Resisting Darkness

by Kate Wendley

  He said, “Turn there,” so she guided her baby onto yet another bumpy, muddy road. It thankfully opened up to a clearing that looked like it was frequently used as a parking lot.

  “This is the ranch. I own this land. Shifters come out here at full moon. We also use this for fight grounds when we need to.”

  She didn’t like the sound of that. She didn’t want him thinking about fighting any more tonight.

  Before she could convince him they should head back, he said, “Come on. Let me show around. I’ll take you flying again.”

  She almost told him no, but he actually looked kind of happy so she shut her mouth and got out of the car.

  **

  Ethan loved how effortless everything was with Harmony. She was definitely unlike any woman he’d ever known, and she fit into his life so easily. Even knowing how to hang onto him while he took them to the skies was a no brainer. She just knew.

  He used his power to keep the wind at bay as they flew so Harmony’s hair didn’t get too messy and tangled, then found the spot he’d wanted to go to. He set them down on a plateau that had an unobstructed view of the stars and the forest beyond. It was another one of his thinking spots, though not one he came to very often.

  Harmony snuggled into him and he relaxed with his arm around her shoulder. He stared at the starry night sky as he lazily said, “I’m sorry you’ve had to learn so much about my old baggage.”

  Harmony laughed sharply. “We’re vampires. We are old baggage.”

  He laughed curiously at her and let the topic go. She didn’t seem eager to discuss it tonight, and if she didn’t want to talk about it, then neither did he.

  They sat together in comfortable silence while he found his calm place in his head, though he wasn’t sure how long he could hold onto it. These panic attacks he’d been waking up to each night worried him. He’d learned how to get them under control soon after waking, but tonight the attack came on out of nowhere as he stood in front of Isaiah and forced himself to talk to the man.

  Standing there facing the bastard brought too many feelings to the surface all at once while he fought with his memories of that long ago night. He’d nearly blanked out on everything around him while they were there. He was a Master, though, and knew he needed to focus for the sake of his family. They wanted closure, too, for the loved ones they’d senselessly lost, so he’d forced himself to stay in control. He’d somehow kept his grip on reality, though only barely, thanks to Harmony.

  She was a godsend, not just because she was there for him tonight, but because he felt good with her. He finally felt like he was shedding some of the old… guilt over not being able to save Sonya.

  He sullenly realized that’s what he’d been keeping locked away in his head. Buried deep down under his rage at Isaiah for killing Sonya was immense guilt over not being able to wake earlier and save her, and even more unbearable guilt that he was still alive and she wasn’t.

  He hugged Harmony close and closed his eyes while he breathed her in. This wasn’t the time to break down. She was a wonderful woman and he didn’t want to drive her away because of his problems.

  But did he deserve to keep her?

  **

  They left after a long time of star gazing in each other’s arms. Harmony let him drive her baby back home, and he felt like a kid behind the wheel, learning something new for the first time.

  She was a little tense as he drove, though. “You have to power through the curves. If you let up on the gas, the car will want to go straight.”

  He was turned on by her telling him what to do. The last person who’d done that… His mood dimmed and he forced himself to stop thinking. Sonya was never far from his mind, and as much as he loved her, he was starting to feel a little crazy with these thoughts constantly popping up in his head. He tried to lose himself in the feel of the moment instead.

  He had fun driving Harmony’s car and realized they should get out in it more. This was something she liked and he needed to find more of those things. She’d been engulfed in his world since she’d arrived, but he didn’t want everything in their relationship to be about him. She was a pretty entertaining person and he wanted to learn more about her.

  **

  He drove them all the way back to Wild Woods and parked her car in the lot, intending to have one of the shifters go get his car at Anthony’s for him.

  Before they made it to the front door, Ethan snatched the dagger Harmony had hidden in the top of her boot.

  “Hey!”

  He chuckled and tossed the knife onto the lawn.

  “Show me some of your moves. You have more strength now. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  “What, here? Now?”

  “Yeah, why not? Come on, let’s go over to the lawn behind the building. You’ll have less of a chance of breaking a nail or skinning your knees over there.”

  She glared at his teasing and followed him to the wide open grassy space he led them to. He stopped and she followed his lead, then they watched each other for a time until she finally made the first move. She rushed him, another dagger in her hand that he had no idea where she’d gotten it from. He laughed, but she had the knife in front of his heart just before he side stepped her and pinned her arms behind her back.

  She surprisingly twisted out of his grasp and his heart raced in lust. “You don’t need to hold back on my account, beautiful.”

  She growled through a smile. “Good to know, sexy.”

  He chuckled and prepared for her next move.

  **

  They spent a good hour tangling with each other. Ethan let her take him down a few times, but all the while he was trying to get her used to using her new strength. She was already fast and good with her daggers, but she didn’t have faith in her increased power yet.

  It felt good to be out here, pushing her to protect herself. He got serious a couple times and took her down, all in an effort to help her improve her self-defense, just in case she might ever need it. She was a quick study and did him proud, but she needed to work on her offense. Her defense was good, and he felt better knowing she was spunky enough to not let anyone easily take advantage of her, but if he could help her refine her moves and learn how to use her knew abilities to get the upper hand in a fight, he would feel so much less worried about her.

  Why he worried about her was a whole other issue. He’d never worried about the shifter women he’d had flings with, but he wasn’t having a fling with Harmony. He cared for her, possibly even loved her, and it brought with it some irrational fears… like her getting staked, in her sleep or otherwise. If he thought too hard about it he’d make himself crazy. Crazier, he should say.

  She pinned him while he was distracted with his thoughts and he rolled with it, though he didn’t make it easy for her to keep him down. In the end he gave up, then pulled her down for a kiss. She protested at first, then gave in to him. They fooled around on the lawn until Ethan almost couldn’t stop himself from taking her out here in the open. They rushed inside and made mad love until the sun came up.

  Chapter 20

  Harmony drank Ethan’s blood multiple times every night for over a week, but she still couldn’t wake as early as him. She smiled as she wondered if she ever would. He was lying in bed beside her, his hands clasped behind his head as he stared at the ceiling. She felt frisky and rolled closer. “Hi.” She’d had him all to herself lately and things couldn’t be better between them.

  He looked happy as he turned to embrace her. “Good evening my beautiful butterfly.” He gave her a chaste kiss. “I was just thinking about that cottage in Virginia that we stayed at with…” Ethan’s eyes went wide and his face fell.

  Oh shit. He was confusing her with Sonya again. Dammit! Jealousy roared through her.

  “I’m so sorry.” He looked lost and guilty as he stared at her. “I don’t know why these memories are so powerful. For years all I could think about was the unfairness of how she died, but since… since just before I
saiah returned, suddenly I’m thinking about other things. Things I hadn’t thought about for hundreds of years. And I don’t know why.”

  He cautiously reached for her and she sighed. She let him kiss her cheek, but she honestly didn’t know how to deal with his issues. He’d accidentally called her Sonya last week, and she knew he frequently thought about her. The faraway, wistful look in his eyes was always a dead giveaway.

  He delicately brushed her hair out of her face. “I’ve told her goodbye in my mind a thousand times since Isaiah returned, and a thousand times she told me it was time to move on. That I should make my life with you, learn more about you, and love you. And I want that. I do love you.”

  Her heart skipped a beat. Damn him for always knowing the right thing to say when he flubbed up. And damn him for being what she desperately wanted. A smart, strong, sexy man who kept her on her toes with his fun ways and quick wit… but mostly a man who cared about those around him, and not just his own needs and wants. Oh, and he loved her.

  She cupped his cheek and whispered, “I love you too, dammit.”

  He chuckled, but she couldn’t help shedding a tear. He pulled her into his arms and held her close. “I’m trying everything I can think of to let her go, my love. Just promise me you’ll stay. Promise me you won’t leave some night when my back is turned.”

  She quietly laughed through her tears and whapped him on the shoulder. “You jerk. I wouldn’t take off without cursing you out before I left.”

  “That’s my kitten. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  **

  Ethan stared at himself in the bedroom mirror as Harmony showered. He felt terrible that he’d been so engrossed in his memory of him and Sonya in one of their travels that he’d accidentally confused her with Harmony.

  What was wrong with him? Was he going crazy? Why were these memories so much more vivid and uncontrollable than ever before? He’d have thought that confronting Isaiah, more than once now, would help him get over his problems, not make them worse. Even his nightly panic attacks hadn’t gone away yet.

  He heard movement in the bathroom and tried to put Sonya out of mind. Harmony was the best thing that’d happened to him in years, and he wanted to make her feel at home here. He needed to keep his head on straight to do that.

  **

  Harmony dried her hair, put on some makeup, then went back into the bedroom to find some clothes. Ethan was his usual sweet and sexy self as he playfully grabbed her up in his arms and stumbled over to his closet with her. “I’m going to clean this out and make more room for your things. I can toss some of this, put some of my clothes back in that other dresser, and the other things can go to storage.” He looked hopefully at her, obviously trying to make up for his earlier mistake.

  She smiled and looked back into the closet. “Sure. Ok.” She caught sight of what she thought was a long dress in a plastic bag stuffed towards the back, and other frilly odds and ends up top in clear containers. What… the… hell… She immediately glanced back at his dresser, remembering Sonya’s ring in the wooden box that sat on top of it, and a satchel full of her other jewelry was also in the box.

  She froze up inside while he hugged her and kept talking about what things he’d move where in order to make room. She wasn’t paying attention to what he was saying because she was freaking out in her mind about him having all of Sonya’s old things here. This was a whole other level of emotional baggage she had no idea how to deal with.

  He finally let her go so he could start rearranging, and she felt cold and alone as she finished getting dressed. In the meantime he got busy pulling his clothes out of the closet and piling them up on the bed.

  “Honey, I need to feed.”

  It was obvious he’d forgotten to feed as well. “Of course, of course. Come.”

  **

  Harmony jumped at the chance to get out of the house without Ethan when he told her Nala wanted to go shopping with her. Maybe Nala could give her some perspective on this whole situation. She could either be a great help with this whole mess, or confirm why this relationship just wasn’t going to work.

  They met out front, and Harmony quickly found out Nala didn’t know how to drive. She gladly guided them over to her baby and slipped into the driver’s seat, loving the feel of the bucket seat cupped around her body. It’d been over a week since she’d driven Ethan up to the ranch and she missed not getting out for a drive more often. Ethan liked to take care of her and his friends by driving them around town himself, but sometimes she liked to be the boss.

  She turned on some music but kept the volume low so she they could talk. “How come you never learned to drive?” They pulled out of Wild Woods and a sick, desperate feeling started in the pit of her stomach. As confused as she was about Ethan tonight, and as much as she thought she wanted to get away for a bit, leaving Wild Woods without him felt all kinds of wrong. It made her realize she did actually love him and Atlanta.

  This city let her be free for once in her life. She hadn’t once been grabbed, stabbed, controlled by magic, or forced do something awful against her will. And she didn’t have to go through the tedious chore of finding a human to discreetly feed from every night. Traveling freely around the city without worrying about whose territory or neighborhood she was in? That was practically unheard of, especially in this big of a town.

  But Ethan was what she loved most about being here. He felt like… dare she even believe it? He felt like the missing someone that she’d been searching for all her vampire life, and it made her ache deep in her bones to be leaving him back home. But was it real, or was it just his craziness wearing off on her?

  Nala adjusted the air vents on her side of the car. “It’s hard to get enough blood to be in solid form. I’m usually not. These last few weeks are the longest I’ve been solid for probably a couple hundred years.”

  “A couple hundred years? Are you kidding me?”

  “I’m not. And poor Seth. As much as I’ve always pushed him to find pleasure with someone, he never would. He insists he only wants me, but hundreds of years of only being able to touch him once every few months, and then only for a night or two has been hard on him. I can tell.”

  Harmony drove downtown feeling jealous that Nala and Seth had that kind of intense love for each other, even for as heartbreaking as their lives were together. She and Ethan had an intense relationship right now, but would it, could it, stand the test of time like Seth and Nala?

  Or like Ethan and Sonya? Her mood fell and she awkwardly said, “You guys are in love.”

  Nala sadly smiled. “My condition is hard on Seth. He insists it’s not, but I know it is.” She put her hand on Harmony’s arm. “But enough about me. Tell me about you and Ethan. How are things going?” She looked eager and happy to hear about them, and Harmony didn’t have the heart to tell her they were having problems.

  “Will you tell me about Sonya? I mean the real her, not just how much you guys all loved her?”

  Nala gave her a knowing look that almost made her feel guilty. Luckily they were pulling onto the freeway so she had to look away to make sure she didn’t kill them both. Though, she wasn’t sure if a ghost could technically be killed. Would it be disrespectful to ask?

  Once they were safely driving with every other crazy Atlanta driver, Nala said, “Sonya was terrible when you first met her. She hated getting to know new people, and especially men. And she was a very bright woman, so much so that other people easily bored her. I think the only reason Seth and I became friends with her and Ethan was because Ethan wanted to broaden their social circle, which only consisted of them and George, Sonya’s father.”

  “I thought George adopted her.”

  “Yes, he did. He stumbled across her in his travels. She was in a forced child marriage to some plantation owner’s son. Back then things were different in some places, and I’m sure you can imagine what she’d been forced to do. How she’d been forced to live. Anyway, George stole her away, adopted her
, and raised her like his own. They had the strongest father daughter bond I’ve ever seen.”

  Harmony’s conscience wasn’t happy with her right now. She’d been so sick of hearing about perfect Sonya. What a creep she was to find out the woman had had such a horrible life as a human. Sheesh.

  “When George turned Sonya vampire, as an adult, she finally felt strong enough to protect herself from anyone, though she still despised most of the men in the world. Even poor Ethan, or so the story goes.”

  Nala quietly chuckled, and even though Harmony had been sick to death of hearing about Sonya, now she wanted to know more. “What happened?”

  Nala smiled. “Supposedly Ethan chased her around the city for a solid week before she’d even give him the time of day, and the more she led him on a wild goose chase, the more he wanted her. She, of course, wanted nothing to do with him. She’d never even been alone with a man since she left that awful plantation, and she was years older than Ethan, though she didn’t look it. He became addicted to finding her and wooing her. It wasn’t an easy thing to do, apparently.”

  Harmony took the exit to the shopping center Nala wanted to go to. They pulled up behind a line of cars to turn into the lot, then searched for a spot to park.

  Nala went on. “A lot of people mistook Sonya’s mistrust as her being a snob, and to be fair, she was one sometimes, but she was kind hearted to those she loved. She never would’ve wanted Ethan to spend so long alone after her death. She would’ve wanted him to love again.”

  She might have wanted him to love again, but would she secretly have liked to find out he was obsessing about her after her death? And was bedding hordes of shifter girls considered being alone? “He loves her.”

  “You two are having troubles. Tell me everything.”

  Harmony spent the rest of the night with Nala doing what women do, which was counseling each other on their griefs.

  **

  Ethan felt invigorated as he cleared things out and rearranged to make room for Harmony. He even pulled Sonya’s things out of the closet. Her clothes, anyway. He carefully boxed them up, intending to find a business that could store them in a way that would keep them from deteriorating any further than they already had. He kept her other miscellaneous things in plastic containers on the upper shelves of his closet. He saw no harm in leaving them there since they didn’t take up much room.