Blood Wolf Dawning (12 page)

He ran his tongue over his lower lip, loving how he could taste her there. “And I can’t hear you say you want me without wanting to do things to you that should have me drawn and quartered.”

Her lips twisted with a rueful grin, some of the fiery heat in her gaze dimming. “I’m sure it’s nothing you haven’t heard a
thousand times before.”

“It doesn’t matter, Sayre.” They were gruff, husky words that were thick with his need for her. “None of it matters, because you’re different.”

“Good,” she murmured, looking relieved, if not entirely convinced. “I should be different for you, considering what’s between us.”

“No,” he argued with a snarl, unable to soften the frustration scalding him from the
inside out. “It’s not good. I’m not talking about the life-mate connection. I wanted you
too much
before I even realized it was between us.”

Surprise filtered through her smoldering look of need. “You did?”

“You’re damned right I did,” he growled, clawing on to his crumbling self-control with everything that he had. “As wrong as it was, I wanted you even when you were practically jailbait.
I wanted to get you naked and under me, Sayre. I wanted to keep you trapped there, at my mercy, taking every inch of me until I was buried so far inside you there wasn’t any chance I was ever coming back out.”

“Cian,”
she moaned, just as her power started to break free in a shower of tiny, golden sparks that glittered around them like fireflies. Pulling away from her, he forced himself to
sit up, needing to give himself a moment to think, to get his head on straight, since he was about two seconds away from completely losing it. But she followed after him, bringing that breathtaking body of hers up right beside him. He opened his mouth, ready to tell her that he wasn’t leaving, that they just needed to be careful and take things slow—not because he wanted to, but because it was the
only way he could keep his shit together—when she reached down, grabbed the hem of her tank top and ripped it over her crazy little head.

Holy mother of God
, someone whispered inside his head, but he wasn’t sure if the choked words belonged to him or to his wolf. His head jerked back so quickly it was like she’d smacked him, his lips parting as his eyes narrowed to piercing, focused slits.
Her nipples were very small, and very pink, the way they topped her firm breasts making his mouth water and his blood burn.

Somehow, she was even more perfect than he’d imagined, and now he was seriously in trouble, his hunger like a living thing inside his body, foaming at the mouth, champing at the bit to get closer to her. “What the fuck, Sayre?”

“I want this,” she said in a voice
that was soft but steady, her long hair streaming over her freckled shoulders, framing her mouthwatering breasts so perfectly she looked like a centerfold. Only he’d never seen a centerfold who even came close to looking as devastatingly gorgeous as Sayre Murphy. She was...damn it, there weren’t even words, and he couldn’t have torn his gaze away from her to save his bloody life.

Blushing
so hard she looked sunburned, that adorable mix of shy and bold the sexiest damn thing he’d ever encountered, she added, “They’re not as big as you usually went for, but—”

“Shut up,” he growled, quickly finding his voice so he could cut her off. He’d walk over jagged shards of glass before he sat there and listened to her say shit like that. “Your breasts are beautiful, Sayre.
You’re
beautiful.
Every addictive little inch of you is perfect.”

And then he was done talking, because he couldn’t wait another goddamn minute to get his mouth on her. Gripping her upper arms, he pushed her back into the god-awful green pillows that had tiny pink shamrocks all over them, and came down over her. Everything else faded away, and he lost himself in the girl he wished like hell he could be the
right man for. Holding her blistering gaze, he touched just the very tip of his tongue to one of those swollen nipples, the taste and texture so damn good he groaned. She was exquisite, and he shuddered with a hard jolt of lust as he lapped at her and rubbed the flat of his tongue over the pebbled, succulent pink flesh. She was exceptionally sensitive, her skin flushing with color, those tiny sparks
of light still pinging around them. It was like being caught in the center of a star, surrounded by the surreal bursts of color and heat, while waves of sensation crashed into him again and again.

Keeping his heavy-lidded gaze locked tight with hers, he loved watching the emotions flash through those hazy blue-gray eyes. Excitement. Hunger.
Want
. Unable to stop himself, he scraped his teeth
over the tender flesh of her nipple, a choked curse rumbling through his mind when she arched into the sharp caress. She might be the softest thing he’d ever gotten his hands on, but she liked a bit of bite with her pleasure, and his head went dizzy with the possibilities. It was like she’d been friggin’ made for him.

She was. Jackass
.

“God, Cian.” She clutched handfuls of his hair as
she held him to her, a husky cry slipping from her lips as he took the tip of her breast in his hot mouth and started to hungrily suck on her. “No wonder all the women made fools of themselves over you.”

He flinched as if she’d suddenly poked him with something sharp, letting her nipple pop free of his mouth as he pulled his head back. “Don’t,” he ordered, forcing the word through his gritted
teeth.

“Don’t what?” she asked, as he put his face directly over hers, a scowl wedged deep between his brows.

“Don’t talk about other women. They don’t have any place in bed with us.”

She stared up at him, rosy and damp with desire, those tiny sparks of light still glittering around her. But she was being careful to keep her expression neutral, even as she pulled that succulent
lower lip through her teeth. “If you don’t want me obsessing about your past and not being enough for you, then tell me what you want me to do. Tell me what you like, and I’ll do it.”

God...damn...it.
Though he wanted her so badly it hurt, he knew he needed to stop. He was too close to losing control, and too irritated by the way she was coming at this thing between them to keep it together.
He knew why she kept bringing up other women, using the reminder to help her keep things from getting too emotional, and it was bugging the hell out of him.

That was...bad, because he was too aware of how easily that frustration could get the upper hand on him, his need for possession overshadowing his common sense as what he wanted battled against what he could take without being a total
asshole.

Closing his eyes, he rolled away from her and threw his legs over the far side of the bed as he sat up. “It’s been a long day, Sayre. You should go on and get some sleep.”

“Wait, what?” He could easily hear the disbelief in those breathless words. “Where are you going?”

“I need another smoke.” He sounded like he’d swallowed a mouthful of gravel, and got the hell out of
there before she could say anything more. Once he was out on the back porch, he propped his shoulders against the cabin’s rough cedar planks and tilted his head back, pulling in deep breaths of the crisp mountain air, trying to make sense of what was happening to him.

Every time he touched her, he could feel his need for the little witch ramming against the defenses he’d built inside himself,
stone by stone. Shields that made it possible for him to get through each day without her...and without doing something stupid.

There were things behind those walls in his head that he did his best to avoid. Pain lay there. As well as despair and disappointment. Failure and regret and guilt. So much that it made his insides feel like a festering wasteland. They’d driven him away from her
before, and he honestly didn’t know what would happen this time around, now that Aedan had already learned the truth about her. Yeah, he knew what he
wanted
. But how badly did he want it? What was he willing to do for it? How much was he willing to reveal? To lay out on the line?

Before, he hadn’t been willing to dig any deeper for the answers, because he’d known he wasn’t right for her.
And he still wasn’t. But that didn’t mean he had any of this shit figured out.

The only thing Cian knew with absolute, unchanging certainty was that he would never be what she needed.

Or even close to what she deserved.

Chapter 8

I
t was time to come clean.

Cian wasn’t looking forward to it, but he knew he couldn’t put it off any longer. After a shitty night’s sleep on the green velvet love seat that sat beneath the window in his bedroom—since he hadn’t trusted himself to sleep beside Sayre in the bed—he’d awakened at dawn. Standing on his back porch with a steaming cup of coffee in his hand,
he’d watched the sun rise above the line of trees, struggling to find the right words for the explanations he would soon be making. He’d told Brody the night before that he wanted to talk to everyone today, and the Runner had told him to be at his cabin at nine.

Since he didn’t want Sayre around when he was admitting all his ugly secrets, they’d decided that Max and Elliot could keep her
busy, and then the two youngest Runners could be brought up to speed later. It wasn’t an ideal solution, seeing as how she’d be spending time with the young men without him there, but he would deal with it because he had to. Anything was better than her sitting in Brody’s living room and listening to his confessions.

While the sun continued its steady rise into an azure blue sky, he was careful
to be quiet so that he didn’t wake Sayre, who was damn near cocooned in the ugly shamrock sheets, only her glorious hair and the cute little tip of her nose visible. He grabbed a shower, then dressed in jeans, his black boots and one of his favorite old gray T-shirts that he’d filched off Brody years ago. It was sappy and sentimental, but it made him feel better to wear it, knowing damn well
that the meeting could go one of two ways, and he wasn’t entirely certain of the outcome.

As he put his empty cup in the sink, he glanced out the kitchen window and spotted Jeremy working on a children’s swing set at the edge of the glade. In that moment, it really hit him, how drastically his friends’ lives had changed since he’d left, and he lifted his hand to rub at the center of his chest,
where there was a sharp pang. He could see it so clearly it was like he was replaying a memory, all those big, badass warriors out there playing with their kids, making them laugh and squeal as they tossed them up into the air and blew raspberries on their little bellies, while the women looked on with heartwarming smiles.

You could have had that with Sayre
, his wolf pointed out quietly,
its tone more solemn than he’d ever heard it.
We could have had it, if you hadn’t left.

That was true, but at what price? Five years ago, Cian could have convinced himself that the danger wasn’t as real as he’d feared—that Aedan would let go of their feud and never mark her as a target—just so he could have her. But it wouldn’t have been fair to her. Would have just been one more sin to add
to his many, and she hadn’t deserved that.

So you left. And look where we are. Right here, dealing with the same things you were trying to avoid.

He grimaced, hating that the beast was right. And, yeah, if he’d known this would happen—that his past would find her anyway—he probably would have never found the strength to leave in the first place. He would have claimed her, despite knowing
he wasn’t good enough for her...that he could never love her the way she deserved, and they would probably have at least three kids by now.

Did you honestly just say that?
his wolf roared, seething with sharp-edged, visceral fury. The beast had been against leaving her from the moment the idea had first come to him, never wavering in its conviction. In its primal world, a male didn’t walk
away from what belonged to him. He conquered and claimed and worshipped, devoting his entire life to ensuring the happiness and protection of his female, while doing everything in his power to plant his seed in her womb and create life.

“I didn’t say I wanted kids,” he muttered quietly to the animal. “I was simply stating a fact. If I’d stayed, I have no doubt the two of us would have kept
her knocked up. We’d have done everything we could to make that happen.”

And that was the truth. All of it. But it would have been wrong.

You call her living out in that cabin on her own, with no family and friends, a better outcome?

He cursed under his breath, unwilling to concede that the animal had a point. But then, his wolf had never bought in to his feelings about his bloodline...or
the guilt he carried over his past. In its world, when mistakes were made, you moved on and didn’t let them hold you back. It was a simple, primitive view, and one he was jealous as hell of. Because he would have given anything to be that way, too. To say to hell with his concerns over what Sayre deserved, and simply take her because it was his goddamn right to do so.

Unfortunately, his humanity
was too much a part of him, his guilt woven into the very fabric of his character.

And now he had to go and unload his darkest, ugliest secrets to the people he cared about most in this entire world, aside from Sayre, and it sucked.

He took a moment to compose himself, shoved his hair back from his face, then turned and headed over to Brody’s. They were all there before him, including
the mercs, the curiosity in the air thick enough to cut with a knife. While coffee was being handed out in the kitchen, he kept himself occupied studying the framed photographs that covered the mantel. Most of them were of holidays they’d had there in the Alley, when everyone had been together. A few at Christmas, and then Easter, and what looked like the Fourth of July.

There were more kids
in the photos than he’d expected, though he shouldn’t have been surprised, given how his friends hadn’t been able to keep their hands off their mates before he’d left. But what he really couldn’t get over was how happy the Runners looked in the photographs, as if everything they could have ever wanted or needed was right there with them.

If it were possible for people to be blessed or rewarded
for their hard work and sacrifice, then Cian knew that’s what he was looking at. These families were a blessing, plain and simple, and he finally had to turn away before he started getting all maudlin about it. As everyone came back into the room and took their seats, he pulled in a shaky breath, ready to confess every shameful, appalling part of his story.

“So, yeah. There’s something important
that I never told you—any of you,” he forced past his tight throat as he leaned back against the mantel, his hands shoved deep in the front pockets of his jeans so that no one could see them shaking. Forcing himself to look around the room, instead of staring at the floor like a coward, he went on. “It’s something I hoped like hell you would never learn. That I’m not proud of. Not for the
reasons you’re going to assume, but because...because of the choices I made.”

“Cian, just tell us,” Brody urged, his elbows braced on his parted knees as he sat beside Mic on one of the leather sofas. “If you’d just trust us, we’d be here for you. You know that.”

“I’m... I have... Shit, this isn’t easy.”

Brody gave him a supportive nod. “Just go for it, man.”

“Right. Okay.”
He sucked in a deep breath, then quickly blurted, “My, uh, father is a vampire.”

Silence immediately followed those six little words. Dead, heart-thudding silence. The kind where you couldn’t even hear anyone breathing. And then a pale-faced Jeremy kind of coughed to clear his throat, and managed to croak, “What?”

Before Cian could respond, everyone started talking at once as they grappled
to understand his shocking revelation.

He understood their confusion. In the Lycan world, vampires were a reclusive, seldom-encountered species. They were coldly calculating, elitist and basically assholes. Immoral, amoral and arrogant as hell.

Huh. When he put it like that, Cian thought it was kind of hard to believe they’d never figured it out for themselves.

When Brody finally
got tired of the noise, he yelled for everyone to calm down, then turned his attention back to Cian. “We can’t scent it on you,” the Runner said in a low voice that surprisingly held more curiosity than it did anger. Aside from Sayre, it was Brody’s reaction he’d been the most worried about, and he couldn’t help but be relieved by how things had gone so far.

Exhaling a slow breath of air,
Cian said, “You can’t detect it because my father is also part human, which means my blood is too diluted for scent recognition.”

“So then you’re a combination of three different species,” Sam murmured. “Human, Lycan and vampire?”

Cian nodded, then reached over for the mug of coffee Mic had set on the mantel for him earlier, wishing it had a hefty dose of Irish whiskey in it. He took
a large swallow, then set down the mug and tried to explain to them how it worked. How his vampire instincts weren’t a voice in his head, like the wolf part of his nature, but more of a...a
hunger
. A greedy, chilling, twisted craving for blood and gratification, like a powerful internal drive that was continually focused on consuming more...and more. And one he was only able to control thanks
to the dominance of his beast.

When he was done, he had to wipe the sheen of sweat off his face with his sleeve, his insides knotting as he waited to see how they would react. After a few moments, it was Jeremy who spoke first again. “So if vamps can halt the aging process by feeding on blood as their main food source, then...Jesus, man. How old
are
you?”

A rusty laugh rumbled up from
his chest. “Of all the things you need to ask me,
that’s
your first question?”

“I’ve just always assumed you were around my age,” Jeremy went on, looking him up and down with a critical eye.

“Close,” Cian murmured.

“How close?” Jeremy persisted, obviously unwilling to let this one go.

A heavy sigh slipped past his lips. “I’m roughly ten years older than you are, because I spent
a decade at the age of sixteen. Then I came here to visit my mother’s family—I met you and the others—and I decided to change the way I’d been living. I stopped feeding from the vein, and allowed myself to begin aging again. All because I wanted to be one of you. To make my home here.”

Everyone took a moment to digest what he’d just told them, and then Lev spoke up for the first time, scratching
his jaw as he said, “You know, that actually makes a lot of sense.”

Cian raised his brows, wondering where the guy was going with that statement. “It does?”

Lev smirked. “Hell, yeah. You spent damn near close to twenty years being a know-it-all, smart-ass teenager. No wonder you turned out to be such an asshole.”

It was Brody who tilted his head back and laughed the hardest, while
the others either snorted or smiled. And even though Cian started off scowling, he soon found himself shaking his head and joining in. “Nice one, jackass.”

Mic was the one who commented next, her blue eyes bright with emotion as she stared up at him from her place beside Brody. “I have so many questions, I don’t even know where to start. I mean, I could sometimes sense that you carried a
tremendous burden inside you. But I honestly never realized that it was this, Cian. I wish you had told us. You have to know that we would have never judged you for it.”

Sliding her a grim smile, he said, “I know that, Mic.”

But he also knew that he hadn’t even gotten to the bad part yet.

Stalling for a bit more time before he dropped that final bit of “craptastic” news on them,
as Sayre would say, he looked at Jillian. She’d been sitting beside Jeremy the entire time, her blank expression completely at odds with the flurry of emotions he could see rushing through her wide-eyed gaze. “Didn’t you ever pick up on it, Jilly?” he asked her gently, searching for the truth in those velvety brown eyes. “Every time you had to heal one of my injuries, I thought for sure that you
would see—”

She cut him off, saying, “Never. I...I tried not to pry. I
always
try not to pry.”

“You honestly never suspected?” he asked, surprised that she’d never seen the truth when helping him, since a witch’s power enabled her to often see into the mind of the person she was healing.

“I didn’t,” she told him, shaking her head. “I thought...I mean, I
sensed
that there was something
different about you. I guess I just figured that you were part of some powerful, unique bloodline, or...I don’t know. That you’d inherited
something
on your father’s side. But I sure as hell never suspected vampire.”

“What about you?” he asked, looking at Brody.

“I don’t know what I thought, man. Maybe that you’d... Hell, I don’t know. I figured you’d been scratched by something, or
fed on something you shouldn’t have, and it’d affected you in some way. But I never suspected it was something that was as much a part of you as your wolf.”

“Huh.” He looked around the room. “With all those comments you all used to make about the damnation of my immortal soul, I sometimes wondered if you didn’t already know.”

“Naw,” Jeremy drawled with a wry, lopsided grin. “That was
just because you’re an ass.”

Everyone laughed, releasing some of the lingering tension in the air. As if they suddenly felt more comfortable, the questions started coming more quickly, one after another, and Cian did his best to answer each one as honestly as possible, even though he hated talking about that part of his life.

But he did it. For them. Because they deserved to know everything,
seeing as how he’d brought this nightmare with Aedan directly onto their doorsteps.

Breaking out in a cold sweat, he eventually explained how the “black” or “dark” blood that created a vampire came in different strains: old lines and new lines. Somewhat sane ones...and ones so evil the creatures shouldn’t even be allowed to exist. As if he sensed where Cian was going with the information,
Jeremy suddenly gave him a sharp look of concern and asked, “What does this all have to do with Sayre being in danger?”

He pretty much flung out the answer, needing to get the words off his chest. “I have a brother. A half brother named Aedan who is a year younger than me. We share the same father, but his mother was also a vampire, which means that the vamp part of him is dominant, overshadowing
the human part. He’s the reason I came back to protect Sayre, and he—”