The only person he truly cared about in this world.
Loved, if he was honest. If he could ever claim to know what the emotion of love meant.
But that wasn’t reason enough to kill. He could protect Lillian. But could he always keep his eye out for this man? Could he let him possibly take out this hospital?
It was daylight, and after taking care of Phillip so recently, Nathan didn’t feel at all like feeding, but he put his hand to the man’s forehead, deciding he needed to gauge how far the darkness had gone.
Nathan gasped in pain as he felt dark swirls of black and purple entwining through his hand and into his body as the man writhed and gaped.
Nathan couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this much evil, though there had been plenty in Phil.
But instead of seeing the faces of raped and murdered women, as he had in Phil’s future, this time he saw flames and destruction.
Murder. Bombing. Bloodlust to rival any nightmare dragon’s.
He withdrew his hand and sighed, looking down at the man who was depleted but still gloating with that evil grin.
This was something Nathan would have to take care of whether he wanted to or not.
He had always hated what moments like this did to his ledger, how it felt like giving in to the darkness inside him. How it made it feel hopeless to ever connect with humankind.
Still, he didn’t feel he had a choice when he was faced with this level of evil, when he was the only one who could stop it just by being the monster he was born to be.
If that meant he couldn’t be with or wasn’t worthy of someone like Lillian, then so be it. But at least the world around her would be a little safer without this mad bomber around.
Because the man was right. Nathan had seen it all in his future. He would get out of wherever they put him, and he would kill.
Kill and kill and kill. People like the ones who had just shaken his hand, trust shining in their eyes, would be burning piles of ash.
No, he couldn’t allow it, no matter how much kills like this darkened his soul.
What did it really matter? He was already born pitch black anyway.
He was born to live only at midnight so people like Lillian could stay in the light.
He slowly lowered the bomber to the ground and made sure no one else was around them.
Then he began.
Chapter 22
When the crowd began to dissipate and everyone was heading out to the parking lot out front, Lillian realized Nathan still hadn’t come back.
She said good-bye to his secretary and assistant and told them she and Nathan would probably see him back at the building and then went in search of her new friend.
More than friends, really, but after their acrimonious start, even friendship sounded great to her.
She walked down the hall in the direction he’d been going and paused when she saw a door at the end of a long hallway.
Was that where’d he’d gone? Her intuition tingled, saying that was it, and she sped up to a jog as she ran to the end of the hall.
When she pushed open the doors, she looked around her, inhaling fresh, cool air.
But she didn’t see anyone.
This was the back of the hospital, and she didn’t see any common parking. Probably only staff was allowed back here. She peeked around, hoping she didn’t get in trouble or that Nathan would be able to get her out of it if she did.
She didn’t know why she was worried about Nathan, since she’d seen he could take care of himself, but she was.
She walked along the building until she reached the far corner and then peeked around it to see a little utility building.
In front of it, she saw someone kneeling, and she let out a loud sigh of relief.
Nathan.
It hadn’t been like him to just leave a meeting that long, so perhaps the crowd had been getting to him. He did like his space, after all.
She took a few steps forward and stopped, unable to make sense of what her eyes were seeing. She blinked and popped back around the corner out of sight, hoping Nathan hadn’t seen her.
Perhaps she’d been inside with too many people. Maybe she hadn’t been getting enough oxygen. She took a deep breath, trying to tell her heart not to crawl out of her ribcage; it was jumping so hard.
Her brain flashed, trying in some way to make what she’d seen be possible. Or anything other than what it was.
Then she peeked around the corner again and withdrew once more, gagging with her hand over her mouth.
She fell to her knees, shaking.
It wasn’t possible.
Images of the Nathan she’d gotten to know over the past few days flooded her memory, trying desperately to counteract the tableaux she’d just witnessed.
Nathan in bed with her, looking down tenderly. Nathan telling her she could stay with him, acting protectively. Nathan rescuing Sasha. Nathan staying calm on their date.
Nathan saying he would always have secrets. Nathan saying she should run from him that night they first made love.
Nathan stopping a robbery as though it were nothing. Nathan taking down Phil.
Nathan mentioning humans as if they were something other.
As if he wasn’t one.
At the time, the thought had been impossible. But now…
She steeled herself, more afraid than she’d ever been in her life, as she took one more look around the building to make sure she really saw what she thought she had.
Her jaw dropped as Nathan turned to face her, finally noticing her presence.
She tried to tell herself to move, but there was no running now. Her body was totally frozen. She had absolutely no words.
Because the man she was in love with, the man she’d been interviewing people about, preparing to write a human-interest story to show the world how wonderful he was, was feeding on someone.
At least that’s how it appeared.
Nathan Lancaster, billionaire philanthropist and apparent monster, had his teeth over some guy’s neck, where it was wounded raggedly, and blood was running down the corners of his mouth.
Then his eyes finally noticed her, and he dropped the man he’d just apparently killed, slowly standing.
She opened her mouth to scream, but before she could blink, Nathan was there, covering her mouth.
She looked at him over his fingers, her eyes wide and terrified. “What are you?” she managed to mumble from behind his head.
He slowly met her eyes, and his gaze was blood red, flashing behind what were clearly blue contacts.
“Don’t scream,” he said quietly. “I can explain.”
He damn well better.
“But I need to take care of this first.”
He lowered her hand, and she gaped at him, too afraid to do anything else as he walked back to the prone body on the cement.
She took a few stumbling steps forward. “So this is it? The missing people? Phillip? What are you?”
He looked at the sky as if begging for patience. Or was it forgiveness? Despite their situation, instead of being alarmed, he seemed terribly resigned. A little undecided but mostly resigned.
“I can explain, Lillian. But I need you to sleep now.” Then he raised his hand, and she felt her eyes close, felt herself slump to her knees and then hit the ground as everything went black.
* * *
He’d fucked up.
Well and truly, Nathan knew as he sat in his study, watching Lillian sleep fitfully.
She would wake soon, and he still didn’t know what to say. If he could have gone her whole lifetime without letting her see what he did, he would have.
But his need to protect her, to protect all the bomber’s future victims, had clouded his vision.
What had he been thinking, feeding in broad daylight?
But what if he hadn’t been able to find the man again? What if he hadn’t been able to reach him in prison?
He’d defused the man’s bomb and incinerated the re
mains along with the man’s body. He’d done it coldly, regretting nothing except that Lillian had seen.
No one deserved to see that.
No one deserved to do that, but it had been his job since birth.
He was a creature of the dark, feeding on blood and darkness, and the only thing that justified his existence was the people he had also saved.
He looked over at Lillian, fighting the urge to stroke her hair. It was her connection with him that had made him so protective he hadn’t been able to think straight. He had never been so careless when feeding before.
He hadn’t thought about the risks, hadn’t thought about anything but saving her and the others. Hadn’t even thought about his notebook, for the first time in a hundred years.
Their creator had known they would kill things, because it was in their blood, but she’d given them a challenge—to save more than they killed, to be a force for good in this world.
To defy their inborn nature.
He’d done his very best.
He took out his ledger and noted the names of the lives he’d saved and the one he’d taken.
Then he tucked it back in his suit jacket and stared down at his mate.
Mate. It was the word that kept coming to him from somewhere he couldn’t identify. A part of him that was becoming more prominent whenever Lillian was around.
But what would they do now?
Humans were never supposed to know about their existence. No one could know.
Plus, she’d asked what he was, and he didn’t know what to tell her. No one completely knew. He had vague memories of being young in the laboratory, of being called nightmares, of being called abominations…
Once, someone had called them dragons but then corrected it to nightmare dragons and then, as they’d grown and began to feed, merely nightmares.
Their creator had said there were many things that went into making them, but they hadn’t turned out as she planned.
Still, given what they were, he’d done his best to hurt as few people as possible, and when he did feed, it saved far more people than he’d hurt.
And he’d gone undetected for over a hundred years… until something as little as love had fucked him up.
But then, was there anything little about love? This woman in front of him, who’d made him overlook all his careful rules and cautious tendencies… his feelings for her felt as big and wide as the sky.
He slumped in his chair, wondering if he should wake her.
He’d already taken a shower, cleaned away any evidence of what had happened. He still had no idea what to explain to her, what exactly she’d seen or what she made of it, or what should happen next.
For the first time in his life, he had no plan, no idea what to do.
Even when Lillian had unexpectedly walked into his life, he’d almost immediately figured out a plan for what they would do together.
How to keep her by his side, how to keep her safe.
But he’d seen the fear in her eyes, the blood leaving her face, the way her hands slumped.
He doubted she would ever look at him the same again.
His heart, the only vulnerable part of him, felt exposed and ready to be squashed.
He could feel the darkness in him welling, ready to take over, to take away this pain and let him go back to feeling coldness.
If he couldn’t have her… if he couldn’t—
A small moan drew his attention, and he jolted when he realized she was stirring.
Dark curls fell away from her face as she slowly pushed to a seated position. She blinked at him, long lashes fringing those gorgeous, green-brown eyes. “Nathan?” She rubbed her head. “I had the most terrible… nightmare…”
He saw the moment it all came back to her as she clapped her hand over her mouth tightly and made a little terrified sound.
He scared her. Of course he did. Their creator, their mother, had warned him that no human would ever be able to accept what he was. And no shifter either, without her approval after seeing his ledger.
Now that ledger, with the thousands of lives saved, the evidence of his dark efforts in this lonely human world, was useless.
Perhaps he should have done differently, ignored the ledger, given up and stayed in the dark.
But if he had, he wouldn’t have met Lillian.
He couldn’t even imagine that now. Even if she left him, he would never regret these few days when he’d crawled out of the darkness and gotten to live in the light.
“I… I don’t know what to tell you,” he said.
Lillian cringed back in her chair, but to her credit, she didn’t run. Her dark eyes studied him, running over his hair, his body, darting up to his lips and eyes. “Did I imagine it?”
“Imagine what?”
“You feeding on someone,” she said quietly, putting her hand to her chest, and rubbing as if something was painful. “I still can’t believe what I saw. If I hadn’t been standing there, if I hadn’t…” She closed her eyes slowly. “You put me to sleep.”
“It’s one of my gifts. So no one feels pain. They simply go to sleep, and anything that happens is merely… a nightmare.”
She gaped at him. “You can’t be serious. What are you? Some kind of serial killer? You use chloroform?”
He could feel the darkness in him taking over. After all, what was the point in hiding anymore? Lillian was too smart, too fearless in her search of truth to just accept what had happened as part of her imagination.
So what did it matter if he was totally open now? If he showed her every part of him? At least the parts he himself understood.
“I don’t use chloroform.”
“How do you do it?”
“With my mind.”
She shifted in agitation, fear still widening her eyes. “Then what are you? A cannibal?”
“No,” he said.
“I saw you feeding on someone. How does that not make you a cannibal?”
“I’m not human, Lillian. Above all, I do know that. I’m not even supposed to get close to them, but with you, it was just so hard.”
Her expression was torn between fear and confusion, and her body was still tight with alarm. “Nathan, this is too much. I don’t know what to do with this. I don’t understand what you are.”
“I don’t fully either, so I don’t know how to explain.”
Lillian let out a sigh. “You don’t want me to run from you, but how can I stay if you can’t even tell me what you are?”
He was silent for a long moment, then looked up to meet her eyes. “I can show you.”
She bit her lip hesitantly. “How?”
“Stay with me after midnight.”
“I don’t know if I can.” Her breathing was rapid, shallow, and a part of him that was now buried wanted to hold her, pull her in against him and tell her everything would be all right.
But he couldn’t because he had no idea what would happen from here on out.
He just knew, with the feelings between them, neither of them would ever be the same.
“Lillian… I love you.”
“Don’t say that, not now,” she said, putting up a hand. “You knew you were like this. You knew—”
“You knew something was wrong with me,” he said, taking a step forward. “That’s why I couldn’t say no to you. You seemed to see past walls no one had looked behind in so many years. I’ve been alone for so long. Having someone see past the masks I put up… gave me hope that someone would someday see the truth.”
“So this is what you wanted all along? To scare me?”
“No! I never intended for you to find this out, but from the moment you began spending time with me, I couldn’t let you go. So yes, I suppose I should have known it would come to this moment, but I never meant to let you see me feed.”
“Did you ‘feed’ on Phillip?”
He hesitated, then nodded.
“Oh God,” she said. “How could I not see it? The police said you were seen w
ith missing people.”
“Trust me,” Nathan said. “They were people who should go missing. I have the ability to see—”
“I don’t want to hear any justifications,” she said, getting off of the chair and edging toward the door. “You can’t just hurt people. Who makes you the judge?”
Whatever force had given him the ability to see people’s future, but it didn’t look as if she would give him time to explain.
Not that he blamed her. He should have known his life was something no human could understand.
All he knew was he had done the best he could in the darkness.
He heard her put her hand on the doorknob, heard her curse as she tried to open it and found it locked. “Let me out this instant.”
Now that she’d discovered what he was, he couldn’t just let her run out of here. Not without trying to see eye to eye. “You know I would never hurt you, but we still need to talk.”
She glared at him, looking almost hysterical. “Or I need to go before you eat me, too.”
He stood from his chair as rage and hurt moved through him, twisting up his soul. “Is that really what you think of me? You’ve seen my life. You’ve seen what I do. And yes, now you’ve seen what happens in the shadows. But you don’t want to know the whole truth of it? Aren’t you a journalist? Don’t you want to know why?”
She shook her head warily. “No. Right now I need to get away, be safe. I won’t tell anyone, Nathan. I just need some time to process.”
“So you’re going to run. You’re the first person to see who I am, and you’re going to run.” He turned his back to her and waved a hand, and the lock turned in the door. “So be it. Just go. It’s what I should have expected.”
Chapter 23
Lillian grabbed the handle but paused at the resigned, desperate tone of Nathan’s voice.
Her brain was still struggling to put it all together, but every time she remembered what she’d seen, how impossible it should be, her body went into fight-or-flight mode again, leaving her boneless.
But as she stood there, heart pounding, she found she couldn’t just leave him. Not like this, without hearing him out.
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