by K Loraine
“That’s not fair. You don’t know the circumstances. You of all people should understand that.”
I stared him down. “What if she killed him?”
“Why would she do that? What could she gain from killing the alpha? It’s not like she could take over.”
“I don’t know.”
“You should talk to her. Get her side of it all. You said it yourself, she thought she was keeping you safe by sending you to Scotland.”
“For a hundred years? No. I think she was ashamed of me and sent me away to keep me out of her sight.”
“Another reason to confront her. Find out the truth. Get closure. She owes you that much before you return to your life.”
“I’ll think about it.” I reached for the doorknob and looked back at him over my shoulder. “Tell Rami we’ll find whoever killed Petra. And we’ll bring back Desi and Jess.”
He nodded. Then, as I opened the door, he called, “What happens when you lose control of your wolf and tear these vampires you love limb from limb, Briar? How are you going to live with yourself?”
“I won’t.” I closed the door behind me and let those words hang in the air. What had I meant? I won’t let the wolf take over and kill them? Or I won’t live with myself?
I left with my chest heavy and my throat tight with emotion. Everything I’d precariously sewn together was unraveling, and I couldn’t seem to stop it. Instead of going back inside, I wandered the grounds. Lucas would be angry with me, but I needed to feel the earth beneath my feet, the fresh air in my lungs, the sun on my skin.
The garden maze was large and well-manicured, of course. Everything at Blackthorne Manor was immaculately kept. I worked my way through the sculpted hedges, the scent of earth and plants crisp in my nose. I missed this. Missed being able to let my wolf have the freedom to run in the forest and play under the moon. Maybe one day…
A soft rustling caught my ear and had me tensing, on edge. I waited, still as a statue, until the sound came again, this time closer. All I could do was stand there, ready to pounce on whomever was in here with me. A shadow spilled across the ground from around the corner, and I launched myself at the intruder.
“Not another step.” Olivia pressed the tip of a silver dagger to the flesh of my throat, the burn sizzling up my skin.
I could hear her heart racing, see the fear and determination in her eyes. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I know. I won’t let you.” She backed away, knife still drawn. “If you think I’ve survived here by the grace of the vampires, you’d be wrong. I know how to defend myself. I’m here by choice and always prepared.”
I thought back to the girl Elias and Cashel were so enamored with during my first time in Blackthorne Manor. Eliana. A ghost of a woman by the time I met her, broken and tragic. What had become of her? Olivia was vibrant, alive, and clearly not ruined by the Blackthornes.
“So, you are a daywalker? That’s interesting. Does Lucas know? Callie?”
“Yes to both.”
“She’ll want us to take a sample of your blood so we can test it.”
I nodded. “Go right ahead. After reading about sun sickness, I’ll do what I can to help.”
Olivia narrowed her eyes.
“Why are you still here?” she asked. “Lucas isn’t holding you against your will. Why not just return to your pack?”
“I don’t have a pack, and I don’t trust that they want me out of love. If they loved me, they wouldn’t have left me to die.”
“This is a world filled with self-serving creatures.”
“Even Cashel?”
She turned dark eyes on me. “Yes. Even him. He chose me over saving his entire race.”
“Some might call that selfless.”
Shaking her head, she began walking through the rows of topiaries and tall shrubs. “I wouldn’t. I’d call it lucky for me. I get to live my life in relative peace, have the man I love, have a family. But countless more will be victims of sun sickness after our supply runs out.”
“I’d think you, as a human, would be more concerned about saving your people.”
“We’re all monsters in the dark, Briar. Some of us hide it better than others.”
“You know, I thought I’d hate you if I ever met you. The woman my mate married.”
She smirked and continued her path out of the garden. “I thought I’d hate you too. For breaking Lucas’ heart.”
“What? He thought I was dead.”
“He didn’t tell me anything about you. But I knew he’d been ruined by someone. That someone was obviously you.”
My chest ached. Did losing me really hurt him that badly? “He gave you his bond.”
“Out of necessity.” She took my hands, the contact startling me, but stared into my eyes. “Look into my mind and tell me you see anything other than that. I promise you, there’s nothing between Lucas and me. Not like that. I love him, but not the way I love Cashel.”
The sky darkened as heavy clouds rolled in, signaling an oncoming storm. Relief flooded me at the sudden respite from the bright light. I let myself open my mind to her, looking into her deep, dark irises until I saw straight into her past and sensed the truth behind her memory. With the combination of our bare palms touching and the openness of her thoughts, I watched the events of their bond through her eyes.
Flashes of everything that had passed between them hit me in rapid succession, and when I watched Lucas die in front of her, I had to break the spell and back away, my eyes burning with tears. “Has his entire life been this painful?”
She bit her lower lip and didn’t respond, but she wouldn’t look me in the eye again. I had my answer. Lucas Blackthorne had mourned me. He’d sacrificed his life selflessly. He may have thought he wasn’t like his human mother, but he was wrong. So incredibly wrong.
“Thank you, Olivia.”
Her palm resting on her slightly swollen belly, she nodded. “He never got over you, and I will never be able to repay him for what he did for us.”
Turning away, I glanced at the sprawling house. My gaze trailed over the stone walls lined with creeping ivy until I found Lucas’ window. “Come inside with me. I don’t want to leave you out here alone.”
With a wicked gleam in her eyes, she smirked. “I’m armed, as you saw. They won’t hurt me without me hurting them too.”
“I know. I don’t doubt your ability, but please, ease my mind?”
Sighing, she nodded and followed me. “Fine. It’s lunchtime anyway. If I don’t force myself to eat, I forget. The perils of living with vampires.”
Bone weary, I let the fatigue I’d been pushing aside take hold. I couldn’t continue on as I had been, burning the candle at both ends. We entered the house and, after I allowed her to take a few vials of my blood, parted ways, as allies if not friends, and I headed up the stairs toward my rooms. But as I passed the door to Lucas’ chambers, I stopped, palm pressed to the wood. I reached out to him with my mind, finding nothing but a hum of energy and the heartbeat that matched my own. I shouldn’t disturb him. He needed his rest just as I did, but I wanted nothing more than to surround myself in Lucas Blackthorne. After what I’d seen in Olivia’s memories, what I’d sensed from touching her, I owed my vampire one hell of an apology.
15
LUCAS
I smelled her before I felt her. No. That was wrong. I sensed her even before she entered my room. Her presence was like a bolt of lightning, raising the hairs on the back of my neck before the strike. I wanted so much to take her into my arms, but I had to settle for letting her curl up next to me because the weight of the daylight held me down.
“I’m sorry.” Her whisper was a balm to my aching soul—if I had one.
It killed me not to be able to respond, the light trail of her fingers over my brow and down across my jaw sending faint tingles rushing across my skin. The sun was so high, so damn powerful, all I could do was feel.
She smelled like the sun itself, tempting and te
asing with warmth and life, everything I couldn’t have. And I caught a trace of something else. Someone else. That bastard, Sebastian. He’d had his dirty paws all over what was mine. If I could have, I would’ve had her on her back as I filled her body and tasted her sun-kissed blood, claiming her beyond all question. Instead, I was trapped here in this prison of waking death.
“I know so much more now. I understand. I just…I wish things were different. I wish I could completely let go of the hurt.”
She curled her body around me, her fingers threading in mine as she held me and slowly drifted to sleep, taking me back under with her, but this time, I saw it all. She dreamed of her past, and it infiltrated my mind, crystal clear and terribly painful. But I deserved it. Every single minute.
16
LUCAS
Briar trembled in my arms as I woke, her subconscious still recovering from taking me back to her past, to the moment she truly gave up on me. Even nearly a century later, she’d thought I had come to save her. She thought about it until the moment it wasn’t me pulling her from Nik’s clutches. I’d been so shortsighted, blocking my humanity, sealing off my heart, and burning a reminder of what I’d lost into my flesh. I couldn’t ever let her go again. Never.
Instead of waking her, I pressed our foreheads together in the dark and closed my eyes, trying to let myself into her thoughts, to walk with her in a landscape of our choosing, not of nightmares. But I couldn’t get inside. She’d thrown up her walls as soon as she felt me poking around in her dreams, in her past. Wrapping my arms around her, I pulled her warmth against me, needing the connection we had to blaze between us again.
“Lucas?” My name was the softest sigh on her lips, her eyes still closed, mouth parted, begging me to kiss her.
“I’m here. I’ll always be here.” I didn’t even mind how my voice broke as the pure yearning she brought out in me escaped. I would die for her. If she’d given me the chance, I would have taken the stake Nik drove into her chest and spared her this…existence I’d condemned her to.
“I hated you.”
“I love you.” My whispered response was automatic, but nothing short of the truth. Here, in the quiet dark of my bedroom, the place I’d first claimed her as mine, I couldn’t keep the words from spilling out.
“I fucking love you, Briar. I always have and always will. If I could give you my bond, I would. I hate smelling him on you. I hate knowing you have feelings for him. I want all of your feelings. All of your love. Every part of you.”
I opened my eyes, staring into the face I’d tried so hard to forget. Burning violet irises met my gaze, sending the grip of anticipation clutching my heart. She could end me right here and now. Reject me and move on. I didn’t have a clue what I’d do if I had to live in a world where she wasn’t mine. Not now that I had her in my arms again.
Her brow furrowed, and the scent of arousal filled the room. Her arousal. She squirmed under me, but not to get away. No, she threaded her fingers in my hair and rocked her hips, brushing my aching length with her core.
“Fucking hell, Briar, I want you. Please tell me I can have you? Be mine.” I wasn’t asking her to marry me again. I was demanding. I wanted her body, her heart, her soul, all intertwined with mine for eternity. And above all, I wanted that bast—Sebastian to know.
“Yes. I want you so badly it hurts.”
I cocked a brow. “Where does it hurt, love? Tell me so I can kiss it better.”
A wicked grin twisted her lips. “Here,” she said, tapping her fingertips to her chest, right over her heart. That sent a stab of pain through me because I caused that. If I had only been honest with her from the start, we would have run away together and spent the last hundred years as we should have, as mates. Instead, I played my father’s twisted game, and she suffered the consequences.
Dipping my head, I pressed a soft kiss to her skin just above the swell of her breast. Her soft, thin slip of…whatever the fuck she was wearing didn’t stand a chance against me when I realized it stood in the way of my body and the rest of her. I gripped it and tore the fabric straight down the middle, exposing the lush peaks and valleys that made up the map of the woman I loved.
I kissed slow trails over her breasts, her nipples, and down until I nuzzled the neatly trimmed thatch of dark blond hair between her thighs. “Does it hurt here?”
She moaned and parted her legs, granting me access before nodding.
One long kiss against her cunt had her gripping my hair and whispering my name as a plea. I tasted her sweetness, spreading her open to me and sliding a finger inside her as I teased her clit. She bucked under me, but with my free hand, I pressed her hips back onto the bed. My one goal was to shake the walls with her cries of pleasure. I wanted Sebastian to know just who she screamed for. Me. Only me.
“Stop thinking about him, Lucas. I’m yours, make me remember it.”
I laughed at her scolding. I’d have to guard my thoughts better. “We can’t bond, but I can do everything a mate does for his bride. Feed from me tonight, mark me as yours.”
Her eyes widened, then she grinned. “Before or after you make me come on your face?”
Chuckling, I fitted myself between her legs again and nipped her clit. “Needy little wolf, aren’t you?”
“If I’m going to marry you, I need to make sure we’re compatible.”
My heart leapt. It fucking leapt like something out of a romantic comedy. “Are you?”
“You told me I was, didn’t you? Or did you forget?”
“I never forget.”
“Yes. I should have run away with you the first time you asked me.”
I didn’t respond. Instead, I spent the next few minutes between my Briar’s legs, doing exactly what she asked of me until my bedsheets were nothing but shreds of silk and her thighs trembled with exhaustion.
My dick was hard as fucking steel against her thigh, and it took everything in me not to sink inside her right then and there. But I wanted to have her taking from my vein before I joined our bodies again.
Crawling up her body, I layered kisses along her belly and breasts before licking a soft line over the pulse point at her throat. “Mine.” The word was a low growl against her skin, and she shivered in response. God, but she was everything I dreamed of. Even after a hundred fucking years of torture without her.
“Yours.”
She dug her nails into my back and wrapped both legs around me, bucking her hips until my cock slid along her soaked folds. “I want you to take from me while I fuck you, Briar. Please?”
Her eyes flared, excitement burning in their depths. Then she bared her fangs and sank them into my neck as my cock filled her in one long thrust. It was pleasure and pain all at once, and I almost lost it then and there, but her voice in my head pulled me away from the precipice.
Yes. God. This is everything we were supposed to be. I love him. Mine. Mate.
She wasn’t talking to me, but our thoughts were connected. She likely had no clue I was listening in, but I echoed her own feelings. I sent the same affirmations and more as I marked her throat in the same spot where she fed from me. We were joined now, even without a bond. She was my eternity. There was no debating that, even if her pack would try everything to stop us from being together.
BRIAR
The bed was empty when I woke. No sign of Lucas to be found, not even the buzz of his thoughts or the pull of his heartbeat. Where was he?
Dread curled in my belly. He hadn’t mentioned going anywhere. Nothing that happened between us hinted at him leaving, and after everything we’d said, I couldn’t believe this would be something he’d do without talking to me.
Flicking on the light, I snagged a robe off the back of the bathroom door and searched the large room for any sign of him.
“I can’t find him anywhere.” Callie’s voice filled the space, but I couldn’t see her at all. “It’s like…he doesn’t exist.”
She materialized in the doorway, her ghostly form more transp
arent than usual.
“Callie, what’s wrong? You look strange.”
“Something is draining my energy. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to keep appearing.”
“Did you see anything? He didn’t mention leaving.”
She shook her head, her brow furrowing. “He’d never leave you.”
“Maybe he needed to go hunt? I…uh…fed on him.”
A smirk turned up the corner of her mouth. “And from the look of your own neck, he did the same.”
Reaching up, I traced the marks on my throat with my fingertips. The spot tingled and sent arousal whispering over my skin.
“That’s not something to be ashamed of, Briar. It’s rare and beautiful. Just like you.”
“Why do you come talk to me instead of your brothers or Olivia?”
She shrugged. “They can’t see me as easily as you can. I don’t know why. Lucas died and came back, just like you did.”
“Maybe it’s not about that.”
“What then?”
“I’ve always been able to see spirits. It’s not common. They usually move on before anyone ever sees them—except for the ones who get stuck. Most of the time I don’t realize they’re even dead. Not until later. Like with you.”
Her eyes widened. “There are more of us? Bloody hell, of course there are.”
“Have you not seen anyone else?”
Her head shook gently. “I haven’t been this way long, and from what I can tell, I’m the only one who stuck around this Godforsaken place.”
“Why didn’t you move on?”
“I had so much work to do. So many unfinished items on my list. Chief among them, cure sun sickness for good. I thought we had that one figured with Olivia, but everything changed in order to save my brother.”