Into the Light (28 page)

Why had she not stopped it? Why had Dane not stopped it?

Dane? It didn’t make sense. Olivia had always insisted he was nothing more than a brother.

But as he thought about it, he realized it did make sense. The fact that Dane went to Vegas when he found out Olivia was missing. Several conversations he recalled overhearing, conversations that were intimate in the way of families—or lovers.

Had this been the plan all along? Was that why Olivia went to Vegas? A bachelorette party gone bad? One last opportunity to experience life, before she settled down to see to her duties as the only child of the king of the lightbearers? Tanner had expected that it would be his pup in her belly that might be king someday, not Dane’s. Dane wasn’t king material, and Tanner couldn’t imagine that his offspring would be either.

The crowd cheered and clapped, and Tanner realized the ceremony was over. Olivia was mated to another. To Dane.

It didn’t make sense.

The king turned away from the crowd and directed his attention to the back of the balcony. Tanner could not make out the conversation over the cheering, but it was obvious that Sander was having a very animated conversation with someone. Dane disappeared from view. All of those jealous feelings that Tanner assumed he didn’t have because it was Dane and Dane was hardly a threat suddenly flooded his system. He wasn’t a threat—yet he was.

He was the ultimate threat.

The glass balcony doors opened and closed and Tanner thought he caught a glimpse of Olivia stepping through them, followed by Dane, and it took everything he had not to shift into the form of a bird and fly up there to find out what the hell was going on. He needed to know. He needed to hear it from Olivia.

The king stepped up to the railing again and lifted both hands. There was a nervous smile on his face. Was he about to confide in his subjects that the coterie was broke?

Instead of that, he thanked his subjects for joining the party and for being a part of this special day. He informed them that his daughter and Dane were so excited about their sudden mating that they immediately decided to spend some time alone.

Tanner was twenty feet in the air before he realized he’d just shifted in the middle of a group of lightbearers. He didn’t care. He had to talk to Olivia.

* * * *

“Dane, leave me alone,” Olivia cried out when she finally ran out of breath and stopped running, only to realize he had been chasing her since she left the balcony after her father’s horrible, horrible stunt. She hadn’t even been able to tell him that his ceremony was null and void because she was already mated.

“Olivia, talk to me. We’ll figure this out.”

She abruptly stopped and whirled around. Dane nearly ran into her, not having expected her to stop so suddenly.

“There is nothing to figure out. I do not want to be mated to you. I want Tanner. I am already—”

“I know.”

She stopped talking and stared at him. He waved one hand in a vague fashion.

“If it wasn’t obvious by the way he glowed, it was certainly obvious by the way you look at one another, and by the way he is so possessive of you. Not to mention the fact that he healed you, using
your
magic, I might add.”

Olivia felt a great deal of her fury deflate as if she were a balloon. She slumped against the nearest wall. “If you can see it, why can my father not?”

“He sees what he wants to see. He always has.”

“I cannot be your mate, Dane.”

“I know. And I realize that I should be flattered to be mated to the princess, but to be honest, I do not wish to be mated to you, either.”

“We aren’t—” Before she could finish the sentence, a bird flew in through the nearest open window. It was a great black bird with furious-looking pale blue eyes. Olivia recognized it immediately.

Tanner shifted into the form of a human and did not even spare Olivia a glance before storming up to Dane and cold cocking him before he even comprehended what was happening. Dane collapsed into an unconscious heap.

“Tanner,” Olivia admonished, and she dropped to her knees and lifted Dane’s head into her lap.

“Don’t touch him,” Tanner growled. “You’re
my
mate.” He sounded like a vicious animal. A vicious, wounded animal.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Olivia said without taking her eyes off Dane’s face. “I have to heal him. Why did you punch him?”

“You’re my mate,” Tanner growled again.

“So you keep repeating. But that does not give you the right to punch him.”

She began pushing healing magic into Dane. He stirred slightly but did not wake. Before she could finish, she was forcibly pulled to her feet. She winced as Dane’s head fell from her lap and banged onto the wooden floor. She turned around and glared at Tanner.

“Let me go,” she demanded.

He tightened his grip on her arm. Magic flared around his hand.

“Did you know?” he asked.

She gave him a bewildered look. “Know what?”

“Your father just attempted to mate you with Dane,” he growled. His pale blue eyes glowed like lighthouse beacons.

“Actually, it was more than just an attempt,” Olivia admitted.

“Did you know?” he repeated.

She sighed and stopped struggling to get out of his grip. “Yes,” she admitted.

She watched as the pain flickered across his face, and she thought,
I’ve hurt the only man I truly love
.

“Tanner, I can explain—” she started, but he released his grip on her arm so suddenly that she stumbled and nearly fell.

“What is there to explain, Olivia? That you knew that you were due to be mated, so you took off to Vegas for one last trip? One last fling? What the fuck do you think we just did this afternoon? You think just because our mating ceremony is different, it doesn’t mean the same damn thing?”

“No, that isn’t it at all. I swear. I just—”

“You knew. You knew you were promised to Dane. Fucking
Dane
,” he spat, as if the name tasted vile on his lips.

“Hey,” Dane protested weakly from where he lay on the floor, feebly attempting to push himself into a seated position.

“Shut up,” Tanner snapped before lifting his eyes to glare at Olivia again. “You lied to me.”

“I did not,” Olivia protested. “I never said—” The man simply would not let her finish a sentence. It was not unlike speaking to her father.

“You never said a damn thing. You just let me fuck you. You just let me mate with you, in the way of the shifters. And then you just mated with someone else. You’re a fucking polygamist.”

“Tanner, please listen to me—”

“You can have her,” Tanner said with disgust. He waved a hand at Dane. Magic shimmered in the air and Dane winced. “But I wouldn’t trust her to be faithful if I was you.”

And then he was gone, shifted into the form of a bird again. He flapped his wings and soared toward the same window through which he’d entered a few minutes prior. Olivia made a strangled cry of protest and lifted her arms to try to stop him, but he twisted his body and dodged her outstretched arms and then he was gone, through the window and out of her life.

“Tanner,” she said on a sob, as she collapsed onto the floor next to Dane.

“What happened?” Dane mumbled as he lifted a hand and pressed it to his head. “Did someone hurt you?”

Olivia choked on another sob. “No. I hurt him.”

Rick Pantera’s home was significantly more modest than Tanner’s father’s overdone manor home. But then again, Rick’s pack was significantly smaller than Quentin’s, and Rick was far less pretentious and overbearing.

Rick also took no stock in the belief that one could inherit magic from a lightbearer by killing her.

“Frankly, I didn’t even believe they still existed,” he admitted to Tanner, as they sat in a small office with barely enough square footage to hold the small, battered wooden desk and chair and the two arm chairs that faced it. Rick leaned back in his comfortable, worn office chair, his hands twined behind his head, as he regarded the younger man seated before him. Rick, like every pack master in every other pack in the country—on the continent—well knew Tanner’s father, if only by reputation.

He waved at Tanner’s person. “But it’s hard to deny your glow. How’d you inherit the magic again?”

“I didn’t tell you in the first place,” Tanner replied. He was not nearly as at ease as Rick appeared, but then again, he knew that despite the other shifter’s outer demeanor, he was just as alert as Tanner. The two men had not yet determined whether they could trust one another. “And I haven’t inherited any magic. It’s just residual glow from being in their coterie,” he lied. It was residual glow from making love to Olivia, but Pantera didn’t need to know that.

“A coterie,” Rick mused, sounding fascinated. “They banded together, formed their own pack, and then hid it with magic so no one could figure out where they were, let alone discover they still existed. And then they flourished, no doubt, while we all assumed they’d been wiped out by either the fae or us, or most likely, both. There must be thousands of them.”

Tanner did not like the faint glow of excitement in the other shifter’s eyes. “The coterie is as well hidden today as it has been for five hundred years,” he said with a warning in his voice.

Rick gave up the pretense of appearing casual and dropped his palms onto his desk, leaned forward, and gave Tanner a sharp look. “If you are implying that I might turn into your father, I want you to know that I am highly insulted by your insinuation.”

“That is good to hear. However, someone alerted him to my presence two weeks ago. Considering I only met four from your pack, I have to assume it was one of them.”

“Who did you meet?”

Tanner gave his answer some consideration before responding. Three days ago, he’d left the coterie in a fit of rage, flying off as a bird, with no real intention or plan in his head. He had been so shocked, so devastated, so furious at what transpired out on that balcony that evening. And then when he confronted Olivia and she admitted that she’d known of her father’s plan all along, Tanner had very nearly lost his mind for a few moments there.

She’s mine
, the voice in his head raged.

She’s a lightbearer. Whose law covers her, really
?

That was the real question. She claimed she understood what it meant for a shifter to take another from behind. She said she knew it meant they would be mated. He assumed she understood that when shifters mated, it was for life, as, he assumed, most if not all other magical species. It was a common joke amongst the magical communities that the fae were the only species who rarely took mates because they were the only ones who could not commit for life. They lived forever, after all, and forever was a damned long time.

Why had she done it, if she knew of her father’s plan? Did she mean to make a mockery of his species? Or, more likely, was she simply caught up in the affair, enjoying herself, and she did it because she wanted to continue along that vein, until she had no choice and mated with Dane?

Of all lightbearers in the coterie, it had to be Dane. Even though he had no real basis for such thoughts, he couldn’t help but wonder if Olivia had intended to keep sleeping with Tanner on the side, while to the public, she was mated to Dane. He wasn’t a vain man, but there was enough testosterone running through his system for him to know that he was twice the man Dane was. Olivia would never be satisfied with Dane as her mate.

Lost in his own tumultuous thoughts, Tanner had flown through the protective wards of the coterie, barely noticing the flare of magic as he did so. By the time the second day rolled around, he was calm enough to be willing to go back. Besides an almost addictive need to see Olivia, he knew he had an obligation to see to Lisa and his mother’s safety. Who knew what Sander Bennett would do to them without Tanner there to keep him in check?

But he could not get back into the coterie. Hell, he couldn’t even tell where the damn lightbearer community was from the outside. He prowled around the general area, as a dog, a cat, and a bird, until he was forced to give up and seek shelter from a storm that had rolled in overnight.

When he woke the next morning, it occurred to him that he had some unfinished business to tend to, and since he was locked out of the coterie for the moment, he might as well see to it. If nothing else, it would give he and Olivia both time to think. He had no idea what would transpire—hell, would he be willing to be her concubine just to taste her and touch her once in a while?—but he knew that whatever happened, he was not finished with Olivia Bennett. Not by a long shot.

In the meantime, he headed southwest to speak to Rick Pantera about the attack that had occurred some two weeks prior.

“Your son,” he responded to Pantera. “And your daughter, and two of their friends. One looked as if he could be related to the two of them. The other was a meathead that your daughter obviously has a crush on.”

Rick grimaced. “That would be Chuck Wezel. He is a meathead,” he admitted. “And my daughter is a fool not to see it. Despite her attraction to him, she is actually a highly intelligent girl. To tell you the truth, there was a point when I was considering declaring her my heir, instead of Andy, because he was taking so damn long to start acting like a future pack master. The other was probably my nephew, Derrick. He and Chuck are practically inseparable.”

Tanner nodded. “Andy impressed me when I met him. I suspected he was the pack master’s son even before he said it.” He decided complimenting the man’s offspring would certainly not hurt, and his praise for Andy was legitimate.

“Thank you,” Rick said, acknowledging the compliment. “But I cannot imagine any of them would have alerted your father to your presence here. We tend to keep to ourselves, and Wyoming is quite a distance from here.”

“His trackers are impressive,” Tanner said, and he thought about Finnegan Hennigan, who’d turned a blind eye when Tanner first escaped with Olivia, Freddy, and Lisa. “But I do not think they found us. I believe someone local knew to contact my father’s pack.”