The Empath

by Bonnie Vanak

Nicolas paced outside, mindless of the snowflakes blowing into his face. It had snowed steadily for the past hour. Maggie was downstairs, having set up her lab in the basement now that it was no longer used as a sickroom. She took samples of the blood and compared them.

  Practical Maggie, always trying to find a cure through science.

  Her grit and iron will humbled him. The pack had taken to her, but still, he had seen the sidelong looks. He’d heard the whispers.

  They were still suspicious.

  The pack wouldn’t fully accept Maggie until she healed their leader. Damian was so close to death Nicholas feared for her to try. What if he lost her?

  Nicolas jammed a hand through his hair. Maggie was key to destroying Kane. Desperation drove him to believe in her mythical abilities. Surely he could not kill the Morph leader.

  But he could heal Damian. Heal Damian and spare her the pain, and possibility she might die because Damian was so ill.

  Nicolas spread his hands out, studying them. Surely he possessed all her healing abilities. He could rid Damian of the Morph disease.

  Now was the time to find out.

  Steeling his spine, he headed inside the lodge, toward Damian’s room.

  ———

  Maggie perched on a stool, peering into a microscope at blood samples. She tried to concentrate, but Nicolas’s words echoed in her mind.

  Nicolas used her to achieve his own purposes. That truth stung.

  But she’d glimpsed inside him and seen the pain he carried. Why couldn’t he open himself up to her? He’d shut her out during the mating lock and now he was shutting her out emotionally as well.

  It was about damn time he stopped. About time she started asserting her own needs. She had come this far to come home…

  The slide slipped from her fingers and fell to the counter with a clatter. Home. Here, among the Draicon, she no longer felt alienated and at odds, as if her carefully organized life would shatter if she took one wrong step. Despite the friction in the lodge, Maggie felt comfortable here. She was one of them. And what if Nicolas had never forced her to look inside and see who she truly was?

  Would she have spent the rest of her life never knowing who, or what, she was?

  Maggie searched deep inside herself. She had been living a lie, and Nicolas brought out her true nature. He accepted her, faults and all.

  If he was only concerned with performing his duty and returning her to the pack, he could have forced her to hunt as the pack males had. Instead, Nicolas had showered gentle, loving care on her, his touch reassuring and soothing. He took her into his strong arms and promised her she’d never have to kill again.

  Not the actions of a male interested only in following Damian’s orders.

  She had to talk to him, and stand by him. Nicolas shut everyone out, but dammit, he wasn’t shutting her out. He needed her.

  Maggie jumped off the stool and ran upstairs.

  She checked the living room, the kitchen, outside. Nothing. But in the hallway, Baylor mentioned seeing Nicolas head up to Damian’s room.

  A horrible misgiving overcame her. As she stepped onto the stairs, a giant shock wave of pain slammed into her. Maggie staggered against the wall, crying out.

  The pain welled from deep inside, and vanished. But she knew the source. Nicolas.

  “Nicolas, oh, no, Nicolas!”

  Her cry brought Baylor and the others running.

  “What is it?” he asked sharply.

  Gathering her composure, she ignored him and raced upstairs, the pack members right behind her. Maggie tore down the hallway toward the wing leading to Damian’s room.

  Baylor beat her there and threw open the door.

  He stared at something curled up in the corner of his room.

  Maggie’s heart raced. Nicolas.

  She ran toward him. He lay curled in a tight ball, hands clutching his stomach. He was moaning.

  “What the hell’s wrong with him?”

  She ignored Baylor, reached out for her mate. Nicolas did not respond.

  “Baylor! Everyone! Look!”

  Only the excitement in Katia’s voice made her turn. In the large four-poster, the Draicon leader sat up, his color no longer grayish. His face was pale and thin, but the lines of pain ravaging it had vanished.

  Nicolas had healed him, she realized with sudden dread. Nicolas healed Damian before she could. He hadn’t realized he never inherited her full healing abilities because she in her stubbornness didn’t tell him.

  Now he was paying the price.

  Her mate lifted his face. “Had to…pack wouldn’t…accept you…otherwise…too risky for you…couldn’t lose you… Maggie,” he rasped.

  Very gently she lifted him. His body felt like a block of ice. Remembering how sick she’d felt after healing Misha, Maggie knew what she must do.

  Nicolas would not want other males seeing him like this. Every fiber in his body would protest the pack witnessing his weakness. Maggie marched out of Damian’s bedroom, ignoring the stream of excited, hopeful Draicon pouring into their leader’s bedroom. She headed straight for their bedroom, kicked the door shut. Very gently she laid her mate on the bed.

  “Maggie, let us help him,” Katia implored through the closed door.

  “Go to hell,” she snapped.

  Friend or not, she couldn’t trust Katia. Instinct to protect her mate drove her on. Maggie undressed him, tucked Nicolas beneath the covers and stroked his forehead. He moaned and thrashed. Pain twisted his handsome face. Grayish skin tones alerted her to the disease’s powerful grip on his body.

  He lacked the antibodies to fight the disease and eradicate it as she had.

  Maggie climbed into bed and lay besides him, holding Nicolas tight. “Please, Nicolas, fight it. Don’t leave me,” she whispered.

  Rocking back and forth, she laid her hands on him. Willed herself to heal him, inside and out. Taking all her strength, Maggie poured it into her mate. She opened herself fully to him, seeing him made whole and strong again. She spoke into his mind words of love she hadn’t dared voice, and saw the disease in her mind chased away by whole, growing new cells. White-hot agony lashed her, but she persisted.

  At long last he opened his eyes. His color had returned and his thin, cracked lips were no longer blue.

  Maggie buried her face into his shoulder and wept.

  She felt his hand gently stroke her hair.

  “Don’t cry, caira, please don’t cry.”

  Clinging to him, she gulped down her sobs. “I thought I’d lost you.” Maggie sat up, swiping at her tears. She punched his rock-solid bicep lightly. “Don’t ever go pulling anything that asinine again or I’ll murder you!”

  Nicolas grinned, holding his arm. “You just healed me and now you’re going to kill me? You make no sense.”

  His look sobered. “What happened? I thought I had your healing abilities.”

  “You didn’t absorb them all during the mating lock because you blocked me.” Maggie outlined his lips with one finger. “I sensed it, but didn’t tell you because I was too proud.”

  “We both made a mistake.” He took her finger and kissed it.

  “Then let’s remedy it, Nicolas.” Never had she felt so certain of anything.

  His gaze searched hers. He nodded. She undressed.

  Nicolas turned and slid his arms about her. His mouth descended on hers.

  He drank in her mouth, tasting her satiny lips, wanting to climb inside her heat and become one with her.

  When he pulled away, the same desire shone in her blue eyes. Nicolas feathered kisses over her cheeks, nuzzled her neck and explored her satiny skin with his hands. He kissed the tiny hollow of her neck, hooked his hands into her silky curls. He charted her body with his mouth, mapped it with his touch, marveling at her pale, soft skin against his big, sundarkened hands.

  Maggie undulated beneath him and parted her legs, opening her arms.

  Nicolas mounted her, panting with need and hunger.

&nbs
p; “Now,” she said in a deep, sultry voice.

  He entered her hard and fast.

  “Maggie.” He groaned aloud as he raised himself up on his hands and moved inside her. The friction was exquisite, her tight inner muscles squeezing him. A crystalline bead of sweat rolled down his forehead, dropped on her breast. He locked his gaze to hers, intent on melding them together as one, matching his pleasure to hers. Nicolas withdrew, thrust hard and deep. She made a tiny gasp. Her deep blue eyes rounded with wonder.

  Lacing his fingers through hers, he pinned her wrists to the mattress. His sweat-slicked body moved over hers, skin against skin. One flesh, one body, one mind. Minds merged and swirled, exchanging thoughts, ideas.

  Memories.

  Pack, family, home. Running wild, wind caressing fur as they ran over the hills. He thrust deep into her, pouring himself, his essence, his life, into his mate. Maggie. Making her his own with each exquisite thrust, sealing them together in the flesh and spirit. Nicolas opened his eyes, gazed at her features, her parted, kiss-swollen mouth, passion clouding her sea blue eyes.

  He opened himself fully to her, letting her inside. Nicolas allowed her to see every dark corner, every deep crevice.

  He felt her power flowing into him, her gentle, healing strength and marveled at the newness of it.

  Iridescent sparks swirled around in rainbow colors. Nicolas felt himself swell inside her as her tiny muscles bore down upon him.

  The mating lock.

  He rolled, taking her with him so she rested atop him. He smoothed her hair and kissed her face. Something wet rolled down his cheeks. This time, he didn’t attempt to stop the tears, but let them come.

  This time, he felt like he had come home at last.

  Chapter 16

  They had little time to plan before the Morph attack.

  Maggie insisted on searching for a way to annihilate their enemy without violence. The pack had no means of fighting an all-out attack when the Morphs could clone themselves into an animal army. Nicolas agreed. He stated his case before Damian, who had recovered dramatically and began restoring order to the pack. Damian held a meeting and firmly told the pack Nicolas’s role in saving him.

  Downstairs in Maggie’s lab, they took samples of Damian’s blood and examined it. Maggie worked steadily, refusing to sleep. She knew she had to find a means to destroy the Morphs soon. First she needed to know how the disease was transmitted.

  “How exactly did Jamie infect you?” She asked Damian this question as she withdrew the hypodermic needle.

  The pack leader sighed and squeezed a fresh ball of cotton over the puncture mark. “I’d rather not say…”

  Nicolas gave him a censuring look. “No use being secretive now, Dai.” He turned to Maggie. “Damian kissed her.”

  She nearly dropped the vial of blood. Goggle-eyed, Maggie stared at Damian.

  “It’s not what you think,” he explained, looking troubled. “She sent me a note saying she needed to talk. As I’ve told you, I’d met Jamie in New Orleans.”

  “You had sex with her,” Maggie said accusingly.

  Damian nodded, looking more thoughtful than regretful. “I needed to see her afterward, and when she sent me that letter, I agreed to meet her on neutral ground. We had words and then I kissed her. After, she laughed and told me she had her revenge for how I’d abandoned her. I tried pursuing her, but she took off.”

  “Ran? Why didn’t you run after her?” Nicholas asked.

  Damian smiled grimly. “No, not running. She took off, literally into the air. She’d joined the Morphs and they gave her the magick ability to fly. That’s when I knew…”

  “You were screwed. Literally,” Nicolas shot back.

  A low growl rippled from the pack leader. “Jamie’s different from most humans. Many mortals possess the ability to work magick and can do so with the right instruction. Very few can fly. The ability must have been in her and the Morphs’ dark magick activated it.”

  Judging from the guarded looks Damian exchanged with her mate, there was more. Maggie opted against asking questions. Instead she prepared another slide of Damian’s blood.

  When it was ready, she studied it under the microscope. The microscope showed exactly what she’d suspected since allowing herself to see the disease as more than a scientific reality.

  “It invades the host like a staph infection through simple skin contact. That’s what makes it so contagious and why anyone caring for Damian was infected. Some forms of bacteria can live for months in clothing.”

  She pushed back on the rolling stool and gestured for Nicolas to look. “It’s how they infected Misha. All they needed to do was brush it against her nose or mouth and bam! Jamie must have infected Damian when she kissed him. It’s actually not a virus, but more a cleverly disguised bacteria.”

  Nicolas frowned as he squinted into the scope. “I thought bacteria could be killed with antibiotics. Giving Damian antibiotics should have at least slowed its progress.”

  “Even some bacteria, like staphylococcus aurea, are resistant to antibiotics. This particular bacteria we’re dealing with is a toxin that’s carried by a section of Morph DNA. Normally Damian’s natural resistance would have combated it, but they intricately cloaked the Morph DNA by wrapping Jamie’s human female DNA around it. His body must not have recognized the human female DNA and allowed it to invade his immune system.”

  Damian gave a wry smile. “That’s me. Always allowing females to invade me.”

  “Once it entered his system, it adjusted and banded to his DNA. Literally it cloaked itself so it could be passed on to the other pack members. That’s why he was infected first. Just as pack members have a scent marker unique to this pack, the bacteria needed Damian’s DNA to get past the pack’s immune system and infect other members. Everyone here has a strain of DNA unique to this pack that’s strongest in Damian, the alpha. Either they inherited it through their parents or it bonded with them when they achieved a copulatory lock with their mates.”

  “It explains why I was never infected,” Nicolas said slowly. “I’m not pack. You are, but we hadn’t mated yet.”

  “Misha became infected, but she couldn’t infect me because I never assumed my wolf form. Maybe they thought I would change, and become infected that way,” Maggie mused.

  Mouth flattening, Nicolas reached over and squeezed her shoulder as if to reassure her. She drew in a cleansing breath.

  “Once it’s inside the body, it acts just like a bacteria, only it appears more like a cancer because it devours healthy cells. The bacteria multiplies and poisons normal cells, absorbing them and eating them alive.”

  She looked at Nicolas. “I don’t suppose you ever watched old fifties horror flicks.”

  “I tried to avoid them when I could,” he muttered. “Especially the hokey werewolf ones. They were very insulting to my intelligence.”

  “You’re too sensitive,” she teased.

  His soft growl made her laugh. Nicolas grinned. Damian rolled his eyes.

  “Well, there was this movie called The Blob. Steve McQueen starred in it. It featured this germ from outer space that infected a local doctor, and then consumed him. Ate him alive and it grew larger. The more people it ate, the bigger it got. It looked like a huge rolling ball of jelly.”

  “This disease acts like the blob?”

  “As it moves through the body, it eats its way through healthy cells, turning them into killer cells just like it. That’s why the body’s normal defenses don’t work. It feeds off energy the cells produce, and the more calories a victim consumes, the more energy the disease has to spread.”

  Maggie drummed her fingers on the counter. “What I don’t understand is why the Morphs needed Jamie’s DNA to infect Damian. It makes no sense. I could understand it if it were a Morph who was a close relative of Damian’s or even his bonded mate who turned Morph. Damian’s system should have recognized the intruder and shut it down before it infected him. Even if it were simple human DNA, h
is body would manufacture antibodies to combat the infection. How could a simple human female’s DNA get past his defenses?”

  A shuttered look came over Damian. “It wasn’t just simple human female DNA,” he muttered. “Dammit, now this all makes sense, why they recruited her and needed her…”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Never mind. It’s not important now. What is important is that we find a way to use this against the Morphs. Can we?” Damian asked.

  Maggie thought. “Now that we know how the disease infects, we need a plan.”

  “Then we’ll make one,” Damian said decisively. “Gather the others, Nicolas. We’ll have a meeting and discuss this news.”

  ———

  They met in the enormous living room. Outside, large flakes of snow floated gently downward. Flames crackled in the fireplace and the smoky scent added a cozy touch to an atmosphere rife with bristling male tension.

  To her surprise, Damian and Nicolas sided with her idea of finding a means to destroy the Morphs while avoiding an all-out war. Kane was the primary target.

  “Maggie’s made a good point. Kill Kane, the leader, and the Morphs will disperse like a colony of ants without their queen. They’ll scatter,” Damian pointed out.

  Sitting in a straight-back chair close to the fire, Baylor shot Nicolas a meaningful look. “That’s your duty, Nicolas. You’re Damian’s second, so it falls upon you to kill him. If the attack is planned for tomorrow, you need to act now.”

  Nicolas rubbed the nape of his neck. Maggie could almost feel the tension radiating from him. “This isn’t as simple as it appears, Baylor. Killing Kane isn’t as easy as it seems. He’s well protected at all times. Yet we can’t plan an all-out attack on them. There’s Jamie. You have to separate her from them. We have to keep her out of danger and in an attack she could get killed in the confusion. Or they could use her as a shield to protect themselves.”

  A casual shrug indicated Baylor’s feelings on the mortal woman. “She infected Damian. She deserves to die.”

  “No.” Damian leveled a hard look at the other male. “Jamie is to be left alone and unharmed. Understand? No one hurts her. Either Nicolas or I will deal with her.”