“Sarelle, were you with Theo last night?”
“No,” I said, flushing.
Dr. Camlyn put my legs back together and stripped off his gloves. “Sarelle, you have slight bruising, but nothing outside the norm for you. Everything is well within normal limits.”
“I figured,” I said haltingly, my eyes filling with tears. “He promised not to hurt me if I let him have his way.”
“Sarelle, you aren’t pregnant because of the pill and your own physiology. I also verified that just now when I examined you. Physically you’re just fine. I’ll run the screening today and let you know in a few days—”
“Fine,” I interrupted. “Can I leave now?”
“Shortly. As you’re here, I want to take some of your blood to see how present the vampire virus is in your system. I’ll be right back to collect a sample.”
Oh, shit. “Okay,” I replied.
Stephen came back, drew a little of my blood and then left again. Danial and I waited in silence.
Stephen came back in about ten minutes and shut the door behind him. “Sar, your blood is unchanged.”
“I’m still partly turned?” I said flatly.
“Yes,” he said with a nod. “This is good, as you’ll most likely heal the scars you have on your uterus. In another four months, you might be able to bear children again.”
While I was not pleased to hear that, Danial was overjoyed. “Are you sure?” he asked Stephen excitedly.
“I believe so,” Stephen replied. “But only time will tell for sure, Danial.” He turned back to me. “But I am concerned about one thing, Sar. You are slightly anemic. Were you hurt or injured when you were taken? Beyond the rape?”
Danial’s grin faded hearing those words, then his head turned slowly toward me.
“I let Devlin feed from me,” I said, my eyes downcast. “He took five explosive rounds to the chest saving me. I was also....they...a man whipped me. Devlin healed them that night.”
Stephen didn’t reply, and the silence stretched. Finally, I looked up to meet his eyes.
“Was Devlin the man that raped you?” Stephen asked, his anger barely held in check.
“No,” I said immediately, drawing my legs up tight to my body.
Stephen came over to me and put his hand on my shoulder. “If he did, you have recourse—”
“Stephen, leave us for a moment,” Danial interrupted.
Stephen ignored him. “—I know of his reputation. You have rights—”
“I do not make idle threats,” Danial said menacingly, moving between Stephen and me. “If what you say happened, it is I that Sar would seek recourse from, not you. Now get out of this room.”
Stephen left abruptly, closing the door behind him with a hard snap. Danial turned to me.
“The anemia will go away on its own. I need to know if he gave you any of his blood.”
“Not that I know of,” I answered. “He healed the cuts he made and the...the others with kisses—”
“Do you want vengeance?” he asked seriously.
I didn’t reply.
“I’ll ask again—do you want vengeance for what he did to you?”
“No,” I whispered. “What I want is for no one else to know.”
“No one else will,” Danial assured me. “I’ll make sure of it.” He went to the door.
“What are you going to do?” I said shrilly.
Danial stopped and turned back to me. “What you really want to know is what I’m not going to do. I’m not going to put out a bounty on my brother. Nor am I going to tell Theo about this. Stephen cannot violate patient privilege and tell him without your permission, so your secret is safe.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m the one who is sorry,” Danial said, coming back quickly and hugging me. “Get dressed. I will deal with Stephen.” He strode out.
I got dressed, then paid my co-pay. Danial was waiting for me in his SUV when I left the office. It was with effort that I made myself get in. “We still need the office supplies,” he said as I put on my seatbelt. “Would you mind the trip?”
I’d braced myself for accusations, or at least for Danial being angry or upset. Instead, he was detached. “No,” I answered, relieved. “Is there a lot of emails or filing?”
“Not really,” Danial answered. “In a few weeks there will be, as I’m close to closing a slew of cases and have word of more than a few new ones pending.” He began to go over some of the new business.
Throughout the rest of that day, we didn’t speak of Devlin or my secret.
* * * *
Weeks passed. Danial was as distant and polite as he’d been when Monica was alive, though I saw him much more frequently. What I found harder to handle was that Theo had adopted the same attitude Danial had. Physical proximity with no closeness at all.
Three weeks passed this way. Finally, on a Thursday night, I walked into the living room where Theo was lounging on the couch. With no warning, I straddled him and gave him a big kiss. He started back from me, and I stopped still, then moved off him.
“Sorry,” he said tentatively. “I was into the movie.”
I sat beside him. “Maybe you could get into me?” I said meaningfully.
Theo blushed beet red. “I can’t believe you said that.”
I wasn’t going to play games. “We haven’t even hugged in weeks. Don’t you want me anymore?”
“I do,” he said seriously, turning the movie off. “But I wanted to talk to you first before we’re intimate. I’ve been putting that off because I’m worried what I’m going to say may make you not want me.”
“There’s only one way to know for sure,” I replied. “Tell me.”
“Some of this you know. I was angry that night that we went to get Peterson. You and Elle had almost been killed, and I wanted revenge at all costs. Finding Will there waiting for me was a bonus. He wanted me dead for screwing Tawny all those years, for making Elle with her. He was shot from behind before I could shoot him. As he died, he got off a round, hitting me in the shoulder. The men that shot him took my cell and my jacket to make it look like he was me.”
“They could tell I was wereanimal from how fast my wound was healing. A man named Gene had been told to send his men to that place and time to capture a werelion. He was pleased when they brought back a cougar. He’d never sold one before, he said.”
“I know,” I added softly. “Nineva told us about that bastard who bought you. Van and Eric killed him and Gene.”
Theo nodded, then continued. “It was Erickson that crippled me. He broke some of my bones over and over. If a broken bone isn’t quickly set right on a were, it can heal badly. By the time I got away from him, I couldn’t walk on four legs anymore as cougar and as human. My hands were useless.”
I held his hand tightly, then motioned for him to go on.
“I escaped in winter. I walked for days, finally taking refuge deep in a forest in Turkey. Crippled and starving, I ate whatever was available. I spent that winter in an abandoned cabin, waiting for my hands to heal. I couldn’t run as a cougar, but as a man, I froze. I couldn’t break and set my bones, but as they reformed with each change of my form they healed some. There was some dried food stored in the cabin that I made last as long as possible. Still, I was hungry most of the time. When it ran out, I knew I had to eat or die.”
“I ventured out of the forest and was able to kill a sheep of a neighboring farmer. With careful rationing, it sustained me for the rest of that year. By then, I was healed enough to hunt as a cougar, though putting weight on my forelegs hurt. But the meat I caught came with the price of being seen.”
He paused and then continued. “A man saw me kill a deer as a cougar. He tracked me to the cabin and saw me change. He called me a devil, then tried to shoot me. I tore him apart, then took his gun and all of his supplies.”
“I understand not being able to contact me during that winter,” I said tentatively. “But why didn’t you try later?”
“I had no money and nothing to identify myself. I couldn’t go to the American Embassy in any case. I’m wanted in Europe, Sar. There were several jobs over there that got messy years back. My name would have sent me to the nearest detention center, and it would be a matter of time until they found out what I was.”
“Couldn’t you find a phone, even a private one and call?” I said persistently.
“I tried several times, but I couldn’t get through. Phone reception over there in rural areas is spotty at best, especially in the countries I was in. And most times, there was no phone I could get my hands on that worked.”
Theo had to be lying to me about that, though for my life I had no idea why. “Go on.”
“I got on a ship, but it took me to Egypt instead of Europe. I tried to sell myself as a mercenary there, in exchange for a fake passport. That night I was captured again, as I slept in cougar form in a deserted warehouse. This time, I was to be sent to a sheik as a present—”
“That was you?” I said tearfully. “We heard you escaped.”
“I did, but by then, I was already in Isfahan, Iran. As I made my way north, I had the bad luck to be noticed by a sorcerer in Iraq. He froze me in my cougar form and sold me to a group of insurgents. They had a great interest in weres. That is where the explosive bullet scarring comes from. They shot me over and over, to research how fast a were could heal and how many shots it took before the healing stopped.”
I wanted to tell Theo to stop, that the horror his words made me imagine was too much. Instead, I wiped my eyes and then squeezed his hand.
“My spirit was broken by then, Sar. I was in a lot of pain and wanted nothing more than to die. It had been a year since I’d first been sold into slavery, and I felt in my bones that I was never going to see either of you again. Seeing I was finished, the army sold me to a distant Russian who wanted a pet werecougar. He sent me to his country home, where I stayed for weeks and slowly recovered until I could walk again.”
“The set-up was the same as the other times I’d been held prisoner: a strong yet tiny cage and meat served in a bowl twice a day. There I finally caught some luck. The Russian’s daughter was there, and she befriended me as a cougar. She nursed me back to health until I could run again.” He looked at me. “Her name was Natasha,” he said softly. “She was sixteen.”
It was all there in the way he said her name. “You loved her.”
“She was kind to me,” Theo said, swallowing hard. “I followed her around like a tame puppy, figuring to heal completely, then escape. Everything was going according to plan until she saw me change one night. When she saw I was a man and not a cougar, she brought me clothes, then took me into her house in human form, telling everyone she had hired me to be her bodyguard. I lived for the first time in a year in peace and comfort.”
“I’m glad she helped you,” I ventured, trying hard not to sound judgmental. “Go on.”
“Two weeks afterwards, she came to my room at night. I hadn’t been with anyone since you, Sar. Had not felt the touch of another person in kindness since then. She and I became lovers.” Theo paused again and took a deep breath. “She was a virgin.”
I said nothing, too much in shock that he’d had sex with a girl that young.
“Soon after, we gave up the pretense of bodyguard, and I moved into her room.”
“Were you in love with her?”
“Yes. I loved her as much as I had loved you.”
I was hurt deeply by this, but said only, “Go on.”
“She asked me to stay with her, to marry her. She had plenty of money. When I confessed about Tawny dying after having Elle, Tasha said she had siblings to carry on the family name, so we didn’t have to have children.”
Why the hell hadn’t he told her he had a child to get back to, a fiancée he had left hanging years before? “Did you tell her about me?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said softly. “She said she understood if I had to go back to you and Elle.”
Good for her. “Go on.”
“She arranged passage to get me out of the country. The night I was to leave, I told her I would come back to her. I told her that I would end things with you and come back to her. Maybe bring Elle with me, if I could—”
I took a deep, deep breath and said nothing. It was everything I could do to keep being, keep breathing. Theo had betrayed me. I’d been so worried about him and his feelings for Aspen, and here he’d had a way more serious romance I’d not even known about. “How did you end up in Casper then?”
“Her father arrived finally to look over his new pet and caught us together in bed. He shot at me. I was still not fast in human form, still crippled because of the gunshot wounds that were taking so long to heal so I was hit. Still I escaped and got to the ship heading for California. When I was aboard, I called Tasha. But she wasn’t there. I spoke to a maid I’d come to know well, one that was happy for the two of us. She said that Tasha had left in tears that night with her father. That he’d arranged a marriage for her the next morning. She said Tasha had told her to tell me to forget her, that our plan to be together could never happen now, even though she wanted it more than anything.”
Theo was crying hard now. Though I held his hand, I couldn’t muster any words of sympathy or comfort. I was too angry.
“I headed back here to New York after accessing one of my hidden accounts. I got here in February.” He wiped his eyes, then said curtly, “I can tell how angry you are that I loved someone else. But how do you think I felt to come back here to find you not only with Danial, but pregnant?”
I didn’t answer his question. It was hard enough to talk and not think about the hurricane of emotions I was feeling inside. “Terian told me how he found you, that you’d seen us and decided to leave.”
“I saw that your Oathing scars were back and the ring on your finger, and I knew I’d lost you. And watching Elle and Danial, I knew I had lost her to him, too.”
“Why did you choose to go west?” I asked. “Why Casper?”
“I wanted to be by myself,” Theo said. “I thought there might be some natural mountain lions there that would be companions. I wasn’t looking for love. I was looking for solace.”
He’d found that and more in Aspen. “Thank you for telling me,” I said politely. “I know it wasn’t easy, and I appreciate your honesty.”
“Does it change what you feel for me? To know that?”
Yes. A resounding yes. I’d been an absolute idiot to stay faithful in my heart to a man who could have called me up at any time in the last year he’d been gone and told me he was alive but had moved on. He’d have freed me to have a complete life with Danial—freed me of so much guilt. But he hadn’t, out of either jealousness or sheer thoughtlessness.
“Sar?”
“I worried for so long you were alive and hurt,” I said tonelessly. “I’m floored that you could have picked up the phone and called me so many times, and you didn’t. And don’t blame spotty reception.”
“How could I have known you were thinking about me at all?” Theo countered. “I figured that you’d moved on, either with Danial or someone else. There was nothing I saw that night in February that made me think you had any feelings left for me at all.”
My hackles rose, the resentment and bitterness welling up within me. Oddly, as it had before, my feelings of betrayal vanished as I considered his words. Theo had loved someone else, but so had I. And I hadn’t waited a year to have sex, move in, or even try for a baby. The only real difference was that I’d rejected Danial’s offer of commitment, and Theo had embraced Tasha’s...
“I can tell you’re upset,” Theo said, squeezing my hand. “I’m not saying you don’t have a right to be. We both went through an ordeal with me disappearing for almost two years. But we do love each other, and we can work through it together, if you’ll work with me.”
I squeezed his hand gently, searching for something besides “okay” to say.
“We’r
e committed to each other,” Theo said, hugging me. “Whatever I felt for Tasha, I’m married to you. I pledged to be faithful, and I’m going to stick to that vow.”
Guilt flooded me, Devlin springing immediately to mind. “I know.”
“Talk to me,” Theo said. “Tell me you think we can work this out. Tell me you still want me.”
“I think we can work it out,” I said distantly.
“You can tell me anything,” he said tenderly. “Don’t hold back what you’re feeling.”
I looked at him, so earnest, and knew that was a lie. I couldn’t tell him I’d had sex with Devlin and enjoyed it, or that I was still devastated he’d admitted to loving another woman and wanting her over me. Admitting just those together to myself made me feel like a world-class hypocrite. I knew only one thing with crystal clarity: I would be apologizing to Danial first thing tomorrow on my knees for how I’d treated him. I’d put Theo and our love up on a pedestal and treated Danial’s love for me like the floor tiles Devlin had alluded to. He deserved an apology for all he’d done for me and put up with.
Theo wasn’t a perfect man, but he was a good and decent one. We did love each other, and we could be happy together—once we worked through our baggage.
As for Devlin, whatever he’d been after—a good lay or a psychological screwing—he was gone, and he wasn’t coming back. The best thing to do would be what he advised: forget him and pretend like our day of making love never happened...
Theo began kissing up my neck. “I want you, too,” he whispered. “I’m so glad we talked. I was so worried—”
He’d picked up on my arousal. Hastily, I turned to him and kissed him back. “I want you.”
He picked me up and carried me into the bedroom, kissing me feverishly. He quickly helped me off with my clothes, then pulled off his own.
Taken For His Own Page 28