The Dark War: The Dark War, Book 1

by Angela Addams

  “Not here, not now.” He kept his gaze on his food, spooning another mouthful.

  “You’re such a dick!” I said as I jumped off the stool. The anger that had been simmering coming to a boil. “You think you can make these kinds of decisions for me? You think I’m just going to go along with some crazy plan you’ve got cooked up? Get me into position? To do what? You’re going to get me killed!”

  Wyatt shifted his gaze to me, eyes cold, no secrets leaking there. “I’ve always done what’s best for you.”

  “Well.” I threw my hands up. “That’s a fucking joke isn’t it? You’ve always done what’s best for me? What exactly does that look like for you? By my tally, you’ve betrayed me, you’ve lied to me, you’ve ripped my goddamned heart out after shredding it to bits. You cast me off. You’ve done nothing but try to destroy me! How is this any different?”

  He dropped his spoon, his eyes flaring. He pushed his stool back. “Watch your words, Kali.”

  “No,” I spat. “You watch your words, you self-righteous, malicious, asshole. I’m done with you and your fucking mind games. All you’ve ever done is hurt me and I’m not going to let it happen again.”

  “Hurt you?” He growled and stood pushing the stool aside so hard it clattered to the floor. “All I’ve ever done is try to protect you.”

  “Protect me!” I sputtered the words. “Are you fucking serious? Protect me from what? From you? ’Cause the way I see it, that’s the only thing I need protection from.”

  He closed the distance between us so suddenly, his eyes burning with such anger that I actually flinched, expecting him to slap me or something.

  “I’ve never lied to you. I’ve never betrayed you. Not on purpose. Not with malice.” He glared down at me, fists clenched at his sides. “Have I made mistakes? Hell yes, but so have you. The only thing I’ve ever been guilty of is loving you too much.”

  I laughed bitterly. “What a crock of shit! How can you call this love? Lying by omission is still lying, Wyatt. Didn’t you ever learn that?”

  “What do you think I lied to you about?” he bellowed. “Tell me, Kali, what is it that has you hating me so much right now?”

  “Ally.” Her name on my tongue actually burned and I felt a second of guilt shudder through me. “You failed to mention that you had a wife, for starters. You seduced me, you played on my weakness for you and all along you had a wife waiting for you back home.”

  He pulled back, vibrating with pent up emotions. I watched his eyes flash from anger to guilt for a heartbeat. Confirming what I already knew. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to sob. Wyatt had only ever been pain for me with brief moments of ecstasy. It wasn’t worth it. Not when it caused so much damage to my heart.

  “I didn’t tell you about Ally because it’s over.” He sighed, looking more defeated than angry now, his shoulders slumping as he moved to right the stool he’d knocked over. “It was over before it even started and I haven’t been a husband to Ally for years. Not the way she wanted. I’m bound to her, yes, just as the ceremony dictates, but we are not really man and wife. Not in our hearts.”

  I gulped as a bit of my anger fell away. “Why then?” I croaked.

  He sat on the stool, ran his hand through his hair, his eyes telling me that he fought with himself over this secret. He didn’t want to part with it. “I owed her that at least.” He sighed. “Her powers have been bound as well and it’s my fault that they are. I felt obligated to marry her, give her some kind of protection. Even if it was just with my family name.”

  “What?” He was giving me a reason, a plausible reason and damn my heart, but I wanted to give him the out.

  It still hurt. God, it fucking hurt. They’d committed to each other. No matter what he said, a witch’s union was bound by magic. It was sealed with it. To break it would be…it would be painful. Possibly deadly.

  “You need to tell me this, Wyatt. Out of everything, I need to know this.”

  He stared at me, contemplating, assessing. He was a vault, didn’t part with secrets easily. Barely trusted.

  “When your sisters died, and you left, I went a little crazy. More than a little,” he said, his words forced. “I found a time travel spell in my family’s grimoire…”

  I gasped, dread soaking right to my bones. “You didn’t?” Had he attempted to alter history?

  “I tried it once but only managed to go back a few days. I needed more power, someone to chant while I manipulated the days. Shifting them to months.”

  “So you asked Ally.”

  And she would have done it. Without hesitation. She’d always idolized Wyatt. He knew it, I knew it. She would have done anything for him, even if it was to help me.

  He nodded, his eyes sad. “And we failed. Something went wrong. I got to the right time, the right place, I watched…” He swallowed, I swallowed, tears bubbling once again. “I watched your sisters die, but I couldn’t do anything to stop it. I wasn’t strong enough. The magic signature was discovered. We were interrogated for hours, threatened with death. When the Council was satisfied that we hadn’t managed to alter anything, they agreed to lessen the punishment. Binding for both of us. A life sentence.”

  It was harsh but merciful as well. Use of a forbidden spell could lead to execution depending on the severity.

  “I married Ally to protect her. Her family disowned her immediately and she was alone, powerless and it was all my fault. I married her and took her to my family, forcing them to swear on the grimoire that they would keep her safe. And then I left.”

  “You left?” I frowned. That wasn’t what I was expecting. Ally was a sweet, pretty young girl who worshiped Wyatt. He could have been happy. She would have tried to make him happy.

  “I knew what they looked like. The vampires who attacked your sisters. I knew who they were.” His eyes got hard all of a sudden. “And I killed every single motherfucking one of them. Painfully. Slowly. In your name.”

  Shock rolled through me like a bolt of lightning, tears sprang unbidden. “I thought…what…why would you do that for me?” My legs were shaking so much that I slumped down on my stool, holding onto the table to keep myself from sliding off.

  Wyatt leaned forward, prying my hands from the counter, pulling me closer toward him. “You and I, we had our problems, but I never stopped loving you.”

  “You put me through hell. I hated you!” I wanted to get angry, to hit him, to scream at the injustice. He’d left me for Ally before my sister’s had died. He’d flirted with the little girl who’d wanted him so. He’d dumped me brutally, without explanation, rubbed his relationship with her in my face. I tried to pull away from him, more confused than anything now. What he was telling me, it was just too much to absorb.

  “I was young. I was a stupid fuck.” He stood, moving so that his hips were wedged between my knees, forcing me to look up at him. “I wanted to make you jealous because I thought that would make you love me back.”

  I blinked, hard. Snapped my gaze up to his. “I’ve always loved you, you asshole.”

  “I thought love was what Ally did. Infatuation, fawning. I told you, I was young, stupid.” He shrugged. “You were never like that.”

  “I told you I loved you. I showed you I loved you.” At least I thought I had. It’s funny how perception can get flipped on its head when you come at it from a different way…with years in between.

  “I wanted more.”

  I nodded. Yes, I understood that. We were both dumb fucks. Playing games with each other. Holding back. Young. Naive.

  “You will never truly know how much I’ve regretted my behavior.” He swallowed. “How much I wish I’d never pushed you away.”

  I couldn’t handle that confession. It was too much truth. My heart was raw from it, exposed, bleeding again. I wanted to take it. Forgive. Forget.

  “You avenged my sisters.”

&nb
sp; “Brutally.” He nodded. “I gave them what they’d meted out to your sisters and I made sure they knew why I was there as they died.”

  Okay, fine. He was a fucking hero. I sighed. Maybe it was time to let some shit go.

  He hooked his fingers under my chin and tilted my face up. “I’m not good at this kinda thing, Kali. You know that.”

  “A fucking vault,” I mumbled.

  He chuckled lightly. “Yeah, I guess I can be.” He rubbed his thumb over my bottom lip. “You need to trust that when I say I love you, with everything that I don’t say, I truly fucking mean it.”

  “I love you too, Wyatt.”

  He leaned down and kissed me tenderly, soft lips pressed to mine for a brief moment before separating again. “I was stupid once for leaving you. I don’t plan on doing that ever again. You’re mine. Eternally.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “I’m not agreeing to anything,” I said as I smacked my palm down on Wyatt’s bare chest. “Least of all a stupid fucking idea that I’m supposed to save the world. As if!”

  Wyatt chuckled as he captured my hand with his, bringing my fingers up to his lips for a kiss. “I’m just the messenger. It’s your mother who conjured this idea.”

  “What did she say exactly? This prediction of hers, you haven’t told me.”

  Wyatt sighed, pushed himself up so he could curl his arm behind his head. “Ivana needed to go. Your mom did say that. I wouldn’t have agreed to going after her if she wasn’t key. Her prediction connects you to Cassia, I think. Ivana’s death was meant to draw her out. Which I guess it did.”

  “Did Mom use names? Specific details?” Mom was accurate but usually not that accurate. There was always room for interpretation where predictions were concerned. Always room for free will and choice. “Did she say I was meant to end the war?”

  “Not exactly, no. Your mom said that your destiny is entwined with the hybrid’s somehow. I mean, she said destiny, and we thought at first that she was talking about your sister but…”

  “What were the words she used? Exactly.”

  “She said that you and destiny had a date with a hybrid and that when the time was right you would have the choice to make, one that would alter the state of the world.”

  “And you took that to mean I would end the war? Jesus, Wyatt.” I chuckled, despite the pit of unease growing in my stomach. “That could mean so many things.”

  He shrugged. “She said something else too, about tracking the hybrid’s signature. That you were the only one who could, or something like that.”

  “Or something like that? Really? Don’t you think this is a little important?”

  “It’s not like I wrote it down, Kali. Fuck, I didn’t really expect for this war to happen to be honest. Or at least I didn’t think it would be this bad.”

  “You and me both.” I sighed, rested my head back to his chest.

  “Besides, once we get back to Salem, you can ask her for clarity yourself.”

  “All the better reason to get on the road ASAP.” We’d slept the night away. At least I think we had. It was hard to tell underground. “How long are we going to stay here?”

  Wyatt lifted his arms in a stretch, up and out, to come around my shoulders as he turned toward me. “Oh, I don’t know. Food, shelter, a giant fucking bed to catch up on things.”

  He leaned down to kiss me, both of us chuckling a little as he did. Rick had been generous with the accommodations, giving us a queen size bed with plush linens and a down filled comforter.

  “We do have some catching up to do.” I grinned as I kissed the side of his neck, licking at his ear lobe before I pulled my face back. “I’d like your giant cock inside me, please.”

  He smiled. “I like it when you talk dirty.”

  He slipped his fingers along my pussy folds, drenching himself in my juice, before pressing against my clit. I moaned into his lips when he lowered down for a kiss, slipping his tongue into my mouth at the same time as he plunged his fingers deep inside of me. Kissing Wyatt was like drowning in lust. I bared myself to him completely just so that he could invade every nook and cranny. That was where the danger always was with him. I made myself as vulnerable as humanly possible and there was nothing I could do about it.

  He was mine.

  He released my lips, removed his fingers and shifted my body to the side so that my ass was pressed against his cock, nudging insistently at my pussy for entry. I lifted my leg, draped it behind, over his thigh, opening myself to him, welcoming without saying a word. He glided into me, my pussy walls gripping him. He rocked forward, his hand coming around to clench my breast, to squeeze and cup before teasing my nipples, one then the other.

  “Wyatt,” I moaned, eyes closed as he buried himself to the hilt.

  He swept my hair to the side and kissed me tenderly on the shoulder. “I love you, Kali. Always have. Always will.”

  * * * * *

  “Hey, you two, get your asses out of bed!” Rick pounded on the steel door, jolting us awake, our bodies still joined, back to front as we had been.

  “What’s up, Rick?” Wyatt withdrew, giving another kiss on my shoulder before he moved to wrap a blanket around his waist, edging to the side of the bed so he could get up.

  Rick popped open the door, sending me scurrying for a blanket, before I remembered he couldn’t see me. He poked his head in, a quirky smile on his face. “She still invisible?”

  “Rick,” Wyatt growled. “Do you mind?”

  Rick nodded, sweeping his gaze in my general direction. I lifted the sheet in my hand, partially covering myself from his probing eyes. Despite the fact that I was invisible to him, I still felt creeped out that he was even trying to catch a look.

  Wyatt didn’t like it either, his second warning growl enough to have Rick chuckling. “Stand down, stand down. Not like I can see anything anyway. Unfortunately.”

  “What do you want, man?” Wyatt stood, moved to push Rick back out of the room.

  With raised hands and a smirk on his lips, Rick moved to the hallway. “I just wanted to let you know that the others have arrived.”

  Wyatt frowned. “What others?”

  “There wasn’t time to tell you.” His smile grew wider. “Got myself a few pack brothers.”

  “Pack brothers? As in werewolves?” Wyatt’s voice rose.

  My heart thundered. Werewolves were not the kind of species you wanted to join forces with. They were borderline wild beasts, savages with a primitive way of thinking. “Did he say a pack?”

  Wyatt glanced at me quickly, his look saying we were so out of there.

  “No worries, my brother. These guys are cool. Helped me fund this project.” He waved his hands around as if we didn’t know what project he was referring to. “They’re all my students. Fully trained preppers.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “These wolves, they all took my Doomsday prepping course. They’re my team. Trained and operational. You won’t find better protection than in this bunker.”

  “He can’t be serious!” Living with one prepper who was borderline insane was one thing, but a group of them? No way. That was just too much crazy trapped in a gigantic steel coffin.

  “Okay,” Wyatt motioned for me to get dressed. “Give us a few minutes and we’ll be out to meet your friends.”

  “You don’t need to sound so freaked, man!” Rick was smiling again, full on ear-to-ear grin. “They’re the good guys…or at least, the neutral guys.” He shrugged. “Just come and meet them, you can judge for yourself. We’re going to get a round of poker going.” He paused for a minute. “Fuck, I shouldn’t have told them about your invisible girl. She would’ve been a great advantage.”

  Wyatt shook his head and closed the door. “Werewolves.”

  I pulled the sheet tighter and pushed to the end of t
he bed. “Guess I better shower. At this point I’m probably more smelly than any of those beasts out there.”

  Wyatt chuckled, as he swatted my ass. “We’ll make it a quickie. I’ll wash your back if you’ll wash mine.”

  I grinned over my shoulder then let the blanket drop.

  Nothing would ever be the same again. Not between me and Wyatt, which maybe wasn’t a bad thing. Certainly not out there in the real world. I felt like each bizarre turn of events lead to another twist of the strange and unusual. Here we were, housed in an underground bunker, with a witch-hating witch who’d bound himself and a pack of werewolves to keep us company.

  Things had always been complicated when it came to my relationship with Wyatt. And yet, for some strange reason, all I was feeling in that moment was happy. I wouldn’t have been able to wipe the grin off my face if I wanted to.

  I knew what was to come wouldn’t be good. I knew my heart was going to take a beating and that housing with werewolves would not be our long term plan but that didn’t matter for now. Wyatt was at my side, and things felt like they were right where they belonged.

  We had shit to do and things to sort out. Also, a world to save. Or something like that.

  About the Author

  Every day is Halloween for author Angela Addams. Enthralled by the paranormal at an early age, Angela spends most of her time thinking up new story ideas that involve supernatural creatures in everyday situations. She believes that the written word is an amazing tool for crafting the most erotic of scenarios.

  She is an avid tattoo collector, a total book hoarder and loves anything covered in chocolate…except for bugs.

  She lives in Ontario, Canada, in an old, creaky house, with her loving husband and children.

  To find out more about Angela, visit www.angelaaddams.com.

  If you’re interested in hearing about upcoming releases, reading exclusive excerpts and getting a sneak peek at cover reveals, sign up for her newsletter here: http://t.co/lEglw3sJuK

  Don’t forget to follow her on Twitter (www.twitter.com/angelaaddams).