Eternal Beauty: Mark of the Vampire (A Penguin Special from Signet Eclipse)

by Wright, Laura

  She caught Brodan’s gaze. “Please don’t report him.”

  “Dammit, Pets.” He sighed, searched her eyes, then shook his head. “Fine. Maybe you’re right, maybe he didn’t know what he was doing. The drugs, the pain.”

  Relief poured through her.

  “But,” he continued. “I can’t have you near him again.”

  “You’re giving me an order, Brodan?”

  “No. I know better than to tell you what to do. What I’m giving you is a choice.” His chin dropped and his voice grew deadly serious. “You want me to heal him, keep him hidden? I will. I’ll do that because you asked me to. But only if you’re somewhere else, somewhere this male can’t get to you.”

  His words made absolute sense, and yet Petra couldn’t stop the struggle within her. The male had just bitten her. He’d looked at her like fresh kill, and yet she didn’t want to leave him. There was so much she wanted to know. What if she never saw him again? Who was he? Who was the female that had turned to dust in the sun?

  And the most dire and secretive reason of all. He shared a trait with her, something she’d never encountered before in the rainforest.

  A lack of heartbeat.

  Realizing Brodan had the upper hand, and that if she put up any amount of fight she was jeopardizing her chance to find out the truth, she nodded. “Fine. I’m going home. I promised to have main meal with my family anyway.”

  “Tell them I send my good wishes.”

  She pointed at him. “You can tell them when you stop by to give me an update later. I won’t come near him, but I want to know how he’s doing.”

  Brodan’s mouth formed a grim line. “Your keen interest in this male’s recovery, though admirable, is starting to concern me.”

  Join the club, she thought. “I saved his life, Brodan.”

  “Are you sure that’s all it is?”

  Her skin prickled. Brodan, like everyone else in the Shifter community, knew nothing about her lack of heartbeat. She gave him a confused shrug. “What else could it be?”

  His eyebrow lifted. “Attraction.”

  Her mock confusion died and she glared at him. “Get serious. He’s unconscious and he bit me.”

  “He marked you.”

  She didn’t like this conversation, didn’t like where it was leading. “Okay, I’m going home now. And I think you should get out of here. Take a break, maybe get some sleep.”

  But Brodan’s eyes continued to track her. “Maybe.”

  Petra glanced at the male one last time before she rushed out the door, ripping off her bandage as she headed down the hallway.

  Marked her.

  Brodan was acting like a jealous male instead of a concerned doctor. It was a bite, a moment of madness, nothing more, she assured herself as she brushed her thumb against the skin of her wrist. A soft gasp of shock escaped her as she felt only smooth, unharmed skin.

  Her gaze dropped. The bite marks had already healed.

  * * *

  Within the rainforest community there were four factions, all existing together: the Avians, the Mountain Beasts, the Land Dwellers, and the Water Lords. Petra worked within all four and had grown quite close with certain families. It was a strange closeness, as each faction tended to work, hunt and breed with its own kind. Of course, there was a common bond being Shifters, and much was traded and shared between them, but the factions couldn’t help but form their own tight communities.

  * * *

  Petra’s family—her pride—were Land Dwellers. They lived in a sprawling one-story home with six bedrooms and a grass roof on a stretch of flat land near the river. It was the largest dwelling in the area, as her father and two brothers were the law enforcement.

  “I was starting to get worried about you.”

  Petra’s mother, Wen, stood in the doorway, her blond hair loose to her ankles, her blue eyes concerned, but her broad smile happy.

  “Nothing to worry about, Mom,” she said, passing through the door and into the hallway where she dropped her bag on a chair.

  Wen followed her into the kitchen. “Okay, I’m sorry for pushing and prying, but you said you’d be here an hour ago.” She rounded on Petra and gave her a wicked smile across the cutting table. “Please tell me it was a male.”

  Oh, it was a male all right.

  There wasn’t much she kept from her mother and closest friend. Besides the grand secret of her non-Shifter lineage, there were the small crushes she’d had and the danger she sometimes faced at work. But mostly, she liked to share her day-to-day life events with the female. This, however, seemed different. Problematic. Telling her mother, her family, about the male she’d rescued from the sun, the male who had no heartbeat like her, and the male who had bitten her . . . well, it seemed like a bad idea.

  She gripped the table, still feeling shaken up inside. The last thing she wanted was for her family to know all that had gone down at the clinic and all she was feeling regarding the male’s physicality and behavior. If they did, they’d make damn sure she didn’t see him ever again.

  “I was with Brodan,” she said simply, truthfully.

  Shit. Brodan . . . She was going to have to intercept him. If he came to the house tonight he might very well say something he shouldn’t.

  Her mother’s smile brightened as it always did when Brodan was mentioned. “A good male, handsome too.” She shrugged demurely. “Your father and brothers would approve. And I suppose I can forgive him for being a bear Shifter if you really care for him.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” She leaned across the table and kissed the female’s cheek. “That’s really generous of you.”

  Wen laughed, showing off her brilliantly white teeth. “Help me set the table, Pets? Your father’s off dealing with some infraction with the Avians, but your brothers will be home soon.”

  Soon? How about now? Petra grinned as she heard movement outside the house. “Did you have to invite the boys to lunch? They’ll eat everything in sight. And their table manners. Disgusting. Like animals.”

  “No,” her mother corrected. “Like lions, dear.”

  Two raucous roars followed those words, and Petra turned to the open doorway with a mock scowl. Lions crowded the wide archway. Two massive, beautiful creatures stood with manes as gold as the sky at day’s end and eyes as black as the ashes in the fireplace to their right.

  “Lions eat with far finer grace,” Petra said, her eyes flashing, her mouth twitching. “I would say you two should’ve been pig Shifters.”

  Behind her, their mother’s tinkling laughter filled the air, and Petra couldn’t help but join in. She watched as the lions shifted back to males. Gorgeous blond, blue-eyed, tall as trees, smirking like cats, males. They grabbed jeans from the hooks on the wall and yanked them on.

  Petra rushed at them and let each one lift her high in the air, then toss her to the other. It was their ritual, had been since they were young, as were all the good-natured insults.

  But today, for some reason, Sasha appeared surly as he placed her back down on the ground. In fact, he growled at her, his eyes narrowing.

  “What’s with you?” Petra asked. “Did the lioness down on River Three dump you again? I swear I told you to stop using that hideous scent.”

  “It’s not my scent that’s the problem today,” Sasha returned, his nostrils twitching in her direction. “What the hell is that?”

  Petra went instantly on high alert. “What?”

  “Yes, I scent it too,” said Valentin, inspecting her with his gaze, his own nostrils flaring. “Are you bleeding?”

  Oh, shit. The scent. Not her scent. Panic rushed her like a sudden wind. But instead of answering them, she backed up a step.

  Gods, she was an idiot.

  Sensing her reticence, knowing how she acted when holding onto a secret, her brothers pounced.

  “Te
ll us now, Pets,” Sasha said through gritted teeth, stalking toward her. “Has someone harmed you?”

  “We will find out,” added Valentin, beside him.

  Nervous and worried about what it would mean if they managed to get this information for her, Petra had the urge to fight back, tell them to back off, to get out of her face—leave her the hell alone. After all, she’d managed to say those words at least once a day for the past twenty years.

  “Hell, yes indeed,” Sasha continued, his lion flickering in and out of his features. “And we will be obliged to rip out his heart and watch it cease beating.”

  But Petra didn’t fight back, or couldn’t. In fact, when she opened her mouth all that squeaked out were the two most ridiculous words on the planet.

  “Too late.”

  Four

  Synjon had been conscious for more than an hour, but he hadn’t moved a muscle. Not outside his body at any rate. Inside, he was working his bloody ass off, running facts in his head, posing questions and possible outcomes, trying to reason his way out of the medical facility without drawing attention to himself and subsequently spilling any more blood they he needed to.

  As he plotted, he woke each muscle, made sure every bone was strong and intact, and followed the flow of the blood running through his veins. His blood mixed with just a hint of hers. Petra. His fangs twitched beneath his lips. The pain in his face, though not gone entirely, had subsided, and it was due to that female’s blood.

  Her rich, powerful, and deliciously pure veana’s blood.

  He wanted more.

  If he was going to leave this place, truly hunt the paven who had murdered his love and ruined his existence, he needed more.

  He needed her.

  For a solid five minutes, Synjon allowed his ears to work. He had superb hearing, and it traveled the clinic searching for sound—Shifter sound—all the while keeping himself calm, keeping himself still, as though the medicine that shite doctor had given him was still working. But though his nose still picked up the male’s scent, his ears captured nothing more than the low-level drone of a few insects.

  Doctor Brodan, it seemed, was elsewhere.

  Syn opened his eyes, and with deft fingers quickly removed anything that was attached to his body. The room was pleasingly dark except for the machinery he’d been hooked up to and two small disk lights on the walls bracketing the door. The exit.

  Time to take a walk, follow his nose, and see how much blood he had to get through before he found the one he needed.

  * * *

  She’d lied about the blood, used the oldest trick in the book and blamed her period. There was nothing that shut down Shifter males quicker than talking about the monthly curse, and she was pretty sure if she tried to go with a cut or something like that Sasha and Valentin would ask not only to see it, but for the details on how she got it.

  Nobody was asking anything now. In fact, they seemed to be avoiding eye contact all together.

  Pussy cats.

  She grinned at them. Sasha and Valentin were sitting side by side across the table from her, the furs of their ancestors who had died in their animal states, on the walls behind them.

  “Sandra’s avoiding you because she’s not interested in a mate right now,” their mother was telling Valentin, who looked as though he’d rather be anywhere else. “Her mother told me. It’s not that she doesn’t find you attractive.”

  Sasha burst out laughing. “No, Val, you’re very attractive.”

  “He is!” Wen said, touching her son’s arm.

  “Okay, please stop,” Valentin ground out, grabbing another venison chop from the middle of the table. “I’m not even into that female. She’s a friend.”

  “Right.” Still laughing, Sasha reached for his own chop. “Friends is code for ‘I tried and was totally shot down.’”

  Valentin ripped a piece of meat from the bone. “You would know, Whiskers,” he uttered, invoking Sasha’s dreaded cub nickname. “Rejection has become your middle name this year.”

  “Boys, that’s not nice,” Wen said, giving each of them a pointed glare. “You’re family.”

  “That’s right,” Petra remarked. “And the family that gets dumped together stays together.”

  “You’re next, Pets,” Sasha growled playfully.

  “Seriously.” Valentin grinned, his mouth stuffed with food. “That bear Shifter doctor friend of yours isn’t going to wait around forever.”

  Petra rolled her eyes as she popped a grape in her mouth. Unlike the rest of her family, she consumed fruit, grains, and seeds—not raw meat.

  “Watch it, Pets,” Sasha said. “Or your eyeballs’ll stay like that.”

  “In a state of perpetual annoyance, you mean?” She snorted. “Sounds about right.”

  Wen laughed, then jumped in to quickly break up a fight as the boys reached for the same chop and ended up in a shoving match.

  “Don’t go back to your office tonight, Petra dear,” her mother said wistfully, sitting back down. “Take the night off.”

  “Yeah, sis,” Sasha said, giving his brother one last shove as he did as his mother asked and relinquished the chop. “You can have my pallet.”

  “He’ll wash the night drool off it first,” Valentin said before taking an enormous bite of the raw meat.

  Sasha flipped him off. “No, that’s your bed, asshole.”

  “Enough,” their mother warned.

  But Val wasn’t listening. “Oh, right. I’m the drooler and you’re the snorer.”

  Petra put her hand on her mother’s arm. “I can’t. I never got to check in on Malen, plus the Avians want to discuss a dual transition they believe is coming at the end of the week. I need to prepare.”

  “Malen,” Wen said thoughtfully. “That’s the young wolf Shifter female.”

  “Out by the caves, right?” Sasha added, his verbal sparring match with Val all but forgotten now.

  “Near there, yes.” The secretive edge to her voice was obvious. She needed to watch that.

  Glancing up from his thoroughly cleaned chop, Val said, “I heard there was some issue out there a few days ago.”

  “What?” Petra blanched, but forced herself to remain calm, cool. “What did you hear?”

  He shrugged. “A small brush fire or something.”

  Relief moved through her and she forced her expression to calm. Everything was fine. Small brush fires happened from time to time, and if they thought that was what went down out there, she wasn’t going to correct them.

  Petra turned, noticed her mother staring at her.

  “You’re not eating?” Wen said, her eyes concerned. “Are you ill?”

  “No. Just a little tired.”

  “Then stay home, rest your body. Work can wait.”

  To some, the henpecking and overly concerned ways of a parent might irritate at times, but Petra never felt like that. In fact, she felt quite the opposite. She adored her mother’s care and concern because it meant she was loved. Never once had any of them acted as though she wasn’t a part of their family, Shifter born or not.

  She leaned in and kissed the female on the cheek. “All is well, Mom. I love you.”

  The female’s eyes grew bright with adoration and warmth. “Love you, my pet.”

  Petra stood and grabbed her plate.

  “What about us?” Valentin said, looking ridiculously morose.

  “Yeah, Pets,” Sasha said, sticking out his bottom lip. “You don’t love us?

  “Awww, boys,” she began. “I always have love for the pathetic.”

  They grinned and Val turned to Sasha. “She was totally talking about you.”

  Laughing, Petra went into the kitchen and placed her plate in the tub sink—the same sink that had been in their home since before she could remember, and had been used by their mother to bathe each
one of them. She was just turning off the water when she heard the sound of wings beating against the breeze outside.

  “My ride’s here,” she called, heading for the hallway and her bag. “I’ll see you all tomorrow!”

  “Petra?”

  She turned to see her mother standing in the kitchen now. “Yes?”

  The female glanced behind her, then turned back and asked, concerned, “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Of course.”

  Her voice dropped. “I know it’s not your monthly time.”

  It was all her mother said—all she needed to say. The female knew Petra had lied to her brothers. Petra’s gut clenched and for a moment she just stared at Wen.

  She couldn’t tell her, not now. Not yet.

  “Tomorrow,” Petra said.

  The female nodded, but her eyes glittered with worry.

  She granted her mother one final smile she didn’t feel and walked out the door into the night air and toward the massive hawk Shifter, who was waiting on the front lawn to take Petra to her office.

  Five

  After nicking the clothes left behind by the good doctor, Synjon had bolted from the clinic and traveled, searched and hunted for an hour in the pitch black of night. It hadn’t welcomed him. In fact, its cool, gentle wind had led him astray more than once. With all the animal scents to contend with, finding hers hadn’t been easy.

  But he wasn’t an amateur.

  Tracking had always been his pleasure.

  He moved swiftly across the large expanse of land toward the dwelling that held her scent, his fangs lowering with every footfall. Though his face and neck still pulsed with pain, it was the ache in his belly that disturbed him the most. He needed to nosh. And the veana’s pure blood called to him, beckoned him forward, teased the shite out of him.

  A low growl escaped his throat as he rounded the dwelling and searched the length for a clear way inside. Announcing himself was a certain ticket into the fighting ring, and though he loved a good going over, now wasn’t the time to go looking for it. There were four heartbeats inside the home. All he had to do was get inside and find the body that didn’t contain one.