by Bonnie Vanak
“Look, Megan!”
Gabriel turned. His gaze darkened and he dropped the bloodied cotton ball. In two strides he was at Jillian’s side. She cried out as he snatched the duck.
The fierce Enforcer threw the toy into the drawer and slammed it shut. His dark brows knit together. “You don’t touch that again. Ever. Understand?”
The low, dangerous tone of his voice made Jillian’s mouth tremble. She backed away, her blue eyes wide.
A protective streak rose in Megan as she stepped before Jillian, facing Gabriel. “Leave her alone. It’s just a toy. What’s the big deal?”
A dark fury etched his face. “It’s not hers and she shouldn’t touch it. No one ever touches it.”
Dread curled in her stomach. “Who does it belong to?”
His jaw ground violently. “My niece Amelia.” Now his furious gaze held hers. Amber eyes. Wolf eyes. “She was a Shadow, just like you.”
Megan’s heart thundered in her chest. She cradled her injured hand. Clouds darkening the sky cast his face into shadow. Didn’t want to know, had to ask. Had to know…
“Was?” she whispered. “What happened to her?”
Gabriel’s jaw tensed to granite. “I killed her.”
Chapter 4
Last one.
Wind kicked up sand eddies, swirling on the ground. Gabriel lifted a heavy metal shutter, hooked it into place over the window and attached it.
He’d changed into shorts and a white muscle shirt for the arduous task of shuttering his vacation home. Sweat dripped down his temples. Gabriel swiped his damp brow with the back of one hand. His home now resembled a ghost house, the shutters reflecting the remaining rays of the late afternoon sun.
Megan and the twins were in the guest cottage on the bayside, where they all would ride out the storm. It was the safest house on the island. Gabriel needed to be alone for now, away from the horror in their eyes, the alarm shadowing their faces. Fear was good for them. Let them think he was as nasty as his reputation.
The thought sickened him.
He sagged against the shutter, feeling sun-warmed steel heat his skin. Closing his eyes, he saw Amelia’s trusting face as he stood in the pool with her favorite bath toy as incentive for learning to swim. Heard her squeals of laughter as she finished splashing toward him, then grabbed the yellow rubber duck in her small fist.
“I got it, Uncle Gabriel! I’m like Ducky, I can swim now!” she’d yelled.
He’d laughed and swung her up in his arms, as Simone and Alex watched proudly.
The duck.
The yellow duck.
That damn…duck!
He hurled the hammer at the sand. Amelia deserved much better. Learning how to swim in the deep end, first dance, first kiss…
Thanks to him, she’d have none of that. She was only ten years old.
I’m sorry.
Gabriel fisted his trembling hands. The approaching hurricane echoed his turbulent emotions. Warmth spread through his body. Wolf clawed to the surface, stirred up by guilt, anger and self-loathing. Plucking at his shirt, he felt as if hundreds of ants crawled over his skin. He rubbed his chin, alarmed to find thick stubble. Gray fur replaced the light hairs dusting the back of his hands.
The first physical manifestation of his Change.
It had grown more powerful since Raphael’s mate had infused him with power during a vicious Morph fight. His sister-in-law Emily’s touch had heightened his Draicon’s magick. It had tripled Gabriel’s powers, but also made his wolf more ferocious.
The hell with it. He allowed the wolf to flow through him. Muscles rippled and stretched, bones lengthened. He snarled at the elements, feeling the primitive need to rip and tear and destroy.
The sweet vanilla scent of childhood halted the process.
Gabriel stiffened, fisting his hands/paws. Acute senses warned that a twin stood behind him on the deck. His human side wrestled for control. Even though the wolf would never hurt an innocent, he could not allow a young one to witness his transformation.
“Mr. Gabriel?”
“Go away, Jillian.” His voice was a low whiplash, hinting of danger.
“Are you still mad at me?”
Closing his eyes, he breathed deeply.
“I’m sorry I touched your toy, Mr. Gabriel.”
“I’m not mad at you, Jillian.”
He managed to corral the violent emotions. Gabriel studied his hands, relieved to see they were normal. The wolf was gone. For now.
“You can call me Jilly. Everyone does.”
He turned, wondering if this young one would know how close she’d danced to the knife’s edge of violence.
“I’m not afraid of you.” A frown dented her brow. “I’m worried about you. You hurt.”
At his blank stare, she rubbed her thin chest. “In here.”
Tension knotted the spot she’d indicated. “I’m fine,” he lied.
“No, you’re not,” she said seriously. “I can tell. I can feel inside you. You don’t want anyone to know because you don’t like what happens when you feel this way.”
Merde, a seven-year-old could tell? Gabriel retrieved the hammer. As he brushed it free of sand, he glanced at the solemn girl examining the inside of his canvas tool bag.
“You can feel inside me?”
She nodded. Seldom had he used his enormous powers of mind control to delve into a child’s thoughts. Children were innocent and their motivations and thought patterns as clear as shiny glass. They were easy to read, but he hated having to do it.
He motioned to the steps, and when she’d sat beside him, he turned the hammer over in his hand. “Can you read other people’s thoughts?”
Jillian gave him a guileless look. “Only if they allow me to, or if they’re so loud they’re screaming at me. Like they’re yelling out loud, but they’re not. Gram taught me not to be rude and invade their minds.”
In a ladylike gesture, she folded her hands in her lap. “I tried once, when my friend Andrea bragged her hair was prettier than mine. I went into her mind to see the truth. She hated her hair and I told her so. Megan punished me and made me apologize. She said it was wrong. I didn’t mean to hurt Andrea and I promised never to do it again.”
“Megan is right. Using power holds you accountable for your magick.”
Gabriel sucked in a deep breath. “When you get older, you’ll understand the difference between doing it for the right reasons or just to be a bully. You’ll learn to shut out others’ thoughts, too, so you can have peace.”
How he wished he could experience such peace. Hadn’t, not since Amelia and Simone had died.
“You didn’t do it, Mr. Gabriel. You didn’t kill her.”
“What?”
“Amelia. You said you killed her, but I felt what you felt.” Jillian shook her head. “You’re not like the bad men who hurt Shadows.”
A fist of guilt and alarm squeezed his throat. “What bad men, Jilly?”
“The men on the island who wanted to hurt Megan. The fisherman on the boat who hit her, and wanted to do the same things the bad men wanted.” She looked confused. “I didn’t understand. Why did they want to take her clothes off?”
His wolf silently howled in protective rage. Gabriel forced it down. Going hog wild on his emotions wouldn’t help her now. He mustered all his control and turned to look Jillian in the eye.
“There are bad men who do things like that, little one. They aren’t nice and you need to stay away from them. There is a blackness inside their hearts and their spirits.”
For a moment they sat in silence on the steps, staring at the gathering storm clouds. Sandpipers and seagulls flew toward the mainland. Jillian looked worried.
“Is it going to be a bad storm, Mr. Gabriel?” she whispered.
He gave her a reassuring smile. “Call me Gabriel. No Mister. Naw, we’ll just see a bit of wind and rain. I can feel it in my bones. You’ll be safe.”
She chatted about the storms she’d experienc
ed on her island. Gabriel listened, paying attention the way few adults did. He liked kids. He’d always been good with his brother Etienne’s four children…and Alex’s Amelia. He’d longed for children, but didn’t dare procreate with his bad genes. Gabriel’s chest felt hollow. Never would he want a son or daughter to endure the shame and aversion he had known in childhood.
“What’s this?”
Fascination stole over her face as she stared at the blue-inked scrolling on his left bicep. She traced it with a finger.
“You got marked, too. Did it hurt like cousin Megan’s?”
The attention span of the young.
“It’s a tattoo, Jilly. My brother Indigo put it there for me. It means ‘fierce one’ in the Old Language of our ancestors.”
“It’s pretty. Megan’s mark is just numbers. She cried after it was done. She tried not to let us hear, but I knew she was crying.”
“Numbers? Where?”
“On the back of her neck, like female Shadow Wolves get when they turn twenty-one.”
So now they were inking all Shadows to keep track of them? His gorge rose. Wolf growled to the surface, driven by the urge to protect and defend his Megan.
His?
The notion stunned him. Megan Moraine was a Shadow Wolf who needed escorting to a safe house. Yet his emotions were that of a bonded male for his draicara.
Jillian sighed. “I guess they’ll give me one when I get older, too.”
Her practical tone sent chills through him. Gabriel took her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.
He started to say no.
Words died on his tongue, a promise he wanted to give her, but couldn’t. She looked so trusting, his heart twisted. Once he’d made the same promise to another child, and failed. He couldn’t promise anything to children. Not anymore.
He enlisted her help in picking up his tools. Gabriel let Jillian proudly carry the hammer and screwdriver while he took the canvas tool bag.
When they reached the guest house, Megan was sitting on a deck chair. Her legs were tucked beneath her as she combed her hair, gazing at the whitecaps crashing against the barnacle-riddled seawall.
She began to sing. The purity of her voice reminded him of sunrise over the bayou. It soothed him, brought the beast to a standstill. His entire body tingled with the desire to draw close, sit at her feet and let her voice wash over him in a cleansing flood. Music was his balm, a necessity to tame his wolf.
Then Jennifer burst out of the house, a tiny, pink-clad whirlwind waving a small conch shell. Megan held the seashell to her ear.
Gabriel stared. Not classically pretty, Megan had an exotic, Fey beauty. Her cheeks were stained pink by the rising breeze, long hair wreathing her heart-shaped face. Her mouth was cherry-red and moist. A blue T-shirt molded to firm, round breasts.
The unabashed laughter in her sea-blue eyes lured him like a sailor to a siren’s deadly song. Megan laughed, the sound pure enjoyment.
All his senses focused on her, his hands shaking with longing. He wanted a piece of that honest happiness, if only for a fleeting moment. Not the joking front he showed to disguise his real emotions. Gabriel yearned for something as simple as the joy of sharing a seashell’s whispers.
He hadn’t experienced that since…when?
Since Amelia died three years ago. When his niece died, a light of innocence in his life had winked out. His niece had adored him, and she’d known exactly what he was. And still, she wasn’t afraid of him.
Jillian set down the hammer and screwdriver and scampered up the steps. A shrill of laughter echoed through the air as she held the seashell to her ear. He felt as if he’d invaded a special and private moment between Megan and her cousins. A lead weight settled on his chest as he went to stash his tools in the shed.
The incoming storm sent a vibrating hum through his tensed body. Wolf howled to release the pent-up emotions. Gabriel glanced backward. Megan and the twins could not see him.
Sand stung his cheeks. He relished the wind slapping his face.
The hell with it. No longer able to hold back his internal storm, Gabriel shape-shifted.
Gabriel was running wild.
Megan’s heart thundered in her chest as she watched a large gray wolf race back and forth on the beach. The wolf’s raw power and dark intensity sent a chill down her spine. Larger than most, muscles rippled under the lupine’s gray fur.
He could break her spine with one lunge. She wrapped her arms around herself, sinking back into the cover of the mangroves.
She’d come to the beach to tell him about the silver-haired man blowing up the bridge in hopes he’d mention where the inflatable boats were stashed.
Megan peered around the mangroves, her palms growing cold and sweaty. What if Gabriel suddenly turned on them? She’d glimpsed his haunted look when he’d left to shutter the houses. But this wolf was not vulnerable. This wolf could tear and kill and destroy.
Never had she seen such a display, as if the wolf released all the emotions the man could not. This wolf snapped at the surf. It tipped back its head and released a long, mournful howl that echoed the cadence of the crashing surf.
The wolf was wild and dangerous.
A delicious scent of pine, leather and sweet wine drifted on the wind. It overwhelmed her senses. Megan closed her eyes, overcome with the sensuality calling to her. No wolf she had ever known emitted such an enticing scent.
The idea hit her like a resounding slap on the face. Shadows didn’t do that. From what little she knew, neither did Normals.
Ferals did.
Panic squeezed her throat. Ferals were wild and unpredictable. Their blood ran thick with the instinct to hunt, kill and mate. Male Ferals were dominating, highly sexual and aggressive. Their scents were strong and irresistible to females. When a male saw a female he wanted, the Feral Draicon pursued with ruthless determination until he had her naked and submissive beneath his powerful body. Their blood ran thick with passion and animalistic need.
Yet as she watched Gabriel, doubt laced through the fear. He’d seemed gentle and protective of the twins. Even when he was furious over the rubber duck, he’d left instead of raging at Jillian.
As wild as the wolf acted, the man acted restrained. How could Gabriel be a Feral since he was an Enforcer? The Council of Draicon executed vicious Ferals and sent others to demon prisons. As despised as Shadows were, Ferals were hated more. Their ability to blend in with the human populace was limited by their savage animal nature, often triggered by sexual arousal and heightened emotions.
Once the most dangerous Ferals were called Trans-Ferals. Long ago, they’d been hunted to extinction.
Megan felt a tug of empathy for Feral Draicon. As a Shadow, she wanted equality among all their species.
A savage beauty reflected in the wolf’s running with the wind. Her heart thundered again, echoing the cadence of distant crashing thunder. Her pulse raced with excitement.
How she longed to run wild, heedless of watchful Draicon ready to punish her for shifting into a wolf. Megan took one step forward, her body thrumming with anticipation.
The wolf skidded, his big paws digging into the wet sand. He pivoted, his huge head swerving in her direction, focused on her with a predatory look.
Wild amber eyes met hers.
The wolf was king. If he wanted, the wolf could track her scent, have her on the ground before she could escape.
Though her heart pounded hard, Megan held her position. She returned the wolf’s dominating look. She blinked, and the wolf was gone, replaced by a man wearing a white shirt and khaki shorts.
Gabriel.
Sea mist dampened his dark hair. His muscled body was hard with sexual aggression. He stalked toward her with determined purpose. Afraid of his power, she stood her ground. Megan refused to lower her gaze as other Draicon would do facing a predator.
“I can smell your fear. I told you before, I won’t hurt you,” he said softly. “How long have you been watching?”
“Why can’t you shift?”
“I guess they’re afraid we’ll become more powerful as invisible wolves than invisible in our human form.”
Raw sexuality radiated from him. Megan swallowed hard. “I didn’t come to spy on you. I came looking for you to tell you something.”
He stopped close enough for her to smell his delicious maleness mingling with evergreen and rain. Passion filled his heated gaze. His nostrils flared as if he’d caught her scent. A pulse hammered at the base of his throat.
“Tell me what, chère?”
Though she was still untouched, Megan sensed his desire. He wanted her, badly. And animal instinct fought for control of the man. Something inside her clawed to the surface, wanting him just as badly.
Gabriel unclenched his fists. He caught her hand in his and turned it over. The gentleness of the gesture contrasted sharply to his earlier display of brute strength. He ran a thumb over her cut.
“It’s starting to heal already. Good.” He dropped her hand and traced a line along her jaw. His touch was gentle, but she instinctively recognized the possessiveness.
A wolf marking his territory.
“Tell you…” She halted, shuddering with pleasure as he stroked a line down the sensitive curve of her neck.
He dropped his hands. “Go back to the cottage. The storm’s getting closer and the twins will be scared.”
“Why are you so concerned when all you’ll do is turn them over to the authorities? For all the stories I’ve heard about you…”
He swore softly, his expression growing cold and dangerous. “I’m not what you think, Megan. Don’t underestimate me.”
As he started to push past her, she blurted out, “I know who blew up the bridge. I think it was the same man from the restaurant, a man with silver hair.”
“Why are you telling me now? Why not before?”
