He bit my earlobe, providing just a hint of pain that intensified my need, then slid his fingers inside my wetness. Not forceful but firm, just hard enough that I clenched around him, wanting more. My hand was in his hair, the other one clawing at the muscles on his bare back.
“Jesus Christ. I’d love to feel this around my cock.” He slid his fingers in and out, firm, strong strokes.
“Yes. I want you.”
“No.” His head dipped, and he took one of my nipples into his mouth. The already hardened bud turned painful.
“Hunter.” I arched my back, spreading my legs for him, giving him better access while his tongue flicked and swirled around my nipple. Desperation for more than just his touch had me bucking my hips.
“Perfect. So perfect. I’ve been dreaming about this half my fucking life.” His mouth devoured my other nipple, sucking until it throbbed. Then his lips captured mine.
By the time he lifted his head, I was panting up at him.
“What about you?” I reached for his rock-hard need.
He said nothing and pushed my hands up above my head. “Don’t worry about me, I’m giving you what you need.”
“But—”
“I’ll take care of it later.” He sped his strokes up until all I could do was fuck his fingers. I couldn’t help picturing him beating himself off somewhere.
“That’s hot. I want to see you get off.”
“Another time.”
“Oh, my God.” His calm, his insistence on pleasing me with no thought for his own satisfaction, only made me crazier. I panted, his fingers quickened, and I rode them until white lights flashed across my eyes. I gripped the headboard rail and cried out.
A low groan left him, half a growl, before his mouth swept over mine, tonguing me hard. I clutched him, and he wiped his fingers on my thigh.
When he lifted his head again, his lopsided, tender smile made me tingle all over. “Good?”
I nodded, breathless. “Magic hands. Why did I wait so long to let you do that?” I knew why, though. To protect myself as much as him.
Thoughts of the Dragonwatch using him to get to me, perhaps kidnapping him as they had my father, cut across my lethargic thoughts, chilling the joy I felt at finally sharing a part of myself with the only man I’d ever really loved. I shoved the images aside, refusing to let them ruin the mood.
“Because you think you have to be alone to keep others safe. You put others first. I love that about you.” He traced my lips with his fingers. “Are you warm enough now?”
I nodded, reveling in the heat that filled me, then peeled myself off the bed, out of the warmth of his arms.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting dressed.”
Hunter rested his head on his hand. Laying on his side, he watched me with a gorgeous smirk while I drew on my clothes. I crawled back in beside him. Quickly, he got up, tossed on his pants. Once on the cot with me again, he turned onto his back, pulling me to him so that I was folded into his side.
“This is nice.” I rested my head on his bare chest. His strong heartbeat filled my ear, a rhythmic thumping.
He hummed in agreement.
“Stay here with me.”
He lifted a brow at me.
“Don’t go back to the couch.”
“Not a chance. I’ll hold you all night.” His lips brushed my forehead. “Rest. I’ll be right here beside you when you wake up.”
His words sounded so committed. Forever stretched out in front of me, a future with Hunter looking like a real possibility for the first time in my life. Love, a life no longer condemned to loneliness, shone like a beacon, at last within reach. Something I’d wished would happen for years. The notion excited even while it terrified me. My throat tightened, though, as reality settled over my thoughts like a cloud. As long as the Dragonwatch was after me, as long as they had my father, and as long as there was evil to fight, a life with anyone was impossible.
My stomach knotted. We’d taken the next step, something I’d wished with all my heart had happened long ago. But where could things go now that we had? If only it didn’t feel like something was missing between us. This was the man I’d wanted for so long, and yet…
No. I’d never let anyone get this close to me, not even Hunter, and now instinct was driving me to pull away. That was all. I belonged here. I did.
Tomorrow, I’d be the monster hunter and the witch who couldn’t afford the luxury of love.
As I dropped off to sleep, determination settled in. Someday this nightmare would end, and when it did, I’d let Hunter mark me. I’d be his mate, and no one and nothing would stop us. I’d be all his, and I wouldn’t lose him again the way I had so many times before.
Chapter 13
Last Resort
Minutes after she’d come so perfectly on my fingers, Helena had dropped off, her breathing slow and even in sleep. For ten damn years I’d waited for a moment like this, so now that I had the woman I loved in my arms, I wasn’t about to miss a moment of it. Sleep wasn’t in the works.
Instead, I lay awake holding her, lost in the rhythm of her breathing, her warmth, her scent that wrapped around me. She smelled like vanilla soap, apple shampoo, her natural human scent, and the fresh tang of a woman’s pleasure. I could have lived and died wrapped in that fucking smell, and I’d have died a happy man.
I shifted on the bed beside her, and she twisted in my arms; I thought maybe I’d jostled her. I moved slowly, hoping I hadn’t disturbed her. Her arms flailed, and her back bowed.
“Helena.”
Her back bowed until she was nearly off the bed except for her shoulders, head and feet. I sat up sharply and shook her shoulder.
“Helena.”
Her back relaxed, laying her flat to the cot, but she didn’t wake. For a moment she lay still, except for her eyelids, which fluttered.
“What the hell…” I bent closer, looking at her eyes. Blue light, like glowing fire, flashed between her lids. I’d only ever seen her eyes glow like that when she used her magic, but there was no magic coming from her now.
I was about to open her eyelids and look, but she seized again, body bent almost in half.
“Shit.” I grabbed her, trying to rouse her. Her eyelids only fluttered again. Her body thrashed and twisted.
Was this seizure from the poison or something else? I’d seen this kind of thing happen to members of my pack often enough that, if not for the Demon Wolf’s bite, I’d have known what I was seeing anywhere.
Helena was shifting.
Expecting her to turn into a smaller, female version of Rakar, I leaped up and rummaged on the shelf above the bed for a pair of the dragonsteel cuffs I’d seen earlier, one of the sets with no chain linking them. One at a time, I locked them around her wrists.
The cuffs wouldn’t stop her from changing, but if her super strength stemmed from her magic, they would cut her off from that, too.
How I only wanted to stay with her, comforting her, but I couldn’t. If shifting into Demon Wolf form was anything like shifting into a werewolf, she’d transform in moments. Ready to rip out the throat of anyone close at hand.
Helena’s body bucked and convulsed, but I made myself strap her down, carefully avoiding her kicking legs.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
Helena’s eyes snapped open. Pools of violent magic light still filled them. Her arms strained against the straps, her face twisting. In rage, I thought.
“Hunter…” Her voice broke, desperate. Filled with pain. “Hunter, help me.”
“Jesus.” The anguish in her eyes nearly did me in. Sometimes young shifters experiencing their first transformation endured considerable pain, often worse than this. A year younger than me at twenty-six, she was hardly a youngling, but this was her first shift. She was in for a hell of a night, and there was nothing to do but wait it out.
Wait it out, and, in this case, hope I could keep her from killing everyone she smelled within a half a mile, not to
mention whatever horrors a Demon Wolf happened to get up to when they first changed.
“Hunter, please help me. It hurts. Let me go.”
“Can’t do it, sweetheart.” I reached to smooth her hair back. Her head twisted, teeth snapping.
“Let me go!” Her voice sounded too deep, almost evil.
The Demon, speaking from within? Maybe, but the tone sounded odd, like nothing I’d heard before.
It took everything I had to pick up my jacket from the chair and head for the door of the cage, lantern and keys in hand. Anger bubbled up at having to leave my best friend and the only woman I’d ever loved with this thing turning her into a monster.
There was a grotesque crunching sound. I spun around to her. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
Helena twisted on the bed; the shoulder that had already popped out of joint, now popping back in. She howled in pure agony.
I nearly unbuckled her and pulled her into my arms, anything to comfort her. No shifting I’d ever seen or heard of went like this. But there was no way to help her, and if she changed while I held her, she might kill me.
I forced myself to leave the cage, locking her in.
Alone.
She twisted the other way, her other shoulder joint snapping horribly. Another scream tore through the cabin. Under her voice, I heard what sounded like a second voice, deeper, raspier, haunting.
Momentarily, her screams formed words.
“Hunter! Hunter, help me! It hurts!”
She descended into incoherent, deep-throated roars that ripped through the night.
“Baby, there’s nothing I can do.” I went back toward the couch, running my palms down my face. “It’ll be over soon. I’m so sorry.”
I hoped it was true, that her agony would end soon, but I had a bad feeling it was just starting.
The convulsions eventually stopped, but not for long.
When Helena’s body finally went slack and her eyes closed, she was covered in sweat, her skin pale like death. Her breathing sounded labored. For a few minutes, the convulsions stopped, then the whole cycle began again. A seizure, then thrashing, then her bones would break. She howled and roared in a world of pain.
Pain I had no way to save her from.
It killed me to do it, but sitting on the couch watching her from across the room during another bone-breaking episode, I kept my service pistol in hand, on my knee. I’d never been much into religion, but right then, I begged whatever power might be watching over us that I wouldn’t have to use the gun.
I’d taken her ring from around my neck, once more twirling it between my fingers, watching the light catch the deep blue stones. Her birth stones.
For ten years, looking at that ring reminded me of her, of what I’d promised myself would one day be mine. Now it reminded me of what I was fighting to save. I gripped the handle of my pistol tighter.
The fourth time she went into convulsions, the mattress under her was soaked in sweat, and I swore every one of her bones snapped—I assumed—the result of her human body trying to accommodate a change to a form meant only for animals.
Hours later, when she should have either died from the shift or turned into a wolf, she still hadn’t. Instead, she murmured incoherently about her father, slick with fever.
Closing my eyes, I forced myself to reach into the inside pocket of my jacket and pull out my police badge. The golden shield glinted in the lantern light from the table. She wasn’t getting better. If she didn’t heal and recover soon, she’d probably die, if not from the attempts to transform, then from the fever.
Badge in one hand, her ring in the other, I looked at the two as though weighing something. The choice was clear.
God, she’d never forgive me for this.
I set the badge on the table and reached my hand toward it, concentrating. Only a Dragonlord could help her now. Only a Windwielder, whose healing powers were renowned for healing almost anything, could save her.
As I stretched my fingers out toward my shield, it glowed with a mystical light. My mind automatically reached for the mind of the man who’d magicked the badge. Who’d magicked it and told me, almost six months ago now, that if I ever needed his help, I had but to call on him.
To call on him and pay whatever unwanted price he chose to exact for his aid.
The thought snuck in, tearing a hole through the wall of tolerance and equality I prided myself on when it came to Suvia Kyans. The Dragonwatch Guard was after her. Dragonlords hunted her. If I called on a Suvia Kyan now…
I withdrew my hand. The light on the badge died, the shining shield nothing more than steel again.
“Fuck.” I pocketed the damn badge.
Helena thrashed and howled, and bones broke. I put my head in my hands. There has to be another way to save her without involving them.
Except, the cycle of almost-transformations didn’t end. Instead, Helena’s thrashing and fever grew worse.
“Leave my father alone, Dragonspawn!” She tossed her head and snarled at no one in the room. “Daddy, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone to the fight. Shouldn’t have left you. My fault. Leave him alone!”
Fuck. She was hallucinating now. I was no doctor, but that wasn’t good.
Her back bowed so far off the bed the strap over her chest broke. Her spine snapped. She cried out in agony. I leaped from my seat and went for the cage, but stopped a foot from the door. The strap on her legs still held. If she went for the door, I’d have to hope the steel and the lock holding the door shut was enough.
My gut tore a hole in itself at the alternative, but I gripped my pistol in both hands and pointed it at her, ready. Fucking Christ, who does this? “Come on sweetheart,” I murmured. “Don’t make me shoot you.”
Helena’s bones crunched. Her head threw back “Daaaaaadddeeee!”
I’d never heard such a horrible scream. It was like hearing the devil howling from inside a human form.
Thoughts of life without Helena loomed, dark and endless. And we’d just taken a giant leap forward. I hadn’t mated her or marked her, but as far as I was concerned, she was still mine. And now I was going to lose her. If I had to shoot her…
Fuck that.
I pulled my badge out. Concentrated until the light on it glowed so bright the whole shield seemed to be made of magic. After a long moment, the magic faded, the summoning complete.
An unpleasant tightness settled in my chest. Well, if I had to pay a Dragonlord’s price, I’d pay whatever he asked if doing so saved her.
Putting the badge back in my pocket, I went to the cage and quickly checked the lock on its door. Then I left the cabin and hopped into her dad’s Blazer.
I hated leaving her knowing what could happen, but I had no choice.
Everything in the Blazer smelled of her. Like heaven. I inhaled deeply, as if this was the last time I might smell her perfect scent.
This is the only way. I won’t let you die like this.
I sped toward the nearest meeting place, an hour out.
Twilight was peeking over the trees that surrounded the small town of Holden by the time I pulled up to the front of the small bar in the middle of the almost non-existent town square.
Driving up to the place a moment ago, the sign above the heavy wooden door read Grumpy Ted’s Bar and Grill. When I got out of the Blazer and walked toward the door, I looked up, watching the sign change as I drew close. The image of a grouchy-looking bartender with his arms crossed became a robed Suvia Kyan with a ball of magic in his hands. A maiden bowed to the Dragonlord, both of them distinctly medieval in appearance. Grumpy Ted’s transformed into new words, The Firewalker and the Maiden.
Watching that sign change the moment I stepped beyond the magical barrier hiding the tavern’s true appearance always fascinated me. A full year since I’d learned about the Suvia Kyan race, about their world of magic, and it still hadn’t gotten old.
Other humans coming here would think the bar was just a place to have a drink, all of its patro
ns ordinary humans. Had I not had the unlikely tie to the Dragonlords I did, I wouldn’t have seen the sign change.
I waved to the bartender behind the bar, and he nodded in return. He put the glass he was drying down and poured me a draft. I wouldn’t be drinking, but the beer would keep the wrong people from eyeing me sideways the way they would have done if I’d lingered without ordering.
At the back of the tavern, I took a seat in a booth, allowing for privacy. This time of day, the twenty-four-hour bar had only three other customers. A big-bellied guy in a lumberjack coat sat on a stool at the bar chatting with Ted, an old woman muttered into her beer at a table, and a scrawny guy with too many tats played pool by himself.
I took the seat facing the door and fingered the outside of my glass, looking like I was nursing the drink without taking any.
Half an hour passed, and my contact hadn’t walked in. I checked my watch for the hundredth time, as if doing so would make the time move faster. All this time I spent here I should have been with Helena, taking care of her.
The possibility that she’d somehow escaped and was now a marauding Demon Wolf rampaging through a small town near the cabin cut across my thoughts. I shut that notion down. This was the only way. All the same, the sooner my contact showed up, the sooner I could get back to her.
Once more, I checked my watch. Still, no one came through the front door.
I glanced behind me. No one back there, and there was only a wide set of heavy steel fire doors for a back entrance. If anyone had come through those, I’d have heard it, and besides, it would have set off the fire alarm.
A few more minutes ticked by while I watched the front door. Still, no one pulled up.
A finger tapped me on the shoulder from behind. I whipped around. No one was there.
“Boo.”
I twisted to face front again. My contact sat in the seat opposite me, having moved from behind me to the seat so fast I might have thought he’d teleported from one place to the other, only I knew Dragonlords couldn’t do that. Not even wolves moved that fast.
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