by Tami Lund
“We aren’t— ” Before she could finish the sentence, a bird flew in through the nearest open window. It was a great black bird with furious looking pale blue eyes. Olivia recognized it immediately.
Tanner shifted into the form of a human and did not even spare Olivia a glance before storming up to Dane and cold cocking him before he even comprehended what was happening. Dane collapsed into an unconscious heap.
“Tanner,” Olivia admonished, and she dropped to her knees and lifted Dane’s head into her lap.
“Don’t touch him,” Tanner growled. “You’re my mate.” He sounded like a vicious animal. A vicious, wounded animal.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Olivia said without taking her gaze off of Dane’s face. “I have to heal him. Why did you punch him?”
“You’re my mate,” Tanner growled again.
“So you keep repeating. But that does not give you the right to punch him.”
She began pushing healing magic into Dane. He stirred slightly but did not wake. Before she could finish, she was forcibly pulled to her feet. She winced as Dane’s head fell from her lap and banged onto the wooden floor. She turned around and glared at Tanner.
“Let me go,” she demanded.
He tightened his grip on her arm. Magic flared around his hand.
“Did you know?” he asked.
She gave him a bewildered look. “Know what?”
“Your father just attempted to mate you with Dane,” he growled. His pale blue eyes glowed like lighthouse beacons.
“Actually, it was more than just an attempt,” Olivia admitted.
“Did you know?” he repeated.
She sighed and stopped struggling to get out of his grip. “Yes,” she admitted.
She watched as the pain flickered across his face, and she thought, I’ve hurt the only man I truly love.
“Tanner, I can explain— ” she started, but he released his grip on her arm so suddenly, she stumbled and nearly fell.
“What is there to explain, Olivia? That you knew that you were due to be mated, so you took off to Vegas for one last trip? One last fling? What the fuck do you think we did this afternoon? You think just because our mating ceremony is different, it doesn’t mean the same damn thing?”
“No, that isn’t it at all. I swear. I just— ”
“You knew. You knew you were promised to Dane. Fucking Dane,” he spat, as if the name tasted vile on his lips.
“Hey,” Dane protested weakly from where he lay on the floor, feebly attempting to push himself into a seated position.
“Shut up,” Tanner snapped before lifting his gaze to glare at Olivia again. “You lied to me.”
“I did not,” Olivia protested. “I never said— ” The man simply would not let her finish a sentence. It was not unlike speaking to her father.
“You never said a damn thing. You just let me fuck you. You just let me mate with you. And then you mated with someone else. You’re a fucking polygamist.”
“Tanner, please listen to me— ”
“You can have her,” Tanner said with disgust. He waved a hand at Dane. Magic shimmered in the air and Dane winced. “But I wouldn’t trust her to be faithful if I was you.”
And then he was gone, shifted into the form of a bird again. He flapped his wings and soared toward the same window through which he’d entered a few minutes prior. Olivia cried out and lifted her arms to try to stop him, but he twisted his body and dodged her outstretched arms and then he was gone, through the window and out of her life.
“Tanner,” she said on a sob, as she collapsed onto the floor next to Dane.
“What happened?” Dane mumbled as he lifted a hand and pressed it to his head. “Did someone hurt you?”
Olivia choked on another sob. “No. I hurt him.”
Chapter 24
Rick Pantera’s home was significantly more modest than Tanner’s father’s overdone manor home. But then again, Rick’s pack was significantly smaller than Quentin’s, and Rick was far less pretentious and overbearing.
Rick also took no stock in the belief that one could inherit magic from a Lightbearer by killing her.
“Frankly, I didn’t believe they still existed,” he admitted to Tanner, as they sat in a small office with barely enough square footage to hold the small, battered wooden desk and chair and the two arm chairs that faced it. Rick leaned back in his comfortable, worn office chair, his fingers twined behind his head, as he regarded the younger man seated before him. Rick, like every pack master in every other pack in the country—on the continent—well knew Tanner’s father, if only by reputation.
He waved at Tanner. “But it’s hard to deny your glow. How’d you inherit the magic again?”
“I didn’t tell you in the first place,” Tanner replied. He was not nearly as at-ease as Rick appeared, but then again, he knew that despite the other shifter’s outer demeanor, he was just as alert as Tanner. The two men had not yet determined whether they could trust one another. “And I haven’t inherited any magic. It’s just residual glow from being in their coterie,” he lied. It was residual glow from making love to Olivia, but Pantera didn’t need to know that.
“A coterie,” Rick mused, sounding fascinated. “They banded together, formed their own pack, and then hid it with magic, so no one could figure out where they were, let alone discover they still existed. And then they flourished, no doubt, while we all assumed they’d been wiped out by either the fae or us, or most likely, both. There must be thousands of them.”
Tanner did not like the faint glow of excitement in the other shifter’s eyes. “The coterie is as well hidden today as it has been for five hundred years,” he said with a warning in his voice.
Rick gave up the pretense of appearing casual and dropped his palms onto his desk, leaned forward and gave Tanner a sharp look. “If you are implying that I might turn into your father, I want you to know that I am highly insulted by your insinuation.”
“That is good to hear. However, someone alerted him to my presence when I was here two weeks ago. Considering I only met four from your pack, I have to assume it was one of them.”
“Who did you meet?”
Tanner gave his answer some consideration before responding. Three days ago, he’d left the coterie in a fit of rage, flying off as a bird, with no real intention or plan in his head. He had been so shocked, so devastated, so furious at what transpired out on that balcony that evening. And then when he confronted Olivia and she admitted that she’d known of her father’s plan all along, Tanner had very nearly lost his mind for a few moments there.
She’s mine, the voice in his head raged.
She’s a Lightbearer. Whose law covers her, really?
That was the real question. She claimed she understood what it meant for a shifter to take another from behind. She said she knew they were mated. He assumed she understood that when shifters mated, it was for life, as, he assumed, most if not all other magical species. It was a common joke amongst the magical communities that the fae were the only species who rarely took mates because they were the only ones who could not commit for life. They lived forever, after all, and forever was a damned long time.
Why had she done it, if she knew of her father’s plan? Did she mean to make a mockery of his species? Or, more likely, had she been caught up in the affair, enjoying herself, and she did it because she wanted to continue along that vein, until she had no choice and mated with Dane?
Of all Lightbearers in the coterie, it had to be Dane. Even though he had no real basis for such thoughts, he couldn’t help but wonder if Olivia had intended to keep sleeping with Tanner on the side, while to the public, she was mated to Dane. He wasn’t a vain man, but there was enough testosterone running through his system for him to believe that he was twice the man Dane was. Olivia would never be satisfied with Dane as her mate.
Lost in his tumultuous thoughts, Tanner had flown through the protective wards of the coterie, barely noticing the flare of magic as he
did so. By the time the second day rolled around, he was calm enough to be willing to go back. Besides an almost addictive need to see Olivia, he knew he had an obligation to see to Lisa and his mother’s safety. Who knew what Sander Bennett would do to them without Tanner there to keep him in check?
But he could not get back into the coterie. Hell, he couldn’t even tell where the damn Lightbearer community was, from the outside. He prowled around the general area, as a dog, a cat, and a bird, until he was forced to give up and seek shelter from a storm that had rolled in overnight.
When he woke the next morning, it occurred to him that he had some unfinished business to tend to, and since he was locked out of the coterie for the moment, he might as well see to it. If nothing else, it would give he and Olivia both time to think. He had no idea what would transpire—hell, would he be willing to be her concubine, just to taste her and touch her once in a while?—but he knew that whatever happened, he was not finished with Olivia Bennett. Not by a long shot.
In the meantime, he headed southwest to speak to Rick Pantera about the attack that had occurred some two weeks prior.
“Your son,” he responded to Pantera. “And your daughter, and two of their friends. One looked as if he could be related to the two of them. The other was a meathead that your daughter obviously has a crush on.”
Rick grimaced. “That would be Chuck Bronson. He is a meathead,” he admitted. “And my daughter is a fool not to see it. Despite her attraction to him, she is actually a highly intelligent girl. To tell you the truth, there was a point when I was considering declaring her my heir, instead of Andy, because he was taking so damn long to start acting like a future pack master. The other was probably my nephew, Derrick. He and Chuck are practically inseparable.”
Tanner nodded. “Andy impressed me when I met him. I suspected he was the pack master’s son even before he said it.” He decided complimenting the man’s offspring would certainly not hurt, and his praise for Andy was legitimate.
“Thank you,” Rick said. “But I cannot imagine any of them would have alerted your father to your presence here. We tend to keep to ourselves, and Wyoming is quite a distance from here.”
“His trackers are impressive,” Tanner said, and he thought about Finnegan Hennigan, who’d turned a blind eye when Tanner first escaped with Olivia, Freddy, and Lisa. “But I do not think they found us. I believe someone local knew to contact my father’s pack.”
Rick looked doubtful, but he pulled out a cell phone and his fingers danced across the screen. “Kids these days,” he mused as he typed. “The only way they communicate is through text messages.” He placed the phone onto the desk. “I’ve just contacted my two oldest children. They will not lie to me. Not about something like this.”
Tanner expressed his appreciation for the gesture. And then the two men settled in to wait.
* * * *
“It’s been two weeks,” Duane, that slimy shifter from the pack out west, complained as he paced back and forth through the small apartment Chuck called home.
The apartment was located above Chuck’s parents’ garage. Convenient, for washing clothes and eating meals that didn’t come from a fast food restaurant. It was also a hell of a lot cheaper than making his own way, especially because he didn’t really like to work. His father teased him mercilessly and his mother strongly disapproved of him bringing girls home, though, which would have been more of a bummer if he were better than he was at picking them up in the first place.
Duane showed up shortly after the massacre at the hotel, where that shifter and Lightbearer had managed to kill the group of shifters his pack had sent after them.
“Hide me,” he’d pleaded, looking frightened and a little crazy. “I can’t go back and tell the pack master what happened.”
Duane, so Chuck eventually figured out, had held back, hadn’t gone in with the rest of them. He said it was because he thought the Lightbearer would run, and he intended to catch her.
Chuck figured it was because he was a pussy, although that Tanner guy was damn scary. And no one knew the extent of the magical abilities of the Lightbearer, but Chuck figured they had to be significant for that pack master from out west to want to kill her for them.
He let Duane camp out in his apartment. That first night, they’d split a case of beer, with Duane downing most of it, and as a result, developing loose lips. Turned out, that guy he and Andy and the others met at the grocery store was the pack master’s son, and he’d stolen the Lightbearer from the pack master himself. Pretty damn ballsy.
The pack master was furious, of course, and he’d sent half the pack out, scouting, tracking, searching for Tanner and the stolen Lightbearer. Chuck’s call had been Duane’s chance, his opportunity to impress the pack master. Duane was a punk, but he had high aspirations.
“After this, Quentin will disown Tanner, you watch,” he had slurred drunkenly. “And he’ll need to declare someone else as his heir.”
“You think it’ll be you?” Chuck had snorted in disbelief. If Duane was the pack master’s best hope for an heir, that pack needed help. Maybe Chuck should go out there and introduce himself. He’d hung out with Andy plenty enough to know how a pack master’s heir ought to act.
Plus, it would get him away from Leah.
She’d shown up that first night, because she heard through the grapevine that something had gone down at that hotel where they’d followed that out-of-town shifter to. She asked if he knew anything about it. He pretended he didn’t, but he and Duane were already loaded by that point, and Duane started looking at her with a spark of interest in his glazed, dark eyes. So Chuck herded her into his bedroom and much to her delight, he screwed the daylights out of her, making a hell of a lot of noise in the process, so that Duane didn’t get any ideas. As soon as they were done, he herded her back out again, past Duane, who was passed out on the couch, and all but shoved her out the door.
He’d been stupid to screw her again, because she’d gotten even worse about hanging all over him. Every day after work, she showed up at his apartment, all smiles and cheerful hopefulness. A couple times, he hadn’t been home when she got there, and when he’d arrived, he found her and Duane, cozied up on his couch, Duane hitting on her and Leah giggling like a stupid schoolgirl. It pissed Chuck off because he didn’t want Leah, but he sure as hell didn’t want this punk kid to have her, either. Duane didn’t deserve her.
Leah was cute and smart and she was a pack master’s daughter. Duane was an idiot with overzealous aspirations in life, and he would do anything to reach his lofty goals, even kill, which he’d already proven when he’d killed those humans and then claimed he thought they were Lightbearers.
“I knew they weren’t,” he had drunkenly admitted to Chuck that first night. “But I also know my pack master, and I knew he would be impressed that I tried. No one else in that pack seems to give a shit about his goal to find the Lightbearers. At least, they didn’t until now. Now everybody’s scrambling like fucking ants, trying to track Tanner and that Lightbearer. Now that they have proof. Me, I believed even when there was no proof.”
Chuck believed now, too. For his entire life, he’d been taught that Lightbearers were an extinct species and that the concept of killing them to inherit their magic was just an old urban legend. His pack master had been wrong. Duane’s had been right.
There was a knock on the door, and Chuck groaned as Duane rushed to answer it. He wasn’t surprised when Leah stepped into the apartment, although he was taken aback at the way she looked when she did.
Her dark hair was down around her shoulders, softly curled and incredibly feminine. She wore makeup, Chuck noticed, and was wearing a dress, too, a cute little pink number that made her look way hotter than she normally looked in her khaki shorts and T-shirts. Duane was practically panting as he fawned over her, so Chuck hurried up and strode across the room to divert her attention.
“What are you doing here?” he asked gruffly.
She didn’t e
ven look offended by his tone, like she usually did when he was being an ass to her. She just smiled and batted her eyelashes and sashayed over to the couch. Yes, she actually sashayed, and Chuck and Duane were both mesmerized by the way her hips swung to and fro underneath that dress.
Chuck gave Duane’s shoulder a shove and then hurried up to claim the seat next to her, before Duane got any ideas.
“I don’t have to work today,” she said as she crossed one knee over the other and her skirt rode up to reveal a hell of a lot of thigh. Chuck’s cock gave a hopeful jump, and he knew damn well Duane was having the same reaction. When Duane perched on the arm of the couch on Leah’s other side, Chuck issued a growl of warning. Duane ignored him.
“I thought I’d come hang out with you guys,” Leah said in a strange, purring voice that made Chuck want to roll her to the side, flip up her skirt and pound into her from behind. Make her his, so that Duane wouldn’t be able to touch her, ever. He shifted closer, so that his thigh pressed against hers, and he draped his arm across the back of the couch.
Duane one-upped him and placed his hand on her shoulder, as he leaned in and said, “What do you want to do today?”
To Chuck, it sounded like he said, “Want to fuck me today?” He balled his hands into fists and took a couple of deep breaths to keep himself from lunging across her lap and attacking the bastard upstart.
Duane, he decided, was gone tonight. He could sleep on the street for all Chuck cared.
Leah shrugged one shoulder and the strap of her dress slipped down to her elbow, revealing more of the top swell of her breast than Duane had a right to see. Before Chuck could do anything, Duane snagged the strap and pushed it back onto her shoulder. Leah blinked at him and murmured thank you, and Chuck decided he was going to call the goddamned pack master himself and let him know that Duane had been hiding out for the past two weeks.
That would show the punk.
“Leah,” he blurted. “I need to see you in the bedroom for a minute. In private,” he snarled at Duane, who leapt to his feet as if he intended to join them.