Her arms came up, cuddling his head to her breasts, and Mike told himself that she did love him.
Sooner or later, she’d tell him.
Everything would be okay, he told himself as he drifted into sleep. Everything would be just fine.
BUT MIKE WOKE ALONE.
Leandra wasn’t anywhere in his rooms. And she wasn’t in hers.
A muscle pulsed in his jaw as he tore through the house, searching for her. She had to be here somewhere. The sun was still burning in the sky, and she was damned weak, weak enough that he suspected she wouldn’t rely on magick to protect her from the sun.
But where the hell was she?
CHAPTER SIX
She felt cold.
She’d been fine as she slipped from Mike’s bed and pulled his T-shirt on before padding out of the room, but now she wished she’d dressed completely.
Maybe even pulled on a coat, a scarf, some gloves . . .
Rubbing her icy hands together, Leandra licked her lips and stared at the door in front of her.
Malachi was in there. She could smell him, and the rage she felt coming off of him colored the air.
He wasn’t alone. Leandra could faintly hear the soft, steady breaths of another person. A slow, regular heartbeat. A scent that was disturbingly familiar.
She didn’t want to be here, frozen in front of this door.
But it was like she had to go in, like something was compelling her. Even when she tried to walk away, it continued to call to her. It was like a compulsion that had taken control.
Leandra didn’t feel in control as she reached out and closed her hand over the doorknob, turning it slowly. She didn’t feel in control as she stepped inside, and she certainly wasn’t in control as she moved toward the bed and the woman lying in it.
MALACHI KNEW THERE MAY COME A TIME WHEN HE would regret this.
Shedding the blood of somebody weak and helpless wasn’t something he’d ever found pleasure in. Killing the helpless, or protecting them. That was what separated the Hunters from the ferals. He was about to cross a line, and he knew it.
But he couldn’t let the girl live.
All the good little Hunters were elsewhere. Brianna had taken her normal break, and she wouldn’t be back in here for another fifteen minutes. Malachi only need a few seconds.
The rest of them were busy attending to their normal lives as everybody settled back into some semblance of everyday life. He envied them; they still had some sense of purpose.
Losing Nessa, though, it was like he’d had a blindfold ripped away, and now he saw clearly for the first time in centuries. The ennui he’d been living with was gone, leaving his senses exposed and bare.
He had no purpose. He fought, like they all did, against monsters, but for every single feral creature he killed, ten more rose up. He’d lost too many friends, seen too many innocents die, and he was tired.
Tired of all of it.
Tired, and quite ready to end it.
Leandra would be well; she had finally stopped looking like such a damned shadow and there was a spark of life in her eyes. She’d be well. Mike would see to it. None of the others really needed him. Yes, he was through with it all.
But first—his fangs throbbed as he studied the woman lying still and helpless in the bed. He wouldn’t feed on her, even though he craved the taste of his enemy’s blood. He would simply snap her neck and be done with it.
Some would want answers—he knew he was breaking the law. Council rule decreed that she be aware, awake, able to face her accusers. It wasn’t a defense as the mortal world knew it. But to kill her outside the heat of battle, and before she had been sentenced was a lawbreaker.
They’d want answers.
And he had no intention of offering any explanation. Simply because he wasn’t going to wait around for another sunrise.
Malachi had spent a long time wondering about the best method to end things. Sunlight wouldn’t do it, and he’d be damned if he let one of the sorry ferals end things for him. So he’d have to find a bit more aggressive way to handle things.
Fire was the answer. It would involve a decent amount of pain, but he was no stranger to pain. So long as it ended things; that was all that mattered.
Standing over the bed, Malachi said softly, “If I had known you were going to be this much trouble, I would have ended this myself the night Jonathan brought you here.”
There was no response. She was as still as death, almost as cold. Reaching out, he closed a hand around her neck, and the icy feel of her flesh startled him. Faintly, he could feel the ebb and flow of life under his hand, the faint beat of her pulse, the slow, shallow breaths.
Lifting his other hand, Malachi cupped her chin in his hand. She sighed, the first sound she had made since he had entered the room some hours earlier.
Do it. Malachi found himself hesitating as he stared into the still, peaceful-looking face. Do it.
“No!”
Leandra hit him with the force of a tornado, and he caught her wrists in his hands, pinning them behind her back. She didn’t stay subdued any more than a few seconds. Her body flared with heat, the same defensive action she’d used on him just a few weeks ago, fire spilling from her pores to lick at his flesh.
Pure instinct had him leaping back.
“Leave her alone!” Leandra said, her voice hoarse and raspy. Her eyes were wide and unfocused, and she looked like she was going to fall flat on her face. Yet she stood at the side of the bed, protecting that bitch.
“Have you gone mad?” Malachi asked quietly, trying to rein his rage in. “Step aside.”
Leandra shook her head, and when Malachi moved toward her, her eyes widened, and she lifted her hand. Fire flared between them.
“You’ve lost your mind.”
But Leandra didn’t answer him. She sat on the bed, her mocha skin so dark as she cupped Morgan’s face in her hands. “You’re stronger than this . . .”
Peeling his lips back from his teeth, Malachi let his shields drop as he ordered, “Leandra, get away from her.”
Fear had an icy grip around Leandra’s throat.
Her knees shook, and a cold sweat had broken out over her entire body. Only sheer determination kept her there. She shoved to her feet so that she could stand between Malachi and the unconscious woman. “You do not want to kill a helpless woman, Malachi,” she said in a voice that shook. “It is not who you are.”
His eyes glowed, and long ivory fangs pushed down past his upper lip as he snarled, “Do not tell me who I am, Leandra. You seem to have forgotten. Step aside.”
She felt her feet starting to move, and she jerked her eyes away from Mal’s, looking at the center of his chest instead. Her breath wheezed in and out of her lungs as she forced herself to say, “No.”
From the corner of her eye, she could see Morgan’s still body lying in the bed, but it wasn’t truly Morgan she saw. Mal spoke again, but it wasn’t him she heard.
It was the Hunter.
“I am bound to her, for some reason. Completely, totally bound. As long as she lives, I live.” The Hunter had looked at Leandra with such clear, steady eyes, seemingly unperturbed about being bound to somebody like Morgan.
“Who are you?” Leandra had asked. Her eyes, they were so familiar.
“Don’t you know?”
And then Morgan was there. Laughing. Her eyes so hard and cynical, her soul so full of evil. “She fears her own weakness. Just like you fear your own strength.”
The Hunter: “It was boredom. Life has become such a tedious existence.”
“I am bound to her . . .”
Determination gave her strength, and she squared her shoulders, staring at Malachi with a level gaze. “I will not step aside, Malachi. If you wish to deal with her, then you will have to kill me first.”
He wasn’t so far gone that he would kill a fellow Hunter, was he?
Not even a second passed before Leandra was questioning the intelligence of her words. Pain ripped
through her head. Distantly, she could hear Malachi comment in a bored tone, “So be it.”
“No!”
Mike tore through the door and launched his body at Malachi. The ancient one turned and struck out, and Mike went flying into the wall. Wood, plaster, and drywall cracked as he hit and fell to the floor in a heap. He didn’t even wait for his head to clear as he rolled to his feet.
The Change ripped through him with painful intensity; one second he was in human form, and then the wolf’s form took over, tearing from his body. But as he crouched down and prepared to leap for Malachi, Sarel and Lori appeared in front of him. “No, Mike,” Lori whispered, shaking her head.
He was frozen in place, unable to move, trapped there, watching as his mate lie on the ground, her hands clutching her head, blood trickling from her mouth.
Kelsey pushed in between Leandra and Malachi. “Stop it, Mal.”
“Get out of my way, Kelsey.”
“And if I don’t, what will you do? I’m no vampire—I’m not a creature you sired—I am just a woman who had placed her faith in you. You have no power over me.”
A long, pale arm moved as Malachi reached for Kelsey, but when he touched her, flame erupted. He ignored it, closing his hand around the front of her shirt, jerking her toward him. “You go too far,” he growled.
“And you have forgotten who you are,” Kelsey said quietly. A smile curved her lips, sad and bittersweet. “Is this how you want to be remembered? The great Malachi, Hunted down by his own for killing fellow Hunters?”
“There is not one among them that can face me,” Malachi purred. He ignored the flame licking at his arm as he lowered his head and whispered into her ear, “None who can stop me. Look around you. Do you see someone who can even hope to stop me?”
“I have more than hope,” Kelsey murmured. Her voice was thick with tears, and the sigh that shuddered out of her sounded more like a sob. “I’d hoped it wouldn’t ever come down to this.”
Her hands came up, cupping his face, and fire exploded, wrapping around them in a tight embrace.
It wasn’t the pain of the fire licking at his flesh that brought him out of his rage. It was the soft, agonized gasp that escaped Kelsey as the fire burned her as well. Like a bucket of icy water thrown on him, his head cleared, and he shoved himself away from Kelsey with a roar.
He didn’t make it far; he tripped over Leandra’s balled-up body and ended up on his ass, staring into her ashen face. The blood trickling from her mouth almost hypnotized him, and he reached out to touch her. Just before his fingers would have touched her skin, he curled his hand into a fist and swore under his breath.
Closing his eyes, he blocked off the flow of power that was draining Leandra’s life away. He clamped his shields down, and just like that, the storm of fear that had been choking the room was gone.
Shoving to his feet, he stared at Leandra, watching as her body contorted while she starting coughing up blood. Once the spasms passed, her eyes opened, but she wouldn’t look at him. Slowly, Malachi looked toward Kelsey.
Her hands were scorched and red, covered with blisters that were already healing. Witches didn’t burn as fast as vampires did, but they did burn. Guilt seared his gut as he realized what she had been ready to do to stop him.
She started toward him, but Malachi shook his head, and without a word, he disappeared.
LEANDRA EASED AWAY FROM LORI’S HANDS AS SHE repeated, “I’m fine.”
She wasn’t, not really. Her entire body felt like she had been beaten black and blue, and she was so damned weak, she couldn’t support her own weight for more than a minute.
“What in the hell were you thinking?”
Leandra looked up and met Eli’s gaze. She swallowed against the knot in her throat, turning to bury her face against Mike’s chest. “Leave it alone for a while, Eli,” Mike said, his hand cupping the back of her neck. But she knew he was wondering the same damn thing. She could feel the rage inside of him, hand in hand with the fear.
Could she make them understand? Was it insane? Hell, there was a part of her that didn’t understand either. A part that was almost frozen from fear. She turned her head a little, until she could see Morgan’s bed.
The woman hadn’t moved at all. She looked pretty much as Leandra remembered, paler, a little thinner. But she wasn’t the same. In her gut, Leandra knew that.
Gently, she pushed away from Mike, bracing herself before she shoved herself to her feet. “You need to sit down,” Mike said, catching her arm as she swayed back and forth on her feet.
Wordlessly, Leandra shook her head and started for the bed. The room spun around her, and she groaned, pressing the heel of her palm against her temple as pain splintered through her head. “Damn it, Lee,” Mike snarled.
Stubbornly, she continued toward the bed and finally, Mike just wrapped an arm around her waist and half carried her to the bed. Leandra sagged against the bed, closing her eyes for a minute as she tried to steady herself.
Words circled through her head. An image of the Hunter from her dreams swam before her eyes, and Leandra could hear her voice: “I am bound to her for some reason.”
Whether she was comatose or not, if the woman on the bed was still Morgan, Leandra would have felt that. She reached out, touching her fingers to a smooth, pale cheek.
“This isn’t Morgan,” Leandra murmured quietly. “If Malachi had killed her, he would have been killing an innocent woman.” It was more than that, but Leandra wasn’t certain any of them would believe her.
“Can you explain that?”
Leandra met Eli’s gaze with a hesitant smile and shook her head. “No. I can’t. But I know I’m right.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
As Leandra let go of Lori’s wrist, she fell back against the pillows piled at the head of the bed. The silence in the room was tense, and Lori didn’t speak as she quickly bound her wrist and left.
As the door closed behind her, Leandra looked across the room and found Mike staring at her with a stony, unreadable gaze. “Feel any better?” he asked quietly.
“A bit. Eli said I’ll have to feed three or four times daily for a few days.”
Mike didn’t comment, just turned his head and stared out the window. Long, tense moments of silence passed, and Leandra was ready to scream with frustration when Mike spoke again, “He nearly killed you.”
“I know that,” she said testily. “But what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t let him kill her.”
“I would have been fine with it if you did.”
Leandra blew out a breath and crossed her arms over her chest. “I did what I had to.”
“I know that,” Mike bit out. “But . . .”
His voice trailed away, and he lowered his lids, hiding his gaze from her. He folded his arms across his chest, his entire body tight with tension. There was a nervous energy simmering just below the surface; one wrong word and Leandra had a feeling that energy would tear free.
“But what?”
“I know you did what you feel you had to,” he said quietly. His voice was a low, rough growl, a sure sign of just how fragile his control had become. “But he was killing you—and I couldn’t stop it. There’s not a damned thing I could have done.”
Ahhhh . . . Like a piece of a puzzle had fallen into place, she understood. Mike had felt helpless, and he tolerated that about as well as she did.
“I had to rely on somebody else to save you.”
Kicking free of the covers, Leandra sat up on the edge of the bed. She made sure the room wasn’t going to start spinning before she stood up. She didn’t want to try to walk to him, only to fall on her face halfway there. The room stayed steady though, and when she pushed to her feet, she only swayed once.
He turned his head toward her, and she held his gaze with her own as she crossed the room toward him. “Relying on others isn’t something I do very well. It sucks, I know.”
A faint smile curled his lips but it didn’t reach his eyes. “That’s pu
tting it mildly.”
He opened his arms as she reached him, and she moved into them, cuddling against his chest. “None of them were able to reach me, though, Mike. When it really mattered. You were the only one able to do that.” And she wasn’t just talking about when she was trapped in that dreamworld, either. Even before Morgan had come onto the scene, nothing any of them had done had chipped through the ice she had wrapped herself in.
“Is that supposed to make it all better?” he asked.
Leaning back, Leandra stared into his eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe this will.” Rising on her toes, she pressed her lips to his, a gentle, chaste kiss. Then she whispered against his mouth, “I love you.”
His body stiffened against hers as his hands came up, framing her face and holding her still as he pulled away. Dark, turbulent gray eyes stared into hers. His thumb trailed across her lower lip, a soft, absent caress that sent hot little shivers dancing down her spine.
“I don’t think I heard you,” Mike said, his face expressionless. “Can you say that again?”
Blood rushed to her cheeks under his intense stare. But she didn’t look away, even though she wanted to. He always made her feel so naked, like he could see clear through to her soul. “I love you,” she said, and her voice cracked a little at the end. Forcing a smile, she asked, “Did you hear me that time?”
“I don’t know,” he murmured, lowering his head and pressing his lips to hers. His hands tightened in her hair. “Can you say it again?”
This time, Leandra laughed. It bubbled out of her as she wrapped her arms around his waist, pressing her body to his. “I’ll say it as much as you want to—well, for a little while.” Cuddling her face in the curve of his neck, she licked the smooth skin just above the pounding of his pulse, breathing in the warm, ripe scent of his body. “I love you. I love you. I love you. How is that?”
His hands slid down to her waist, and the breath left her body in a rush as he spun her around and pressed her to the wall, crushing his body to hers. “Again,” he demanded as he tore away the white T-shirt. The plain white cotton was the only thing she wore, and it fell around her in shreds, leaving her naked.
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