by Donya Lynne
And the derailing had begun with the ripping apart of his perfect family when he was just a little boy.
He’d started out with a dad and a mom, and unlike now, his father had been happy. His father had smiled all the time. He had paid attention to what Ronan said. He had given him rides around the house on his shoulders and encouraged him to grow up big and strong.
Then there had been his mom. His mother had adored him, always playing with him, building blanket forts with him and taking him to the park after sundown to push him on the swings. She had read stories to him every night, made him homemade chicken soup when he didn’t feel well, and baked mountains of cupcakes for his birthday parties. The house had always been filled with the comforting, fragrant aroma of her cooking.
Their small family hadn’t been financially wealthy, but they’d been rich in love.
Ah, such happy times and fond memories.
Then everything had changed.
A strange male had come to the house one night after Ronan had heard his mom and dad arguing. The male had been tall, with light-brown hair, and dressed in a tailored suit. Possessive aggression as thick and heavy as a fog bank had rolled out of him, sending a chill through the air as he entered the foyer.
The moment the male saw Ronan’s mother, he snatched her hand and pulled her against him like he owned her, scowling at his father.
Ronan would never forget what the male said next, before he whisked his mother away. “She is mine by law. I’ve mated her, and she’s coming with me.” Then the male’s cold gaze turned toward Ronan. “The boy stays with you.”
Despite his mother’s protests and the way she cried, reaching for Ronan, the male dragged her away. Ronan never saw her again.
That was Ronan’s first lesson in the king’s law. The claim of a biologically mated male over a female always superseded the claim of an unmated male—and the son—who merely loved her. As if love were a choice. Something that could be prevented or turned off at will.
Love was a luxury for a male vampire, because a male in love knew that at any moment another male could come along and bond to his female. And if—and when—that happened, he was shit out of luck. No one would uphold his claim in the face of one based on biology.
Which was why it was a miracle Ronan had even been conceived. His father had never biologically mated his mother. He’d loved her, but that was all. Love hadn’t been enough to keep her even though it had been enough to create him.
Now, instead of a miracle, Ronan felt like a curse. Because that’s what his life had become after his mother was taken from him. Without fail, anything good turned to shit.
But as bad as Ronan suffered after she was gone, his father had suffered ten times worse.
There had been no more rides on his father’s shoulders. No more words of encouragement. No more laughter. In their place came silence, solitude, anger, and resentment.
In many ways, Ronan became the adult the day his mother left. He had tended to his father, learned to cook, figured out how to do the laundry. He became the male of the house. For months, his father wouldn’t even eat unless Ronan fed him. Wouldn’t bathe unless Ronan did it for him.
For the first year, his father hadn’t been much more than an empty shell, his eyes vacant and lost most of the time.
Only when he slept did he show any signs of life as nightmares consumed him, making him flail, shout, and curse. The words that escaped from his father during his night terrors painted a frightening picture. One filled with death, loss, and anguish. People his father had killed. The deaths of those close to him. The loss of a son named Micah and a mate named Isabel.
Ronan would lock his bedroom door at night and pull the blankets and pillows over his head, clutching a kitchen knife for fear his father would sleepwalk and tear into his room on a blind rampage, seeking to kill those in his nightmares and mistaking Ronan for the enemy in his unconscious state.
There were so many nights he cried himself to sleep listening to his father yell and sob at the horrors he relived in his dreams. Which was probably why his father began resisting sleep. Which then led to a sort of psychosis during waking hours, where he hallucinated, trading his night terrors for waking nightmares. Which led to angry outbursts about how Ronan should be more like his brother, Micah.
He came to hate hearing Micah’s name, which eventually became a loathing for the male himself. Why can’t you be more like Micah? His father would ask. Micah could shoot an arrow square between a boar’s eyes at fifty meters. Micah could take on six drecks at once and defeat them all without breaking a sweat. Micah brought honor to the Black name. Micah this, Micah that. The perfect son, Micah.
Is it any wonder Ronan grew up to hate him?
So, yeah, Ronan hadn’t exactly experienced an enviable childhood. When other kids his age were playing basketball and riding their bikes, he was paying the household bills and walking two miles to the store by himself to pick up groceries.
Oh, how he had yearned for a simple life. But that wasn’t to be. Not then, not now, not ever.
Ronan’s brow dug deep into his eyelids as his mouth fell open on a revelation. Money. There had always been enough money to cover the bills, despite their meager living conditions. Where had that money come from? And why had he never thought to ask that question before?
Well, shit, the answer was pretty obvious, wasn’t it? Ronan had always been too busy staying out of his father’s way, preparing for the next mentally unhinged tirade, and wishing he could be more like his unknown brother, Micah, because then maybe he could have helped his father return to the male he’d been before Mom left.
There hadn’t been much room left to ask where the money came from. All that mattered was that every month, day in and day out, it was there.
He remembered the bank statements that came in the mail like clockwork. Since he didn’t learn how to balance a checkbook until years later, he ripped open the envelope, scanned the statement for the remaining balance, stapled the pages together, and filed them away.
It wasn’t until he was older that he started paying attention to the details, and even though every statement showed a deposit of five thousand dollars—and later, six thousand—he’d become so conditioned to simply stuffing the damn things in a file folder, he never stopped to think about where the deposits were coming from. Just that they kept coming.
He assumed at the time that his father had set up some kind of arrangement where money was deposited on a schedule, but now, years later, that explanation didn’t hold water.
Someone had provided cash flow all those years to ensure he wasn’t put out on the streets. Like a guardian angel or something.
But who?
Who would do that?
His mom? Had she secretly been funneling money to him and his father after her new mate ripped her from their lives?
Maybe. Maybe not. That douchebag in a suit hadn’t looked like the type who would allow something like that. Then again, mates held a lot of power over their males, and she could have convinced him to keep Ronan and his father financed.
Whatever. Maybe he would look into it. See what he could dig up. But if his mother was responsible for the mysterious deposits, he wasn’t sure he wanted to see her. He was as angry at her as he was his dad. She could have fought harder to keep him, especially if she was the one who had sent the money.
So, yeah, his childhood had sucked in the worst fucking way. Devotion to caring for his father soon turned to resentment, and then to anger, and finally to rebellious loathing by the time he turned twenty.
Of course, by then, he was hanging out with the wrong crowd, stealing cars, getting a firsthand education in Beginner’s Breaking and Entering, Advanced Chop Shop Etiquette, and honoring in How to Win in Hand-to-Hand Combat. All while learning how to evade human cops while adjusting to his maturing vampire body.
In the twenty-six years since, his resentment toward his father had only thickened, but at least he’d ditched the small-tim
e thugs in favor of more elegant, as well as more philanthropic crimes.
The enchanting blonde had called him a hero.
He wasn’t a hero.
He was the quintessential antihero, overflowing with flaws and a horrific past. His skills fighting the enemy had been honed first by embracing a life of crime. Only after becoming disillusioned with thieving’s lack of personal fulfillment had he turned toward fighting for a greater good.
That was about the time he met Alexis, not quite six years ago.
Alexis was a jack of all trades. Bounty hunter. Vigilante. Thief. Gun for hire if the price was right—and if the target was evil enough.
And let’s not forget, she was an amateur surgeon and emergency care physician.
But what Alexis really loved to do was break up human trafficking rings. She had a nose for shitheads involved in the skin trade, and she took great joy in putting them out of business.
Her rules were simple. No children, no innocents. Everyone else was fair game to fall inside the crosshairs of her gun’s sight. The worse the criminal, the greater the target.
Most of the time she found her own targets and did society a freebie, but once in a while—just often enough to keep her bank accounts fat and her supplies stocked—she received contracted and paid work from an anonymous handler in exchange for protection. There were those she wanted to hide from, and her handler helped her stay off the grid, so it was a win-win as far as professional relationships went.
And now Ronan was her partner and protégé, thanks to being in the right place at the right time when she took out one of the human thugs Ronan used to hang with.
Talk about wake-up calls.
But hero? No. Not him. No way.
That didn’t stop him from replaying how it felt when the blonde called him one, though. Warmth had flooded his chest, and in that moment, he wanted nothing more than to be the Tarzan to her Jane. To lift her in his arms, tuck her against him, and swing from vine to vine so far into the jungle no one would ever find them.
There, he would feed her, bring her water, wash her in a cool pool under a waterfall, and make love to her on a bed of palm fronds in his thatch hut. They would have children, and Ronan would prove he could be a better father to his young than his father had been to him.
Wait, what? Children? What the fuck was he thinking? He didn’t need to be thinking about mating and children. God, no. That wasn’t the path he wanted his life to take.
With a frustrated snarl, he stripped the mask from his head and tossed it to the side. It bounced and rolled, coming to rest facedown on the grass.
Raking his fingers through his hair, he tossed an angry glance over his shoulder at the pyramid tomb.
He was stuck here, in more ways than one. There would be no jungle hideaway just as there would be no portal opening to take him to another realm.
Although, now that he’d met the stunning blonde with sky-blue eyes, being stuck in the earth realm didn’t feel quite like the prison sentence it had an hour ago. She intrigued and excited him. In the short while he’d known of her existence, she’d consumed his thoughts.
Who was she?
Why was she using cobalt?
What was she afraid of? And who?
The heartbreak and desperation he’d seen in her eyes as she begged him to save her had nearly broken his heart. A female like that . . . she should never feel threatened. She should never need to beg anyone to save her, because everyone who came in contact with her should feel instantly duty bound to keep her safe.
If she were Ronan’s, he would protect her. He would—
What the hell? Why did he keep going down this path? He didn’t need to think that way. He was not boyfriend material any more than he was father material. He wasn’t a savior or a saint. And he wasn’t her bodyguard or some kind of hero. He was a renegade. An outlaw.
A female as fine as she needed someone stable and safe, neither of which were him. A male like him could never be with a female like her. He wasn’t worthy to look upon her, let alone touch her, whether intimately or casually.
He was a thief. She was a goddess. The two simply didn’t go together.
But damn him if he didn’t like the fantasy of her lips on his, her body wrapped within his arms, her hands touching him everywhere.
Everywhere.
Ah, but fantasies were the private inner workings of the mind wanting what the body couldn’t have. Much like the freedom he’d lost when the ankh hadn’t opened the pyramid tomb’s portal last week.
He removed the ankh from his pocket and turned it over in his fingers, staring at it, knowing in his heart that if he kept searching, one day he would find the gate it opened. Then he would disappear and start over new wherever the portal took him. And he would take that beautiful female with him.
And that was yet another fantasy meant to taunt him, because he wouldn’t be taking that beauty anywhere.
Knowing his luck, if he managed to open a portal, it would probably lead to a black hole and suck the life from him. But if she was with him, at least they would die together and be free of that which haunted them both.
Like Romeo and Juliet.
Only his life was anything but Shakespearean. As poetic as dying in the arms of such an angel sounded, he was more likely to die tragically alone and loveless than fulfilled in his heart.
But what was the harm in daydreaming that he really could be the hero her intoxicated mind had seen in him tonight? At least in fantasies he could be everything he wasn’t in real life, and in his fantasies, he could be with her.
“Ronan?”
He jerked out of his reverie and lifted his head, surprised and a little troubled to find Rule, his mentor from the secret fight club, Grudge Match, standing beside the pyramid.
That was one more thing he could be pissed off at Micah about. The one thing he’d wanted for himself—to be a member of Grudge Match without any interference—was now a pipe dream. Like everything else, what was once a good thing was now ruined.
Micah and that bitch, Cordray, had somehow connected him to the fight club and shown up the other night. That had to have been how Micah found out where he lived. Had to have been how Micah had shown up at the house tonight to await his return.
What was he supposed to do now? He had exposed and brought shame on the club by being careless. No way would Rule and Digon allow him to remain a member.
Rule had recruited him into Grudge Match, trained him, and had become a father figure to him. Ronan couldn’t say Rule was a friend, but his respect for the guy put Rule right up there with Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. His skills were superhuman. He moved with the grace of a tiger and the speed of a cheetah, and held black belts in every discipline. If he had anyone to look up to, it was Rule.
No one beat Rule in the octagon. No one. Ever. Fights he engaged in couldn’t even be called fights, they ended so fast. That’s how good he was.
Ronan stared up at the male. “What are you doing here?”
“We need to talk.” Rule’s grim expression sent a shiver down Ronan’s spine.
Here we go.
No doubt, Rule had found out what he’d done and had come to expel him from the club. Not that Ronan was surprised. He had suspected he was out, but facing the reality upset him more than he wanted to admit.
“How did you find me?”
Rule continued toward him, his expression troubled. “It’s a long story, one we don’t have time for right now.”
Ronan scoffed and glanced around the dark cemetery. “Actually, I seem to have all the time in the world.” He looked away, not wanting to see the disappointment in Rule’s eyes.
If only his circumstances were different. He’d lived a lifetime in Micah’s shadow. For once, he wanted to be seen for who he really was, not for what his father wished he could have been. Not as the son his father had lost centuries ago and had longed for all Ronan’s life. A son his father had now reconnected with, so what good did it do Ronan to con
tinue hoping he could ever measure up? His father had what he wanted now. He had Micah. What more could Ronan offer him?
Rule hastily glanced over his shoulder as if checking to see if he’d been followed then turned, spied the ankh, and frowned. “What’s that you’ve got there?” He asked the question as if he already knew the answer.
Ronan shoved the ankh back into his pocket. “Nothing. Just a trinket I found.”
“Uh-huh.” Rule crossed his arms, his voice betraying that he didn’t buy Ronan’s lie.
Ronan glanced away, in no mood to see yet another person he admired look at him like he was a failure.
Rule let out a turbulent exhale. One that sounded like it came with a mix of frustration, distraction, and impatience. “I just came from your house.”
A chill raced down his back. He’d left Micah and his father at his house two hours ago. More than likely, his father was still there, awaiting his return. He could only imagine the conversation Rule had had with his dad.
“What were you doing at my house?” When Rule didn’t answer right away, Ronan glanced up at him. “Well . . .?”
“I think you already know.”
Anger simmered underneath the sharp-edged dread sending up goose bumps on his arms. Respect or not, he was fed the fuck up to fucking here with the shit he’d been through tonight.
Standing, he pushed into Rule’s personal space. If he was out of the club, anyway, he was going to ensure he was way out.
“No, Rule, I don’t know. How about you spell it out for me.” If Rule had been to his home, and was now looking at him like he should know what this little cemetery visit was about, he no doubt had gotten a rundown from good ol’ Dad. God only knew what version of the story his father had given Rule, but it appeared as if Rule had taken his dad’s version as gospel.
Rule simply stared at him, the only movement in his expression a tightening of the skin around his eyes.
“I’m waiting, Rule? What the hell were you doing at my home?”
Rule broke out of his statue impersonation and paced a few steps to the side as he glanced over his shoulder again. “First of all, you should know my real name isn’t Rule. It’s Rysk. Rysk the Second, to be exact.” He said his real name like it was one Ronan should have heard before.