Bloodright (20 page)

“I would not change a thing. Had I not met you that night, Falon, I would never have known what love is.”

Falon swallowed hard. Her broken heart swelled with huge love for this man. “Rafa, if by some crazy stroke of fate, there is another chance for us, would you take me back?”

Fury flashed in his eyes. “I know what you have done. I know that you wanted him. That you begged for his touch.” He sneered. “The scent of your sex still clings to you! How could I take you back?”

For the hundredth time since she had laid eyes on him, her heart wrenched painfully. Heat infused her cheeks. She looked down at the ground, thinking she should feel ashamed that she had been so bold with Lucien when his brother’s heart broke for her but oddly she did not. Not now. She had been thrown into an impossible situation. And she had made the most of it. What was done was done. If Rafael could not see past her impossible situation, then she could not make him see. Not now anyway. Her head snapped back and she looked him directly in the eye. “You will mark another mate by the next full moon. I am with Lucien. Nothing will change that. Now, Rafael, I am begging you, for the love you once had for me,
help
me save him.”

“Because of him, I do not have you! Because of what he did to you, I cannot take you back even if he were dead!”

Desperation had a chokehold on her. “Rafael, I love you! I loved you last week. I loved you when Lucien took me. Because of your sacrifice, I allowed him to mark me!” She grabbed his hands. “I love you now. None of what I feel for you has anything to do with Lucien! What I do or do not feel for him will never change what I feel for you.”

“What
do
you feel for him, Falon?”

She shook her head and answered honestly and quickly. They needed to go. “I don’t know, but I do know I don’t want him to die.”

He flung her hands from his. “Then save him yourself.”

Dumbfounded by his refusal to do what was right, Falon shook her head. “What happened to the honorable man I fell in love with?”

Rafael’s eyes hardened to ice. “He died the minute my brother marked you.”

“Oh, Rafa, don’t do this. Please, don’t do this to yourself. This is not who you are.”

“It is who I have become.”

Tears blurred her vision as she rose up on her toes and kissed his tight lips and softy said against them, “I will mourn my true love’s death until my last days.” She turned and strode to the door. With her hand on the handle, she turned and looked back at him. He had not moved. But his eyes mirrored what was truly in his heart. It made walking out of his life that much harder. “Good-bye, Rafa.” She shifted and ran to Lucien.

Falon cleared the high compound walls and ran as if hell were on her heels to where she left Lucien. Somehow, she would find a way to free him even if she had to—she didn’t want to think of what she might have to sacrifice for his life. But she realized she would do it. Whatever
it
was.

She did not want to think of what Lucien meant to her. All she knew was that what she shared with Lucien she did not share with Rafa. He had brought something to life inside her. Something primal. The sex, the fighting, the killing. It was like a drug. Lucien was dangerously unpredictable. He was volatile, he was ruled by his emotions. Rafael was so different. He was methodical, honorable, and though his emotions ran deep within him, he controlled them. He did not make the emotional mistakes Lucien made.

The brothers were as different as day and night, and she was trapped between dusk and dawn. She knew why Rafe refused to help, but she would not let Lucien die.

Falon picked up Lucien’s scent. His blood scent. Her heart hammered in her chest and her rage grew. They’d hurt him. Snarling, she dug deeper and ran faster. They would pay for each drop of his blood.

Lucien’s scent stopped at the banks of the churning river. Falon looked across the fifty-yard span. She didn’t know how to swim as a human but as a wolf it would come naturally. She waded into the cold water and was immediately swept away by the powerful current. She went under but allowed her body’s buoyancy to bring her up. Instead of fighting the current, Falon swam with it while she kept her eye on the opposite bank. As the river swept her farther downstream, the current picked up. Her body slammed into a boulder knocking the wind out of her. She yelped and went under. The current dragged her down. Panicked, she flailed in the water, trying to break the surface. Her lungs ached, her eyes burned. She could see the sunlight from beneath the water. Her back leg hooked on a fallen tree trunk. The velocity of the pull made her yelp; she swallowed water. She could not get the momentum to bring her body to the surface, the current was so strong, pulling her downriver underwater.

The gray fog of unconsciousness blurred her vision.

Luca!

But he didn’t answer.

“FALON!”

Her eyes fluttered open. Haloed by the sun, she could not see the face above her, but by his scent she knew it was Rafael. She pushed to sit up. She was naked and dripping wet. Rafael was naked and just as wet above her. Angor and the rest of the Berserkers were dripping wet and strapped down with leather packs and sheathed swords. Scores of Vulkasin wolf stood behind them.

Emotion exploded in her chest.

Rafael’s eyes shone brightly with emotion but his words were serious. “I am here because I love you, Falon. When I choose a mate and mark her by the next full moon, she will have no place in my heart. There is no room for her or any woman, because you occupy every part of it.”

Tears stung her eyes. She reached up to touch his cheek. He grabbed her hand, preventing it. He swallowed tightly. “You belong to Lucien, Falon. I gave my word and it is my vow; I would not encourage you in any way. So that I don’t break that vow, let’s just go.”

He may have made such a vow, but she did not. She threw her arms around Rafael’s neck and hugged him to her. She cried when his strong arms wrapped around her, holding her tightly against him. “Thank you,” she choked between her tears. “Thank you.”

Moments later, Falon shifted as did Rafael. With Vulkasin behind them, they went after Lucien.

LUCIEN SLOWLY BECAME aware that he was in human form, on his back, shackled at the hands, waist, and knees, in pain, but alive. Hellish heat burned the back of his heels. His blood scent was strong. He hissed in a long breath and groaned painfully when he flexed his feet. Both his Achilles tendons had been severed. He could not walk as a man nor run as a wolf. He was literally grounded. Was Falon?

Had she made it to Rafe?

Falon!

Sweat beaded his forehead and his blood pressure shot sky high when she did not respond.

Falon, answer me. Are you safe?

The fear knotting his gut tightened when she still did not answer. There was only one of two reasons she did not respond: because she was with Rafe and did not want to, or she was incapacitated.

Neither scenario eased his taut nerves. He didn’t want to think Falon had skipped back to Rafe, leaving him to die at the hands of the Slayers. But worse, he could not bear the thought that she may lay hurt and vulnerable somewhere. He needed to get out of there and find her. Wherever the hell here was!

Familiarizing himself with the scents and sounds around him, Lucien lay still, barely drawing a breath. Hanging like a toxic pall around him, Slayer stink permeated his nostrils. It combined with the fumes of gasoline and the cloying scent of oil, creating a polluted stench. He opened his eyes to dim light outside filtering through dented metal blinds. It was just around twilight. He was chained inside of a large metal cage, securely locked by a cereal bowl–sized cast-iron lock hanging on the outside of the door, tall enough for an average human to walk through. Lucien looked up at the pitched wood ceiling then around what he guessed was some type of storage shed. Gardening type tools hung haphazardly on three walls. Several bales of hay were stacked up across from the wood slat door with a wheelbarrow and several shovels casually propped against it.

Past the shed, the distinct sound of revelry filtered back to him. No doubt Slayers celebrating the fact they finally had him. Lucien sneered. It wasn’t over until the fat Slayer screamed.

He shifted. The shackles magically readjusted to wolf size.

Fucking Slayer magic.

Shifting back into his human form Lucien mentally mapped out what he needed to do. First, heal himself. He would need to be in wolf mode to lick his wounds, but the way the shackles were wrapped and locked around his hands, ankles, and body, he could not bend far enough down to do so. So Plan B: get out of the shackles so he could heal himself and get out of there.

He searched the wall for a tool that he could pick the locks with. A long-handled aerator hung next to a long-handled shovel. As he moved to the nearest spot in the cage toward the tools, footsteps hesitantly approached the shed. Not heavy like a man, lighter, like a woman.

He stiffened. Intimately familiar with the scent.

His heart thumped against his chest as the person fumbled with the outside lock. Slowly the door opened.

A small, bare foot followed by a curvaceous body, followed by long red hair he used to wrap around his fists when she—Shocked, his eyes widened as he looked into two familiar cat-shaped, green eyes.

He was dreaming. It couldn’t be. Pain, joy, and confusion collided in his chest.

“Mara—”

Her full red lips slid back into a happy smile. She brushed her hair from her eyes.

“Lucien! I had to come when I heard they’d captured you!” she said, flying to her knees outside of his cage. She grabbed the bars, pressing her face to them. Sixteen years separated her death from her resurrection, and she looked as young and beautiful now as she had all those years ago.

“How—”

His heart thudded against his rib cage.
Mara was alive?
He raised a hand to touch her, to feel her flesh and bone, but he hesitated.

She reached through the bars and touched her warm hand to his cheek. She was living, breathing—warm. “I am alive, Lucien.”

His brain exploded with the realization that her resurrection, regardless of whether she was a Slayer or a superhuman who had survived a catastrophic injury, changed everything! Not that he wished Mara dead, but alive, Lucien had no right to Falon. His gut fisted.

“How are you here? Alive?”

Her emerald-colored eyes glistened with tears. “I have so much to tell you, Lucien. So much! But first, I need to get you away from those bastard Slayers before they come back for you. What they want to do to you is inhuman.” She slipped her hand into her skirt pocket and withdrew several keys.

Too stunned by this crazy turn of events, Lucien lie still on the dirt floor and waited for Mara to unlock the big iron lock. She was having trouble.

“How did you survive Rafael’s attack? And what are you doing here with Slayers?”
Was
she in truth a Slayer? He would know it! But as before, whenever Mara was near, he saw only her. Except this time, when he looked into her green eyes, he saw Falon’s sapphire blue ones.

A slight frown tweaked her brows, but she quickly hid it. “I thought when we were reunited you would be over-the-moon excited to see me. Instead you ask why I’m not dead.”

Guilt pricked him, but not enough to set aside pleasantries before facts. “For sixteen years, I thought you were dead. You
were
dead! How did you survive? Why didn’t you return to me?”

The lock popped open. She smiled triumphantly and lifted it off. When she swept her hand down her chest to wipe a smear of dirt from her finger, Lucien’s body stirred. She used to do the same thing with his fingers, except naked. The snug translucent top hugged her ripe curves. Her stiff nipples pointed straight at him. She was not wearing a bra. She never needed one. His gaze traveled down her narrow waist to the short black skirt that barely covered her creamy thighs. He raised his gaze back to hers for explanation.

“After your brother nearly killed me, I thought I would die there in your bed, Lucien. I was terrified, but somehow, I managed to drag myself from that room as you and your brother lie dying on the floor. That’s all I remember. But I have been told a Slayer found me just outside of the compound gate. I woke up weeks later, chained to that bastard’s bed. He saved my life, but every time he raped me I wished I was dead.”

It made no sense at all. “I’m sorry, Mara. But you died in my arms—”

“A miracle saved me.” She opened the cage door, dropped to her knees, and crawled toward him. Her floral perfume was familiar. Belladonna. Talia used the deadly plant to put wounded animals she could not save out of their misery. It was the same perfume Mara wore sixteen years ago.

She sat back on her heels and pouted when he made no move toward her. “I have planned and plotted for this day for sixteen years, Lucien! Aren’t you happy to see me?”

“Keep your voice down,” he warned.

Despite his tone and lack of affection, she beamed at him. “I may have been enslaved for sixteen years, Lucien, but I did not cry myself to sleep each night. I paid attention to their black arts. I learned how to create spells and elixirs.”

She leaned toward him. “When I heard they had you, I insisted I come along for the entertainment. Then I created a little spell to keep them preoccupied until I had you safely back home.” She pressed her lips to his. His cool indifference surprised him. He should be sorry for what she had to endure all these years, and thankful that she came to his rescue, but something else niggled at him.

She pulled away from his lips and raked his body with her gaze. She brushed her fingertips across one of his nipples. “I love the tat.” Then trailed them down his chest to his belly to his sleeping dragon. She stroked the cock ring. His cock stirred. “Only sinful Lucien would indulge himself in such a way.”

“Mara,” he hoarsely said, thickening beneath her roaming hand. “I’m stunned to see you. More like in shock.” He turned away from her hand, and groaned, rubbing his forehead against his cuffed hands. “For sixteen years I have hated my brother for killing you.”