by Honor James
Paranormal Protection Unit 9
The Wraith’s Mate
Davyn had a good life, a job he loved, and a group of men and women he actually called friends. Not that he liked them all the time, some were just plain annoying. But he was missing a very important part of his life, a bond-mate. Having watched many of his friends find their own, all he wants is to know that kind of love and inner peace.
Dahlia had it all—a good home, loving parents, and a job. Not a great job, but it was a job. Now if she can get her boss to stop being such a sleaze! Then her very world rolls and rumbles, literally. One minute she was on her feet, and the next a sexy doctor was leaning over her, reassuring her everything would be just fine.
A whirlwind romance, heartache, and there's only one place they want to be—in each other’s arms. The cosmos throws them back together for one last go. Can they make it work?
Genre: Contemporary, Paranormal
Length: 46,629 words
THE WRAITH’S MATE
Paranormal Protection Unit 9
Honor James
EROTIC ROMANCE
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Erotic Romance
THE WRAITH’S MATE
Copyright © 2013 by Honor James
E-book ISBN: 978-1-62242-437-5
First E-book Publication: May 2013
Cover design by Viola Estrella
All cover art and logo copyright © 2013 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
Letter to Readers
Dear Readers,
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DEDICATION
I would like to dedicate this book to my family. Thank you all for sticking by me, even during my rambling messes and nearly constant writing when an idea strikes me.
I also dedicate this book to my fans. Without you I am just another woman with a dream. Thank you for being a part of my life and taking this journey with me.
THE WRAITH’S MATE
Paranormal Protection Unit 9
HONOR JAMES
Copyright © 2013
Chapter One
Growing up, he’d always known he was different from others. He’d known even as a small child that his mother and father were both different. His father was as he was, and his mother, well, she was something else entirely. The “what,” though, eluded him for the longest time especially as neither would speak of it to him, not even in the vaguest of terms.
As a child he didn’t really care why, though he would admit that now and again he did ponder it late at night. But as a teen it seemed to grow more necessary to discover the why and how of his and his parents’ differences. Not that they would discuss it. No, they only told him that “when the time was right” would they speak of it. When that time would come he didn’t know, but he did know the clock was ticking down. He could practically hear it, tick-tock, tick-tock, like a specter in the dark waiting for the right moment to come for him.
Little did he realize at age sixteen just how close to the truth he had come with that obscure and vague analogy.
Growing up he was a lucky kid. His parents worked for a wealthy landowner who was kind, generous, and very patient with a curious boy. He was permitted to take lessons with the man’s own children, giving him an excellent education and knowledge that would hold fast in the years to come. Plus it had the added bonus of filling the gap when his parents had to work and he couldn’t be with them.
Then came his seventeenth birthday, and everything changed mere days after with a scream of horror and pain. Another landowner, greedy and demented by his own driving need to have everything, ripped his very world to pieces, and all he knew became nothing but dust on the winds of hatred. His mother slaughtered, his father taken and beaten, and everything he’d once called home burned around him.
Later he would discover that none of his kind came into who they were until at the earliest their twentieth year, but more commonly, in their twenty-fifth…until him. Another fact he would uncover, a little known detail really, was that extreme anguish could accelerate the change. It certainly did so for him. Losing his parents, his friends, and a man he considered a mentor unleashed from within him that which all others in a world he’d never known existed feared to the bottoms of their souls.
One moment he was a terrified young man trying to avoid being one of the victims the overwhelming numbers were creating, the next he was everyone’s worst nightmare. When he could next clearly remember anything and see everything around him, those that had come to kill lay dead, not a mark upon them.
He on the other hand felt more alive than he ever had. Something new and dark, but not evil, unfurled inside of him. A piece that had been missing previously now fit perfectly into place. Later he would examine it, but right then he had family and friends to find among the dead and bury them or get them help.
More years than he cared to recall passed, many of them spent attempting to discover just who he was. Many more of them he spent burying friends, their children, and their children’s children. Not a luxury he afforded himself after a time, a friend that was. Not with what he’d discovered of himself and his linea
ge.
It was old, his heritage, one of the oldest there was still in existence. There had been other lines, as old, but over time and through the many wars, a great number of them had died out. As it was, his line in particular was on the verge of joining them and perishing in a time that didn’t believe in such things any longer. From what he’d uncovered there were no more than a couple dozen in existence. Why they were a dying race he couldn’t completely figure out. One possible reason though, at least from what he could glean, was the incredible difficulty of his kind to get a woman pregnant—the first time around. After that apparently it was much like rabbits in heat on steroids and caffeine and…well, yeah.
It wasn’t because his race were impotent, hardly that, but conditions for a successful impregnation were challenging to say the least. It was convoluted and mildly depressing really. For prime conditions of an initial pregnancy the woman had to be a virgin. Yeah, those were easy to find in current times. She had to have suffered some sort of major heartbreak in her past, something scarring and lasting. It needed to be a new moon and, just because it wouldn’t be degrading enough to begin with, she had to have imbibed in alcohol to the point of being not fully steady on her feet but not so far gone as to be unconscious.
Making a face as he read that part, Davyn shook his head violently. So to get a woman knocked up he had to find a broken-hearted virgin on a new moon working her way well into her cups. That was just fucking bloody special! And, to top it all off, there was absolutely no guarantee it would take unless she was hopelessly in love with him. No wonder his race had such dwindling numbers. The fucking deck was rigged!
Finishing off his scotch, he got up and padded out of his den, up the hall, and into his workout room. He’d fought tooth and nail to create a home for himself with the hope he’d one day have what his parents had seemed to have. Love, trust, and joy in just being together no matter the situation. It was all he’d ever wanted, someone to love him for who he was as a man, hopefully overcoming the natural and deep-seated fear all people had of him on first meeting.
He’d tried dating in the modern world, but basically he had sucked at it, and no woman seemed able to meet his odd eyes without looking for the nearest exit. Dark blue and green mixed with a bit of gray in an odd hypnotic mix that many had commented changed, shifted, and basically creeped them the hell out. Understandable. His eyes could lure someone in compliantly, or they could give the barest of warnings of just what he was about to unleash. His eyes also tended to let others know his emotional state, or rather, the Wraith’s emotional state. And that bastard seemed to be constantly PMSing—non-fucking-stop!
On the plus side the demon inside made him a fucking amazing doctor. Bloody nasty bastard knew instantly what was wrong with someone, better than any X-ray or MRI machine on the market! But the downside was he couldn’t do hospital work. No, that he had learned the hard way. Hormonal asshole.
Back on the plus side he did work with a group that was plenty different. All the folks melded seamlessly together in a coherent group, and they didn’t tend to ask a lot of questions. A couple knew what he was and what he could do, but for the most part, the rest all thought him human with maybe a hint of changer way, way, way back in his line.
If only they had a clue, he thought, shaking his head slightly as he moved to beat on the heavy bag. Pausing at the ring of his cell, he stopped the bag and snatched it up with a frown, answering on the fourth ring. “It’s my night off, Skittles,” he said softly.
“I know, but we’re scrambling to get enough people to help with a building collapse at the president’s request. We need every man, woman, and child that is able on deck for this one,” Quincy told him in a rush.
“Where do you want me?” Davyn asked, already racing out the hall and up the wide staircase for his room to shower and change.
“The helicopters are in the air. T-Rex will pick you up in ten at the park across from your place. He’ll give you the rundown and details in the air.”
“Copy that.” He hung up and moved fast to shower and dress in all black clothing. Grabbing his go-bag, just in case, his jacket, wallet, and field kit, he raced out the front door toward the park where the chopper was just settling to the grass. He had no idea what might have happened, but at that time of day and with a building, Gods keep the souls trapped safe.
Chapter Two
Dahlia Ramsay should have known when she took the job that it was too good to be true. She had taken a job with a man that she had known since she was a child, a general with the Army at one time who took on working in the private sector when he retired. No, she should have known then that it was far too good to be true, but oh no, she didn’t listen to herself. Not at all. Nope. She was stupid.
She looked up at her boss and frowned. “I’m sorry, what did you say to me?” She surely hadn’t heard right. There was no way in hell that this man who was at least forty years her senior had asked her out.
“If you want to move up in the office you need to learn ‘tit for tat,’” he stated and looked, rudely, at her tits.
“Fuck you, sir,” she muttered darkly and turned to leave the room. When she was about to leave the entire world shook. “What in the—?” she asked and grabbed onto the doorframe. She had no idea what happened next, but the very world around her seemed to rock and roll. Her entire world rumbled around her, and the world went black.
She heard him then. She heard the sound of the man. “Help!” she screamed. “Please, help!” The building must have crashed. That was the only thing she could think of. The building must have crashed down around them, and because she was inside of the doorframe she had thankfully been somewhat protected, somewhat.
When the large man found her, she reached out a hand to him. “Please? Help me?” She was buried under far too much rubble still and could barely breathe, but she reached for him, pleaded and begged for help.
“Be still,” he said to her, softly taking her hand in his. Checking her pulse automatically, he reached out to stroke back her hair with his other hand and checked the wound on her forehead. Shifting, he pressed the comms. “I have two more live ones, one female and one male, older. The male appears unconscious, and I’m going to need a hand getting him free. The female is conscious and coherent, a bit banged up. Bring in two backboards and collars just to be safe,” he advised before looking to her again. “It’s all right, I’m a doctor with the Teams working to get everyone out. Is there anyone besides you and the older gentleman in this area?” he asked her, pulling out a small light to check her pupil dilation and reaction.
“No, just me and that old piece of crap who thought it was good to hit on me. He actually thought that because I’m a twenty-five-year-old virgin I would leap into his bed. Idiot.” All right, so maybe she was more than slightly concussed, but still. “I can’t believe that jackwagon idiot,” she muttered. “Who does that? I mean seriously, who?”
“Dirty old men who think they can get anyone they want because of their position and or influence,” he told her, gently running his fingers over her head and face. “Couple of good scrapes, one slightly deeper gouge, but no broken bones,” he said. Digging out a compress, he applied it to her forehead and continued his check down her neck. He didn’t feel anything out of place, but he’d feel better after a full set of X-rays and scans.
“Here.” Tryggr passed him a collar as Mac set one of the two backboards down next to her.
“Can you go and start getting some of the crap off the older guy?” he asked the jaguar. “Keep him still if he’s conscious, but ask him his name, the date, and who the president is if he is awake. If he’s unconscious, we’ll deal,” he said, shifting to let Trey and Aiden past him to the guy with Tryg. Looking back at her, he smiled. “I’m going to put on the collar just to be safe. You seem fine, but I prefer to be overly cautious, especially given you lost consciousness,” he said, gently slipping the neck brace around and tightening it properly.
“I would prefer to be o
verly cautious as well.” She closed her eyes and drifted again. When she came to, it was to the most beautiful man once more over her, and she found herself smiling. “You have got to be an angel, because men simply aren’t as beautiful as you are naturally.” She knew she had lost consciousness again, and that was bad, right? “Hopefully the old bastard broke his you-know-what. Stupid old buzzard,” she grumbled. “I’m Dahlia. Who are you?” she asked softly.
“Davyn Montrose,” he stated with a frown as he continued to check her limbs gently. “Mac, let’s roll her, and, Tryg, can you slip the backboard in place?” He looked to the others as he settled at her head. “Nice and smooth in three, two, and one.” He held her head between his forearms as he rolled her by her shoulders. “And back in three, two, one,” he said when the backboard was in place. Moving, he strapped her down after covering her with a light thermal blanket. “We’re going to fly you to the local hospital,” he told her. Digging out a card, he gave it to her. “But you need anything at all, you call me, all right? I have privileges in most of the local hospitals around here, so I don’t mind coming in and butting my nose where it doesn’t belong.”
She took the card and smiled up at him. “Thank you, Davyn Montrose.” She reached a shaky and filthy hand up and touched his cheek. “For saving my butt, thank you.” She winced again and shuddered. “I seriously hope that I have some drugs waiting for me at the hospital.” She only half teased. Reaching out though, she grabbed the man’s hand with hers. “I’m scared.” Truer words had never been spoken.
