Hunting Hearts II
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2014 by Melissa F. Hart. All rights reserved worldwide.
No part of this book may be replicated, redistributed, or given away in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written consent of the author/publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
http://www.melissafhart.com/
Books in the series
The Book of Unbound Chains - Volume 1
Dreams of a Restless Sleep - Volume 2
The Wolf Released - Volume 3
My Only Safe Place - Volume 4
To Soar with Eagles - Volume 5
Love at the End of the World - Volume 6
***
Synopsis
Book Four: My Only Safe Place
A year after she fled Mads and his war against the angels, Tara is making a life for herself in a large anonymous city. She is finally beginning to believe that there may be some kind of life for herself and her son, Fen, but then everything changes in a single terrible moment, and the war is on her doorstep again.
Mads has never forgotten Tara, but when he realizes what she has done and who she has hidden from him, can he ever forgive her?
Book Five: To Soar with Eagles
Mads and Tara enter into an uneasy alliance with Lukas, the angel of prophecy, to find their son. Lukas guides them to the Aerie, the nesting place of angels, where no wolf has gone and lived to tell the tale.
Mads and Tara's love is put to the test as they search for their son in a terrifying stone labyrinth, and Tara is forced to make a decision that might doom everything that she holds dear.
Book Six: Love at the End of the World
Tara and Mads face off against Anders, the leader of the fallen angels, and they soon realize that his madness endangers not just the wolf clans but the entire world as they know it. Tara makes a desperate decision, risking her child and the man she loves, and she can only pray that she made the right choice.
In the end, Tara knows that Mads loves her, and she knows that he would give his life for her and their son. What she does not know is whether it will be enough.
***
Table of Contents
My Only Safe Place
To Soar with Eagles
Love at the End of the World
***
My Only Safe Place
***
The library was quiet at night, and that was how Tara liked it best. She finished the shelf reading and turned in the papers to the front desk before taking clocking herself out.
It was a long walk back to the apartment, and it gave her time to think even as she stretched out legs that were sore from reshelving books and crouching to find missing volumes. She wished she could return to her job at the university, but with the war between the angels and the werewolves reaching a fever pitch, she didn't dare, not when they had found her once.
It had been a year since she ran from Mads, the alpha werewolf who was cutting a swathe of destruction through the ranks of the angels, using the weapon she had given him. A year had not dulled the sting of his lies or of the fact that at night, when she allowed herself to grieve, she still mourned him, still longed for his arms around her.
Everything had changed that night in Scotland, and when she had run, with an angel and a mysterious being known as the Three in One as her unlikely allies, she had run hard. The year had been a difficult one, the hardest she had ever known, and her travels had brought her to this large city, where she could disappear into the swell of humanity.
Her life was dark in some ways. She couldn't let any one get too close, and her ties with her family, tenuous though they had always been, were now cut for good. She flinched from every dark shadow that came at her from above, and some days, she was so angry about what Mads had done that she could have wept.
Still, opening the door to her fourth-story apartment, she knew that there were things that she wouldn't give up for the world.
“How was he, today?” she asked, hanging her purse by the door.
In his angelic form, Lukas was inhumanly beautiful and perfect. When she had told him that there was no place for half-naked men with tall, broad white wings on the run, he had folded himself inward and hidden the wings, though there was no disguising his handsome features or his long, almost completely unblinking gaze. Now he only looked like an amazingly handsome man in his late twenties, with curly hair and piercing gray eyes. He wore the jeans and the T-shirt she had purchased for him, and in his muscled arms, he held a baby that already held Tara's heart in his hands.
She took him from the angel's arms, and Lukas made a considering noise.
“He was restless today,” the angel reported. “Fretful. Usually he sleeps so calmly, but today, it did not matter whether I held him or let him be, or sang. He senses something coming.”
“Do you, little one?” crooned Tara, taking one of the canisters of her milk from the refrigerator. She set the milk on the stove to warm, and she sat down in the tiny kitchen, rocking him gently.
The baby opened eyes that were going to be a bright vivid blue, and she touched his petal-soft cheek with one careful finger.
“Beautiful Fen,” she whispered. “I love you, baby, don't worry about what's coming. I will protect you, Lukas and I both.”
Despite the fact that he was mostly occupied with childcare and groceries at the moment, Lukas was himself a warrior. Eons ago, he had been the guardian of prophecies, and when the other angels had gone to war with the werewolves, he had stood aside. He was nothing like his scarred and broken brothers, and when she needed him, he had come. He told her that she and Fen were important, but he could not say how, and when she pressed him, he looked so sad that she could not stand to ask further.
“It will be revealed in time,” was all he would say, and with that she had to be content.
It was a small life that she had with her baby and her angelic companion. She went to the library to work, she came home, she cuddled her child, and she tried not to think about the child's father. This was far easier than being on the run, especially when she started to show, and she relaxed into the familiarity of her routine as she fed her son the warmed milk.
Mads, damn you, you should be here, she thought emptily.
***
The hills echoed with howls of victory, and Mads stood up over his band, howling the loudest.
There were five dead angels on the ground, their bodies twisted and their wings wrenched. Before, no matter how much they hurt them, they could never kill the angels. Now, with Mads carrying the sword of the great hero Fenrisulfir, that had changed, and the werewolves were slowly, but surely turning the tide.
“We've won,” exulted Kalle. He was shorter and lighter than Mads, but otherwise, he was his brother's double. He bounced on his feet, as ready to fight now as he had been a few hours ago, when the battle started.
“We've won a battle,” corrected Nils, darker and slighter than either of them. He was the youngest of them now, and he had always been grimmer. “There are angels yet to fight.”
Mads cleaned his sword, the thing that had brought all five angels down while his war band had engaged them, and he grinned at his companions.
The year had been a successful one, and slowly, word among the angels had
spread. The attacks on their land had lessened. Discontent with that, the werewolves had gone hunting. It was a brutal measure, but one that he and the elders of the pack deemed necessary. They had been on the hunt for more than nine months.
As much as he was homesick, however, a part of his heart still reached out for Tara. Some nights, he thought the sword was a poor exchange for the woman he had fallen in love with. He wondered if she was safe, if she yet lived, and Kalle whistled insolently in his ear.
“I know what you are thinking, brother,” he said mischievously. “Let me cure you of your misery. I know a young lady not a day from here who would make you forget everything that troubles you.”
Mads' roar was a furious thing, and he swung a heavy backhanded blow at his brother, who dodged lazily.
“I'd give it up if I were you,” Nils observed. “He's got a war to fight, after all.”
“One that might be ending soon,” Mads said thoughtfully.
They had seen fewer and fewer angels, this much was true, and the twenty men and women in his war band were tired from their long fight. He glanced around them and saw not only soldiers who he would trust with his life, but also people who were tired to the bone and longed for their home, for the cottages of Cairn Rock, where the werewolves lived freely and openly.
“I'm not done, but the rest of you are,” he said finally. “There was talk of an angel in Boston, a powerful one. I can't take the lot of you into the city, so you head home. Nils and Kalle, you're with me, and then we'll make our way home together.”
“What's one angel?” called Sivan, a tall, gaunt woman with a single eye. “Come home with us, Chief, celebrate with us.”
There was a murmur of agreement, but Mads quelled it with a warning growl.
“The war's not done yet, Nils is right. I'll come home when it's right to do so.”
It was a mark of their regard how much they wanted him to return with them, but he couldn't do it. He knew that if they returned, he would be surrounded by young werewolf women who wanted a place by his side, and that there would be pressure from his entire family to marry. Werewolf war leaders didn't have a long life because of the dangers of battle, and it was his duty to leave his blood behind in the form of sons and daughters.
He shook his head. There was no way he could return, not when his heart was missing. He looked up at the clear night sky, and when he simply thought of Tara's name, he ached.
Boston, he decided. One last hunt in Boston, and it was time to get on with his life, whatever he made of it.
***
It was Tara’s day off, but Lukas was no where to be found. Sometimes the angel would leave for days on end, off on his own strange errands and tasks, but when she expected him to be around, he always was.
Tara bounced Fen in her arms, biting her lip with worry. She knew that he haunted one of the large parks nearby sometimes, and she knew that once in a while, he had mentioned losing track of time, becoming lost. He had told her he would be with her today to take Fen outside into the warm summer day, but as the day drew on, and she didn't hear from him, she grew increasingly nervous.
Tara knew that she could take her son out on her own, but she also knew that it was safer to do so with a disguised angel nearby. Finally, she decided that she would go looking for Lukas, and with that, she rang the doorbell on the apartment next door.
Mrs. Erikson was an older widow who had looked after Fen before, and she was delighted to take a little bit of cash to watch him while Tara ran out for an hour. Tara knew that she wouldn't leave the house, and so she set off for the park at a brisk walk.
To her dismay, the day that had started out so bright and sunny was growing dimmer by the moment, and when she came to the park's gates, there were fat drops of rain pelting down around her. She passed families who were hustling out of the park as she entered, and a feeling of deep foreboding came over her.
She trotted along the paths because running would have meant admitting that something was wrong, and everywhere she looked for Lukas.
Tara was just beginning to give up hope when she heard growls from nearby and a pained groan. She had her phone in hand, ready to call the police when she realized that she recognized that groan.
She dashed into the trees and within a few moments, she found herself in a wilder area of the park, one that was shielded from view by high rocks and growth, and that was how she found Lukas.
He was flat on his back, and though he was wearing normal clothes, his wings had emerged from his back, turning his shirt to rags. Those same wings, strong enough to lift him off the ground, were bent and pinned to the ground, and standing over him were two gray wolves. He had been groaning before, but now he was lying frighteningly still.
Her mind tried to tell her that they were wild dogs, but she knew that they were not, especially when as one, they turned to look at her, and one of them had a pair of electric blue eyes that she still saw in her dreams.
“Please,” she said softly, inching closer to them. “He hasn't done anything wrong... he doesn't hunt you. He's... he's gentle.”
One of the wolves bared his teeth at her, but the other, the one with the blue eyes, transformed before her eyes. She realized very quickly that it wasn't Mads, but he looked enough like her lover that it made her heart constrict.
“You don't know what you're talking about,” he said bluntly. “I don't know what you know, but it's not enough. Whoever you are, run and hide, and we won't hurt you. Hurting humans isn't our business.”
“He's my friend,” she insisted. “He... he protects me, please, don't hurt him.”
The wolf by the man's side growled warningly when she tried to come closer, and she halted, holding her hands up. She was almost dizzy with fear, with how fast things could change, and all she knew was that she could not allow the wolves to savage her friend.
She started to speak again, but then a voice cut through all of it, a voice that she had dreamed about and yearned for the better part of the last year.
“Tara?”
She spun around and found herself clasped in arms that were as strong as steel and her lips taken in a fiercely passionate kiss. There was no other response possible for her to this man, and she clung to him. She knew who it was without looking. There was no hesitation in her body and her mind, and she kissed him back fiercely.
It wasn't until he set her back that she could see the deep trouble that she and Lukas were in. Mads was dressed for battle, with a sword strapped to his side, and a part of her wondered how he had even gotten it through the Boston streets at all.
“He took you,” Mads growled, glancing at the angel on the ground. “All this time, I thought you ran, and one of these bastards took you.”
“No!” she cried, because she could see Lukas' death in Mads' furious gaze, and she put herself between Mads and the injured angel on the ground.
“No, I did run away,” she said softly. “You betrayed me for that weapon you hold in your hands, and he helped me.”
There was a moment of sheer rage in Mads' eyes, but his hands on her were still gentle.
“I love you,” he said forcefully. “What does that mean to you?”
“It means...” she hesitated. It meant everything, but she had no idea how she was going to say that to him.
A sharp cry and a furious howl behind her took them both by surprise, and Lukas, who was less injured than Tara initially feared, threw himself into the air. There was nothing that either wolf or man could do to hold him, and when Mads charged him, slashing with the sword, he only flew higher.
“It is done,” Lukas said, with aching regret in his voice, and Tara heard something in it that made goose bumps rise up on her arms.
“What? What is done?” she demanded, and he met her stare with grief.
“I'm... I'm so sorry, Tara. Please take heart, it is for the best. I will see you again at the Aerie.”
With nothing more than that, Lukas threw himself into the air, and was gone, leaving ever
yone to stare at Tara.
“Fen,” she whispered. “Oh no, Fen!”
She took off running, but Mads caught her by the elbow again.
“Who or what is Fen?” he growled. “What are you hiding from me?”
She stared up at him, seeing the rage and the jealousy there, and suddenly, her own anger came up to meet it quickly and with the power of a tidal wave.
“My son,” she shouted. “My son, my child, the one I carried from city to city! Lukas, that angel you were going to kill, helped me birth him, and helped me survive, and now I have to go to him! Let me go, Mads!”
With every word that she spoke, his hands tightened on her, and his face grew paler and paler.
“A child?” he said thickly. “A son?”
“My son,” she cried. “Mine and yours, and now let me go!”
Whether he let her go from pain or from shock, she didn't know and didn't care. She ran as hard as she could, and she was only vaguely aware of the three following her, all human now.
She dashed up the stairs to her apartment, and to her shock and terror, she found Mrs. Erikson's door hanging open. The woman was in a dead sleep in her bedroom, but there was no sign of Fen. The only thing left was a long white feather that she knew came from no bird, and she shivered, thinking of her child in the arms of one of the burned and scarred angels.
Numbly, she woke up Mrs. Erikson and told her that she was taking Fen back, and then she went to the little apartment, a place that had felt so safe just a few hours ago. She let Mads and his friends in, because she couldn't think to do otherwise, and for a very long moment, she sat still as a statue in the kitchen chair.
Hunting Hearts II (Trilogy Bundle) (Werewolf Romance - Paranormal Romance) Page 1
