Dark and Damaged: Eight Tortured Heroes of Paranormal Romance: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set (48 page)

She looked astounded. “I have allies?”

Fraser shook his head. “We don’t know where you come from yet. You have
to shift
to know for sure. Your dragon will answer the question definitively. The Herreras, and indeed the rest of the Bloodkin Assembly, have been very patient.”

“Oh…well,” Emerson said, “I’m deeply grateful for their forbearance.” She sounded anything but.

Herrera. Were they the ones Thane was looking for? Had they killed Carreen and Rinc?

No. It didn’t feel right. He’d had no quarrel with them. In fact, they’d always lived on different continents and pursued different business interests. They’d prospered on intellect and wise alliances, not violence. What cause had they to attack Ealdian? Why would they send an assassin six hundred years later?

Perhaps Lena would think of something that connected them.

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Emerson demanded of Fraser.

Thane had told her why already: power. The Triad had been trying to keep her in check.

“It wasn’t mine to tell,” Fraser said.

“You’re awfully chatty about it today,” she shot back.

“You asked me directly. And I assumed that Mr. Ealdian had informed you about your family.”

Her voice rose. “My family? You know
nothing
about my family.” She lifted shining, confused eyes to Thane. “All this time. Even when I was in college and already identified as Bloodkin. It’s been
years
.”

At her distress, his dragon flexed within him. She’d been alone. She’d made a wolf her brother. She’d had to ask for money to learn, to live. Her anger was his anger, too. He knew what it was like to be alone.

“I don’t want the hoard, whatever it is, whatever it’s worth,” she said. “And I’m
done
with Bloodkin. What kind of
ally
would leave me to fend for myself at
seven
?”

“It’s possible they didn’t know your circumstances,” Thane said. He’d find out if they had.

Emerson shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. I’m done.
Sooo done
. You people make me sick.”

You people
. No matter how much she wanted to, she couldn’t will her dragon away. Her eyes were brighter and greener than ever.

She walked toward
The Goddess
and stood looking into her serene face.

“Emerson, you’re not alone in this,” Thane said to her back. When she drew away—or drew into herself—his dragon became agitated. He needed her here with him. “You’re not alone anymore.” The Herreras would be made to acknowledge her identity. Did they know what had become of her parents?

She turned abruptly. “Can we just finish this? I need to take a walk.”

Yes, maybe that was the better course. Finish, then talk.

Thane was turning back to Fraser when a flash of steel preceded a high, ragged cry.

Fraser gripped his arm as blood squirted from his wrist. The white bone and red flesh of his forearm was exposed by a clean cut. His severed hand lay on the carpet clutching a gun.

Matthew held his short sword slightly away from his body, blood dripping from the blade.

“Not again.” Emerson’s face and lips had gone white. “Oh, please God, not again.”

“He wasn’t going to shoot himself, my lady,” Matthew said. “He was aiming for my lord Thane.”

***

“Please, I need dragon blood.” Fraser’s face was white with strain.

Nausea curled in Emerson’s belly. She knew now why the Bloodkin called themselves that. Somehow, they kept managing to spill blood. The smell—rich and metallic—made her throat tight. Thane, on the other hand, moved closer to Fraser.

“I’m not going to give it to you,” Thane said to him. “Not after you just professed loyalty to my kind and then tried to sting me with that weapon. To what end? A bullet wouldn’t kill me. To provoke the dragon?”

“I had to try,” Fraser said. “If I didn’t, I was dead anyway.”

Emerson frowned in disgust. “Who put you up to it?”

“I’ll tell you if you help me,” Fraser said. “My hand can be reattached. It will grow back together. I’ve seen it done.
Please
.”

She hated all of them. “I want to know who put me on the mediation.”

“You’ll heal me if I tell you?” He looked so pale, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.

“Yes.” Of course, she would’ve tried anyway because she wasn’t a monster like the rest of them. Revenge and blood and war. That’s what Thane wanted, and by now, she knew to take him at his word.

“Lena Orvyn,” Fraser said.

Thane took a step back as if struck. “No. You lie.”

Lena
. The name was familiar, but Emerson couldn’t place it.

Fraser nodded and looked at Thane. “She told me to assign Emerson to the mediation and to keep her involved at all costs.”

Emerson glanced at Thane, too, whose teeth were…
sharpening
as he shook with rage. The skin above his indigo eyes was deepening to gray. It seemed like they knew the culprit after all. Lena Orvyn. Now maybe this could end. Nobody else had to die.

She approached Fraser to save his damned hand. Disgusting. “Matthew, I don’t know how to do this.” Open a vein? “Can you help me?”

Fraser reached out toward her. “If you just cut—”

And then his head fell off, hit the floor with a soft thud beside his hand, and rolled to expose a rictus of surprise.

She blinked twice, but still didn’t understand what she was seeing. She looked at Matthew, who was lowering his sword again, fresh blood sliding down the blade. The corpse of Martin Fraser leaned slowly forward but was held morbidly upright in the chair by its deep seat and high arm.

“My lady,” Matthew said, “he betrayed two dragons today, my lord Thane and Lena Orvyn. I wasn’t letting him near a third.”

***

“No, I told you I’m done,” Emerson said when a gentle hand touched her shoulder. Matthew’s. She’d collapsed on a chair at the big table, her head buried in her arms. She was getting out of here as soon as she could stop shivering.

They were so violent. Why were they so violent? All this death. Some things were starting to make sense, though. How
had
Thane managed to live so long if not by killing everyone in his path?

She stole a glance at him from across the room. He was weirdly crouched low and rocking on his feet, a strange, savage purr coming from his chest. Thane was battling inner demons, she could tell. The impulse to go talk to him, talk him back to himself, collided with the instinct to survive, to stay away. She didn’t know what to do.

“You need to go back up to your room,” Matthew told her. “Now.”

The sharp, red blade, still clutched in his hand, continued to drip on the floor. The carpet was ruined already, so she might as well vomit on it, too.

Thane bellowed in pain, strain making the tendons on his arms, shoulders, and neck stand out. His shoulders were rolled forward like Gerard’s had been before he’d caught fire, before he’d shifted. She’d known Thane was close, but now he seemed on the very brink.

“Go now. Please.” Matthew took her under the arm and yanked her to standing.

And then, suddenly, he was knocked out of her sight, and Thane loomed large, a smoky musk wrapping around her as he dragged her down to the floor with him. She screamed as he caged her between his arms and legs. His very pointy teeth were not an inch away from her neck, his breath so hot it singed. And there he stayed, trembling above her, but not attacking.

Her body flashed hot in response, something within—her own personal fortifications—crumbling at his nearness. She was vulnerable and in the clutches of a man-monster, but she had no idea which part was dominant.

“Matthew?” she called, her voice a little high and thready.

The barrier between her and Thane was breaking. She didn’t know what would happen if it collapsed entirely. He was so close, so raw. And in her own way, she was, too. This was dangerous.

“He grabbed you.” Thane’s voice was barely human, but he wasn’t taking a bite…yet. “I can’t trust anyone. I thought I could. But if
she
betrayed me, then…”

He had to be talking about Lena Orvyn, the woman Fraser had named. She must be really bad news for Thane to lose it like this.

Tentatively, Emerson tried to look past him and spotted a black boot and its very still leg on the other side of the room. “I think Matthew is hurt.”

“He’ll live,” Thane said. “I can’t move. Not yet. Not safe.”

“
He
was trying to get me to safety.”

“You’re safe here. Safest here. With me.” His body was shaking.

She was alone with a man at war with his dragon, so she was pretty sure her safety was questionable at best. But as the seconds ticked into minutes, her heartbeat slowed and her breath evened. Underneath the smoky darkness of the dragon, he smelled like a morning shower, clean and fresh but tinged with a note all Thane—a combination that wasn’t bad, not really. His warmth relaxed her tensed muscles. Melted her.

She discovered that she wasn’t afraid. Not really. Who better to protect her from an emergent dragon than Thane? Yeah, even if the dragon was him.

She trusted him. For the first time in forever, she trusted someone.

“I don’t like all this death,” she finally said.

His forehead touched hers, another tremor rolling over him. “I thought Lena was a friend.”

“Is she your…?”
Lady friend? What do dragons call sweethearts?

“No. She’s Carreen’s sister. She searched for Carreen with me, remember?”

She nodded. Yes, she remembered now. He’d mentioned Lena during the drive on the way out here.

“Did she know about Rinc? Did she take Rinc from me?” The turmoil in his voice was too much for her to take.

“I hope not,” she said. “But we’ll find out.” Emerson had some questions for her, too.

“We’ll find out.” Thane seemed to hang on to that promise.

They’d hang on together.

Silence fell, and still Thane kept her close. When his tremors finally abated, Emerson spoke again. There was a dead body ten feet away, and the iron tang of the blood was making her sick. “Could you maybe keep me safe elsewhere?”

He inhaled hugely, as if breathing her in. “Yes. I know a place.”

He ungracefully slung her over his shoulder and carried her through the house, down some stairs, and palmed a security panel, which opened a door. They descended into darkness, and she deeply regretted asking to move…until lights flickered on one by one across a cavernous room. She had an upside-down view of a cache of riches the likes of which she’d only seen in movies.

Holy cow
.

“This is your hoard,” she said as he set her down.

The neat piles of gold bars were almost cliché, but seeing them in person made it a truly extraordinary experience. He had art displayed on the walls—masterpieces, no doubt—and texts in covered cases. How he’d managed to get a car down here—a fancy old Mercedes—was beyond her.

“A safe place,” he said, sounding more like a sad, exhausted version of himself.

A bank of high-tech safes lined one wall. She nodded slowly, in awe. “For serious treasure.”

He smiled and met her gaze. “And precious things.”

“She must be really bad news,” Emerson said.

Thane slid his gaze to the floor. “I’ve been blind.”

Lena. She was why he’d never discovered Carreen and Rinc.
Lena
had hidden the truth, and he’d never once suspected her. He’d been a fool to believe her grief and desperation.

Carreen would find a way to send me a message
, Lena had assured him.
She’d have to be trapped for her to be silent so long
.

But
who
would hold her?
Thane had demanded a thousand times.
Why?

He’d thought it had to have been an enemy to the Ealdian line, or else they’d have spared the babe. He’d never a considered a sister who hated the other so much that she murdered her child, too.

He was ashamed to remember wondering if everything would’ve been different if he’d married Lena and not Carreen. He’d merely agreed to the contract. Marriage was business, and Carreen had done her part. Lena married later and had her own son. He’d had no reason to suspect bitterness between the two.

“Will you stay here while I check on Matthew?” His man-at-arms had been silent too long. “I promise I’ll come back.”

Emerson seemed to be trying hard to keep herself together, and Thane appreciated it.

“Can I look at all your cool stuff?” Her voice had a tremulous quality she couldn’t entirely hide. He didn’t blame her for wanting to run away anymore. Carreen had hated violence, too.

“You might like what’s in there.” He pointed to the vault on the far right and told her the code. He’d never told anyone a code before. Never. Not even Matthew had unrestricted access to the hoard, and he’d never been left alone in the vault.

“I won’t steal anything.”

“You’d better not.” He tried to sound lighthearted, but it came out rougher than he’d intended. Oddly, he’d give her anything she asked for. He didn’t know why, except perhaps because the stars would soon be his treasure, and the sky would be where he kept his hoard.

Yet here he was, turning to go back through the security door, leaving more or less a stranger behind. When he closed the door after him, locking her in, the dragon within settled contentedly, uninterested in the scent of blood and the sudden availability of fresh meat. The dragon was satisfied, while Thane was in pieces.

He found Matthew sitting against a leg of the table, pain creating lines of stress across his forehead and around his mouth. But since he was awake and had moved, the healing process had to have begun, years of Thane’s dragon blood mending what he had broken. But it seemed Matthew’s back was still injured since he wasn’t standing or moving his legs.

“Does Emerson live?” Matthew sounded devastated.

“She’s fine. I put her in the vault while I came to check on you.”

Matthew narrowed his eyes. “You’ve never lied to me before.”

And he wasn’t now. “Emerson Clark is currently admiring my collection of royal jewels. I gave her the code to the safe before I left. She says I have cool stuff.”