Then another wave sucked him under.
Gasping for air, he fought his way to the surface, following the trail of bubbles. When he emerged, he sucked in a deep breath—and saw Tabby swimming across the surface toward him. Surprise jolted him like a live wire. She was alive! Free!
Greedily, he clutched her against his chest with one hand, wand in the other, while he scoured the room for Mathias. She grabbed Raiden tightly, buried her face in his neck, and sobbed.
As the water flooded out the open window and dissipated, Raiden realized Mathias was nowhere in sight.
“Damn it!” Caden shoved his wand back into his jacket.
Bram pocketed his wand and glared at Raiden. “We could have cornered the bastard, but we didn’t have a bloody plan. You jumped in without thought.”
With a glance, Raiden told the group’s leader that he could fuck himself. Yes, he wanted Mathias dead… but he needed Tabby alive more.
Ronan clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m glad she’s safe.”
“Besides,” Ice added, “we don’t actually know how to kill a wizard who’s already risen from the dead. There’s nothing to say that even with a plan, we would have succeeded tonight.”
In fact, they’d all wondered before if killing Mathias was a mere fantasy. Incarcerating him was nearly impossible, which left them wondering how the devil they could vanquish him once and for all. Raiden only knew they wouldn’t stop trying.
In his arms, Tabby pulled back and sent a terrified hazel gaze his way. “He’s gone, Raiden?”
“Yes. I’m here, love. How do you feel? How did you get free?”
“I’m fine. When he slapped me, I pretended to pass out, hoping he’d drop me or think me useless as a hostage.”
Wishful thinking.
“When Mathias blasted the water through the room,” she continued, “I-I felt him dissolving himself into the water. The way he grabbed me, I knew he meant to take me with him. And if he did, he’d kill me. So I surprised him by kneeing him in the groin and shoving away just as he dissipated.”
If Mathias hadn’t already been in the midst of breaking down his form to float away with Tabitha, he would likely have remained behind and killed her just for spite.
Raiden clutched her tighter. He hadn’t saved her, damn it. She’d saved herself. Her cunning and bravery made him love her that much more.
“You amaze me, Tabby.”
“Please don’t leave me again.”
He didn’t know what to do. But he couldn’t give her back to Blackbourne if the other wizard still lived. That, he knew.
“You haven’t mated yet,” he observed by studying her signature.
“I-I told Sean I needed time to mourn, that I couldn’t pile what should be the happiest time of my life on top of the saddest.”
Raiden closed his eyes. He’d wanted Tabby safe… but the thought of her being Blackbourne’s had ripped his heart out and poured acid in the empty hole.
“But Sean suspected,” she went on, “that I was stalling. He knew I mourned you as well.”
Raiden hesitated. He’d brought her here for safety, but if he hadn’t returned tonight, Blackbourne would have failed her. She might, even now, have been dead. Or worse.
At his feet, Sean Blackbourne staggered upright and saw Tabitha in Raiden’s arms. Blackbourne froze, resignation settling across his features.
“You’ve come back for her, then?”
Raiden looked between him and Tabby—and realized that even with the risk of war, she’d be safer with him and the rest of the Doomsday Brethren. As long as Mathias roamed free, trying to overtake magickind, there would be danger everywhere. Raiden had seen plenty of casualties among magickind’s innocents, who had no defense against a maniac like Mathias. “Civilians” like Blackbourne were ill-equipped to fight this terrible threat. Mathias could come for Tabitha again and again. Raiden shuddered to think what would happen if he wasn’t by her side.
Meeting Blackbourne’s stare, he simply said, “Yes.”
Blackbourne sighed with regret, then looked at Tabitha. “I don’t have to ask what you want. It’s clear that you love him.”
Tabitha’s lips pressed together as she slowly made her way to Blackbourne and kissed his cheek. “I’m sorry, but… I do.”
A sad half smile crept across the older wizard’s face. “Your haunted eyes made that hard to miss. At first I thought that mourning was strictly for your family, but when you said his name, I knew.” Then he glared up at Raiden. “You’re mating with her, correct? No more crap about lacking instinct?”
Raiden stiffened. “That’s something Tabitha and I will discuss.”
“See that you do. Quickly.”
Biting back anger, Raiden resisted telling Blackbourne what he could do with his edicts. But the wizard was letting them go with no malice, and getting Tabby to safety was more important.
With Blackbourne’s permission, they all teleported away from his estate and back to Ice’s caves. The other wizards quickly made themselves scarce. Raiden took Tabby’s hand and dragged her to his cave, then set her on the edge of his bed.
He knelt beside her, resisting the urge to fidget. “You deserve much better than me.”
“You’ve done your very best to keep me safe,” she argued quietly.
“It hasn’t been enough.”
“You don’t have to do it alone. Together, we survived these past few days. We will in the future, as well.”
“You don’t know that!” He jumped to his feet.
“I know without a doubt that you’ll do everything in your power to keep me and our youngling safe.”
True. And he’d never stop.
“This war is dangerous. I may not live to see old age.”
“I’ll cherish every moment we have, but I have faith you’ll do everything to return to me safely.”
Another truth.
Tabby grabbed his hand and urged him back down with a gentle tug. “Life doesn’t come with guarantees. These are dangerous times. Is anyone safe?”
No. And he knew it, had thought it himself mere minutes ago. “You’re right, but I’m…” Raiden shook his head, trying to force the words out of his mouth. He wanted Tabby so badly. But he wanted her happiness more. “I’m terrible mate material.”
“How do you know that for certain? You’ve never tried mating.”
Closing his eyes, Raiden hung his head. Shame clawed through him. He’d wasted years, focused on nothing more than conquering one female after another. It was all he knew. “You know my reputation.”
“Indeed.” She sighed. “If I released you now and gave you leave to bed any woman you wished, are you certain you wouldn’t choose me?”
Not choose Tabitha? No woman had ever affected him so much. He’d choose her every time. “You know I want you. God, so much…”
“Have you ever felt about another woman as you do about me?”
Until her, he’d never fathomed feeling about any witch as he felt about her. “No.”
“Have you ever told another woman you loved her and meant it?”
Say the three scariest words to some meaningless lay? “No. But your parents wanted—”
“My parents believed that you would never love me. If they were here now, what would you tell them?”
A wave of emotion broke over him. A realization. Sadness, joy. Raiden’s love for Tabitha flowed through his veins, as natural as breathing.
Suddenly, he knew exactly what he wanted. Always before, he’d been afraid to believe in it, fight for it.
Not anymore.
Raiden took her face in his hands, feeling tears well in his eyes. “I’d tell them that I’ll defend you to my dying breath, that I will want you always, and that I love you more than my own life.”
She smiled softly, tears running from those thick-fringed hazel eyes. “That’s what I hoped you would say.”
His thoughts raced. Only one thing stood between him and Tabby now. He’d faced down Mathias
tonight with less terror than asking his encinta the question on the tip of his tongue. “Do you have any reservations about mating with me?”
She caressed the side of his face and sent him a huge, bright-eyed smile that lit up his heart. “Call to me and find out.”
Issue the formal vow of a wizard to his mate. Right. Hell, did he even know the words?
Raiden closed his eyes and pictured the rest of his days with Tabby. In contentment, shrouded in love.
The sacred words filled his head.
“Become a part of me, as I become a part of you. And ever after, I promise myself to thee. Each day we share, I’ll be honest, good, and true. If this you seek, heed my Call. From this moment on, there is no other for me but you.”
Tears flooded her beautiful eyes, and Raiden swore that even with her hair half-tumbling out of its knot and her clothes soaked, she’d never looked more radiant.
“Was that so difficult?” she whispered.
No. In fact, he’d never felt more certain about anything in his life. Except… “Are you going to answer?”
“I can’t wait.” Tabitha pressed a kiss to his lips, and nothing had ever tasted sweeter. “As I become a part of you, you will become a part of me. I will be honest, good, and true. I heed your Call. ’Tis you I seek. From this moment on, there is no other for me but you.” She smiled again. “We’re officially mated.”
“We are, indeed.” He tore off his shirt and hovered above her to remove the last of the pins from her hair. Then he sent her a lopsided grin. “I need to make you mine. Now.”
She sighed as she unbuttoned her dress. “I already am.”
Darkest
Temptation
Sharie Kohler
Chapter One
The car rolled to a hard stop beside the house’s perimeter wall. Lily’s head bounced against the headrest, her seat belt biting into her chest. The moon-soaked night throbbed around her. Alive. As palpable as heavy fog.
This was it. Where he lived. She knew it. Felt it in the tightening of her scalp. The tingling of her flesh. The dull, nagging throb at the core of her. Already, she felt the change. The difference, her humanity fading.
Fighting back a swell of nausea, she rotated her still tender arm, gently fingering the deep wound there, cringing at the sticky warmth of her blood.
The man beside her spoke, his voice as rough and gritty as the asphalt burns on her hands and knees. “Remember what I said. If you lose the gun, use the knife. Lose both, and you’re dead. Nothing else will work on him. Got it?”
She turned to stare at the hunter. Curtis. Moonlight streamed through the dirty windshield, limning his narrow features a pearly gray. He reminded her of a rat with his straggly hair and hooked nose. His small, dark eyes darted anxiously around them, as if he expected an attack. “I’ve been hunting this bastard a long time. Fail me and you die.”
She nodded once, wishing he would stop talking and let her get it over with so she could put this nightmare behind her. She recalled his brutality. He had cut down those… things without a blink. She was nothing to him. A means to an end. Expendable. She knew what needed to be done.
“Fuck him if you have to, just kill the bastard.”
She flinched at his harsh words despite all she’d been through. All she had seen tonight. All she still felt…
Bile rose in her throat and she shivered. She’d only ever been with one guy—her high school boyfriend. Before he’d graduated and left for Berkeley. Before Mom had gotten sick and Lily’s life had become about working two jobs, paying bills, playing nurse. About making it through the day, the week, the year. About giving up on her dreams in order to survive.
He chuckled and closed a hand over her bare thigh, sliding moist fingertips beneath the edge of her skirt. “You’re a nice enough piece. You got that going for you. Use it.”
She pried his hand from her thigh, gritting the words, “I’ll do whatever it takes.” And she would. She always had. For her life. For Mom.
He grunted and motioned for her to get out of the car. “I’ll be around. Don’t screw up.”
She stepped from the vehicle, eyeing the stretch of white stucco wall that guarded what lay within from the outside world. A shiver chased down her spine. You know what lies within. You came face-to-face with it over an hour ago. Watched as it made a meal out of Maureen.
Gleaming silver eyes, swiping claws, and gore-stained teeth flashed in her mind. She shoved the images back with a ragged breath. Maureen’s short-lived scream echoed in her head. Lily closed her eyes against the stinging memory and sucked in a deep breath.
Clasping a hand over the nasty bite on her arm, she assessed the wall, the headlights of Curtis’s car warm on her back. Gnats and mosquitoes danced around her, attracted to the light and the aroma of spilled blood—hers and Maureen’s.
Craning her neck, Lily tried to imagine a way over the ten-foot wall and not think about what waited on the other side. The gun tucked in her jacket bumped her hip, offering solace as she walked. Curtis’s eyes burned into her from where he sat in his car.
She could do this. She had to. She couldn’t fail. Couldn’t vanish and leave Mom alone. Not now, so near the end.
Fueled with determination, she climbed up a large oak tree beside the wall, biting her lip against the pain in her arm. Blood ran over her teeth, warm and sweet, but still she climbed. She worked her arms and legs, fingers digging fiercely into rough bark. Fresh blood rose on her scraped palms, making her grip slippery as she dragged herself onto a branch. Inch by slow inch, she progressed further, holding her breath, praying the branch did not snap beneath her weight. Finally, as far out on the bowing limb as she dared, joints stretched and screaming in protest, she jumped.
With a muffled shout, she caught the wall. Grunting, she clung, slippery hands curling around the edge. She hauled herself up, dragging her body. Chest heaving, shoulder screaming in protest, she collapsed atop the wall. She had done it.
Curtis reversed and turned his car around, the lights swinging wide. She watched the taillights disappear down the hill, the purr of the engine fading as he vanished into the night.
She had made it over the wall. Now she was on her own.
For several moments, she fought for breath, the coolness of the stucco seeping through her, chilling her legs, penetrating through her jacket and silk halter top. The halter top Maureen had loaned Lily when she’d shown up at Maureen’s house wearing a “boring blouse”—Maureen’s words. Fresh-hot pain rolled over her. Maureen. Dead. Mauled and rotting behind that nightclub. The image flared, a burning imprint in her mind. She jammed her eyes in a tight blink, but the horrible image clung, scraping behind her eyelids.
Opening her eyes, she stared at the moon burning brightly through the night’s clouds, seeing it with fresh eyes. The eyes of someone who knew its curse, understood its power. It would be the end of her if she let it. Its intense force seemed to flow to her even now, reaching for her, into her. The wound on her arm tingled in response.
“The hell with you,” she growled. “You’re not going to get me.” Sucking in a breath, she surveyed the drop down from the wall.
Turning on her stomach, she slid her legs over the edge. Feet dangling, she lowered herself until she hung by her fingers. Arms burning, muscles stinging from the strain, she dropped…
And landed hard, toppling and rolling to her back in a winded pile.
She rose slowly, assessing the grounds around her. Well-tended lawn cushioned her feet. The perimeter lights of a large house with a surfeit of windows winked at her through the wind-brushed trees. The windows gleamed like dark sheets of ice in the night. It was beautiful, a showpiece. But oddly soulless.
She stepped forward, every muscle tense, ready. Do-or-die time. She couldn’t leave Mom. Not now. Not after sticking with her through all these years.
Body taut as a bowstring, she advanced through the trees, hoping they would shield her, offer some cover until the last possible moment. “Fuck
him if you have to, just kill the bastard.” She ground her teeth to block the thick rise of bile in her mouth. She would do whatever it took to win back her life… to keep her soul and not turn into a monster with a taste for human flesh.
To be there with Mom at the end.
She thought of tonight again, of Maureen’s screams, of the white-hot pain as teeth ripped into her. That wasn’t going to happen again. Now that she knew monsters were more than make-believe, more than the stuff of nightmares, she was ready. Her hand slid inside her jacket’s pocket.
I’m the hunter now.
Luc crouched high in a tree, more shadow than man, watching the interloper through narrowed eyes. He had felt her the moment she’d stood outside his gates. Smelled her. The female heat of her. The freshly spilled blood she wore like perfume. The fear.
Inhaling her scent, faint and earthy beneath the taint of blood, his throat thickened. The old dark hunger rose in him as he observed her weave through the trees.
Silent as the wind, he jumped to another tree, loosely climbing the trunk and perching on another branch with the agility of a jungle cat. He flicked an angry glance at the moon. Bad timing for her. Its lure thrummed through him. The heavy pull alive and strong in his muscles and bones. He would be hard-pressed to control himself tonight. She was a fool to come during moonrise. When he felt so little restraint. When hunger rushed him. His heart raced with predatory speed in his chest.
She was not the first. Others had come. Mortals and lycans alike. Although never alone. Hunters came in groups. Lycans in packs. They hunted him for one reason only. To kill him.
As he watched her, he knew the same purpose filled her, saw it in her deft, determined strides. Felt it in the vibrating tread of her feet over the ground. And he knew he would do what he had done to the others. Destroy her. Leave no trace behind. Those who intruded on his life never lived to carry tales or spread word of his existence. They thought him something else. Another lycan. Only too late did they learn he was more. More dangerous. More of a threat.
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