“Do you know a case where a woman who was all human died after becoming pregnant by a werehound?”
“No.” He didn’t look amused.
“You don’t know of a werehound who mated with a human, do you?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know a human wouldn’t be a perfect mate for Sean? They could probably have babies together successfully and that would help us increase our number and become more integrated with the humans.”
Niles’s sigh was becoming too familiar. He was afraid she would mention having a child again. Since their joining, he had become increasingly protective of her, and without hearing it from his own lips, she knew he feared that a pregnancy with him might hurt her—kill her.
Leigh understood but she would not, could not let him make this decision for both of them.
He cleared his voice. “If you expect me to swallow all this, you’ve lost your mind. What would Tarhazian want with a human? How could she train one to do what Elin does?”
“I’ve told you, more than once now, I don’t think she knew what she’d stolen when she took Elin,” Leigh said, jutting her chin at Niles. “But Tarhazian is an incredible paranormal talent and she could probably teach Jazzy to bend iron if she wanted to.”
Jazzy was Leigh’s blond, black-eyed part sheepdog, currently asleep in front of the fire.
“She got Elin exactly the way she wanted her to be, and now all she wants is to stop Elin from being with Sean because Tarhazian hates the hounds. She hates everyone but her own kind. If she can’t stop them, she will do her best to use them. But you are not without defenses.”
“You are really reaching,” Niles said.
“And you are a stubborn man.”
“Have you mentioned this to Sally at all yet?”
Leigh felt herself blush and knew her freckles would stand out on top of white patches against the rest of her scarlet skin. “Well, um—”
“I just bet you haven’t.” Niles smirked. “You know she’d laugh you out of town. What’s more, that’s just plain dangerous subterfuge, sweetheart. We’ve got to protect Elin—mostly from herself—not give her more excuses to keep going after Sean.”
Leigh brought her fists down on the table. “She is not going after Sean any more than he’s going after her. But think about this: Why would Sally go out of her way to introduce Elin to Sean if she didn’t think Elin could mate with him? She wouldn’t.”
“Then why didn’t Sally tell us?”
“She doesn’t have to tell us anything. Perhaps she wanted to have them find out if they’re a match all by themselves. She did with us.”
“Sean and Elin are off their heads,” Niles muttered.
“This is as good a time as any to tell you I’m loaning Two Chimneys to Elin. She has no place of her own. Sally loves having her, but unless she shifts into Skillywidden every night, there is nowhere but a cat bed for her to sleep.”
“You what?” Niles looked amazed. “Why didn’t you talk to me about it? She wouldn’t be safe there on her own.”
“I’ll tell her you don’t like the idea if you want,” she said with a sniff. She had actually asked Sean to tell Elin she could use the cottage and by now she would know. “And Sean, too. He intends to be there to watch her, the way he watched me before you and I were sealed.”
“So it’s okay for him to sleep on the porch as a hound, but it’s not—”
“Please don’t be angry.” She should have talked to him first. “Of course Elin can’t sleep on the porch as Skillysidden, if that’s what you were going to say.”
“It’s your porch. Who sleeps on it is your business. In the cottage, too.”
“Niles, it was okay for Sean to sleep on the porch and watch over me.” She did feel sheepish. “But you think what Sean does is something you get to decide. Sorry. We’ll work it out.”
“Dammit all, great. You know I won’t stop them.”
One of the front doors opened and Elin walked in with Sean behind her. Sean carried a floral silk bag over his shoulder.
Leigh leaned against Niles’s shoulder and said, “Hi, you two,” as if getting together at such an hour were routine. “Come and join us. Are you hungry?” She could feel knife-edged tension in the air.
Neither of the newcomers said a word or gave a hint of a smile. Without a glance at each other, they sat with Niles and Leigh.
Leigh didn’t know what to say and evidently Niles didn’t either. She stole a look and recoiled a little from the grim set of his face. He had already said he expected nothing but trouble from “this impossible infatuation” but he knew as well as she did that there was no simple solution.
“I thought I heard you come in.” Sally’s hoarse voice broke the silence. Her smile forced, she bustled toward them with her uneven, swinging gait that suggested arthritic hips. “I’ve got something in the oven. It’s almost ready.” A flour-dusted apron didn’t come close to covering her green and yellow muumuu.
As always, her white blond hair was tightly curled all the way to dark roots, and liberally applied makeup made it impossible to guess her age—or the age she might appear to be without the makeup. With the fae, their years were unimportant.
She arrived at the table, all her attention on Elin. Sally had hidden Elin since she escaped from Queen Tarhazian more than a year earlier, hidden her in shapeshifted form as the small, silvery cat, Skillywidden. They both insisted Tarhazian didn’t know Elin could shapeshift and that it was a gift she’d been born with. No doubt Niles would eventually use that as an argument against Elin being human.
Elin’s eyes were that same vivid violet shade now as they were when she shifted into a cat. Her mass of shining black hair, scattered with glistening raindrops, swept back from a heart-shaped face and fell to her waist. Her frame was small but she was feminine and perfect, except for bruises that still marred one side of her lovely face and one arm where Tarhazian had beaten her the night she caught her visiting the fae kingdom. Elin had gone to see a friend but one of the Queen’s many spies had reported the visit before Elin could shift back into her cat form.
Sally had rescued her by diverting Tarhazian and now Elin’s banishment from the fae kingdom really was permanent and Sally was blamed for encouraging Elin’s disobedience, making her own separation from her own kind just as irreversible—not that banishment meant they were safe from sly punishment if they were careless and let their guards down. Leigh believed, as did Elin, that Tarhazian was a long way from severing the strings to her “child,” and there would be many more subtle, and not-so-subtle, attempts to control her again.
“You’re healing?” Sally said to Elin.
“That woman had best stay far away from me,” Sean said, his face rigid. “How could she hurt someone so gentle?”
“I am healed,” Elin said in a small voice. “And I’m not helpless, Sean. I can protect myself.” She looked at her hands, folded in her lap.
Leigh felt a special bond with the girl since she had spent a great deal of time with Leigh and Jazzy when they first came to Whidbey.
At this moment Jazzy was nosing at the bag Sean had put on the floor and she figured Elin’s Pokey must be inside.
“Okay,” Leigh said to Sean and Elin, “that’s all I can take of this. What’s the matter with you two? Are you mad at each other?”
“Mad?” Sean said. “As in angry? Only a woman would come up with something as ridiculous as that.”
Leigh said, “In other words there’s something serious going on.”
“I’ll get those pies,” Sally said and retraced her awkward steps with Jazzy rushing along to keep up. Jazzy never missed the chance of a treat and followed Sally to the kitchen behind the bar.
“You wanted us here,” Sean said. He had thick, dark blond hair tied at his nape and brilliant light brown eyes that could skewer whomever he chose to give his full attention with tiger-like intensity. “I…we didn’t want to come. There’s nothing to be gained.” Sean was a man fe
w people looked at only once. His sleek, Nordic features and lithe body were hard to ignore.
Elin’s hand, stealing into Leigh’s, worried her. The mysterious girl was frightened.
“What do you think you should be doing instead of making decisions with me?” Niles said, his voice even but pitiless. “Fleeing together perhaps? Don’t try it. You’d better think long and hard about what you’re doing. Tarhazian hates you for being with her little darling. She could decide to punish you both.”
“What do you want of us?” Sean demanded, muscles working in his hard, angular jaw. “We’re here because of your order. I would not have come otherwise.”
“You must give each other up,” Niles said, and Leigh could not bring herself to look at him.
“Never,” Sean and Elin said in unison.
“Cast me out,” Sean said. “If that will make you feel safer, tell me to be gone forever. But I will not be parted from Elin. We are not ready to be sealed but we believe we will be.”
“Don’t you understand what’s happening?” Niles said. “You are becoming a conduit between us and the Fae Queen. She will use Elin as her spy. You know what Tarhazian has admitted. She will never accept this match, but then she wavers, and I know enough to read her mind. She will allow the match if Elin tells her our secrets.”
“I would never do that,” Elin said softly. “I want only to be with Sean.”
Leigh gave Sean all of her attention and she didn’t like what she saw. He was torn. Torn between his allegiance to his Team and his need for Elin.
Sally came from the kitchens, pushing a cart with loudly wobbling wheels. “This will warm your hearts,” she said, but her face showed nothing but deep concern. “Hot cider. Meat pies. Fruit pies. Mulled wine—”
She pushed the cart beside the table and sat down. “Help yourselves,” she said, sounding grimmer than Leigh had ever heard before. “I will not allow this girl to be hurt. Not for the sake of foolish quarrels between you hounds and the fae, or the wolves—or whomever.”
Sally usually deferred to others and this announcement caused silence.
She pinched her lips together and poured cider. This she passed around to each of them. “Warm yourselves. Settle down. Between us we have a good deal of power and we are not helpless. Even before the likes of Tarhazian.”
Elin covered her eyes.
“The Queen wants to use Elin as a spy,” Sally said.
“Just as I have said,” Niles said explosively. “And there will be no way to stop information from being passed—even innocently—if Elin is in our midst.” He paused and looked at Sean. “With the best intentions, my friend, ours is a great passion to share with our chosen mates and something might be said—in certain moments—that could damn your own kind.”
Slashes of red burned Sean’s high cheekbones.
“You have not had her yet,” Niles said. “But when—”
“Enough,” Sean said. “This is not the time nor the place to discuss such matters. I will see you outside.”
“No,” Leigh shouted. She glared at Niles. “Stop it. We must work together. This isn’t a time for saber rattling between testosterone junkies.”
“Testosterone junkies?” Niles’s jaw dropped, then both he and Sean laughed.
“I think we just got put in our places,” Sean said. He looked at Elin’s sad face and held out his arms to her. “Come here.” He took her onto his lap and kept a firm hold on her waist. She put her head on his shoulder and kissed his neck, softly, repeatedly. Sean said, “Leigh’s right. We should listen to these women more. We will work together.”
“You mean fight together,” Niles said, but quietly. “Never think we aren’t entering a battle or that it might not be violent.”
“We know the risks,” Sean said.
Niles gave Elin all of his attention. “If you were convinced Tarhazian would accept you back into the only world you’ve known—in return for having you spy on us—what then?”
“She has already given her answer,” Sean said. “Elin would never—”
Elin’s hand on his arm stopped him. “No matter what I say, you will doubt me,” she told Niles. “But I hope you will come to trust me.”
chapter THREE
Niles stared at Elin for a long time and she stared back. Sean felt the battle of wills to his core and he admired his small love for showing no fear in front of the alpha.
“Trust,” Niles said at last. “Time will tell but the stakes are high, Elin. I respect you but I cannot yet trust you.”
She turned away.
“Forgive me for joining the party uninvited,” a deep, even, male voice said.
Sean looked over his shoulder. Dr. Saul VanDoren lounged carelessly at a nearby table. “I didn’t see you arrive,” Sean said, knowing well that the vampire could come and go as he wished, where he wished.
“You were all so involved in your discussion,” Saul said, resting his elbows on the table so that his full white sleeves draped elegantly. He laced his long, slender fingers together. “You hounds do have some interesting rituals. I wonder you don’t find them onerous with so much waiting and watching—and wanting—attached to your mating habits.”
“Damn it.” Sean paused, trying to control his flaring temper. He smiled at Elin. “Our habits, as you call them, have their own benefits. But they won’t interest you.”
“We are having a private meeting here,” Niles said.
Sean sensed his alpha’s annoyance at the vampire’s interruption. They had formed a tenuous friendship with him, or should that be tolerance, during a previous battle with Whidbey’s werehound pack.
“Very private,” Saul said. His dark eyes could appear black, as they did now.
“Should we put the rest of our discussion off?” Sean said. “It’s very late.”
“And you want to take Elin to Two Chimneys,” Saul said, tilting his head to one side. His long, dark hair slid forward, framing his pale, saturnine face. “How kind of Leigh to insist you use it. But then, Leigh was always kind.”
A subtle warning raised every hackle for Sean. This man’s words might be innocuous enough but the threat behind them was unmistakable. Unmistakable and strange. What was he trying to say, or not to say?
The pulse beating in Elin’s neck was very visible, and fast. Sean stared at it as he raised a hand toward her and she grasped it, hard.
“How long have you been here, Saul?” Niles said. “You must have heard our conversation earlier.” His mild tone didn’t fool Sean.
“Not long,” Saul said. “Introduce me to your lady, Sean. You have good taste. She is very beautiful—very delicate.”
“I am Elin,” she said before Sean could respond. Her grip on him grew even tighter. “I am of the fae.”
“I know,” Saul said. “You must be the one cast out by that aberration, Tarhazian. How lucky you are to be free of that.”
The man knew too much. “We are glad to have Elin with us permanently,” Sean said. “She’s where she belongs.”
“I do hope so.” Saul rose fluidly, his long, dark coat spreading behind him as he approached. When he was close enough, he pointed at Elin, brought a forefinger near, but not quite near enough, to touch her jaw.
The slightest gesture with that finger and Elin raised her chin. She looked steadily and directly into his eyes.
“There is a lot they assume about you,” Saul said. He smiled, “But how could they not, when they haven’t learned the rest.”
Sean surged to his feet and pulled her against him. “What do you want, VanDoren?”
The smile Saul directed at him would have chilled a lesser man. “I am a friend, Sean. But you should already know that. A friend who cares about threats against you. Bear that in mind.”
Saul walked away, the heels of his boots hitting the wooden floors, sharp, precise. His hair swung slightly from side to side and the coat flew behind him. “If you wish, I’d be glad to talk with you outside, alone.”
Sean
didn’t see the door open, but he heard it close. Immediately he got up, guided Elin to sit in his chair, and followed the vampire.
In the forecourt of the business, Sean couldn’t see Saul at first. He almost turned on his heel and returned inside.
“I’m here,” came Saul’s voice.
To his right, by a clump of bushes, Saul’s shadow moved forward and became obvious.
“I hadn’t intended to confront you like this—here,” he said. “But the presence of the woman who appears to be in your care, or perhaps control, means I must speak now.”
Sean frowned, more confused than angry in that moment. “Save the riddles. Speak plainly.”
“Your given name was not Sean Black,” Saul said and added very quietly, “Jacob O’Cleary.”
Instantly cold, Sean straightened his shoulders and set his jaw. Whatever was coming, he would meet it and not bend. “Say what’s on your mind,” he said.
“I had reason to cross the path of one who says he knows you. He wants to find you again. Since I have never doubted you, I didn’t tell him I had met you or had any idea where you are. But if what he says is true, I can’t stand by while you’re allowed to be alone with a vulnerable woman. She couldn’t defend herself against you. I think you know what I’m saying.”
And Sean wouldn’t defend himself against the lie Saul had been told. He braced his feet apart and crossed his arms.
“Do you know this man who approached me?” Saul said. “He was in the area looking for you. To bring you to justice, he said.”
“Here?” Sean asked. “On Whidbey?”
“So you don’t deny any of this?” Saul said.
The turning of his heart, the way his stomach dropped, shocked Sean. He had convinced himself the horrors of San Francisco were behind him but they were rearing again, he could feel them. “I thought it was over,” he told Saul honestly. “I was set up in a San Francisco club. By the man who made me what I am, a werehound. Believe me or not. I won’t beg you.”
“A man with black hair,” Saul said. “Strangely cut to his ears. And his mouth is wide, a mere slit, but wide.”
Darkness Bred (Chimney Rock) Page 3