by Quinn Loftis
“Ask me,” he rumbled in her mind. “Communicate with me, Little Dove.”
“Why are you so still? If I had my hands on your bare skin I wouldn’t be able to keep them still for want of needing to know how you felt.”
“I know my limits. If I allow myself more than this, I won’t be able to stop and you won’t want me to.”
“I’m confused,” she admitted quietly after several minutes of them simply holding onto one another. She hadn’t meant to say it, but she couldn’t hold it inside any longer.
“Finally,” he muttered as she opened her eyes and met his pale blue ones. She could see his burning need for her to talk to him and be open with him as he waited for her to continue.
“I believe you both. The things he said were true; they felt true. But then the things you said are as well. Am I evil, Dalton?”
“No,” he said firmly. “You have the capacity to do wrong, because you’re fallible. But you aren’t without compassion or empathy. You do not act without remorse or regret.” His eyes softened as he pulled her tighter against him. “No, Little Dove, you are definitely not evil.”
“Then why does some part of me still feel like choosing what Volcan offered is the right decision? I mean, I know he is evil.”
“Why does anyone choose to do the wrong thing? Is it because the wrong decision is ugly, without allure or appeal? No, it’s because it has such great magnetism and it calls to us. Evil portrays itself as something good and right, twisting its purpose until it feels as though to not choose it would be foolish. Power is a very seductive enticing lover.” She felt as though he was trying to memorize every detail of her face. “When a person has spent their life feeling helpless, or stuck the way you did, that power becomes even more alluring. I can understand not wanting to be helpless to the judgment and whims of others. If you remember, I was held captive and tortured and molested. I know exactly what it is to feel powerless.”
She let out an un-ladylike snort. “Yeah, but I don’t see you jumping on the evil bandwagon as it drives by.”
A single brow rose on his handsome face. “No, I just went on a century long killing spree and sexual binge. Nothing to worry about at all.”
“You only killed people who were bad,” Jewel pointed out.
“I had no right to be their judge and executioner. I was angry; I wanted to vengeance.” He paused and his head tilted slightly as his eyes narrowed. “What do you want, Jewel?”
Jewel tried to shut the bond before he could see her thoughts. She wasn’t ready for him to know that even after everything he had said, after all declarations and though she wanted to choose him, she still had to go with Volcan. If she didn’t he would kill everyone she cared about. She wouldn’t be responsible for their deaths when she could prevent it. She watched as his face hardened as he realized she was once again shutting him out.
“My precious dove, for someone with the IQ of a genius, you are incredibly thick sometimes,” he growled at her.
“Why do you call me Little Dove?” It probably wasn’t the right time to ask such a question, but Jewel didn’t know if she would ever see him again and she wanted to know.
Dalton shook his head at her. “The night that we are bonded and I take you as my mate I will tell you.”
Jewel’s heart plummeted to her feet. She wanted that night more than she had wanted anything and yet it just wasn’t meant to be. As she had said to him, sacrifices were a casualty of conflict, and she had found herself smack dab in the middle of a feud that had been going on for centuries.
“Am I to guess that by the way your face just fell and your soul just cried out for mine, you aren’t expecting to ever have that night with me?”
As she stared at him, unable to answer him for fear that she would simply fall at his feet and beg him to make it alright―to keep her safe―she saw realization dawn on him.
“He’s coming for you isn’t he?” The darkness that seemed to envelop Dalton as his face morphed into the stone mask that he kept in place with everyone but her made his deep voice sound even more sinister. His pale blue eyes began to glow and she watched in awe as his teeth grew in size. “That’s why he said you would go with him willingly. He’s coming for you and you agreed to go.”
She stepped back from him, all the while going over the facts in her mind about prey not running from a predator. But from the look in his eyes she totally understood why they forgot that rule and bolted for the hills. He took another step forward and she matched it by taking another back.
“Is he coming for you, Jewel?” he asked her again, slower this time as if she hadn’t understood him the first time. “He thinks to take you from me and you think to go.”
Jewel wanted to shrink back at the accusation in his voice, but he was right and had every right to throw it at her. She was hurting him. It was the last thing she wanted, and yet the only choice she could see that she had.
Dalton couldn’t hold back his beast any longer. Now that he understood why his mate was so upset, he lost control of the beast. She was going to leave him. He could see the set determination in her jaw, though in her eyes she was begging him to stop her. Dalton didn’t think she even realized that her soul was crying out to its mate. Had she been a Canis lupus, her wolf would have been thrashing inside of her attempting to get to him. And though he wanted to answer her, he was at a loss as to what to do. Volcan was not physically stronger than Dalton, but he wielded dark magic that Dalton didn’t understand. The fae was powerful and Dalton wasn’t too proud to admit that he had no idea how to defeat him.
He took another step towards her and when her back hit the wall, her eyes widened as she realized that she was trapped. His wolf wanted to howl victoriously at his caught prey. Dalton stepped forward until his body was inches from her own and looked down at her. Jewel tilted her head back against the wall to look at him, and her chest rose and fell rapidly as her heart rate increased at his close proximity. Her scent was intoxicating to him as it swirled in the air around him, calling to him. Seducing him, it drew him closer. His left hand gripped the back of her neck and tilted her head to the side, exposing her neck. With his right hand he tugged on her shirt until she was bare from shoulder to throat. Her scarred flesh taunted him, dared him to take what was his, to add his bite and place the only mark that had the right to be there on her, and he knew he was fighting a losing battle.
“Dalton,” her whimper only stirred the wolf more.
Claim, protect, mine, he growled inside his mind. If she was hell bent on leaving him, on giving her life up for the good of others, then he would make damn sure that he would be going with her. His lips pulled back from his sharp teeth and he struck without hesitation sinking his teeth deep into the place between her neck and shoulder. He heard her sharp intake of air and then felt her relax into him as the pleasure of the mate bite consumed her.
Dalton felt the rush of her warm, sweet blood gush into his mouth from the pulsing artery. She was perfect, everything he knew she would be, and yet better than he could have ever imagined. She’d already had his blood multiple times and even once sunk her teeth into him, but he wanted it again. Without releasing her he guided her mouth to his own neck and felt the magic of the mate bond take over as her instincts kicked in. She bit him without a second thought and Dalton’s hand tightened on her neck while the other landed on her hip and pulled her against him. He had been right to think she would become his addiction. As they marked one another, taking in the very essence of the other, he felt their bond strengthen as if the chord between was getting thicker. He wanted to keep drinking, her taste and the intimacy of knowing only he would ever have this right was heady, but his first instinct was to protect her, and he didn’t want to take too much from her.
Dalton began to pull back and Jewel whimpered in protest. He wanted to give her what she wanted but it was not the time or place. Usually after the Blood Rites were complete true mates would be lost to one another, needing to complete the physical unio
n as well, but Dalton would have to settle for just holding her.
“Jewel, it’s enough,” he told her as he pulled her from his neck. She looked up at him, drunk on the taste of him, lost in the passion of the Blood Rites and he wanted her. She licked her lips, cleaning off the remnant of his blood, and he groaned as his eyes followed the movement. He knew he had to taste her lips; he couldn’t wait any longer. As his head lowered to hers and she tilted her mouth up to him, clearly needing the same thing, he was suddenly thrown back across the room with such force that when he hit the opposite wall his body went through it.
His eyes snapped up as he jumped to his feet. Volcan had his arm around Jewel’s waist with his hand dangerously close to an area of her body that no man, save him, had a right to touch. Dalton knew he wouldn’t make it to her in time. He was fast, but not faster than the flash of the fae. He heard Peri’s shouts and the furious pounding on the door as the others tried to get into him. His eyes never left Volcan.
“You will never touch her again. I hope you enjoyed your little rendezvous, but don’t get too used to the Blood bond; it won’t last long.”
Dalton lunged for the sorcerer just as Jewel reached out a hand to him. Her eyes pleaded with him and the last thing he heard before Volcan flashed his mate from him was her voice in his mind. “I love you.”
Chapter 11
“There comes a time in everyone’s life when they need a hero. At some point, everyone needs someone to be stronger than they are, for just a little while, to help them bear the load of whatever devastation has befallen them. They will need someone to cry for them when there are no tears left. They will need someone to reach through the fires of hell and pull them out because they have no strength left to climb out on their own. We will all need a hero at some point, and my time is now. I need a hero. I need you.” ~Jewel
The door suddenly crashed open behind him as bodies came tumbling through when Volcan’s magic dissipated with his parting.
“Where is he?” Peri snapped as her head whipped around the room.
“Where is Jewel?” Sally’s desperate voice echoed what Dalton felt, only it didn’t even come close to the magnitude with which he felt her absence.
“Gone,” Dalton answered in a suddenly very calm voice. The other males were in the hall but wisely didn’t enter what he had come to consider as his territory. He didn’t want to be there crammed in that room where all of their scents were overwhelming what was left of Jewel’s. He needed air, needed space so he could think. “I’ll return,” he growled as he phased and ran for the window. He hadn’t bothered to open it but knew as it flew open just before he expected to smash through it, Peri was the reason he didn’t.
His feet hit the ground just as he heard his Alpha’s call. It rolled off of Dalton like oil. There was only one thing stronger than the pull an Alpha had on his pack and that was the pull of a true mate. Dalton’s true mate was gone. Taken from him by the most evil being their kind had ever seen. He couldn’t even begin to think of what Volcan would want from Jewel. If he did, it would drive him mad, and he wouldn’t be able to plan her rescue.
He would get her back. He had marked her and could find her anywhere, but he knew better than to go rushing in. He needed a plan, a strategy in order to be successful. Dalton reached the edge of the creek that ran near Peri’s home, and he sat down and looked up at the moon. In his mind he could still see her, still smell her, and still taste her, and he was ravenous for more. The mournful howl that ripped from him was full of that longing, and until he had her back in his arms, he knew the ache for her would only grow.
“We must remain calm,” Dalton told his wolf. The beast didn’t want to obey. It kept reaching for the bond, whining each time it hit a blocked wall where its mate should be. He couldn’t hear her, could only feel that she was alive but nothing more.
“I am loyal to none but her,” his wolf informed him. “She alone is my concern. I will concede to your human knowledge, but I will kill anyone who gets in our way.” Dalton had only heard his wolf talk in complete sentences like that a handful of times, and it always was unnerving to hear the animal think like a human. “Then we are on the same page,” Dalton told him.
“The sorcerer will suffer for touching her, taking her,” Dalton agreed wholeheartedly with his wolf. Volcan would burn for taking his mate. A quick death was too good for him, although he also knew that as long as he was alive, even if it was to be tortured, he would always be a threat to his mate.
“Dalton,” her voice suddenly broke through the block.
“Jewel!” He phased to his human form as if he would be able to snatch her with his arms through the bond back to his side.
“Can he break the bond?” The fear in her voice ripped through him.
“I’m not sure. He is powerful. Do you know where you are?”
She ignored his question and asked another of her own. “Scientists have proven that the will is often times stronger than the body, even stronger than diseases. I won’t let him break it. You told me to keep fighting, that you would be back, is that still true?”
“I will always come for you. I won’t give up. I will always fight with you, by your side, as your equal.” He could feel her slipping away again and he was desperate to hold onto her. “Keep fighting, Little Dove. I will be there soon, very soon.”
“Just five minutes longer,” she told him and he felt her hand on his face and her breath on his lips and then she was gone.
The silence left in her absence was absolute. Her light was gone and he was suddenly plunged into a darkness he had never experienced. When his parents had died, when his will had been taken, when his dignity had been stripped from him and his moral compass derailed, he hadn’t felt as utterly consumed by the darkness as he did in that moment. He was so focused on trying to breathe, trying to not suffocate by the sudden weight that seemed to have descended on him, that he didn’t hear anyone approaching him.
“Talk to me, Dalton,” Dillon commanded his Beta as he threw a pair of shorts to him. It had been several hours since Jewel’s disappearance, and other than Dalton’s initial reaction, there had been nothing. He had watched him from a distance once Dalton left Peri’s home, worried that they would have to step in when Dalton lost control. But so far the only pain that Dillon had seen was the one lone howl and the anguish in Dalton’s eyes. His face was as blank and stoic as ever. There was no pacing, no yelling or throwing things, and no out of control behavior that would normally be seen in a male whose mate had been taken from him. If Dillon was honest with himself, Dalton’s lack of reaction made him more concerned than if the giant man was losing his cool.
“What did she say before she was flashed away?” Still his Beta said nothing. Dalton slipped on the shorts and then stood staring at the creek that ran through Farie. The scene was so picture perfect that it was hard to believe that something so horrific had just happened.
“Dammit Beta! Answer me!” Dillon snarled. As Alpha his need to protect his pack was on a whole other level and now one of his own had lost his mate and all Dillon could think was that he needed to fix it.
“How long have we known each other?” Dillon continued when Dalton still didn’t answer. “How many times have you been there for me? When I left to be with Lilly, who took care of things for me? Even though you weren’t my Beta then, you defended me to those who questioned my whereabouts. Who was I able to talk to about that time in my life which was in complete contradiction to what we teach our males? YOU! You have been there for me in your silent, brooding, grumpy ass way, but you were always there. Let me be there for you. Let me help. It’s my right as your Alpha. Please don’t make me use the Alpha command on you. You know that I will if I have to. I will do whatever it takes to protect my own. And if I can’t control you, I’ll go to one who can. I’ll seek out Vasile if need be.” Dillon’s arms were crossed in front of his chest, and his jaw was clenched tight as he glared at the wolf he had called friend for so long. A male who ha
d already been through so much was now going to endure something even worse—the loss of his mate.
“I bit her.” Dalton’s deep voice rumbled. It was not the words Dillon expected to hear from him.
“She bears your mark? You’re blood bonded?”
“Yes,” Dalton growled.
“So we can find her.”
“And when I do I will kill him and tan her hide for ever thinking she had the right to sacrifice her life.”
Dillon tried not to smile because it was such an uncharacteristic thing for Dalton to say, but then he supposed that once a male found his true mate he did a lot of things that were out of character. Adapt or die, his mate always told him. It seems it’s true in more instances than just living for centuries.
“Is there a particular reason Dalton is standing so calmly while his mate is in the clutches of a witch maker?” Peri suddenly appeared next to Dillon.
“Not helping, Peri,” he growled.
“Don’t give a damn, Alpha,” she snapped back. “He has her, which means he has her blood and her power, and now he can and will be turning any willing, wicked woman into a witch until he rebuilds the covens that we destroyed. He will make Desdemona look like a freaking fairy godmother. We cannot let him rebuild the covens.”
Dalton turned and faced his Alpha and the high fae. They stood, both appearing battle ready simply staring at him. He knew that the mask he had so diligently perfected over the centuries was firmly in place, and they would not be able to see any of the burning inferno of rage building inside of him. They wouldn’t know that he was barely holding on to his control as everything inside of him shattered. She hadn’t wanted to leave him and that gave him some small measure of peace. She had reached for him before Volcan had taken her. Though she spoke of sacrifice and keeping others safe, she wanted to be with him. She loved him; he could see it in her eyes before she ever said it. He had heard it in her voice when she finally told him what she had promised Volcan. He could feel it in her soul as she broke not only his heart but her own by telling him she was going with the evil sorcerer. Dalton knew that Jewel truly believed that she didn’t have a choice. She believed that in order to keep the others safe and him safe that she had to do what Volcan wanted. He knew it was just part of her ignorance of their species; she couldn’t possibly know that there wasn’t a wolf alive that would allow a healer to be in the clutches of one so evil as Volcan. Even if he died and they weren’t blood bonded, the Canis lupis would pursue her until she was back in their care, where she belonged.
