Hearts Aflame Collection IV: 4-Book Bundle (5 page)

“
This isn't real,” she muttered, pressing her hand
against her throbbing head. “This can't be real.”

“
I'm very much afraid it is,” he said, stepping a
little closer to her. “And I am sorry to say that you are right in the middle
of it.”

“
I haven't done anything...” Tara trailed off when
she realized how close he was. She should have been frightened out of her wits,
but instead, this man's presence made her feel safe. She resisted the urge to
reach up and pet him, pulling her hand back at the last minute, and his lips twitched
in a quick smile as if he knew exactly what she was thinking.

“
I haven't done anything wrong,” she continued
lamely, retreating to sit back on the bed.

It was probably the wrong move because he came to
sit down next to her on it. In all fairness, there did not seem to be any other
chairs in the room. The mattress dipped under his weight and now she was
imagining how it would feel to lie down with him on it.

“
You haven't,” he agreed, looking at her with those
bright blue eyes. “You've just been dragged into the center of something that
by all rights should have nothing to do with you.”

“
And what is that?” she asked archly. She did her
best to ignore how much she liked the way he tilted his head to listen to her
and how the lines of his body made her want to touch him. He had stripped out
of the leather coat, and now she could see how broad his shoulders were and how
thickly muscled he was dressed only in a T-shirt and a pair of black jeans that
looked as if they had been painted on.

“
A war,” he said, after a long moment. From the
suddenly hungry look in his eyes, she thought he could feel the attraction
between them too, and he levered himself off of the bed, going to pace on the
floor instead.

“
My name is
Mads
Magnussen
, the alpha of the Cairn Rock pack,” he said.

“
Pack...” Tara murmured. “Like wolves?”

“
Close.
Men who walk as wolves
sometimes.”

Her memory flashed back to something that she had
been sure was a hallucination, to the wolf that growled so terrifyingly and
defended her from the winged monster she had seen.

“
That's impossible,” she stuttered, staring at the
man who called himself
Mads
, and he smiled slightly.
It transformed the lines of his face, giving him a look of such sweetness that
for a moment her breath was taken away.

He shrugged, or at least, he started to shrug, and
between one blink and the next, there was no man in front of her but a wolf
instead. Tara felt her jaw drop, and the massive wolf lolled out its tongue in
a surprisingly dog-like smile.

Hesitantly, she reached out her hand to the animal,
still not certain that it was the man she had been talking to before despite
what she had seen right before her eyes. The wolf waited patiently as she
faltered, and then when she was brave enough to rest her palm on his broad
head, whimpered happily.

“
How beautiful you are,” she whispered, and the wolf
nudged her hand with its cold nose, so puppy-like that she laughed. Despite the
wolf's size and strength, which she had seen demonstrated for her in the ruin
of her home, she could see nothing but humor and good will in every line of its
body.

“
I had a dog when I was young,” she said, talking
almost to herself.
“A big German Shepherd.
My family
got him when he was a puppy, and he was my best friend for fourteen years.”

The wolf snorted, and if he had been capable, she
thought he might have rolled his eyes. Despite his shape, there was no
mistaking him for a true animal. Tara looked into those bright blue eyes and
knew without a doubt that there was a man there.

The wolf shivered, and there was a man in front of
her again, his eyes bright and dancing, and a little bit of mischief in his
eyes.

“
So?” he asked. “Have you seen enough to go
screaming into the night?”

“
Where would I go?” asked Tara in amusement.
“There's little enough left of my home after what you and that... that thing
did.”

Mads
nodded somberly.
“
The angel,” he said, and there was a grim edge to
his voice that made her shiver.

“
Angel? That didn't look like any angel I have ever
seen.”

He hesitated, and he came to sit by her again. This
time she was ready for the tingle of attraction she felt for him, and the lurch
of her stomach, but then he took her hand, holding it in his like it was
something precious.

“
I am going to tell you things, and you must believe
me that they are true. This is a story that you should not know, not as human
as you are, but you deserve this story, you understand?”

“
You don't even know my name,” Tara said, a little
startled, and he smiled.

“
I know better than your name,” he said, squeezing
her hand with a surprising amount of intimacy. “I know that you smell of ink
and paper, and that you had a cheese sandwich for lunch. I know that you keep
fresh flowers in that poor home that I and that angel so carelessly ruined. I
know that you use juniper soap and a lavender shampoo. I know other things
beyond that, and you're worried I don't know your name?”

“
It's Tara, anyway,” she said, a blush coming up on
her cheeks. She wondered if he could smell desire too, and the slightly
slumberous look in his eyes made her certain that he did.

“
Tara,” he said, rolling the sounds across his
tongue. He nodded, satisfied at something and continued.
“
There are stories that explain our war. These
stories go back thousands of years, and they change depending on who tells
them. I'm not versed in our history, not like a historian or a storyteller
would be, so I will only tell you what I know. Once, there was a time when we
hunted for the angels. We were the wolves who were chosen to serve, and from
the legends of our people, we served well. We hunted, we tracked, and we
killed, and one day, we simply refused to do it anymore.”

“
What happened?” wondered Tara.

Mads
smiled, a wry thing.
“
No one knows, exactly. The story I heard said that
Fenrisulfir
, the great wolf king of the era, said that the
wolves would stand apart from the
angels, that
they
would only hunt for themselves. The angels, as you might expect, did not think
very much of that. Ever since then, my people have been fighting for their
freedom. We are hunted wherever angels fly, and well, you suffered the result
of that yourself.”

“
You came to my window and that... the angel came to
my door,” Tara said softly. “Why?”

He nodded at the book she had found. It lay on the
small table by the bed, as innocent as a novel someone had tossed aside.

“
That's the game changer,” he said softly. “That is
what I've been looking for quite some time now, and that's what the angels want
to keep away from me.”

“
It's a book to free things, to open doors,” Tara
said hesitantly. “
Mads
, what do you need freed?”

“
Fenrisulfir
,”
Mads
replied, and there was such a tone of reverence and hope to the single name
that it made her ache.

“
He's our great hero, our King Arthur. He sleeps,
but our legends speak of a time when he will rise up to lead us, to help us win
this war.”

“
It sounds like a story...”

“
Did you think that werewolves were a fairytale
before tonight, too?” he asked, amused, and she had to concede his point.

“
But what do I have to do with any of this?” Tara
shook her head. “I... I just had the
book,
surely I
can give it to you, can't I?”

“
I'm afraid not, dear,”
Mads
said regretfully. “They know of you now, and they know that you're with me. You
cannot leave, not with your life, and I've enough sins on my head that I cannot
allow you to come to harm.”

It sounded perfectly seriously. He had saved her
life. Still, there was something there that made Tara look twice, and for a
very long moment, she stared at him, her dark brown eyes meeting his. He met
her gaze steadily at first, but after a moment, he dropped his eyes. If he had
been in his wolf form, she was sure that he would have tucked his tail between
his legs.

“
You stared me down,” he said in surprise. “Do you
have any idea—
”

“
You're hiding something from me,” she said bluntly.
She couldn't always tell a liar, but she knew when someone was keeping
something from her, and she could see that was exactly what
Mads
was doing.

“
I don't know why you are hiding something from me,
and I don't know what it is. However, unless you tell me the truth right now, I
am going to walk out of here and if I run into an angel, maybe he'll give me a
better story.”

“
No!”

Mads
voice was like a shot in the small room, and his
hand shot out to wrap around her wrist. She flinched instinctively, ready to
pull away, but despite his speed and his strength, he held her wrist so gently
that she blinked.

“
You mustn't,” he said urgently. “They're evil
things, Tara, you must believe me, and they would as soon tear you to pieces as
look at you. You saw what the bastard I fought did to your door.”

She studied him for a long moment, and she nodded.
“
That I believe. Now what's the rest of it?”

He nodded, but he didn't release her hand. She
wondered if it should have made her feel trapped, but instead she found herself
holding it more tightly.

“
The rest is that I need you,” he said softly. “You
can read the words of the book, can you not?”

Hesitantly, Tara nodded, and she felt his grip on
her fingers tighten before he relaxed again.

“
I need to wake
Fenrisulfir
,
for my people, for my family. We've been hunted for centuries, Tara, and I've
only ever known a life of war and fear. I want better for my brothers, and I
want better for my cousins. The legends say that
Fenrisulfir
must be awakened to end the war, and that was the only thing that would take me
from my family. I do swear that, Tara, on my life.”

Mads
paused, and when he spoke again, there was a
resolution to his voice that she hadn't heard before.
“
I need someone who can read the book, who can say
the words at the place where
Fenrisulfir
sleeps. I
need someone who can open that door for me, and Tara, I am so sorry, but I
think it must be you.”

She started to protest. Surely there was someone
else. Surely there was a man or woman more capable, more qualified, but when
she picked up the book again, she knew there wasn’t. When it came to this
particular language, this particular book, there were perhaps a handful of
people who had her level of expertise.

“
I'm asking no small thing here,”
Mads
continued soberly. “Where I would take you, your life
will be in danger, and perhaps even more than that. All I can tell you is that
I will guard you with my life and every breath I have in me.”

“
Why would you do this?” she found herself asking,
and there was that wolfish fierceness on his face again.

“
For my family, for my people.
For our survival, and
that is what your help would mean as well, Tara.
I'm not asking you to
risk your life for wealth or for fame. I would never, not a woman like you. I
know that. If it were for money alone, I can tell that you would order me away.
I'm asking you to risk your life for our survival, mine and my kin's.”

She wavered. Something tugged at her, something
strange and sideways and sly.

“
Prove it to me,” she
said,
her voice a challenge. “You've shown me that you are a wolf, now show me that
you are who you say you are, that there are people who love and depend on you.”

He hesitated, and she wondered if she had caught
him out. After a long moment, though,
Mads
nodded.

“
Yes, you should see this too,” he said, sounding
heartbroken.

He stood, and in a single moment, he pulled his
T-shirt over his head. Tara made a startled squeak, and for a moment, all she
could see was how beautiful his body was, how the lines of muscles chiseled
into his frame made her ache to run her fingers over them. Then she gasped,
because his entire body was covered with scars, most faint white lines over his
tanned flesh, but some as stark and raised as mountain ranges. There were heavy
scars, twisted and knotted, on his right shoulder, and now that she looked, she
could see a long scar that ran from under one ear down to his collarbone.