by Petra Landon
Not only did her words not have the desired effect, they served to antagonize him even more. He stiffened, the gold-colored orbs transforming. Abruptly, everything Raoul leashed carefully from the world swirled in the depths of his eyes — the ticking time-bomb, smoldering on a silent trigger; a fuming volcano whose eruption had the power to consume and lay waste to everything in its path. Tasia’s heart picked up its rhythm to canter faster, as fear gripped her. This was a stranger that confronted her, not the man who had tempted, cajoled and beguiled her, urging her to take a chance on him by promising her the world.
“I will only say this once.” His voice switched to the whisper-soft tone, cold and menacing at the same time, that had once terrified Tasia. “If you ever try to exploit this bond again, you will regret it.”
Though he made no move from his position behind the desk, the subtle threat emanating from the bottled-up volcano on a leash had Tasia take an instinctive step backwards, away from the Shifter breathing fire at her.
His eyes flickered at her reaction. “You should be afraid of me, witchling!” he said sibilantly, with an unnatural calmness affected to tamp down the frenzy in him. “Did you think you were going to get away with it?”
Tasia put a trembling hand on the wall behind her, as the first wave of despair hit her. He did not believe her and refused to accept any explanations from her. How could he change in the blink of an eye? Were all the assurances he’d given her so worthless that, at the first hint of trouble, he’d reverted to the old patterns between them? Her eyes searched the implacable face, trying to reconcile this version of the Alpha. She’d been at the receiving end of his temper and fury before, but not this biting, accusatory and acerbic coldness directed at her, while the gold depths manifested the darkness that blazed a destructive trail through him.
Steeling herself, Tasia took a step forward towards the desk. She could not give up. Not on him. “I am not what you believe me to be.”
“Not a Siren — the enemy the Clan fought a war to eradicate?” The words lashed at her. “You were willing to have your lies draw the Pack into a conflict with the leeches, while Lady Bethesda and her cohorts drag the Chosen into hell. You can’t feign ignorance about this. It was you who told me about the war in the first place. No one knows better than you how vengeful the Clan is about blood feuds. Every day, the investigation draws us closer to a confrontation with Monseigneur. Yet, you remain silent. You’re wasting your breath, witchling. Your claim of innocence will not wash with me. Not this time.”
Tasia, drowning in flames licked with gold, struggled to stay on her feet. Everything was collapsing around her and it disoriented her. As the denouncements rained down on her, Tasia’s chest constricted, like when she’d first come to after the dream. A great weight pressed down her, crushing her tentative dreams and burgeoning aspirations. She had rushed to him, hoping to make sense together of an extraordinary event that touched and affected them both. But the man she’d hoped to seek answers with was the one who held her culpable for the catastrophe. She could not believe the turn of events. But there was to be no escape. The hits kept coming at Tasia.
“What happened with the mad witch was never yours to intrude upon” he snarled, his words seething with rancor and resentment. “You had no right to take that from me.”
Tasia reeled under his accusations while the gold eyes burned with emotion, the inscrutable facade he hid behind cracking before her eyes.
“You and I — it was never going to be easy” he shot at her. “I knew that. We might as well live in different universes. But I’ve always been honest with you.”
Despite the dejection threatening to swamp her, Tasia thought she understood why he lashed out.
“You must believe me” she beseeched, frantic to persuade him. “The ayo srayta is a curse. Every few generations, a Siren is born with the ability to bond thus. But in my case, there was no way to know if I could seal the srayta. I’m the first Siren not full Blood Elemental. Nonetheless, to be on the safe side, I was warned to steer clear of any Chosen mates. Monseigneur went after my mother because she inherited the curse, and it destroyed her. I’ve never wanted it. It has wrought nothing but misery upon the Blood Mages.”
Tasia paused to catch her breath. This time, he remained silent, a frown between his brows. As a shard of hope pierced her despair, she frenetically jogged his memory. “I told you once that there is no way to predict if I’ve inherited what the Vampires coveted from my mother. It was the srayta I talked about. How could I warn you of something I had no knowledge of myself?” This had been a conversation in his apartment, after she’d revealed her mother’s Eru heritage. Tasia hoped to remind him about that night. It was the night he’d bluntly laid claim to her, forcing her to confront the simmering attraction between them. The night everything had changed between them.
Though her jumbled explanation managed to cut through the haze of white-hot fury and encroaching wildness, the gold eyes were unforgiving. A monster had hold of Raoul, pulling him down to the pits of the same hell he’d spent his adult life fighting to claw free of.
“An ayo srayta is no ordinary magic” he rebutted, unmoved by her appeal. “It cannot be an accident. We both know that I don’t have old magic.”
You have more magic in you than you know. This could never be possible otherwise.
His pointed rebuttal served to remind Tasia that there were many layers to the catastrophe that confronted her. But everything else could wait. The call of the hour was to persuade the Alpha that she was as much at sea about the bond. That she had never set out to deliberately stab him in the heart.
“You sought to use my own heart against me, witchling” he castigated her, instinctively reading the bond and misconstruing her emotions. Bruised and buffeted by the acute betrayal, he was merciless in his charges. “The Wyrs whisper that Raoul Merceau has no heart. They’re right. I lost it in a decrepit shed over a decade ago.”
Tasia trembled, as the import of his words washed over her. It was too late. For him. For her. For them. Yet, she knew deep down that he did not mean it. The Alpha had a heart under the layers of armor, for she’d been allowed a peek at it. His words were an attempt to paper over something else abandoned in the shed of broken dreams — an appendage as essential and precious as his heart, but far more critical and fragile for a Wyr. The past had left a gaping wound on his psyche. Only now did it strike Tasia how profound, deep-seated and integral his loss was. At the shattering epiphany, a noxious medley of desperation, dejection and despondency threatened to inundate her, draining the very breath from her. It was all Tasia could do to draw air into her lungs.
“What was done to me brought me to the edge of reason. I know what it feels like to question your sanity.”
Inadvertently, and completely by accident, she’d scratched a festering wound in his subconscious, one so rooted that he’d submerged it under layers of defenses. Tasia closed her eyes, as their short association flashed through her. She had been on the cusp of surrender, ready to risk every guardrail to take a chance on a Wyr. And now, when he was rejecting her, the loss hit her hard, even as Tasia grieved the terrible damage done to the Alpha. Their relationship, never easy to begin with, had transformed slowly as the masks fell from their respective eyes. Yet, the goodwill and trust built carefully up between them had perished in the blink of an eye, scattered into the wind to leave no trace behind of the promise that had coaxed her out of her shell. Tasia grappled with the abruptness and speed with which her world was crumbling before her eyes.
Raoul used the short respite to ruthlessly master his runaway emotions. It had been a long while since he’d found himself on the edge like this. It was fitting that his life should be upended twice by Spell Casters. By any measure, the blue-eyed witch had wrecked it to the point of no return. But the damage effected by the witchling hurt infinitely more. Where one had left bruises on his spirit, the other was laying siege to his heart. It had been a Herculean blunder to break his vow an
d chase after a Spell Caster, he chastised himself savagely. Never again would he lower the guardrails around his heart — never again would he make himself vulnerable. Despite his own overwrought emotions, or perhaps because of it, their bond allowed him to sense the jumble of confusion, remorse and grief in her. But fueled by gut-wrenching duplicity and betrayal, he ignored it, hardening his heart to her.
When Tasia felt she could breathe again, she opened her eyes to meet his. They stared at each other across the expanse of his desk. Only the width of it separated them, but for the first time since he had declared that he would not ignore the searing attraction that blazed between them, the distance between the two seemed insurmountable. This was the hurdle Raoul could not overcome. It was as if all the strides made in the weeks while they danced around each other, in a carefully choreographed mating ritual, had been for naught. Instead, in one fell swoop, the threads that bound them to each other had been torn asunder, even as a different bond tied them together.
Matters had come full circle between them, Tasia reflected numbly. It was time to accept the truth. Her instincts, honed by a lifetime of hiding from the others, had screamed this from their very first meeting. She was never meant to run to him; only away from him. The signs had always been before her. But she’d disregarded the cues, again and again. Whatever the future held for her, she was not destined to be with the Pack or their Alpha. She was, as always, to pay the price for her tainted blood — penance for an ancestor that had lost a battle to his twin.
Yet, the thought of parting ways while the Alpha believed that she’d taken advantage of him left her heart aching unbearably. Tasia could not help but make one final plea.
“I watched you on Russian Hill, with the silver in you” she implored him, her voice shaking. “You have to know I would not lie to you like this. Fight back, please.”
Do not surrender to what is eating you.
The gold eyes skewered her, glacial implacability and flaming fury fighting for supremacy in their depths. “Every single moment of every day, I push back the darkness” he said fiercely, with a grim resolve that hinted at his life-long struggle. “I’ve never run from a fight, but I do not battle without a cause.”
The words fell between them like the pinpricks of a sharpened dagger, bloodying the woman who stood at the edge of the precipice. Her breath hitched, the sound audible in the sudden silence. For a moment, neither moved, so great was the affect. Raoul, also teetering precariously at the yawning edge of his personal hell, opened his mouth, as if to qualify the retort. But it was too late. Her shoulders slumped, caving in to the inescapable. To Tasia, even more than the implicit rebuff, the subtext of his charge struck deep — she was not worth fighting for. She had been condemned and no supplication would be entertained.
As her expressive eyes filled with the inevitability of defeat, Raoul seemed to realize that she would not offer any more explanations or justification. Finally, he allowed a hint of the actual wound she’d inflicted, and not the accusations that arose from his fury and the past, to come to his lips.
“Every step of the way, I gave you a choice” he said slowly. “Never imposed my will on you, despite the compulsions on me and my Pack. Yet, you played by very different rules. ”
To the woman frozen before the desk, the dispassionate tones were more damning than any indictment. Wrenching her eyes away from him, Tasia turned to the door. But as always, the heavy steel door refused to co-operate with her. Déjà vu hit her hard. She’d struggled with this door before, when every instinct had urged her to leave the Pack behind. But the Alpha’s routing of her Guardian captor had convinced her back into the fold. Tasia wished fervently that she had heeded the warning then. Leaving now would prove infinitely harder than walking away from him before. The distance between them was simply too vast to be bridged. Fate had made repeated attempts to get her to swallow this bitter pill, but with her heart in play, she’d refused to face the truth.
She and he would always be an ill-matched duo. A Wizard with dark secrets, saddled with a future ruled by the past, and a Wyr who hated Spell Casters and was obsessed with writing his own story — such a mismatched pair could never be destined for each other. It had been a wild and beautiful dream while it lasted — a tantalizing pot of gold just beyond the horizon. But never an attainable goal. Always just a wishful fantasy not to be realized.
“Oh no” he interjected sharply. “You’ll not pin this on me. I might have been at fault the first time you ran, but not this time.”
Tasia kept her gaze on the door. It was futile to point out to him that he was reading the bond, despite having expressly forbidden her to do so.
Leaving her to her own devices, Raoul fought to control the conflagration raging through him. But as she struggled to open the door, he strode forth to her aid.
This time, it was Tasia who did hold back, crushed by his accusations.
“No more favors please.” She waved him away.
The gold eyes narrowed on her. “Do not talk of favors, witchling” he retorted coldly, reaching for the door.
“Back away” she insisted, fueled by pride. Just this once, Tasia wished she could use her magic. But it would tear through the door and that would only compound the unfolding disaster.
Grasping the handle, he nudged her hand aside, to open the door for her.
“You’ve lost the right to command me” he said dispassionately.
Tasia turned to him. The ghost of a smile flickered on her lips, an acknowledgement of what was not meant to be. “I never had the right, Alpha” she said softly.
The barb hit home. He zeroed in on her, an arrested look on his face and the dawning realization of what he’d lost in his eyes. For a moment, they stared at each other, the air between them redolent with memories of a short-lived journey filled with promise.
Then, it was Tasia who symbolically drew the metaphorical curtain between them, by walking away without a backward glance. There was a sense of certitude and acceptance in her gesture, a surrender in the face of an enormous and insurmountable challenge. For the second time that night, the self-assured Alpha stumbled over his own feet, before righting himself. He stared after her, battling his heart, his head and the past. And nearly going under with the crushing weight of it all. It was his worst nightmare all over again — to lose his firm grasp on the reins and be at the mercy of the elements. As the darkness threatened to overpower him, he fought to not go under. This was a fight he had once been very familiar with. The staggering sense of loss added to the magnitude of what threatened him. He was no longer a petrified teenager in over his head, he reminded himself fiercely. He was Raoul Merceau. Nothing and no one could defeat him. Not even the slip of a girl who had dared to put her hand in the fire, only to mislead and deceive him.
Gliding through the silent halls and corridors of the Lair like a ghost, Tasia shuffled into her room. She perched on the bed; the darkness enveloping her. The open shutters had chilled the room, but Tasia ignored the cold. Nightmarish images crashed through her, a kaleidoscope of horrors. The hellish events in the barn had been no dream, but the work of a sick deranged Chosen. That had been done to him. Bile rose in her and she felt sick to her stomach. Icy air wafted in to blast the girl on the bed. The frigid cold shocked her, shoving the monstrous images away to sober Tasia. Her teeth chattered uncontrollably but she allowed the frosty blasts to seep into her pores, until the fog that clouded her mind was dispelled. A sense of devastating loss persisted but Tasia could now think with some clarity.
Her worst fears had come true, despite her best efforts to follow the rules. With a single stroke, fate had smashed her hopes about the past, her dreams of the present and any chance at a future, to smithereens. Not only was the carefully constructed house of cards crumbling around her, the catastrophe had also shattered her heart into a million pieces. It had been only a few days ago, at the little beach hideaway in Corfu, that she’d been exultant about the future, elated at having navigated the pitfalls
along her path. Now, everything lay in tatters before her, so fractured that she would never be able to put it back together. A numb Tasia stared blindly at the walls, unable to succumb to her grief, loss or fear.
A rapid fire of colossal bombshells had shaken her in one evening, coming on the heels of one another until the very ground under her feet had been swept away — the realization of the ayo srayta, the flash of insight regarding the Alpha’s past, devastating loss and a sense of dread about the future, now that the past had come home to roost. The first epiphany of the night had been the srayta, prompting her to run to him. But the second one, about the Alpha’s profound scars, had convinced her to walk away from the man of her dreams. While she grappled with it, she mourned deeply, for the young boy in the barn and for what could not be. Something infinitely precious had slipped through Tasia’s fingers, right when she was ready to reach for it. Instead, her worst fears had come to pass. There was no mitigating the curse. Her future had just come crashing down.
“I’ve personal experience with the havoc an ambitious Chosen with great power, minus a moral compass, can inflict on naïve bystanders whose only crime is to cross her path.”
Now that she had context, Tasia had a deeper appreciation for the Alpha’s battles with his past. For the young boy, his world had tilted on its axis. The survivor had fought to live with the past and rise above it. The violence buried just beneath the skin, his need to dominate his environs, the fierce guarding of his turf, the uber iron-willed control over himself, the drive to be the master of his destiny and the innate distrust of others — these were all consequences of his never-ending struggle. The day the Alpha stopped fighting back, he would go under. Raoul Merceau would spend a lifetime trying to make sense of a senseless horrific act.
“He betrayed me once, when I was at my weakest.”
She was a Spell Caster, like the aunt that had betrayed the boy. But that was not why he rejected her today. She had once reminded him, without knowing the particulars of why he abhorred Wizards, that her heritage might come between them. He had assured her then that it was something he’d come to terms with. But now, Tasia recognized that the past’s crippling grip on the Alpha was far more insidious. More crucially, she suspected that the Alpha didn’t understand the root of what entrenched him to the past. To complicate matters even more, what had been mangled beyond repair was something that went to the heart of what made him who he was. It was not his aunt the Alpha could not forgive, but his beotan. The witch had been a stranger, but not his beast. The wounds inflicted by the Wizard lay on the surface, while those from his beotan’s crushing betrayal went deeper. The beast’s treachery had been profound, with damage beyond repair. It had struck at the heart of a Wyr’s beliefs, to leave him rootless and exposed.
