Darkness Descends: A Skye Faden Novel

by Alisha Ashton

  Frantically, she searched for confirmation of such an encounter; a bite mark, a bruise, anything. Unfortunately, she quickly realized that there was no point in looking. Even if her entire throat had been covered in hickeys, they would have long-since healed by now.

  Water sloshed over the sides of the tub as she hurriedly and clumsily climbed out. She wrapped herself in the fluffy robe that had been left for her, quickly drying her hair while desperately trying to recall the time she was missing.

  I smelled like a locker room when I woke up, she recalled. I was covered in the scents of more men than I could count.

  “Ooohh shit...” she whined, hurrying out into the room and finding the bed freshly made. She stared at it for a long moment as a horrible likelihood occurred to her. If she could smell the other men on her, then Taran still could as well.

  Oh God, she thought, the bath... the fresh sheets... Taran requested them in order to get rid of the other men’s scents.

  Her gut was twisting in guilt for something she was not even sure she had done. She reached out for the clothes Christie brought – but her eyes widened in horror seeing the choices.

  “No... no, no, no,” she whispered in panic as she picked up... “A dress?!”

  She quickly looked around the room in case Christie was hiding somewhere nearby. She did not want to offend the woman by cringing at her selections. Frantically, she rifled through the garments, finding all of them similar in style.

  She whimpered in defeat as she rested her forehead on the dresser.

  “This is so not fair,” she whispered.

  Doing her best to fight off the bad memories she associated with strangers selecting dresses for her, she slowly pulled one on. The only way she managed to stomach it was to focus on the color of the material and remind herself that things were different now. Not a single one of the dresses that had been brought for her was white.

  This was not like before. She was okay. She was not caged. She was not being harmed.

  “Damn you,” she growled at Scotland, at Taran, at Christie, and at the castle as she stared at her reflection.

  Hadn’t it been less than a week prior when she was the one in the tight black tactical gear? The one with the bleach-blonde braid and dark-lined eyes? That was not the girl staring back at her now.

  Her wild, wavy, honey blonde hair was cascading down her back freely. Her arms were bare. Her legs were exposed from the knees down. A blue cotton dress was hanging from her body in a way that seemed to accentuate every curve she possessed.

  It’s tough to be hardcore when you’re rocking periwinkle.

  With a groan, she turned away from her feminine reflection, stalking to the door and yanking it open. She gracelessly rebounded off of Taran’s chest as she attempted to take a step into the hallway.

  “Good afternoon,” he chuckled as he caught her by the shoulders and helped her recover from her halted exit.

  “Hey,” she managed, but after looking up at his face, she found that he was staring at her in open awe. Her expression immediately changed to a scowl. “What?” She demanded challengingly.

  He bit his cheek, trying desperately to suppress a smile when she put her hands on her hips and tapped her foot impatiently.

  “Ya look divine, my love,” he said, taking several steps into the room and effectively backing her far enough into its interior to close the door behind him.

  “Well, don’t get used to it,” she insisted indignantly. “I just didn’t want to offend Christie, that’s all. As soon as I can get to a store, I’m buying my usual long sleeve shirts and fatigues,” she assured and crossed her arms over her chest self-consciously.

  “Then I’m glad to have seen ya like this, even if it was just once. I’ve a great memory,” he said with warm smile before tapping a finger to his temple and winking at her. Casually, he crossed the room and took a seat in one of the chairs by the window.

  She tried to read his expression for a moment with no luck. Finally, she gave up and walked over to sit across from him. She wanted to know what had happened, but did not want to sound crazy if the images in her mind were just the result of another batch of sedatives.

  He studied her as she sat in silence. She was in her defensive posture, leaning forward with her hands clasped together tightly. Her forearms were resting on her knees as she chewed the inside of her cheek thoughtfully. He spoke first, knowing that she had a great deal of questions.

  “What’s the last thing ya remember, love?” He asked softly.

  She looked up at him nervously. His question only confirmed her fears that she was missing something important.

  “Umm...” She swallowed hard, wracking her brain for the last clear thing she could recall. “It’s fuzzy, but we were by the lake talking. I think we were going back inside to kill time before I had to go in the cage. After that, it gets really hazy.”

  Taran sighed and shook his head, realizing that the wolf had started to take control of her far earlier than he had originally thought.

  “So ya do nah remember the change? Waking up the morning after?” He asked and she shook her head.

  “What is it, Taran? You can tell me... I can take it,” she said quickly. Her knuckles were now white as she clasped her hands together even tighter. “What did I do?” She asked, looking at him guiltily.

  He stared back at her in surprise. He had definitely thought this conversation would have been more along the lines of ‘what did you do?’

  “This is going to sound...” His brow creased as he tried to find the right words. “This is nah likely to make ya happy,” he warned and waited for her to nod that she had already figured that much. “The wolf in ya decided she was ready... to take a mate yesterday.”

  Those words brought back more flashes of memories. Her eyes widened as she recalled the men she had been kissing the night prior. The most disturbing of which was...

  “Why was I kissing Miko?” She demanded with a curled lip.

  Taran tried not to laugh at her reaction. “Ya did nah take him, love, if tha’s what your worryin’ aboot. Ya did, however, use his male weakness against him to get out of your cage. Something was nah right aboot ya when the sun rose. Ya were nah acting yourself. Since I did nah know what was causing it, I went to ask some of the ancients if they had known any female faoil in their day. I left ya locked up safe, but your wolf knew how to play the right cards to trick Miko. Ya put him in tha cage while ya made off for the city,” he explained, waiting for the screaming to start.

  “Then I didn’t... and he wasn’t... he’s okay?” She asked and breathed a sigh of relief when he nodded. “So, basically what you’re telling me is, since I’m now a literal bitch, I went into heat?” She demanded, her tone starting to hold a bit of the rage he had been expecting.

  He nodded slightly in agreement.

  She threw her hands up in the air before sitting back against the chair heavily. Silence settled over them as she struggled to take this in. For several moments, he watched her impatiently jiggling her foot. She exhaled slowly, stealing a glance at him and finding his eyes still locked on her. She knew there was more to hear and decided to get it over with as quickly as possible.

  “I have memories of... a club,” she began, casting him worried looks as she continued. “I’m not sure what happened there, but I see flashes.”

  Her breath caught in her throat recalling just a split second of the sight of Taran cutting through the crowd without a shirt, that drunken sensation that had washed over her. She struggled for air as arousal hit in time with the memory. Her gaze became affixed to the carpet. Even though she could still feel his eyes on her, she did not want to look into them.

  “All right, enough... just tell me,” she said, leaning forward and covering her face with her hands.

  His brow arched as the ball was unexpectedly thrown right back into his court. He took a deep breath, closing his eyes and hoping for the best.

  “Ya were at tha club when I caught up with y
a. Had a group of men there ready to fight me because ya would nah leave just by my asking. So... I...” He felt like a child having to tell on himself here. It was unnerving. “I had to get ya to come with me on your own. And there was only but one way to do tha.”

  She groaned into her hands, knowing what was coming. “And then?”

  “Well, then ya sorta latched on. And I have to say, ya were very persuasive,” he insisted, his eyes going out of focus at the memory of it. With a great level of difficulty, and in a strained voice, he continued. “See, when ya are aroused, your scent changes to me.”

  “Yours does to me, too,” she confessed before she could stop herself.

  He licked his lips and looked up to the ceiling praying for strength. “But the scent of it last night was...” He rubbed his face, struggling to find the words. “I can nah tell ya properly how it affected men. We were just at its mercy. And when... ya and I... and then in the car...”

  She groaned again, pressing her face harder against her hands.

  “So, yes, we did –” he continued quietly.

  That was as far as he got before Skye stood from her chair and started pacing the room.

  For 15 minutes straight she went, back and forth, back and forth, pulling at her hair and muttering angrily to herself while his eyes followed her every movement. He was tensed up expectantly, just waiting for the shrieking to start.

  Summoning rage was somehow more difficult than it should have been for her. She wanted to scream at him, I mean really wanted to – she was trying with everything she had. She wanted to blame him for all of it, to treat him as if he had taken advantage of her in some way, to hate him for what had happened.

  The pesky reality of the matter was that the memories she did have of him from the back of that car... Yeah, they were definitely not what she would describe as ‘unpleasant’. She was strangely relieved that out of all the men she could have screwed, her wolf had gone with the one that she would have – might have – chosen for herself. You know – eventually.

  So who? Who was she going to blame for this?

  “This is all Drostan’s fault,” she finally declared, nodding that she had found a perfect fall guy.

  If she could just stay focused on the blaming and screaming, she could avoid the way Taran was watching her, avoid having to deal with what had happened between them and the way her body was silently pleading for his touch.

  “Who the hell did he think he was, biting a female without telling her what she was in for? I think I had a right to be warned that the wolf in me is a nympho! I should have been locked up, out of the range of men, days in advance. Now I’m off having sex without a say in the matter because he couldn’t keep his teeth to himself? This is ridiculous!” She ranted, not noticing that Taran had even stood from his chair until she turned in her pacing and found his chest in front of her.

  “He did nah know, love,” Taran said softly while staring down at her, but not daring to touch her.

  Skye struggled to ignore the temptation of having him so close. Her voice broke, if ever so slightly, as she marched around him and continued on with her outburst.

  “Is that supposed to excuse him? That just gives me even more reason to be mad at him! Who gave him the right to bite me without knowing the consequences? This is totally unacceptable. Isn’t there some sort of code the Tàcharain Fhaol follow when changing people? Or is it like, ‘hey, I know – let’s go bite that one next and see what happens’? This isn’t a game we’re talking about here. This is my life!” She screamed, somehow unable to look into his eyes as she did it, somehow refusing to admit to herself that she had managed the entire beginning of this rant without a single curse.

  “Skye, it’s regrettable tha it turned out the way it did, but ya did nah harm anyone. No innocent lives were taken. I can nah say as though I’m happy it went this way either, but...” he began in a soothing tone, unaware that he had just unintentionally wounded her pride.

  In her frustration, Skye took his words the wrong way.

  He can’t say he’s happy? Way to go, she thought bitterly, way to tell a girl the morning after that you’re sorry it ever took place. The anger came now, boiling to the surface to protect her from the heartbreak that she would never own up to, the humiliation of feeling like she had forced herself on him.

  “And what the fuck were you thinking?” She snapped.

  Taran’s mouth formed a tight line in response. His posture went rigid. His eyes became so remorseful that it pained her to look into them. She refused to let it dissuade her.

  “Leaving me alone with Miko when you knew something was wrong with me? I could have been deaf, dumb, and blind and still found a way to trick him if I wanted to badly enough. For someone who’s ‘nah happy’ with the way things went, you sure as shit played a part in it!” With that last screamed declaration, she turned away from him to stalk from the room. Tears were forming in her eyes and there was no way in hell she was going to let him see what he had reduced her to.

  Before she could even take a step, Taran reached out and caught her by the wrist.

  “Skye, please, would ya just –” he tried.

  “Get off of me!” She screamed, trying yank her arm free.

  He was speaking softly as he pulled her back to him, but her anger and wounded sense of pride were at a boiling point. Her outrage over the tears that were trying to fall unbidden got the better of her.

  She spun toward him and drew back a fist, ready to use the momentum of him pulling her toward him to throw a punch...

  But the next thing she knew, she was lying on her back on the floor, staring up at him in shock.

  He had both of her wrists gripped in one hand as he glared down at her furiously.

  So... yeah... she thought. Apparently, that was an unwise move on my part.

  Note to self: do not attempt to hit Taran. Like ever.

  He had reacted faster than she could even comprehend. The way his eyes were now burning into hers was sobering her from her temporary fury. Testing the waters, she tugged at her hands.

  “Enough!” He barked in response.

  She winced at the power of his command. Despite the defiant glare she managed to give him, she abandoned her attempts to get away.

  “Tha’s nah how ya want this to go and we both know it,” he snarled with teeth bared.

  The weight of his body atop hers was pinning her in place. His hair was hanging down around her face like a curtain, keeping her attention focused solely on his outraged expression.

  “Now,” he began in a quieter – yet every bit as furious – tone. “With what you’re hearing, I’d have forgiven the swearing. But I’ll nah be struck in anger for a misunderstanding, wee one.”

  The rage in Skye’s features slowly faded back to frustration. Her eyes glittered with tears. She tried in vain to look away from him. With his face mere inches from her own, it proved impossible.

  He sighed heavily and pulled her up onto her feet, keeping her wrists ensnared in his grip as he continued.

  “I do nah know what would possess ya to twist my words, but we’ll try this again. This time without ya cutting me off and launching into a tirade. Have I made myself perfectly clear?” He demanded.

  Grudgingly, she nodded her agreement.

  “As I was saying before: I am sorry things happened the way they did and no, I’m nah happy tha I was nah strong enough to prevent it,” he reiterated, putting extra emphasis on the words she had thrown back in his face a moment earlier. “But the reasons for tha are nah what you’re telling yourself. My regrets are tha it happened in such a way, nah tha it happened at all. I’ve shown ya since ya arrived here tha ya have my interest, love. How could ya doubt tha I wanted this between us?” He asked in a wounded tone. “It was to be, but nah like tha. It was to be different, and was nah to happen until the time was right.”

  Her features softened as she gazed deeply into his eyes. She marveled at the intensity she found there. She had never seen so
meone so committed to the truth of their words before. His jaw was flexing, his nostrils were flaring, and his chest was heaving. She took a moment to wonder how he always managed to look so damnably sexy in everything he did. Unfortunately, she did not know what to say to him. What could she possibly say in response to all that?

  After a moment of silence, he growled something angrily in Gaelic. He shook his head, releasing his hold of her wrists before turning and stalking toward the door.

  23: Trust

  A surge of panic washed over Skye as she watched Taran go.

  Her thoughts exploded into frantic demands to make him stop – to say something, anything that would make him stay.

  He had just reached for the doorknob when she finally worked up the courage to speak.

  “How?” She all but whispered.

  Taran paused, his brows drawn together in confusion as he stared at the door.

  “How what?” He ground out, breathing heavily as he continued blaming himself for what had come to pass.

  “How would it have been... you know... different?” She asked timidly.

  She tried not to look too terrified when he turned back to face her.

  Her heart leapt up into her throat seeing the way his features softened in appreciation of her words. She was fast approaching an anxiety attack, wondering what would possess her to ask such a thing, when he started back toward her.

  She could hardly breathe by the time he was standing in front of her.

  He stared down at her adoringly as he ran his hand through her wavy, golden mane. There was a warm smile on his lips now. The fact that she had asked that question, despite the fear he could sense in her, despite her nervousness at being involved in such a discussion with him, made his heart swell.

  “The difference, my beautiful Skye,” he began softly as he placed a hand beneath her chin and lifted her face until their eyes met. “Would have been me having the time to tell ya tha, in all my days, I’ve ne’er once wanted the chance to love another as I have you. Tha looking into your eyes, seeing ya smile, being in your presence... these gifts make me thankful for the first time in countless ages tha I am immortal. I’d have had the chance to tell ya tha I would be honored to stand by your side for whatever is to come.” He brought her hand to his mouth and pressed his lips to it. “And I’d have been able to tell ya tha I want my heart to be yours and no other’s, tha I want yours to be mine alone as well.”