Kai (A Dark Assassins Novel Book One)

by Valerie Ullmer

  “No, no, love.” His voice choked with emotion, and he cleared it before he continued. “Not your fault, but mine. I should have told you about my dream, my premonition, and should have kept you safe. This is my fault.”

  As he scanned her for injuries, he noted that her heartbeat was weak, and when his hand moved over her side, a hoarse groan sounded from deep in her throat as he touched the wound. When he withdrew his hand, he watched as her blood dripped steadily from the piercing wound on her right side. He ripped through the ropes on her feet and legs and for the first time since he’d met her, he feared that he would hurt her with his strength. He pressed his hand against the wound that continued to bleed, and her hoarse cry speared him with a pain that he’d never felt before. Keeping his head, he searched her for other injuries and snarled in rage as he noted her broken right arm, several broken fingers on both hands, a broken cheekbone, and several slashing cuts along her neck and chest.

  “Hold on, love. Help is coming,” he said.

  “Fucking bitch ruined everything,” the man grunted.

  Loud growls and snarls ripped through the air, reminding Kai that his team was there for Liv and him. He sneered at the man a moment before Xander and Hunter punched the man in the stomach, rendering him silent.

  “An ambulance is on its way. We have to question this fuck before we take care of him,” Ghost stated.

  “His name is…Dr. Richard Ames.” Xander retrieved his wallet from his back pocket.

  “We need answers,” Hunter demanded.

  “Fuck you,” Ames spit.

  “You hurt our Liv, and that is something you’ll come to regret.” Hunter, with very little effort, reached down for the man’s forearm and snapped it in two, and waited until the he stopped screaming before he continued. “If you don’t tell me, I will break every bone in your body and keep you awake and alive the entire time. Understand?”

  Ames nodded, but he paused a few seconds before he started his story. Kai smiled a pained smile. The panther was vicious when protecting his own.

  “I needed a vampire or a shifter to change my dying wife.” He chuckled. “Well, it started as that, but as I noted the power that I could have for my own, I wanted the change for myself. I learned about your contract with the government, and I posed as a recruiter, and that’s how I captured those you broke out a few hours ago. I figured if I could change, and strengthen the power you already have, then I could have more power and money than I could have ever dreamed about. But when her research stalled, everything I wanted, everything that I deserved, was destroyed by her. She deleted my research, destroyed the samples, and I couldn’t recreate it because the fucking shifter killed the scientists who worked on the formula. I needed her, but as you can see, she was uncooperative.” He laughed.

  They heard the sirens in the distance, but his eyes were on Liv. Another grunt of pain sounded, and Kai knew that Hunter had landed another punch for the demeaning way he spoke about Liv.

  “Are there others, besides the vampire and the shifters we released?” Hunter asked.

  Dr. Ames moved his head an inch, barely enough to tell what his answer was, and when Hunter bent down and grabbed his uninjured arm, he finally answered the question.

  “No. There are no others, I swear.”

  “How did you get the vampire to help you?” Xander asked.

  “I kidnapped his mate. I told him that he would get her back when he did this job for me, but it didn’t work out as I planned. I had to kill her. She fought me and almost got me caught, so I put a bullet in her head. I told him that he would get her back as soon as he kidnapped Dr. Sabin here. He has no idea.” Ames laughed again.

  Kai heard Liv’s shocked breath, and he reached out to catch her as she leaned forward. “Bring him closer to me,” she croaked in his ear.

  Xander and Hunter heard Liv, and while keeping him on his knees, his feet and wrists tied together, they brought him to kneel in front of Liv. They watched as Liv struggled to pull something out of her pocket with broken fingers, but she waved him off when he tried to help her. When she slid it out of her pocket, his eyes landed on a tiny syringe filled with less than a millimeter of milky liquid.

  “Please move away from him and whatever happens, don’t touch him,” she demanded.

  Making sure Ames was secured and wouldn’t be able to move, the assassins took a few steps back. Kai stood behind Liv, making sure that he would be there if anything were to happen.

  Ames laughed. “What are you going to do, kill me?”

  Liv leaned forward. “I don’t really know what will happen because it’s your drug, but whatever it does, I hope it’s painful. You shouldn’t have killed his mate.”

  With more strength than he thought she possessed, Liv leaned forward and stuck Ames with the needle, and while she looked him in the eye, she plunged the liquid into him.

  Kai stood there stunned at what had transpired, but at that moment, Ames fell backward and twitched on the ground. His mouth was open but no sound escaped. In the next instant, the skin around his neck, where the injection had been given, disintegrated before their eyes. Kai expected it to stop or slow, leaving some trace of his body, but the drug dissolved every inch of the man who had tried to destroy his love, who killed the vampire’s mate, who had killed the lion-shifter, and became hell-bent on destroying their kind or becoming one of them, until there was nothing.

  “What the fuck?” Ax stuttered.

  At that moment, Liv slumped forward as she lost consciousness, and he scooped her up into his arms. The medics, who worked for the assassins, burst inside and immediately set to work stabilizing Liv. Kai refused to let go of her hand, so the two worked around him. The others had forgotten about the doctor and circled around Liv, watching with horror as the paramedics worked on her. For the first time, they noticed all the injuries she sustained. One of the paramedics made a sound in his throat, and when Kai looked at him, he had a grimace on his face as he searched for a pulse. Kai could feel her heart beating, but it was weak.

  “We need to get her stabilized, and she needs blood.”

  Ghost nodded to them, and the two medics and Kai lifted her and transported her to the ambulance. They drove to a heliport, loaded her on the helicopter, and soon they were in the air.

  Kai was told that they were going to the Dark Company facility in Denver, where some of the best doctors were ready to save her life. He tried to be appreciative, but fear crowded out common sense, and he kept silent as he watched Liv. Kai listened to her weak heartbeat and threaded their fingers together, willing his strength and love into her broken and weakened body. He glanced up at the medics as he heard one of them clear their throat, and he noticed that they stared at him, frowns on their faces. The next moment, he realized why. They were human.

  “You’ve worked with the immortals before, right?” Kai asked.

  They both nodded.

  “Could I turn her now?” he asked.

  They both shook their heads, but the older one spoke. “Right now she’s too weak. The spread of the venom is very painful and there is no guarantee that your venom would take.”

  “Have you seen injuries like this before? Will you be able…to heal her?”

  “I…don’t know,” the older paramedic said. “We’ll know more when we get her back. But her eyes were slow to respond, which leads us to believe that there might be some brain swelling. Her breaks will be set, and they will heal, but damage to the brain is what we have to worry about. I’m sorry we don’t have more answers.”

  At his words, desperation clawed within Kai’s chest. For the first time in his existence, he prayed.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Kai

  The beep coming from Liv’s medical equipment had been a constant rhythm in his ear for the past four days. Instead of becoming annoyed by it, he took comfort in what it represented. Her broken bones had been set, her fingers had been splinted, her cuts sewn and bandaged, but she had yet to wake. The doctors had worri
ed that the stab wound on her side had caused severe internal injuries, but the main concern was the concussion she received after repeated blows to her head during the few hours she spent with Dr. Ames. Her brain had swollen, and until she regained consciousness, there was no telling whether she would have full administration of her faculties, at least that is what the many doctors had said.

  He knew that his Liv had strength; she’d survived living with her parents who treated her as though she didn’t exist and losing her sister at such a young age. But she’d come through it all stronger and with a determination that he’d rarely seen. This time, the reason his Liv was in this position had been entirely his fault.

  She had trusted him even before she’d spoken to him, and although he shared his home and his family with her, he wouldn’t allow himself to trust her when it mattered most. If he had told her about his nightmare, she wouldn’t have allowed herself to leave with a vampire who had been sent to kill her. She could’ve screamed for him or one of the assassins.

  Even as he thought about it, time and time again, he knew that she would’ve never allowed Seth to be harmed. The vampire who he’d come to know as Kane had mentioned that he used her feelings for the kid, and she hadn’t hesitated one second to take his place.

  Kane had explained to Ghost and the team that Dr. Ames had lost everything the night Liv had discovered his dirty little secret, and as time grew, his mind had grown unstable as well. Kane’s human mate, Allison, had been taken the day after Liv had disappeared. Kane had gone in for several interviews over the previous few months with Dr. Ames, who had represented himself as CEO of Dark Company and learned of his connection to the human when he had listed her as his spouse. The anguish in the other vampire’s eyes was reflected in his own, but for now, he still had Liv in his life. Despite his rage at the situation, he couldn’t blame anyone but himself for her kidnapping and suffering. Kane had been desperate to get his wife back, and Kai couldn’t fault him for it.

  As soon as they arrived at the warehouse, Kane knew that Dr. Ames had other plans for Liv. Kane admitted to breaking her finger the first time, but he couldn’t stomach any more and retreated. But the doctor hadn’t cared; he wanted his revenge and quickly forgot about him. The vampire watched in horror as the doctor twisted her right arm, breaking the bone easily. The doctor wasn’t satisfied with breaking her bones, and that was when the blows to her head started. The doctor pretended to ask questions, knowing that she wouldn’t answer him, yet still became frustrated when she refused to speak, and that is when he plunged a knife in her side. Kane had stepped forward then, wanting to prevent her from dying, and that was the moment Liv drugged him, plunging the needle into his thigh and pressing down. He’d woken up in the hospital, handcuffed to the bed, with armed guards standing over him.

  Kai had seen Kane after he’d been told that his mate had been found, deceased, and as he looked at him, he became aware that grief and loss could manifest as physical pain. Each time he spoke with Kane, the vampire’s eyes were dull, lifeless. The last time, Kane had come to visit Liv; he sat across the bed and locked eyes with Kai.

  “I asked her if she was your mate, and she told me that she didn’t know. Is she?” Kane asked.

  His question left him with a feeling of desperation that he couldn’t shake. “Yes,” he choked out.

  Kai knew then he couldn’t lose Liv, couldn’t watch her die. As he sat alone, he flinched as he brushed his fingers gently over her face, careful to avoid the sutures and swelling that had recently started to lessen. He began to talk randomly.

  “I miss you, love. I didn’t realize how much I missed our conversations, our fights, until you had been taken from me. I almost lost my mind when you’d disappeared, and I had to depend on my team to get me to the warehouse. I couldn’t think straight, and for moments at a time, I thought that I might have lost my sanity. When we reached you, instead of waiting for a signal from the team, I breached first after watching him strike you. The moment I spotted you on the chair, I would have sacrificed my life to save yours. I never wanted this. I should have protected you, watched over you more, helped you when you asked. I hate myself for what I said to you, how I made you cry.”

  Silence met his confession, and for several moments, he listened to her steady heartbeat in the quiet room. He hadn’t heard Ghost walk in the room, but when the man put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, he tensed at the shifter’s demeanor.

  “I’ve spoken to her team of doctors. Her wounds are healing as expected, including her broken bones and the piercing wound on her side, but she’s not responding to any stimuli. Her brain waves are strong, and she’s physically responding, but because she hasn’t woken, it leads them to believe that she’s given up,” Ghost said.

  Instead of listening to the meaning of Ghost’s words, Kai recalled asking Kane about what it felt when he first met his mate, and noticed the vampire’s face relaxed for the first time since they’d met.

  “She’d become an obsession from the moment I spotted her. We had been together for two years, and she wanted me to change her, but I thought it would cause her too much pain, so I kept putting it off. I don’t really understand why, but I did. She could have taken care of herself if I turned her, and I regret not listening to her, not trusting her enough to turn her. She’s dead because of me, and I will forever live with that fact,” Kane had said.

  His mind snapped back to the present and he glanced at his boss. “I can’t allow her to die. I’ve been thinking about changing her, and because she’s in a coma and gaining strength every day, she’ll be able to convert without the pain.”

  “Is that what she wants?” Ghost asked.

  Again, guilt swamped Kai because he’d never asked her, or even contemplated what would happen in the extreme case that she could be captured and hurt. His ego wouldn’t allow him to think that anyone would get past him to kidnap her. And yet she lay there in the hospital bed, unconscious, while her life slipped from her, as he tried to figure out what he thought was best for her.

  “I don’t know, but I can’t let her die.” His voice cracked on the last word.

  “Have you really thought it through? What if she is angry that you changed her, without allowing her to wake up and make the decision for herself? I’ve heard from Reaper and Hunter what happened in the hours before she was kidnapped. What if she wakes up and remembers what transpired? She thought that you rejected her because she had completed her research, and your actions didn’t reinforce that you wanted her in your life. If you don’t want her, whether she’s changed or not, then it would be best to wait and see,” Ghost finished.

  While Kai grasped her hand in his, he turned toward his boss and friend, and admitted the truth.

  “I can’t live without her. It’s not only because she’s my mate. It’s because she’s a part of me. When I found her missing, something inside me ceased to exist because I allowed her to be taken from me. I haven’t been able to breathe since the moment I opened the basement door to find her missing, and I know, in my soul, that I exist because of her.” Kai paused as he gathered his strength for his next words. “And if I change her and she doesn’t want me any longer, then, I’ll do what’s right for her and let her…go.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Olivia

  Muted sounds and voices that drifted rhythmically in and out of her mind gave way to pure consciousness. When Liv blinked open her eyes, she thought she was completely alone in a hospital room, and she couldn’t remember how she arrived here.

  Closing her eyes for a moment, she thought back to what she last remembered, and the memories flowed over her all at once. They had used Seth to get to her, but the vampire didn’t want to hurt her. The doctor did. He enjoyed each strike, slap, and punch, as if hurting her brought him happiness, but she shut down her mind, allowing frequent thoughts of Kai to intercede, the hurt of his rejection sometimes more painful than the blows to her already weakened body.

  Reaper, Jade, and the
others warned her that vampires were loners. The few that they’d known had never found a mate, human or otherwise. She hadn’t given much thought to whether Kai would choose her to be his mate, but she thought that she might have meant something to him. As she replayed their last conversation over and over, there was a finality about it that stuck with her. His anger had taken her by surprise, but it allowed her to understand that in his way, Kai cared for her.

  But not enough to continue a relationship with her. He hadn’t been lying when he told her that his mark, along with their relationship, was temporary.

  And because they had figured out who wanted to kill her and why, she had no reason to continue her affiliation with the assassins or Kai.

  She thought that she might be arrested for killing Dr. Ames, and although the action she’d taken was to protect those she had come to care for, it had also left her confused and disgusted with herself.

  The man had killed the acknowledged mate of the vampire and rage had overwhelmed her, giving her the adrenaline she needed to plunge the fatal liquid into his veins. Whatever happened couldn’t bring back the woman who had been killed, but logic flew out the window as pain and heartbreak led her to act; whatever her consequences, she would deal with them.

  In the time she had gotten to know Kai, she had come to see him as a large part of her happiness. Out of place in most situations and not fitting in because of her intelligence and really her choice, she had forgotten that she was more comfortable alone than with people. But for the first time she had found herself in a place where she knew what happiness and contentment felt like.

  She had held onto it with all her strength because her emotions had become involved. Not only for Kai, but for the shifters and vampires she could call friends. Disregarding her need to analyze every movement or word, she allowed herself to relax and enjoy the time she had spent with them.