Dark and Damaged: Eight Tortured Heroes of Paranormal Romance: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set (52 page)

“That’s because your brother’s association with us challenges his Alpha’s authority,” Thane said absently. He lifted the arm of his injured shoulder and flexed the hand. A deep ache barked at the movement, but it wouldn’t be long before he had its full use again.

“My sister is royalty,” the wolf told him.

Thane grunted in agreement. He could deal with the wolf’s smell if he felt that way about Ember. Thane met her gaze. “Have you contacted Matthew?”

Matthew would have some clothes ready for him.

“He hasn’t picked up his phone for the past two days,” Ember said.

“Two days?” Thane made to sit up again, and this time he managed to get himself upright. “Try him again. Now.”

Ember sighed, but she pulled her mobile from her back pocket. She put it on speaker and dialed. The call rolled to voicemail.

She shook her head at Thane. “I’m sorry. I’m hoping he was able to get out of your house before any trouble started, and just left his phone behind. He doesn’t know to look for us here.”

Left his phone—?
Matthew was inseparable from his mobile. He would never leave it behind. The alternative scenario was that he was still at the house. Unable to answer. A vision of Matthew collapsed in his own blood floated before Thane’s eyes.

He tried to stand. “We have to go. He may yet be alive.”

Decades of dragon blood might have sustained him. He’d been injured many times in the past. There was still hope.

“You’re barely conscious,” Ember said. “I think we need to wait until you’re better in case another creepy killer is waiting for you at your house. You’re in no shape to fight again.”

“This is
Matthew
,” Thane told her.

“I know. But you look like you’re going to fall over,” Ember shot back. “You’ve been lucid for all of two minutes. You almost died on me.”

“He’d do it for me, Ember. He
has
done it for me.”
So many times
.

“I can go,” Bryan said to Thane. “Now that you’re awake, you can hold off Ray—he’s my asshole Alpha.” He looked over at Ember. “Ray doesn’t have the balls to attack Thane Ealdian.”

Thane was taken aback by the wolf’s generosity. “I would be most grateful. Matthew is family.”

“You’ve been taking care of my girl,” Bryan said. “I’m happy to do it.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Ember said to Bryan. “That last killer…he was like a big insect on the wall. He almost killed
Thane
.”

“Not an insect. Vampire,” Thane said under his breath.

Bryan nodded as if he’d guessed as much, but Ember’s eyes widened in horror as she mouthed the word
vampire
.

“Oh please, Ember,” Bryan said, shrugging off the danger. “Give a wolf some credit. I may not be shifter royalty, but I can handle myself. I’ll do a little sniffing around and report back. Easy.”

His tone was disarming, and Thane could see Ember’s resolve wavering.

“If you get hurt,” she said, “I swear I will make you miserable.”

“Noted.” The Wolfkin didn’t seem afraid.

“And thank you,” she added.

Thane reached out to clasp the wolf’s hand. “You know where to go?”

“Yeah, Ember told me where you live. Just don’t let Ray near her,” Bryan said, “or he’ll try to prove something to the rest of the pack.”

“I wish this Ray would try,” Thane said. Even injured, he could take a wolf.

Bryan put on a leather jacket. He looked like something of a rascal and had the wiles to go with it. When this was over Thane might just have work for him.

“How about you worry about Godric,” Bryan said, “and I’ll take care of Ray when you both are set.”

“Call if you find anything,” Ember said. “Call if you don’t, too.”

Bryan left the apartment with a nonchalant wave over his shoulder. He was a good man; Thane approved of Ember thinking of him as kin. The fact that the wolf acted brotherly was a relief, and Ember had bickered at him like a sibling, as well.

Ember moved to the window again and trained her gaze below. Thane pushed to his feet and came to stand next to her. Yes, some four stories down, there were men under the streetlights prowling like wolves and crouched on street benches. At least twenty by his count, light occasionally reflecting eerily in their eyes. He wondered how Bryan would evade them, but he didn’t doubt that he would.

“How long until he reaches my stronghold?” Santa Barbara to Big Sur. Thane didn’t know how to gauge modern transportation times anymore.

“I’d guess about four hours, maybe more,” she said, leaning in to the glass. Then she pointed upward. “Look!”

Thane lifted his gaze in time to see a male silhouette land on a neighboring rooftop, crouch low, and creep to the other side of the building. Thane grinned in satisfaction. The pack wouldn’t be able to catch Bryan. Thane absolutely had work for him.

He dismissed the threat below and turned to Ember. “Tell me everything.”

“I don’t want to,” she said, an ache in her voice. “You’re hurt already. Can it be enough that Godric is the bad guy? How about you kill him—or I will—and then forget the past?”

She was offering to kill one of the Triad? She, who was so opposed to bloodshed?

“I appreciate the offer,” he said wryly, “but I need to know. Lena did this to me, didn’t she?”

Ember faced him and opened her hands as if she wanted to give him something—solace maybe—but her palms were empty. “I think her intentions… Well, they weren’t good, but they weren’t all bad, either.”

“Just tell me, Ember. Do me that courtesy. I’ve waited so long for it.”

Her eyes welled with tears, and she pressed her lips together, as if refusing one last time. “Carreen was unfaithful to you…with Godric.”

Thane drew back slightly. He’d known she’d taken a lover at some point and he’d also known that Carreen hadn’t been happy in the marriage. The religious rhetoric of the time was that shifters were demon-born, and that God favored meekness in women. He never should’ve laughed at her. He should’ve listened. Nevertheless, she’d done her duty, and he’d done his. Their marriage had joined two lands, creating a great swath of open country within which the dragons of their bloodlines could fly. It was a union many had feared, so much power coming together as one.

The surprise was that
Godric Tredan
had been the one to touch his wife. Godric of the Triad. He’d been an
ally
. He’d visited the Ealdian stronghold on many occasions. Visited and…?

Thane closed his eyes against the thought.

“And Lena said she’d helped Carreen in that regard,” Ember said. “Helped her meet with him.”

So
both
Carreen and Lena had conspired to deceive him. The pain in his shoulder muted, another kind of hurt bruising through his body. “Go on.”

She paled. “She said Rinc wasn’t yours.”

All the air in the room went rotten, poisonous to breathe.
“What?”

She nodded. “Lena was pretty unintelligible near the end, but she tried very hard to tell me this… Godric was the father. And he killed both of them.”

Godric was the father
. Of all the scenarios that had played out in Thane’s mind, this had not been one of them. The story Ember told was so simple, but he couldn’t understand it. The pieces of the puzzle were all laid out, and they
appeared
to snap together so easily, and yet he couldn’t make them fit.
Wouldn’t
make them fit. Not those pieces.

“I’m so, so sorry, Thane. I can’t imagine how terrible—”

Sound rushed his head, blocking out everything else. “Rinc wasn’t mine?”

“We’ll go after Godric,” she said. “We’ll track that bastard down and shove one of those slayer spears through his heart. I’ll do it myself. With pleasure. He doesn’t deserve to live after all the blood he’s spilled. His own son. He killed his own son.”

“
My
son,” Thane said. The pain of losing Rinc again, losing him
this
way, was agony beyond anything he’d known. He’d easily take another Drachentöter in its place.

“Your son,” Ember repeated, tears spilling down her cheeks. “Of course.”

Ember stood by Thane as he stared out the window, his expression scarred by the agony of what he’d just learned. He didn’t move. Barely breathed. She held her breath with him.

Minutes ticked into an hour and then two, but he still didn’t move and neither did she. She wasn’t leaving him alone with his new, terrible knowledge. If she thought he’d be receptive, she’d have wrapped her arms around him and held him tight. But it was as if he’d turned to stone. Night fell and deepened to an ominous, obsidian black, and she didn’t budge from his side.

When her mobile rang, she merely lifted it to her ear, ready for the worst.

“Matthew is probably okay,” Bryan said on the other line.

Thane turned his head slightly toward her, and she put the phone on speaker so that he could hear more easily. “What do you mean
probably
?” she asked.

“I’m told he went looking for you and Thane with someone named Nerea Herrera. They left someone behind at Thane’s place in case you guys returned here. Nice spread, by the way. Little cramped for my taste. And the view—all that ocean—must get real dull.”

It was not the time to be funny. “Why isn’t Matthew answering his phone, then?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” Bryan sounded weary. “Is it okay if I tell this
very insistent
person where you guys are, so that they can tell the other Herrera people?”

Ember looked over at Thane, who gave a curt nod of his head. “They’re your allies. I’m guessing they finally want to make contact with you.”

“Yes, go ahead,” she said to Bryan, frowning at the word
allies
. What a joke. “That’s fine.” The faster Matthew could come to them, the better. She wished he were a dragon so he could fly straight here. Maybe he’d know what to say to Thane, what would help him. Had she made a mistake in passing on Lena’s message?

No, she’d do it again. He deserved to know. He’d always deserved to know.

“Where is Matthew now?” she asked.

Bryan repeated the question to someone on his end, and she heard an answering murmur. “Evidently, they thought you might be in New York City.”

“Where the Triad meets,” Thane said with a bitter curl to his mouth.

This was a disaster.

“Okay,” she said to Bryan. It’d be a while, then. “You better stay away from here. I count twenty Wolfkin on the street now.”

“Sounds like a party.” His voice had gone light. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

***

With the passing of the hours, the ache had diminished in Thane’s shoulder and his breathing had eased, his heartbeat returning to normal. He inhaled deeply, feeling his lungs expand, blood quickening in his veins, his senses sharpening.

He could smell Ember’s stress, but she hadn’t moved. He’d wanted a loyal and steadfast woman, and despite blood and fire, here she was. He should lighten her heart.

“Ember,” he said.

She looked at him, circles under her dragon-green eyes.

“Lena was wrong,” he said. “Rinc
was
my son. I know it. I can still see him. He
felt
like my son. My dragon
knew
him.”

And he didn’t think the dragon could be fooled. That part of him had
never
been uncertain of anything. The dragon was absolute, and it hadn’t wavered now, not even with Ember’s tearful confession. It was Thane the man who’d feared the worst. He’d simply needed time to let the fear pass and the truth reassert itself in his heart. There had been something…undeniable,
immutable
between him and his son. Rinc had been an Ealdian. Carreen might’ve felt that, too, had she not repudiated that deeper, elemental part of herself. But she had, and so she’d been wrong, and in turn, Lena had been wrong.

Godric was not Rinc’s father. And
that
had to be why Godric had killed him.

“I could’ve misunderstood her,” Ember said. But the wistfulness in her voice told him that she’d understood what Lena had said all right.

He sighed. “I acknowledge the possibility that Carreen
could’ve
carried Godric’s child, but she didn’t. The truth stands: Carreen bore my son, and she tried to shift in order to save him. Godric will pay.”

“Just Godric? Not his heir?”

Thane fisted his right hand and flexed it again. His stomach growled. “He doesn’t have one anymore. His son died during World War I.”

“Lucky him,” she said.

Thane grinned at her, then laughed out loud. “Don’t be so sad, Ember.”

“I was sad with you,” she said defensively. “I was going to be sad with you as long as it took.”

“Isn’t it better that Rinc
did
belong to me?”

“Well, yeah.” Her eyes were getting wet again. “But you’ve been thinking that for a while now, and here I’ve been worrying…”

Thane couldn’t help himself. He cupped her face and pressed his mouth to her lips. He tried to be gentle, with all his willpower he tried, but he was not a gentle man. He had never been. He wanted to inhale her, consume her, taste and touch every inch of her so that both the dragon and the man were satisfied. Bloodkin were not known for moderation.

She trembled for a moment—
frightened?
—but then she moaned and her arms went around him, one of her hands fisting his hair to bring him even closer to her.

He chuckled against her lips, and she backed suddenly, a little line of worry between her brows. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”

Finally, a woman made for him. “No. Never. Sweetheart, I dare you to try.”

“You
were
almost fatally wounded.”

“It was a scratch,” he said. “Now, please, I beg you, take that ugly shirt off. I want to smell you, not that shaggy dog.”

She grinned, a flicker of fire in her eyes. “Don’t let him hear you call him that.”

In one movement, she lifted the shirt from her body, but his view was still obstructed by a female undergarment, a thing of torture if there ever was one—for both parties. Why did women insist on such restrictive contraptions?

“You sure you’re okay?” she asked.