He felt the tension and anxiousness of the Weres sidling closer. There was no time to tell them about the information they didn’t have. He knew better than to expect another round of creatures this night. Rosalind had been visited by two species of monsters lately, and she had used two shapes to call them to their deaths. Two species. Only those. The spirit inside her had accomplished what she had come here to do. She had rid the area of harmful creatures, and in doing so, had seen to it that Rosalind was safe.
Maybe, Colton rationalized, this Banshee wasn’t an evil spirit at all. And maybe this Death-caller didn’t want to harm the Lycans.
If Jared Kirk’s story had been true, this spirit had saved the woman she had been slated to call to her death so that that woman could mate with a Were.
What did that mean for Rosalind now?
He had to use every brain cell to work that information to his advantage.
“I believe you have one more in there,” Colton said, facing Rosalind and nearly breathless, his arms raising in an open invitation. “And if truth be told, I prefer no colorful, sparkling auras at all, other than the ones created by what I’d like to do to you, and with you, in the near future.”
He wanted to shout when the sparks wafted away and Rosalind’s outline returned as if she had simply faded back into existence.
Colton wanted to close his eyes and give thanks for this brief sight of his lovely, wounded lover. But this wasn’t over yet.
She was separated from him by less than ten feet. None of the Weres who had fought by her side, and for her, dared to go near her or get any closer, now that the night had again grown quiet and their enemies had been vanquished.
Rosalind continued to stare at him soundlessly.
“Also,” he went on gently, “I have a soft spot for fur. Any color might do, really, though my favorite lately has been black. A deep, true, midnight black that’s silky and exotic to the touch, and quite rare. Do you know anyone that description might fit?”
“Not anymore,” she whispered.
Colton’s heart stirred in his chest. They had made contact. It was a good sign.
“Second to that, I like werewolves with white fur,” he said. “I could easily make do with someone who looks like that, as long as she had large, expressive green eyes. But mark my words, Rosalind, it has to be a Were. My mate has to be a she-wulf, and not any other kind of creature. We have to be a perfect fit, you see.”
“That’s a long list,” Rosalind said tonelessly.
“Yes, well, I have looked Death in the eye on a couple of occasions, and want the time I have left to be special until I have to face it again. I want that time to be shared with someone special. That person is you. Who else would have me, like this?”
Fearing to move toward her, Colton opened his arms. Rosalind, he silent called. Please come.
He saw that she couldn’t, and felt what was holding her back. The black presence that had wailed and called to the freaks who wished her harm still sat within Rosalind, on guard and carefully watching him.
“Can I speak to the Death-caller?” he asked, dropping his hands to his sides. Without waiting for a reply, he said, “I’m told that you know me, spirit.”
Rosalind lowered her gaze. Her cheeks were hollow, her face haunted.
His eyes fixed on her. “We have you to thank for the warnings, Death-caller. We’ve heard your story and have seen what you can do. But it’s time to let Rosalind go. It’s time for her to live her own life.”
The black eyes again looked up.
“Rosalind is flesh and blood,” he said. “Though you might have loved her family, and might love her, you must see that she needs to be with her own kind. If she isn’t allowed to be what she is meant to be, what’s left for her?”
The spirit was listening, and hopefully understanding. Colton watched with fascination as a single tear slid down her pale cheek.
His heart stirred restlessly as he continued, groping for the right words to express himself. “I’m sorry. I don’t know if you can leave her. I have no idea what leaving Rosalind would mean for you as a spirit. But I’ll help if I can, and if that’s possible. I love her, too, and will do whatever it takes to care for her. You know my feelings are true because you also recognize the blood that runs through my veins. Isn’t that right? We supposed that’s why Rosalind and I found each other—because you made sure that we did.”
Rosalind’s head shook. It was her voice that said, “Yes. She knows you. But she can’t leave me. Being tucked inside my family’s bloodline is her penance for disturbing the natural flow of life and death. She will pass through my line for an eternity.”
“Then I don’t care who is in there if you, Rosalind, are with me. I’ll take all of you. Every last part.”
She shook her head again. “I can’t touch you like this.” Sadness rang in her remark. “What sort of life would we have?”
“Try,” Colton suggested. “Reach out to me and see what happens.”
“If I do, I might see things I don’t want to see. I might know the time and place of your death. I have already seen mine.”
“Yours?” he repeated. “What do you mean?”
“I die tonight. I’ve seen this.”
Colton processed that, refusing to allow the confession to make sense. A streak of pure agony nearly derailed the next idea that came to him. He was grasping at straws, with the odds stacked against him. But he could not lose Rosalind.
He had to try everything, and study every angle.
“Maybe,” he began, moving toward her, “you only think you will die. Maybe what you think of as Rosalind will be gone, while the real Rosalind will continue to breathe. Couldn’t the death you saw merely be a metamorphosis of some kind?” He added after a breath, “Like going from a potential Night Wulf to a...ghost of one?”
Though Rosalind hadn’t lowered her gaze, he sensed another energy fluctuation going on inside her. She was considering what he’d suggested.
“You’re already no longer in danger of becoming a real Night Wulf, even if you were destined to be such a thing,” he said, gambling on that in order to hold her attention. “There’s no chance of a black heart taking over your chest, not with the spirit’s presence inside you.”
Colton cleared his throat to rid himself of the lump making speech difficult. He was desperate to have his theory proved right. He had to remain calm.
“I’m not afraid of you, Rosalind, or of any information you might turn up.”
Stepping closer to her, Colton searched for the trace of moistness that had tracked down her cheek, sure that former hint of sadness had come from the spirit, who had to understand exactly what was going on.
“I’ve already walked Death’s line, Rosalind. I may be living on borrowed time. What I want is to be with you for a while longer without running and fighting and facing our demons.”
Rosalind didn’t advance or take him up on his offer to test what remained between them. She appeared to be frozen in place.
“Please,” he said, addressing the Banshee still present in the color of Rosalind’s eyes. “If you can’t let Rosalind go, at least let her have the love she deserves. You have the power to do this. You have done it before.”
Probably he hadn’t been meant to be a ghost wulf, he reasoned, since it had taken trauma to make him what he now was. But he was growing stronger with each passing night, and no longer felt pain in the same way. The only real pain he felt came from the possibility of losing Rosalind.
What did he have left to go back to, without her?
His changes had been radical. Because of that, it wasn’t likely that he would be able to go back to the city and his job. And after what had happened here, fighting crime might seem elementary and mundane.
Still, he saw the folly of his former thought patter
ns now, surrounded by other Weres who had witnessed the unveiling of his secrets and Rosalind’s secrets, and had aided in this fight with no questions asked. Like true friends. Like family.
He allowed his attention to momentarily drift.
Dylan Landau was there, his clothing torn and his expression one of concern. His mate, Miami PD’s Dana Delmonico, was beside Dylan and naked, preferring, he supposed, to give in to her animal nature now that she had stumbled upon it.
Detective Matt Wilson stood behind Rosalind with his hand on the shoulder of the auburn-haired female who had offered Colton a plate of food and the use of her field.
Farther back, away from the rest, a furred-up Lycan female’s stunning red pelt glowed in the moonlight, patchy with the dark blood of the two monstrous species she had helped to take down. That she-wulf’s eyes glowed with green fire.
He had to stare at that red wulf, who was in wulf form without the moon guiding her to it. He shouldn’t have been surprised about he and Rosalind not being the only Lycans with this gift.
He couldn’t think now about the many surprises that had rocked the night. What he was feeling, in that moment, came darn close to sudden enlightenment. He had learned something here: a big lesson about trust, honor and the need for friends. And he had learned that one terrible sorrow didn’t necessarily have to piggyback on another.
He accepted the fact that he had, so far, made good on his vow as Rosalind’s protector, and therefore might even be well on his way to redeeming himself. Surely that had to score him some points with whoever was watching this from above...or through Rosalind’s eyes?
“Try, Rosalind,” he repeated, taking another step in her direction, and hoping she would meet him halfway. “Trust me, my love. Touch me.”
The will of all the others present aided his request. The night virtually hummed with their hopes for him, and for this. Beneath the fierceness, werewolves were romantics at heart.
When Rosalind took a step, the buzz of ideas and hopes in Colton’s head ceased. His heart nearly stopped beating. Having her so close was both frightening and reassuring. His ravenous hunger for Rosalind hadn’t lessened one bit.
Rosalind took a second wary step, her expression blank, her eyes downcast, as if she were afraid to look at him.
“Please,” he said. “Do this for us. Take a chance. Prove me right.”
Her heartbeat began to quicken, matching the swift rise in his. Their gazes reconnected, and through that meeting of their eyes, their thoughts melded together.
This was proof, Colton wanted to shout. The proof of a true connection. She had to feel it, as he did. She had to know what it meant.
“Rosalind,” he whispered, barely moving his lips. “Please.”
Chapter 32
Rosalind couldn’t escape the heartfelt plea in Colton’s voice. She couldn’t avoid his expression of need.
Torn, she wanted to shout to all the people whose eyes were trained on her. I’m torn by what you say, and what I fear.
Yet there was a sudden calmness spreading inside her where there had been only darkness. Although she still felt sick, that sickness had become less of a burden. She had, she now realized, always experienced this same momentary lightness when Colton was around.
The monsters were gone, though she barely remembered what had transpired. She had killed a few, but this was still a fight for her life. She wondered if Colton’s theory was correct, and she wasn’t going to die. Not in the way she had thought.
He wanted to believe that. So did she. And since she was still standing after the creatures that had come after her had been taken down, and the spirit she housed had faded to allow her the time to test a love that waited for her if she were able to grasp it, Rosalind accepted the rise of former strengths she hadn’t dared to use.
She was Lycan above all. Colton had told her that. And Lycans, early on, had to learn to be masters of their own destinies. She was young in terms of Lycan years, and was part darkness as well as wulf. Learning to control the dark parts was going to be a lesson hard-won. Still, she had a reason to live with what she had been given. Love shone from the eyes across from her. Colton’s love, strangely accrued from a series of misfortunes, was not false or feigned.
God, how she loved him back.
She had loved him from the start. At first sight.
The spirit inside her had made this happen. That spirit had wanted it to happen. Maybe, in light of that...she should be thankful. She’d be all right. She’d make this trio within her work out, with her own wishes coming out on top.
* * *
Colton held his breath as Rosalind ran the rest of the way and flung herself into his arms. Or maybe it had been the other way around and he had rushed to gather her to him. He couldn’t be sure.
His trembling arms closed around her slender body, enfolding her, pulling her tight. As they met, chest to chest and thigh to thigh, he whispered to her with his mouth in her tousled white hair. “I love you, little ghost.”
She didn’t wail or writhe or violently shift into something else. She didn’t fall to the ground in the kind of death she had wrongly foreseen. Yes, it could be said that the old Rosalind had died inch by inch in his arms, he supposed, and that this last embrace was the culmination of that. But if that was so, and the black wulf had ceased to exist, it was not really a death but a transition, a passing from one kind of life to another, and from being alone to having found a soul mate.
He had been right about her ability to survive the many transitions. Maybe the spirit of a Death-caller had bolstered her and then backed off to offer him a hand in gaining a bright, shiny new future. If that were the truth, there was no clear way to thank that spirit directly. And yet that spirit, deep inside Rosalind, would know everything he felt, he supposed, if it was part of her. That spirit would take part in whatever events their future had in store.
He claimed Rosalind’s waiting mouth hungrily, greedily, endlessly. Their hands traded explorations that were only the starting point for burning needs finally about to be appeased without interference...at least for now.
The sleek white she-wulf who would always have another strange entity compressed inside her returned his ardor. Her full, pale, quivering mouth clung to his in the manner of a drowning person in need of a lifeline. Like a woman who had to have this one last thing in order to find true happiness. And as though the spirit within her was finally getting what it also deserved and wanted so badly: a shot at happiness.
Then again, maybe those were his own feelings he was projecting onto the she-wulf in his arms.
Gratefully, gladly, aggressively, Colton’s hands stroked Rosalind. They would be on the ground in a minute, or up against a tree, but right then he was content to devour her mouth, savor her taste, become lost in the familiar burn of a love that had spanned the ages.
Rosalind was, hands down, the bravest creature of them all. He vowed never to stop kissing her, ever.
He had no inkling of how much time passed before he rose from her prone body onto his hands and knees, covered with sweat and panting from exertion. Sometime during their wild lovemaking session, the Weres had gone and the night had again grown eerily calm. Not even a breeze stirred the silence. Above them, the moon shone with a silver gleam, but it wasn’t full, and its lure came nowhere near to the powerful longing for what he held in his arms.
They were ghosts. Alike. And temporarily, at least, free from marauding monsters that might in the days or months or years ahead return for reasons no one had yet actually discovered—other than dark seeking dark wherever they could find it.
With the ease of a sigh, punctuated by a symphony of bones simultaneously cracking, he and Rosalind, with their limbs still entwined, flowed from one shape to another. With their coats glistening and their muzzles quirking, they leaped to their feet.
But they didn’t run to shed the excess energy that made them twice as strong as their human counterparts. Because their wulfs knew what to do with that energy, and were ten times as needy.
Colton growled his pleasure. Rosalind howled once. Raising their faces in unison, they bayed at the moon like their ancestors had done once upon a time, long ago, as they backed into shadows they had once feared for round two...or was it round ten...and to make good on their dreams.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from SENTINELS: ALPHA RISING by Doranna Durgin.
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Chapter 1
Lannie Stewart fell back against the brick wall with a startled grunt of pain and a rare flash of temper. Son of a bitch has a knife.
His hand closed around the grip of the small blade now caught between his lower ribs; he twisted it slightly, releasing it...sending the white-hot scrape of sensation back at his attackers in the form of a snarl.
All five of them.
One of them cursed. The others didn’t have a chance. Lannie plowed into them, throwing the knife aside and drawing on the wolf within.
Alpha. No-holds-barred.
That made him faster than they were, and stronger, and riding the awareness of every pack he’d ever built. Not to mention infuriated by their assault of someone older and weaker and not looking for trouble.
Wolf Born Page 23