To Crave a Blood Moon (15 page)

Soon, she vowed, she would forget his face. Eventually, his name.

And one day she would not even remember this killing pain in her heart.

Dressed, fed again, Sebastian strode through the bazaar near Gunter's nest with swift purpose, feeling almost himself again. Almost. All expect the tightness seizing his throat when he thought about Ruby. Out there alone. He detected traces of her, hints, but nothing substantial lingered. She was long gone, beyond tracking. It was as if she had disappeared like smoke from the streets. Plucked off the ground and whisked away on the wind.

Since they'd mated, he was tuned in to her. He knew the earthy scent of her skin, the aroma of her hair. Wind that passed over her tasted different on his lips, felt different against his face. Lifting his chin, he breathed, drawing air deeply into his chest, probing.
There was a bite in the air. It nipped at his newly shaved cheeks. Lowering his chin, he settled his gaze before him, eyes straight ahead as he walked.

He could pick up nothing.

“So,” Kit murmured, keeping pace beside him. “Is this lycan pretty?”

Sebastian glared at his sister-in-law. In the last day, he had learned how strong-willed she could be. And nosy. There was no leaving her behind at the hotel. In fact, they
all
insisted on joining him in his search.

This close to the pack's nest, he knew he risked discovery. Darius, it seemed, knew this, too. Several times, the lycan would pause and lift his face to the air. Then his gaze would find Sebastian's, lock in silent message.
They risked much
. And yet Darius never objected as they circled dangerously close to the pack's nest again and again. He supposed a thousand-year-old lycan was accustomed to risking death.

“What are we doing hunting this one lycan?” Gideon demanded of Rafe. “We found your brother—not that it appeared we needed to. He's safe now—”

“Then go home, March,” Sebastian snapped, stopping at a sudden familiar scent. Just the barest trickle, but he marked it.
Ruby
.

He moved past vendors' stalls, slapping at a colorful array of scarves that blew in his path.

“Sebastian! Wait up,” Rafe called but he was gone, on the scent.

Her smell grew stronger and his gut cramped as he realized he was headed directly for the nest. Had she been recaptured then? His pulse hammered in his ears as he flew through the narrow alley, stopping before bursting into the courtyard that faced the warehouse of horrors he and Ruby had survived together.

“What are we doing here?” Rafe stopped beside him.

Sebastian held up a hand, listening,
feeling
. He sensed her close, but she wasn't inside the warehouse. No, she was…

His gaze drifted up to the tenement at his right. Several shadowed and curtained windows stared down at him. Watching eyes.

He turned and ran for the front door. The others pounded behind him. He blew up three flights of stairs before stopping. A baby cried from a room somewhere at the end of the floor. He eased his foot off the top step and started down the dingy hall, each step he took slow, measured and assessing, before halting at the door numbered 417.

He resisted the instinct to burst inside the room. His skin tightened, pulled with familiar, snapping tension. Instead, he closed his hand around the latch, wondering why she would be this close to the nest.
Wouldn't she have wanted to get as far as possible from the pack? What he knew of her led him to think so, but then what did he really know of the woman he had ravished within the first twenty-four hours of meeting? Other than that she had every reason to hate him. Fear him. He winced at the reminder, then shoved the memories away. Especially the ones that made his blood burn—the silken heat of her surrounding him, taking him deep inside her body. Steeling himself, he pushed open the door.

His eyes locked on a male, not a lycan… but not human either. The light gleaming at the centers of his eyes marked him a dovenatu. Damn, another one. That brought their total count in this city to who knew what. Clearly, EFLA's and NODEAL's attempts to control the breeding of dovenatus had failed, and their extermination of all Marshan descendants was all the more pointless. Sebastian, Rafe and Kit weren't the only hybrids. This city was overrun with them.

His brother and the others crowded close behind him, their breaths falling hard and heavy. The bastard was so big, easily pushing six and a half feet. He overpowered the room with his proportions. Sebastian took a moment to locate Ruby.

Sebastian felt her—the very pulse of her life's blood reached out to him across the squalid little
room—before he located her. She stepped around the dovenatu. Her fingers circled his muscled forearm, and the action sent the blood pumping hard and fierce through him.

“Sebastian!” Her gaze scanned his face, eyes widening as she took her first good look. She hadn't seen him like this before. Clean. Shaved. Civilized. In truth, this was the first time she had ever been granted the full view of his face. Stupidly, foolishly, he felt a surge of self-consciousness, hoping she liked what she saw. That the sight of him—the man who had ravaged her on the floor of a cold, dirty room and claimed her virginity—did not disappoint her.

Tension thickened the air.

“Yeah,” he bit out, his voice tight with anger. “I'm alive.” She looked good. Skin a healthy glow. Dark hair falling past her shoulder in glossy waves. “In case you were concerned.” His gaze flicked back to her hand on the stranger, and he inwardly cursed himself for sounding like a petulant child, jealous and sniping.

Frowning, Ruby tried to step forward then, but the dark-haired hybrid wouldn't let her. He stopped her, one hand clamping down on her arm.

Red filled Sebastian's vision, and he sprang into action, unmoved by the cries from those behind him. He crashed into the other hybrid, sending them to the ground in a fierce collision. Bone met bone as
he struck the bastard. The floor shuddered beneath their thrashing weight and from the ferocity of their blows. His head snapped back from a punch that would have knocked a normal man's head from his shoulders.

He heard Ruby scream, and his heart squeezed a little. Did she scream for him? Because she gave a damn? Or because she wanted him to leave off killing her new
friend
?

His brother and Kit fell on him, tugged him back, using every bit of their considerable strength. Darius squared off before the hybrid, stopping him from charging.

Ruby positioned herself in front of Sebastian, hands on her hips, pewter eyes aglow. “What are you doing?” Looking back over her shoulder at the imposing wall Darius made in front of her friend, she abandoned him in a flash.

“Leave him alone!” she cried.

Air sawed from his lungs, frothing at his lips. He steeled himself, trying to regain his composure, to not sink into the dark and let the beast overrun him because Ruby appeared to care for another over him.

“I thought I was saving your ass,” he snarled to her earlier demand, as if she still gave a damn and waited for his answer. He eyed her proximity to the dovenatu, the way she insinuated herself between Darius
and him. Almost as though she thought she needed to protect the hybrid from
them
. “Guess I was wrong. It appears you don't need saving.”

“You
are
wrong,” she agreed with force. “I don't.”

Only what he heard was:
I don't need you
.

It stung. More than it should. He quickly squashed the feeling. The last thing he wanted was for her to use her gift and sense his feelings, to think he was hurt or rejected. He didn't want her in his head. Especially not right now when jealousy ripped through him at her closeness to some stranger.

“My mistake, then.” He shrugged out of his brother's and Kit's hold. “Let's go.” Vowing inwardly to leave her and forget her, he didn't stop when he heard her call his name. She could have her damned hybrid. She could shift at the next moonrise and kill, feed, lose her soul…

He did stop, however, when a female lycan arrived breathlessly in the door, her dark hair wild and windtossed around her shoulders, as if she had run a great distance at the speed only one of their kind could achieve.

“Luc,” she rasped, her gaze landing on the hybrid before skimming each of them, assessing them for threat. Her throat worked, her pewter gaze wild. “Are you okay?”

“Everyone, just stop! Don't move!” Ruby sliced
a hand through the air. “We're all on the same side here.” She flicked Darius—dark, imposing Darius—a nervous glance. “I think.”

“He's all right,” Sebastian ground out, to which Ruby release a shaky little breath of relief.

“Isn't all this… interesting.” Darius looked between Ruby and the new female with burning intensity, his interest in the pair palpable. They
were
him, after all. Full-blooded lycans driven by hunger—moon hunger, blood hunger—and ruled by the impulses of their libido. Either one would be a perfect mate for him… at least that must be what his instinct was screaming.

Luc strode past Darius and took hold of the other female's hand in a possessive display. The brunette pressed close to his side. Luc sent Ruby a pointed look. “Ruby, who are these… people?”

She motioned to him. “Sebastian is the dovenatu I told you about.”

Sebastian bristled at their familiarity, but stood his ground.

Luc looked hard at him. “And these are your friends, I gather?”

“That's right.” He guessed it was the easiest explanation, although he didn't know whether he would call Gideon and Darius friends. Gideon—he supposed he was family now. But Darius? He didn't trust
the guy. Doubtful he ever could trust a lycan—

He stopped hard at the thought, thinking of Ruby. His gaze snapped back to her. Dressed in fresh clothes. Body washed and clean hair shining darkly. She had been covered in blood and filth most of their time together. He drank this sight of her hungrily. Even with her silver death gaze, she was better, sweeter on the eyes than he remembered.

“If we're all on the same side, maybe you could help us, then,” the female lycan suggested.

“Lily,” Luc murmured, his gaze sliding over each of them warily. “We know nothing of them.”

“Well, they aren't over there, are they? With
them
? That has to mean something.” She motioned in the general direction of the warehouse, then turned her gaze on Sebastian. “Why are you here?” He thought he read hope in her expression. A motherly type of encouragment. His imagination, of course.

“I came for Ruby.”

“Oh. And why is that?” Luc pushed out his chest and crossed his arms.

Lily elbowed him in the side and addressed Sebastian. “Of course you came for her. Ruby told us all about your imprisonment together.” The lycaness smiled widely, a dose of civility that ran opposite to the moment. “You saved her life.”

Sebastian's gaze locked on Ruby. Color flooded
her cheeks, and he knew she was thinking about their imprisonment together. Specifically the portion of it spent having hot, wild sex with him. Had she told them about that?

“Look,” Luc announced. “We're here for one reason only, and that's to track down and destroy the family of dovenatus in that building.” He nodded to Ruby. “We found Ruby and she helped us pinpoint Ivo's location.”

“Dovenatus?” Kit broke in. “How many are we talking about?” Like Sebastian, she clearly grappled with the information that more of their kind existed.

“I suspect there are more of us than we realize,” Luc answered grimly. “Ivo's a madman, determined to promote our species by enslaving lycans, then using them to… come out.”

“Come out?” Sebastian asked.

“Yeah,” Lily announced, with obvious disgust. “With an army of lycans at his disposal, he intends to proclaim himself to the world and subjugate man.”

“And if we don't want to be enslaved?” Rafe asked, lines tightening around his mouth.

“Then he kills you. Or sics his lycan soldiers on you.” Luc shrugged. “He's got an army of them pledged in service to him.”

“How can that be?” Kit questioned, “Don't lycans outnumber him?”

“Lycans are fiercely pack-loyal. They serve one alpha and war against all other packs. Their inability to unite is their greatest weakness. Ivo's army grows with every pack taken, he becomes their alpha…” Luc stopped, shaking his head. “I can't imagine how many packs he's taken since he started on this mad scheme. It might be too late. He should have been stopped long ago.”

“You sound like you know this Ivo well.”

“I do.” Luc glanced at his wife. “He's my cousin. We grew up together. Perhaps we're even half brothers.” He shrugged. “I'll never know. Our mothers were sisters, Marshan descendants both raped by lycans, together. On the same day.”

“And you're here to destroy him. Your own relative.” Kit snorted, crossing her arms and spreading her booted legs. “You sure about that? How do we know you won't chicken out? That when you come face to face you won't give him a great big hug?”

Rafe had told Sebastian she was a lycan hunter—excepting Darius—but he had never really appreciated that until now. Until he saw this hardness in her. This edge.

“It's the only way to stop him. To make this world safer.” He shot Lily a tender glance. “For my family.”

Sebastian tore his gaze from Ruby, stopping any tender feelings from rising up in him at the display of
affection between a lycan and a dovenatu. “And how were you thinking about doing this?”

Luc and Lily exchanged looks. She took his hand in hers. “He never stays in one nest long after he conquers it. He's almost impossible to track that way, and it's nearly impossible to get close to him—”

“What is your plan?” Sebastian bit out, his patience at an end.