Darkest Before Dawn

by Amelia Hutchins

  Shots rang out from the tree line as I moved toward my brother, but a sickening pelting noise made me pause as sharp pain and an extreme burning sensation shot through several places around my heart. Dagan watched me, and I knew from the look in his eyes that this wasn’t my death. It was a rebirth to them, their kind.

  I could hear their mental chatter and they didn’t seem to know that I’d already died, and been reborn. This would be my second death, the cliff being my first. My eyes shot to Jimmy who looked at me grimly. He must have thought Addy was exaggerating when she told everyone at the shelter that I was dying. He probably thought I was at the estate being a vampire’s plaything. No wonder my mother said I was a vampire’s whore. I could do this; I could handle it for Grayson. I could handle anything to save him.

  Right? It was too much! It felt as if my entire body was being torn apart. My veins pushed poison through them, and the entire time, I somehow managed to stay upright. The bullets had been laced with something, ensuring death would be swift. I swallowed until I couldn’t, and the air left my lungs in an exhale.

  “She’s amazing,” Trina whispered with pride.

  I closed my eyes and tried to think of what Dad would have said if he’d seen me like this. I discarded the thought quickly and focused on the process. I listened to their thoughts, and then to the others around me.

  I could feel Jaeden as if he was with me, a part of me, but then I’d seen it in my vision. I had his blood, and it had done something to us. I felt the glyphs as they seared the skin inside my forearms, showing my rank in the army I was currently staring down. Thankfully, it was soon to end. Grayson was too young for it to happen to him, and right now he was fighting them to get to me.

  I looked up and met Trina’s eyes. Grayson broke free, as my vision changed so that I could now see an outline of everyone’s heat signature. This was an improvement in the vision I experienced when I fought the wolves and I knew from my visions that my blue eyes now had a luminous glow to them.

  “She’s not a Knight, Trina, she’s a fucking Guardian,” someone whispered.

  Wait, what? Knight was so much cooler than Guardian.

  “Move!” she screamed, her eyes flashed in a blue luminous glow that matched mine, and the Sentinels scattered and melted into the woods, Dagan grabbed Grayson and strong armed him into one of the waiting cars in the distance and I was frozen, unable to make myself move through the pain.

  “Now!” I breathed, barely above a whisper, but Jaeden still felt it and the woods exploded with life.

  They attacked as a well-oiled unit, but the car that held Grayson in it sped off before anyone could stop it. I screamed for Jaeden to get Grayson, but the car was gone before I could get the words out.

  Lachlan in wolf form broke away from the scuffle and darted to my frozen form. He whined and then howled, which brought a very blood-covered Jaeden to me.

  “Emma,” he whispered as he stared into my eyes.

  “They took Grayson.” I’d failed. I was alive, but the plan had failed. The change had taken longer than my vision showed me it would; I watched in silence as the wolves and vampire tore the only two remaining Sentinels apart. It didn’t look like they were going to save anyone for interrogation, that much I could see.

  “We will help you find him,” Jaeden said with promise buried in his tone. “We will all help you find him.” Jaeden picked me up since I was basically stuck standing in place and unable to move from lack of strength.

  In my first vision, I’d seen Dagan kill my dad, and I had been shot several times and underwent the change. I broke free of the change, then killed them all and saved my brother. The other vision had been them killing me when I’d tried to save my dad. The third option showed they’d killed my dad, and taken me and Grayson to some underground lab. I hadn’t seen what did happen in any of the visions, but I’d learned from it.

  One: My visions weren’t perfect, they seemed to more like tactical simulations that allowed me to assess best-case scenario.

  Two: I was a Sentinel Guardian, but without google or another Sentinel to explain what that meant, that knowledge was pretty much useless.

  Three: I heard voices inside my head when the Sentinels were close to me, and I could use that to find my brother.

  Four: My dad was really dead now.

  Five: My mother was going to die by my hand, well; she was going to be buried and hidden in some shithole of a grave that had maggots and other things in it and she wouldn’t enjoy it— not a freaking second of it.

  Chapter 28

  It was kind of anticlimactic. I hadn’t discovered very much information of what I was, and the glyphs on my forearms itched a little as they set and healed. They looked a little like an intricate lacy infinity symbol on the inside of each forearm, but I had no idea as to what they signified other than a rank. As I sat in my dad’s room before the small service that Addy was putting together, I realized I couldn’t put my thoughts and emotions together, much less a service for my dad. I found a bunch of journals in the room while looking for clothes for him to be buried in. I started skimming the entries of one, and found references to him meeting Shamus.

  “Is everything okay?” Lachlan popped his head in the doorway, concern in his eyes.

  “Yeah, I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

  He nodded and left. I watched as Jaeden walked by, carrying a load of supplies he’d brought. It was odd; as I saw him in the shelter, interacting with my people and bringing in supplies, he looked so right doing it, like he belonged with us. I had no idea where that thought came from.

  “Emma, it’s time.” Jaeden had come for me, pulling my mind from my distracted musings.

  I stood and hid the journal back in my dad’s drawer before heading with Jaeden and Lachlan to the makeshift morgue with my dad’s best blue shirt and jeans. Sven was waiting to replace the blood soaked clothes he’d died in and when I handed them off to him, I spun around and leveled Shamus with a look.

  “You knew my dad?”

  “Yes,” Shamus smiled as he said it. “He had been doing some research on the internet that was very specific,” he shook his head and made a task-tsk noise of disproval, “which of course, didn’t go unnoticed by the elders, so I came here and met him to see if he was a threat or not. I liked him immediately upon meeting him. I saw the fight in him, and knew he’d be perfect for building a ‘safe haven’ so to speak, if it came to that. You see, once your father understood why I was here and what I was, he told me of a virus that would be put into play soon; that it was going to wipe out much of what I hold near and dear, if you get my meaning. Now usually someone spouting nonsense like that, I wouldn’t have paid much mind to, but a little taste and I knew everything he said was true.” He flashed me a cheeky grin. “So, I gave him a wee bit of help and sent much of the funding used to build this Ark. Do not misunderstand me, Emma. It was for purely selfish reasons. He would attract humans, it was inevitable, and my kind need food. I made a choice to invest in him, and it made sense since this was a secure location that would be easy to hold. Years later when the virus did hit, we only had to had come here and work on the defense of the area. I had already secured the food.” He finished smugly.

  “Well then,” I said, at a loss of anything better to say. Food, he’d secured food. And by food, he meant my friends. Peachy! “Wait, you were here before too?” I asked Jaeden who smiled at me.

  “I had a peek at you from a distance once. I’m pretty sure it was Addy taking pictures of you in a field of flowers. You didn’t turn in my direction, but from the scent I caught of you, I knew I’d want to have you. Your scent has changed now that you are grown; it is even more enticing now,” he said as his eyes twinkled naughtily.

  I blinked. I’d wondered that day if I’d ever do anything good with my life, or find love. And the entire time I’d been pl
otting my life, a vampire had been watching me. Death had been watching me from afar and I’d not even known it.

  “Did I meet you?”

  “No,” he said with a sexy smile that made me think otherwise. “But I knew I’d have you if you hadn’t been among the dead here.”

  “Nice, so you plotted my deflowering before you even met me?”

  “I never take chances. I did way more than plan your deflowering since I hadn’t expected you to have a flower,” he replied with a husky timbre and heat in his eyes.

  “Right,” I said as I spun around to find my dad had been laid out on a makeshift slab. “He knew what I was, and what my mother was.”

  “He was a very smart man,” Shamus said as he stood beside me. “He did this entire shelter alone, and he finished it without asking for help or more money than was needed to get this place operational. He was intelligent enough to know that you were special before anyone else did. He sent me a letter when you graduated high school, and he said you had started a job in the medical field, and that you’d be an asset to my people should anything happen to him.”

  “So what do you know of Sentinels?” I asked Shamus.

  “Nothing, nothing except rumors and myth,” he answered, and dismissed me.

  “It looks like you all got pretty up close and personal with some rumors and myths today,” I quipped, and Shamus rolled his eyes and a made a rude noise. “So what do we know of the rogue wolves?” I countered.

  “Jaeden shared with me what he told you; we don’t know much beyond that. Information keeps coming in all the time, so we are always reassessing.” He shrugged.

  “I haven’t made it through all of the tapes, the ones my mother made and hid,” I whispered as the implications of what she’d been up to filtered through me. “There’s a little information on one of the tapes that has some stuff about the wolves, not much though, but maybe one of the others might have more.” I shook my head sadly as I looked at my dad’s body. “The entire time she was with him, she was planning his death.”

  “You can’t know that,” Shamus said.

  “No, I wouldn’t have known that, but she was cocky. She documented everything. It is rambling and I don’t understand most of it, but it may be the way we figure out where she is and what her plans are.”

  “Maybe,” Jaeden said cautiously. “Right now, Emma, we need to bury your father.”

  I turned around and looked at the man who’d raised me. He’d done it right, and he’d never asked for anything. He had even figured out what I was, and kept detailed notes. I’m not sure if he ever meant to show them to me, but I was going to go through every journal to see what he had discovered about me and what he knew of my mom’s plans. He’d protected so many people and our little town, and he’d only been a mere mortal. He figured out a lot of what was going to happen; he knew he couldn’t stop it, but he still did what he could to save people. And they’d repaid him by calling him crazy.

  I knew there was no easy way to figure it out, and I was going to have to listen to those damn tapes sooner or later. I’d spent so much time grieving for her that it seemed unreal that she was back, and a total psycho.

  The funeral service that Addy planned had been beautiful, but what Jaeden and the men had done brought fresh tears to my eyes. Some of Lachlan’s men played the bagpipes, while Jaeden and his men had built a Viking funeral pyre. Instead of the ship, they settled for building a scaffold over what looked like a tomb, overlooking the shelter that he’d built. Sage had been placed on the scaffolding, and he’d been placed on top of that so when the torch was set to the pyre, his ashes would drop to the tomb below.

  It was a surreal thing to watch, and know that I was finally able to bury him. I’d thought him dead this entire time, but at some point he had run into her. Now she had my brother, and the knowledge that she did was sickening.

  The funeral wrapped up and Jaeden made his way to me with a purpose in his stride. “Emma, come,” he said as he grabbed my hand and pulled me behind him.

  We’d just cleared the trees when he pulled me against him and kissed away the tears on my cheeks. “I hated watching you today. That shit can’t happen again,” he ordered.

  “You’re not my boss; not here, not now.”

  “We will see about that,” he grinned. “I’m taking you home with me, so go say your goodbyes. I want you tonight, and you gave me your word, so go be a good girl and let them know you won’t be home until tomorrow night. I’m about to show you what it really means to be fucked by someone like me, little girl.”

  He swatted my ass as I turned to go do as he asked. Addy was giddy at the fact that I was going to be gone for a night, and Kyra had agreed to hold down the fort since Maggie was still in the common room, recovering. I gave Lachlan last-minute instructions that he would probably ignore and do what he felt was best, and with that, I left hand in hand with Jaeden.

  It wasn’t until we reached his room that I started doubting coming here. He walked us in and closed the door, sealing us in as he locked it.

  “Last time was nice, but I’m not promising that. I’m going to fuck you until those pretty little toes curl.” The carnal grin playing about his lips held a world of promise in it.

  “Is that so?” I asked, sultry as friggin’ hell. I blinked at my tone.

  “Oh yes, Emma, because I’m pretty damn sure you’re immortal, so I don’t plan on being gentle in my fucking.”

  “You called what you did before, gentle?” I turned my back on him with a naughty grin on my lips.

  “Yes,” he growled as he pushed me away from the door with his body. “I’m going to push you until you want me to stop; no, you’ll beg me to stop.” His hands slipped down my sides, to my hips as he slowly pushed me with his body towards the bed. His lips and nose softly grazed my neck. “I won’t, of course, because you’re mine now, Emma. I made you into a woman last time and now I’m going to make you into my pretty little fuck toy,” his lips fanned my ear, as he cupped and tested the weight of my breasts. “I’m going to bring you to the edge of orgasm, but I won’t let you fall,” his mouth drifted over and kissed the flesh at the nape of my neck. His voice was a soft growl that sent a little shock through my body. “Not for the first couple of times, and your body is going to want it, crave it even,” his hand slipped around and cupped my already throbbing sex.

  “You’re going to try and stop it from happening, and it’s going to add to your excitement, because it’s going to let me know that you’re ready to succumb to it, but I know when to pull away, when to wait it out,” he pressed his fingers against the wetness he was creating and smiled against my neck. “You’ll beg me to come, and your body will become sensitive and that sweet pussy will want to be punished more, until it’s a soaking fucking mess for me to feast upon. You’re going to realize how fucking helpless you are, and how much you want and need to come.” His tongue swirled where his lips had just been, sending a shiver racing down my skin with anticipation. “It’s going to be a slow tease, a merciless one that courses through your body. By the time I’m finished with you, you’ll whimper and shiver as you are kept at the height of desire.”

  I swallowed a moan, but it came out anyways, as a needy gasp. He stepped closer, and his eyes turned red as his fangs slid from his gums abruptly. “No hiding what I am tonight, Emma. Tonight you get me, faults and all. I’m fucking dirty and I have a filthy mouth but I’m good with it. I’m going to give you one orgasm because I smell it on you already, building for me just from my words alone. After that, I’m going to torture you and make that pussy weep to come for me. Only then will I fuck it, and not just once, Emma, but for the next twenty four hours straight, you’ll be in my bed with me, coming as I see fit.”

  I gulped down air, unable to get enough. He moved with inhuman speed. His hands were rough but it was okay; I wanted it rough, and
I wanted everything he said he would do to me—everything and more. My clothes had been stripped from my body as well as my bra. I shook with the knowledge that he’d removed it all in a blink of an eye. He left my panties on and flipped me up onto the bed, sitting on all fours.

  It wasn’t until I was on the bed, and had my ass in the air, fully exposed to him that he growled his approval from deep in his chest. His hands grazed over my ass and lower, to the soaking mess his dirty mouth had created. He ripped the panties off, and placed them in his pocket as if he’d wanted them as a trophy. He parted my flesh and allowed his fingers to sink in slowly, until they were buried inside of me, and then he pulled them out…slowly. He leaned over me, and placed his one hand under my chin as he lifted my face until I was forced to look at him.

  “Good girl,” he whispered with a hoarse voice. “I think you like this a lot. Being at my mercy, begging me to allow you to come. I have dreamt of this sweet pussy being soaking wet and weeping with the need to be fucked since the last time I had you here. I imagined how hard I would fuck it, and how loud you’d scream for me.”

  Fuck! He was seriously skilled in dirty talk! He turned me over, and my hands itched to touch him. Like this, he could see everything I had, and take whatever he wanted.

  I moved to touch him, but he pushed me down on the pillows that rested against the headboard and his hand wrapped around my throat possessively. “You’ll lie there and take it, little one. Be my good girl—” he said before he leaned down and nipped at one nipple, then the other, drawing it in until it grew hard from his hot mouth. His fingers found my core and plunged inside, pulling a deep moan of pleasure from my throat where his other hand held me down by my throat still. “Fucking hell, good girls aren’t this wet, Emma.”