Claim Me at Nightfall (Doomsday Brethren #5)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Ice Rykard’s Caves

Wales

Raiden

“Mathias attacked the Lowery estate last night,” Bram Rion announces behind me. “He burned it to the ground.”

At the news, I whirl to him. Instant terror grips me as I fixate on one question. “The family?”

Solemnly, he shakes his head. “Dead.”

My heart plummets. The cave tilts around me. I stagger, slamming my palm against the nearby wall to stay upright as his terrible words ricochet in my skull.

The entire family dead? Including Tabitha...and the unborn youngling she carried?

My youngling.

Fuck, I never said good-bye to her, never had the chance to hold her one last time.

Pain detonates in my chest, an inferno torching every nerve. My knees buckle as my thoughts rebel against Bram’s news. Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe, somehow, she was magically spared.

As soon as the hope flares, I force myself to snuff it. I’ve seen the aftermath of other such Anarki attacks. My head knows the odds of her still living and breathing—still growing my son in her womb—is zero.

But my stubborn heart refuses to believe she’s gone until I see her body myself.

After recently returning from exile to wreak havoc on magickind, the evil wizard, Mathias d’Arc, has been quiet for weeks, his indiscriminate raping and killing of his enemies among magickind’s elite paused.

He claims he commits his crimes against the wizarding upper class, the Privileged, in the name of uplifting the lower class, the Deprived, to power.

Liberation based on blood, pain, and torture? I shake my head. That’s not liberation, but terror.

“I know what you’re thinking, and I won’t let you go alone.” Bram blocks the doorway, his voice flat. Even in the dim light, a darkness simmers under his surface—something coiled and volatile that sends a chill up my spine. It wasn’t there a few weeks ago.

He leads the Doomsday Brethren, a ragtag band of warriors devoted to stopping Mathias. We’ve taken to hiding in a fellow warrior’s caves like damn underground rodents scurrying for shelter. While others above us die.

Like my beloved Tabitha.

Her fiery hair, her laughter, her hazel eyes, her sweetness…all gone?

Anguish and fury assail me at once. It’s all I can do not to charge across the room and rip Bram’s blond head off his wide shoulders. “I have to go. I must know if there’s any way…”

I rake a hand through my hair. I can’t even speak about Tabitha’s death. I tore out my heart and left her behind so she would be safe. Off Mathias’s radar. Hopefully immune from the violence.

Instead, I left her to die.

“The neighbors reported fires. When Caden and Ice”—Bram references two of the Doomsday Brethren’s other wizards—“teleported there to investigate, they found no survivors. You won’t solve anything by going.”

“If someone had attacked Emma’s house, wouldn’t you investigate personally?” I snarl about Bram’s mysterious mate who bonded with him one night, then disappeared the very next dawn.

Bram raises a brow. “It’s not the same. Tabitha wasn’t your mate. In fact, didn’t you spend last night with another woman?”

I did, and his reminder is a gut punch. She was human. I don’t even recall her name. And don’t I regret that choice now? While trying to avoid Tabitha so she could live a safer life, I’d left her and her family to face Mathias’s murderous wrath alone.

Self-loathing eats my stomach like acid.

I shoot Bram a glare. “I’m going. I don’t care if you come with me or not.”

Forcing myself to tamp down the turbulence roiling inside me and concentrate, I take a deep breath, struggle to center my magic, and teleport to the Lowery estate.

The grand home lies in ruins, a skeleton against the rising sun, charred and ransacked, as if someone has searched it high and low.

The devastation is absolute. It guts me.

Bodies are strewn on the lawn, eyes still open wide in terror.

One by one, I find them. First, her mother’s twisted body near the door.

Next, her father face down in ash. Finally, her brothers, Javen first, then Russum. Each corpse another nail in my chest.

But no sign of Tabitha.

Hope—and dread—grip my throat. I can hardly fucking breathe.

I prowl through the charred remains of the house—foyer, sitting room, bedrooms, servants’ quarters.

Smoke chokes me. Debris crunches under my boots as I call her name until my throat turns raw.

Every wall, floor, and surface still smolders, black and twisted, with the aftereffects of the fire. Every room lies empty.

Ash coats my hands. Fear squeezes my heart. And with every step, my dread burns hotter. My hands shake. Sweat—or is it tears?—burns my eyes. She has to be here. She has to.

But she’s not. Panic balloons until it feels like an elephant sitting on my chest, threatening to crush me.

I can think of only two reasons Tabitha’s body isn’t among the dead. First, she miraculously escaped. Or second, Mathias took her with him. And if that’s the case, the evil bastard will torture my beloved and unborn son unmercifully before ending their lives in a cataclysm of humiliation and pain.

All for the unforgivable “sin” of being mine.

Suddenly, I hear a whoosh and I whirl, heart chugging, wand up and braced for a fight. Hell, I welcome one. Instead, I find Bram.

“She’s not here,” he informs me.

As I can plainly see. But I won’t rest until I find her…one way or the other. Once I have, I’ll let this crushing heartache take me. “When you spoke of the attack, you didn’t mention that.”

“You didn’t let me.”

Semantics. I have no time for them. “I must keep searching. I pray she escaped and sought refuge elsewhere.”

“It’s possible.”

But Bram doesn’t sound convinced. Despite the fact I’m not either, I stifle the urge to rage at him. It might make me feel better. Unfortunately, it won’t do a bloody thing to bring back Tabitha.

With a sigh, Bram claps me on the shoulder. “I know she’s expecting your youngling.”

“Yes,” I choke.

A son I’ll never get to meet or hold, never get to love or guide. Hell, I won’t even have the opportunity to look upon his face before I bury him.

The realization threatens to take me out at the knees.

She wasn’t very far along, three months at most. If any other woman ever conceived by me, I would know exactly when because I never spend more than one night with any of them.

I never go back for seconds. I refuse all attachments.

For Tabitha, I broke that cardinal rule.

Repeatedly. I couldn’t stay away from her, no matter how much her parents hated me, no matter how much better her life would be if I steered clear.

Now I wish I hadn’t been so fucking selfish.

“Understandably, you’re concerned about the youngling,” Bram placates. “Since children are difficult for most witches to conceive, particularly those unmated, I—”

“Shut up.” Not for anything will I confess my feelings about Tabitha to Bram. Hell, I’ve never felt anything like her hold on my heart, so I barely understand myself.

“Or is this about Tabitha herself? If you loved her, why didn’t you Call to her? Take her as your mate?”

The wanker knows why. Everyone does. And I’d rather not have this discussion. Not here. Not now…when she’s missing. When she’s probably dead, and it’s all moot because I failed her in every way.

But I know Bram. He won’t shut his bloody yap until I answer.

“You’re well aware that my family was cursed centuries ago. We can’t sense our mates. The instinct was bred out of us generations ago,” I say, referring to the sixth sense that allows a wizard to taste a woman and know if she’s the fated mate magic intends for him.

Bram raises a golden brow, his blue eyes laser sharp. “That didn’t stop your twin. Ronan looks quite settled with Kari. For months he hasn’t so much as looked at another woman.”

Nearly two years, if Bram wants the honest truth.

Oh, prior to mating with the pretty human Kari, Ronan bedded other women.

Magic must be powered by a strong exchange of emotion, and sex always provides plenty.

Playful encounters with many partners are expected until one mates.

But almost from the start, Ronan fixated on Kari until he finally mated with her, despite the fact that the rest of the Wolvesey wizards, eternal bachelors all, thought him mad—including me.

I understand now. Meeting Tabitha was almost surreal. My first thought was that no witch could possibly be so lovely. Once I’d talked my way into her bed, my second thought was that no witch could possibly be so sweet.

It took great effort to leave her the next morning, but I vowed never to return. She was too tempting, felt too damn good once I sank into her. But I returned three agonizing days later, hungrier than ever. Then again, and again…

“I’m not like Ronan.” I clench my jaw so hard that I swear it will shatter.

Bram scoffs. “He’s smarter.”

When Bram turns away to sift through the ruins, I charge after him. “I don’t have the instinct!”

“But, in theory at least, you have a brain. And a heart. You knew that witch meant something to you, but…” Bram shrugs. “Well, I suppose it’s water under the bridge if she’s dead.”

I growl, “I will not believe that until I have proof.”

“But chances are—”

“Finish that sentence, and I’ll wring your bloody neck. Call that dodgy prick Shock. Find out what he knows. Right now!”

Bram doesn’t take orders, and it goes against everything in my body to suggest he call the Doomsday Brethren’s supposed double agent.

No one likes the confrontational bastard.

They trust him even less. But he alone is close enough to Mathias to have useful information.

Shock might well know the truth. I close my eyes and pray.

“Are you mad?” Bram glares. “If Shock says Mathias has her, what will you do? Charge in like her white knight? You’ll be signing your own death warrant.”

If Mathias has Tabitha, I’ll go after her.

I’ll do everything I can to save her…or die trying.

No woman—especially sweet Tabby—deserves to perish the way Mathias prefers to kill: shaving, branding, raping, then leaving the agonized victim to bleed to death.

I can’t even think about her enduring that.

She’s so warm, so passionate beneath her shy exterior, so smart, and so welcoming I couldn’t find the will to stay away. Everything about her draws me in.

She is, in a word, perfect.

Tabitha deserves a better father for her child. In fact, her parents insisted on that—and found her a suitable mate, whom she would have joined with mere days from now. I never imagined that dredging up the strength to walk away from her would lead to her disappearance…or worse.

“Call Shock,” I demand. “Now!”

With a sigh, Bram pulls his phone from his pocket, his long exhalation sounding like code for you poor bastard. “You’re presuming the wanker will answer.”

After pressing a few buttons, Bram hands me the phone.

Shock picks up…with his usual attitude. “What the fuck do you want?”

“It’s Raiden Wolvesey. I need help.”

“Why should I help you? We have nothing to say.”

The hell we don’t. “I need information about the Lowery attack.”

Shock falls silent for a long moment. “Why do you think I can help? What’s done is done.”

“You knew about this?” I’m horrified. My stomach lurches. “You knew Mathias intended to attack Tabitha’s family?”

Shock remains silent for so long that I wonder if the wizard hung up. Finally, he replies, “If you were Mathias and you could obtain information you needed while bedding one of magickind’s most renowned beauties, what would you do?”

“So he planned to take her and—” I can’t finish my sentence. Hell, I can scarcely breathe. I’m torn between feeling ill and wanting to take him—not to mention his evil boss—apart with my bare hands. “Did he succeed? Does Mathias have her?”

“How should I know? I wasn’t there. Mathias had this mad idea last night. Wouldn’t share it, just said he’d solved a problem and needed information. Then he disappeared. I don’t know who he took from the Lowery estate. But today, he’s in a foul mood. Make of that what you will. Now piss off.”

I hear three beeps in my ear. The wanker hung up on me! With a curse, I thrust the phone back at Bram, trying to tamp down my growing fear and fury.

Mathias was after information? But he’s in a right foul mood? Something must have gone wrong.

I pray that means Tabitha escaped.

Clinging to that glimmer of hope, I resolve to keep searching for her. I won’t rest until I find her…one way or the other.

“Well?” Bram prompts.

“Shock knows nothing.”

“At least nothing he’s willing to admit. With him, who knows?”

Who, indeed? I wander into what was once Tabitha’s bedroom and stop in the doorway—stricken. Rubble everywhere. Destruction. But not a single trace of her—not a shoe, not a ribbon. Not even a hint that she fought back.

Just…nothing.

Somehow, that guts me almost as much as if I’d found her body. The effect is the same.

She’s gone.

The thought is a stab straight into my bleeding heart.

Damn it, how can I be this grief-stricken over someone I don’t love?