Blood Wolf Dawning

by Rhyannon Byrd

  He wasn’t surprised they disagreed on that particular point. Hell, most of the time they hardly agreed on anything. But the one thing they were both fully prepared to do was protect Sayre. At any cost.

  Tired of letting this son of a bitch stand between him and his woman, Cian released his own lethal set of fangs, his long Lycan claws piercing through the tips of his fingers as he charged Aedan in a blur of speed. He managed to get in a solid strike across the bastard’s ribs before Aedan backhanded him with so much power he was surprised his head hadn’t snapped off, the hot rush of blood filling his mouth telling him that his lip had been smashed. Shaking it off, Cian rolled his head over his shoulders and narrowed his gaze, just as a deep, guttural growl surged up from his chest. Aedan might have the cold, calculating hatred of a vampire, but Cian had the scorching, primitive fury of his beast, and the ruthless animal was seriously pissed that their mate had been put in danger.

  In the next second, Aedan flew at him in a flurry of strikes, his talons slicing across the front of Cian’s shirt, shredding the cotton but only grazing his skin as he twisted to the side. He wasn’t hurt badly—it was only a scratch—but Sayre reacted as if he’d been gutted. Surging to her feet, her face pale and her eyes wide with fear, she flung her arms forward, throwing up one of those crackling, blinding walls of energy between him and the vampire.

  But Cian wasn’t going to let it hold him back.

  “Sayre, stay out of this!” he roared, gritting his teeth as he pushed into the light, his skin sizzling from the searing burn. But he didn’t back down, determined to reach his brother and inflict as much damage as he could.

  When he’d made it through the wall, stalking toward Aedan—who was watching the whole thing with another one of those chilling, maniacal smiles—Cian pulled off the tattered remnants of his shirt and tossed them on the ground. “Come on, you sick bastard. You want blood?” he snarled, knowing damn well that his eyes were turning the same haunting shade as his brother’s, his rage fueling his bloodlust. “Then come and get it.”

  “Not today, I’m afraid,” Aedan murmured, pushing his hands in his front pockets as if they weren’t in the middle of a vicious fight to the death. “Like I said before, brother, this is proving so much more entertaining than I’d hoped. And I was already aiming high, after spying on your dreams these past few months.”

  He froze, unable to believe what he’d just heard. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Aedan laughed low in his throat, and took a step closer, though nearly ten yards still separated them. When Sayre had thrown up her light, his brother had scrambled away like a frightened cat. But now he was all cold, malevolent confidence. Lifting his brows, he said, “Think about it, Cian. How else do you think I learned about her after all this time?”

  “You saw my dreams of her?” he growled, flexing his deadly claws at his sides.

  Aedan smirked as he shook his head. “You’re jealous I saw you thrusting like an animal between those silky thighs? That doesn’t sound like you, brother. I can remember a time when you liked screwing your meals while others watched. It made you hotter.”

  He flinched and cut a quick look toward Sayre, who was still standing by the fallen trunk as she stared at his brother with complete focus, her expression impossible to read.

  When Cian returned his attention to Aedan, he found the bastard staring right back at her. “You’d probably faint if I told you what my precious brother dreams about doing to you, little witch. Some of it was so depraved, I couldn’t get enough of watching, just like a voyeur.” His head cocked at an eerie angle, as if his neck wasn’t attached correctly. “Though you’ve probably been having those dreams, too. It’s because the two of you were quickening for one another. That happens when life mates spend too much time apart, at too great a distance.”

  “How the hell would you know?” Cian demanded, wanting to rip out the bastard’s eyes so he couldn’t look at her that way. As if he was seeing her like she’d been in so many of his dreams, passionate and wild and hungry for pleasure.

  “I’m a hunter, brother, and hunters study their prey. I’ve been learning everything I could possibly need to know about your doglike nature for years.” He finally tore his attention away from Sayre, and slid Cian a gloating look. “Although, it wasn’t the sex dreams that truly caught my attention. They were just the cherry on the top of my favorite part. The thing that reached out across the world through our link and clasped on to me, digging its way into my mind.”

  He swallowed, knowing exactly what Aedan was talking about.

  “You see, Sayre, Cian’s been dreaming about more than just nailing you to every available surface he can find. He’s been having bad, bad dreams. And it’s funny, the things you can tell about a person’s feelings, when they’re afraid. You see what they care about most in those moments. What means the most to them. Like when a fire alarm goes off, who does the husband run to first, his wife or his kids?”

  Cian bared his fangs. “Shut the fuck up,” he snapped.

  Ignoring him, Aedan went on. “And because Cian and I shared so many...meals together,” he explained with an evil smile, “we formed a connection. One that bound us in a way others will never understand. I’m sure he would feel my fears, if I had any. But I can assure that I feel his. I feel them as if they were my own. And do you know what most people fear for the most? The things that they lo—”

  “That’s enough!” he roared, cutting the bastard off.

  Aedan threw back his head and laughed. “Careful now,” he chided. “You’re giving yourself away, brother.”

  Catching the scent of the others in the air, he said, “My friends are almost here, Aedan. You’re powerful, but you’re also massively outnumbered.”

  “And you can’t hide here with your animal pals forever. Our time is coming, Cian, whether you want it to or not.”

  “I’m an animal, too, Aedan.”

  The vampire’s crimson eyes burned with madness. “Which is why I’ll win. Vamp trumps your noble beast, brother. Always.”

  Voice thick with frustration, he asked, “Why can’t you leave me be and get on with your own damn life?”

  “Because I’m lonely? Because this is fun?” Aedan’s eyes narrowed, a guttural tone to his own deep voice that sounded like tightly coiled rage. “Because you deserve it for betraying me? Do I really need a reason, brother mine?”

  His jaw tightened. “You won’t win this.”

  “You’re suffering, Cian. You look as if you’re living in the depths of Hell.” A slow smile twisted his thin lips. “That means I’m already winning.”

  “It doesn’t mean jack shit.”

  In a flash of movement, Aedan was suddenly at his side, his cold mouth pressed close to Cian’s ear. “And just in case you were getting any ideas,” he whispered, “killing yourself won’t save her. It’ll just mean I don’t have to go through you to get to her. But she’s still mine, even if you’re rotting in the ground.”

  In the next moment, the Runners and the mercs, along with Jillian, caught up to them and burst into the clearing, and Aedan disappeared in a blur of speed that the others probably hadn’t even caught.

  “Where is he?” Brody demanded, his fangs gleaming beneath the curve of his upper lip. His massive body vibrated with rage, and Cian felt the sharp slice of guilt tear through him. He hated that he was putting his friends through this. Hated that he couldn’t reach Aedan. Hated every part of it. Every miserable piece of this screwed-up situation.

  And beneath it all, there was the sickening guilt that this was all his fault. For starting Aedan on this path. For not ending him when he’d first realized what his brother was capable of, after his father had refused to take action. For the niggling fear that he hadn’t tried hard enough to find Aedan these past five years. The fear that there was a part of him that hadn’t wante
d to find Aedan badly enough, because he hadn’t wanted to see his brother die. A part that had privately been relieved he couldn’t go home to Sayre, knowing where that path would lead, too frightened of the things the little witch made him feel. Of how much stronger those feelings would be now that she was a young woman, and no longer untouchable.

  Christ, had he ever wanted to touch anything as desperately as he wanted to touch Sayre Murphy? Ever needed anyone as badly, or simply craved their happiness?

  The answer was as simple as it was obvious.

  Not. Even. Close.

  Chapter 14

  Shoving away from Jillian, who had thrown her arms around her in relief, Sayre suddenly turned and took off, running as hard and as fast as she could back toward the Alley. Tears ran unchecked down her face, the enormity of the danger Cian had faced making it difficult to stand, much less move at this speed. But she made her way back to the cabin as quickly as possible. She was too raw to talk things over with anyone, including her sister, and she knew Jillian would try.

  There’d been moments in her life when her “sight” had proven incredibly useful—but only for her loved ones. Never for herself. Never when she’d needed it, and God, could she have used it now. Being blindsided by an undeniable truth when she’d watched Cian fighting his brother had left her reeling. Left the ground shaking beneath her feet in a way that made it difficult to breathe...to think. All she could do was feel, seething in a maelstrom of emotion, the tears coming harder, faster, until she was sobbing with them, every part of her body trembling, breaking apart.

  In that moment, when she’d thought he might actually die out there in that clearing, she’d realized that she didn’t need to fear she was falling too hard and too fast for him, because it had already happened. Her heart was already his, irrevocably and completely, and that scared her in a way that Aedan Hennessey never could.

  Had she known, when she’d agreed to come back to the Alley with Cian, that this was where her need would lead her? To loving him?

  Whatever the answer, it no longer mattered. She was already at the point where it was too far to turn back, because he’d earned it. He’d earned her heart—every scared, agitated cell of it—when he’d faced off against that monster to protect her.

  Now she just had to decide what she was going to do about it.

  “You bastard!” she screamed only seconds later, when he shoved the bedroom door open, breaking the lock with ridiculous ease, apparently unwilling to let anything come between them—except himself. Fired with savage, visceral frustration, she picked up one of the heavy books from an ugly green bookshelf and hurled it at his head with surprising strength. “You son of a bitch!”

  He’d ducked to avoid the book, but the breath whooshed out of him when she nailed him in the stomach with a wooden bookend. “I get that you’re angry,” he grunted, “but I need to know if you’re all right. Are you okay?”

  “You’re damned right I’m angry,” she snapped, her hair lifting slightly from her shoulders as the air between them began to crackle.

  “You have every right to be. It’s my fault he got near you.”

  She shuddered, recalling the sickening fear that had burst inside her the instant she’d set eyes on Aedan. But she wasn’t going to let him distract her so easily. “I’m not angry about him coming after me. Yeah, it sucked. But that’s not why I’m livid. I’m pissed because of what you did!”

  His head jerked back as if her words had clipped him on the chin. “What?”

  “Why would you do that? Why would you just...just try to throw your life away like that? You saw what he was like! How did you expect to fight him and come out alive? I could have watched you die out there!”

  He sighed, his shoulders dropping as he took a step toward her. “Sayre.”

  The way he was suddenly looking at her, as if she were the most precious thing in the world, only made her cry harder. His bright, long-lashed eyes were still painfully beautiful, even when she’d seen them tinged with crimson. So unlike his brother’s. Aedan’s eyes had resonated with pure evil, especially when seen within a face that was so coldly devoid of emotion. She shuddered again as she relived the memory of Cian taunting that monster to fight him, and shouted, “No! Don’t come any closer. I...I’m liable to punch you if you do.”

  He looked stricken to see her so upset, his breath leaving his lungs in an audible rush. “I wasn’t trying to die out there, Sayre. I’ll do whatever it takes to protect you, but I’m not going to throw myself on a fucking sword. If I thought it would help, then yeah, I’d be tempted. I’d be an asshole if I felt any differently, because I’m the one who got you into this mess. But it wouldn’t stop him. It would just leave you alone to deal with him without me, and I can’t let that happen.”

  Trembling, she said, “No matter how this ends, it will be bad for you, Cian.”

  “And that’s what I deserve,” he growled, his chest heaving as he fisted his hands at his sides, his claws and fangs already retracted.

  But his chest and arms were still streaked with crimson smears of blood, and she knew, she goddamn knew, how close he could have come to dying out there.

  “Why d-did you do this?” she sobbed, shaking so badly her teeth were chattering. “Why d-did you come back? I’m not yours. You haven’t claimed m-me, and you never will. So why didn’t you just k-keep screwing your way around the world and let him kill me?”

  He took a harsh breath, his brow furrowing as he slid his gaze to the side. “I haven’t.”

  “You haven’t what?” she snapped, sniping at him like a child in a fit of temper.

  He shoved a hand back through his hair and cursed under his breath. “I haven’t...been...with anyone. Like that.”

  “What?”

  He pulled in another deep breath, and slowly brought his hooded gaze back to hers. She jolted from the look burning in those molten eyes, feeling like she’d just been shoved hard in the chest, though no one had laid a hand on her. “I haven’t been with another woman, Sayre. Not since I left you.”

  She swallowed so hard that it hurt. “Cian, that...that doesn’t even make any sense.”

  “You think I don’t know that? I mean, I know I can’t have you. Not like that. And I don’t want to go through the rest of my life like this. But from the moment I walked away from you, I haven’t even seen other women. Hell, before I even left, it’d been...weeks since I’d taken anyone to my bed.”

  “You still slept with them,” she said unsteadily, “after...after we realized what we were. What we are...”

  “I know.” He exhaled a ragged breath and grimaced like a man in physical pain. “I tried like hell to ignore it, Sayre. To prove I didn’t need you. That I could keep going the way I always have, doing the same things to cope.”

  “To cope?”

  He shook his head as he looked away. “Never mind.”

  “No! No more freaking secrets. Or I walk.”

  “Fine. It was how I coped with the bloodlust,” he growled, pacing away from her. His heavy boots were loud against the bedroom’s hardwood floor, his hard-edged muscles rippling with power beneath his bloodstained skin. “The constant fucking—it was either that or keep feeding the monster inside me and stop aging. And I didn’t want that. I wanted to live here, with the others. So I screwed my way through the pack and kept that twisted part of me at bay as best as I could.”

  “And after you left?” she whispered, her thoughts reeling so rapidly she had to reach out and brace her hand against the bookshelf.

  “I’ve been feeding on supplies of human blood that I purchase on the black market. It’s why I don’t look as though I’ve aged, because I haven’t. Not since I came back for you.”

  “And the blood worked?”

  “When I’ve needed it,” he muttered as he lifted one of his powerful ar
ms and rubbed the back of his neck, the position causing his beautiful biceps to bulge. “For the most part, I’ve been...I don’t know. Dead inside. I’ve felt nothing.” He flicked her a shuttered look from beneath his lashes. “Nothing but the need for you.”

  She wanted to ask how he dealt with that need without going crazy, then blushed as she figured she already knew the answer, considering how she’d had to take matters into her own hands over the years. Not that her self-made orgasms were anything to brag about, compared to how Cian could make her feel. As if he’d read her mind, he arched one of those dark brows as he looked at her, and the corner of his grim mouth actually twitched.

  Needing to put the conversation onto a different subject, before she embarrassed herself, she blurted, “I’m sorry for what Jillian did last night. She finally fessed up before I snuck away today. I honestly wasn’t running. I just...I needed some time to myself to think, and then I...well, I ran into your brother.”

  He stopped pacing and took a step closer to her. “Promise me you won’t do that again, Sayre.”

  “Yes, of course. I understand now. I...I don’t think I really did before,” she admitted in a nervous rush, wetting her lips. “Aside from those humans you killed at the cabin, I guess the threat didn’t feel as real to me as it should have. But it does now.”

  His brows lowered over his sharp, steely gaze, and he took another step closer to where she stood. “And the thing with Jillian? You’re not angry...about your powers?”

  “Cian, that’s my problem, not yours. And, anyway, I have enough things to be pissed at you about without throwing that on there.”

  He grimaced, until he caught the way she was smirking at him. “Smart-ass.”

  “In all honesty, I already suspected you were the reason.”

  He looked surprised. “You did?”

  Nodding, she said, “I started feeling different the morning after you left. And from that point on, each day got a little worse. I’d hoped I was wrong, but I think that deep down, I always knew the truth.”