by Lisa Childs
“You don’t have a choice,” he pointed out. “If you don’t turn into one of them, they’ll kill you.”
“I don’t have a choice?”
He wanted to offer her one. His heart ached with the overwhelming desire to ask her to become his mate. But he would be asking her to give up everything for a future he wasn’t certain of.
Reagan had silver bullets. If it had been him instead of Kate stepping from the shadows, he could have shot Warrick—could have killed him just as he had their father.
How could Warrick ask her to become his mate when he might not be around?
He couldn’t leave her as Reagan had left Sylvia alone with strangers. And because she had betrayed him, Sylvia was truly alone; the pack would not accept her.
They might not accept Kate, either, if they knew he had willingly given up his life to protect her. Kate would be safer in the Secret Vampire Society anyway; she already had friends in it.
And feeling as he did about her, her future and her safety mattered more to him than his own. He’d already put her in danger because he’d been too selfish to fight his attraction to her.
Now he had to do what was best for her.
“No, you don’t have a choice,” he forced himself to reply even though his heart constricted with each word. “I think you would be happiest as a vampire.”
Her voice sounded odd—almost hollow—when she asked, “Really?”
“You’ll be immortal,” he reminded her. And knowing that would give him peace.
“Yeah,” she said with another sigh, “and people would literally kill to live forever.”
“They would,” he agreed. And probably many of them had.
Was that any kind of family for Kate? Would she be safer in the pack? Being Kate, she would probably win them over—just as she had won him over.
She sucked in an audible breath. “I just wonder…”
“What?” he asked, barely resisting the urge to reach for her. He wanted—he needed—to touch her, to kiss her…
“Will I really be happy living forever…alone?”
“You’d have Paige and Ben and Sebastian.”
She nodded. “Of course. By becoming a member of the society, I will never lose my friends. But there’s more to life than friends. There’s you…”
Did she want to become his mate? But she had no idea what the pack was really like, had no idea of the responsibilities he would have.
He shook his head. “I have nothing to offer you.”
Her throat moved as she swallowed hard, and her eyes glistened, as if she was fighting back tears. His strong Kate? He had thought she needed no one. Could she need him as much as he needed her?
“I’m sorry…” If he only knew how everything would turn out…
If he only knew what kind of future he could give her, if he could give her one at all, then he would beg her to become his mate.
She shook her head. “No, it’s okay. I get it. What’s happened between us… It didn’t mean anything to you.”
“It didn’t mean anything?” he repeated. “It meant…” Everything. But if he told her that, she might wait for him—and what if he didn’t make it? Then the Secret Vampire Society’s offer for her to become one of them might expire and they would kill her.
“Nothing,” she finished for him when he didn’t. She lifted a trembling hand to her face and pushed her hair off it. Then pride lifted her chin.
He fisted his hands to keep them from reaching for her, from dragging her into his arms and never letting her go. But he had to make her leave before his uncle came back with Sylvia.
Uncle Stefan couldn’t discover that Kate had learned about the pack; he couldn’t learn that she had silver bullets loaded in her gun. Or she wouldn’t be in danger from just the secret society.
He choked down the emotion strangling him and told her, “There’s no reason for you to stay, Kate.”
She jerked her head in a sharp nod. “I appreciate your honesty. It’s better to know the truth. Now I know what my options are.” She turned and walked out with her head held high and her back rigidly straight.
She was proud. So proud that she would never give him another chance—should he survive a silver bullet. When she was gone, she was gone to him forever.
Chapter 15
She was gone. He didn’t need to step inside the cabin to confirm it. He didn’t feel her there anymore. And if he emerged from the shadows of the woods, he might be seen. It would all be over then. For him.
For Warrick.
For Sylvia.
It was probably already over for the human detective; the vampires would have already decided her fate.
Had someone decided Sylvia’s? Or had she decided her own? His heart beat furiously, the blood pumped so fast and violently through his veins. He wanted to track her down—wanted to make sure she was safe.
But if she’d escaped the locked cabin—if she’d made it away from the pack, she would be safer on her own than she would have been with him.
She was gone. He hoped it was a good thing.
*
Kate couldn’t stop shaking, and it had nothing to do with the cold night air. The sun had just disappeared with dusk. Shadows grew longer and darker. This area of the city had other buildings like the bank that were abandoned due to the economy. So there was no else walking the streets with Kate, or even driving along them.
Perhaps she should have driven, but she had needed the walk to build up her courage to talk to Warrick, to tell him that she loved him and wanted to spend her life with him.
She would have gladly given up immortality and her friends for love. His love.
But he hadn’t offered it.
Thank God she hadn’t actually professed her love. She would have felt even more the fool than she did now.
Making love with her had obviously meant nothing to him. She meant nothing to him. But then why had he always seemed so concerned about her safety? Why had he been so determined to protect her if he didn’t care?
Did he think he was doing that now? Was he somehow protecting her by letting her go?
“Warrick,” she whispered as hope lightened the heaviness of her heart. Maybe he did care about her. She stopped walking, wondering if she should turn back.
A sound of shoes scraping across cement caught her attention. She wasn’t alone.
Had he changed his mind and come after her? As hope filled her, she whirled around. But no one stepped from the shadows, and an eerie silence fell.
“Warrick?” she called out. “Is that you?” But she already knew it wasn’t. He wouldn’t try to scare her; he wasn’t that cruel. But hadn’t he just been cruel if he’d lied about his feelings for her?
Tears threatened again, but just as she had back at the vault, she blinked them away. She wasn’t a weeper; she was a fighter. So when she turned back around and started walking, she listened carefully for the sound of someone following her.
And when she heard the telltale scrape of shoes on the sidewalk, she reached for her gun—the one Reagan had loaded with silver bullets—and spun around with her weapon drawn and ready to fire.
“That won’t protect you from me,” Dwight said.
“The gun or the silver bullets?” she wondered. Could it have been him that night? Could he be a member of Warrick’s pack? They hadn’t seemed to know each other, though. So he would have had to belong to some other pack.
He lifted a blond brow with surprise and a question.
She nodded. “I know everyone’s secrets now.” And back when they’d been married, she had known Dwight was keeping secrets from her. Secrets that would have devastated her as much as his sudden fits of violence.
He uttered a ragged sigh of resignation. “Then you need to know that if you want to stop me, it would take a wooden stake.”
“So you are a member of the Secret Vampire Society.”
“Yes.”
Her head pounded with confusion. “But we had an outside
—daytime wedding. You couldn’t have always been…” One of the creatures of the underground.
How had she lived in Zantrax so long and not known about the creatures? Even Bernie—poor brutally murdered Bernie—had known.
And how in the hell had she been married to one and not known?
Her confusion turned to humiliation. She had always prided herself on being a good detective. But she’d failed to detect the biggest dangers in her city—in her life. Of course she hadn’t realized that those dangers were real.
“I wasn’t a vampire when we got married,” Dwight said.
Her mind eased a little. At least she hadn’t been a total fool.
He continued, “I got turned not long after we’d been married, though. It was during a late-night bust—something bit me.”
“I remember your being hurt. You acted so strangely after that. Then you started—literally—pushing me away. And down on the ground. And into walls.” He’d suddenly become so strong, too. Like Warrick. Superhumanly strong.
“I’m sorry, Kate. I never meant to hurt you, but I couldn’t tell you,” he explained. “Not without putting you in danger—the same danger that you’re in right now.”
She needed a wooden stake. But despite buying her time—to live—her friends hadn’t offered her any protection against the society.
“I know about the rules,” she said. And she, who had always loved law and order, had begun to despise rules.
“You don’t have much time,” he told her. “If too many society members find out that you’ve learned the secret, you’ll be killed.”
“I know. I have a decision to make.”
“What decision?” he asked. “You need to turn into a vampire. That’s the only way you can save your life. You can have immortal life then.”
She would rather have Warrick. If only she knew for certain why he had denied having feelings for her…
Because he really didn’t or because he had too many?
“I need to think about that,” she said, “before I rush into anything.”
“Kate, it’s simple,” he said as if she was a dim-witted idiot. “Death or life.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Is this about that damn werewolf?” he asked, his eyes growing hard and hot with jealousy. “Is he trying to make you join his pack?”
She finally understood Warrick’s impatience with all her questions. Perhaps detectives could be annoying. “That’s not any of your business,” she reminded him. “I’m not any of your business. So why were you following me?”
“Someone has to keep you safe, Kate. You’re not thinking clearly,” he said.
Actually, she was finally thinking clearly—because she knew her fears weren’t just crazy notions. They were reality. The werewolves. The vampires.
It was all real.
There were no more secrets. She was finally and fully aware.
“I’m thinking quite clearly,” she assured him.
“But you’re not taking care of yourself,” he said. Moving closer, he offered, “Let me take care of you.”
Goose bumps lifted on her skin, and she shivered at his obsessive tone and the strange gleam in his eyes. “I can take care of myself. I’ve been doing it for years.”
She’d even been doing it against them—werewolves and vampires—before she’d realized they existed.
“You can’t protect yourself against the society, Kate. You need to join them. Now. Let me change you, Kate.” He stepped closer, his arms reaching for her. “Let me be your husband again.”
She flinched and stepped back, not wanting him touching her. She cringed with disgust. “No. We were over years ago—the first time you struck me.”
“I had my reasons, Kate,” he insisted. “I did it so that you would leave. Then I didn’t have to worry about you finding out the secret.”
“You could have told me that you were cheating.” It wouldn’t have been a lie since she’d suspected he had been seeing someone else—always at night. She’d probably been a vampire, too. “I would have left then without the bruises and the scars.” Both physical and emotional.
His broad shoulders slumped slightly as if he actually had a conscience, as if he actually regretted how he’d treated her.
She doubted it—his sincerity ringing false to her. She doubted him.
“I’m sorry, Kate. Let me make it up to you. Let me spend eternity making it up to you.” He reached for her again.
She shrank back. “I don’t want to spend another minute with you—much less eternity. Leave me alone!” She definitely needed a wooden stake. But would she be strong enough to bury it deep in his chest—in his heart?
“I will never leave you, Kate. You just have to accept that you belong with me.”
“No…” She shook her head. She belonged with another man—the man she actually loved. But he didn’t love her back.
What Dwight felt for her wasn’t love, either, though. It was obsession.
She shivered in the cold night air and tightened her grasp on the gun. But even the silver bullets wouldn’t hurt him. She would just be wasting them if she fired her weapon at him. She needed to run.
But then she remembered Bernie’s warning about the humans that weren’t human that could fly. The vampires. They were the ones capable of flying.
She couldn’t outrun a man who could fly. But before she could even turn to run from him, he lunged at her. “Once I’ve changed you,” he said, “you’ll realize that we are meant to be together. Forever.”
If only a silver bullet could have stopped him…
*
He had to find her; he had to beg her forgiveness. His heart ached with the pain he had seen in her eyes, which had filled with tears. It killed Warrick that he had hurt her. Even if he didn’t survive the next skirmish with his brother, he had to tell her how he really felt. She deserved to know that he loved her—though she would probably be too proud to accept his love now.
Or to offer him forgiveness.
Had he turned the wrong way out of the building? He’d gone toward Club Underground, believing she would head back there to be changed. And he didn’t want her to change into a vampire thinking that it was her only option besides death.
He wanted to give her another option: love.
But she hadn’t been at the club, so now he rushed into her apartment, through that damn bedroom window she always left open. “Kate!”
A shadow hovered near the bed. Unmoving. Stoic. She had to be so mad at him, or worse, so hurt that she wouldn’t speak to him.
“Kate, I’m so sorry,” he said, his heart wrenching over how he’d hurt her. And the words he’d denied her, the feelings that had overwhelmed him spilled out, and he shouted, “I love you! I love you!”
“I love you, too, brother dear,” Reagan remarked as he stepped from the shadows.
“Son of a bitch!” He gasped for breath, shocked at his brother’s sudden appearance.
“Yeah, we both are sons of a bitch,” Reagan replied with a brief chuckle.
Their mother hadn’t stayed with Father or his pack; she hadn’t understood that whole mating for life promise she’d made. Kate would understand, though. But would she want to spend her life with him after he had acted like such an ass?
“I can’t deal with you right now,” Warrick said with a shake of his head. Why now? After days of looking for his brother, why had he showed up again when Warrick was worried only about Kate?
“You’re looking for that female detective,” Reagan surmised. “What have you done that you’re so sorry about?”
Ignoring his brother’s question, Warrick asked his own. “What the hell are you doing here? Are you looking for Kate, too?”
If Reagan had intended to hurt her, why had he given her silver bullets? Warrick had looked at them; they were real. She would be safe from his brother. From him…
It was the damn vampires she had to worry about—that Warrick had to worry about. Had they
already changed her?
“No. I’m looking for you,” Reagan replied. “I knew you’d come back to her.”
If only Kate had known that…but she thought she didn’t matter to him. He hated himself for letting her believe that.
“I—I can’t do this now,” Warrick said again. “I have to find Kate.”
“I gave her the silver bullets,” Reagan reminded him. “She’ll be able to protect herself.”
“Only from you. Why would you do that?” he asked. That question had been burning within him since Kate had revealed what Reagan had loaded into her gun. “Why would you give her silver bullets if you intend to hurt her?”
His brother shook his head and his voice was deep and full of sincerity when he vowed, “I would never hurt her. I can tell how much she means to you.”
“And I figured that’s why you wanted to hurt her,” Warrick said. “Because it would hurt me.”
Reagan sighed every bit as raggedly as Warrick had. “I never wanted to hurt you, either.” His eyes darkened with regret and guilt and he shook his head. “I can’t explain what happened with Sylvia…”
He didn’t need to explain because Warrick understood now. If Reagan had met Kate first, Warrick would have tried to steal her away. As much as he had loved his brother, he wouldn’t have been able to fight his feelings for that incredibly strong and sexy woman. Even as much as he loved Kate and wanted to protect her, he hadn’t been able to deny his feelings for her. At least not for very long…
Just long enough that he might have lost her forever.
For eternity…
“I can only apologize,” Reagan said with that sincerity that began to reach Warrick. It rang very true.
But he shook his head, refusing to accept. “I don’t want your apologies.”
“No, you want my life.” Reagan’s eyes gleamed in the darkness—with more regret but no fear.
“Your life for my honor,” Warrick reminded him. “You know the rule.” If he didn’t kill Reagan, he wouldn’t be able to rejoin the pack. A werewolf without honor wasn’t allowed to live among the pack—or at all.
Reagan nodded. “I know the rule. That’s why I killed Father.”
“I don’t understand.” How had killing their father been about Reagan’s honor? Then a horrible thought occurred to him. “Did he hurt Sylvia?”
