Healing her protector had left her drained. Why?
The wound was slow to heal beneath her hand and her head swam as she struggled to keep going, afraid that the man would die if she failed.
It eventually closed, leaving her trembling and weak, limbs heavy and mind throbbing. Her legs wobbled beneath her and her hand slipped from his throat. The man released her arm and she almost fell.
Her protector grabbed her arm and pulled her back to him, settling her close to his side and dwarfing her. His arm curled around her, tucking her against his body.
Protecting her? Had she been in danger?
She wanted to look up at him but her head felt too heavy to lift.
She leaned into him instead, focusing on steadying her nerves and regaining her strength. He was warm against her, skin soft despite his hard appearance, and she liked the feel of his hand on her shoulder, holding her close to him, protecting her. She drew in a slow breath and resisted closing her eyes. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been this close to a man, but she knew in her heart that whoever it had been, he hadn’t made her feel like this man did.
She felt safe, shielded from the world, and hot from head to toe.
She slowly raised her head and found him looking down at her, the red and gold flecks in his eyes bright against the dark chocolate. The world fell away again and her pulse picked up, heart hammering out a hard rhythm against her ribs, as though it wanted to break free and fly to him.
When the heck had she become a poet?
She scolded herself. She knew better than to fall for a man’s charms. She couldn’t get close to anyone.
It wasn’t safe.
It was different this time though. In the past, she had kept her distance to keep herself safe, afraid if someone discovered her secret that she would be handed over to people who wanted to experiment on her.
She didn’t need to do that around this man. These men. They all had powers. They were like her.
“She is a Carrier.” Those words formed hazily in her mind, breaking through the warm silence, and drawing a frown from her.
She lowered her gaze from her protector’s and looked blankly at the proud one. He casually wiped the blade on the sleeve of his black coat and stared at her.
“Perhaps,” the tawny built one said and a murmur of agreement ran through the group.
“Carrier?” A chill ran over her skin. “Like a disease?”
Her eyes leaped back up to meet her protector’s ones. He shook his head, unruly strands of his dark hair falling down to skim his stubbly jaw. His eyes remained locked on her, focused with intensity that heated her outwards from her core.
“It means that one of your parents is a Hellspawn.” Daimon’s words sank like lead through her, dragging her insides down.
Megan wasn’t sure what sounded worse, being a carrier of a disease or the fact that either her mother or father had been something like these brothers. Her skin prickled and heart picked up speed again, causing her head to spin. She wasn’t strong enough to listen to this. Not right now, not after healing the leader of these men.
She felt sick.
She thought she had known her parents.
“Did either of your parents ever display a power like yours?” The proud one moved closer to her and she couldn’t take it.
She burrowed into her protector’s side, needing to shut out the rest of the room so she could stop the rising tide of panic that threatened to crush her.
His arm tightened around her and a low growl curled from his lips. He sounded like a beast whenever he did that, feral and wild. Inhuman. She trembled against him, her palms on his chest, struggling to comprehend what the others were saying.
Her parents?
She couldn’t remember them having a power.
“I need you to answer the question, Megan. It is important that we know.”
She shook her head and drew in a steadying breath, and then emerged from her protector’s strong arms, meeting the proud one’s green gaze.
“I don’t know. My parents died when I was little... a light aircraft they were in crashed into a mountain... my grandparents raised me, and no... they were normal people.” She couldn’t believe she had just told them that. She hadn’t spoken about her parents’ deaths in years, had never let anyone get close enough to her to know such a thing about her.
The years she had spent with her parents were branded on her heart and her mind, reinforced by the hours she had spent talking with her grandparents about them. Could they really have had powers like hers? She felt sure that if they had, her grandparents would have known. She wanted to call them and ask, but she hadn’t spoken to them in years, since leaving her home behind.
Her protector’s arm tightened further, drawing her closer to him. His other hand shifted and slid along the length of her jaw, luring her into looking at him.
“It may not have been your parents. It’s more likely that Hellspawn blood entered your family line generations ago.”
There was small comfort in that but it still meant that someone her grandparents had told her about had been responsible for the power she had and was the reason she couldn’t lead a normal life no matter how hard she tried.
“No one in my family besides me has powers. Wouldn’t others have powers too?”
“Not necessarily.” The sound of his deep voice and the lightness of his hand on her face sent warmth curling through her. “It can skip generations or lay dormant until a certain event triggers it. When did you first realise you had a power?”
Her eyebrows pinched together. She hated thinking about that day. There had been so much blood and she had been so scared, terrified not by what had happened but by herself.
“I was eighteen. I was hiking in the mountains like I did most weekends and heard a scream. I thought maybe a bear had attacked someone. I ran in the direction the scream had come from.” She closed her eyes and images flashed across her mind. Bad move. She opened them again and fixed them on his, using them as a focus point so the memory of that day didn’t sweep her under. “I found a woman caught on a short ledge down from the path. There was blood everywhere. She looked so scared.”
His hand shifted against her face, soothing her colliding emotions and giving her something else to focus on.
“I tied off a rope on a tree and made it down to her. Her ankle was broken... badly... it was...” She swallowed her desire to be sick. “I radioed for help and then set about making a splint for her. When I touched her ankle, it... the skin began to close. It scared me and I didn’t want to touch her again, but she was going into shock and...”
“She needed your help, so you helped her. You don’t have to put yourself through this, Megan.” His hand settled against her cheek and the heat in his dark eyes backed up his words.
She nodded, but continued, needing to finish. “I touched her again and nothing happened. I thought I had imagined it. You know? The adrenaline getting to me or something crazy like that? Two years later, I found a deer caught in a trap. I wanted to free it. When I grabbed its hind leg to hold it steady while I opened the infernal contraption, the wound from the wire healed.”
“That was a very kind thing you did.” His thumb caressed the line of her jaw, and awareness of the other six men in the room slowly crept back in.
A cursory glance out of the corner of her eye revealed they were all staring at her, or more precisely, the point where their brother was touching her face.
Something was up.
Whenever he touched her, a flicker of shock crossed their faces, as though he shouldn’t be doing such a thing.
Was she off limits?
Esher had looked at her as though she was repulsive on more than one occasion.
Didn’t Hellspawn mix with Carriers?
Her head ached. Daemons. Hellspawn. Carriers. What next? Gods?
She cleared her throat and his hand dropped away from her, his arm leaving her too. She wanted to say something to clear th
e awkward silence and move the conversation away from her and the fact that someone in her family tree had a little daemon in them.
Not daemon. They had all drawn a line under that one.
She looked down at her protector’s hands, wishing he hadn’t let go of her, and frowned as she noticed the thin black braided band he wore around each wrist, flush to his skin. She had seen something like that before. She looked at Esher where he stood at the back of the room, his arms folded across his chest. Similar twin bands encircled his wrists. Her eyes shifted to the man on the armchair. He had them too.
A brotherly thing? It was cute that they had matching wristbands to go with their matching coats.
“You are definitely a Carrier.” The proud one broke the silence and she wished he hadn’t.
She still wasn’t sure what a Carrier was, or a Hellspawn, but neither of them sounded good. She had wanted an explanation about her power and now that she knew where it came from, she wanted to go back to not knowing. She didn’t want to think that somewhere out there, she had other family, all of them with strange powers and called by a name that sounded like something straight out of a nightmare.
Megan sank onto the red couch.
“Are you feeling okay?” Her protector frowned down at her and she wanted to say she was peachy but she couldn’t bring herself to lie to him.
“I wish you hadn’t told me.” She pulled her legs up, hugging her knees against her chest. “I don’t feel safe.”
His fingers flexed into fists at his sides, causing the muscles in his powerful arms to ripple and tense.
“I will protect you,” he said, voice a deep rumbling purr and expression fixed in a hard, determined look.
Her heart skipped a beat and heat stole through her veins.
His brothers raised their eyebrows.
Megan smiled.
She appreciated the back up. While the other men in the room all scared her to a degree, she felt safe around him and he had been nothing but gentle with her, always shielding her from others, and even risking his life for her. She had only known him a short time, but her heart said that she could trust him.
She now knew of eight in this world with powers more incredible than her ability to heal, and she knew where her power had come from. She wasn’t sure what to make of it, but she knew that her life would never be the same again.
Neither would her heart.
Her protector glanced down at her, his striking eyes locking with hers, stirring the heat within her again.
His hands had felt so good against her.
How would his caress feel?
It would set her heart and body on fire, would brand his name on her soul, and would leave her forever changed.
It would be dangerous.
Megan stared up into his eyes.
But it was a risk she was willing to take.
CHAPTER 6
Ares was finding it hard to concentrate on business when there was a beautiful woman sitting on his couch watching him. Her gaze bore into him, heating him by degrees until he was burning inside, as hot as he had ever been. He had caught the looks his brothers had given him whenever he had dared to touch her.
Touch her.
He grinned inside at that but schooled his features so his brothers didn’t see it.
She had felt soft beneath his fingers, skin cooler than his but satiny and tempting. He had taken every excuse to touch her but some of the times had been a gut reaction. Keras had poked around in her head. Ares hated it when his older brother employed mind tricks like that. Her thoughts were her own business and he didn’t like the idea of his brother placing things in her head, making her feel things against her will.
His dark gaze slid to Keras, who met it with cool green and raised a single black eyebrow at him.
“Temper,” Keras said in a low voice and Ares reined it in, unwilling to challenge his brother.
He just wanted him to know that she was off limits.
She belonged to him.
Sure, he hadn’t failed to catch the looks in his brothers’ eyes that warned him to keep his distance from the woman, as though she was dangerous, but he didn’t care.
His gaze slid back to her and she blinked and met it, her warm chocolate eyes cranking his temperature up another notch. She was beautiful, compassionate, everything good and pure. She had been dragged into this dark world because of him and he would protect her, even from his brothers if it came to it.
Gods, he wanted her.
He switched his focus back to his brothers, shutting down his desire at the same time, struggling to keep his body under control. Getting a hard-on was not going to help his cause. The towel wouldn’t conceal it. His brothers would instantly spout warnings about Megan and that he was just weak right now because he had lost his powers.
Megan would be wholly unimpressed too.
She barely knew him but the minute she discovered that the reason his brothers’ watched them like a hawk whenever he touched her was because she was the first woman he had been able to touch in a couple of centuries, she would be out of the door. He might have been out of the dating game for a long time, but he hadn’t forgotten how women worked.
She would presume he wanted her just because he could have her.
He wished that were the case.
He had noticed her beauty before he had lost his powers, even though he had known nothing could ever happen between them. She had triggered an intense need to protect her that had only grown in the short time he had known her, increasing from a desire to keep her safe from daemons to a consuming and commanding urge to protect her from everything in the world.
Even his brothers.
He would protect her.
He would make her belong to him.
Ares frowned. What the fuck was he thinking?
He was fooling himself. Nothing could happen between them. He had to find a way to regain his power from the daemon. It was a part of who he was. It made him Ares. Without his power, he felt like a different person.
He cast his gaze down at the oak floor beneath his bare feet. There was only one way that he could have her, and that would be to give up his power and not try to retrieve it. Could he sacrifice such an intrinsic part of himself for her sake?
It was a seductive proposition, and not only because Megan would be his reward.
He had spent centuries exerting rigid control over his power, and it had been exhausting, had drained him more than he had ever realised. Now that he was without his power, he could see just what a burden it had been.
Now, he no longer had to control himself all the time. He no longer had to constantly master his body and wage war against his fire.
Now, he could touch without fear of hurting others, could lose his temper without fear of burning everything to ashes, and could live life in the way he had before his duty as a guardian of the gates between the mortal world and the Underworld.
Seductive.
Dangerously so.
“What are you going to do about it?” Keras said and Ares raised his head and scanned the expectant faces of his six brothers.
What would he do?
What he needed to do, because he was a warrior.
A guardian.
Fulfilling that duty came before everything, even his own happiness.
“I’ll get my power back somehow.” Those words almost stuck in his throat. It had to be done. He was strong without his fire and had other abilities that he could rely on in a fight, as well as man-made weaponry at his disposal, but to protect the gate and his world, he needed his power.
“You sure you want it back?” Daimon stared across the room at him. “Life without it might be nicer... you seem to have taken to it quickly. I mean... you have kept the woman here and you seem rather close.”
Ares let that one go. The barbs edging Daimon’s tone cut him but it was his brother who bled. He could see it in his pale blue eyes.
“Maybe you could let the daemon hold on to y
our power for you while you get it out of your system?” Daimon’s eyes darkened towards sapphire. “I mean, it must be nice... you’ve certainly been taking advantage of it. You don’t seem to be able to keep your hands off her.”
Megan gasped.
Ares growled. “Do not test me, Daimon.”
There was only so much he was going to take from his little brother before he took him and his smart mouth down. Daimon was only shooting his mouth off to cover his feelings, but it was beginning to piss him off. He didn’t want to deal with this in such a public arena, and definitely not in front of Megan. She didn’t deserve to hear such filth spoken about her. He knew Daimon was hurting. Hell, his brother probably saw this as a good thing and might go off half-cocked looking for the daemon so he could lose his power too.
So he could touch again.
Ares couldn’t blame him if he did, but Daimon didn’t know how it felt to be without his power.
It didn’t feel good at all.
It felt terrible.
It might be seductive, might be what he had desired in the last two centuries, but now that he had no power, it felt as if part of him was missing.
“Daimon,” Keras said, his tone calm but commanding.
Daimon folded his arms across his chest and looked out of the bank of windows at the night.
How long before the leash on his temper snapped again? The darkness growing in his brother’s eyes said it wouldn’t be too long. Ares gave him five minutes at best before he felt the need to say something again.
“I called you last night. Where were you?” Calistos’s equally pale eyes verged towards stormy grey and the strands of his blond ponytail fluttered.
A warning sign that his youngest brother was close to losing his temper too.
What was with his brothers tonight?
He had screwed up, had lost his power, and didn’t know how to get it back, but they were all acting as though their problem was bigger than his was.
“Out getting my arse handed to me by a daemon,” Ares lied.
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