Chapter 11 #2
“Will they live?” She gulped in a breath.
“I don’t know.”
“How can you be all-knowing and not know that?”
“I only know some things. I can’t see everything. Death isn’t something I can predict.”
“My sweet, faint-hearted son… Jonas can’t do this.” She stepped away from him and clasped her hands tight. “My baby’s not a fighter. He belongs in his studio, where he sees the world through his paintings. The others know this. I don’t know if he can survive if they make him kill.”
“All of them might not make it through this.” His lips compressed into a thin line. “I had to keep you free of that curse.” He gazed off into the horizon. “I had to.”
“Stop pretending you care about me. You’re here because some deity told you to be. You follow orders like a black-hearted robot.”
His irises shifted from brown to a pale blue as his dark lashes fell over his eyes. When he met her gaze, a myriad of emotions blasted her. His dark brows pulled together until the crease between them deepened. His voice cracked. “They didn’t ask me to save you from it.”
“I was supposed to get cursed too?” She swallowed, but it didn’t alleviate the dryness in her throat.
“Even if it was supposed to happen, I couldn’t allow it.”
His eyes managed to scare her more than his soft words.
They seemed to penetrate her soul. It left her unsettled…
heated. She wasn’t used to this feeling.
Ever since she’d gotten free of Willem’s hold on her, she hadn’t allowed herself to feel anything real for a male.
Okay, maybe she felt a bit for Dom, but he was “safe” and off-limits since she only saw him when in her dream-like state. In reality…
Never again would she be powerless, at the mercy of another. Nothing made sense. She wanted to pulverize him for grabbing her before she could kill everyone threatening her sons. Yet, she also wanted him to see her as attractive and as someone he would want to kiss for real.
“I see you,” he whispered hoarsely.
“Stop it.” She covered her eyes and backed away from him. “I can’t handle you. Not with that voice and reading my thoughts. You smell so bloody amazing. What the hell is that soap?”
“How do I smell?”
She peeked between her fingers. “Like the peace after a summer rain. It’s bamboo and wet skin in the sun. It’s oranges and lemons. It’s so brilliant I’m losing my mind when I’m standing a foot away from you.”
He blinked.
“You think I look good and smell good?” The flash of teeth and curve of his lips lit him with a lightheartedness she’d never seen from him. It stole her ability to think.
“Your heart’s not so black now, is it?” She slammed her eyes closed and backed a few steps away from him until her back hit a wall. Block him out. “Have mercy on me. Your aura and everything about you makes me nuts. Women must throw themselves at you all the time.”
“Not really.”
She threw her head back to glare at the gray sky. “I’m old enough to know better than to fall for this.”
“It’s thyme and marmot soap from Nepal.”
“Your soap?” She took an inadvertent heavy inhale. Vertigo spun her mind in reaction to the delight of the scent. She stumbled. He caught her. She shrugged him off and stepped away. “Damn it.”
With her hands on her knees and head lowered, she said, “Right now, I need to figure out what happened back there. I need to get them out of there.”
“You can’t save them. I won’t say it again.
We need to get Efrem, who’s gotten himself caught.
Atypically careless of him.” He closed his eyes as if focusing elsewhere.
“He’s the one who needs you most. I’m going to get him and dump both of you back on your airplane.
You will promise me to leave this country.
You will not follow them back to England. ”
“I can’t promise that.”
“The only way to help them is to become a ghost in the world. Did you notice Willem looking around? I think he knew you’d be there. He wanted you cursed too. Why is that?” When she didn’t comment after a few seconds, he said, “So long as he lives, he’ll do anything to get to you.”
She glowered. He might be right.
“If he’d gotten you cursed as well, he could force you to do anything he wanted.
Imagine what he’d concoct in the name of some power-hungry monarch.
He could make you sleep with humans or lycans to get information.
He could make you hurt one of the boys. He could torture you to make the boys do what he wanted.
Perhaps he’d force you back into his bed to bear him more children.
Does that sound like a way to save them? ”
I’d rather die than that have that fetid creature touch me again. Dom might’ve saved her a lot of misery.
“Of course I did.” Dom said it with such arrogance she almost hit him again.
“Get out of my head.”
“Your thoughts are bright and loud. It’s hard to miss them.”
“Me staying away from the boys is a big ask. I can start a war with the entirety of England to get them back, if I need to.”
“Then for sure they’d be ordered to hunt you down. They couldn’t refuse the order. When have I ever steered—”
“When have you steered me wrong? Let’s see.” She tapped her lip and pretended to consider the question. “You encouraged me to mate that abusive, toxic shit.”
“I don’t recall encouraging you to align yourself with him. I recommended you not get yourself caged. Then you got bespelled, which worked against you. Did you resist the mating right up to the moment when you suddenly didn’t? If so, that’s the moment the mhis was cast.”
She reluctantly nodded.
“Did you ever think that’s why he might’ve colluded to put that suppression curse on you? It made you more pliable.”
“Of course I considered it. He seemed surprised about it, though. I couldn’t find a link to him.
Perhaps my mother did it. Maybe Willem is the one who murdered my mother a year into our union.
She disappeared. I’m not saying I missed her.
The whole who cast it on me is a mystery I can’t resolve.
” She inhaled a shaky breath that did nothing to settle her.
“There has to be a way to reverse what happened today.”
“This isn’t a kind of magic I understand. There are few, if any, still alive who do.”
“If I agree to leave them be for right now, can I still see them now and then?”
“Only if it’s without Willem knowing. It’s a huge risk.”
“They’re my everything. I can’t stay away forever.” She wheeled away from him to try to sort through her options. “Will you give them a message from me? If you do, I’ll stay away until I figure out how to help them.” Her gaze sought his.
“What kind of message?” he asked with hesitance.
“At the second full moon from today they will meet me at the beach of West Lulworth in Dorset at first dark. They must come without Willem or any of their new masters being aware.”
“That’s rather specific. Is this smart?”
“They need help on the full moon. I’m giving them six weeks to realize a full moon still represents catastrophe if they’re not medicated or safely occupied.
They took the suppression drug, or at least they should’ve, last week.
That should hold them until then.” The drug had been discovered two decades ago to suppress the full moon sex craze.
It dulled the need, but sometimes the instinct persisted.
“I won’t play intermediary to communicate.”
She held her hands up in prayer.
“Okay,” he said gruffly. “This one time only, but that’s it.”
“Just once. Thank you.” She jumped in and hugged him fast before stepping away, not that he returned the hug.
“Whatever role you’re supposed to play in all this is probably out of my control.
Can you please leave out our history when you communicate with them?
” She stared at the lines of worry on his face.
The worry was for her. He wasn’t flying the flag of a black heart today. “That kiss sucked.”
“I know.”
“If you put your lips on mine again at any point in the future, you better mean it.” She may mean the words, but the last thing she wanted was to get involved with any male. The words had just flown out.
He stepped forward to rest his forehead against hers.
This close to him she couldn’t think of anything but kissing him for real.
“I can’t do it like I mean it,” he whispered.
“You can’t or won’t? Is it because I’m a lycan?”
“It’s nothing to do with what you are. I’m forbidden to feel like this.”
“I knew you wanted it as much as me. Who forbids you this?”
“The Mage Conclave…and my future.”
“They’re the ones who caged you. Promise me someday you’ll tell me why.”
He ground his back teeth together.
“Do they fear you because you’re strong? Your future… Do they fear you’ll go bad?” She reached up to massage his jaw until he relaxed.
“They fear me for sure. It’s complicated.”
“Your power isn’t why they cage you.”
“Someday, perhaps, I’ll tell you.”
She grinned. “You want me.”
“Evie…”
“You want me so much that it’s bothering you.
” She put her lips against his neck and kissed his hot skin.
I’m getting sucked into him again. “I’m impressed at your restraint.
” I can’t do this. Can’t handle… I won’t let anyone have power over me again.
It is a fearsome power. “Let’s get on with saving Efrem or we’re going to end up doing something stupid that’ll make things more complicated. ”
A low rumble of a sound she could never recreate came out of him. It was something between a groan and a growl. “We’re already complicated as hell.”