Dark and Damaged: Eight Tortured Heroes of Paranormal Romance: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set

by Colleen Gleason

  He tried to stand. “We have to go. He may yet be alive.”

  Decades of dragon blood might have sustained him. He’d been injured many times in the past. There was still hope.

  “You’re barely conscious,” Ember said. “I think we need to wait until you’re better in case another creepy killer is waiting for you at your house. You’re in no shape to fight again.”

  “This is Matthew,” Thane told her.

  “I know. But you look like you’re going to fall over,” Ember shot back. “You’ve been lucid for all of two minutes. You almost died on me.”

  “He’d do it for me, Ember. He has done it for me.” So many times.

  “I can go,” Bryan said to Thane. “Now that you’re awake, you can hold off Ray—he’s my asshole Alpha.” He looked over at Ember. “Ray doesn’t have the balls to attack Thane Ealdian.”

  Thane was taken aback by the wolf’s generosity. “I would be most grateful. Matthew is family.”

  “You’ve been taking care of my girl,” Bryan said. “I’m happy to do it.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Ember said to Bryan. “That last killer…he was like a big insect on the wall. He almost killed Thane.”

  “Not an insect. Vampire,” Thane said under his breath.

  Bryan nodded as if he’d guessed as much, but Ember’s eyes widened in horror as she mouthed the word vampire.

  “Oh please, Ember,” Bryan said, shrugging off the danger. “Give a wolf some credit. I may not be shifter royalty, but I can handle myself. I’ll do a little sniffing around and report back. Easy.”

  His tone was disarming, and Thane could see Ember’s resolve wavering.

  “If you get hurt,” she said, “I swear I will make you miserable.”

  “Noted.” The Wolfkin didn’t seem afraid.

  “And thank you,” she added.

  Thane reached out to clasp the wolf’s hand. “You know where to go?”

  “Yeah, Ember told me where you live. Just don’t let Ray near her,” Bryan said, “or he’ll try to prove something to the rest of the pack.”

  “I wish this Ray would try,” Thane said. Even injured, he could take a wolf.

  Bryan put on a leather jacket. He looked like something of a rascal and had the wiles to go with it. When this was over Thane might just have work for him.

  “How about you worry about Godric,” Bryan said, “and I’ll take care of Ray when you both are set.”

  “Call if you find anything,” Ember said. “Call if you don’t, too.”

  Bryan left the apartment with a nonchalant wave over his shoulder. He was a good man; Thane approved of Ember thinking of him as kin. The fact that the wolf acted brotherly was a relief, and Ember had bickered at him like a sibling, as well.

  Ember moved to the window again and trained her gaze below. Thane pushed to his feet and came to stand next to her. Yes, some four stories down, there were men under the streetlights prowling like wolves and crouched on street benches. At least twenty by his count, light occasionally reflecting eerily in their eyes. He wondered how Bryan would evade them, but he didn’t doubt that he would.

  “How long until he reaches my stronghold?” Santa Barbara to Big Sur. Thane didn’t know how to gauge modern transportation times anymore.

  “I’d guess about four hours, maybe more,” she said, leaning in to the glass. Then she pointed upward. “Look!”

  Thane lifted his gaze in time to see a male silhouette land on a neighboring rooftop, crouch low, and creep to the other side of the building. Thane grinned in satisfaction. The pack wouldn’t be able to catch Bryan. Thane absolutely had work for him.

  He dismissed the threat below and turned to Ember. “Tell me everything.”

  “I don’t want to,” she said, an ache in her voice. “You’re hurt already. Can it be enough that Godric is the bad guy? How about you kill him—or I will—and then forget the past?”

  She was offering to kill one of the Triad? She, who was so opposed to bloodshed?

  “I appreciate the offer,” he said wryly, “but I need to know. Lena did this to me, didn’t she?”

  Ember faced him and opened her hands as if she wanted to give him something—solace maybe—but her palms were empty. “I think her intentions… Well, they weren’t good, but they weren’t all bad, either.”

  “Just tell me, Ember. Do me that courtesy. I’ve waited so long for it.”

  Her eyes welled with tears, and she pressed her lips together, as if refusing one last time. “Carreen was unfaithful to you…with Godric.”

  Thane drew back slightly. He’d known she’d taken a lover at some point and he’d also known that Carreen hadn’t been happy in the marriage. The religious rhetoric of the time was that shifters were demon-born, and that God favored meekness in women. He never should’ve laughed at her. He should’ve listened. Nevertheless, she’d done her duty, and he’d done his. Their marriage had joined two lands, creating a great swath of open country within which the dragons of their bloodlines could fly. It was a union many had feared, so much power coming together as one.

  The surprise was that Godric Tredan had been the one to touch his wife. Godric of the Triad. He’d been an ally. He’d visited the Ealdian stronghold on many occasions. Visited and…?

  Thane closed his eyes against the thought.

  “And Lena said she’d helped Carreen in that regard,” Ember said. “Helped her meet with him.”

  So both Carreen and Lena had conspired to deceive him. The pain in his shoulder muted, another kind of hurt bruising through his body. “Go on.”

  She paled. “She said Rinc wasn’t yours.”

  All the air in the room went rotten, poisonous to breathe. “What?”

  She nodded. “Lena was pretty unintelligible near the end, but she tried very hard to tell me this… Godric was the father. And he killed both of them.”

  Godric was the father. Of all the scenarios that had played out in Thane’s mind, this had not been one of them. The story Ember told was so simple, but he couldn’t understand it. The pieces of the puzzle were all laid out, and they appeared to snap together so easily, and yet he couldn’t make them fit. Wouldn’t make them fit. Not those pieces.

  “I’m so, so sorry, Thane. I can’t imagine how terrible—”

  Sound rushed his head, blocking out everything else. “Rinc wasn’t mine?”

  “We’ll go after Godric,” she said. “We’ll track that bastard down and shove one of those slayer spears through his heart. I’ll do it myself. With pleasure. He doesn’t deserve to live after all the blood he’s spilled. His own son. He killed his own son.”

  “My son,” Thane said. The pain of losing Rinc again, losing him this way, was agony beyond anything he’d known. He’d easily take another Drachentöter in its place.

  “Your son,” Ember repeated, tears spilling down her cheeks. “Of course.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Ember stood by Thane as he stared out the window, his expression scarred by the agony of what he’d just learned. He didn’t move. Barely breathed. She held her breath with him.

  Minutes ticked into an hour and then two, but he still didn’t move and neither did she. She wasn’t leaving him alone with his new, terrible knowledge. If she thought he’d be receptive, she’d have wrapped her arms around him and held him tight. But it was as if he’d turned to stone. Night fell and deepened to an ominous, obsidian black, and she didn’t budge from his side.

  When her mobile rang, she merely lifted it to her ear, ready for the worst.

  “Matthew is probably okay,” Bryan said on the other line.

  Thane turned his head slightly toward her, and she put the phone on speaker so that he could hear more easily. “What do you mean probably?” she asked.

  “I’m told he went looking for you and Thane with someone named Nerea Herrera. They left someone behind at Thane’s place in case you guys returned here. Nice spread, by the way. Little cramped for my taste. And the view—all that ocean�
��must get real dull.”

  It was not the time to be funny. “Why isn’t Matthew answering his phone, then?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” Bryan sounded weary. “Is it okay if I tell this very insistent person where you guys are, so that they can tell the other Herrera people?”

  Ember looked over at Thane, who gave a curt nod of his head. “They’re your allies. I’m guessing they finally want to make contact with you.”

  “Yes, go ahead,” she said to Bryan, frowning at the word allies. What a joke. “That’s fine.” The faster Matthew could come to them, the better. She wished he were a dragon so he could fly straight here. Maybe he’d know what to say to Thane, what would help him. Had she made a mistake in passing on Lena’s message?

  No, she’d do it again. He deserved to know. He’d always deserved to know.

  “Where is Matthew now?” she asked.

  Bryan repeated the question to someone on his end, and she heard an answering murmur. “Evidently, they thought you might be in New York City.”

  “Where the Triad meets,” Thane said with a bitter curl to his mouth.

  This was a disaster.

  “Okay,” she said to Bryan. It’d be a while, then. “You better stay away from here. I count twenty Wolfkin on the street now.”

  “Sounds like a party.” His voice had gone light. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  ***

  With the passing of the hours, the ache had diminished in Thane’s shoulder and his breathing had eased, his heartbeat returning to normal. He inhaled deeply, feeling his lungs expand, blood quickening in his veins, his senses sharpening.

  He could smell Ember’s stress, but she hadn’t moved. He’d wanted a loyal and steadfast woman, and despite blood and fire, here she was. He should lighten her heart.

  “Ember,” he said.

  She looked at him, circles under her dragon-green eyes.

  “Lena was wrong,” he said. “Rinc was my son. I know it. I can still see him. He felt like my son. My dragon knew him.”

  And he didn’t think the dragon could be fooled. That part of him had never been uncertain of anything. The dragon was absolute, and it hadn’t wavered now, not even with Ember’s tearful confession. It was Thane the man who’d feared the worst. He’d simply needed time to let the fear pass and the truth reassert itself in his heart. There had been something…undeniable, immutable between him and his son. Rinc had been an Ealdian. Carreen might’ve felt that, too, had she not repudiated that deeper, elemental part of herself. But she had, and so she’d been wrong, and in turn, Lena had been wrong.

  Godric was not Rinc’s father. And that had to be why Godric had killed him.

  “I could’ve misunderstood her,” Ember said. But the wistfulness in her voice told him that she’d understood what Lena had said all right.

  He sighed. “I acknowledge the possibility that Carreen could’ve carried Godric’s child, but she didn’t. The truth stands: Carreen bore my son, and she tried to shift in order to save him. Godric will pay.”

  “Just Godric? Not his heir?”

  Thane fisted his right hand and flexed it again. His stomach growled. “He doesn’t have one anymore. His son died during World War I.”

  “Lucky him,” she said.

  Thane grinned at her, then laughed out loud. “Don’t be so sad, Ember.”

  “I was sad with you,” she said defensively. “I was going to be sad with you as long as it took.”

  “Isn’t it better that Rinc did belong to me?”

  “Well, yeah.” Her eyes were getting wet again. “But you’ve been thinking that for a while now, and here I’ve been worrying…”

  Thane couldn’t help himself. He cupped her face and pressed his mouth to her lips. He tried to be gentle, with all his willpower he tried, but he was not a gentle man. He had never been. He wanted to inhale her, consume her, taste and touch every inch of her so that both the dragon and the man were satisfied. Bloodkin were not known for moderation.

  She trembled for a moment—frightened?—but then she moaned and her arms went around him, one of her hands fisting his hair to bring him even closer to her.

  He chuckled against her lips, and she backed suddenly, a little line of worry between her brows. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”

  Finally, a woman made for him. “No. Never. Sweetheart, I dare you to try.”

  “You were almost fatally wounded.”

  “It was a scratch,” he said. “Now, please, I beg you, take that ugly shirt off. I want to smell you, not that shaggy dog.”

  She grinned, a flicker of fire in her eyes. “Don’t let him hear you call him that.”

  In one movement, she lifted the shirt from her body, but his view was still obstructed by a female undergarment, a thing of torture if there ever was one—for both parties. Why did women insist on such restrictive contraptions?

  “You sure you’re okay?” she asked.

  He gathered her to him, the bare skin at her waist like satin under his hands.

  “Not okay,” he murmured against her neck. “Not by a long shot. But ask me again in few hours.”

  ***

  Emerson arched her back in Thane’s arms, eyes wide with surprise as he grazed his teeth along her collarbone. She hadn’t thought this through. Maybe she should’ve asked a few questions. Because the man’s hands scorched where they roamed—rounding over her hips, under the waistband of her borrowed sweatpants, and over her ass—but the burn didn’t hurt so much as it made her nerves crackle with feeling. He was a match; she was flint. And between them both…fire.

  Her vision shifted and went strange, color so bright and vivid that she had to close her eyes for a moment. The world washed dark red, but it didn’t matter. The craving that rose so fierce and fast within her intensified all her senses so that she ignored Thane’s attempts to release her bra. If she didn’t breathe him in right now, she thought she might die. She brushed her cheek along his chest to take his rich, dark, smoky scent inside her lungs.

  She knew she was not being sexy or cool, but how could she play cool if she was so damn hot?

  And she had to taste him… But he was wrestling with her pants, so she contented herself by moving her open mouth across his pecs, her tongue and teeth rasping across the tight skin under a smattering of chest hair.

  Not enough. Not nearly enough.

  She had to go lower, and was just sinking when he moved, stroking a hand deep into her hair and pinning her against him.

  “Little dragon,” he said. “You’d feel better if we worked together.”

  A sob of frustration broke from her throat. “I thought I knew how to do this,” she said. But all the feelings were too strong, the drives overwhelming. She had to get his pants off. Now. But he was holding her too tightly to get at what she wanted.

  “I think I’m dying,” she told him. This ache would kill her.

  He chuckled. “No, you’re merely awakening. And I’m going to show you how to fly.”

  Merely? She wasn’t merely anything. She’d known the Bloodkin were dangerous, and Thane was the deadliest of all. She was about to be ruined, utterly and completely ruined, and yet, all she could say was, “Yes, please.”

  He tilted her face up to him, and she opened her eyes to find his indigo gaze upon her. He fit his mouth to hers in a rough slide and lock, and then took her deep into black velvet ecstasy. She tasted him, relishing him like the darkest of chocolate—yes, this was what she’d wanted, all her senses engaged at once—and knew that she could survive on kisses alone, and ever be satisfied.

  His previous efforts proved genius when he lifted her against him and she discovered that they both were naked. Her legs straddled his waist, breasts heavy with sensation, her core flush with his belly.

  He laid her down on the bed he’d occupied during the four days of his recovery. His weight slid up her body, and the friction of contact rippled like flame across her skin. Fire didn’t hurt. Fire loved her. And she loved fir
e. It’s what she was made of. She knew that now.

  With the realization, strength and power flowed through her, a strange tingling in her bones. She was brand-new and ancient, desire and rage, woman and dragon—all simultaneously.

  “Ember,” Thane said, forcing her to meet his eyes by touching her chin with his hand. “This is not the time for shifting.”

  “But I want everything,” she said, yet didn’t recognize her near-feral voice. She trapped one of his legs with hers, knotting them together. His erection was a large firebrand on the inside of her thigh.

  “And so you will, my lady.” He nuzzled her neck, a gesture more primal than human, before letting go of her chin to stroke and cup her breast, his thumb massaging her nipple. “Just hold on. Hold on to me.”

  The longing was excruciating, even cruel, but when Thane pushed inside her, filling her so completely, the blood in her veins turned to molten gold, melting her worries away with each beat of her heart. His possession set off a chain reaction through her system, each cell flaring with sensation, the heat of magic a transformative force that might not have turned her into a dragon, but nevertheless, changed her forever.

  She curled around him as he moved, his rhythm slow like the tempo of an ocean, but just as absolute and unrelenting. She sensed her climax coming when it was still a long way off, so that by the time the wave reached her, she crested so high and so long that she indeed felt like she was flying.

  When she could see again, she realized the gift he’d given her. Strain etched across his brow, his skin just slightly darker than his human self. He moved with greater force—a second swell of feeling filling her—and he growled as he found his release. She clutched him to her as they shuddered, drawing him as deep as she could. And when he collapsed on top of her, she contented herself by licking a drip of sweat that was winding down his neck.

  She waited—generously, she thought—until he got his first full breath before saying, “I think we have to do it again.”

  “Yes, love,” he said, his voice warm with humor. “That was just to take the edge off. We’ll be at this awhile.”