Bond with Me

by Anne Marsh

  “Fuck.” His team was running into a situation he couldn’t control. “He’s got angelfyre. Fall back, damn it. Fall back.”

  He was already moving, trying to head off the confrontation he saw coming like a bad train wreck. There wasn’t any stopping Eilor, however, and his team didn’t understand what they were facing.

  The fiery edge of Eilor’s sword sliced through the first warrior through the door like a knife through butter, making the bad situation clear. Nael staggered backward, cursing. “Guess I’ll go get me what I came out here for,” Eilor crooned.

  Cold rage was pumping through Brends’s veins, shutting down all but the most primal instincts. These were his brothers. Not livestock to be cut down. Red washed over his vision. Red that matched the color of the blood slicking the fyreblade. There was a copper bite in the air, but the wrong motherfucker was bleeding.

  He leaped forward and gave the beast free rein, loosing his rage and the anger. The fear of losing someone else who mattered. He was too late to save his brother, but he wasn’t letting the rogue get away. Not again. His body pounded into his opponent, his blade slicing through flesh.

  Score one for him. Through an ever-deepening tunnel, as the beast rose up inside him and the man disappeared, he heard the other’s low growl of pain and a muttered “Lucky bastard.”

  Brends’s feet were slipping, the ancient black-and-white linoleum slick beneath his boot heels. Blood. Coke. He didn’t know and he didn’t give a fuck.

  His target was eluding him, escaping through the shattered display window, and there wasn’t a thing—not one goddamned thing—he could do about it.

  Brends watched his team package up the forensic evidence for transport back to M City. As the adrenaline buzz of the fight faded, there was only one answer to the day’s fuckup and it wasn’t going to be found in the too-careful process of collecting blood and skin samples going on in front of him.

  The technicians the Goblins had flown in from M City scraped and bottled industriously, picking through skin and blood like they’d found buried treasure. What the hell did they expect to find?

  The dead girl hadn’t been on the list. Brends had been so sure he understood the rogue’s motivation. That he could predict what Eilor would do next. So how had he fucked this up so badly?

  “She was a throwaway.” Brends sounded suddenly sure, as if the pieces were falling into place for him, when Mischka was still locked in a fog of confusion. “This kill was a personal tease, a ‘fuck you’ to all of us. He knows we’re tracking him. He wanted me to find this body.”

  “But she doesn’t fit the pattern,” Nael chimed in. Someone had patched him up, the white bandage a stark reminder against his dark skin.

  “It doesn’t mean she didn’t matter.” Mischka’s voice sounded sure. However this latest victim had ended up here, she mattered—desperately—to someone, somewhere, even if it was only to his bond mate.

  “Yeah.” Nael shrugged, uncomfortable but clearly feeling her.

  “She’s not on the list.” Brends slapped the paper down. “Why are these names on this list?”

  “Because they’re related?” Nael sounded interested now, and even Zer had stopped his pacing.

  “Distantly,” Brends confirmed. Mischka had never met—or even heard of—any of the women on this list other than Pell. She’d told them that and he’d overlooked the significance of her words.

  “So why this bloodline?”

  “Could be a freak accident.” Nael shrugged and winced, but the lazy roll of his shoulders didn’t match the keen look in his eyes.

  “Or it might matter.” Zer nodded slowly.

  “Tell me, love,” Brends said, turning toward Mischka, “how you’d feel about a small DNA test?”

  Mischka opted for the convenience store’s bathroom, while Brends’s team cleaned up the crime scene out front. Less clean, but more privacy. Would they be able to ID the dead girl, or would the girl’s friends and family ever learn what had happened out here? Maybe, the dead girl would just disappear from their lives and that would be that, no many how many times her family wondered out loud about her fate. Or maybe they weren’t close at all. Maybe no one would care at all, and that was the saddest scenario she could imagine.

  Genetic privacy laws prevented M City’s residents from flat-out asking whether or not a person was human. If you weren’t sure and it mattered—a lot—there were things you could do.

  Like at-home DNA tests.

  She balanced the white cardboard box with the DNA test on the edge of the sink. M City had clinics for this. Out here, however, she got a gas-station restroom that hadn’t been cleaned in at least two decades.

  Possibly three.

  She was stalling and she knew it. Swiping the swab tip along her lower lip was simple enough; reading the results on the plastic stick was altogether different. Brends wouldn’t have suggested the test if he hadn’t believed the suggestion had merit.

  “Could be worse,” he suggested from the doorway. “You could have had to pee on it.”

  Right. She shot him a look. “Don’t even think it,” she warned.

  Before she could lose her nerve, she looked down at the slim wand. Two dark bars and a series of smaller dots and swirls—the details. Two bars. She didn’t need to unfold the crumpled instructions to interpret Brends’s slow smile.

  “No,” she said, and then said it again, because really, once couldn’t possibly be enough. “No. That’s impossible.”

  “Well, hell, baby.” His strong hands took the plastic stick from hers. “You’ve been holding out on me.”

  Hell no, she hadn’t. Maybe she’d done the test wrong. After all, the damn thing was supposed to reassure her that she couldn’t possibly have inherited a gene for rheumatoid arthritis or psoriasis. The kit was supposed to tell her who her daddy was. Not that somewhere, somehow, she’d got stuck with a family member who wasn’t human.

  Explaining this to her aunt and uncle would be impossible.

  Unless they knew already. But she really, really doubted that.

  She wanted to run out and get another kit. Redo the results. Instead, she settled for crumpling the colorful instructions and cursing.

  Ancestry painting was supposed to tell you your ancestors were French. Or Scottish. Or Korean. Anything human. She couldn’t explain what she was feeling. No possible way. She’d got up that morning knowing who—what—she was, but she wasn’t going to go to bed the same way. She recognized the queasy sensation in the pit of her stomach, however. Like missing a step on the stairs or waiting to hear a piece of news the person opposite you had to deliver. Good news. Or bad news. The air had that same heavy feeling, like Brends just knew the storm was about to break but was okay with that.

  She needed to get out of here. Go somewhere where she could think. She couldn’t be part paranormal. That wasn’t who she was. Paranormals had killed her parents—surely, they wouldn’t have done that if her parents had been one of them?

  Brends was watching her, of course. “Don’t hide from me.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not hiding.”

  He eyed her. “Not yet. But you want to. You’re thinking about it, baby.”

  Of course she was. Damn him, he’d just delivered a life-altering detail as if he were asking her what kind of pizza she preferred. How did he think she was going to react? Humans and paranormals weren’t supposed to mix. This sort of genetic blending was supposed to be impossible. There were no known cases that she was aware of, so why the hell did she have to be the first?

  She’d wanted to be special. She’d wanted to belong. Next time, she’d be more specific. Because there was no way in hell she was a paranormal.

  “It’s defective.” It had to be.

  Brends folded his arms over his chest and her eyes followed the sexy pull of that cashmere sweater. No. She wasn’t noticing that. She was having a genetic crisis, not a hormonal meltdown.

  “Get another kit,” she ordered.

&nbs
p; She focused on the sexy quirk of his mouth as he shoved off the wall. “Sure,” he said. “Whatever you want.”

  “Don’t patronize me.” Logically, she knew another kit wasn’t going to make a difference. But what if it did? She fought off panic. She was going to hold it together.

  He eyed her curiously. “Fine. Then welcome to the club, baby. You’re one of us.”

  “Did you know?”

  He shook his head slowly. “No, but it didn’t matter to me.”

  One hand slid into the thick mass of hair at her neck, rubbing away the thick band of tension, while the fingers on his free hand traced down the unintelligible columns of dots as she reached for the kit’s instruction booklet. The answer was in here somewhere. She shuffled through the pages and he stared at the marks on the paper. Someone knocked once on the door, a hard tattoo of sound, but Brends sent them away with a muttered “Later.”

  Fine with her. She wasn’t ready to share this news.

  “How good’s your biblical scholarship?” When he asked the question, she blinked. Not the question she’d been expecting. At all.

  When she didn’t answer, he kicked open the door and pulled her out.

  Mischka’s bloodlines followed a direct line of descent back to Jacob. She was related to humans who’d spent decades wandering a desert in exile until they finally came home. He shot her a look, assessing those high patrician cheekbones of hers. Yeah, she had a biblical patriarch in her family tree and that couldn’t be an accident. The genetic markers screamed look at me, even as her eyes cooled. Ice Princess was back and she didn’t like the news he had to deliver.

  Too fucking bad.

  What biblical scholars didn’t know was that there had been thirteen tribes to start with. One tribe had split off from the others, gone AWOL. They’d been wiped from the records, from the face of the earth, as if they’d never existed. And yet they had.

  Still did.

  If he was right, that lost tribe wasn’t lost at all. Just living through one hell of a diaspora. So why would Eilor be hunting her line?

  “I’d want to do more tests,” he said to Zer, “but the genetic markers are there. Diluted, but there. Her family line traces straight back to the thirteenth tribe.”

  “The lost tribe? Fuck.” Zer swore and punched the wall.

  He hadn’t lied, Brends told himself.

  Brends hadn’t known that Mischka Baran wasn’t completely—entirely—human. When he’d first spotted her, it hadn’t mattered at all. He’d known then that he was going to have her, was going to do everything in his power to make her his.

  But it sure as hell mattered now. Primitive possession warred with dark pleasure. Yeah. She was his, right down to her genetic markers.

  He’d had other bond mates, had taken other females. He’d used those females even as he’d pleasured them. Now, however, their faces were pale blurs, unimportant pauses in millennia of memories. This female, this woman pacing and muttering beside him, mattered.

  Mischka Baran mattered.

  He was a selfish prick, because she was upset but he couldn’t stop the feral pleasure that swept through him. His. Mischka Baran was his, and the damn cardboard kit she’d put so much faith in had just confirmed it.

  Cold, hard facts bound her to him.

  “So that’s why he’s after me,” she clarified. “It’s not an accident.”

  “No.” He forced his hands to relax by his sides. She didn’t need further proof about just how bad the whole situation was. He’d keep her safe. She didn’t need to know. “It probably isn’t.”

  She stopped walking and looked up at him then, and he understood what his problem really was. Shit. He was afraid of losing her. That was natural, he told himself. They’d bonded, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that he was possessive. Always had been. He’d just have to work through this and do what he had to do.

  Her next words surprised him, however. “Use me,” she said. “Like you said before. As bait.” She licked her lips when she said the words, the gesture betraying her nerves. She knew what she was asking him to do. That there was a chance—maybe not even a small chance—that Brends wouldn’t be able to come to her rescue fast enough. She’d be alone with the rogue. And he could tell that thought scared the piss out of her.

  He ran a hand up her arm, savoring the sweet heat of her skin. How could he risk her like this? Ask her to take the chance?

  Because you don’t have another plan.

  Not one that would work anyhow. If she followed his rules, she’d be safe enough.

  Zer was watching, expressionless as two of the Goblins carefully slid the dead girl’s body into a body bag. The black nylon framed the pale skin, threw Eilor’s handiwork into stark relief. Eilor hadn’t taken his time with this one, just done a quick slice-and-dice that managed to be grislier because of the lack of emotion. The dead girl was just another item on a to-do list, a means to an end.

  Every primal instinct Brends possessed growled at the thought of Mischka ending up like that girl.

  He filled Zer in on the plan forming in his mind. “We get out in front and Eilor’s going to follow. He wants Mischka and he wants her cousin. We hand him an opportunity and he’ll take it.”

  “But we’ll control it.” Zer nodded.

  That was the theory. “Yeah,” Brends said. “I can make sure it plays out the way we need it to play out. No one gets hurt.”

  “Bait.” Zer looked at Mischka. “You’re discussing this?”

  “She should choose,” he argued. “This should be her choice.”

  “She’s your bond mate,” Zer pointed out, his strong hands zipping up the body bag and hiding away the evidence of Eilor’s crime. “That’s the only choice she had to make.”

  She wasn’t his puppet, even if he was strong enough to force her obedience. There would be rules—for her own protection—but the ultimate choice needed to be hers. If she wanted to turn around now, he’d find another way to get her to her cousin.

  “Hey, quit talking about me like I’m not here,” she snapped.

  Zer lifted the body bag effortlessly and turned to face her. “You want to say something?”

  “If there’s something we can do together to stop Eilor, I want us to do it. No one deserves that sort of pain and fear and horror.”

  “Do the right thing?” Zer’s eyes dipped to the body bag.

  “Yeah,” she said quietly and then, a little more loudly because for some reason her throat had closed up, “Yeah. That’s it.”

  “Good.”

  “You don’t leave my side,” Brends interjected. She could bitch all she wanted, but she wasn’t leaving his line of sight again. She was human and that meant fragile.

  “Is this typical for a rogue?” she asked. “I want the truth, Brends.”

  “No, it’s not.” Why not tell her the truth? Maybe, the next time—and he was certain there would be a next time—she’d listen. She was in over her damn head here, and somehow, he had to get her to recognize that home truth. “I’ve never seen a rogue quite like this one. He’s violent, yeah, but they’re all violent.”

  Her head dipped at that truth, the dark curtain of hair sliding forward and cutting him off. Yeah, she knew what he meant. That a few humans here or there were not the problem. His kind had treated her kind as disposable goods for centuries, so that wasn’t really the issue, and she was too smart not to know that.

  She was dogged in her pursuit of what she thought was the truth, though. He’d give her that. “So what makes Eilor different?”

  “Our rogue has wings. When Michael kicked our asses out of his Heavens, he took those wings,” he explained. “This rogue somehow has them back. So how did he get them? They’re not standard Wal-Mart issue. I don’t know anyone who’s been able to get them back. Ever.”

  They were too close to the Preserves to take any chances of hunting for the rogue now, with night coming on fast; it was best to hunker down and wait for morning. Besides, the
longer Brends could keep Mischka at their new base camp, the longer he could guarantee her safety. Camp was all disciplined bustle, with team members coming and going. Enough eyes to do the job and know where his bond mate was at all times. When Brends had suggested sleeping, however, Mischka had settled for a cool shrug. “Whatever. You’re the boss.”

  Yeah, she was pissed about his little mind-freeze trick. Still, he watched her sleep because nothing, no one, was getting through him to her.

  Restlessly, she rolled over, grumbling in her sleep and exposing the vulnerable curve of her spine to him as he stood by the side of the bed. All that human fragility and warmth. Hell. Who was he kidding? He was fucked. No way was he walking away from this one—and the most he had was thirty days. Stupid Judas that he was, he’d sold out for days when he should have been holding out for eternity.

  He moved away from the bed. He’d protect her. No matter what. And the best way to do it was through the bond. Hell, wasn’t he noble? Michael should throw the doors of Heaven wide open, because he was a candidate for sainthood. Never mind that his cock had a life of its own when he was around her.

  This bond wasn’t about sex.

  Wasn’t just about sex, he admitted to himself.

  He’d watched humans come and go for centuries, scurrying about their business, but letting this one go just wasn’t possible. Not anymore. She’d let him have his taste and now he would have sold his soul for a second. Hell.

  So he’d tried to forget his new emotional connection. Even Zer had noticed his new preoccupation. He couldn’t get Mischka out of his head—or his heart. He tried the thought on for size. Not just the sex, but something more.

  Sex was simpler.

  Brends took what he wanted, gave his partners what they fantasized about. Human females were delightfully straightforward, warm and vocal about what they desired. All that hot, heated skin, the breathless moans, the sweet, wet cream—these were good. These, he understood. This was what he’d been created for, condemned to do. He teased. He seduced. He dominated.