Deceptions: A Collection (25 page)

“
Such a little weakling
…”

Fanis stood over me.

Aneris Hall. The aneira stronghold. The royal family’s home. My grandmother’s home.

I cringed on the floor of the room where they’d locked me, cradling my aching arm to my chest.

“The healer has to re-break the bone,” she said, moving to pace around me.

I wanted to cry, but I didn’t dare. I knew better.

“She said she could give you an elixir so you would sleep through it but I will not allow it.”

Biting my lip, I tried not to beg. There was no way I would beg. The last time I’d begged…my back still had the scars.

“Do you not have anything to say, granddaughter?”

I shook my head.

“Good.”

She stood by as the healer broke the bones. And as I screamed, she smiled.

You are dreaming
…

I flinched at the sound of his voice.

Jude was the last person I wanted to see witnessing those dreams.

“The absolute last?” he murmured, stroking a hand down my arm. The one she’d broken.

Forcing my eyes to open, I found myself lying on the bed. The dream world was almost painfully vivid and I gasped. I could smell the lingering stench of burnt popcorn—the family next door had burnt some a few hours earlier and it had yet to fade. There were also the familiar scents of lavender and vanilla, coming from the scented rocks Colleen made for me.

And Jude. Sitting by me, stroking a hand up and down my arm.

“You can see into my dreams now?”

He shrugged. “Bits and pieces, yes.”

“Wonderful.” I struggled to move, figured it would take a few more minutes, but to my surprise, I was off the bed and moving in a blink. “Whoa. That’s unexpected.”

Jude smiled. “I tap into your energy when I break into your dreams. Now that there is a link between us, I don’t have to do that and there is no drain on your resources.” He dropped his chin on his fist as he eyed me narrowly. “You’re an odd bird, Kit. Most humans can’t move for hours when I do this. I’d expected I’d have more control over you now that I’d tasted you but…”

A faint line appeared between his brows. “It appears I don’t.”

“I’m not human.”

He shrugged. “You are…in part. You’re not witch, and you’re no shapeshifter. The aneira even show as human in any testing that is done on them, did you know that?”

I shrugged. “And this matters to me…why?”

“Just as I said. You’re an odd bird.” His head cocked and a smile curled his lips. “You’re about to have company.”

I frowned. Two seconds later the door opened and Damon came prowling in.

He moved to pause by the bed and when he looked down, I did the same thing. I had to remind myself that I wasn’t
really
moving around my room. I was just dreaming. In reality, I was in the bed. Still, it caught me off guard to see myself, lying there. Vulnerable.

The last thing I wanted to be around Damon.

Rubbing a hand over my chest, I focused on the naked back of the shapeshifter instead. He wore a pair of low-slung workout pants and if I didn’t hate him, I might have enjoyed the view very, very much.

“It figures the bastard sneaks in while I sleep.”

“Don’t get your maidenly honor all worked up. He is worried,” Jude said, shrugging, his tone bored.

“Worried.” I snorted. “Probably trying to think of a way to kill me and still get his Alpha’s nephew home.”

“No.” Jude shook his head. “His emotions aren’t murderous.” His lids drooped low, only the thinnest sliver of his glowing green eyes visible. “Your heartbeat slows in dreams and this connection would slow it even more. He’s listening. Takes his job seriously, this one.”

I glared at Damon’s naked back. “His Alpha made him promise he wouldn’t allow any harm to come to me while I was working the job. He actually
let
her bash his face because she was pissed off at me. By the way, do you know she’s crazy?”

“Annette? Oh. Yes.” Jude’s smile went cold. “She’s very, very crazy. And you…you little fool…went to work for her.”

I was getting so tired of men calling me a fool.

“Is there any reason you’re here?” I asked tiredly.

“I heard your dreams. The terror in them…I could feel it. Taste it.” A strange light appeared in his eyes. “I wondered what could push you to such fear, little warrior. You’ve always been so foolishly brave.”

Disgust, humiliation and rage crowded into my throat.

Jude just watched with that sly little smile. “Ugly, awful dreams you have. It’s no wonder you hate her.”

“Stay out of my dreams,” I said quietly.

He shrugged. “We all have our nightmares, Kit. Yours are just a little more recent than some. Besides, I wanted to test the strength of this new bond we share.”

“There is no bond.” I stared at him.

“Nothing I can hold you to, of course.” The smile widened and the faint light in the room reflecting off his fangs. “But there’s a connection now, little warrior. And sometime soon, you’ll be glad of it. By the way, I heard stories of several runaways. Groups of them, actually. You should focus your investigation to the south.”

Way to derail the conversation, I thought sourly. Runaways. Blowing out a breath, I shook my head. “To the south? Just where to the south? The Keys? Cuba? South America?”

“Hmmm.” As he uncoiled off the bed, I tensed.

He closed the distance between us and tugged on the hem of my shirt. “I’m glad you’re dressed. You don’t need to sleep in the skin around one like him. Save that for me.”

I smacked at his hand but he was gone before I made contact.

And I woke up to find Damon standing over my bed.

Groaning, I grabbed a pillow and flopped over onto my belly. “What the hell, you jackass?” I muttered, shoving my face into the pillow.

Damn it. The dream was still echoing in my mind. Loudly.

Jude had seen my dreams. My nightmares. My fucking grandmother.

Groups of runaways.

In the south.

And now Damon was in here, staring down at me.

“You weren’t breathing right.”

I pulled the pillow over my head. “I’m breathing now,” I grumbled.

South. Was Jude jerking me around or had he really heard something?

“Your heart rate was too slow.”

“I was willing myself into a catatonic stupor. The only way I can really get any sleep with you in my home.”

“What was going on?”

Swearing, I flung the pillow away and twisted into a sitting position. “Would you leave me alone?” I glared up at him and wished that I wasn’t able to see so clearly in the dark. It was a handy skill for a born killer, but still.

Seeing in the dark made it that much easier to see that he was, indeed, naked from the waist up.

And…wow. I hadn’t seen that in the dream. He had a tattoo on his chest. A vivid, rather tribal looking creation that spread up over his entire right pectoral, across his shoulder and curving down over his right bicep. I stared at it for a second while some part of my brain tried to wonder how it was possible for him to even have a tattoo—tatts weren’t that much different than scars, implanting the pigment under the skin…shifter bodies rejected shit like that.

So how was it even possible?

Then he crouched down, eyes on level with mine. The storm clouds, for once, weren’t so brooding and angry, but the look on his face was just as disturbing to me as the anger, although for different reasons entirely. I’d rather he be angry with me.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked softly. “You sounded like you were having a nightmare, but then it just…stopped.”

“Apparently the leave-me-alone thing falls on empty ears,” I muttered. Fighting free of the blankets, I clambered out of the bed and stormed toward the bathroom. “Just what in the hell did I do to deserve having a death sentence on my head and a couple of psychotic cat shifters breathing down my neck, on top of all the other shit I’ve dealt with?”

I made into the bathroom and slammed the door. Magic shimmered as wards settled into place. Flipping the lock, I grabbed a spare pillow and a blanket out of the closet. I had a safe place in my office. And another one here. It was the bathroom, the smallest room in the house, the easiest to secure. Not the nicest place to spend the night, but I could do it.

As I settled down in the bathtub, I called my sword.

I could hear him moving around, heard the door shut. But I didn’t bother getting up.

I hadn’t stopped having the nightmares until a few years ago.

When they’d gotten really bad, I still ended up in here, certain that I’d awaken and find Fanis standing over me.

This was one place I almost felt secure. Miserable enough to some, I figured.

But for nearly thirteen years, I hadn’t ever had a bed to sleep in. After my mother died, I’d been pretty much treated as a stray dog in my grandmother’s house. And the dogs had been fed better.

After I’d fled Aneris Hall, I’d been so busy running, I ran until I was too tired to go any farther so I dropped where I was. Often, I hadn’t even had a warm place, or a blanket, or pillow. At least here, I had those…and safety.

Not to mention the psychotic cat sleeping out in my living room.

I woke to hear my phone chiming.

Shit.

I hadn’t thought to bring it into the bathroom with me.

If it was Linc…

Muscles shrieked and protested as I climbed out of the tub and stumbled into my room.

Damon was already standing in the doorway. Storm-cloud eyes studied my face as I snagged my cell from the bedside table. It wasn’t Linc. Good. That was good.

Colleen.

Call me
.

Okay.

I’d call her. But caffeine first.

Knuckling at my eyes, I headed toward the door, only to stop a foot away as I realized the bane of my existence was still standing there. Balefully, I lifted my eyes and glared at him.

A faint smile, there and gone, twisted his lips and he stepped aside.

Coffee.

Cyanide.

For me. For him—he said it would take a tank load, but maybe Colleen could work up something that would work. It was possible, right? Had to be.

Five minutes later, I was thinking clearly.

Clearly enough to realize he wasn’t hovering at my back.

Nor was he in the living room where he normally slept. He’d already made up the bed—thank God he was fairly neat. His clothes had already been packed away, which meant he’d been up for a little while. A T-shirt was draped over the back of the chair close to me, along with a towel, so he must have been in the guest shower when the text woke me up.

But he wasn’t out here now and he wasn’t in there—

Storming into my room, I found him leaning against the wall just outside my bathroom, staring inside.

“You slept in the bathtub.”

“Yes.” I cradled my coffee and took a drink, burning my tongue. Didn’t matter. I had caffeine. That immediately made the day a little bit easier to face.

Storm clouds flashed in his eyes as he shoved off the wall and faced me. He crossed his arms over his chest and I briefly found myself distracted by the way muscles played under his golden-brown skin.
Pretty
—

No.
No
. Not pretty…asshole.
Capital
asshole.

“Why did you sleep in the bathtub?” he asked, a growl edging into his voice.

“Because I didn’t want to talk to you and you wouldn’t leave me alone. I figured you’d at least give me five minutes to pee in peace and quiet and when you didn’t barge in immediately, I thought maybe that would be the ideal place to sleep.”

A muscle jerked in his jaw. “I left you alone because I figured you wanted to be left alone. You weren’t in there pissing or anything else. You could have come out.”

“Oh, like you’ve been so respectful of my privacy or anything else.” Another drink sent more caffeine pulsing through me and I imagined I could see the cobwebs blowing away. Jude. The dream. South. And those kids had said something about the Everglades…

“I left you alone last night, didn’t I?” he snapped.

I took another drink. “A fluke. Although if you’re really trying to grow some manners, you could always leave me alone again. I need to change.”

I needed forty-five minutes in my gym. I needed to call Colleen, but I had to work that dream out first or I was going to go crazy.

Such a little weakling
…

Yeah. Better to work it out now, than lose my mind later.

I’d much rather work out alone, but that wasn’t going to happen. At least he was busy with the weights he’d had delivered. They had shown up on the second day of our not-so-ideal arrangement and half of my space was surrendered to his equipment.