Bound (Dark Reflections Volume 1) (11 page)

"Just in case you've been asleep on the job, Vincent and I really hate each other. I've been in plenty of danger in the past without ever needing to square off against any vampires."

I got a cold smile from her. "I'm done talking about this, Alec. Every word you've said has been the truth, but I'm perfectly capable of discerning when someone is trying to deceive me by telling me only part of the truth. I've only continued the conversation for this long because it is vitally important that you understand the extreme importance attached to you manifesting an ability. You are quickly running out of time."

I kept the relief washing through me off of my face, and I was pretty sure that I'd done a decent job stopping it from bleeding over into my scent. She'd assumed that I was trying to put her off the trail of the truth, which I had been, but I'd been trying to keep her going down the path she'd already selected, not steer her off like she'd assumed I was.

"I'm already aware of just how many of Kaleb's plans hinge on me being able to serve as a counterweight to Brandon. I'll take your concerns under advisement, but I hardly expect that anything I could do in the next eighteen hours would allow me to manifest an ability that would make any kind of difference down on the border."

"I wasn't talking about your upcoming tour of duty. Trust me. If you don't manifest an ability soon you're going to look back at our conversation and bitterly wish that you'd moved heaven and earth to heed my warning."

I opened my mouth to ask her what she was trying to get at, but she stood and left the room in a single fluid motion that didn't give me a chance to get any words out. I hurried after her and caught up just outside of the building.

"What are you trying to tell me?"

I grabbed hold of her shoulder to turn her around and force her to acknowledge me, but she pivoted and hit me in the stomach with such blinding speed that I didn't have a chance to do anything more than tighten my stomach muscles to try and absorb some of the force of the blow.

My best efforts weren't enough, not taken by surprise like that, not against another hybrid. She hit me hard enough to knock the wind out of me, causing me to double over in pain as her knee came up and hit my face. A split second later I was looking up at her from my back.

"You don't put your hands on me, Alec. This time was a freebie. The next time you try to impose your will on me in any manner I will kill you and your father's plans can burn."

Mallory turned and walked away without waiting for a response from me. A few seconds later she was onboard the plane and one of the guys from the ground crew was asking me if I was okay.

"Yeah, I'll be fine."

I waved away his offer of a cloth for my nose and rolled back to my feet. My metabolism was already kicking in; the bleeding had nearly stopped and by the time we flew out tomorrow my nose probably wouldn't even be swollen any more.

There were usually at least a couple of cars from the pack at the airport at any given time and today was no exception. The dark blue Honda Civic and the black Nissan Pathfinder both had Kaleb's circular sigil affixed to their rear windows, so I used the standard code to unlock the Honda and a few minutes later I was on my way back to the house.

A few years back, two of the locals had figured out our standard unlock code and gone joyriding in one of the pack cars that Kaleb had purchased by the dozen. Kaleb had sent Brandon to teach them a lesson.

Neither guy had been able to walk unassisted for nearly two months. The police had investigated, but nothing had come of it. Actually that wasn't right—nothing had come of the investigation, but after that everyone in Sanctuary had realized that Kaleb had GPS transmitters on all of his cars and that they'd be idiots to touch his property.

Brandon had strutted around like a king after that and I'd realized just exactly how little influence my mother really had. She'd managed to anonymously pay for the worst of the medical bills that Brandon had inflicted on the two guys, but she hadn't been able to do any more than that.

I'd wanted Brandon to end up in prison, or for some kind of civil case to be brought against Kaleb, but both had remained completely above the law, just like always.

I started my drive back to the estate in a bad mood and thinking about Brandon just made things worse. By the time I got home, I was angry enough that I probably would have done something stupid like challenging Brandon if I'd run into him in one of the halls.

Fortunately, he was down on the border and I didn't run into anyone else on my way to my room. I cleaned myself up and headed into the small training room that Kaleb had attached to my bedroom as a reward when I changed to a wolf for the first time.

I'd used it religiously for several years until I'd realized that it didn't matter how much I worked out I still wouldn't be able to match the unnatural strength of someone like Brandon or the supernatural healing that Kaleb routinely used to wear his opponents into the ground before finishing the fight in an abrupt explosion of violence.

The fact that Vincent was now stronger than me was proof that weight training did indeed pay dividends even for shape shifters, so that meant that I needed to squeeze regular training sessions into my schedule on top of the studying that I'd need to get my GED.

I was midway through my fourth set of curls when someone knocked on my bedroom door. Some of the anger that had started to die down while I'd been working out flared up and I stalked towards my door fully intending on giving somebody a piece of my mind. My beast was just as unhappy and waves of power preceded me, beating on the door in time with my steps. I flung open the door and then upon seeing that it was Donovan who was waiting for me, reined my anger in.

"Have I come at a bad time, Master Alec?"

"No worse than normal, Donovan, I'm just not handling things as well today. Please come in."

Donovan gave me a respectful nod and then waited as I turned on the three privacy generators stationed about my room.

"What can I do for you, Donovan?"

"Not for me, sir, but rather for your mother. She sent me to ask if you would be willing to spend the evening with your sister. She's heard that Master Kaleb is quite incensed over the damage to his troop rotations occasioned by her shopping trip with Mistress Rachel and she expects that he will pay her a visit tonight to discuss his unhappiness over her recent actions."

"And she'd rather Rachel not feel like it's her fault for asking Mother to take her shopping."

"Exactly, sir. May I tell her that you'll acquiesce to her request?"

"Yes. I'd much rather spend the evening stewing, but it would probably be good for me to not be by myself tonight. Mother could have just called me and saved you the trip across the house."

Donovan gave me the small smile he used when I questioned the traditions that my family had followed for more centuries than I could even imagine.

"Some things are simply better conveyed one person to another rather than over one of those technological devices that your generation is so fond of."

I shook my head at him. "And by that you mean she couldn't get away herself, but she wanted you to report on my state of mind in greater detail than she thought she'd be able to get by talking to me over the phone."

"Of course, sir. And since the secondary purpose of my visit is now out in the open, may I ask how things went? Your mother heard that you'd been injured and was quite concerned."

"All in all, they could have gone quite a bit worse than they did. James and I were injured, as were two of Jack's wolves, but Jasmin and Jessica came out of it with flesh wounds and James and I will pretty much be back at full strength by the time we land in Arizona tomorrow."

Donovan nodded, but it was obvious to me that he was considering his next question very carefully. "May I tell your mother that your power level has grown?"

I wanted to put my fist through a wall, but I forced my anger back down and nodded. "Yes. I hadn't planned on keeping that a secret from Mother, but I didn't expect for the secret to get out on its own so quickly. First Mallory and then you. At this rate the entire pack will know before I leave tomorrow. Is it that obvious?"

Donovan pursed his lips and then shook his head slowly. "I would say no, at least not for most of the dominants, but we submissives tend to become very good at remembering relative power levels, and you were quite angry just now. Under normal circumstances nobody other than Mallory could tell that anything had changed, but you will need to be very careful to remain in control of your emotions if you want to maintain your secret."

"I seem to be having a harder time than usual controlling my anger today. Honestly I'm not sure how Mallory got so far under my skin, but she sure pissed me off today."

"If I may, Master Alec, I've noticed a definite trend that would seem to indicate that the more powerful one's beast is, the harder time one tends to have keeping one's feelings in check. While you've become quite accomplished and controlled over the years, it is possible that your recent increase in power is going to take some getting used to on a number of fronts."

He was probably right. It made a lot of sense, which meant that I'd have to be even more vigilant than normal for the next little while, but that wasn't what had caught my attention. There'd been a slight change in his expression when I'd mentioned Mallory. It had been so small that I would have almost thought I was imagining it, but it wasn't the first time that it had happened when I'd mentioned her name around him.

"Donovan, just now when I talked about Mallory you…well, it was almost like you flinched."

"Indeed, Master Alec. I have tried for years to break myself of that habit, but it appears that I have not yet fully succeeded."

"Can I ask what happened or is that presuming too much?"

Donovan was silent for several seconds before finally nodding with a jerky motion that was nothing at all like the smooth, graceful, proper movements that normally characterized him.

"I must admit that the story is difficult for me to tell even now. Your mother has no doubt told you that your father was an entirely different man back before you were born, but you may not have realized that many of the pack were likewise different back then. Mallory and I have both been in service to your family since back before your father was born."

I nodded. I didn't tend to think about just how old Donovan was, but much like Jack he'd been around and lived through things that I'd only heard vague references about in history books.

"I fought my feelings for many decades, but the truth was that during our shared service, first to your grandfather and then to your father, I developed feelings for Mallory."

I felt my eyes go wide, but Donovan didn't seem to hold my surprise against me.

"I wish you could have known her back then, Master Alec. She was a strong, brave woman who was consumed by the plans that Kaleb had for the pack. It seemed that nothing was impossible back in those days. Kaleb was outmaneuvering the Coun'hij at every turn and he'd laid the groundwork for alliances with Jaclyn in the south and Ulrich in the north."

"What happened?"

Donovan shrugged. "Nobody knows, not even those of us who were inside of Kaleb's inner circle back when it happened. We had a visitor late one night, a man who demanded to be shown to Kaleb's office and who conversed with Kaleb for nearly ten hours before disappearing into the night. After that things slowly started to change. The differences were almost imperceptible at first. Still, I should have seen them, but I was foolishly focused more on Mallory than on Kaleb."

"She betrayed you, didn't she?"

"Yes. In hindsight, looking backwards with a knowledge of who she's become over the last couple of decades, it must seem obvious that she would betray me, but I didn't have that advantage back then. I'd struggled with the possible impropriety of my feelings for years, but finally one day I expressed my admiration for her in stronger, plainer terms than I ever had before. She told me that she was flattered, that she'd sensed a special bond growing between us over the years, but that she hadn't ever thought it proper to act on it before now. She told me that she needed some time to think things over and confirm to herself that a relationship between the two of us wouldn't violate our oaths to Kaleb and the pack."

Donovan's smile was bittersweet. "We spent more time together over the next couple of months. I wanted to press her for an answer, but I knew that she wasn't the kind of woman to respond well to being pressured, so I kept my silence and just enjoyed the fact that we were together so much more than before. Things came to a head when the two of us ran into Agony."

My breath caught. Agony had been the shape shifter equivalent to the bogyman for as long as I could remember. He was just a hybrid, but his power was one that allowed him to short-circuit the normal healing abilities of a shape shifter. Normally we healed back from nearly anything that didn't kill us and we rarely scarred. Agony could make any wound heal with human slowness and even then they never really healed right, leaving a mass of scar tissue that pulled whenever we moved around and especially when we shifted forms.

"It was a routine patrol. If we'd known that he was sniffing around we would have brought more help, but it was before Kaleb had joined up with the Coun'hij so we weren't expecting Agony to take any interest in us. Besides, we wanted some time alone."

"He knew. Somehow he knew that Kaleb was going to throw in with the Coun'hij."

"Yes, I think he did. I still don't know how, but I think that you're right. He knew that Kaleb was considering an alliance with the Coun'hij and he was scouting around the edge of our territory looking for a weakness, looking for a way into the manor so that he could attack Kaleb."

"What happened?"

"We attacked Agony like the good soldiers we were. Believe it or not, back then I was a respectable fighter. I was no match for a hybrid by myself, but Mallory and I together had Agony on the ropes. I thought that we were going to beat him, and then Mallory was a fraction of a second too slow in backing up one of my lunges and Agony buried his claws in the left side of my chest. It was far enough back that it missed my heart, but it scarred up exactly as you would have expected, which is why I rarely transform any more. After that Agony fled and Mallory carried me back here to the estate."