Second of the Winterset Coven (4 page)

“Why didn’t you just tell me all this?” she whispered. “I would’ve understood.”

“Would you? You are Torunn’s lookalike. How could I explain that in a way that wouldn’t hurt you? How could I tell you I’d hunted you for the way you look? That I’d been hunting you for centuries, always looking for your face in crowds? How could I make you understand that I care about you for more than your face now?”

Dawn’s stomach curdled, and she shrugged helplessly. “I guess that’s the hard part, right? Now it’s up to me. Do I believe you and trust your feelings aren’t just some wish that I was someone else? Or do I cut and run. I guess I have to decide which one hurts the least. Garret?”

“Yeah?”

“Why didn’t you feed from me tonight?”

He huffed a breath like it should’ve been obvious. “You were hurt by Asmund. It wasn’t a consensual feeding, Dawn. He forced you just to get to me. I don’t want to hurt you more.”

“But you’re thirsty.”

Garret gritted his teeth. “No amount of thirst could make me hurt you when you’re feeling raw like this. I’ll hold. You’ll heal. We’ll talk about feeding later.”

And there it was. He was starving—it was in his shining black eyes and the wildness of his face. She could see it in the fangs that hadn’t dulled the entire time they talked. But he would rather sit this close to her in torture than hurt her.

And she trusted him. She trusted that Garret had figured it out, that she was no Torunn.

This care wasn’t for a ghost of his past, but was just for her.

He may have hunted for Torunn, but he had fallen for Dawn.

Garret opened the door for Dawn and ghosted a glance at the lightening sky. It was a deep gray now, and sunrise would be here soon. He hated this—the fear of the sun. Some days it was enough to drive him mad.

He was wearing a pair of gray sweatpants and nothing else. Usually he hid his scars, but what was the point now? Dawn had seen all of him and hadn’t seemed to mind at all. She turned on the porch and hooked her fingers in the elastic waistband that hung low on his hips. Her smile was shy and soft, and for the hundredth time he was struck with how different she’d turned out to be. He’d been convinced that Torunn would be reborn, but she hadn’t been. Or if she had been, he never found her. Dawn was soft and sweet, cute and bubbly, where Torunn had been sharp as a blade and ready to battle at any moment. He used to think he needed a hard woman, but then he’d met Dawn, and she’d breathed new life into him.

Garret lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her on the inside of her thumb. God he wanted to drink her, but not until she was fully recovered.

As if she could hear his thoughts, she whispered, “Don’t take another feeder. I don’t like the thought of your lips on them. If you need to drink, come find me.”

She was so pretty in the early morning light— the ends of her blond hair lifted in the breeze, her lips swollen from kissing him, cheeks rosy, eyes hooded and sleepy, their color like the daytime sky. It was the closest to a midday sky he would ever get. She was wearing a pair of worn, pink flip-flops and one of his T-shirts over her jeans. He’d always liked that about her—she could dress down and be comfortable in her skin and still look fucking gorgeous. Soft spoken she may be, and sweet to boot, but she was also confident, and there was nothing sexier on a woman than confidence.

“Why are you smiling at me like that?” she asked, intertwining their fingers and clasping their hands together as she shifted her weight closer.

“It’s just nice to finally touch you how I want.”

“You could’ve before.”

But she was wrong. He’d been on the fence before, confused by her resemblance to Torrun, wary of his dangerous life and the effect it could have on her, worried about putting a long shadow on her life. Garret had always been careful at decisions of the heart, and he’d wanted to make sure he was all the way in before he asked her to attach to him.

Thoughts of shadows stole the smile from his face. “Do you work tonight?”

“No. Trager wanted me to take some time off while I heal up. I told him I’m fine. I could use the money. My mom has rent due soon, and I need to help her out.”

Garret frowned. “Why do you have to pay for your mom?”

Dawn shrugged. “It’s what family does. She’s got a busted knee and has been doing physical therapy. She’s recovering, but not fast enough for her job. I’m floating us until she can find another one that isn’t so physically demanding.”

“So you’re paying your rent and hers?”

“No.” She gave him a cute, little frowny smile. “Didn’t you know I live with my mom?”

Garret huffed a laugh. “No. Momma’s girl, huh?”

She giggled and pushed him in the shoulder playfully. Her touch was like goose down, but he allowed her to push him back so she wouldn’t feel weak. “I had my own place, but she needs help. It’s part of the reason I came to every feeding invite, smart aleck. That and your cute butt.
Honk
.” She squeezed it, and her cheeks flushed a pretty pink color as she ducked her gaze. God, she was so fucking adorable.

“Hmm,” he said nonchalantly. He had plenty of money to help her out, but something told him Dawn wasn’t one to take charity or to be a kept woman. He would have to negotiate a higher wage when she fed him and hope it helped. “Go out with me tonight.”

Dawn jerked her startled gaze to his. “What?”

The sky was lightening by the second, and he didn’t have a lot of time to do this properly. “Go on a date with me. I want to take you out somewhere nice. Somewhere I can show you off.” And somewhere in public where Asshole Asmund wouldn’t dare approach them. Garret knew all that sneaky bastard’s tricks.

Dawn fidgeted with the hem of her T-shirt. “Okay. What should I wear?”

He grinned. “You’ll look beautiful in anything. Surprise me—
oomf
.”

Garret rocked backward with the force of her hug. Startled, he lifted his hands to her back, careful to be gentle with her fragile human skin as he hugged her. She was shorter than him, so he rested his chin on top of her hair like he’d always wanted to do when she’d given him quick hugs goodbye. Fuck, this felt good. It felt good to just stand here and breathe in her scent—fruit shampoo and sex. He could smell himself on her, and he loved it. But after a few seconds, her shoulders jerked, and a soft sniffle sounded from her.

Confused, Garret eased her back to arm’s length, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes, and now her cheeks were even rosier. “What’s wrong, woman?”

“I’m happy.”

Garret was horrified. “You cry when you’re happy?” He would never understand women.

“It’s just, when I came here last night, I thought I would tell you off and then it would be like before, and I would be alone again. But it’s not like that. Now you feel like…”

Garret leaned down to eye level with her. “I feel like what?”

“You feel like mine. You aren’t pushing me away.”

“Dear God,” he muttered, pulling her against his chest again and sighing in relief. “I thought I broke you.”

Dawn laughed thickly and dug her little harmless claws into his lower back as she hugged him probably as tight as she could. It was like embracing a butterfly. He would have to remember to always be careful with her.

The sky had lightened to dove gray now, and any moment the sun would peek its head over the horizon. Sleep was pulling at his body, making him feel drugged. “I’ll pick you up at dusk. Don’t let anyone but me in, okay?”

“Will he come for me?” she asked.

She sounded scared, and Garret swore to himself—as he had a hundred times since he’d learned of her attack—that he was going to drive a stake into Asmund’s heart for what he’d done.

“I don’t know,” he murmured, so he wouldn’t scare her worse. But something deep inside of him said Asmund wasn’t done with Dawn.

Garret had been in the hospital that night, standing in the darkest corner of Dawn’s room, watching her as she slept off the effects of the blood transfusion and the pain meds. He’d been waiting for Asmund to come for her, a wooden stake resting in his back pocket for his maker. Dawn didn’t know it, but he’d watched her house, too, standing in the shadows…ready. And when he left to hunt his origin, he’d posted two of the coven at her house in his stead.

Dawn lifted up on her toes and kissed him gently. Her lips softened as she lingered. He angled his head, brushed his tongue against her mouth just barely. Just to taste her one last time before she returned to her life.

She didn’t understand yet, but war had been declared the second Asmund’s teeth had pierced her skin.

Unsteadily, Dawn meandered to her little beat-up Mazda, looking back at him twice with the cutest fucking shy smile he’d ever witnessed. He couldn’t believe she was his.

Asmund thought he would use her to get to Garret, but he was mistaken. Garret had been fine to live on the opposite side of the world from his maker, but then he’d come after Dawn and awakened the Destroyer that had been sleeping deep inside of him. With that one bite to her neck, Asmund the Dark had signed his own death warrant.

Dawn drove away with a wave and a smile so beautiful it froze the breath in his chest.

“What do you want to do?” Aric asked from right behind him.

Garret sighed and shoved his hands in the pockets of his sweats, dragging them even lower down his hips. “What would you do if Sadey was being hunted?”

For a few moments, Aric was silent. “I’m calling a coven meeting tonight,” he murmured low.

“It’s my fight.”

“It’s not. If Arabella was here, hunting my mate, you wouldn’t hesitate at my back, would you?”

“No, King.”

Aric clapped him on the back, his eyes flashing with anger. “In hurting Dawn, your origin has directly attacked my coven. The stake is yours, but we will be there for the final death.”

Accepting his king’s wishes, Garret tucked his chin to his chest.

Right now, his maker was slithering into some dark crevice to sleep for the day. The sun peeked over the field in front of the house and cast a beam of dim light onto the porch, singing Garret’s bare foot. Wincing at the pain, Garret stepped back into the shadows of the house and gave one last longing glance to the rising sun.

Asmund had taken daylight from him, but he would not take his Dawn.

Red or black? Dawn held up the strappy red dress again and frowned at her reflection in the full-length mirror that hung from her bedroom door. Whatever had possessed her to purchase the same dress in two colors was beyond her. Just for fun, she quickly typed in
What are Vikings’ favorite colors?
onto the search engine of her glowing laptop, but with no satisfactory results.

Geir the Destroyer. What a sexy-ass name. Oh, she bet he was a warrior. She could just imagine him in the layers of simple cloth and furs like the pictures she’d spent half the day researching. Modern day Garret wore simple colors, too, and sweaters and shirts without logos. And nice jeans—the ones that cost more than she could earn in tips on an entire weekend. Modern-day Garret looked like one of those sexy billboard models with the fit physique, carefully messy dark hair, and bright green eyes. Well, when he wasn’t hungry and they were black as pitch. At least she’d always thought him to look like a model—perfect in every way and intimidating as hell—until last night when she’d laid eyes on his scars and battle-hardened body. She liked this side of him—the real side. Garret Westergaard was a destroyer all right…a destroyer of ovaries.

Everything she’d learned had shocked her to the core. She’d fancied them best friends before, but he’d kept so many secrets about who he really was. A part of her was frustrated he’d maintained that wall for the last four months, but another part of her was now infinitely intrigued by the many layers of Garret. A Viking. Huh. She wished he would cut his hair shorter on the sides so she could make sense of his tattoos.

There was a knock on the front door and Mom yelled, “Dawn, get that!”

Since her knee had gone, Mom had refused to get up from icing it on the couch for just about everyone but Mr. Yin from the Chinese restaurant down the street. When she ordered delivery from there, she dressed up. Dawn was pretty sure Mom had a huge crush on the soft-spoken restaurant owner. He was ten years younger than Mom, but she swore age was just a number in the bedroom. Mom had no filter, sure, but Dawn was beginning to think she was onto something. Garret the Panty Destroyer was an immortal vampire, and yet Dawn had only just celebrated her twenty-sixth birthday with a taco and guacamole party—yes, they were a thing.

Dawn made her way through the old, creaking house she grew up in and grabbed the certified Ash wood stake she’d rush-ordered online the day after Asmund played bitey-bitey-asshole on her neck. She, Dawn Leanne Reed, was nobody’s victim.

Might sound petty, but she’d already carved Asmund’s name on it in bubble letters and superglued black glitter into the carving to make his name stand out. She was craftsy, and not even her weapons of death and destruction were safe from her glitter bombs.

Dawn held it up in the air like she’d seen on the two B-rated horror movies she’d rented from Bud’s Videos and Beer Barn this week. And when she was ready to call on her inner vampire huntress, she flung open the door and screeched a battle cry.

Sadey stood in the waning evening light with a startled look on her face.

The scream died in Dawn’s throat.

From behind her, Mom demanded, “What in tarnation are you doing, child of mine?”

Dawn hunched her shoulders and spun. Mom was leaning heavily on the entryway wall aiming a giant bazooka water gun at Sadey. “That ain’t the way you hold a stake! You hide it first and surprise ’em with it in the heart.”

When Sadey snickered on the porch, Dawn’s cheeks flushed with heat. “At least I’m defending this house with more than a water gun!”

Mom pulled the trigger and squirted Dawn’s shirt. “For sassing me, Dawn Leanne. It’s holy water!” With that, Mom limped back to her seat on the couch.

“Come on in,” Dawn rushed out, embarrassed.

Sadey’s blue eyes sparked with amusement as she stepped inside.

“Mom, this is Sadey. Sadey…” Dawn waved to where Mom was pumping the action on the water gun like she was about to go to war. Dawn sighed heavily. “This is my mom.”

“Sadey the snow leopard shifter. I saw you all over the news when you registered to the Winterset Coven. That, and Dawn talks about you all the time. If I didn’t think my kid had a hard-on for that sexy dark-headed morsel in the coven, I’d say she had a crush on you.”

“Mom!” Dawn clipped out.

“She don’t have many friends outside of the vamp house. You girls want me to order some Chinese take-out? I gotta man who probably has the tastiest eggroll in the world.” Mom waggled her eyebrows like a perv, and mortified, Dawn dragged Sadey by the hand to her bedroom at the back of the house. Over her shoulder, she called, “I’m moving out again!”

“Good!” Mom said. “You need to stop coddling me and besides, that’ll give me some private time with Mr. Yin without you lookin’ at me all judgmental.”

Dawn scrunched up her face and shut the door at the vision of Mom and Mr. Yin fooling around.

“I think I love your mom,” Sadey punched out through her giggles.

Dawn glared at the door. “Yeah, she thinks she’s a hoot.” Looking around her childhood bedroom, she drawled out, “Uuuuh, sorry my room looks like a unicorn took a rainbow shit in here. I just moved back in to help my mom with bills, and I’ve been too busy to fix up the old room.”

Sadey picked up an old dust-covered trophy. “Is this seriously a first place for curling?”

“It’s a sport! And I wasn’t super athletic in school so when it came to extra curriculars, I got creative.”

Sadey sat heavily on her neon green office chair and spun slowly. “I got tired of hanging around outside like some peeping-tom stalker. That’s Garret’s gig, not mine.”

“What? You’ve been standing outside my house?”

“Yeah, Project Dawn Patrol has been in full effect since the attack. Garret has me watching this place during the day while he’s sleeping and unable to protect you. Like Asmund could get to you during the day. He might be ancient, but he’s still a vamp and will go up in flames in sunlight. Garret doesn’t want to take any chances though. Those dresses are hot.” She pointed to the outfits laid out on the bed. “Go with the black one tonight. It’ll make your eyes pop, and Garret won’t be able to keep his hands off you.”

Dawn just stood there with her mouth hanging open wide enough to catch flies. “Wait, go back. Wh-who watches me at night?”

“Mostly Garret. You should get better curtains. When he’s out hunting Ass-munch, he usually puts Shane and Evan out in front of your house. Also, we are really gonna have to work on your vamp-staking skills. You held your weapon like a limp noodle, and is that glitter?” Sadey pointed to the sparkle-adorned stake hanging limply from Dawn’s hand.

Dawn slowly hid it behind her back. “No?”

“Want to hear a secret that I’ve been dying to tell you all day?”

“Um, okay.”

“Aric has called a coven meeting.”

Oh, that sounded bad. Coven meetings didn’t happen often, and it was usually about something unsavory. “A meeting about what?”

“We’re going a-huntin’ on your behalf.”

“Mine?” Dawn’s head was spinning. “But Aric calls me a feeder.”

“Not anymore. This morning my supersonic shifter hearing was on point, and I heard Garret call you his.”

“His what?”

“You know. His woman, his lover, his queen, his to defend, protect, avenge. The coven is going to war with his origin to back him up. To back you up.”

“That’s terrible! Why do you sound so excited about this, Sadey? Asmund is terrifying.” She didn’t want any of the Winterset Coven to get hurt or worse on her behalf.

The smile slipped from Sadey’s lips, and quietly she said, “Garret’s already been hunting him, Dawn. The night we found out about your attack… I’ve never seen Garret like that. He raged and filled the entire coven house with something awful and dark. I couldn’t even fucking breathe, Dawn. Aric laid down an order for Garret not to hunt Asmund while the police were sitting outside watching us so closely, but he ignored it. Ignored an order, Dawn. From his king. After tonight, Garret won’t be hunting alone anymore, so yeah, this is a really good thing because the coven can’t lose him. And we can’t lose you. Asmund is ancient and powerful, sure, but our boys are loyal and lethal. He has a better shot at ending Asmund and keeping you safe with the coven at his back.”

“But maybe Asmund made his point and won’t come back for me,” Dawn whispered, desperate to deny she was still a target.

Sadey canted her head, and her eyes grew sad. “He can’t take the chance on losing you, too. Asmund has taken from him before.”

Dawn frowned. “This is different from when Asmund Turned Garret.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Sadey murmured. “Asmund killed Torunn. If Garret thinks this is a repeat of history, then I trust him, and so does Aric. And for your own safety, you should trust him, too.”

Dawn sat heavily on the edge of the bed and stared down at the stake in her hand. She’d bought it because she didn’t feel safe anymore, but a huge part of her had really wished the nightmare was over. Her eyes burned as she felt crushed under the weight of the avalanche tumbling down on top of her. The attack, finding out about Garret’s past, about his great love, and now this? Torunn hadn’t moved on as Garret had told her. She’d been killed by the same man who’d nearly drained Dawn dry.

And on top of all of that, Dawn’s feelings for Garret had deepened infinitely during their night together. There was no running from this. There was only enduring it until she could see light again, because Garret had said she was his.

And down to her soul, she felt the same about him.