But it didn't feel that way. It felt like, as a team, they were stronger than the forces hunting them, whether it was the shadows or an ancient Calydon destiny. She took another deep breath, and her mind began to slip into the fuzzy state of sleep. Are you making me go to sleep?
I'm helping you relax. Calydon healing power works best through sleep. It'll take only a few minutes. We're not too bad off. How are you going to save your kingdom?
I made a deal. Sunlight for the kingdom, he gets me as his… Concubine? Servant? Minion? He gets my loyalty.
Levi stiffened, but she was too tired to care. She hadn't slept well in so long, always desperately working on finding the solution to preserve her kingdom's safety before the next attack. She hadn't slept at all since the first sighting of the wolves several weeks ago. But in Levi's arms, she felt safe, safe enough to finally relax for a few minutes. He wouldn't let the shadows kill her, and Rohan's team was guarding her kingdom.
She had a moment, a brief, brief moment, to regroup, a short respite before she entered a hell from which she knew there would be no escape, a hell that had absolutely nothing to do with Levi.
What exactly is the deal? With who? Levi's question sounded distant, too far away to answer. Her mind was too tired, and she didn't want to think about what she'd promised to save her kingdom. Putting it into words would make it real, and she wasn't ready to do that. Not yet. Not now. So, instead, she simply sighed, and let him take her to sleep.
There would be time to fight the battle when she woke up.
Chapter 4
Maya would die.
It was the first thought Levi had when he awoke from his healing sleep, still wrapped tightly around Maya. If he completed all the steps of the sheva bond so she would be able to kill him, it would trigger the fate that would result in her death. Shit.
He knew that. He'd known it from the start, when he'd agreed to help her, but it was completely different now. Before, she'd been a stranger. Now that he knew her as a courageous woman who was willing to sacrifice herself to save others…the thought of her dying for him just didn't work anymore. But what other choice did he have? Allow a madman to live and victimize others? He couldn't do that. He couldn't live with any more deaths that he could prevent. But he also couldn't let her die.
Shit.
He ran his hand through her hair, letting the soft strands drift over his fingers...and he realized he could feel every detail of the touch. Sensation had returned to his fingers. Like silk, the softest spun threads, beyond what he'd ever felt. He lifted his hand and watched his fingers flex. They moved easily, fully healed again. He flexed his wrist, studying the way the bones and tendons slid beneath his skin, no longer crushed and broken from a century in shackles. His shoulders no longer ached, and it didn't hurt to breathe. Power seemed to hum through him, and he knew he was back at maximum capacity.
Was it simply the healing sleep, or was it something more? Was it because Maya ignited something with him, something that only she could touch? He suspected it was more than simply the healing sleep. How could it not be? She was his other half, bound to him on a metaphysical level that no one quite grasped, and now she was with him, merging her energy with his.
He wasn't going to deny it felt right as hell to have her in his arms, and to be feeling so alive that he could defeat any enemy, no matter what. He was back at full strength, the same as he was before he'd been chained up, but he was also totally different, mainly because he wasn't insane anymore...
But the moment he thought it, that insidious, ancient craving began to pulse through him. That need to feed upon a soul. That hunger that was never fully sated. The lethal instinct that had trapped him for so long. It was still there inside him, still hunting for prey.
"Shit!" How could it still be there? He set Maya aside and sat up, resting his forearms on his bent knees as he bowed his head, fighting to suppress it. But still it came, a ruthless compulsion to hunt and feed. It came hard and fast, as if it were trying to make up for a century of being dormant. It was that relentless need to kill that had made him such a ruthless assassin. After all that time in the cavern, the need had abated, bled away by the isolation.
He'd thought it was gone. It had merely been sleeping.
He leapt up and paced away from Maya, fisting his hands as he tried to focus. He'd suspected it would come back if he killed again, but he'd also thought that as long as he abstained, he'd be okay. He'd thought he was safe, at least for the moment.
"Levi?" Maya was right behind him, and he jumped, spinning around and putting distance between them. "What's wrong?" she asked.
He spread his hands, as if he could push her away. "You need to leave. Now. Distance yourself from me." Her hair was tousled from sleep, tumbling wildly around her shoulders. She looked sleepy, vulnerable, and sexy as hell and he wanted to drop to his knees before her and simply breathe in who she was. But instead, he walked away, turning his back on her as he moved several yards away.
"I can't leave. I need you." Her words were simple, straightforward, and unapologetic, making his gut twist.
He wanted to be that guy for her, the one who helped her when she had no one else to turn to, but not at the cost of her life. He gritted his teeth and kept his back toward her. "Don't you get it, Maya? I'm an assassin. The compulsion to hunt was trained into me, making it a part of my very soul. I have to kill. That's how he controlled me. He kept me locked up until the need became too strong, and then he'd give me a target. I was so crazed with the need to kill that I did it, every time. I never hesitated, and I never looked back. It was..." Shit. What a nightmare that life had been. "It was a constant cycle of insanity and death. I was a monster, and I didn't even care." Unable to resist, he turned slightly so he could see her face, needing to know if she judged him, even though he wanted her to be smart enough to see him for who he was.
She pushed her hair out of her face, frowning at him. "But you're not like that anymore."
"I thought I wasn't. But it's still there." Jesus. It was still there. "Without him to give me targets, I might hunt you." The thought chilled him to the bone. He'd never hurt an innocent, but he'd also always been given prey to target. What if he wasn't given an outlet? What would he do then? "I kill. It's what I do. It's what I have to do."
She walked up to him, unafraid, so boldly that both fear for her safety and admiration for her courage coursed through him, warring factions in a body already stained with so much violence that there was almost no space for anything else. "Levi." She put her hands on his chest, and the shock of her soft touch was a jolt to his system. "There are really nasty things hunting me. You'll need to kill them to keep me alive." She smiled. "You'll get your chance to do your hunting thing, so it's all good."
Something inside him seemed to ease at the feel of her touch, and despite his attempts to be heroic and keep her at a distance, he found himself putting his hands over hers, holding them in place. "If I kill anything," he said quietly, "I will lose what is left of my mind. It's like an addiction. It's a need that's always there, and once I have the smallest taste of it, I'm lost to it. It took me thirty years in that hellhole before I was sane again. I don't want to go there. I can't live like that again, but the need is there, clawing at me, every second." He needed her to understand what he was. "Maybe I should have stayed chained up. Maybe the man who locked me up was right that the cavern was the only safe place for me." The thought was grisly, but he couldn't lie to himself. The night that he'd been ambushed by pissed off commoners after he'd killed their leader, he'd been knocked out, taken underground, and deprived of the ability to hunt. For years he'd raged, until slowly, the need to kill had begun to fade, replaced by the first glimpses of sanity he'd had in a long time. Getting chained up had been his greatest gift, because it was that isolation that had given him his mind back.
Maybe he should have stayed there. Maybe he'd been wrong to escape. Maybe he'd been wrong all this time to think he could stay sane once he was out.
Maya studied his face, her beautiful, intelligent eyes searching his, her expression devoid of any fear or wariness. "How do you kill? With your weapons?" She touched his arm, her fingers brushing over the brands that had been locked down for so long.
He shook his head, but didn't move away from her touch. It just felt so amazing to feel her skin brush against his. He'd been without human contact for so long. Maya's touch made him feel like he was a human being, like his soul still existed somewhere in the depths of all the stains he'd poured into it over the centuries. "Through the skin. I absorb the life force of my victim. Silent and unseen, I suck the life out of them until they're nothing more than an empty physical shell." He didn't try to sugarcoat it. As much as it would break him to walk away from her, he couldn't lie to her about who he was. She deserved the truth.
Her eyebrows shot up, and she pulled her hand back from him, breaking physical contact. "What about your Calydon weapons?"
He shrugged casually, even though a part of him shriveled and died at her retreat. For his entire life, he'd lived in isolation, and he was fine with it, but Maya made him burn for connection with her. To be so close, and then have her retreat actually made his chest hurt.
"I don't kill with my axes," he said, trying to stay focused on the conversation, and not on how badly he wanted to bury himself against her. "And I don't kill by accident. You can touch me without being afraid." He hadn't meant to say it, as if he were trying to convince her to touch him, but the words had come on their own. No one had touched him voluntarily in his life, at least that he could recall, except to hurt him. Even if people hadn't known who he was, they'd sensed how dangerous he was, and they'd stayed away. A few women had been attracted to the danger, but their touches had been clinical and meaningless, only for the purpose of getting a night of hard sex. Maya was different, and it made him want more.
She glanced at his arms again, but didn't touch him. "If you did use your weapons to kill someone, would it trigger the old cravings?"
He felt like his blood was on fire, burning through him with the need to touch her. Was it because she was his sheva? He didn't think it was. She represented more than a mate to claim. She was the life force he'd been searching for, the energy that could sustain him forever, the one that would fill him with all he'd ever wanted to be. He was hungry for her, hungry to the depths of his soul, not as predator and prey, but as if a part of his own soul had gone missing, and she was the key to making him whole again. "No, using my weapons is just a path to doing what I need to do, which is feed."
She cocked her head, studying him thoughtfully. "So, if you defended me with your weapons, it wouldn't trigger it? You could murder that man you want to kill with your weapons, and you'd be fine? Is that what you're saying?"
He stared at her, processing her question. Slowly, he realized that she somehow believed there could be an easy solution to this. "There's no happy way out, Maya. I was locked up because there's no way to kill me, and no way to stop me. You're the only one who can kill me, if we were to bond completely. Even if I don't use my powers to kill someone, I can tell the need is building again. Killing someone will make it happen faster, but it's going to happen. I need you to kill me before it takes over." There. The truth was out. The ugly fucking truth. It was completely foreign to be standing here, being honest with someone, but with Maya, he had no other choice. He needed her to know him, to see him for who he was, to give her the truth no matter how ugly.
She stared at him. "Really?"
"Yeah."
"That's why you said yes to helping me? Because you planned to cement the sheva bond with me, and then have me kill you?" To his surprise, she didn't look horrified. She looked thoughtful.
He nodded. "Yeah."
"Huh." She walked past him, stopping just beside him, but facing out toward the woods, as if she were thinking. Her shoulder was so close to his that he could feel the heat from her body. "And if I killed you, then I'd kill myself, right?"
He balled his hands into fists. "I already said that won't happen—"
She turned back toward him, and her eyes were bright with determination. "There is only one thing that can save my kingdom from the shadows, and that's light. They're natural opposites."
He narrowed his eyes, studying her, suspecting that she was about to propose an idea he wasn't going to like. Yeah, he admired her bravery, and he appreciated the fact she was working her ass off to save the kingdom, but there were limits to what he wanted to hear. "So?"
"So, there's a man who is the heir of an ancient kingdom of sunlight. He's the one I bartered with. His sunlight for my kingdom, and he gets…" Something flickered in her eyes. Fear? "He gets me."
Levi's gut hardened, and his fingers instinctively wrapped around her wrist. "What exactly is your deal with him? You said you weren't engaged."
"No, not engaged. Under agreement to help my kingdom." She grimaced. "I owe him fealty. Not as queen, as a woman. Not marriage, because that would be mutual. It's one-sided, me to him for my lifetime." She met his gaze, and he saw in them something he didn't like: fear, the kind of deep, knowing fear that would haunt a man forever. "He's a bad man, Levi. He'll hurt me. I know that, but it's the only way to save my people. I owe them that. But if you and I bond after my kingdom gets his light, and I kill myself afterwards." She managed a smile. "Then I'm free from him."
"No." He tightened his grip on her wrist, his mind spinning with the number of things he didn't like about that plan. "If he's a bastard, he'll hurt your villagers, too. You realize that, don't you?"
She met his gaze, lifting her chin like the royalty she was. "He doesn't get my kingdom. He just gets me. There's a difference."
"If he marries you, he becomes your king."
She shook her head. "Not in my kingdom. We're not getting married, and even if we were, you can't marry into the throne. You have to inherit it, or be declared."
"And if you die? Who inherits, or will be declared?"
She stared at him. "I don't know. There isn't a succession plan. I always thought…I never thought it would come to this. I wasn't...I wasn't planning to die when I started this. I was going to just endure, but..." She sighed, and her shoulders sagged. "Honestly, Levi," she whispered, her voice trembling. "I am not sure I can survive him. I'm scared. Really scared. Dying with you might be better."
Hell. What kind of future was she giving herself? Eternal torture at the hands of a bastard, or death? Both options made him want to drag her against him, call out his axe, and cut down anyone who tried to harm her. But he could already tell that she didn't want to be rescued, not if it meant letting down her people. So, he tried the only tactic that he knew would get to her. "What if he takes over your kingdom?"
She was silent for a moment, and he saw the reality in her eyes. "Without him, they will all die. With his sunlight, they have a chance. It's up to them to save themselves after this."
"He's so bad that you're willing to die instead of endure him, yet you'll leave your kingdom in his hands?"
"It's not in his hands! He doesn't get it!"
"He'll get it. You know he will, if he wants it."
She stared at him, and then frustration rolled across her face. "What do you want me to do, Levi? Let the life be sucked from their bodies until they're nothing but shriveled husks, rotting away? What kind of life is that—" Her face suddenly paled. "Oh, my God. Is that what you do? Are you like them? Are you...a shadow?" She backed away from him. "Are you what killed my parents? And my sister? Is that why you were able to sense them in the cavern? Is that what you are?"
Levi caught her wrist before she could retreat. "I don't know what's hunting you, but I'm the only one of my kind that I know of. I've never preyed upon an innocent."
"How do you know? Didn't you say you lose your mind?"
The fear in her eyes seemed to ice right through his veins, and into his heart. After a lifetime of not caring what anyone thought, his brief exposure to Maya had changed everything
. She was the one person who'd ever seen him as someone other than a monster, and he couldn't lose it. As long as she saw him as worth trusting, he knew there was hope for him. Without that ray of hope she gave him, he had nothing to hang onto. "Don't," Levi said softly. "Don't do this to me."
Maya's eyes widened, and she stared at him.
For the longest moment, they simply stood there. Their only physical connection was his hand around her wrist. His grip was tight, but not so tight she couldn't break it, and they both knew it. And yet, she didn't pull away.
He felt like she was holding his world in her hands. His very soul hung precariously, awaiting her words, and his only chance at hope was in her control. He was teetering on the razor-thin edge of sanity, and he had no tools to defend against the dark needs humming away inside him. Maya was his light, the one thing that seemed to ignite his humanity. "I need you," he said, his voice roughened with emotion. "Despite everything I said earlier, I need you to believe in me."
Still, she didn't move, and he felt hope crumbling. The beast within him laughed, a bitter, satisfied laugh of triumph, and he felt the darkness swell within—
Her expression shifted into shock. "I feel that," she said. "I feel it inside you. It's…evil. It's like…death itself."
He shrugged. "It's not evil. It's just instinct. A need to kill." Even as he spoke, he heard that distant thundering sound, the one that felt like a thousand snare drums in the distance, getting closer with each second, even though it was inside his own head. Crap. It was the sound of the hunt amassing within him—
"No!" Maya suddenly flung herself at him.
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