Sleepers: Shifters Confidential Romance Collection

by Juniper Hart

  She trailed off, catching herself. There was no sense in fighting with him, not when she needed him to get on board with her now. Yet even as she thought it, another string of questions fell from her mouth when she took in the marks on his face that she hadn’t noticed before.

  “Just look at your face! Did you not hear a word of what I said to you yesterday?”

  On the other hand, did it matter? According to Dex, everything was falling apart.

  A shudder of worry fluttered through Kyla’s body as she caught the odd expression on Pascal’s face. For the first time, she realized that he looked different than usual, his eyes taking on a faraway look, as though he was there but his mind was a million miles off.

  “What happened?” she insisted. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Why are you going off on me?” Pascal asked. “Can we do this another time? I feel like we go through the same song and dance every night, don’t you?”

  His flippant nature and lack of response only incensed her more but for the first time in her life, Kyla had no idea how to deal with what was before her.

  “No! No, we can’t!” she snapped back. “Clearly I’m here for a reason!”

  “Are you going to share that reason with me?” he asked with a dryness that made her want to smack his face.

  I should leave him here to fend for himself, she thought furiously. I’ve protected him for the last time.

  And yet she remained in place, gawking at him, her mind whirling. Her feet were rooted in the ground and she had nowhere to go.

  “Well?” Pascal demanded, his eyes narrowing. “What’s going on?”

  I shouldn’t tell him a damned thing. He’s not ever forthcoming with me. Why should I lay out all my cards on the table when I’m not sure what’s going on? I need to regroup my own thoughts before doing anything stupid.

  Suddenly, she realized what a mistake she had almost made, based on nothing but an alarming phone call.

  What if this was a test? What if Dex was testing her on behalf of Anatoli?

  For the first moment since getting the call from Dex, Kyla felt calm, rational.

  I haven’t thought this through, she realized, inhaling sharply. I’m ready to pack up and run off but do I really need to do that?

  “What time did I get home last night?” Pascal asked, bringing her back into the bedroom. She gaped at him.

  “What time did—have you been listening to a damned word I’ve been saying?” she hissed, suppressing the urge to whip something at him.

  “Of course!” Pascal grumbled. “You’re lecturing me again.”

  Kyla’s mouth parted but instead of indignation, a short laugh escaped her lips. Pascal eyed her warily.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You are,” she muttered, shaking her head. “You’re unbelievable, really.”

  “I am just trying to remember what happened after I got in! I blacked out!” he protested, sounding offended that she was mocking him.

  “Of course you did! You were wrecked as usual. It was probably after four,” she told him, remembering the last time she had looked at the time before succumbing to sleep herself.

  Pascal nodded placatingly at her and rose from the bed with surprising agility.

  “What are you doing now?” Kyla demanded.

  “You’re right,” he agreed. “I have to get up and find work. I can’t lie around all day like this.”

  The about-face should have alarmed Kyla but she found herself remarkably unmoved by his declaration.

  He’s either saying that to placate me or he’s serious. In either case, I shouldn’t care. I have bigger problems than Pascal Wyndham today.

  She watched as he stripped off his shirt, her dark eyes trailing over the muscles of his back and shoulders. If he could sense her eyes on him, he made no comment, his strong physique facing her as he lost his pants. It was only then that Kyla came to her senses and tore her eyes away from his body. She swallowed the lump in her throat and stared at the ground.

  “I’m jumping in the shower,” he announced, sauntering out of the bedroom toward the bathroom in the hall. “Need anything else?”

  A hot flush shot through Kyla’s face as she thought about exactly what she needed in that moment.

  “Ky?”

  “No,” she replied hastily, shoving her way past him toward the front of the house. “I don’t need anything.”

  Except air. She needed air and a clear head.

  7

  “You haven’t eaten.”

  The words sent chills of apprehension through Lara, but she was too weak to properly acknowledge them. Her head hung heavily, chin touching her chest as she struggled to keep her eyes open, but it was an exercise in futility. She had waited too long.

  It was a statement, not a question, but even if it had been a query, Lara knew there was no point in denying it. She knew Franz could tell by her pale complexion that she was starving. She had done this to herself more than once and after being with Franz as long as she had, he knew her too well.

  “Well?” Franz insisted.

  Lara stared straight up at the ceiling, unresponsive.

  “You haven’t eaten and you didn’t come to bed in the morning like you promised. Where the hell were you? I listened for you.”

  She did not bother reminding him that she promised no such thing. They had not shared a bed in longer than she could remember.

  “Why haven’t you eaten?” he growled, seizing his mate by the shoulders and shaking her. “Where did you go if not to feed? And don’t lie to me, Lara. I know you’re up to no good!”

  A slight recognition seemed to slip into her eyes, but she continued to focus on the space above her head. He was there, but not there, and she was having a difficult time formulating thoughts.

  Maybe she should just let herself die there. Maybe that was the only escape for her.

  But she knew that wasn’t true either. She had seen Pascal now. She had him in her sights. He had not disappeared as Franz had claimed but she had known that for a long time now. If anyone could save her from this life, it was him.

  I need to confront him again, this time on my own terms, she thought. He caught me off guard, is all. I need to go back to South Africa and make him understand the danger I’m in.

  Franz slapped her wan face and a spark of electricity coursed through her veins. He pulled her upright on the bed and slapped her again, hoping to instill a reaction. When Lara still did not respond, he rolled up the sleeve on his V-neck shirt, exposing his muscular forearm.

  “You can’t continue to do this to yourself,” he snapped furiously, jamming his wrist into her mouth. “What the hell has gotten into you lately? I barely recognize you anymore.”

  She pushed his arm away in protest, but he forcefully kept his arm in place until she could no longer resist, her shiny white fangs elongating to jab into his flesh. Eagerly, she suckled on his blood until the haze of hunger seeped from her and she was coherent once more.

  Why did she always succumb to him? She should know better. It was all part of his trick to keep her and the tribe under his thumb.

  It had worked thus far. For years, Lara had been unable to shake the sensation that Franz was sucking the tribe further and further into the delusion of what he thought they should be. At first, Lara had barely noticed the changes that had transpired until it was too late.

  To Lara’s mind, the tribe was nothing better than a cult now, bowing to Franz’s whims. The few vampires who had once stood up to Franz’s tyranny had long since disappeared, either by Franz’s design or by choice.

  She had such high hopes for Pascal before he, too, disappeared.

  But he wasn’t gone and Lara knew how to find him. Hope was not lost—at least not until Pascal had been approached.

  And Lara knew there was a very strong possibility that might occur.

  Franz ripped his appendage from her lips, droplets of blood painting the gleaming mahogany floor. Drawing bac
k, she sighed heavily and looked up gratefully at him, even though her gratitude was filled with resentment.

  “Where did you go last night if not to eat?” Franz demanded furiously. “You said you were going out to eat!”

  Lara shifted her gaze away.

  In her haste, after her chance encounter with Pascal, she had fled for home, forsaking her insatiable hunger. Before she knew it, she was battling the southern Atlantic winds, making her way up the South American coast toward home again. She was shocked she had made it at all. By all rights, Lara knew she should have plummeted into the dark waters of the ocean in her state.

  That just means that my work isn’t done. I must go to him again, this time with a plan.

  A burst of excitement shot through her and the sensation was shocking for several reasons. Aside from her supernatural strength, Lara had not felt the element of surprise in many decades.

  Had she even felt it since she’d been with Franz? If so, Lara couldn’t remember it.

  While Franz could sometimes catch her off guard with his forceful energy or the thrill of a kill might make her heart speed up, the feeling of a gasp escaping her lips was so foreign, Lara wondered if she hadn’t been possessed. No one had ever been able to start her pulse in such a manner for many years. It was unnatural for a vampire to experience such a rush of blood and the combination of the fresh feed and headiness made Lara dizzy.

  She wondered if that meant something or if she was just making something out of nothing. One way or another, she knew she needed to find out. She needed to go back and talk to Pascal.

  It was a dangerous idea, particularly now that Franz was watching her with so much suspicion. Lara didn’t claim to understand anything about the Sleepers or why Pascal had been sent to South Africa. For all she knew, he had changed sides and was working for another realm.

  Of course, that would never happen. Would it? Pascal’s loyalty was to the tribe. It had always been.

  She had wanted to ask Franz about the Sleepers, but she dared not, lest he discover what she had been hiding for the past year—the letter that had come from Cape Town.

  If she told him, Franz would only steal Pascal away again. Lara believed she did the right thing by sitting on the information.

  “Answer me!” Franz’s voice jarred her from her memory and she gave him a sidelong glance. “Stop acting like you can’t hear me.”

  “I don’t need to answer you, Franz,” she muttered, rising to her feet. He pushed her back and she landed on the floor unceremoniously.

  “You’ve developed a false sense of security,” her mate growled. “We’re not untouchable, you know.”

  “How can I forget? All you talk about is how everyone is against us,” she shot back before she could stop herself. “That’s all you’ve ever talked about!”

  The anger in Franz’s face spoke volumes and she wished she had not spoken out of turn.

  “What?” he hissed and Lara knew she had gone too far.

  Why do I bother trying to reason with him? There is just no point and there will never be a point until he’s gone.

  She lowered her long-lashed eyelids and displayed contrition she was not feeling. It was simply easier to allow him to believe she was complacent than to continue the fight.

  “Do you have something to say to me?” Franz insisted.

  “No, Franz. Of course not.”

  He glowered at her for a long moment and Lara braced herself for a lecture but when he didn’t go off on a diatribe, she exhaled.

  “When the sun sets, we will go out hunting together under the cloak of darkness,” he told her. “Get you some real food. My blood won’t sustain you. You know that.”

  “No!” She immediately cried before she could stop herself. She didn’t want him with her that evening, not if she was going in search of Pascal again. Franz glared at her, his fists placed upon his hips, prepared to unleash a harangue of fury upon her. Lara forced a smile onto her trembling mouth and looked pleadingly up at him.

  “Don’t get upset,” she urged him quickly. “I can’t have you forever hunting in my place, Franz. You’re constantly telling me how I have to learn to do it on my own.”

  She wondered if her words sounded as lame to his ears as they did to hers. Franz regarded her skeptically and then offered her a hand to help her from the pristine floor.

  “Lara, this depression you’re falling into is going to get you killed,” he told her as she stood. “The tribe needs you now more than ever, especially if we’re going to war.”

  She tensed at the words and stared at Franz with wary eyes.

  “Franz, we’re not going to war,” she said quietly. “You need to stand down. We don’t have the numbers or power.”

  It was clear he was furious at being contradicted but Lara could not help but feel a surge of pride at having stood up to him.

  “You’re wrong and you’ll eat your words when we take on the others and win,” Franz growled. It was a long familiar argument, one which Lara had no interest in rehashing, particularly not when she wanted him out of her room. “Why are you always such a pessimist?”

  Lara slapped another placating smile on her face and gave him a soft look.

  “I just don’t want to see you endangered, Franz. You are already under intense scrutiny from the others. Don’t give the tribe more cause to worry about you.”

  Franz balked slightly and gaped at her.

  “Are you talking about Kieran?” Franz demanded slowly. “Is that what this is about?”

  Lara hadn’t been thinking about the archduke but now that she had put the bug in Franz’s ear, she wasn’t opposed to giving Franz another branch of paranoia. If it kept him off her case, she was willing to use it.

  “You know why he watches us,” Franz growled when she didn’t confirm or deny her thoughts, nor did Lara contradict him as she moved to rise from the bed. She was beginning to feel claustrophobic between him and the thin mattress in the darkened room.

  “No matter what we do, no matter how hard I prove to him that I’m just as good as any of them.”

  The whiny pitch of Franz’s voice ground on Lara’s nerves.

  He doesn’t watch “us”. He watches you. They don’t worry about me. You’re the live wire that concerns the higher-ups.

  She brushed off her jeans and waited for Franz to kiss her cheek which he did on cue. After he pulled away, he stared at her and for a fleeting moment, Lara saw something in his eyes she had never seen previously but it was gone before she could properly place it.

  Was that longing? Did she see a yearning in his eyes?

  The idea made her heart beat rapidly. Emotions did not run high in vampire circles and yet…

  She was sure she had seen something in his face, something that didn’t belong in their world. Lara dismissed it as quickly as it had come. That was not the time to second-guess her intentions, just because Franz may have given her a look of affection.

  No, he does not see our immortality as a curse, she remembered. He is content with the finality of our situation despite all it has cost us.

  There had not always been scrutiny and suspicion between the pair. When they were young, they barely knew one another.

  Franz had been the oldest of the nine children in his family, Lara the second youngest in hers. There were thirteen long years between the two at a time when that was nothing short of a lifetime.

  Their village had been small but not so small that the two might have chanced across one another with any great frequency. It was Pascal who had been promised to her, even if the details had not been properly made or a dowry set.

  Lara had loved Pascal in the way a child loved a brother and their story might have ended there, the two mortal beings disappearing off into the sunset to live their lives as the young did in those days, but all was not to end that way.

  If it had not been for the fateful night when the soldiers took Zalongo by storm, Lara and Franz would have likely died in the same fashion in which t
hey had lived—oblivious to one another.

  They had all resided in the exclusive security of the Thespotia Mountains, generations in the sanctuary of the Souliote confederacy, never suspecting the bloodshed which would ensue on that eve in December 1803.

  The uneasy truce between the Souliotes and the Ottoman empire had ended and uneasy it had been. The people had lost their false sense of security they had grown to accept under the confederacy and the villages were in turmoil. Many had retreated to the solitude of Zalongo under the treaty enacted between the Souli and Ali Pasha but the pasha had other plans for them. Lara had been far too young to fully understand the dynamic or political impact of what had happened until it was too late. Upon receiving the necessary signatures, Pasha immediately sent troops to seize the remaining Souliotes, despite his promises to allow them to live free under his rule. Under brutal orders, the Turks seized the mountainous range, showing no mercy as the villages were plundered, leaving no man alive.

  By the time the soldiers had come, the village had been in turmoil, the screams still echoing in Lara’s ears, over two hundred years later. Lara was a young woman at the time, just turning twenty years old.

  “You must run with me!” Lara’s mother hissed as mayhem exploded in Zalongo. She grabbed the young woman’s hands and tried to force her along, but the chaos was unavoidable. She had looked for Pascal, for her other friends but the confusion forbade any true vision and there was no choice but for her to run with her mother.

  Ottoman soldiers flooded the dirt streets, slashing mercilessly at the Souli people, laughing mercilessly as the victims cried out for their families. The screams were deafening, and Lara had not known which way to turn. Everywhere she looked there seemed to be danger, but her mother’s voice guided her.

  “This way, Lara! Quickly!”

  She had no choice but to obey her mother, following the dark hair through a dizzying array of flailing arms and bloodied faces. Her legs were trembling in fear as she found her way to her mother, who danced on the edge of the cliffs. The scene unfolded without reality and even as she saw it, Lara did not understand it.