“Do you really want to know?” he growled as his control over his temper started to fray.
“Yes.”
“Because you’re my mate.”
And somehow, deep inside, she’d already known that was the reason. “What does that mean?” she asked.
“It means, whether we like it or not, we’re at least partially tied to each other for the rest of our lives.”
“So, because of what I am to you, you gave up everything that meant anything to you, even though you don’t know me, not really?”
“Yes, but you have one thing wrong.”
“And what is that?” she asked.
“I didn’t become what I am now because of you; I did it for you. And I would do it again.”
Simone’s breath rushed out at those words. She never would have believed anything remotely sweet could come out of Killean’s mouth, but she’d been mistaken.
“So we’ll be mates now?” she asked, uncertain how she felt about that. No one could make her feel as alive as he did, but the whole mate thing was a pretty big commitment and he could be a pretty big jerk. They might kill each other if they were forced to live together for an eternity.
“Our bond won’t ever be completed,” he stated.
“Why not?” she demanded and realized her emotions were completely out of control. He’d thrown her off completely with all his revelations, and she had no idea how to react to all of them.
“Because I won’t condemn you by binding you to the thing I’ve become. You’ve consumed my blood, and if you’re feeling any pull from the mating bond, it will make things difficult for you to not have me in your life, but it’s best for you if I’m not.”
“I’m capable of handling more than you give me credit for.”
“Are you capable of handling the darkness I possess now that I’ve killed humans?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yes!” she insisted.
Even as she said this, a part of her screamed, No! What are you, an idiot? This man is dangerous. He’s bordering on the edge of losing control and becoming more Savage than not; he’ll steal your heart and tear it out if he loses control.
And he could so easily steal her heart; he already owned a piece of it for sacrificing himself to save her. Never had she imagined someone like Killean becoming a part of her life. Every image she ever had of her future husband was of someone who was kind, considerate, and a hunter.
Killean was the exact opposite of everything she’d dreamed of in her life, but she wanted him more than she’d ever wanted anything else. Maybe it was the mating bond at work, or maybe it was that no matter his harsh exterior, she knew a kind man lurked beneath; one who’d denied himself love since the death of his family but who so badly needed it.
“Then you must know that when I kill now, all I want is to feel the suffering of those I feed on,” Killean said and held her gaze as he revealed the worst part of himself to her. When he was done, she would never again consider taking him as her mate, which was what he wanted. Liar. But Killean didn’t stop.
“You should also know that when I’m not imagining all the things I want to do to you in bed, I’m thinking about how many different ways I can kill and feast on someone. Since reaching maturity, I’ve been obsessed with killing, but I managed to keep myself restrained from destroying any innocents. Now that I’ve finally given in to my darkest impulses, my need to kill has become this ever-constant thing gnawing at my insides, and all it craves is more blood, death, and pain.”
Simone inwardly cringed at his words, but years of wearing a demure mask came in handy as she held his gaze. “I can handle anything.” Before her capture, she wouldn’t have been at all certain of this; she was now. “I’m not saying let’s complete the bond, but you won’t scare me off either.”
Killean released a snort of laughter. “You have no idea the things I’m capable of doing.”
“And you have no idea what I’m capable of handling.”
The jarring ring of the phone silenced his reply as his gaze went to the nightstand. Releasing her wrist, he stepped around her and lifted the phone from the receiver. “Yeah,” he said.
“Killean?”
Ronan’s voice deflated his anger. “Yes,” he said.
The relief in Killean’s voice drew Simone’s attention. When he sank onto the bed, he looked more relaxed than she’d seen him in a while. He also looked almost happy.
“How are you?” Ronan asked.
“Been better,” Killean admitted. “Saxon spoke with you?”
“Yes, and we’ve talked with the others. Nathan has never heard of another turned hunter before Kadence. He’s spoken with the elders, and the other hunter factions he’s still in touch with, but none of them have ever heard of such a thing happening before either.”
“I know what I saw.”
Killean’s gaze fell to his hands, and an uneasy feeling crept into his gut. Did he know what he saw in the bunker? He’d seen blood drenching his hands that was never there too.
No, he’d seen that creature before the hallucinations started; it was real.
“It could be something else, it could be the hunters weren’t told about such a thing happening, or it could be a hunter they all assumed dead until now,” Ronan said.
“It’s really powerful, and I believe it’s older than you.”
“And it can still die,” Ronan said.
“Yes, it can.”
Killean’s gaze slid to Simone as she watched him with compressed lips and narrowed eyes. The composed, pristine doll he’d first encountered on the beach was gone. The woman standing there resembled a banshee with her hair flowing about her shoulders and a wild gleam in her normally tranquil eyes.
He liked this side of her; he liked her.
The realization hit him like an arrow between the eyes. All this time, he’d considered her a passive creation of the hunter’s archaic ways, but free of their hold, she was defiant, stubborn, and stronger than he would have believed her capable of being. He’d been confident her captivity would destroy her, or if not destroy her, make her meeker, but like a phoenix, she’d risen from the ashes of her old life and spread her wings to become something stronger.
She was amazing.
“How is Simone?” Ronan asked.
It took him a minute to find his voice to respond. “She’s a fighter.”
Simone quirked an eyebrow. Was he talking about her? Could dollies fight? The question left a bitter taste in her mouth, and she found herself scowling at him again. To her utter annoyance, he smiled at her.
“Kadence would like to speak with her,” Ronan said.
“Here she is,” he held the phone out to Simone who turned her glare on it. “Kadence is asking for you.”
She snatched the phone from his hand. “Hello.”
“Simone,” Kadence breathed. “Are you okay?”
Her irritation fell away at the sound of her best friend’s voice. “Yes, I’m fine,” Simone assured her.
“What about Killean? Are you scared of him? Is he treating you okay? Is he dangerous?”
“Not at all. Yes. And not to me,” she answered each rapidly fired question honestly. What Killean would be like around others, she didn’t know, but he would never be a threat to her even if she slapped him a hundred more times. The reminder of what she’d done and the complete loss of her temper caused her cheeks to flush.
“Can he be trusted?” Kadence asked.
“Yes.” Killean may doubt that, but she didn’t.
“It’s so good to hear your voice.”
“Yours also. My mom? Is she okay? I lost sight of her after I was captured, and she wasn’t with us in that place.”
“She’s fine,” Kadence said. “She’s worried about you, but I’ll let her know we talked.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful.” Tears of joy filled Simone’s eyes. “Please tell her I love and miss her.”
“I will.”
They spoke for a few minutes more before she handed the phone back to Killean who talked with Ronan and hung up.
When his gaze returned to her, her shoulders went back. She didn’t want to fight with him anymore, but she was prepared to battle him until he got it through his thick skull that she wasn’t fragile. The silence extended into minutes while they gazed at each other.
“I can handle the darkness, Killean,” Simone finally said, “but I’m not sure you can handle letting go of your past enough to walk out of the shadows.”
With that, she turned away, gathered some clothes from one of the bags, and strode into the bathroom.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Killean stared at the ceiling as he lay on the bed with his hands propped behind his head while he listened to Simone’s soft breaths. Rolling over, he gazed across the distance separating the two beds and at the curve of her back. They’d removed their socks and shoes, but both still wore their clothes in case they had to flee from here.
The last words she’d spoken to him ran on a constant loop in his mind. “I can handle the darkness, Killean, but I’m not sure you can handle letting go of your past enough to walk out of the shadows.”
What had she meant by that? How could he just walk away from the events that forged him into the man he was?
Suddenly, she rolled over and he found himself staring into her striking eyes. And just looking at her, for the first time in his life, he considered letting go of his past to embrace a future with her.
But how could he bind her to someone such as himself?
She was far too good for him. He’d been broken before he reached maturity and found himself seeking death; he was worse now.
“I know the stake missed your heart, but at seven you hadn’t fully matured yet, so how did you not bleed out?” Simone asked.
Simone braced herself for him to tell her to mind her own business, call her a dolly, or some other incensed reaction. Instead, he merely lay there, staring at her in a way that made her feel cherished though she had no reason to believe he would ever treasure her.
Killean debated answering her, but he’d already told her more than he’d intended, so he saw no reason not to reveal more.
“My uncle found me before I bled out,” Killean finally said. “He lived on the estate next to ours in England. And by next to ours, I mean his manor was an hour ride away by horseback. When my father didn’t arrive for their weekly card game, he came to check on us. He found me, barely clinging to life, and gave me his blood to save me.”
“What became of him?”
“Hunters killed him fifty years later. He was the last of my family.”
Simone held back the tears burning her eyes. His entire family had been wiped out in such a short amount of time, and by her kind. “I understand why you’ve hated my kind for so long, and what they did to you and your family was unforgivable, but things are changing between our sides. Those hunters didn’t know there were good vampires in the world and believed you were all evil.”
“The things those hunters did to my family, and me, makes some Savages look kind.
I wasn’t the only one they cut. They tortured us for hours.”
“Hunters don’t do those things.” Simone regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth; she felt a snapping in him from across the three feet separating them, and her denial was childish. He still bore the scars of what those hunters did to him, and they were only the ones she could see. She suspected his inner scars ran far deeper than the ones he wore for the world to see.
Killean sat up on the bed and set his feet on the floor. “You said you could handle the dark side, dolly, yet you’re denying what I’m telling you.”
Simone sat up too. “I can handle it. It’s just that hunters… we’re not… we’re…”
“What?” Killean asked when her voice trailed off. “You’re not evil? You’re the good guys? Perhaps, like vampires, many hunters mean well, but some of them are vicious bastards who hide behind the killing of vampires to unleash the rot inside their souls.” Lifting his hand, he ran his fingers along the scar on his face. “I still bear this, and the one on my chest, because I was so young the scars were forever etched onto me.”
“I see,” Simone said. “What else did they do?”
She didn’t want to learn anymore about what was done to him as a boy, but she suspected that if she backed away now there would be no hope of anything more developing between them. He would drop her off somewhere and walk away, and she didn’t want that. She would understand him better, and she believed he needed to get this out. What happened that night had eaten at his soul for centuries; it was time to set it free.
Killean couldn’t look at her as the memories of that distant night replayed in his mind. No matter how much time passed, he could still recall every detail as if it happened only yesterday. But he’d replayed that night thousands of times and found countless ways he could have saved his family if he’d just done something differently.
“There were twelve of them against two adult vampires and four children; it wasn’t much of a fight, but my father managed to kill two hunters and my mother one, before they brought us down. My parents fought so hard to save us, and they loved us so much, but it wasn’t enough. When they were dead, the hunters focused all their attention on me and my siblings,” he said.
The screams of his younger sisters resonated in his ears as his brother yelled and swore and struggled. While three men kept him pinned to the ground, Killean watched his siblings fall. After he succeeded in biting the hunter who cut his face, the man announced they would save him for last, so he could watch everything they did to the others and see what they would eventually do to him.
When he looked at Simone again, the helpless rage filling him that night boiled to the surface. “I’ve never understood why I survived when my family perished. They were all better than me, kinder and stronger.”
“Oh, Killean,” she breathed when she saw the raw guilt he’d been living with all these centuries. “That’s not true.”
“It is. Would you like to know what else your ancestors did to us?”
Killean heard the challenge in his voice, but Simone had grown increasingly pale while he spoke, and he kept waiting for her to tell him to stop. He kept waiting for her to run from him as any sane woman would, and when she ran, she would confirm this could never be between them.
She absolutely did not want to know, but she found herself saying, “Yes. If you’re willing to tell me.”
Launching to his feet, Killean stalked away from her and over to the plate glass window with the curtains covering it. That was not the response he expected.
“Killean?” she whispered.
He turned back toward her, but when he saw the frightened, nearly pleading look on her face, his words died away. Simone wasn’t there that night; he was punishing her for sins she’d never committed and would never commit. Some of the hunters were murderous, hideous bastards, but Simone was not one of them, and neither was Nathan and Kadence.
“Killean?”
Running a hand through his hair, he tugged at the ends of it as he tried to bury his memories. The torment, degradation, and sorrow of that night burned like acid in his chest. His fangs throbbed to sink into someone and destroy them as the innocence of the boy he’d been was destroyed that night. He needed to feast on the pain of others and let it course through him until it buried his past.
“Killean?”
Killean forced himself to focus on Simone again. “Some things are better left in the past.”
He paced over to the door and glowered at the sun creeping around the edges of it. He couldn’t go out to kill until night descended, but he didn’t know if he could handle being caged in this room much longer.
Simone didn’t know what propelled her to her feet. Before she could fully comprehend what she was doing, she was standing beside him with her hand on his arm. She almost released him and backed away when his r
eddened eyes swung toward her. She’d never seen him look so volatile, so ruthless, so… lost.
Her heart ached in a way she hadn’t experienced before as her hand tightened on his arm. This powerful, lethal man was broken, and he needed her. There was so little in her life she was sure of any more, but she was sure of this, and she was sure she needed him too. No matter how disturbing his past, no matter the things he did, she would not walk away from him.
“I have to go out,” he said. “I have to feed.”
“You have to kill, you mean.”
Surprisingly, he was the one who flinched at her words.
“I saw what you did to that vampire, and I didn’t run away. I won’t now either.” She may not want to hear what else he had to say, but she would listen to it all because he had to say it. “I know what you need, Killean. I know what you are, and I’m still here. What else did those hunters do to you?”
Killean shook his head, not to disregard her words but to shake off the past cleaving to him like a second skin—a skin threatening to choke him with every passing second.
“Tell me,” she said quietly, but with an authority she hadn’t known she possessed.
Killean focused on the far wall as screams echoed in his head and the scent of centuries-old terror and blood permeated his nostrils. It was as if he were in that house again, pinned down and helpless.
“They raped them,” he murmured. “My brother and my sisters. They raped them for hours and tortured them before killing them.”
Simone’s breath caught as bile swelled up her throat. Denials screamed through her head, but she saw the horrible truth in his slack face that looked far younger than it usually did. Staring at him, she caught a glimpse of the boy he’d been. The one who was loved by his parents and the one forever altered in a night. She almost wept for him, but Killean would leave here if she cried.
“And what did they do to you?” she whispered.
Killean tore his gaze away from the wall to focus on her. When he gazed at her, he could keep himself in the present. “I was not spared.”
He thought it would shame him to admit this to her, to anyone, as he’d kept it from his uncle too. Though he was sure his uncle had known the truth. But Killean experienced no shame. Instead, it felt as if a weight were lifted from his shoulders. The horrible truth was out there, and it hadn’t made him weaker, and she wasn’t gazing at him as if he were repugnant.
Bound by Darkness: The Alliance Series, Book 3 Page 18
