I held my hand out to him, and he looked at it. Seconds seemed to stretch into hours as he just stared. I knew he wouldn’t shake it. What had I been thinking? I snorted, curling my fingers back, when suddenly he took it.
His grip was firm, almost painful.
“You didn’t know.”
He phrased it as a statement, but I knew it was really more of a question. Emerson didn’t like me, and I didn’t like him. But he’d lost something precious tonight, and I refused to injure him further.
“I didn’t know, Em. I swear to you, I didn’t know. But I really am sorry.”
His jaw clenched. He dropped my hand quickly and looked to the side but not before I caught a glint of water shimmering in his eyes. Giving him his dignity, I moved on.
Steven wrapped his arms around me so tight that I felt the burgeoning muscles of the man beneath the child.
Leaning down, I kissed both his cheeks and hugged him just as fiercely. For once, he said nothing. The child who never stopped speaking had seemed to run out of words. That hurt more than I could say.
I dreaded looking at the next set of eyes.
Clarence’s face was stoic, almost angry.
“I’m sor—”
I wasn’t given the chance to give him my words of condolence before he cut me off.
“Carter lives.”
I nodded, wondering if he would ask me to kill my old partner. Who wasn’t my partner. I froze, feeling cold and empty inside all over again.
“Yes. He’s making a miraculous turnaround.”
Carter’s injuries, to a human or most Veilers, should have been lethal. It was only then that I fully understood just how improbable and impossible it was that I’d killed his female counterpart.
Only one thing in life could kill a bogeyman, and I, by some fluke of fate, had figured it out. I didn’t believe in coincidences, but I couldn’t understand how it was that I’d figured out something that’d been scrubbed from time immemorial by all save the bogeymen themselves.
Clarence took my hand, squeezing so hard I felt my knuckles slide and start to fissure with microscopic cracks. I bit down on my back teeth to keep from grimacing, to keep from giving him the response I knew he wanted.
“Do you want me to kill him?” I asked steadily, never taking my eyes from his. Letting him know that I was a predator too.
It was within my jurisdiction, and whether I hated Carter or not, I knew he had enough of a sense of honor that if I told him to march into the haunted shack and end things, he would.
He was no innocent, either.
He’d killed so many, but after Emily, he’d changed. Changed for her. And I saw that now. I wanted to damn him to hell for making things so much harder for me, but I understood him too.
He was a monster. He was also a man.
My heart thundered in my ears as I awaited the Alpha’s reply.
“You will keep an eye on him. I do not trust him. But he is a valuable weapon to us now. I’ve instructed the hospital to insert a kill switch in his brain.”
My blood ran cold as the enormity of what he was telling me sank in slowly.
“You...you what? What have you done?”
His face twisted into something truly horrific and awful as a terrible snarl spilled off his tongue.
“Short leashes, Scarlett Smith. Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.”
Then he shoved me away. The shove wasn’t exactly rough, but it was obvious, causing those around us to look up with shock and dismay.
The Alpha hadn’t banished me. But what he’d done was almost as damning.
He’d declared for one and all to hear that I was his enemy. I bit my bottom lip and looked up into his blue-green eyes that shone with pain.
“Mercer, I’m—”
But Mercer did what Mercer always did with me. Defended me not with words but with actions. He grabbed me and hugged me tight, and I shuddered, burying my face in his chest as his big, large palm slid up and down my spine and his nose buried into my hair.
I dug my fingers into his shirt, wishing things were different between us. Wishing I could take back the past few days and start over again. How could someone who had touched me with such passion and love keep pushing me away?
I wasn’t crazy. I knew that what I felt, he felt too.
He stiffened, and I wanted to cry, because I knew. Knew he’d smelled James on me. Knew what I had done.
He gently sat me away. And I didn’t need to look around to know that at least among most of the shifters, I was not considered their enemy. So long as Merc was on my side, I was still one of them, however much they might not want it.
Without saying another word, Mercer turned on his heel and walked away, leaving many stunned and confused shifters behind. He’d broken protocol by leaving before the Alpha.
I looked at Clarence, who in turn was looking into the shadows with a dark and menacing emotion on his face.
I shivered, my heart spasming with fear for Merc. I loved him more than my own life, my own soul. Why couldn’t he love me back?
Jamie’s hand slid into mine, squeezing gently. I’d not realized he’d shifted again and started almost guiltily.
“Let’s go home, Vampire,” he said softly, and my flesh prickled with need despite myself.
“Okay,” I whispered back.
In the distance, a lone wolf howled.
~*~
Mercer
He watched them walk off, hand in hand, their heads close and their lips even closer, and he was dead inside.
The air tightened with a heavy pressure of power.
Closing his eyes, Mercer rested his forehead against the tree trunk, digging his fingers into the bark so hard that several slivers of wood impaled themselves.
“You let her leave with another,” Dean snorted. “I have to say, dog, I never imagined the unyielding depths of resolve and steel caged inside your wild heart. It’s got to kill your wolf to see its mate bed another.”
Twirling, his eyes aglow as the Alpha rage rode him hard, he snapped, “Shut your fucking mouth before I make you shut it.”
Dean just laughed. “I could kill you without breaking a sweat, fleabag. So don’t tempt me.”
His body, held tense and taut, didn’t relax an inch as he imagined all the ways he could kill the Veiler before him. But there was no point, and Mercer knew it.
“She isn’t Veiler,” he said wearily, “and neither are you.”
Dean, looking as cool and unflappable as ever, shrugged before leaning against the base of a tree opposite. “Never said she was.”
Mercer had been expecting Dean’s reappearance for a few days. The ancient had warned him once before never to feed Scarlett his undiluted blood. That the consequences of such an action would be grave.
Dean smirked. “Oh, I’m not here to kill you.”
Mercer didn’t know whether Dean had gleaned the question from his mind or his tense posture. Either way, didn’t matter. “I fed her my blood. It was the only way to save her.”
“Oh, come, come, wolf. Let us not lie to each other. Not us. We’re above such things, are we not? You had the wolfsbane at hand. You could have eaten it. You chose not to. Now you get to live with the consequences of your actions.”
Breathing heavy, he remembered that night. The touch of her mouth on him. The taste of her skin. Her tongue, sweet like blood and honeysuckle and cloves. Blood rushed violently through him, making him weak in the knees and desperate to claw and rip at something.
Wet kisses.
The glide of fingertips across naked flesh. The whisper of heated, passionate words murmured in thick brogue.
And then...
Yes, Jamie...yes...
He roared, rearing back as he punched a fist-sized hole through the tree, shattering it and dropping it to the ground with a heavy boom.
Dean’s laughter lit up the night.
“Now you know why I warned you, dog. You should never have claimed her as mate, bu
t you have as I knew you would. The sharing of blood means you feel all she feels. The touch of James’s hand on her breast, the lick and swirl of his tongue gliding down her lily-white skin, and the pressure of his enormous cock hitting all the sweet spots inside of her.”
Mercer dropped to his knees, clapping his hands over his ears as he shook his head, trying to deny the words even as he felt the proof of them bludgeon him.
“Take it away!” he pleaded. “I don’t want this. End this agony.”
But Dean never batted an eye. “I can’t. It’s why I warned you away. I do not deal in love and matters of the heart, wolf. Pandora’s box once opened cannot be unopened. You did this. So now you deal with this.”
“So pushing her away,” he barked, “it was all for nothing? All I’ll ever be is forever tortured by her love for another? Fuck you, demon.”
Shaking his head, Dean sighed deeply, looking up at the stars. “Not for nothing, wolf. I told you before and I’ll tell you again, there are two paths. Though one is far clearer now.”
Mercer wanted to ask which one, which one was clearer. But he was tired of the games. Tired of second-guessing everything he did. He was tired, and he was hurting.
Yes. Oh God...yes... His fingers spasmed as he clutched at his furiously beating heart.
He seethed, gritting his teeth, counting slowly to ten to try to drown out her voice of ecstasy in his head.
“You taught Scarlett a valuable lesson tonight, wolf,” he said slowly, and Mercer knew he shouldn’t ask.
But he did, anyway. “What lesson?”
“That she can survive without you.”
The words weren’t uttered with cruel indifference or frost-laced venom, but they pierced his cold, dead heart all the same.
“But can you survive without her? That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” Dean’s look was knowing, ancient, and wise.
And for tonight, at least, Mercer was done. He turned and he ran, distancing himself from Dean, from his pack, from Scarlett, and from Clarence. Mercer no longer trusted him, and a time of reckoning for the Alpha was close at hand. But most of all, Mercer tried to outrun himself and the demons that haunted his every step.
~*~
Somewhere in the cosmos, a slumbering god blinked...
~*~
Did you know that there is a prequel to this book? It’s called Honeysuckle Memories and you can find the novelette in the short stories anthology called, Nightshade. Also, if you’ve not read my Night series but are interested in learning more about Dean, Pandora, and the rest of the Night characters than I highly suggest starting at the beginning with the Night series collection written as RS Black. The Night books can only be found on the Amazon Kindle Unlimited program!
Want to learn more about my latest releases? And when the next full-length book, Me and You and a Ghost Named Boo comes out, then make sure to sign up for my newsletter!
Author’s Note
If you loved this book and are fiending for some more vampires and shifters, I was recently invited into an awesome collection of short stories with some other big time authors of paranormal fiction—Jennifer Ashley, Mandy M. Roth, Michelle M. Pillow, Yasmine Gaelnorn, Kristen Painter, and Deanna Chase, just to name a few. Taming the Vampire releases on Halloween day and all stories to include my own (Fae Bridge Over Troubled Waters) are brand new, never before read additions. That short story immediately follows Whiskey, Vamps, and Thieves. It’s already for up for preorder wherever e-books are sold!
The second full-length novel in the Southern Vampire Chronicles will be coming soon-ish. I’m hoping to have a November to December release date for it. It’s titled Me and You and a Ghost Named Boo, you can follow the progress of that book by either following me on FB or signing up for my newsletter!
Other Books by Selene Charles
Tempted Series – Set in the Night Universe (Completed)
Forbidden, Book 1
Reckless, Book 2
Possessed, Book 3
Bears of Kodiak Series – Standalone erotic shifter romances (Completed)
Chance, Book 1
August, Book 2
Phoenix, Book 3
Night Series – Written as RS Black (Completed)
The Night Series Collection (Books 1 and 2)
Howler’s Night, Book 3
Red Rain, Book 4
About Selene Charles
Selene Charles is the pen name of a successful NY Times and USA Today Bestselling author. She loves to write about the seedy underbelly of things that go bump in the night. If you want to learn more about her books you can follow her on FB.
Whiskey, Vamps, and Thieves (Southern Vampire Detective #1) Page 30