Blood Wolf Dawning

by Rhyannon Byrd

“I didn’t say I wanted kids,” he muttered quietly to the animal. “I was simply stating a fact. If I’d stayed, I have no doubt the two of us would have kept her knocked up. We’d have done everything we could to make that happen.”

  And that was the truth. All of it. But it would have been wrong.

  You call her living out in that cabin on her own, with no family and friends, a better outcome?

  He cursed under his breath, unwilling to concede that the animal had a point. But then, his wolf had never bought in to his feelings about his bloodline...or the guilt he carried over his past. In its world, when mistakes were made, you moved on and didn’t let them hold you back. It was a simple, primitive view, and one he was jealous as hell of. Because he would have given anything to be that way, too. To say to hell with his concerns over what Sayre deserved, and simply take her because it was his goddamn right to do so.

  Unfortunately, his humanity was too much a part of him, his guilt woven into the very fabric of his character.

  And now he had to go and unload his darkest, ugliest secrets to the people he cared about most in this entire world, aside from Sayre, and it sucked.

  He took a moment to compose himself, shoved his hair back from his face, then turned and headed over to Brody’s. They were all there before him, including the mercs, the curiosity in the air thick enough to cut with a knife. While coffee was being handed out in the kitchen, he kept himself occupied studying the framed photographs that covered the mantel. Most of them were of holidays they’d had there in the Alley, when everyone had been together. A few at Christmas, and then Easter, and what looked like the Fourth of July.

  There were more kids in the photos than he’d expected, though he shouldn’t have been surprised, given how his friends hadn’t been able to keep their hands off their mates before he’d left. But what he really couldn’t get over was how happy the Runners looked in the photographs, as if everything they could have ever wanted or needed was right there with them.

  If it were possible for people to be blessed or rewarded for their hard work and sacrifice, then Cian knew that’s what he was looking at. These families were a blessing, plain and simple, and he finally had to turn away before he started getting all maudlin about it. As everyone came back into the room and took their seats, he pulled in a shaky breath, ready to confess every shameful, appalling part of his story.

  “So, yeah. There’s something important that I never told you—any of you,” he forced past his tight throat as he leaned back against the mantel, his hands shoved deep in the front pockets of his jeans so that no one could see them shaking. Forcing himself to look around the room, instead of staring at the floor like a coward, he went on. “It’s something I hoped like hell you would never learn. That I’m not proud of. Not for the reasons you’re going to assume, but because...because of the choices I made.”

  “Cian, just tell us,” Brody urged, his elbows braced on his parted knees as he sat beside Mic on one of the leather sofas. “If you’d just trust us, we’d be here for you. You know that.”

  “I’m... I have... Shit, this isn’t easy.”

  Brody gave him a supportive nod. “Just go for it, man.”

  “Right. Okay.” He sucked in a deep breath, then quickly blurted, “My, uh, father is a vampire.”

  Silence immediately followed those six little words. Dead, heart-thudding silence. The kind where you couldn’t even hear anyone breathing. And then a pale-faced Jeremy kind of coughed to clear his throat, and managed to croak, “What?”

  Before Cian could respond, everyone started talking at once as they grappled to understand his shocking revelation.

  He understood their confusion. In the Lycan world, vampires were a reclusive, seldom-encountered species. They were coldly calculating, elitist and basically assholes. Immoral, amoral and arrogant as hell.

  Huh. When he put it like that, Cian thought it was kind of hard to believe they’d never figured it out for themselves.

  When Brody finally got tired of the noise, he yelled for everyone to calm down, then turned his attention back to Cian. “We can’t scent it on you,” the Runner said in a low voice that surprisingly held more curiosity than it did anger. Aside from Sayre, it was Brody’s reaction he’d been the most worried about, and he couldn’t help but be relieved by how things had gone so far.

  Exhaling a slow breath of air, Cian said, “You can’t detect it because my father is also part human, which means my blood is too diluted for scent recognition.”

  “So then you’re a combination of three different species,” Sam murmured. “Human, Lycan and vampire?”

  Cian nodded, then reached over for the mug of coffee Mic had set on the mantel for him earlier, wishing it had a hefty dose of Irish whiskey in it. He took a large swallow, then set down the mug and tried to explain to them how it worked. How his vampire instincts weren’t a voice in his head, like the wolf part of his nature, but more of a...a hunger. A greedy, chilling, twisted craving for blood and gratification, like a powerful internal drive that was continually focused on consuming more...and more. And one he was only able to control thanks to the dominance of his beast.

  When he was done, he had to wipe the sheen of sweat off his face with his sleeve, his insides knotting as he waited to see how they would react. After a few moments, it was Jeremy who spoke first again. “So if vamps can halt the aging process by feeding on blood as their main food source, then...Jesus, man. How old are you?”

  A rusty laugh rumbled up from his chest. “Of all the things you need to ask me, that’s your first question?”

  “I’ve just always assumed you were around my age,” Jeremy went on, looking him up and down with a critical eye.

  “Close,” Cian murmured.

  “How close?” Jeremy persisted, obviously unwilling to let this one go.

  A heavy sigh slipped past his lips. “I’m roughly ten years older than you are, because I spent a decade at the age of sixteen. Then I came here to visit my mother’s family—I met you and the others—and I decided to change the way I’d been living. I stopped feeding from the vein, and allowed myself to begin aging again. All because I wanted to be one of you. To make my home here.”

  Everyone took a moment to digest what he’d just told them, and then Lev spoke up for the first time, scratching his jaw as he said, “You know, that actually makes a lot of sense.”

  Cian raised his brows, wondering where the guy was going with that statement. “It does?”

  Lev smirked. “Hell, yeah. You spent damn near close to twenty years being a know-it-all, smart-ass teenager. No wonder you turned out to be such an asshole.”

  It was Brody who tilted his head back and laughed the hardest, while the others either snorted or smiled. And even though Cian started off scowling, he soon found himself shaking his head and joining in. “Nice one, jackass.”

  Mic was the one who commented next, her blue eyes bright with emotion as she stared up at him from her place beside Brody. “I have so many questions, I don’t even know where to start. I mean, I could sometimes sense that you carried a tremendous burden inside you. But I honestly never realized that it was this, Cian. I wish you had told us. You have to know that we would have never judged you for it.”

  Sliding her a grim smile, he said, “I know that, Mic.”

  But he also knew that he hadn’t even gotten to the bad part yet.

  Stalling for a bit more time before he dropped that final bit of “craptastic” news on them, as Sayre would say, he looked at Jillian. She’d been sitting beside Jeremy the entire time, her blank expression completely at odds with the flurry of emotions he could see rushing through her wide-eyed gaze. “Didn’t you ever pick up on it, Jilly?” he asked her gently, searching for the truth in those velvety brown eyes. “Every time you had to heal one of my injuries, I thought for sure that you would see—”
/>
  She cut him off, saying, “Never. I...I tried not to pry. I always try not to pry.”

  “You honestly never suspected?” he asked, surprised that she’d never seen the truth when helping him, since a witch’s power enabled her to often see into the mind of the person she was healing.

  “I didn’t,” she told him, shaking her head. “I thought...I mean, I sensed that there was something different about you. I guess I just figured that you were part of some powerful, unique bloodline, or...I don’t know. That you’d inherited something on your father’s side. But I sure as hell never suspected vampire.”

  “What about you?” he asked, looking at Brody.

  “I don’t know what I thought, man. Maybe that you’d... Hell, I don’t know. I figured you’d been scratched by something, or fed on something you shouldn’t have, and it’d affected you in some way. But I never suspected it was something that was as much a part of you as your wolf.”

  “Huh.” He looked around the room. “With all those comments you all used to make about the damnation of my immortal soul, I sometimes wondered if you didn’t already know.”

  “Naw,” Jeremy drawled with a wry, lopsided grin. “That was just because you’re an ass.”

  Everyone laughed, releasing some of the lingering tension in the air. As if they suddenly felt more comfortable, the questions started coming more quickly, one after another, and Cian did his best to answer each one as honestly as possible, even though he hated talking about that part of his life.

  But he did it. For them. Because they deserved to know everything, seeing as how he’d brought this nightmare with Aedan directly onto their doorsteps.

  Breaking out in a cold sweat, he eventually explained how the “black” or “dark” blood that created a vampire came in different strains: old lines and new lines. Somewhat sane ones...and ones so evil the creatures shouldn’t even be allowed to exist. As if he sensed where Cian was going with the information, Jeremy suddenly gave him a sharp look of concern and asked, “What does this all have to do with Sayre being in danger?”

  He pretty much flung out the answer, needing to get the words off his chest. “I have a brother. A half brother named Aedan who is a year younger than me. We share the same father, but his mother was also a vampire, which means that the vamp part of him is dominant, overshadowing the human part. He’s the reason I came back to protect Sayre, and he—”

  “Wait a minute. You have a goddamn brother,” Brody cut in, looking ready to bolt to his feet. Cian figured the only thing holding his former partner back was the touch of his wife’s hand on his arm.

  “Brody, calm down,” she murmured.

  “No, that’s not gonna happen. Because it’s one thing not to tell us about the vamp blood,” the Runner growled, his scarred face ruddy with anger as he glared up at him. “I don’t like it, but I get it. But why the hell did you need to keep your family a secret? What the fuck is that about, Cian? I didn’t think we kept shit like that from each other.”

  “We didn’t,” he said, hating the hurt he could see that was fueling Brody’s anger. “But Aedan is a twisted son of a bitch and there wasn’t any way to tell you about him without telling you about the other.”

  “How about ‘Hey Brody, I have a brother. He’s a jackass, so I don’t like to talk about him. But I just thought you should know’?”

  “Christ, Brody. He’s not a jackass.” He couldn’t stop his voice from rising, each word torn out of him like a bleeding chunk of flesh. “Aedan’s an evil piece of shit, and I spent ten years of my life acting just like him! That’s why I didn’t want you to know!”

  The Runner’s face paled so quickly it was like he’d been gutted.

  Dropping his head forward in defeat, Cian screwed his eyes shut, hating that look of shock that had just spread across his friend’s face. Voice weary and thick with disgust, he forced himself to explain as much as he could stomach to reveal. “He’s a hundred times more powerful than a rogue wolf. Their drive and their frenzy—that’s Aedan on a mellow day. I heard he once took out an entire Lycan family of eight on his own, within a mere matter of minutes. He’s that strong. That screwed up in the head, and I spent an entire decade with him when he was a boy. At the age of sixteen, I traveled the world at Aedan’s side, doing more shit than I could ever possibly name that I’m not proud of. But Aedan always took things even further. I tried to get him to...hell, I don’t know. To tone it down, I guess, and I made excuses for him for a long time, like he was someone I needed to look out for and stand by because he was my brother.” Lifting his head, he forced himself to look Brody right in the eye before he went on. “Then, one day, I ran dry. He’d done something that I couldn’t make any more excuses for, and I got out. But not before I’d made a lifelong enemy of him.”

  Jeremy’s deep voice cut into the heavy moment of silence that followed. “And now he wants to hurt Sayre because of you? Because she’s yours, and he holds a grudge against you for something that happened all those years ago?”

  Before he could respond, Brody shot to his feet and paced away to the far side of the room, then turned around to face him with a dark, vicious scowl. “That’s why you left,” the Runner snarled, his thick chest rising and falling with the harsh force of his breaths. “Goddamn it, Cian! When you realized what she was to you, you took off to protect her. You didn’t even ask for our help. You just left!”

  Hardening his jaw, he managed a curt nod, feeling sick to his stomach. In that moment, standing there in the face of his best friend’s pain, he hated himself...and he hated his old man more than ever for not ending Aedan when he’d had the chance.

  Though their father’s vampire strain was one of cunning and strength, the “dark” blood from Aedan’s mother was as evil as it came. Their father had always claimed that she’d used that ancient power to enthrall him, leading him to her bed against his will. But Cian knew better. Colin Hennessey was nothing more than a self-serving son of a bitch who thought of nothing but himself, and he always would be.

  When his father should have destroyed Aedan, once they’d realized just how far he was slipping away from them, he’d refused. Because of power. The fool had seen Aedan as a weapon that could be used to defend his position in Ireland, not understanding until too late that no one controlled Aedan, including the man himself. Aedan had been lost to the darkness inside him from the moment his vampire instincts had gained the upper hand, and there was nothing anyone could do that would ever bring him back.

  “Jesus,” Kyle rumbled, locking his fingers behind his head as he leaned back in his chair, while Brody completely turned his back on the room, his hands braced on his hips. “I knew you had some serious shit going on under the surface that none of us knew about, Hennessey. But I never guessed it would be this messed up.”

  He didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything at all.

  “I wish you’d talked to us,” Jeremy said with a tired sigh, his blond hair falling into his eyes as he shot a worried look over at Brody. “That you... Shit, man, I just wish that you had trusted us.”

  He swallowed so hard that it hurt, knowing there wasn’t anything he could say at this point that would make things better. This wasn’t one of those times when sorry was going to cut it. Not unless he wanted to sound like an even bigger dick than he already did.

  It was Jillian who finally cut to the heart of the matter. “How does this affect Sayre? Does she even know?”

  He braced himself, knowing exactly where this was headed. “She doesn’t know specifics about the threat, but she knows that Aedan is my brother.”

  “And the vampire part?”

  Locking his jaw, he shook his head.

  Perched on the edge of her seat, she gave him a look that would have brought a lesser man to his knees, the love she held for her sister making her fierce. “You have to tell her, Ci
an.”

  “I know.” He swallowed, then wet his lips, each thudding beat of his heart making him feel like he was sinking deeper into a pit of quicksand. “I just...I don’t want her to be afraid of me.” Or disgusted by who I was...

  Damn it, he didn’t want to lose what little part of her he had!

  “I can understand that,” Jillian offered with a husky note of sympathy. “But it doesn’t mean you get a pass, Cian. The only choice you have is to trust her.”

  Scrubbing his hands down his face, he muttered, “It’s not that simple, Jilly.”

  “It’s exactly that simple. You’re going to have to man up and tell her everything. All of it.” Her dark eyes burned with conviction. “Even those parts that are the...hardest.”

  In other words, the secrets he was holding closest to his chest. The ones that would cause him to lose her, and not for a handful of months, or years.

  But forever.

  Chapter 9

  Cian spent another hour with the group, questioning them about how things had been since he’d left. Not long after his strained exchange with Jillian, Brody had cursed something guttural under his breath and stormed out of the room, his office door slamming shut behind him a moment later. Mic excused herself and followed after Brody with a worried expression on her face, but the others were willing to let Cian turn the tables and ask some questions of his own.

  Even Slivkoff managed to offer some helpful information without sounding like a jackass, and Jillian spoke up a time or two, though it was apparent her thoughts were a million miles away, undoubtedly with her sister. But, together, the group filled him in on the problems they’d had to deal with during his absence, as well as the challenges they’d taken on. It was clear that the Silvercrest were now thriving, and that the pack had the Bloodrunners to thank for their success. Relations between the Alley and the pack’s mountaintop town of Shadow Peak had never been better, and he was glad that his friends were enjoying the recognition they deserved.