Light Beyond the Darkness (12 page)

“Of a sort,” he said, hedging.

“What did you have in mind?”

He sat back on his haunches, turned his face to the side, and looked out the window at the darkened sky and the roofs of the nearest buildings.

“I want to visit your coterie.”

* * * *

She hadn’t given him a direct answer that night. She hadn’t been able to. Instead, she feigned exhaustion—which wasn’t really feigning—and promised they could discuss it the next day. Reid had accepted her response, had shed his clothing and curled himself around her body, and fallen asleep with her wrapped securely in his arms.

Except she didn’t feel secure, anymore.

In truth, she felt the urge to run. She wanted to slip out from under his arm, quietly let herself out of his apartment, rush back to her own house, pack her meager belongings, and disappear from this life she’d forged for herself. She wanted to go somewhere where no one knew who she was, what she was.

She’d thought she’d found that here, in this city teeming with humans, many of whom appreciated her culinary skill. Her roommates were perfectly willing to accept her refusal to discuss her past, to tell them anything about herself, really. The owner of the restaurant where she worked was thrilled to allow her to practice her trade, to improve her skills. The patrons were more than happy to devour her creations. Everything had been as perfect as it could be.

Until Reid walked into her life.

He’d turned her life upside down, caused her to question everything about herself, about her past, her future. He helped her to understand the pleasure that should be derived when two people come together intimately. He gave her no choice but to believe in herself, to respect herself, to believe that she deserved better than what she’d had with Miguel, than what her family had expected from her.

And now he wanted her to go back to that life. To face her demons.

Miguel.

“Why?” she asked the next morning. She had slipped out of bed shortly after dawn, having given up on any attempts at sleeping. She’d climbed into the shower and stood there, letting the heated water beat on her, soak into her skin.

After only a few minutes, he joined her, standing behind her and washing her hair, massaging her scalp, and causing her to very nearly forget why she had spent the last night tossing and turning instead of sleeping.

“Why do I want to visit your coterie?”

Carley nodded.

“Because I believe the Finn you mentioned is my brother.”

She turned around, stared up into his face. He looked grim, as if he did not want to go to the coterie either, yet for some reason felt compelled.

“I hadn’t really thought about it until now, but you and Finn do have different coloring from the rest of the shifters I’ve met.”

“You know others? Besides Finn and Tanner?”

“Tanner’s mother, Arianna. Another named Lisa, and her two children. She calls them pups. They all have dark hair, although Arianna’s had gone white. After Olivia healed her, it has begun to grow in dark again. The queen used her magic to color the ends, so that it did not look so strange.”

“Arianna is alive? And Lisa Bearrans? She whelped her pup?” He shook his head. “Of course she did. She was near to whelping nine months ago.”

“You know them? You’re from that pack too?” Instinct encouraged her to shrink away from him, but she fought it. He was like Tanner and Finn, Lisa and Arianna. He did not believe he needed to kill her to inherit her magic. Either that or he simply did not care about gaining the magic in the first place.

He sensed her internal turmoil. She could see it on his face. He reached for her, his hand wavered, and then dropped to his side. He turned away from her, showing her his back, the white, puckered scars there. As he climbed out of the shower, she whispered, “Of course you are.”

“What does that mean?” he asked. He grabbed a towel, draped it across his shoulders, effectively covering his back. His past. Then he grabbed another and began drying his body.

“I don’t care about the scars,” she said, because she needed to say it as much as she suspected he needed to hear it. But he did not acknowledge her words. Instead, he left the bathroom, with the towel still draped over his shoulders.

She turned off the water and snagged a towel, quickly drying her body and hurrying after him. “Reid,” she said when he opened the dresser drawer and extracted a T-shirt. “Make love to me.”

His body went rigid for a moment, and then he turned to face her. His pale eyes glowed. His body was obviously turned-on.

By me.

“Make love to me,” she said again. She deliberately pulled the towel away from her body, let it drop to the floor. She stood there, needing him to come to her, to lead her to the bed. It was still so hard for her to make the first move. Before Reid, she’d never wanted to. Now, she was still half-afraid to.

But she needed him to understand. She didn’t care that he was from that pack. She didn’t care that his back was a mess of white, puckered scars, a constant reminder of what he’d gone through in his past life. She believed he did not want to kill her for her magic. He probably didn’t even care that she was a lightbearer. He wanted her for her, nothing more, nothing less.

In two steps, he stood before her, his hands twisted in her wet hair, his mouth slanted over hers, his erection brushing against her belly. She wrapped her arms around his waist, pulling him closer, melding their bodies together. She felt her magic flare, felt Reid’s body react. He pressed her against the wall, pulled his hands from her hair, and wrapped them around her thighs, lifting her off her feet.

She clung to him, her arms around his back, her fingernails scraping over the scars. She locked her ankles around his waist and pressed her thighs against his hips, as he pushed into her. He didn’t break the kiss. He continued to ravish her mouth as his hips slapped against hers, again and again. Even when she cried out as her orgasm hit, he swallowed her cry and continued to kiss her, until his hips began to piston uncontrollably, and he suddenly stiffened and poured his seed into her.

They remained like that for a long while afterward, until Carley realized she had not had a panic attack, like she had the last time they’d made love with her pressed against a wall. It was, in her mind, a significant step in the right direction. She wanted to be able to give everything to Reid, to make love with him any way he desired, regardless of how she’d been conditioned from years of living with Miguel. She was not entirely there, but she’d made great inroads in just a few short weeks.

* * * *

“I cannot. I can’t go back. I’m sorry.”

She made crepes with raspberry puree, and Reid devoured his, while she picked at the food on her plate.

“Because of the one who abused you? He’s still there?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. She had no idea where Miguel was. Before she left, Alexa had told her he’d disappeared. While the vast majority of the Chosen One’s followers had either been killed or captured, Miguel had been one of the few who had simply vanished. Lightbearers could not literally vanish, of course, which meant he was probably still alive, and was hiding somewhere. The Chosen One had remained hidden for ten years. Miguel had learned from the best.

“I’ll protect you.”

She considered telling him, admitting that she was mated to the very man she feared. But she held back. How would Reid react to learning he was sleeping with a woman who was mated to another? Would he see it as a betrayal? He was a possessive man; he told her it was a shifter trait. She did not imagine he would appreciate the fact that technically she belonged to another, even if she wanted to be with him.

“You don’t understand.” She stood, began clearing their plates from the table.

“Then tell me. Explain.”

“Why don’t you explain those scars on your back?” It was an unfair response, she knew, as soon as she said it. But she could not take back the words, and she watched as he closed up, right before her eyes. She literally watched the transformation, as his face shifted from open, earnest, hopeful, to shut down. She turned away from the sight, placed the dishes on the counter, and continued on, walking down the hall to the bedroom, where she gathered the various pieces of clothing and other items that had collected at his apartment since they started sleeping together. She had begun to leave quite a large amount of herself at his place, after only a very short time with the man.

“Don’t leave.”

He stood in the doorway, blocking her exit. His eyes were glowing again. His emotions were high, although she doubted he was turned on at the moment.

“I have to go to work.”

“Not for another four hours. Don’t leave me.”

“I’m…Reid, I can’t. Please don’t ask me. I understand you believe Finn is your brother. I suspect he is, too. Your features, your coloring is so similar. Even your actions, your mannerisms are—”

“I’m suddenly extremely jealous of my brother, if you know so much about him.”

She laughed, surprised that she was able to at all, at the moment. “I told you, he’s in love with Cecilia. He appreciated my cooking, nothing more. And I never saw him as anything more than the man who loved my cousin.”

“That’s a relief.”

She gnawed on her lower lip. “I wish I could even just tell you how to get there without me, but I cannot. The charms around the coterie are such that none except those who are direct descendants of the king can tell anyone else its location.”

He snapped his fingers. “My sister.”

Carley’s eyes widened. “I remember Finn and Cecilia going to visit his sister. In Tennessee, I believe.”

“He took a lightbearer to visit my sister?”

“Well, she followed him, after he went by himself. I think she was afraid he planned to stay there.” She paused, then added, “If he really is your brother, which I truly believe, the more I think about it, then your parents are there, as well. When they returned, I remember Cecilia mentioning that their reception hadn’t exactly been warm and fuzzy.”

“They lived their entire lives under Quentin’s reign. And I imagine they blamed the lightbearers for the demise of their pack. Even though we are all better off with Quentin dead, it is very difficult for a shifter to walk away from the only pack he has ever known.”

“You did.”

He nodded.

“It’s because of those scars, isn’t it?”

He said nothing, but shifted his gaze to stare out the window.

“He did it to you, didn’t he? Your pack master, I mean. You would never have left, otherwise,” she guessed.

“I didn’t leave, even afterward. I didn’t leave until I received word that the pack master was dead. And I presumed at the time, so was my brother. I figured without Quentin holding them back, my parents would make their way to my sister in Tennessee. And I was free to get away from pack life, from the oppression of a bastard pack master. Except I haven’t felt…whole. Or complete, I guess, since I left.”

Her heart ached for him. She wanted to help him, to do what she could to make him feel whole again. But she could not take him to the coterie. Anything but that.

“I’ll go with you,” she blurted.

His head shot up, his eyes glowing almost as brightly as they did when they made love.

“To Tennessee,” she modified. “I’ll talk to the manager at the restaurant tonight. He won’t be happy, but neither will he complain too much, so long as I promise to come back.” She arched her brows.

“I’ll bring you back,” he promised. He strode across the room and swept her into his arms. “Thank you.”

He then proceeded to express his gratitude the way that Carley was quickly becoming addicted to.

They did not leave until the following Monday. While he impatiently waited, Reid had Roman show him how to look up his family using the Internet. He even let Reid borrow his cell phone, so he could call his sister. Felicia was so relieved to hear from him that she began sobbing and had to hand the phone to her mate, Ben, who promised to let Reid’s parents know he was alive and well.

“Finn? Is—is he really alive?” he’d asked.

Ben had snorted. “Alive and well. Mated to a lightbearer, if you can believe it. Remember those magical beings your old pack master kept insisting were still alive? Turns out he was right.”

Reid blew out a sigh of relief. Even though Carley had already said it, to hear Ben, who knew Finn and Reid both, confirm it, made it all the more real.

“I know,” he said in reply to Ben’s comment about lightbearers. “As it turns out, I know one, too.” More intimately than any other being, ever. And he wished it could be more—if only he could get past his issues and give himself fully to her.

“Oh yeah? That’s so crazy, that for five hundred years, everybody but Quentin thought they were extinct, and now you and Finn both know one. And Quentin’s son is mated to one too. So when you coming to visit?” Ben shifted gears so quickly, it took Reid a moment to catch up.

“Soon. Hopefully in the next few days.”

“Felicia’s going to be over the moon. I bet your parents will be, too. How long you planning to stay?”

“I’m not sure. Not long,” he warned, thinking of Carley’s dedication to the restaurant. “I’m bringing someone with me. The lightbearer I know.”

“I think I’m glad Felicia mated to me when we were so young. Falling for lightbearers apparently runs in your family.”

Falling for a lightbearer? While Reid acknowledged that he was obsessed with Carley, that he had no intention of letting her go anytime soon, he wasn’t sure he was quite ready to call it
falling for her
.

“She has been hurt in her past,” he told Ben. “Tell my family not to make a big deal of this. She’s…skittish.”

* * * *

She was also nervous. He’d rented a car to drive to Tennessee, and Carley spent nearly the entire trip sitting in the passenger seat, wringing her hands and staring out the passenger side window.

“They don’t bite, Carley. Okay, they do. But only food, I promise,” he remarked, trying to relieve her tension. Funny, as nervous as he was, he found himself feeling more and more lighthearted, the closer they drew to the Nashville area, where his sister and parents lived.