Destined for Shadows: Book 1 (Dark Destiny Series)

by Susan Illene

  She left the cabin, gently shutting the door behind her. Still, Bartol didn’t pop out of nowhere the way she kept expecting. Go figure that she’d tie herself to a man who would be even harder to get away from than Griff. The only difference was deep down she knew Bartol would never intentionally hurt her. In his eyes, she’d seen the remorse he’d felt at hurting her last night. She’d spent enough time examining his reaction since then to be reasonably certain he hadn’t done it intentionally.

  Cori rubbed at the bite wound. It was still sore, though it seemed to already be knitting back together. Was it supposed to heal that fast? One more question to ask Melena. Unlike Bartol, the sensor had been through all of this before and would have a lot more answers. Cori just had to catch her before she went to work.

  Climbing into the truck, she got the engine started. She was thankful it didn’t fight her the way some of her past vehicles had when they got cold. Of course, the truck did just get a lot of maintenance to help. She slowly pulled out of the drive and got on the highway. The road wasn’t too bad since the snow was light, but she took care not to go too fast.

  Along the way, she kept thinking of Bartol and the night before. Until that last part, he’d been absolutely amazing. There was no doubt left in her mind that the reclusive man had once been a world-renowned lover. He knew exactly how to touch a woman and bring her to the brink of madness with pleasure. There had been a couple of close calls where she’d almost lost him, but somehow she’d pulled him out of it. Cori was still amazed she’d managed to break through such a deep-rooted trauma. The feeling of gratification she’d gotten from that made her feel even closer when Bartol regained his composure and his masterful touch.

  But why did he have to ruin it with the bite?

  She’d been too out of her mind at the time to sense the change when his feral nature took over. It wasn’t until he’d sunk his fangs into her that she realized what was happening, and by that point she was too far gone to care. But then there were the memories. So many had flashed through her mind she could only latch onto a few, but she saw enough to get a good idea of what Bartol had been through in Purgatory and even experience some of his pain for herself. They’d relived some of the major moments in her life as well—to her horror. While she was frustrated with Bartol at the moment, she could hardly stay angry with a man who’d suffered as much as him. He’d reached out, and whether it was intentional or not, she’d responded in a way that connected them.

  Lost in thought, she didn’t notice the semi truck getting too close behind her until too late. It moved into the other lane and abruptly slammed into the corner of her vehicle. Her truck skidded sideways. Cori gripped the wheel, trying to keep control, but the road was too slick. Her vehicle veered off the highway and dove into the adjacent forest. No amount of hitting her breaks could stop the momentum. She bumped along, going over brush and saplings before crashing into a black cottonwood tree. Her body jerked against the seatbelt, the airbag slammed into her face, and glass flew everywhere. For a moment, she sat there in a daze, unable to move.

  Cori blinked in confusion at the cuts on her hands and arms, trying to figure out how she’d gotten there, but she couldn’t make sense of it. Then someone jerked her door open. Two middle-aged men who might have been a couple of truckers stood outside. One of them leaned forward with a syringe in his hand.

  “No!” she shouted.

  Cori tried to scramble away, but her seatbelt held her in place. She fumbled to unlatch it, unable to get her clumsy fingers to work before she felt a sharp prick in her neck. She jerked away, the seatbelt biting into her collarbone. A few moments later, her frantic movements be-came sluggish and her vision blurred, and then everything went black.

  Chapter 25

  Bartol

  Something was wrong.

  Bartol leaped out of his bed, searching for an unknown enemy. He found nothing. His gaze fell on the closed door to his room, and he rushed out of it to check on Cori. The blankets and pillow she’d used were set neatly on the side of the couch, but he could not find her. Panic rose inside of him. He checked the kitchen, bathroom, and finally the front lawn. She was nowhere to be found.

  He went back inside and did a second sweep, paying attention to the smaller details this time. Her bag and other belongings were still sitting in the corner where she normally kept them. Nothing was broken or out of place. His gaze caught on a small sheet of paper lying on the dining room table, and he rushed over to it. Scanning the note, some of the tension faded from him as he saw Cori had gone to Melena’s house. It was only a fifteen-minute drive, and she’d written that she left after dawn, so it shouldn’t have been too dangerous. Something still didn’t feel right, though.

  Bartol grabbed his cell phone and called Melena. “Is Cori there with you?”

  “Um, no. Should she be?” the sensor asked.

  “She was…upset last night. When I woke just now, I could not find her, but she left a note saying she went to your house not long ago.” He took a deep breath. “Perhaps she has not reached your home yet, but I feel in my gut something is wrong.”

  Melena was quiet for a moment. “Why was she upset?”

  “I may have…” He cleared his throat, wishing he could have kept this private for a little longer. “I may have marked her as my mate last night.”

  “You what?” Melena shrieked.

  Bartol pulled the phone from his ear to rub at it before responding. “I bit her. It was not something I planned or had any control over. It just happened.”

  Melena let out a string of curses. “Why can’t you nephilim ask first before you do that?”

  “I didn’t know what I was doing until too late.”

  “Of course not.” She sighed. “Did Cori accept the mark?”

  He paced the living room. “Yes.”

  “That tells me two things. One, she was likely coming to me because she was scared and confused about what happened. Two, if you’re feeling something is off, it’s probably the mate bond warning you.” Melena’s voice turned grave. “We have to find her now.”

  “I will begin checking the route to your home,” he said, pulling on clothes as fast as he could while holding a cell phone to his ear. Until that moment, he hadn’t realized he was still naked. It was just as well he didn’t have any neighbors to notice when he’d briefly flashed outside.

  “I’ll start from the other direction and meet you along the way. The roads are slick from the snow, so maybe she just had an accident.” Melena paused. “But I’ll bring Sable just in case we need her.”

  She meant in case Cori wasn’t where she was supposed to be. Bartol didn’t want to think about that or what it might mean. He had to find his mate. It was a driving need within him, and every instinct told him she was in deep trouble. Bartol might not have planned to bond with her, but she was his responsibility even before last night. He could not let her down.

  “I’ll see you soon.” He hung up.

  Putting his boots on as quickly as he could, along with a jacket since the humans would expect it, he flashed away. Bartol began along the highway not far from his home. He moved about fifty feet at a time, searching everywhere for any sign of Cori or her truck.

  It wasn’t until he was a little over halfway to Lucas and Melena’s house that he caught tracks from where a vehicle had gone off the road. The falling snow had started to cover it up, but not all the way. Bartol followed the trail into the woods, quickly finding Cori’s truck not far inside the tree line. She’d slammed it against a tree. He flashed to the driver’s side door to check inside, though he knew in his heart she would not be in there. His soul felt empty, as if she’d been cut off from him. He found a few drops of blood, but otherwise no sign of her.

  A vehicle pulled up close to the highway. Melena appeared on the trail a moment later, treading through the snow as fast as she could since it was deeper in the woods. Though it wouldn’t feel that cold to her either, she’d donned a blue Gore-Tex jacket and knit
cap. Next to her, Sable kept pace, sniffing the snow in her lynx form. The cat had fewer problems making her way to Bartol.

  “These prints couldn’t have been here more than an hour,” Melena said as she got closer.

  “I agree, assuming the snow has been falling at the same rate during that time.”

  She nodded. “It has. I was getting ready for work when you called, but I’ve been up since six this morning.”

  It was almost eight o’clock now. Bartol took Cori’s purse and the phone she’d left in the console. They wouldn’t be much help under the circumstances, but once they found her—and they would find her—she would want her things back.

  He stepped away from the door. “Tell your cat to sniff inside.”

  Sable didn’t need prompting. The moment Bartol was out of the way, she leaped into the truck and began running her nose over everything. Cats might not normally be used for such work, but Sable had been trained for it, and her nose was nearly as good as a dog’s. The difference being she understood human languages, and she had more complex thought processes than normal animals. If Bartol had enough gold set aside to give the fae, he would acquire a shape-shifter cat for Cori as well. Unfortunately, they were rare and quite costly.

  The cat whined when she hopped out of the vehicle and looked at Melena, swishing her tail. Bartol lifted a brow. “Any idea what that means?”

  “She’s trying to tell us Cori is hurt but alive—at least, when she left here.”

  Satisfied they got the message, Sable padded across the ground, following faint boot prints in the snow. There were two sets, but one was deeper. Bartol knew that had to be the man who carried Cori from the wreckage. The shape-shifter followed it all the way back to the highway not far from where Melena had parked. She let out a loud growl, then came running back to them.

  “They must have left in a car,” Bartol surmised, his gut churning because he knew they could have gotten Cori far from their present location by now.

  The sensor’s face darkened. “Griff had humans waiting for her to make a mistake like this and go off on her own. I was afraid this would happen eventually. We couldn’t monitor her every moment of the day no matter how hard we tried.”

  “I should have been,” Bartol said, running a hand through his hair. “This is my fault. I upset her last night, and then I gave her space when she asked for it. If I’d just kept her in the same room with me…”

  “Stop.” Melena held a hand up. “You didn’t do anything wrong, and if you’d forced her to stay close to you when she was hurt and confused, it would have caused other problems. None of us are perfect. We’ve done our best to keep her safe for nearly a month now, but we were bound to screw up at some point. Griff clearly had time and patience on his side.”

  Bartol knew she was right, but that didn’t make him feel any better. “We must find her.”

  “I’ll call Lucas.” She pulled out her phone. “He’s already at work with the nerou, but he won’t mind if I interrupt for this.”

  Bartol listened as she updated her mate about Cori’s disappearance.

  “I’m going to need your help if we want to get her back,” Melena said after explaining the situation.

  Lucas grunted. “I must finish with the morning training session, but after that I can meet you at the house. Tell Bartol I’ll send Tormod now to help if he wishes.”

  “This can’t wait,” Melena insisted. “Cori is in immediate danger, and everyone needs to help. In fact, I’m calling Derrick next so he can get his people on it, too.”

  Bartol appreciated her urgency, but he didn’t like standing around while she requested help. All he wanted to do was start flashing everywhere until he found Cori. Unfortunately, it would be futile without assistance from others with more useful abilities. There was simply too much ground for him to cover on his own and not enough time. They needed to find his mate before Griff rose from sleep later in the day. Bartol would take every bit of help he could get.

  “She is human,” Lucas said plaintively. “We have already done more for Cori than we ever have for any other mortal. As much as I like her, I cannot risk trouble with the archangels for her, which is what will happen if I leave the compound before I’ve finished for the day.”

  Melena clutched the phone. “Bartol marked her last night. They are mates now.”

  Silence. “You’re joking.”

  Bartol couldn’t stand there listening to the conversation any longer. He took the phone from the sensor and pressed it to his ear. “Lucas, she is my mate now and the only woman who brings me peace. Not only will you help me find Cori, but you will take every last one of those damn nerou you’ve got sitting around doing nothing useful and put them on the hunt as well. Fuck the archangels and all their asinine rules. We are getting my mate back if I have to fight a legion of the bastards and anyone else between here and the North Pole.”

  Melena stared at Bartol with rounded eyes.

  “Understood,” Lucas replied, clearing his throat. “Meet me at Derrick’s in one hour, and I will bring you the search party you’ve requested.”

  “Make it half an hour.” Bartol hung up.

  Chapter 26

  Cori

  It was so dark Cori couldn’t see anything around her. How much time had passed since she’d woken, she didn’t know, but it felt like hours. Her head throbbed, and a cut on her knuckles burned. As best as she could tell, she was underground. The floor she sat on was made of dirt, and when she’d scooted as far as the chain around her ankle would let her go, she’d bumped into a cool cement wall. The men who had grabbed her had handcuffed her wrists behind her back as well.

  Cori had been terrified when she’d first regained consciousness, but now she was just numb. The cold had seeped into her bones until she couldn’t think about anything except getting warm again—and when Griff might come for her. He had to be the one who’d arranged her abduction after all. It was only a matter of time before the sun dipped low enough on the horizon for him to wake up. He definitely wouldn’t wait to see his prize or start punishing her.

  She wished she could see so that she could at least form some kind of plan. It was hard to do much when she didn’t even know where the exit was from the room. Her abductors had been smart enough to empty her pockets, so she didn’t have anything to try picking the locks on her cuffs. It made her crazy to sit there as time ticked by slowly while she could do nothing to save herself. The only advantage Cori had was that she hadn’t been hurt too badly in the crash. Other than a headache, a sore neck, and a few cuts, she was alright. She just had to keep her wits about her and find a way out of this.

  The floorboard above her squeaked.

  She froze and stared upward, though she couldn’t make out anything. This was the first noise she’d heard since waking up. Hard footsteps against a wooden floor continued, moving to a part of the basement she couldn’t reach. A moment later, a door opened from a high point across the room. Soft light flooded inside, half blinding her. She had to squint her eyes for a moment before she could focus again. Cori could just make out the figure of a large, all too familiar man filling the doorway and a set of stairs leading downward.

  Terror filled her, and her mouth went dry. Memories of when Griff had controlled her every movement and beaten her if she dared defy him came to mind. Now she was back in his hands. Cori could take a few wild guesses what he might do as punishment for the trouble she’d caused him. Griff had always sworn he’d make her pay for leaving, and she’d added trying to kill him to his vindictive list. Like a fool, Cori had given him a chance for payback.

  He began moving downward in slow, halting steps. The creak of each stair sounded like a death knell. She started to shake despite her resolve to be brave. The cold and the fear were getting to her, and it was all Cori could do to hold still. Griff wanted her to be afraid. She couldn’t give that to him, or he would have truly won. He’d won far too many times already.

  “Congratulations,” she said, bitter
ly. “You got me.”

  A match struck and the scent of sulfur filled the room. A moment later, a lamp lit up the grungy basement. Griff carried it over to a small wooden table well out of her reach. It provided just enough light that she could make out his features and the hardness in his eyes.

  “You have many powerful friends. It wasn’t easy.”

  Cori lifted her chin. “They will find me.”

  Griff smiled slowly. “I hope they do. I’ve got plans for them as well.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, stiffening. “What could you possibly do against supernaturals who are a hundred times stronger than you with more powers?”

  He crouched a few feet away and stared at her for a long minute before answering. “If they’re so powerful, why haven’t they found me yet?”

  She’d wondered that more than once herself. No one should have been so good that Melena and the others couldn’t eventually track them down. She’d known her ex-husband was cunning and dangerous, but not enough to thwart her friends.

  “I don’t suppose you’re going to explain how you’ve hidden from us all this time?” she asked. Griff was an egomaniac, so there was a real chance he might tell her just to listen to his own voice.

  He chuckled. “I’ve got powerful friends, too.”

  “It still doesn’t make sense.” Cori shook her head. “I’ve got a friend who can detect…”

  “A sensor?” he questioned, lifting a brow.

  “Yeah.”

  “With angel blood in her.” He shook his index finger at Cori. “That was the key to how she couldn’t detect me, though I know she tried very hard. Came so close a couple of times I could see her blue eyes.”