in human skin. “Leave the Lord Vardon with me my friends…”
Pain wracked her as she prepared to send new found allies back to the Sovereign Court.
“I am asking you to return with Dardanos to my Grandmother…” Cat hesitated.
“As soon as I have secured our safety I will come for you. This I promise. Until that day your
bodies are inviolate. Mate marked as you all are the Queen can demand you carry out your
duties to defend the Court, but she no longer has the power to strip you of dignity.”
Her heart lurched at the sight of six tall warriors surrounding the immense shape of an
encased beast, as beautiful as the devourer was ugly.
“We await your call Princessin…” Turi had become spokesman for them all. With fingers to
head and heart they were gone in an instant.
Biting back a cry of denial, wishing with all her heart it was within her reach to offer her
mates a safe haven right now, Cat dragged her attention back to the ruined body laying
neglected on the ground. She dreaded waking him, the pain would be crushing. Drusal had
to be conscious if she was to help him heal. His white silk shirt was tattered, soaked in the
brown stains of old blood, blood that had been as red as hers when it spilled. The flimsy
fabric adhered to numerous wounds. Getting him to the truth pool, to soak the clothes from
his skin, was the quickest remedy she could think of to support his earth element.
The surrounding grass verge, the pebbles coating the bottom of the pool would lend him
some strength, maybe enough to get Drusal mobile again. Palms stretched over the taut
muscles of his chest she infused his body with Mother Earth, a faint green luminescence
tinged cold skin in pallid waves, pulsing faintly with a laboured heartbeat. Moving her
palms to his temples Cat whispered to a somnolent mind.
Wake Lord Vardon… But please hold still. Leaning over she dropped a gentle kiss on his lips.
If the prince could wake Sleeping Beauty with a kiss, she should have equal opportunities.
The male stirred in her lap, a deep groan escaped from lips split and bleeding. A cloud of
nerve-numbing empathy dissipating, Drusal arched his back from the solid touch
of unyielding ground.
Please keep still…A faint whisper reached through the agony of torn muscles and ripped
skin. A familiar wash of soothing fingers calmed the fear that Cat had been taken from him.
You are safe…?
The effort of sending out a tiny thread of thought felt like knives digging into his skull.
“Don’t think, just breathe…” Gentle fingers caressed his face, dampening the worst of the
pain in a feather-light brush of all the elements.
“I have to get us both to safety behind the shield.” Cat knew the only way to move him
was to translocate, something she had never considered trying before.
“I have to search your mind to understand the way translocation works. I’m not asking
this lightly Drusal… If I don’t get it right, our molecules will be spread across the shield
like so much strawberry jam.” Vividly aware that she could kill them both, leaving Istirina
to cheer at their demise, Cat laid her heart open for Lord Vardon. She showed him the
scene with Turi. Let Drusal feel the strength of her growing attachment to him.
“I cannot in all conscience let you die. A part of me would go with you.” It wasn’t quite
an avowal of love, but as close as she was prepared to go, for now.
Drusal had not felt this level of commitment from another being since his father had
disappeared from the Court. If he was to die, Iscatya would find another mate. Turi had
shown a blatant interest in the female who held his life in her hands. Was he prepared
to let her go? Let his life force dissipate into the earth? No…
He wanted to live, to prove he was worthy to be her mate. Opening the outer layers of his
mind to a female was alien, reluctance battled with need. He had fought for eons to keep
the Queen from intruding upon his innermost thoughts. To take a step towards trusting his
life, his essence, to an infant was tantamount to suicide. His options were limited.
Succumbing to a pleading voice he laid open the part of his mind that held the method of
translocation, with no little trepidation.
Thank you… A tendril of gratitude infused his mind. Hold still my mate…
Cat using a form of address, other than the scathing Lord Vardon, filled Drusal’s tired mind
with a mist of tenderness he had not rightly earned.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The descent into the truth pool was messy. On the plus side all their limbs were still
attached and in working order, even though disorientation made Cat feel woozy. With his
eyes sealed shut, Drusal knew Iscatya continued to hold his head above water. Lapping
waves cooled the stinging wounds covering every inch of his back.
“Let your body float Fur ball, I won’t let you drown…” A glimmer of hope touched his
consciousness, Cat’s relief was seeping from her thoughts. They were protected from
further attacks. All her attention became riveted by the appalling mess Dardanos had
carved into his flesh. Gently teasing the blood soaked shirt over his arms, tears fell to
disperse in the glistening depths of a crystal pool.
“I’m going to use a little of my fire element to warm the water, hypothermia is an added
complication we can both do without.” She kept up a running commentary more for her
own benefit than Drusal’s. It distracted her from the seething anger threatening to bring
the water to a boil.
“As soon as I can be certain your wounds are free of dirt, I promise to put you to bed.”
A throaty chuckle escaped her lips.
“Now there’s an invitation you never expected to hear from my mouth.”
Drusal’s drawn out sigh suggested it was an easy offer to make, since he was incapacitated,
unfit to make full use of a very inviting bed. Using the rags that were left of his shirt to clean
his face, she grinned into pain-filled eyes.
“Was that a sigh of thank the fates I can sleep, or damn it, my charms are a useless force
right now?” With tender care Cat patted away the last trace of blood from a gorgeous
face, noting several scratch marks on both cheeks. The Queen had been up close and very
personal during the beating he had taken, in making sure he was less than ready to bed his
mate. “You are right on both counts…” The merest attempt at speech exhausted Drusal,
but he needed to lighten the sadness and shame he saw in her eyes.
“This is not of your making Iscatya, do not bear the burden of guilt for a female who does
not deserve to call you kin. She bears no love for you. All that has gone before is an overriding
fear that another, stronger female will usurp her position as supreme Ruler of the
Sidhe, you know this.
Taking an enemy by force is as natural to her as breathing. She wants you destroyed or
subverted by any means at her disposal, I was but the first of many dupes to trap you
before your power rivals hers.” Eyes closing Drusal admitted his own guilt in forcing his
glamour on Cat, to try to tie her for eternity in a bonded mating ritual.
“I know what you planned Fur ball… I’m not stupid, just sadly lacking in the attraction
department.” Shifting to support his body more securely, Cat hid her eyes from an
unwavering pearlescent stare. “Turi was more than ready to take your place…”
A deep throated growl told her exactly what he thought of that idea.
“Be reasonable Fur ball. I would only be exchanging one form of servitude for another.
Isn’t that the reason you tried to make me your mate?” She wanted him to deny any form
of collusion with the Queen. He was all Fae, incapable in any way of lying. That didn’t mean
he wasn’t duplicitous. Lord Vardon could play with words to form a reasonable excuse to
secure an attachment to her. “Yes…” He answered through clenched teeth.
It was more shocking to hear Drusal starkly admit he wanted her because the Queen had
commanded it, than to be witness to a convoluted evasion of the truth.
“Fine… Then we know exactly where we stand. You know I am attracted to you.” Cat could
no more lie than he could. “Don’t believe for a minute it gives you a free pass to my heart.
I intend to heal your body to the best of my ability then give you the same choice you gave
to your victims. Either, you return to the Court and submit to Grandmother’s pleasure or
seek exile from this realm.” Her heart broke as she spurned all he had to offer as a mate.
Trusting a male who could turn on the charm at a whim to suit his purposes was a life she
had already lived. Succumbing to base instinct, an easy avenue of gratuitous pleasure Cat
was not prepared to accept. She wanted the real deal or nothing.
Drusal felt a thrill of fear that the tables had been turned on him. Iscatya held him in less
esteem than did his hated Queen. He had played on her innocence to subvert and control
a female whose birth threatened the status quo. She used politics as a child would play with
building blocks, forming a power base that allowed no refusal of the control she wrought in
but a few days.
Istirina’s line was alive and well in a Granddaughter as ruthless as she was.
“As you wish Princessin…” Drusal withdrew into his thoughts, locking down the growing
attachment he felt for a female who could destroy him in a heartbeat. The mating bond had
meant nothing but disaster, or a tool to usurp the Queen, until now. His father had bonded
with Istirina soon after the vampire incursions. It was a signal for the demise of a male who
gave him life. A slow degradation of mind and spirit, until the day his father’s essence was
expunged from his soul in a knife sharp wound. Drusal was no fool, his father had not met
the needs of a rampant female. Desire for another child, one she could mould into a creature
without conscience, an end product she craved, to the extent she took to bed any male
capable of breeding. He had been next in line after his father, a path he fought strenuously
and painfully. This desire to have a child led to the decimation of the Court. Families were
torn apart or fled in fear of reprisal. Drusal became the hunter of breeding stock, his task to
bring back the males, or annihilate the whole family.
His innate compassion, and loathing for the Queen, had saved many families from extinction.
The majority had integrated and interbred with the human world. His assumption that
Iscatya was a hybrid by-product of the intermingling of races was an arrogance he may live to
regret. Drusal’s pure blood held the only value left in his life, a superiority over the humans,
whose rapacious greed for power overwhelmed the planet in a blanket of pollution that
threatened to destroy the marvel of creation, an aberration to be wiped out.
I am still in your head Lord Vardon… Cat was disgusted by Istirina’s manipulation of Drusal
and his father, she was more appalled by the wanton desire to destroy mankind. All beings
had the intrinsic right to survive, whether or not they conformed to his idea of a perfect
world, dominated by superior Sidhe.
“Fur ball you have no idea of the results of the decimation you envisage. Humans outnumber
the Sidhe. Believe me… They will not relinquish their right to survive without a dirty fight.
I know how dogged they, we, can be when our freedom is threatened.” Taking a deep breath,
Cat readied herself to defend the human world that had been her home for twenty five years.
“Your brothers, your father defended the Sidhe against an incursion of vampires… Yes…?”
Taking a bite of human history Cat drew parallels.
“Europe and America fought the Nazi’s in a war that brought the world to its knees. They did
this in reprisal, at the genocide of a gentle people who could not defend themselves. It’s a
human trait called compassion, a horror that one person has the right to decide who lives and
who dies. Do you really want to start a war that could ultimately wipe out a race of peace
loving people, ones who gifted you with life?” Her simplistic review of all the hatred he had
stored in a heart made brittle and broken by the loss of his father, made Drusal feel humbled.
“You are being irrational Lord Vardon. The human race is no threat to you. The threat lives
and breathes in Istirina. She demeaned your purity by allying you to a less than perfect mate.
The human race played no part in the downfall of the Sidhe, in the loss of true decency and
honour in a Sovereign Realm.”Cat released his body to float unaided in the truth pool.
“Suddenly I am not so attracted to you… Turi may be a brutish Bear with no finesse, but at
this moment he’s an angel in comparison to you.” Wiping her hands to remove any trace of
contamination, any smidgeon of deluded blood from her skin, Cat slid from the pool in an
eddy of wild waves that washed over Drusal’s face.
“When you are able to, come to the house…” Derision filled her human face with a veneer
of contempt at the distasteful Dark Hound he had become. “My decision to help you stands.
I can do no less for any creature in distress.” Heart and head hardened against a male who
would contemplate waging war on innocent beings and filled Cat with the resolve to be done
with him and Istirina, once a brotherhood of Sidhe warriors were brought to safety.
Drusal watched with a heart he once had no use for torn apart, as Cat left him alone to
fend for himself. Crawling from the pool on hands and knees, the weakness that assuaged
his limbs a residue of a psychic and physical beating in a space of days. A small voice in his
head berated the Lord Vardon for ever demeaning a world that had shaped the female he
desperately wanted to encourage to accept a mating bond, preferably a marked bond. She
was no coy innocent waiting with baited breath for a male to bestow his seed on her.
Iscatya Edan-Fire, a pure Sidhe female of two royal lines - Istirina had enjoyed informing him
of the nature of his mate’s lineage as she stripped the skin from his back - was the ultimate
of desires. A female with the capacity to rule a world with compassion and love, diametrically
opposed to the creature whose reign instilled only fear and hatred in all who served her.
Istirina had fostered his belief that humans were the scourge of the earth, blaming them for
luring away the males, including his father. He could not in truth lay the full blame for his
antagonism on Istirina, but regretted how blinded he had been by the force of her arguments.
Cat had been driven from his side by stupidity, she found him to be unworthy as a partner.
The difference between love and hate is a
bitter line he was learning to his cost, the cost of
having Iscatya by his side for eternity.
Shaking from head to toe, Cat couldn’t decide if it was the fact she was soaking wet or Drusal’s
belief in his superiority of spirit that froze her heart into a solid ball of ice. Placing a full shield
over the bathroom door she stepped into a scalding shower to suffer the torment of finally
repudiating the male she had grown to love.
Strong emotions were the side effect of traumatic events…
Where had she heard that? Oh yeah… A chick flick she and Alex had watched. Her life was no
chick flick. It was a fright night of hopeless entanglements. She froze under a misty spray,
Drusal would go feral, totally ballistic, when he found out she had mate marked his brothers.
Turning off the shower Cat sensed his presence in the bedroom. A familiar vanilla scent teased
her nose and heart with all she had just thrown away. Pulling on sweat pants and matching
grey vest, she twisted wet hair into a tight knot. She still needed him to retrieve the brethren.
He had to be told about the desperate plan to protect precious skin, before he returned to
Court, if he decided to return to Istirina and the indignity of serving as her right hand wolf.
Determination to resist the pull of her empathic nature to treat a seriously wounded animal
with sympathetic care, left her lips in a wounded gasp at the sight of a naked body scarred
beyond belief. Drusal was struggling uselessly to remove sodden leather pants.
Rushing to his side Cat slipped under one arm, reaching down to untangle the wet leather
twisted round his ankles. In her peripheral vision his manhood hung limp, but still a potent
force of masculinity. His hand dropped, to cover the cause of possible embarrassment.
“I’ve seen you naked before, stop being a wimp Fur Ball.” Cat snapped at him, released from
the mesmerising vision of all he could offer.
“Get onto the bed, I want to examine the state of your back.” Buckling under his tremendous
Burn for Me (Edanholme Book 1) Page 11