“We do not fear death,” Stefan assured her.
“You owe me a debt, Stefan. You betrayed me. Let us save you and then we can both walk away.” She fought as much for her own life as she did for his.
He looked at her, an unrecognizable expression on his face.
As the seconds ticked by, Beth knew they were reaching the point of no return—where even if he agreed to let her save him, they’d be doomed. She wouldn’t leave him. It didn’t matter to her beast what he’d done, he was still her mate.
She sighed and turned to the other wolf. “Go. You don’t need to die here.”
Beth had already resigned herself to death once; maybe he was just now catching up with her.
The other wolf looked at her, head cocked to the side. “We stand with you.”
“Take my men,” Stefan croaked, and then called the order to stand down.
Beth nodded to the wolf and watched as they bounded away with their passengers. She knew she’d done a good thing. She’d been unable to stop or cure the infection, but saving those lives would have to do.
“What are you doing, Beth?” he asked, sounding tired and dejected.
“Staying with you.”
“Go. You can still make it.” He narrowed his eyes at her.
She shook her head. “No. I can’t. Wolves mate for life. You were my mate when I was turned. You still are. I couldn’t leave you here if I wanted to.”
“But it was a lie.” Incredulity stained his words.
She snarled and pushed at his shoulders with no care for his silver or his weapons. “Don’t you think that’s obvious? I may have been stupid enough to fall in love with a pretty mirage, but I can see the writing on the wall. If I could leave you here, I would, you bastard. It’s what you deserve. I don’t want to die!” she cried and shoved at his shoulders again. “I had dreams, and just because you’re not part of them anymore doesn’t mean they’re gone. I still want a home, a family. I want to help people. I could still have that. But no, you’d rather stay here and rot instead of accepting help from something you hate. The animal doesn’t understand betrayal. It doesn’t understand lying. The human part of me wants to hate you, but the beast won’t let it.” Fear choked her as the roaring of the jet reverberated ever louder in her ears. “So thanks for making that choice for me, too.”
“That’s ironic as hell, isn’t it?” he asked gently.
“Because you kill them? Things like me?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not irony.”
“Then what is it?” His dark eyes searched her face as if he actually didn’t understand.
Tears streamed down her face as a million memories crashed over her in a tsunami. Her first chemistry set, her doctorate, the night when she’d met him. The way he’d touched her, the first time he’d told her he loved her. When he asked her to marry him. It was nothing now—just like her. In about one minute there’d be nothing left of them but ash. None of it mattered. What she wanted, what she’d hoped, even his betrayal. In the endless ocean of time, she was nothing more than a molecule.
“Over.” She shrugged as the F-16 entered the airspace above them and dropped its payload.
Chapter Three
Beth was alive.
Stefan didn’t understand. She’d been infected—turned. She didn’t look sick, and she still had her human consciousness when she changed. All of the beasts at the facility did. He’d never seen that behavior before. That didn’t negate the fact they were brutal dogs, but it did change how he’d deal with them in the future.
Studying her, she still looked human. She looked like the same beautiful woman she’d been the last time he’d seen her, the last time he’d touched her. Except for her eyes—they were electric-blue shining out into the darkness—strangely hypnotic.
I love you, she’d said.
He could admit now he’d mourned her death. But here she was in the warm, living, breathing flesh claiming she couldn’t leave him—even after all he’d done. The guilt from earlier blossomed into something else, something he couldn’t name and didn’t want to give voice to.
As the prince of his people, he had special magic he knew he could use to save himself. He didn’t know if he was strong enough to shield all of his men from the bomb, but he could save himself.
He could save her. She didn’t have to die, not for him.
Logic argued he would only make things harder. It would save him the trouble of putting her down if he let the bomb have her. He killed werewolves. Beth was a werewolf. He couldn’t reasonably let her continue to draw breath.
He couldn’t let her die either. The thought of watching her incinerate while he protected himself with his magic was a poison dagger that twisted in his gut and ripped something vital from him.
Decision made, the Mark of Zoranna on his neck burned as he summoned his power. It crackled in violent spears of lightning that struck the earth, and he dragged her against him just as the bomb hit.
Heat blasted through his shields, but it was nothing compared to the fire that the feel of her nakedness pressed against his body ignited in him. His flesh remembered what it was like to touch her, taste her and have her wrapped around him while she cried out in ecstasy. His cock didn’t care what was beneath her skin. Only that she felt like heaven.
Even with his silver, his weapons and his lies, she came into his arms so easily. The world was on fire and burned to ash around them, but the only thing that mattered in this moment out of time was touching her.
“Beth,” he said, his voice thick.
“Don’t,” she pleaded. “Aren’t I broken enough?”
“I’ll put you back together,” he swore. “This was always good between us, and I swear to the Goddess it was real.”
“You don’t have to keep lying.”
He gripped her tighter against him so she could feel his arousal. “Does this feel like a lie?”
“None of it ever felt like a lie,” she answered.
“So much of it wasn’t,” he confessed. “I know this is wrong, but I still want you.”
She tilted her face up to him, arms wrapped around his neck, and didn’t hesitate to kiss him. The first touch of her lips was alchemy—every emotion that churned inside him was transmuted to molten gold.
His hands, still sparking with magic, tangled in her wild mane. It was soft as silk, but she no longer smelled of pomegranate shampoo. This was earthier, richer.
His logical brain argued she was infected, and her kiss could possibly infect him, too. He was immune to werewolf venom, but the virus was something else. What was done was done. There was no going back now. Stefan didn’t want to go back—he wanted to go forward, further, deeper. He wanted to drown in her eyes and burn in her hair while he buried himself to the hilt in her pussy.
She was so responsive, wanton. She arched into his touch with no fear, only heat. Only the desperate desire born of denial—of being apart.
“I need you,” he ground out.
“I’m yours.” Her elegant fingers made quick work of his utility belt and BDU pants. She freed his cock, stroking him expertly while she sought another kiss.
What he loved about her ministrations was that she approached each encounter like she planned a military coup. She was hot and passionate but thorough and precise. Beth learned exactly what he liked and endeavored to give him more of it until he was ready to come—then she held him off until she wanted him to come.
Stefan lowered his mouth to hers until their breath mingled, but didn’t kiss her. He gloried in that moment before he took her mouth—the way her lips plumped for his kiss, her breathing became erratic and her eyes met his with no reservation as they conveyed all of her longing, her desire.
“Fuck me while the world burns, Stefan.”
Her words made his cock surge in her hand—he was so hard, thick with his need of her.
Instead of waiting for his kiss she stroked him and turned in his embrace. Beth shifted so she ground her
ass against him. He filled his hands with her pert breasts, kneading the buoyant flesh and teasing her already tight nipples.
It was always like this with them, a contest to see who would break first. Tonight, it would be him. He didn’t have the mental acuity to maintain the shield and resist the siren call of her demands.
She tossed her hair over her shoulder and cut a glance out of the corner of her eye, daring him to stop her, to follow her, to do anything he wanted to the feast splayed before him. Beth dropped to her knees, still looking at him. She braced her arms and angled her legs apart as she spread herself on all fours.
He devoured the sight of her. The shadows of fire dancing around them, casting highlights and lowlights over her silky skin that made the strands of her hair seem like flames themselves. The flare of her hips was made for his hands to anchor her hard against him, the smooth line of her long, slender legs made to be wrapped around his waist. But he especially loved the sight of her swollen, pink cleft slick and wet for him.
It brought him to his knees.
He traced the topography of her back, from her neck down to the gentle dip of her spine, then back up again to knot her hair around his fist. He tugged gently to angle her head back and she gasped, licking her lips. Stefan reached between them and rubbed his fingers along her slit, delving inside her channel only to tease her clit with a few practiced strokes before entering her again.
She rocked back against him, seeking more—always more. This was what made her so addictive. She pushed every boundary, even her own. She wanted anything he decided to give her—any pleasure he could conjure, with no limits.
Her inner walls contracted, suctioning his fingers deeper, and he grit his teeth to keep from groaning aloud. He remembered just how good that felt on his cock while he drove himself into her.
Stefan rubbed his cock around the mouth of her cleft, pushing only the thick crown inside while he continued to tease her clit.
“Stop teasing,” she growled.
The growl should’ve turned him off, should’ve made him remember what she was and how wrong this was between them now. It didn’t, it only made him hotter. A sense of pride welled inside him that he’d pushed her so close to the edge she was growling, her voice like gravel. Maybe he wouldn’t be the one who caved first, after all. Triumph bloomed.
Beth bucked against him and he thrust hard, her satin heat tightening around him. Stefan withdrew and plunged again, drilling into her core. The sensation coupled with his conflicting emotions was too much, and he knew he’d finish before he was ready to. He increased the tempo of his caress on her clit, pushing her higher and causing her channel to butterfly around his cock.
“Goddess, woman.”
She rocked back, meeting his thrusts with her own, taking him deep. Small gasps of pleasure filled his ears, and when she struggled to increase their pace, he knew she was close. She convulsed around him, and only when she cried out his name did he surrender to the fury of bliss that stole his senses.
He didn’t want it to be over. Stefan knew when this moment burned itself out, they’d be thrust back into the world where she was a werewolf and he was a hunter. Where he lied and she didn’t. Where she loved him and he—couldn’t finish the thought.
“I know you,” she said, leaning her cheek into the bowl of her hand. “This version of you right now.”
Stefan didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.
“You fuck the same no matter what mask you wear.”
Her words cut him. This had been more than fucking. He’d tried to tell her everything—no, show her that it hadn’t all been a lie. Watching her face, he searched for signs she’d said that to hurt him, but there was no subterfuge. He supposed he could understand wanting to put that distance between them, to make it something so mechanical as Slot A and Tab B. That was all it should’ve been.
“You don’t.”
“I was going to spend my life with you before, and now I’m not. This was a throwaway, right? We were going to die. Adrenaline was high and this is what we’re used to...or at least what I was used to—taking comfort in you.” She sat up. “Can I leave the magic bubble now?”
“Tell me why you didn’t leave me.”
“Don’t be stupid. I already did. You’re my mate. My it. My one. But don’t worry, I didn’t scratch or bite you. You didn’t say you’re mine, so we’re not bonded.”
But he was, he realized. He was hers, and her ownership of him was chiseled into something deeper than bone. He owed her a debt for what he’d done to her, and until his slate was clean, he couldn’t be free of her.
He’d saved her life just now, but that wasn’t... It hadn’t satisfied the debt. His people believe in retribution and revenge. Maybe that was his task—to punish those who’d done this to her.
“I’m going to kill them for what they’ve done to you,” he swore.
“Who?”
“The brothers Gevaudan.”
“Konstantin saved me.”
“You only say that because he turned you. He’s the Alpha.”
“I say that because it’s science. I was infected when I went inside the enclosure. Ian infected me with a pure form of the virus. He dosed my coffee to see what would happen. Konstantin bit me, and his form of the virus, which was stable, defeated the other strain that would have turned me into some mindless zombie mutt.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “You may not be able to stand what I am, but I’m alive, and I’m grateful for it.”
She looked so alone and small in that moment. Everything about this woman twisted him up, confused him.
“I’m grateful for it, too.”
“Because you didn’t want my death on your conscience.”
“Is that so bad?”
She shook her head. “The fire’s burning itself out. Konstantin just contacted me telepathically and told me there’ll be a cleanup crew here soon to check the rubble and hunt down anything that escaped. I didn’t even know about the other werewolves until I saw them. Who knows what else the Aeternali was keeping here. I’m going back to the cabin to grab a few things.”
“The cleanup crew—”
“What was it you said earlier? In and out? There are keepsakes I want.”
“I’ll go with you.”
She sighed. “No. You need to go while I can still let you. Every second you spend in my presence is another that the beast wants to mark you. Don’t you understand that?”
He considered her meaning. The mark of the beast. Her teeth tearing into his flesh, branding him as hers. It should’ve turned his stomach, but it didn’t. Stefan didn’t want it, but he couldn’t deny what the power inside him demanded either. “I owe you. A Gypsy always pays his debts.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“Just like you have your beast inside you guiding your actions, I, too, have something similar. I can’t ignore it,” he argued.
“Consider yourself warned.”
Chapter Four
It was strange walking into the cabin with Stefan. It was like a foreign country where she didn’t speak the language. So many things were familiar, but they were still strange. The house looked as if he hadn’t touched anything since her infection.
They’d had a whole life here. It was a small life, it was a quiet life, but they’d built it together these last two years.
Her white wedding dress hung on a plastic form in the corner of the living room where she’d been adding seed pearls and threading a pale orange cream ribbon through the bodice. Not the most traditional of color choices, but it made her happy.
They were supposed to be married the following October.
She watched the way the tallow light fell on his dark hair. Beth still wanted to run her fingers through it. “When were you going to bail, Stefan?”
He looked at her, eyes dark and fathomless. “What do you mean?”
“You asked me to marry you. We were planning the wedding. When were you going to leave me?” Stefan coul
dn’t possibly have planned to go through with it.
He blinked, as if the question surprised him. “I don’t know.”
“You didn’t have to ask me to marry you, you know. I was fine with things the way they were.”
“It seemed right.”
It seemed right? His answer enraged her. Beth knew there was no answer he could give her that would make it right, that would be enough, but this pissed her off. “I guess I don’t need to worry about returning your grandmother’s ring. Good story, though. You had me.”
“Beth, it really is my grandmother’s ring.” He nodded.
“Talk about committed to a cause.” She bit her lip, and the air was suddenly too thick with his scent, with the heavy weight of memories that now meant nothing. Beth needed to move. Her skin was too tight, her chest too full and her heart too broken. She went to their bedroom where her jewelry box sat on a dresser.
“Can I explain?” he said, following her.
Why had she even asked him anything? Her need to know? Jesus. She didn’t need to know. She didn’t need his explanation, because none of it would heal the gaping wound in her heart. Nothing would make this pain better.
“It was January.” He sat down on the bed and stared at his hands. “My people and wolves—we don’t mix. Or we mix a little too well. There’s something about Gypsy blood.”
She pulled the rings—her mother’s and his grandmother’s from the box—and leaned against the wall. Remembering the way he’d flinched away from her, it didn’t seem right now to sit down next to him. He wouldn’t find any comfort in her, anyway.
“They say he was my younger sister’s father.” Stefan looked up at her, his eyes like dark coals. “Can you imagine what it must be like in her head? To have found our mother as she did? Ripped apart in her own vardo, an enchanted wagon where gypsy magic should’ve kept her safe. My mother was a princess, next in line to be Alpha of Alphas—Eve of our kind. The most powerful. And a stinking, dirty mongrel ripped out her heart and used her ribs like toothpicks.”
Empathy stole over her like a silent thief. She didn’t want to feel anything more for this man than she already did, but there it was. Understanding, acceptance and the sharp stab of his pain like it was her own.
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