Forgotten (53 page)

At the sight of another male threatening his
female, Rone’s own Beast surged forward so strongly he could barely
contain it.

Mine!
it roared.
She is mine!

For once, Rone agreed with it. Growling
fiercely, he charged forward to meet the male, putting himself
between the other Beast and Kate.

Taken by surprise, the male snarled and
tried to get around him. He didn’t even want to fight—he just
wanted to get to Kate and breed her.

Just the thought—the idea of any other male
touching his female—made Rone so angry that for a moment his vision
turned pure red as the Rage took him.

“
You bastard,” he said
thickly, shoving the other male’s broad, hairy chest as hard as he
could. “Stay the
fuck
away from my mate!”

The other male snarled
again and reached for him, his fingers hooked into claws. Rone
ducked his clumsy lunge and plowed his fist into the Beast’s nose.
There was a loud
crunch
and blood that looked black in the moonlight was
suddenly pouring down the other male’s jaw and chin.

He made a wounded gurgling sound and clawed
at his face while Rone stood between him and Kate, who had stopped
just behind him.

“
Get back,” Rone said
harshly when the other male roared in anger and tried to come for
Kate again. “Get back or I’ll fucking
kill
you.” He heard more than a
little of his own Beast’s growl in his voice but he couldn’t help
it. With Kate this close and in obvious danger, his other half was
fighting to get out—determined not to let another male breed
her.

The other male roared again but then Kate
stepped around Rone and ran at him.

“
Kate,” he shouted. “What
in the Seven Hells do you think you’re doing? Get behind
me!”

But she didn’t listen. Instead, she shoved
something she’d been clutching in one hand directly into the other
male’s face.

“
Go
away!
”
she
yelled.

As the male roared and backed away, clawing
at his face, Rone’s sensitive nose detected the stinging scent of
stayback flowers. How in the world had Kate known to use them? And
why had she come to the Howlund in the first place?

But such questions would have to wait. Rone
stayed balanced on the balls of his feet, his fists ready in case
the other male tried to come at Kate again.

But clearly the hairy Beast had had enough.
Between Rone’s punishing punches and the fiery touch of the
stayback flowers, he was no longer interested in pursuing Kate.
Moaning and gurgling to himself, he stumbled off into the woods
still pawing at his face.

“
Rone?” Kate gasped in a
high, frightened sounding voice. “Rone is he…will he come
back?”

“
I don’t think so.” He
turned to her at last. “What are you doing here?”

“
I don’t know.” She shook
her head. “I…I thought it was a dream. But if it is, it’s the worst
nightmare I’ve ever had and I don’t…don’t know how to wake
up.”

“
This is no dream,” Rone
said grimly. “Come on, we have to get you out of here before my own
Beast comes out.”

Even now he could feel it
straining against the mental leash he kept it on.
Mine…MINE!
it was
roaring, demanding to get closer to Kate, to taste her honey and
breed her…to bond her completely.

No!
he told it sternly.
I told you, you
can’t have her!
But despite his struggle,
he could feel it getting closer and closer to the surface, closer
and closer to taking him over completely…

“
Rone?” Kate was looking
up at him with fear in her eyes now. “Rone, your eyes…the pupils
are…are shrinking. They’re going silver.”

“
Like I said, we don’t
have much time. Come on, I know a short cut back to Tante Corii’s.”
He grabbed her by the arm and walked as swiftly as he could. But
when he got to the edge of the small clearing, his head smacked
suddenly into something he couldn’t see. “What in the Seven Hells?”
Rone rubbed his forehead and then tried again, pushing to get out
of the clearing.

“
It’s like the invisible
barriers they had at Flame and Frost,” Kate said. She, too, was
feeling in every direction, trying to find a way past the thing
which blocked their path. But there didn’t seem to be an
exit.

“
In fact, it is
exactly
like those
barriers. My master learned to make them while he was watching over
your activities there,” a deep, male voice said.

“
Who said that?” Rone
looked around, his eyes narrowed and his nose open for the scent of
the intruder. But he could smell nothing but Kate’s own sweet,
feminine fragrance and a lingering trace of the spicy staybacks she
still clutched. “Who are you? Show yourself,” he
demanded.

“
I am Y—the scion of
Master Two of the Dark Kindred.” A tall figure stepped out from
behind the shadow of some trees. “And I bear a message for him to
give to your master, Commander Sylvan of the Kindred High
Council.”

“
He’s not my master,” Rone
growled. “And if you want a message carried to him, do it
yourself.”

Suddenly the voice changed, growing high and
evil.

“
Oh, I think not,” it said
and cackled with laugher. “I think that after what is about to
happen to your sweet little female tonight, you won’t be able to
help telling him. Because you’ll want him to help you take revenge.
Or try to, anyway.”

Rone felt a sick roiling in the pit of his
stomach but he forced himself to keep his voice steady and
calm.

“
What are you talking
about? Nothing is going to happen to Kate—I’ll protect her with my
life.”

“
From other males, yes,
certainly you can protect her as we just saw,” the high, evil voice
sneered. “But can you protect her from
yourself?
From the Beast that lives
inside you? I doubt that you can, Wulven—doubt it very much. At
least, not indefinitely. Look above you—the full moons are almost
completely in convergence. When they fully overlap, your Beast will
come out whether you want it to or not. And your sweet little mate
will be waiting.”

“
No!” Rone felt the panic
rising inside but he tried to damp it down. “No, do whatever you
want to me but let Kate go! Don’t do this to us!”

“
Why shouldn’t I? I know
about your mission, Wulven—I know how you’re supposed to find me
and spy out my whereabouts. Well, let me tell you—you’ll never find
me. Not until it’s too late!” The evil voice cackled laughter again
and the short hairs on the back of Rone’s neck prickled and rose in
response.

“
You bastard,” he said
hoarsely. “Why are you doing this? You’ve already stolen Kate’s
memories. So what if we were sent to track you—that’s no reason to
torture us any further.”

“
It most certainly
is,”
the voice
proclaimed. “You see, I’m planning on making a metaphor here. A
tasty little allegory of what is to come. What you’re about to do
to your little mate—the rape you’re about to perform on her—will be
nothing…
nothing
to the rape I plan for the entire Kindred nation!” The voice
rose in pitch and fury. “Tell Sylvan that I still remember what he
did to my people—to the Dark Kindred. I may have failed to ruin him
in the past but I will
not
fail again.”

“
Look, I’ll tell him
anything you want, just let Kate go. Just…” Rone swallowed and
heard a dry click in the back of his throat. “Just don’t make me
hurt her.
Please.”

“
Too late for pleading,”
the voice taunted. “The moons are almost fully converged and so I
must leave you.
Do
enjoy breeding your mate, my dear Wulven. And don’t bother
trying to get out—the force-field I’ve placed around you is a
bio-chemical construction which can only be melted by the light of
the sun. And I think that we
both
know by sunrise tomorrow morning, the deed will
be done.”

Still cackling that high, ugly laughter, the
dark shape faded back into the forest.

“
Wait!” Rone heard the
hoarse, awful panic in his own voice but he couldn’t stop it.
“Wait—come back here, you bastard! Come back and let us out of
here—or at least set Kate free!”

But it was too late. The figure—who must
have been Two, the Dark Kindred himself—had melted into the gloom.
He was gone and with him, any hope Rone had of getting his mate to
safety.

Already he could feel his Beast straining to
be free, its determination to get to Kate unstoppable. There was no
way he could hold it in all night—the moons overhead were almost
fully converged and it was about to break free.

He was going to do something he had sworn to
never do to the woman he loved—something he would rather die than
do but couldn’t avoid.

They were trapped and for Kate, there was no
escape.

Chapter Twenty-five

“
Kate, you have to get
back from me. Get away!”

Rone’s deep voice was more than half growl
and when he turned to her, Kate saw that his eyes were almost solid
silver, the black of his pupils swallowed by the pure, metallic
color.

“
I would, but…where can I
go?” Kate backed away from him, measuring the small, roughly
circular clearing they stood in. They were surrounded by trees but
when she tried to reach for a low-hanging branch to climb one, she
found the invisible barrier was in the way. Kate had a sinking
feeling that all the trees would be similarly inaccessible. The
evil Two wasn’t going to let a single detail go unnoticed when it
came to ruining her life with Rone.

“
I don’t know. I don’t
know where you can go, I just know you have to get away from here.
Away from
me.”

Rone paced restlessly around the circle,
marking off the dimensions of the invisible force-field they found
themselves in. Sure enough, none of the trees were reachable. They
were trapped—or Kate was. Trapped in an unbreakable cage with a
male who was about to become a ravening Beast. Her heart skittered
nervously in her chest—what was she going to do?

“
What in the Seven Hells
are we going to do?” Kate heard Rone mutter to himself, repeating
her internal question. “What can we…” Suddenly his nearly pure
silver eyes drifted down to the bunch of purple gloved staybacks
she still clutched in one hand. “Those!” He motioned excitedly.
“You have staybacks!”

“
I do. I grabbed them as I
left your aunt’s garden.” Kate looked down at the bunch of flowers
which were now looking much worse for the wear—their stems crushed
and their petals limp and drooping.

“
Use them on me—when I
turn,” Rone directed. “Just keep pushing them into my face again
and again.”

“
But…won’t that make
you—make your Beast—angry?” Kate objected.

“
Yes, almost certainly,”
Rone said grimly. “But it should also keep it—me— from getting to
you. Please Kate, promise me you’ll do it. I feel…” He looked
overhead, his deep voice strangled. “I feel the moons’ convergence.
In another moment they’ll completely overlap and I…I won’t be able
to hold it…hold it back any longer.”

“
I…” Kate didn’t know what
to say.

“
Promise!” Rone insisted
and his voice was little more than a growl now, his eyes almost
pure silver. “Please, Kate—it’s coming forward. Taking over. I
can’t…can’t…”

The sentence ended in a
long, liquid howl that set the short hairs at the nape of Kate’s
neck on end. Overhead, the full moons of G’neral
f
inally completely
overlapped and in their pure silver light she saw the man who was
her husband—the man who she had forgotten but was beginning to love
all over again—changing.

Rone had already taken off his shirt and now
his muscular chest, which had always been so smooth, began to
sprout hair.

Kate watched in horrified fascination,
wondering if he would become as hairy as the other Beast-man who
had chased her through the forest. But no, to her relief, Rone’s
chest hair mostly confined itself to his well-defined pecs with a
small trail leading down the front of his washboard abs and into
the black flight trousers he still wore. The whiskers on his face
seemed to get thicker too until he was wearing a short, scruffy
beard that made him look dangerous—like seven miles of bad road,
her mama would have said.

Well at least he didn’t
grow a freaking fur coat like that other guy,
Kate thought. In fact, Rone’s new look was kind of sexy in an
animalistic way—if you liked guys with hairy chests. And Kate had
never been opposed to them.

Of course, what she
was
opposed to, she
reminded herself, as Rone turned pure silver eyes filled with lust
on her, was being held down and taken against her will.

He made a low, questioning growl in the back
of his throat and took a step towards her.

Kate took a step of her own, away from him,
as her heart leaped up into her throat.

“
Stay back,” he told the
Beast, trying to keep her voice level and even. “Just stay back,
okay? You and I weren’t ever supposed to meet so just leave me
alone.”