Dark Power Untamed (The Children Of The Gods Paranormal Romance Book 50)

by I. T. Lucas

  Tired of the excuses, Vlad squeezed his mental fingers, knocking Roger out.

  When the guy slumped, Richard reached to check his pulse.

  “I didn’t kill him. I just knocked him out. I’m debating whether turning him into a vegetable would upset Wendy.”

  Richard arched a brow. “I didn’t know it was possible to do that with a thrall.”

  “Neither did I.” Vlad pushed his bangs out of his face. “Maybe it’s something that I inherited from my father.”

  “What did you see in his mind?”

  “A lot of crap I wished I could un-see, but I didn’t see him murder Wendy’s mother.”

  “Did he abuse anyone else since?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t summon those memories, and I can only see recent ones.”

  “What do you want to do with him?”

  “Kill him. Even if he’s not a murderer, he’s a twisted, sadistic monster. I’d be doing the world a favor.”

  Richard shook his head. “You promised Wendy that you wouldn’t. Thrall him, make sure that he never hurts anyone again, and erase the memory of us ever being here.” He smiled evilly. “You can always come back at a future time and finish the job.”

  61

  Cassandra

  “You’re in a good mood today.” Kevin perched on the edge of Cassandra’s desk. “You haven’t snarled at anyone yet. What gives?”

  “I finished the design for the new brochure and handed it over to Brenda to put into production. Then I started working on next month’s box. I made good progress, and I’m finally ahead instead of being behind.”

  Last night, after Onegus had left her satisfied but puzzled, she’d taken a shower and worked until two in the morning.

  Why hadn’t he wanted her to return the favor?

  Or just finish what he’d started and make love to her?

  What kind of man brings a woman to a shattering orgasm and just leaves?

  “Why didn’t you send the brochure to me for approval?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Since you never bother to check them, I stopped doing that months ago. Hadn’t you noticed?”

  Kevin’s expression turned sheepish. “I didn’t. You should remind me.”

  “Fine.” Cassandra uncrossed her arms and picked up her pencil.

  He didn’t make a move to leave and was still looking at her as if she’d dyed her hair green. “Do you need anything? Or were you just bored and decided to waste my time?”

  Kevin smiled. “And she’s back. I just wanted to check on the design for the eyeshadow line ad campaign. Did you send that to me and I missed it too?”

  “Not yet. I’m still playing around with it. And I need to run a comparison test to choose the best performing creative. I’ll send it to you when it’s done.” She twirled the pencil between her fingers. “I almost forgot. Tell Josie that Connor says hi.”

  “Who’s Connor?”

  “A score composer she’s worked with before. He’s Onegus’s roommate.”

  Kevin grinned. “That’s what the good mood is about. Did you snag the most elusive eligible bachelor that all the socialites have been pursuing for years?”

  She frowned. “How come no one did?”

  “He’s a mysterious fellow. He shows up for those big charity events and then disappears for months.” Kevin leaned closer. “To tell you the truth, I thought that he was gay, but apparently I was wrong.”

  She snorted. “Very wrong.”

  “Do you know where he disappears to?”

  Onegus had told her the truth about his position in the family business, but she wasn’t going to betray that even to Kevin.

  “He told me that he travels a lot for business. I thought that it was just an exit strategy for when he dumps me, but maybe it’s true and that’s why he’s gone most of the year.”

  “Why would he dump you?”

  Cassandra leaned back. “A guy like him is expected to marry an heiress or the daughter of a high-ranking politician. What would his family think if he brings home a woman who doesn’t even have a college education?”

  That was regrettably true even if he wasn’t the head of the operation. He was still a member of an incredibly rich and influential family.

  Kevin shook his head. “If that’s a sore spot for you, you should just get that damn degree. You can do it online.” He leaned closer and whispered, “That’s what I did.”

  “I know.” She rolled her eyes. “I don’t have time for that, and I don’t need it. But people judge you if you don’t have it.”

  When her cell phone rang, she snatched it off the table and smiled. “It’s him.” She waved her hand at Kevin. “Go. Find someone else to bother.”

  “Fine.” He pushed off the desk and walked out of her office.

  She waited for him to close the door before answering. “Hi.”

  “Hi, yourself. I have a question. Can you take a vacation starting the following Monday?”

  “No. Why? Are you going somewhere?”

  “Not unless you are coming with me. I want to spend time with you away from work and all the hustle and bustle. I will be very busy starting tomorrow and all through next week, and I don’t know if I will be able to make time to see you.”

  So that’s what this was about. He was letting her down gently.

  Cassandra wasn’t going to make it hard for him. It was better to end this on a good note and at least keep fond memories from their very short time together.

  That was what her brain said. Her heart, on the other hand, felt as if Onegus had stabbed it with a rusty knife.

  She rubbed her chest. “I can’t take more than one day off. I just have too much to do.”

  “You have a department full of employees. Have them earn their money.”

  Was he insisting because he knew she couldn’t go?

  “They won’t lift a pencil if I don’t tell them how to do it and when. I don’t have anyone who can take over for me. I haven’t taken more than a day off since I got promoted.”

  “That was more than ten years ago.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “I’ll call your boss and admonish him for overworking you and hiring the wrong people for your department. I want you all to myself for at least a week.”

  He sounded sincere. Maybe she’d misjudged his intentions?

  “Out of curiosity. If I managed to get away for an entire week, where would you take me?”

  “My family owns a secluded cabin in the mountains. It’s very romantic, and there are no other homes for miles around. We will have complete privacy.”

  As Cassandra’s anger flared red hot, the pencil holder on her desk started rattling.

  She’d expected Onegus to say Paris or Milan, and if not that, then at least New York. But a damn cabin in the woods?

  “I see. You want to take me to another place where no one will see us together. What’s the matter, Onegus? Embarrassed to be seen with a pleb?”

  “What kind of nonsense is that?” He pretended to get mad. “Where have you gotten that idea from? I danced with you at the gala and our pictures were splattered all over the tabloids and the internet. I took you to the fanciest restaurant on the West Coast, or maybe even the entire country, and we danced there as well. How can you think that I’m embarrassed to be seen with you?”

  “The gala was nothing. You didn’t come with me and you didn’t leave with me. And the restaurant was dark, and no one paid any attention to us. The damn place belongs to your cousin, and you didn’t even introduce me to him.”

  “That’s because Gerard is a prick, and if I had walked into his kitchen, he would have thrown a knife at me. You are being ridiculous, Cassandra.”

  “Am I? I invited you to meet my mother and introduced you to her, but you couldn’t even invite me to your home and introduce me to your roommate?”

  “I let you talk to him on the phone.”

  “Whoopty doo. I’m the kind of woman a gu
y should be proud to be seen with, a woman he would show off to his friends and introduce to his parents. I’m not a shameful secret to be brought in the middle of the night to an unoccupied building.” She paused to take a breath. “I told you that I don’t do hookups, and if that’s all you have to offer, then I’m not interested. Goodbye, Onegus.” She disconnected the call.

  The tears started a moment later.

  Cassandra really liked the guy, and pushing him away hurt, but everything she’d told him was true. If he wasn’t willing to show her that he was serious about her, she wasn’t going to waste any more of her time on him, or worse, fall in love with a man who didn’t appreciate her.

  62

  Onegus

  Dumbstruck, Onegus stared at his phone. He couldn’t believe that Cassandra had hung up on him without waiting for his reply.

  The woman was nuts, and she had a huge chip on her shoulder. How could she think that he was embarrassed to be seen with her?

  She was gorgeous, successful, smart, talented, had superb taste, and she was a potential Dormant. Naturally, she wasn’t aware of the last one, but she was well aware of everything else. Had he really given her a reason to suspect he thought otherwise?

  The woman was more than confident, she was prideful, and she had a shitty attitude.

  For a brief moment there, he’d thought that she might be the one for him, and he’d even contemplated ways he could have a mate without compromising his work standards. But he’d been wrong about her, and she wasn’t the one for him. Onegus didn’t need the drama, and he didn’t need tantrums. What he needed was a coolheaded, reasonable woman who had a life of her own and wasn’t needy or dependent.

  Aside from the short fuse, he’d thought Cassandra was all those things, but it seemed like that short fuse was a much bigger problem than he’d anticipated.

  Angry and hurt, he threw the phone on the desk and headed out.

  Ingrid intercepted him in the hallway. “I programmed the locks of all the rooms with the guests that will be staying in them and emailed everyone their room assignments. That will save us the trouble of handing out keycards and showing them to their rooms.”

  “Good.” He kept on walking.

  “What happened?” She fell in step with him, her high heels clicking along.

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t nothing me, Onegus. I’m not one of your Guardians, and I smell girl trouble. Did she turn you down for the vacation idea?”

  He stopped and turned to her. “She practically slammed the phone down on me.”

  “Why? What did you say to get her mad?”

  “Nothing. She asked me where I wanted to take her, and I told her about the cabin. She exploded, accusing me of being embarrassed to be seen with her and hiding her from my friends and relatives.”

  Ingrid winced. “I can see her point. You didn’t introduce her to your friends or family, just not for the reason she thinks.”

  “So, what am I supposed to do? Bring her to the village?” He turned and kept walking toward the elevators.

  Ingrid rushed after him. “You could invite her to the wedding. That will put an end to any talk about you hiding her from the important people in your life.”

  “Are you serious?” He pressed the button.

  “Completely. Gerard’s human staff is serving at the event, and Yamanu is going to take care of their memories when it’s over. He can do the same to Cassandra.”

  The elevator arrived, and the door opened, but Onegus didn’t step inside. “If Yamanu will erase her memories, then what’s the point of inviting her to the wedding? She won’t remember it.”

  “Good point.” Ingrid put a hand on her hip. “You will need to do it and only remove the incriminating stuff and where the event was held. You will also need to get her drunk so she will blame the holes in her recall on the booze.”

  “Too risky.”

  “Not really. The same was done with Nick when Eva insisted on inviting him to her and Bhathian’s wedding. And just like in Nick’s case, it’s only a temporary fix until Cassandra transitions.”

  “What if she doesn’t?”

  Ingrid laughed. “She will. If the mighty chief is obsessing about a female, then she must be a Dormant.”

  63

  Vlad

  “You need a drink.” Richard stopped at the corner of the street and pulled out his phone to call an Uber.

  “Am I back to normal?” Vlad glanced down at his mother’s mate. His fangs had retracted, but he had a feeling that his eyes were still glowing.

  Richard chuckled. “You are back to looking as normal as you usually do.”

  “Thanks.” Vlad grimaced. “And I don’t mean it sarcastically. You were a great help in there. If not for you, I don’t think I would have walked out of that house with his heart still beating.”

  “You’re welcome, kid.” Richard clapped him on the back. “We have three hours until our flight back. We can have that drink at the airport.”

  Vlad nodded. “I need to call Wendy.”

  “Wait until we are inside the car, and then do your silent bubble trick. It’s a forty-minute drive to the airport.”

  Wendy was probably biting her nails, worried about what he might have done to her father and what he’d discovered about her mother. The good news was that Roger hadn’t killed her mother. The bad news was that they still didn’t know whether she was alive and if she was, where to find her. Roger hadn’t lied about not knowing where she’d gone after he’d kicked her out of the house. Vlad had double-checked by going through the memories he’d brought back, looking for any clue, but there had been none. Roger had never bothered to search for the mother. In his mind she’d been as good as dead, most likely from a drug overdose.

  As the Uber driver pulled up to the curb, Richard opened the back door and signaled for Vlad to get in. He then took the front passenger seat and started chatting with the driver about the best restaurants and bars in Milwaukee, keeping the guy’s focus on himself and not on the strange dude sitting in the back and talking without making a sound.

  After snapping the sound bubble around himself, Vlad dialed Wendy’s number.

  “Is he dead?” she shot at him.

  “Regrettably, he’s still breathing.”

  She let out a breath. “Thank God.”

  He chuckled. “It should be, thank Richard. He kept me from losing it.”

  “You sound like you are in a good mood. Did you find out what happened to my mother?”

  “He didn’t kill her, and he doesn’t know where she went after he kicked her out. He told her that he would kill her if she didn’t stay away from you and him.”

  “Why?”

  “He said that she was a drug addict.”

  “Yeah, that’s what he told me too, but I didn’t believe him.”

  Vlad pinched his brows between his thumb and forefinger. “She was, but I don’t blame her for escaping the nightmare of living with him in any way she could. It’s a miracle that she didn’t off herself.”

  “Maybe she did,” Wendy whispered. “Otherwise, she would have come back for me.”

  “She might have been too scared. Roger meant it when he told her that he would kill her if she ever came back. And from what I’ve seen of his memories, he nearly did it several times, beating her up so badly that she ended up in a hospital.”

  “How did they let him get away with that? Why did no one intervene?”

  He was quiet for a moment, remembering what she’d told him about her father. “You know how he did that. The same way he fooled your teachers and the nurse and anyone else who noticed that you weren’t doing so well, or the people who you actually turned to for help.”

  “I don’t get it. He’s not a compeller.”

  “No, but he’s a handsome, all-American-looking guy, and he knows how to play the part of the harmless, charming, ordinary man. People don’t want to see the monster hiding behind the façade. They prefer to believe the lie and keep t
heir heads in the sand.”

  “Yeah, I know. So what do we do now? We are back to square one, we can’t find my mother, and you made the trip for nothing.”

  “Not for nothing. I made sure that the maggot will never hurt anyone again.”

  “How?”

  “I thralled him to feel severe chest pain if he even thinks of hurting anyone. Anytime he has violent thoughts, he will be gripped by that pain and believe that his heart is going to give out and he’s going to die.”

  “That’s clever. How long is it going to hold?”

  “Depends on how strong his brain is. I plan on reinforcing it from time to time.”

  “I don’t want you to ever see him again.”

  “I won’t. It can be done over the phone.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “I didn’t know that thralling works long distance.”

  “It doesn’t, but compulsion does.”

  There was another long pause. “Are you going to ask Eleanor to do that for us?”

  “I think that I can do it myself. I discovered today that my thralling ability comes with a strange twist. I need to figure out exactly what it means.”

  “How come you didn’t know you had it before?”

  Telling her about his Kra-ell ancestry over the phone was far from optimal, but it was time. “There is something that I’ve been meaning to tell you after this thing with your father was over, but I wanted to do it in person. Can you wait until I’m back?”

  “No way! You have to tell me now. I can’t stomach another moment of stress and anxiety.”

  “My father wasn’t a human. He was a Kra-ell hybrid.”

  “A what?”

  “Kra-ell, like the Krall, like the cult leader the clan captured.”

  “How is that possible? And what does it have to do with your newly discovered ability?”

  “To answer the first question, my mother had a thing with one of them and kept it a secret until the cult leader was found and their existence became known to the clan. And as for your second question, apparently my strange new ability, as well as my superior strength, came from my father. I was always aware of the latter, but not of the former.”