up, reworked. You’re talking about this guy being all hot and everything, and all I can think is he screwed my best friend, got her preggers, and couldn’t care less.”
Petra winced. Her best friend’s words cut deep. As they were meant to. “You know my father took away his emotions. He couldn’t feel a thing now even if he wanted to.”
The hawk made an irritated sound. “Are you seriously defending him?”
“No.” And she wasn’t. That would be insane. That would make her foolish and optimistic, and worse yet, a glutton for punishment.
“You totally are,” Dani returned. “Please tell me that blood you took from him didn’t shatter the reality of the here and now, and his major dickhood.”
Jeez. Sometimes Dani could be a major pain in the ass. “Rest assured I haven’t suddenly become blind to reality. But his blood did calm me down. Made me able to think and feel, without pain and depression along for the ride.”
“Well . . . I suppose I am glad of that.” Dani was quiet for a moment. Then, “You think he’ll try to escape?”