by Kari Gregg
She cringed when Peter’s clumsy hands stroked her hair. “You hurt him,” she said. The pain and the guilt of it made her eyes burn.
“Yes, I did. The flogging would’ve killed a were and standing in her stead, should’ve killed Garrick. But he survived.” His hand paused in her hair. “As you wished.”
Garrick stroked her arm. “Olivia defied Peter’s authority. For the good of the pack, he needed to establish order. Without control, at times harsh control, a pack spirals into anarchy and chaos.”
“Even after beating Garrick within an inch of his life and dousing him with our entire supply of wolfsbane, Barry challenged me for alpha. He doubted I could maintain pack discipline. He leaped on me after Luc dragged Garrick’s bloody carcass away.”
Kate jerked her gaze up from Garrick’s side, stunned.
Peter cocked an eyebrow, slid his turtleneck down his neck to reveal violent tears.
Kate gasped.
Lines etched at the corners of his mouth as he eased the turtleneck back up to hide the devastation. “The bite of a were doesn’t heal well. Or quickly.”
“There are more, Kate. Luc tended to him—”
“Barry was a fierce challenger.” Peter tossed an approving nod over his shoulder to Elise, who sniffled and wept on the couch inches away. “You’ve every reason to be proud. He fought well.”
“He was your lieutenant, your second-in-command. You trained together. Of course he fought well.”
“Barry all but ripped out his throat. See how he favors his side? Lift his shirt, and you’ll find the hamburger Barry chewed Peter into.”
“I killed him. I didn’t enjoy it. Barry was my friend, but I killed him because alphas fight to the death. I had no choice.” He jerked his head to Elise, sobbing behind him on the couch. “I took her under my protection so the rest of the pack wouldn’t retaliate. I loved that crazy bastard, but now that he’s dead, and with Garrick still flinching from the punishment I inflicted on him, the other men have submitted. Even weakened by Barry, they won’t attack me. They don’t dare.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “You could’ve died.”
“Weres are brutal by nature, love. As are we vampyr. Your human mind balks at the violence, but you cannot change it.”
Peter snatched her hand, cradling it against his jaw. “Forgive me.” His tortured eyes pleaded with hers. “For what I did to your mate.”
Kate tried and failed to swallow the hard knot in her throat. “You hurt him.”
“Yes.”
“But what I asked hurt you. Hurt the pack. I should’ve been the one beaten and—”
“No!” both men roared, eyes rounded in identical horror. Peter’s hand squeezed hers like a vise, and Garrick’s arm around her crushed her to him.
“I swore loyalty to—”
“As your mate—”
She pressed her fingers to Garrick’s lips. “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you.”
He kissed her fingertips. “I love you, Kate.”
She lifted the hand Peter petted and brushed a kiss across his fingers. “You suffered because of me.” Kate swallowed hard but met Elise’s gaze. “You and your children suffered because of me. Ignorance is no excuse for what my behavior cost you. I am so sorry.”
Elise’s gaze flittered to the floor. “You are pack.”
Peter’s body slackened. “You are mistress of Pridemore, mistress of my pack.” He hesitated. “Mistress of me.”
Though it must’ve pained him, Garrick stiffened beside her, growled.
Peter’s gaze dropped, and he laid his head in Kate’s lap, baring his neck to Garrick.
She didn’t know much about anything, but she did know that was an incredibly stupid thing to do.
But Peter bared his neck, left himself vulnerable to Garrick. And waited.
Garrick’s hand rose.
“No!”
Peter tensed.
But the blow didn’t land.
Instead, Garrick smoothed his fingers over Peter’s hair.
The were angled his head so that he could lick Garrick’s fingers.
“Of course, you love her, Peter. As you love me.”
“Yes.” He sighed with giddy relief, nuzzled Kate’s thighs with his cheek and his chin. He grinned up at her. “Don’t ever be angry with me again.”
Chapter Fourteen
“You should be ashamed of yourself.” She glared at the wrinkled map stretched between Luc’s hands, the sheaf of papers scattered around him. She wanted to rip the lot into tiny pieces. She wanted to feed every sheet into the fire that crackled and snapped behind them and watch them burn. Sneering ripe disgust, she tugged at Garrick’s rock-hard biceps instead.
He arched an amused eyebrow. He stood immobile under her irritated yank, his feet rooted into the deep pile of the carpet in the den where she’d found them.
Mentally laughing at her.
Which just annoyed her more.
Stupid vampires.
She leveled her frigid stare on him, too, for good measure. “Disgraceful. The both of you.”
Unsettled by the deepening intimacy that had followed the completion of their blood-mating, Kate had asked Garrick to leave her an hour ago.
Once she’d moved into his rooms, they’d rarely spent a moment apart. She’d turned to him often, for blood, for release when desire stirred to fever pitch. She’d eventually gotten used to the idea that she couldn’t fall asleep without him, his scent enfolding her. Sometimes, she just needed the comfort of his smile. To hear the rumbling tenor of his voice. Being away from him, out of his sight, jarred her nerves, set her senses to shrieking. Garrick seemed to understand. He seldom left her.
But her mind had remained her own.
She’d been able to shove him out of her thoughts whenever she wanted.
Not anymore.
His thoughts and emotions had become a white noise in the back of her mind, a constant she couldn’t shut out no matter how hard she tried. Time apart, no matter the cost to her jangling nerves, had seemed like a sensible approach to get the man out of her head. Desperate. But rational.
Or so she’d thought.
Luc and Garrick both had been distraught at the dangers blood-mating posed to her from the beginning. So soon after her transition from human to vampyr, they’d said her body was too depleted to risk blood-mating again to reinforce the bond. She had to grow stronger to finish it. They’d sworn to wait until the two vampyr were positive her body could tolerate the burden and bear it well.
Too bad they hadn’t consulted her.
She smiled with malicious glee at how easily she’d outmaneuvered them.
Then her nose wrinkled.
Too bad she hadn’t consulted them.
Turned out the pair of them had been right about the physical drain on her body. Luc had been horrified when she’d drained Garrick to share the ruinous effects of wolfsbane on his body. Kate was half convinced the strength Garrick had drawn on to return to her had been spurred by his fear that the poison seeping into her might kill her rather than him. Probably because it almost had. Even under Garrick’s care and vigilant attention, Kate had nearly died.
She shivered.
Still, neither man had ever hinted that blood-mating would intensify more than their physical union.
They’d focused on the physical hazards.
Not a word about the mental and emotional ones.
She hadn’t been prepared.
Not for that.
She sighed.
She didn’t understand why they’d been so fearful of the physical aspect of blood-mating. She had to admit that, yeah, things hadn’t gone so hot at first. For a few heart-stopping minutes, until Garrick had fastened his mouth to her wrist, she’d been sure that, rather than saving him, Kate had killed them both. Scary. But most of her new life was.
Kate—and Garrick—had survived blood-mating, though. With her body to share the burden of poison polluting his, his strength had returned at an incred
ible rate. Just as she’d suspected. The weres wouldn’t spare medicines to heal Garrick, but they’d been desperately eager to give Luc whatever he needed to save her.
She’d outsmarted them all.
She’d been pleasantly surprised to find she enjoyed the escalation that cementing their blood bond had wrought in her physical ties with Garrick.
Kate liked listening to the faint echo of Garrick’s heartbeat. She’d grown fond of the steady thrum of his pulse alongside her own. She reveled in the heady bouquet of his scent now always with her. Inside her. An integral part of her. Still couldn’t fall asleep without his arms around her, but at this point, she didn’t want to.
And boy, hadn’t that been a vicious blow.
She’d anticipated their bodies working in harmony with each other, the physical unity between them.
She hadn’t anticipated the mental one.
The psychological union forged by completing their blood bond had set her already precarious equilibrium floundering. His mind in hers, intimately joined and now cemented, had raised the fine hairs at her nape to urgent attention from the moment Kate had realized she couldn’t push Garrick away.
She’d hoped that the separation from him might help her regain her distance.
Allow her to harden her heart.
Steel her mind.
So although the notion of his being out of her sight pained her, she’d asked him to go earlier that evening.
If he wasn’t near her, his warm eyes on her, his ready embrace so close, maybe she’d be able to shore up her defenses. She’d plant her feet on solid ground again. She’d sort herself and her wildly chaotic emotions out. She’d been so sure.
She’d been wrong.
He was in her head.
To stay.
She couldn’t shut him out.
And Kate had grown more and more certain with each passing minute that the only solid ground she’d ever find was at Garrick’s side.
He was where she belonged.
So she’d come to him.
Only to discover, while she’d been struggling toward her earth-shattering epiphany, Luc and Garrick had been busily plotting their stupid war.
She glared at him.
“You are such a jerk.”
Garrick chuckled. “Am I allowed to link with you, then?”
“No.” She pulled at his arm.
He didn’t budge.
“You were whipped within an inch of your life a few days ago. And poisoned!” Her lips thinned. “You should be resting. Rebuilding your strength. This is ridiculous. Outrageous. Even for you,” she said, accusing eyes flashing at Garrick.
“We haven’t allowed the war to intrude on you. The rigors of mating, adapting to your new nature, they are trial enough.” Luc darted a glance to Garrick, then settled back in his chair. “Fighting hasn’t ground to a halt, bébé. The war goes on, and as long as it does, we must be wary.”
Garrick nodded. “Masters hunt us.”
Kate rolled her eyes. “According to you, they’ve hunted us all along.” Mindful of the circle of welts Peter’s silver manacles had burned into Garrick’s wrists, she snatched at his fingers and dragged at them. He simply smiled at her. “An hour of downtime won’t make any difference to your war, and it’ll do you a world of good. Come on.”
He dug in his heels, his eyes narrowing with suspicion. “Downtime?”
“Entire minutes when neither one of us is sucking blood out of the other. No whacked-out vampire mojo. No werewolves either. No war.”
“Masters are drawing closer. I was careful while I hunted for him, but not enough.” Luc frowned. “They haven’t tracked on to us yet, but they will. We need to prepare.”
“You are such a drama queen, Luc. Don’t think I haven’t noticed that about you.”
He scowled at her.
Ignoring her guardian, she focused on Garrick instead. “You can do what regular people do for sixty lousy minutes without life as we know it coming to its bitter end in some grand vampire apocalypse.” She blew out a frustrated breath. “And if that’s too much of a stretch, you can damn well pretend.”
The corner of his mouth kicked up.
“And you have to keep your pants on.”
He laughed.
“Zipped too.”
A boyish grin lit his face, softening his autocratic features. “What’s the fun in that?”
She glowered at him. “I took care of the poison, but you’re still too beat up from Peter’s whip. No sex. So can it.”
“I will never be so weak or damaged that I don’t want you, love.” His fingers covered hers, his hand squeezing hers with easy affection. His eyes shone, sparking with wry humor.
Embedded in his mind as he was in hers, Kate felt his bright pleasure like a kick to her solar plexus.
Just when she thought he couldn’t surprise her, that he’d never catch her off guard again, he floored her.
Garrick was happy.
For the very first time, he was truly and genuinely happy.
Lighthearted even.
She gaped at him.
“You bring the worst out in me.”
Then he winked.
“All right. Let’s give it a try,” he said. “I can’t guarantee you the human perception of normalcy, but I can give you ours. For the next hour, we’ll pretend there’s no war.”
Luc bolted upright in his seat. “We’ve evacuation plans to review. We may need them. Garrick! Where do you think you’re going?”
“To show Kate the garden.” He lifted their joined hands to his lips, kissed her fingers. “With any kind of luck, she’ll seduce me. Don’t wait up.”
* * *
The night sang.
A light breeze stirred needles in scraggy pines along either side of the flagstone path and swished spears of prematurely green foliage underneath.
Still shoeless, she felt the stone smooth and cold against the soles of her feet. Garrick slung an arm around her shoulders and when she shivered, pulled her against the furnace of his body. “Stay close to me. The early spring brought on the first blooms, but the nights can still be cool,” he murmured into the shell of her ear. “Your eyes have adjusted now, yes?”
She nodded.
The half-moon washed the planes and angles of his face in an eerie, muted silver.
The night was alive with nocturnal creatures.
Kate was too disturbingly aware that she was now one of them. Rather than wallowing in the strange turn her life had taken, she sank blissfully into the warmth of his embrace. She’d hauled him out, away from his war. The least she could do was pretend to be normal too. “Tell me about your garden. You don’t strike me as the digging-in-the-dirt type.”
He chuckled. “Usually, no. The garden began as a practicality. For the weres,” he said at her bewildered gaze. “See the hood-shaped flowers that run down those stalks there?” He pointed to sprays of drooping blue ahead. “That’s Aconitum, also called monkshood from the shape of the bloom.” His brow winged up in droll mischief. “You’ll know it as wolfsbane.”
She shuddered.
“They’re among the first to come out every spring. The flowers are beautiful in the moonlight. Poisonous but beautiful.” He smiled down at her. “And necessary. Every pack needs wolfsbane to keep its weres in line. Which is why I began these woody shrubs.” He tipped his head to stems that barely reached her knees off the path to their right. “They’ll grow almost as tall as you are. By midsummer, they’ll be dotted with dull purple bell-shaped flowers.”
She bent to take a better look. “What is it?”
“Belladonna.”
She jerked back.
“I see you’ve heard of it.” He laughed. “I grow belladonna, deadly nightshade, to treat accidental exposure to wolfsbane. The pack’s whelps know to steer clear of my garden, but wild patches have seeded and spread to high ground in the swamp. I thought it wise to provide the pack with the ability to make medicines. Just in case.”
&
nbsp; She gulped and then stood. “But isn’t belladonna poisonous?”
“In this form? Very. But atropine, a thoroughly modern medicine, is derived from it.” His mouth curved. “You tricked the pack out of its supply of belladonna, love. It saved our lives.”
Poison to treat poison?
She shook her head in amazement. “Are all of the flowers deadly?”
“Most of them are ordinary,” he said, “but I developed a taste for more exotic plants once I’d gone beyond gardening for practical purposes and decided to incorporate a moon garden into the grounds.”
“What’s a moon garden?”
Smiling, he held her hand, leading her down the path. “Just a little farther. You’ll see.”
The path widened to a small clearing beyond a bend ahead, and as she drew nearer, the scent of jasmine and roses tickled her nose. When she rounded the curve, her eyes widened. Her heart fluttered in her chest.
Flowers, white and luminescent by the soft glow of the moon, seemed to float in the air, green stems and leaves lost in the darkness. Five-pointed stars, blooms drooping from shadowy vines, and trumpet-shaped blossoms shimmered magically. Shiny leaves she recognized as silver sage clustered beneath, joined by gray sprigs of lamb’s ears and others she didn’t recognize.
“A moon garden is one designed to be enjoyed by moonlight, Kate.”
Her heart skipped a beat.
He’d planted a garden she could take pleasure in, even at darkest midnight.
Because she wouldn’t be able to tolerate the sun until her skin recovered, which wouldn’t happen for years.
Roses climbed a shadowy trellis behind a swing hanging from a tree to one side. Carnations in enormous terra cotta pots bracketed each end. And before them, he’d tamed the swamp into an ornamental pond dotted with white blossoms that climbed inches above the water.
The night was perfumed with a heady mixture of rich fragrances. Her calf brushed against potted elephant ears marching in a line down the entrance to the magical world Garrick had created, the heart-shaped leaves like velvet on her skin.
“I start most of the flowering plants from seed, then transfer them once the danger of frost is over. Without the early spring, I wouldn’t have dared transplant so soon, but I couldn’t wait for you to see it.” He grinned. “The five-pointed stars with the dark pink centers? They’re four o’clocks. They bloom in the afternoon and close up at dawn. It’s still too soon for night phlox or my angel’s trumpets, but they’re night bloomers too. That vine? Night-blooming jasmine. It’s flowering, but it won’t really take off for another couple of weeks.”