The Hunt

by Heather Killough-Walden

  But right now, at this moment, Kat felt nothing but pleasure. Not a single inch of her was uncomfortable. She felt sated, light, and delicious. The lingering aftershocks of her orgasm were painted with tips of pleasure – and Byron was still inside of her. She could feel that he was almost hard again. She knew that if she moved, the tiny motes of need that floated around her would blossom once more into full blooms of desire, and she would be all over him again.

  She realized now that it was exactly what she’d really wanted to do the first time she’d seen him there in that clearing on the warlock king’s estate. He’d been so tall and gorgeous – impossibly so. And she’d wanted to jump his bones. She had been angry and confused and scared, but deep inside was a need that she’d shoved away and ignored for far too long.

  Katherine had been born a dormant and, as a Hunter, she knew all too well that most dormants were claimed in their early twenties. She’d held on to hers, denied its existence. And then, when Byron Caige had turned his gaze on her, she had been caught in its sparking steel and called out. In every sense of the word.

  “You need food, little one,” Byron whispered in her ear as he leaned over her and moved to the side, propping himself up on his elbow. She turned with him, unwilling to let him leave her just yet.

  The movement stirred a familiar feeling deep within and she closed her eyes for a moment, biting back a moan. She couldn’t help it when she rose to meet him and his hardness probed her deliciously. As her eyes were closed, she heard Byron’s deep chuckle beside her ear. He gently kissed her neck – and then nipped it. She felt the prick of his fangs.

  “Don’t tempt me any more, Huntress. I’ll end up draining you dry.” He raised his head and she caught the lightning in his eyes. Then he kissed her, only slightly less demanding than he’d been before. Warmth spread across her neck and chest and inched lower until he finally pulled away.

  When he did, his breathing shook. “If you were human,” he said, and his brow furrowed as if he was overcome by what he was realizing, “which you’re not any more.” He cupped her face with his hand and ran his thumb along her cheekbone in a tender caress. “You would be going into shock.”

  “I’m fine,” she told him. It was true. She felt better than she’d ever felt. Maybe she felt a bit light and weak, but she was alive – and she could sense that something very significant had happened to her body.

  “If you have to run or fight against anyone but a human, you won’t be able to,” Byron said. “I want you to take my blood.”

  Katherine hesitated. “But you just took my blood,” she told him, frowning. “You’ve barely healed yourself.”

  Byron smiled in a way that was not entirely innocent. “Kat, you make me stronger than you realize. Now,” he said, and he ran his hand down her back to cup her bottom. She shivered as he slipped lower, pulling her leg up over his so that the air touched them both. It caused her to clench around him and he answered in a growl and another kiss.

  When he pulled away this time, he said, “I insist.”

  His cock throbbed inside of her and Katherine moaned low. He felt so good…. She was slipping into a state of stark need once more. When she felt his fingers slip over to deftly manipulate her clitoris again, something inside of her snapped. She placed her hands on his chest and pushed, rolling on top of him as he went down onto his back.

  In the next moment, she was curling her fingers around the top button of his shirt and giving it a hard tug. Her strength was unfamiliar to her – and it was immense. The buttons went flying and Katherine had the view of his chest that she’d been wanting for the last two days.

  Perfect, cut… He was broad and strong and absolutely mind blowing. But before she could get the eye-full she truly wanted, Byron was once more taking over, rising to claim her lips in another of his scorching kisses. He delved deep, drank her in, and made her dizzy. His hand fisted in her hair, holding her taut as his other hand continued to work its wicked magic on her slick, heated core.

  She felt another orgasm building. The smell of him, the look of him, the feel of his sculpted hardness beneath her fingertips – he was all around her and she was on fire and it couldn’t be contained. But there was something missing… something…. Her mind hummed and her body writhed.

  She found herself on her back again, trapped beneath her werewolf mate as he pulled back and thrust and she gasped and craved more. Her eyes felt warm in her face, her vision was shifting, and she was… hungry.

  There was just something that would complete her as nothing else could. Her body knew what it wanted, but her mind was two steps behind it. She didn’t fully recognize it when her gums began to ache and her teeth grew long and sharp. She heard Byron’s deep, throaty growl, animalistic and extreme, and couldn’t comprehend that the wolf in him was responding to the mounting wolf in her.

  She rose to meet him as he pounded into her again and again, and her brain felt feverish. She squeezed her eyes shut. I want… God, I want…

  Byron broke his kiss and hissed in her ear, “Do it, Kat.”

  Katherine ran the tip of her tongue over one of her new fangs. Reality kicked in, her being slid into place, and she opened her glowing eyes and turned her head – to sink her long, sharp teeth into the curve of his neck.

  Byron made a harsh, deep-throated sound of pleasure and she felt his hands clasp onto her waist with immense strength. He drove into her harder now, going deeper, and Katherine drew his precious blood into her mouth.

  It was hot and felt like liqueur across her tongue. It burned deliciously on the way down, making her drunk with pleasure. The warmth spread across her chest and into her limbs, coiling in her middle, where his cock thrust up to meet it, making her delirious. She growled, not recognizing the sound as her own – and then she spasmed around him, a tight, mind-blowing squeeze of a climax so strong it was nearly agonizing.

  She ripped her fangs from his throat and cried out as the orgasm rolled through her, but Byron silenced her cries with his mouth, drinking her in with greedy wrath. Life ceased to exist; there was no up or down, wrong or right in that moment. They came together and there was only the pulsing pleasure in her body, the crackling of it in her head and behind her eyes. It went on and on and on….

  At long last, the fireworks stopped sparking behind her lids, and Katherine felt Byron’s arms around her once more. He was sure and strong, and radiated heat where he clasped her to him to lay them both on their sides. She felt him kiss her forehead and brush a lock of blonde hair from her face. Katherine caught the scent of their sex; it was easier to detect now and it mingled with the scent of redwood and moss – and distant rain.

  It really hit her then – what she had become. She could smell the world around her. She’d ripped a man’s shirt off and taken his blood with her fangs. She could feel her eyes glowing and her body changing inside. She felt stronger than she ever had.

  I’m a wolf, she thought. She was a made wolf.

  Byron’s made wolf.

  “Mine,” Byron whispered against her flesh where he nuzzled her neck. It was as if he’d caught her thought and echoed it. She liked the way it sounded. ***** Jason Alberich felt the air in his living room shift and knew that the warlock king was trying to get in. Jason had erected various wards around the premises years ago, and he replenished these wards whenever it came time. But Wraythe’s power was backed by very old and natural magic and it would only be a matter of time before Jason’s spells fell.

  He sighed heavily and rose from the black leather love seat in which he’d been reclining. If Wraythe’s estate hadn’t been destroyed and his daughter hadn’t been killed, Jason would have been more nervous about the man’s impending visit. However, Malachi Wraythe was not the man today that he’d been three days ago. Jason’s freedom was not at stake.

  His life may be – but not his freedom. Not any more.

  Jason strode to the edge of the large white plush rug that rested at the center of his
living room – and then he turned and slowly waved his right hand. The edges of the room warped, the color shifted, and the smell of sandalwood filled the large space. When he lowered his arm again, a swirling black mass appeared at the center of the room.

  Before it fully materialized, Jason addressed it. “I wondered when you would succeed in hunting me down.”

  The black mass coalesced, condensed, and formed the tall, dire figure of a man. Malachi Wraythe’s hazel eyes found Jason where he stood and zeroed in on him. “I’m surprised at you, Alberich,” he said calmly. His voice sounded hollow, devoid of the haughty edge it once carried. “You were too easy to find.”

  “I wasn’t hiding,” Jason told him. It was true.

  Wraythe looked as though, at one point, he would have laughed at the comment. But he was all out of laughs now; he was an emotional husk of the man he’d once been. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his suit pants and paced across the white rug, his gaze on the floor.

  “I want to know where he went, Jason,” Wraythe came right out and said. It was what Jason had expected he would say. “I know you saw him. I know you spoke with him.” He stopped and looked up at Jason, meeting his eyes. “And I know that you know where he is right now.”

  Jason absorbed the accusation and watched the play of dark, disturbed emotion pass behind Wraythe’s eyes. And then he took a deep breath. “In point of fact,” he said, “I don’t know where he is right now.” This was also true. He knew where Caige had been the night before – holed up in a cave on the West Coast. However, something had happened in the interim and now his location was being guarded by someone with quite a bit more power than Jason possessed.

  And apparently more than Wraythe possessed as well.

  Which gave Jason an idea of just who it might be. Not that he was going to say as much out loud.

  Wraythe was quiet for a moment, and the air in the room grew thick with dark magic. “Don’t fuck with me, Jason,” the warlock king warned. “Believe me when I say I’m not in the mood.”

  Jason believed him. Malachi Wraythe was a man with nothing to lose and a hell of a lot of magic. There was little in the world more dangerous. However, he would also gain nothing by killing Jason and Jason knew that too.

  “What do you want from me, Wraythe?” Jason asked, opening his hands at his sides. “He’s being guarded and we both know it. There is nothing I can do for you.” Never mind that Wraythe had ruthlessly dragged Jason back from the peace of death and shoved him into a cage with his vicious, blood-sucking daughter. The warlock king apparently didn’t care whether Jason owed him anything or not – Wraythe was simply king and that was that.

  “No,” Wraythe said finally, his tone one of calm resignation. “Perhaps not at the moment. But there is something I can do for you.”

  Jason’s gaze narrowed. He watched the king carefully as Wraythe left the rug and made his way slowly toward a chest along one wall. Jason’s gut clenched. He really didn’t want Wraythe to see what was in that chest. It was a holdover from the man he’d been in another life time.

  But Wraythe flicked his wrist nonchalantly and the chest unlatched, its lid yawning open to reveal an assortment of devices inside. Ropes, cuffs, whips, chains, and a myriad of other dominating devices had been placed neatly – lovingly – into the chest. They were testament to a darker side of Jason Alberich. It was the warlock in him, and a side he’d been born with.

  Wraythe gazed down at the instruments and without looking up, he addressed Jason once more. “Imani Zareb is now the herald of your coven,” he said softly.

  “I know.”

  “Of course,” Wraythe allowed. “Did you know that the young herald once referred to you as Anakin Skywalker while conversing with her best friend?”

  Jason swallowed hard. A lump had instantly formed in his throat. Imani’s best friend was Dannai, the Healer. And Jason hadn’t had the courage to scry on the Healer since he’d escaped the warlock king’s estate. He just couldn’t… he couldn’t bring himself to see her smiling at another man.

  Jason said nothing. Wraythe still gazed steadily at the assortment of devices in the chest.

  “How ironic,” the king finally said. When he turned to glance at Jason over his shoulder, Jason caught the meaning in his cold expression. The warlock who enjoyed putting women in restraints had found himself restrained by another woman. At least that was how Wraythe would see it.

  The warlock king was an apathetic man, however, and knew little of the desires and needs of others. Jason would never deny that his tastes had run along a darker path than those of other men. But there was something deeper to what he had done, something that hinted at trust and release and freedom – despite the bonds involved – and that was something a man like Malachi Wraythe could never come to comprehend.

  Let him believe what he wishes, Jason thought. He could not have cared less.

  What he did care about was the fact that Wraythe turned then and his gaze focused intensely. “You still care greatly for the Healer.”

  Jason felt his throat tightening a little more. “Tell me, Alberich, did you close your eyes and think of her when my daughter took your blood?” Jason’s jaw twitched. His muscles tensed. “Did you dream of young Dannai when Isabel left you drained and chained to your bed after a long night?” “Get out,” Jason hissed. Enough was enough. “Need I remind you that I am your king, Alberich?” Wraythe said softly, taking a step toward him. “And your response confirms my suspicions.” He took another step toward him. Jason’s hands curled into fists. “You want the Healer. And I can help you.”

  Jason wanted to send him flying into the opposite wall, but instead he asked, “Yes, you’re fond of kidnapping people for others, aren’t you.”

  It wasn’t really a question, and Wraythe didn’t bother responding to it. Instead, he took another step and said, “Two warlocks are better than one.”

  Jason felt his teeth grind behind his closed lips. He said nothing.

  Wraythe nodded once. “Give it some thought, Alberich. Call me when you’re ready to talk.”

  With that, the warlock king’s body was enveloped in a thick cloud of odorless smoke. It rose from the ground up, a charcoal gray writhing shroud, and once his body was gone, the mist disappeared as well.

  Jason stared at the spot where his king had stood. And then he closed his eyes and thought of a woman with long black hair and kaleidoscope eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “The Flush”

  “Can I ask you a question?” Katherine said where she rested with her head in the crook of his arm. Her left leg was curled over his and her left hand was draped gently over his abdomen. They’d been laying there for an hour or so and Byron was in heaven. He had no idea what was coming or what was in store, but at that very moment, he knew a kind of peace he’d thought he would never obtain. All because of Kat.

  “You just did,” he teased gently. “Another few?” He smiled and kissed the top of her head. She was a fast learner. “Shoot.” She hesitated a moment, shifted a little, and then said, “The vampire princess had her father’s blood in her veins.” Byron nodded, though she couldn’t see it. “Yes.” “And for fifty years, she gave you her blood.” Byron’s gaze narrowed. He thought he could see where this was going, and it didn’t feel good. “Yes,” he admitted softly. “So you carry the warlock king’s blood inside of you. And now so do I.” Byron didn’t know what to say to that. What could he say? It was true. Katherine’s veins ran with a soup of magical blood – the warlock king’s, the vampire princess’s, Byron’s blood, and her own.

  “Byron, he’s inside of me. The man who killed my father.”

  Byron moved then, shifting so that he was at eye level with her, his body gliding over her own, caging her in. “Listen to me, Kat,” he said, capturing her gaze with his. “There is no one in here,” he said, lightly touching her chest and then her temple, “but you.” He shook his head. “I have never known
a being with more will and more intelligence than you, Katherine Dare. Blood is a transfusion, nothing more. People have them all the time.”

  “Then why can’t we go out in sunlight without it burning us?” she asked, her beautiful eyes wide open.

  Byron stilled. Fuck, he thought. She was going to make this hard. “Blood can be tainted, little one, but it doesn’t mean that the person who donated it is inside of you.”

  “You would say that,” she told him. There was a hint of something in her voice that he didn’t like at all. It sounded like resignation.

  It made him angry.

  Slowly, so that he wouldn’t hurt her, he moved away from Katherine and got to his feet. “We need to find shelter before dawn,” he said, hating the way his words only served to verify her claims. But the vampires had obviously decided their business with Byron and Kat was through and Byron wasn’t certain whether the one protection spell they’d enjoyed would last through to morning.

  Katherine didn’t say anything. She stood as well, and made her way to the clothes he had more or less ripped from her body. Byron watched as she bent and retrieved them one at a time, the curves of her legs and hips beckoning as she moved. When she turned to face him again and pull her top on, she stretched, taunting him with a flash of her perfect breasts and torso before the shirt was sliding over her skin and covering it up.

  He swallowed hard. She pulled her long blonde hair out of her shirt and eyed him suspiciously. “You gonna get dressed or just stand there watching me?”

  “I was thinking option three.”

  Katherine’s plump, kiss-bruised lips curled in a small smile. “Well at least you’re honest.”

  Byron turned away, hiding his smile. He breathed a private sigh of relief. If she was gently reprimanding him, then she was no longer thinking about the fact that her blood ran flush with the blood of her father’s murderer.