Vaewolf: Damn the Darkness: The Prophecy's Promise (Hearts of Darkness Book 3) (27 page)

“Come back to bed,” she whispered. He was almost beyond control. She may have to force him to exchange blood tonight so he’d be strong enough to deal with this unexpected shock. Caitlin opened a deep slash across her breast. “It’s your turn to feed.”

Chapter Thirty Four

Dylan’s Return

Dylan ended it, ensuring she’d live. The weakness in Caitlin had faded her essence to dangerous levels. Losing her that way wasn’t what they needed. The prophecy needed all of her—the dark and the light.

He watched Caitlin and Jackson, reassuring himself of her safety—testing himself and his resolve. Once Jackson joined her inside the room and the scent of arousal in the air hit him hard, Dylan’s control didn’t last long.

He sifted down to the bayou and hid, hid like a coward from his old home and his friends. But he couldn’t hide from his thoughts, couldn’t take the visions out of his head. After all this time, he’d finally found a life mate. Even considering the sins of his past, giving her up seemed a cruel fate.

Why couldn’t they share her?

No. Why couldn’t he?

This was his choice—his problem. She wanted them both. Jackson might be an alpha wolf and an alpha vampire, but Dylan had been his superior too long for Jackson to ignore Dylan’s authority. Jackson would share. This was about Dylan’s inability to accept their circumstance.

Why? Because he couldn’t share a life mate or because he couldn’t stand by while another man threatened his
claim
on the woman he loved? If the latter was the reason, the agony of watching Jackson and Caitlin together hardly seemed worse than this emptiness he felt without her.

The real issue begged the question. Jackson couldn’t impregnate Caitlin without binding her to him. Not only was the future of all vampires at stake, so was their love. He didn’t dare risk returning and confronting them without a solution, because the one fact everyone agreed on was that woman he loved and who loved him in return was definitely the intended match for Jackson’s wolf.

According to the last translations he discovered in the texts he unearthed, the facts matched the ones in the crypt. Psychics were another form of Lore beings, descendants of the fae as he knew, even though most other supernatural beings didn’t readily accept them. Most humans kept their psychic gifts secret, guarded from everyone, and for the most part, underdeveloped. According to the ancient scrolls, human psychics were capable of procreating with most Lore species, including vampires. Their recessive genes were an advantage as potential mates and other recessive Lore traits were often passed on to their offspring.

If Niccolai had foreseen these consequences, Dylan wondered if he still would have saved him? Or was it the reason he had? Dylan still hadn’t uncovered those answers. Why the ancient elder needed a “made” vampire with Dylan’s power and strength was still a mystery to him.

And why Dylan?

Niccolai never satisfactorily explained the reason he’d chosen him. For three hundred years, Niccolai’s response had remained the same. He could almost hear the ancient’s words. “You were a man of compassion, morals, and ethics. The night before your fatal battle, I saw a strength in you I seldom found when I looked into the souls of others.”

Dylan didn’t see himself that way.

Based on what Dylan had read, apparently Niccolai knew when he bound Jackson’s mother to him that Abigail was descended from Hecate, Goddess of the Wilderness. Hecate was also known for witchcraft, magic, and ironically…childbirth. Hecate’s father, Persus descended had from the first line of Werewolves. From everything Dylan heard, Abigail was a very powerful alpha female and daughter of the pack leader. Jackson inherited his father’s vampire nature, but because his mother was Were, he inherited his ancient grandfather’s wolf traits too. If the second pregnancy hadn’t killed Abigail fifteen years later, Jackson would have had a sister, maybe more siblings. But when his mother died, and before his father went mad and went to ground, Niccolai called on Dylan, holding him to his three-hundred year-old promise.

Dylan did as he’d been asked. And he would complete the task. Finish overseeing Jackson’s upbringing. Watch him claim his rightful position as leader of the Lore. See him mated. Fulfill the prophecy.

If Caitlin’s and Jackson’s union was intended to include Dylan to resurrect the vampire species, why by inference or position wasn’t was a third party mentioned anywhere in the scrolls. Dylan, merely a made vampire of mixed lineage, didn’t figure into the overall picture of resurrecting the biological species. Interference would mean death, and the thought of her grieving over his death disturbed him, but she wouldn’t grieve for long. Once she and Jackson bonded, she’d no longer suffer the pain of losing him.

Dylan found convinced him the answers were in the DNA as Max and Victor assumed. The papyrus scroll he had translated appeared to be a codex of sorts for the genetic fertility of Lore beings. He’d taken a photo and sent it to Max and Victor from his cell phone, and they were working on it. But until they deciphered the pattern of the codex, he had to stay away from Caitlin. He didn’t have the strength to resist her when her need called to him.

Tonight he sniffed the swamp air and thanked all the gods of old that the Bayou Bar wasn’t busy. He knew one way to obliterate his pain even if it was only a temporary fix. Not once in the three hundred years, since Niccolai plucked him from the hands of death and turned him, had Dylan thought of himself as weak. Not until tonight.

It wasn’t every night a man watched the woman he loved being made love to by someone else—especially if the man was like a brother to him—not without wanting to kill the other man.

Why he didn’t want to hurt Jackson was what really baffled him. Strange.

Chapter Thirty Five

Caitlin’s Room

She and Jackson had exchanged blood again, after he’d fed from her. Then when they both felt better, he left to patrol the estate with Garr, promising to return before morning.

Dawn was still hours away, and the computer’s power lamp bathed the room in a soft blue glow. Insignificant though the earlier moment seemed, the incident, the first mental contact Caitlin even suspected might be Dylan, had shot hope to her heart. But her disappointment, followed.

Where did he go? Her question was clear and yet, as usual, there was no answer, no soothing mental touch to follow. The instant before Caitlin shut down her laptop, a familiar mental thread stirred within her mind. The man she loved finally returned, and dumped her. Something made her think of Dylan again, and the inevitable question. Would he return for her?

A slight disturbance behind her distracted her.

Almost silently, the door behind her opened, and the curtains rustled in the open window across the room. Turning away from her desk, her keen vampire sight adjusted quickly to the dark.

The scent of power, blood, and lust filled the room—filled Caitlin’s senses—sending tantalizing heat up her spine and a deep seated hunger to her core. But this was not Dylan.

Every nerve in her body sizzled to a heightened awareness.
Jackson.
He’d fed his wolf, and burned off some latent anger hunting.

When her gaze drifted to the presence in her doorway and flowed down his massive body, fingers of expectation crawled across her skin, and she said, “Don’t stand out there. Come in.”

Stubbornly he crossed the threshold like he needed an invitation.

Caitlin permitted all her senses to absorb the impact of the man’s presence, the visual satisfaction of his image, the pleasure of a brief breathless instant when eye contact sent sexual anticipation zinging in the air between them. Her libido shifted into overdrive.

Caitlin shook off her regret. What she wanted now was this moment. The hybrid was hot as well as intense. Everything about him had her nerves on edge.

Until Jackson buried himself inside her, satisfying her through the night, she’d savor this anticipation like a rare wine.

Tired of hurting, Caitlin ached for an orgasm to ease the constant painful sexual need she experienced for her life mates. But thankfully something about Jackson also filled part of the hole in her heart, and that was enough for her to face another day.

He may not believe her when she explained sex with him was more than a pleasant, temporary fix. Until they resolved the issue of the ritual bond, she insisted on proving it.

~~~~

Tension vibrated around him, reaching out and engulfing her. “Your mind touched his? And you didn’t say anything?”

His harsh words of accusation sounded hurt. He was capable of withstanding a great deal of pain, and like Dylan, would do everything to protect her. But he was the one she chose to protect from himself and from the truth, at least until they could find a solution to the problem plaguing the three of them.

His flat tone revealed a palpable fear and pain as agonizing to Caitlin as the emptiness Dylan left behind.

“I told he ended it. Then I thought I felt something when I went through a few papers he left behind, searching for evidence of where he might be. It was nothing.”

“What made you think to go through the papers?” Jackson asked, locked in place, suspicion reeking from him. “Did you sense him again?”

Caitlin raised a brow and shook her head. “I don’t know anymore. Maybe it was wishful thinking.”

Turning her back on the man vibrating with tension, she collected her words, and chose them carefully. “He’s never far from my thoughts. All it takes is a scent on the breeze to provoke a fleeting memory. This was nothing tangible.”

“You’re sure? Nothing more?” he asked.

“Will you please come in and sit down?” He cocked his head sideways, staring her down with an expression of disbelief on his face. “Just tell me. Is he back?”

“I don’t know. Why do you ask?”

“You know something.” Jackson’s facial features tensed, but that was his only give. He did know something.

“I
know
what you’re doing.” She suspected where this line of questioning was headed if she didn’t stop him. After the years she spent with the FBI, Jackson was nuts to try turning the interrogation on her. “Don’t forget, I’m the pro—the one with the law enforcement background.”

“You’re not distracting me.”

She pointed a finger at him. “If…and I mean
if
I was lying, I wouldn’t slip up.”

At least anger was an adequate line of defense against her attraction to him. But the bitchier she got, the more aroused it made him, and in response, the hotter she got. Bitchiness usually wasn’t her best asset, but Jackson sometimes brought out the worst in her. Unfortunately, the trait was one Lycans regarded highly. And he was going to get it in spades until a low seductive rumble started deep in his chest.

“Wh-what?” she asked, making time to think through her response. She snapped to attention, her own anger elevating.

“You’re the one with the closest connection to him. You’d know.”

“Okay.” Caitlin sighed. “I’ll tell you.”

What approach would put him at ease? Honesty.

“For a moment, right before I sensed you, earlier tonight, I thought I felt his presence. Nothing concrete. It’s been so long, I’m not sure...” Caitlin shivered.

“Maybe you did sense him. I ran into Kyle, and he thought he caught Dylan’s scent down by the bayou.”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Caitlin shot up out of her chair.

“I wasn’t sure if he’d want to contact you...after ending it and hurting like he must be.”

He wouldn’t stay away—Caitlin scoffed at the idea Dylan would avoid her. Then she remembered. “Oh God, he was here while we... I am going to strangle him when we find him!”

“If he’s around, he’ll show. He can’t hold out forever against the
calling
unless he does go to ground.”

“How can we find him, if we can’t get him to show himself? Do you think he discovered an answer?”

Jackson scowled and kept his distance. “The elders claim secret cultures like ours exist all over the world, and their ancient artifacts might reveal the solution to the vampire species’ infertility problems.”

Caitlin shuffled through the papers on her desk. “Our own research team believes they’re close to deciphering the last of the codex from the scrolls.” She held up a sheaf and shook it. “What if Dylan found more evidence?”

“Short of digging up my old man and dragging him out of his sarcophagus for answers? Yeah, I can see Dylan being that frustrated, and if anyone can give us answers, it would be Niccolai.”

“Not Niccolai but someone who knows almost as much?” After a moment, Caitlin turned to look at Jackson. “Why wouldn’t Dylan tell us if he found something?”

“There’s one other possibility.” Jackson shook his head. The frown on his face deepened. “Dylan doesn’t like what he found. It’s not the solution we were hoping for.”

“Dammit. We need answers.” Caitlin untied the hairband and shook her hair free. “Damn the man. Where is he?”