She whirled on him. “I’ll tell you why. I spent two centuries cut off from the world by an overprotective mother so that no harm could befall me. I had no contact with people, no interaction. I rarely even caught glimpses of the world moving on around me as I floated inside the void that was my prison. And when I did see others, no matter how loudly I screamed, they never heard me. Never saw me. I was utterly and completely alone. But I was safe, just as Mother had intended.” She pulled in a shaky breath. “I understand Joseph’s desire to protect me, but I refuse to spend even one more minute being caged or coddled. I’m going out in the world to live, to fight as I was born to do, and there is not a force on this earth powerful enough to compel me or trick me into changing my mind.”
She stalked off, leaving Morgan reeling.
Two hundred years alone? No one to talk to? No one to touch? It was a wonder she hadn’t gone mad.
Then again, he’d seen the way she fought, throwing caution to the wind, taking chances. She hadn’t been careful. In fact, she’d bordered on reckless.
Maybe she was a little crazy, after all.
Serena ducked under a loose strand of barbed wire to cross some grazing land. As she bent, he saw a slice through the leather covering her calf. Blood coated her skin and dripped from her heel.
“You’re hurt,” he said.
“It’s nothing.”
“You’re bleeding. You know the demons in the area will smell that and come running, right?”
“I’m counting on it. The night is young, and I’m bored.” She glanced at him as she said it, making him wonder if it wasn’t a jab meant to wound his pride.
“What if you got their blood on your cut? It’s hard to fight when you’re poisoned.”
“I’m fine. Those demons aren’t poisonous like the ones from my youth.”
“How do you know?” he asked. “We haven’t been fighting their kind for long.”
“Experience. As I said, I’ve been out alone in the big, cruel world for a while now. I’m no novice.”
The idea that she’d been injured before with no one around to care for her grated on his sense of duty. Sure, she was independent, and yes, his upbringing was a bit antiquated, but so was hers. She wasn’t as old as he was, but she’d been raised in a time when women were protected and cherished, not left to fend for themselves. Besides, he couldn’t just unlearn centuries of teaching. Male Theronai protected their women. Period. They didn’t let them roam around alone, fighting demons without any kind of backup.
Even the idea was insane.
The female of their species was definitely the deadliest of the sexes, but only when she was properly bound to a man who could supply her with the energy her magic needed to function. Men stored magical power and women wielded it. It had always been that way, and no matter how independent she wanted to be, they were each born to play a specific role.
Serena was unbound. She had no access to a man’s energy, no way to care for herself if she was seriously injured, and no one to drag her lovely ass out of a fight if things went sideways.
Which they would. They always did, eventually.
Morgan couldn’t allow that to happen. There weren’t enough female Theronai left to save his brothers from the pain their slow deaths caused. Without the outlet of power she would provide one lucky man, another of his kind would fall to the crushing agony caused by carrying around such vast stores of energy.
His own pain reared its ugly head now that the rush of combat was fading. He could feel it crushing him from the inside, always searching for a way out, as if it longed to be free.
Morgan wasn’t as bad off as many of his fellow warriors. The living image of a tree covering his chest—his lifemark—still held leaves. He felt the strain of the growing power he carried, but he was tough. He could handle the pain.
What choice did he have?
If she could save one of their men, then it was her duty to do so—whether or not she liked it.
The other men that Joseph had sent to bring Serena home had failed, but Morgan would not. One of his brothers’ lives depended on it, even if he didn’t know which one.
He lengthened his stride so that she was within arm’s reach. “Play time is over, Serena. It’s time to come home. Do your duty.”
“No, thank you, Mr. Valens. I’m content to continue on as I have been.”
“You appear to be under the impression that you have a choice. I’m here to tell you that the only choice you have is to either come home with me willingly, or I will fling you over my shoulder and haul you home against your will.”
Her entire body went tense. He almost expected her to run, but she wasn’t going to get far with that injury.
And she knew it.
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said with a resigned sigh. “I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this.”
“Come to what?”
“Good bye, Mr. Valens.”
A strange pressure closed in around him, making his ears pop. He suffered through a fleeting moment of vertigo like he had when she’d fought the demons. When it was over, he was standing alone under the starry Texas sky, queasy, with nothing around but cattle and scrub brush.
Serena was gone, and he hadn’t even seen her go.
***
Serena hated using her gift, but there was no other choice. She couldn’t go back to Dabyr. She wouldn’t go.
She choked down the wave of nausea shifting the flow of time caused, and drove away from the big, white truck parked next to her little sedan.
She had no idea how these men kept finding her, but she was beginning to think it had something to do with technology, rather than magic. She’d been out of her prison and part of this time for almost a year, but that wasn’t nearly long enough to catch up on two hundred years of human advancement. She was barely used to wearing pants.
She’d tried to watch TV so she could learn current customs, but the jarring flutter of bright, frenetic advertisements made her head hurt. Every hour she watched only served to highlight just how much she’d missed, thanks to her mother’s overprotective streak.
Never again. That was the vow she’d given herself when she’d finally learned to function in this time. She didn’t understand what lay beneath the hood of her car, but she knew how to make it move forward. She didn’t understand how a rectangle of plastic could serve as coin, but she knew how to swipe and sign like the rest of the world. She didn’t understand how the man she’d loved for two centuries could have believed her dead, but she knew he was lost to her forever.
No one could force her to go back to his home and watch as he and his lovely wife brought their first child into this world—a child that should have been hers.
A life that should have been hers.
Let her people think she was cold, lazy or uncaring. Let them believe that she refused to defend their home because of some petulant display of independence. She didn’t care what they thought of her, so long as she kept her secret safe.
No one could ever know that she was still deeply in love with a man who now belonged—irrevocably—to another.
Chapter Two
It took Morgan all the next day to catch up with Serena again, but this time, it wasn’t Synestryn she was fighting off, but a giant throng of human men.
The dance club was filled with gyrating, sweaty bodies flailing to a loud, frantic drum beat. He couldn’t exactly call it music, since there was no discernable skill involved in creating the noise.
He knew his age was showing, but he didn’t care. He detested modern music and had since the nineteen seventies had killed all he held dear.
Except Lindsey Stirling. She was a keeper.
Next, he was going to be screaming at kids to get off his lawn and lamenting over how easy the lives of today’s youth had things.
Sheesh.
He headed straight upstairs to the second level and took up a position at the edge of the balcony. From here, he had a clear view of the dance
floor and the swarm of flailing bodies covering it.
Serena was right in the middle of a testosterone donut, completely ignoring the men surrounding her.
She wore a vivid purple dress with a short, flouncy skirt and a pile of glittering crystals winking under the light show. Her arms were bare, raised high over her head in abandon as she moved to the music. Sweat glistened on her skin and plastered loose curls to the sides of her face.
The only visible flaw she had was a glaring, white bandage covering the cut on her leg. If any of the men were put off by the wound, they didn’t show it.
The music shifted downward, its beat slowing and growing sultry. As it did, the men around her crept closer and reached out to pull her into their arms.
Serena evaded them all and simply danced with herself, swaying in a hypnotic display of pure feminine perfection.
Morgan couldn’t look away. All he could do was stare and soak her in. He wasn’t even mad at her for making him chase her around. All sins were forgiven so long as she kept dancing.
That was art.
His cock tingled, shocking the hell out of him.
He ripped his eyes away from her long enough to figure out what was wrong.
He didn’t get aroused. At least not without thinking about his wife. She’d been gone a long time, but he’d never once strayed. Never even wanted to. He flirted with women and tried to charm them, but never anything more. He hadn’t even kissed a woman in well over two-hundred years. Not since Femi’s last night on earth.
But now, his libido seemed to be waking up and stretching, preparing for a new day. No coffee necessary.
What the hell was wrong with him?
A young woman in a slinky, black dress sidled up to him and pressed her breasts against his arm.
She was lovely, with long, blonde hair and all the right curves to make a man lose his head. And she knew it.
“Want to dance?” she asked.
All the tingles in his groin drained away as if they’d never been.
He gave her a charming smile to ease the sting of his rejection. “No thanks, sugar. I don’t dance.”
She slid a glittering red fingernail down his chest and looked up at him from under sinfully long eyelashes. “That’s okay. You can just watch me.”
As lovely as she was, there was nothing here for him. And he had nothing to offer her. She was human. His job was to kill the things that went bump in the night so she never even had to know they existed. There was nothing more between them than that, and there never would be.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” he said.
She gave him a full pout that had probably worked on more men than not. “You’re no fun at all. And here I was, willing to go home with you and give you a solo show. Ever had a woman dance naked for you before?”
Morgan frowned at her, shocked. He’d been so busy out in the field, fighting, that he hadn’t spent any time in places like these for several decades. He’d heard his brothers talk about how easy it was to pick up women and relieve some of their pain through enthusiastic, casual sex, but until now, he hadn’t realized exactly what they meant.
It wasn’t just easy. Morgan hadn’t even had to ask and already this girl was ready to jump in bed with him.
“You’re not my type, honey. Sorry.”
She laughed, like he’d made a joke. “I’m every man’s type.”
Morgan glanced down at Serena and was instantly trapped by the rhythmic sway of her body. That long-lost tingle of sexual arousal swept through his groin, and this time, he knew it was no coincidence—no fleeting memory of the woman he loved.
Serena turned him on, and she wasn’t even trying.
A little voice in the back of his mind told him that his attraction to her was more than merely physical. He’d have to touch her to test his theory, but if he was right, then she had the power to save his life.
But first, he had to catch her.
Morgan didn’t even glance at the blonde as she spoke. His whole world had shifted in the last few seconds, and he was struggling to catch up.
“Not this man,” he told her. “I prefer my women to be a challenge.”
***
Serena was being hunted.
She’d felt eyes on her since leaving the night club, and they weren’t just any eyes.
Morgan Valens was on her trail.
He’d followed her back to her motel room, though she hadn’t seen him behind her, hadn’t seen him lurking in the shadows of the small parking lot.
She’d checked every corner of her small, utilitarian motel room, sword in hand. She’d looked behind the stiff curtains covering the single, wide window, though she had no idea how a man his size could possibly be lurking there. She’d bent low to peer under the wide bed in the center of the room, finding only a solid platform filling the space. She’d even searched behind the shower curtain in the tiny bathroom before she was certain she was alone. At least for now.
Even as she showered, she could feel his presence, so different from the other men who had sought her out. There was something about him that left her feeling unsettled. Excited.
Morgan Valens was not going to be an easy man to deter.
Her first instinct was to run—shower off the sweat and glitter of the club, dress and flee. Her belongings were packed, and in her car, even though she hadn’t yet checked out of her motel room. She liked the freedom of knowing she could leave town whenever she wanted.
Over the past few months, the habit of staying mobile had come in handy more than once as she’d evaded a constant string of male Theronai, eager to please their leader by dragging her back to Dabyr. But she was tired of running. No matter how far she went, or how fast she got there, Joseph’s men always found her.
It was time to make a stand. Confront the enemy and make it clear to all who would pursue her that she would go back to help rebuild their broken compound when, and if, she wanted. No sooner.
After two centuries of captivity, that was the least she deserved.
She only wished that her freedom made her happy. Instead, all it did was ease the constant gnawing heartache she endured every time she thought about Iain and his wife.
She didn’t want to love him anymore, but she didn’t know how to stop. How was she ever going to fill the gaping void in her chest if she couldn’t stop loving him?
He wasn’t even the man he’d once been—the man she’d fallen in love with two hundred years ago. Time had taken its toll on him, and it had cost him his soul. He was no longer the sweet, kind man she knew. He was hard and cold, wrapped in flesh that looked like her Iain, but wasn’t him. Not even close.
Jackie, his wife, had saved his life. She’d even opened herself up to him so wide that she shared her soul with him—like some sort of bizarre organ transplant.
Everything Serena had loved about Iain—his wicked sense of humor, his easy laugh, his deep kindness and tender heart—was gone. All of those things, all of who he was, had died along with his soul. She knew that. She’d tried to think of him as dead and buried so she could mourn him and move on, but with his body walking around, alive and well, she didn’t know how.
She didn’t know how to not miss the man he’d once been, even though there was no sign of him left in the man he’d become.
At least out here, beyond the broken walls her people called home, she was free to grieve as she liked, without judgment or blame.
Iain had thought her dead for two centuries. He’d had a long time to grieve for her. She’d had only a short time to adjust to the loss of the man she’d always loved—the man who’d consumed her thoughts for two hundred years. A man now gone.
Even in the face of such tragedy and loss, everyone was so happy for the expectant couple. They all cheered and celebrated the rare union of male and female Theronai and the precious, new life to come.
None of them stopped to think that they were also celebrating Serena’s crushing heartache as well. Without realizing it, they cheered for
her pain and gloried in her suffering.
How could any of them expect her to stay and face that?
No, she was better out here, away from all the happiness, where she could kill and scream and rail at the universe for all its unfairness.
Maybe one day she’d be able to go back and look into the eyes of the child that should have been hers and smile, but not today.
Serena let the hot water flood over her head as she braced herself against the cool, tile wall. She was exhausted from clearing out a Synestryn nest earlier tonight, exhausted from two hours of fending off the advances of a dozen men at the night club. All she wanted was to dance in peace, to revel in the feeling of being free from her cage, able to breathe, to move. The deafening blast of music and the anonymity of the crowd had always buoyed her spirits, but tonight had been different. There was no joy in the pulsing beat, no escape in the crush of bodies thrashing to the music.
Mr. Valens had been watching her.
She hadn’t been able to see him in the dark, crowded space—hadn’t known where he was—but she’d felt him. His presence shimmered around her, more palpable than the pounding, drumbeat thrum in her chest.
He hadn’t come for her in the club, much to her surprise, but he would come. Soon.
Serena couldn’t find the energy to run again tonight. She was too weary from her physical exertion, too heartsick from life’s unfairness. But if she didn’t run, she would have to fight, because the man hunting her would give her no rest.
Serena decided that her hotel room was as good a place as any to make her final stand against the men Joseph continued to send. The message she issued had to be clear, unmistakable, and loud enough that she wouldn’t have to send it again.
She thought about Mr. Valens as she showered, how she might best prove to him that she wasn’t going back with him. But every time her mind settled on him her thoughts seemed to scatter. She wondered about the magic he housed, what it must feel like to carry around something so powerful and alive—something so massive that it would one day kill him if he couldn’t set it free.
She wondered why these men hadn’t yet given up their quest to bring her back, and how much she would have to injure Mr. Valens in order to make her wishes clear.
Saving Daylight Page 2
