The Bloodline War (29 page)

“Not that would change my mind. You’re going to make a great mother someday, Toni. I won’t steal that from you.”

Her throat moved stiffly. “People adopt all the time.”

A laugh came out of him that did his demonic heritage proud. “Right. Social Services is just dying to send kids down to Vampire Land to be raised by a half-demon father.”

She dismissed that with a wave of her hand. “We could finagle our way around that. Just tell me you don’t love me, Jaċken, and I’ll leave this alone.”

He sat there, painfully mute, unable to lie. “It doesn’t mean anything if I do,” he ground out.

“It means everything!” Tears collected along her lashes.

He surged to his feet and pointed a rigid finger at it. “Don’t you
do
that.”

Alex, her brother, started blinking rapidly at him.

“C’mon, man,” Sedge said from the side of his mouth, “just tell her already.”

A tear tumbled free of Toni’s lashes and rolled down her cheek.

“Okay! Jesus! Yes! I love you.” He threw out his arms. “You satisfied now, you insane battle-axe?!” He spun toward the window, giving her his back.
Shit, shit, shit
. But what else was he supposed to say, for the love of crap? She was crying! He dragged his hand across his upper lip.

“That’s all I needed to know,” she said softly. “Because I love you, too, and—”

“Shut up.” He slammed his eyes closed.

“I most certainly will not shut up.”

He whirled back around and glared at her. “Toni, I swear—”

“Would you just be quiet and listen a minute.” She reached under the conference table and produced a black leather briefcase. “While I was away, I did some research. I wanted to see for myself what all the uproar concerning your genes was about. So, I had my brother hack into the community’s hospital computer and I ran some experiments with the blood graphs on file. Here are two procreation simulations I conducted.” She pulled two sheets of paper out of her briefcase and set them on the conference table. “One is of Jaċken and Beth, compared to one of Dev and Beth.” She pointed to a couple of hills on the second graph. “Strength and health came out high with Dev and Beth’s offspring, but”—she switched to the first graph—“even higher with Jaċken and Beth’s. I’m assuming that’s because of Jaċken’s Rău. But the problem is immediately apparent. Peak 12 is at excessive levels.” She glanced at Dr. Jess. “This is why you determined the Bruns shouldn’t have children, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Jess answered, “exactly so.”

Jaċken sharpened his glare on her. He was
so
happy to be taking this trip down memory lane.

“Then I experimented with my own blood.” She pulled out another graph, but held onto it. “You see, when Alex told me I was a Royal, it got me thinking. Maybe my blood is different, too, and look!” She set the third graph next to the other two. “Here’s me and Dev.”

Roth and Jess leaned forward, Dr. Jess making an interested sound.

“Strength and health increase markedly with this pairing, do you see that? My blood
is
different!”

Dr. Jess’s eyebrows popped up.

“That got me wondering how my DNA would pair up with Rău bloodlines, so I ran Jaċken and me.” She laid down a fourth graph.

Jaċken’s heart staggered out of rhythm and he stopped breathing.

“The numbers for strength and health are through the roof, the highest, yet. And here”—she pointed to a small rise on the graph—“Peak 12 is at
normal Vârcolac levels
!”

“Holy goodness!” Dr. Jess gasped.

Jaċken stared at the fourth graph, feeling like somebody had poured epoxy onto his brain, all the gears and mechanisms inside his skull glued into immobility. He
should
understand what was going on, he really sensed that, but everything was just stuck in a shocked standstill.

“Whatever’s in my Royal bloodlines appears to completely counteract the negative effects of Jaċken’s Om Rău.” She shifted her gaze over to Jaċken. “You and I
can
have children, Jaċken. In fact, I think we’d make one heck of a Vârcolac kid, don’t you?”

Jaċken stared mutely at Toni, feeling like he was going ten rounds with a telephone pole. This…couldn’t be happening. “No,” he rasped out. “It’s not true. It can’t be.”

Just run and hide when you see your father coming
. His mother gently swept the hair off his brow.
Tomorrow will be a better day, Jaċken, you’ll see
. But it never was. So stupid to hope….

“Dr. Jess,” Toni said, “could you please confirm my work is correct?”

Jess nodded. “Dr. Parthen has done everything accurately.”

“No.” Jaċken’s stomach sloshed sideways. Clammy goose bumps broke out over his flesh. He reeled backward. “No!” He spun toward the window again and gripped the frame in tight fists. He wasn’t letting any of it in, not the impossible dream that Toni could actually be telling the truth, not the bone-deep hunger which had been eating him alive ever since he’d met this infuriating woman. He stared at the stars in the sky until they blurred before his vision and formed the word silently with his mouth.
No
.

“Don’t misunderstand Jaċken, okay, Toni?” That was Sedge coming to the rescue. “He’s not rejecting you. It’s just that, for most of his life, he’s had to accept that he’ll never have a wife or children, or love. You erased all of that in about ten seconds flat, and…I’m guessing he’s feeling a little overwhelmed right now.”

Overwhelmed
? There wasn’t a single solid-feeling bone left in his body.

“Thank you, Sedge,” Toni said softly.

Jaċken heard her move around the conference table, coming toward him. He squeezed his fists. The window frame splintered beneath his grip with a soft crunch.

Toni slipped a hand around one of his forearms. “Are you going to make me sit on you until you agree to bond with me, Jaċken? Because I’ll do it. You know I will.”

He dropped his head, a low, pain-filled groan spilling out of him. She would, wouldn’t she? Jesus, he was so in love with this whack-job. He wanted her for his wife more than he wanted to breathe. No more schizophrenia about it. He flat-out
wanted
her. “You’re a beautiful and smart doctor, a damned
Royal
, and I’m…I’m…a Half-Rău hardass.”

She released an unsteady breath. “Oh, Jaċken, do you have any idea how many pieces I’m in on the inside?” She pressed her forehead against his arm, her voice lowering to a whisper. “You’re the only man who’s ever made me feel whole.”

His heart stopped, then restarted, thudding wildly. Jesus Christ, that’s exactly how she made him feel. He turned his head to look at her. Their eyes caught and held, and he saw the truth of her words right there in the depths of her magnificent blue eyes. He swallowed hard and found his voice; it was hanging out at the bottom of his stomach, sloshing around with the acid there, burning his throat on the way up and out. “Holy shit.”

She laughed breathlessly. “Oh, that’s just the beginning of it, pal.”

He straightened. “Why the hell didn’t you say anything before, damn it, about your blood graph?”

“I had to know if you loved me first.” The color of her eyes darkened. “There might be other royal Dragon women out in the world, Jaċken, I don’t know. But as it stands now, I’m the one woman who can be your wife, who can give you a home and children, and I didn’t want you to want me for only that.”

He shook his head at her. “Haven’t you been paying
any
attention
at all
these last few weeks?” He made a grab for her, pulling her into a tight embrace.

She wrapped her arms around his neck just as tightly.

Everyone in the room came to their feet and broke into applause.

“Ah, Jesus.” He tucked his face into her throat and inhaled deeply, allowing himself, at last, the supreme luxury of smelling her as his own. God, yeah, she definitely felt like his, her scent saturating him with such a sense of rightness, it was as if he was finding a long lost piece of his soul in this moment. “Don’t you know,” he whispered against her flesh, “that every viable feeling I’ve ever had in my whole life has been about you.”

The clapping stopped abruptly.

Jaċken lifted his head.

Toni stepped out of his embrace, frowning at the opening door.

At first Jaċken thought it was Kimberly who was knocking while simultaneously pushing open the door—the woman entering had the same short, bobbed blonde hair as Sedge’s wife—but, no, it was some nurse. “Dr. Parthen?”

“Yes, Penny?” Toni’s frown deepened as she moved toward the nurse. “I thought I’d asked not to be disturbed.”

“Um, I’m sorry, but….” The nurse gave her a distressed look. “The hospital was under strict orders to report it if you showed up.”

“What are you talking about?”

Toni’s question was answered as the door swung wide. There, standing in the hallway, were two men with guns and badges, one with brown hair, the other Spanish-looking with tan skin.

Penny gestured weakly at them. “This is Detective John Waterson and Pablo Ramirez of the San Diego Police Department.”

Chapter Thirty-one

Jaċken’s fist hooked out in a brutal uppercut, slamming into the brown-haired cop’s chin to shut that gawping-way-the-fuck-open mouth of his….

All right…no, he didn’t actually do it. But he saw the act in his mind’s eye so clearly, so perfectly, it was as if he actually had. He also wouldn’t mind pulling a Three Stooges on the peckerhead and double-fingering the man’s bulging eyeballs back into their sockets. For Christ’s sake, Toni might as well be naked, the way the cop was eyeballing her.

Jaċken should probably cut the guy some slack, considering Toni did look totally hot. But slack-cutting had never been one of his strengths, and he certainly wasn’t in the mood for it now. No, the longer that cop stared at Toni with such blatant hunger in his eyes, the more Jaċken wanted to introduce the man to getting his ass kicked Rău-style.

“Toni,” the cop exhaled her name. “Good God, you really are here.”

“Detective Waterson?” Toni inflected her voice with mild surprise, although Jaċken saw her hands flex and release at her sides. “What are you doing here? Is something wrong?”

The cop’s expression morphed into something between incredulity and irritation. “You’ve been a missing person for more than two weeks now, Dr. Parthen, and I’ve been busting my hump trying to find you,
that’s
what I’m doing here.” He drew up right in front of her and stared her dead in the eyes.

A growl built in Jaċken’s chest, a single
crackle
popping dangerously in his ears. He forced himself to concentrate on the glow of the light over the conference table, the smell of disinfectant, the sound of Sedge shifting his feet subtly into a stance of readiness. The growl exited his lips as a hard breath.

Toni cut him a chill-out glance.

Waterson followed the look around the edge of the door—and his eyebrows shot straight up.

“I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” Toni tried, but—

The cop wasn’t listening to her. He was already shouldering past Toni, his eyes traveling in swift assessment over their group, lingering on Sedge and Jaċken. Looked like the cop didn’t care much for their large size and obvious strength.

Waterson’s dark-skinned partner followed, then Toni stepped back into the room, her expression strained.

Waterson’s brows made another trip toward the ceiling when he spotted Toni’s brother. “Well, isn’t this interesting?” he drawled. “And here I thought you were frantic with worry over your sister, Alexander. Now you look like you should be having tea with the Queen.”

“Yeah,” Alex chuckled, “no worries, John. Everything’s cool, as it turns out.”

“Oh?” Waterson crossed his arms and rocked back on his heels. “How’s that, exactly?”

“Ah, well, that’s because, um….” Alex’s smile skewed off center.

Jesus
. Obviously, Mr. Milquetoast hadn’t prepped for ways to avoid saying things like “vampires” and “secret, underground community.” Jaċken muttered a curse under his breath. He’d be seriously amazed if he managed to get through this without hitting someone.

“Please, Detectives,” Dr. Jess intervened, a charming smile aimed at the two cops. “If I might be permitted to clarify matters. I think Alex and Toni Parthen might seem a bit awkward because they’re not sure how much they’re allowed to say. You see, these past few weeks Dr. Parthen has been going through a rigorous interview process for a position with our Research Institute. We have a highly classified operation, however, so during the time Dr. Parthen was with us, she wasn’t allowed contact with anyone outside of our facilities, including her family. We’ve just recently determined she’s passed all of her security clearances, and we’ve come here tonight to officially offer her the position.”

“I see,” Waterson responded in the bland tone of someone whose bullshit meter was pinging.

“And the name of this institute?”

Dr. Jess gave Waterson a regretful look. “I’m sorry, but I’m not free to say anything more than I already have.”

Waterson looked less than impressed. “Well, that’s kind of problematic for me, isn’t it?” He turned on Toni. “And you couldn’t have told your family you were going to be out of touch
before
you left for this…interview?”

“Of course, and I thought I had,” Toni answered, rolling smoothly into this new direction. “I was suffering from a concussion, though, and it had made me a bit fuzzy.”

Jaċken almost snorted his appreciation.
Good answer
.

Waterson pursed his lips. “I have to admit to feeling a bit fuzzy here, myself.” He reached into his breast pocket, his lips slanting when Sedge and Jaċken stiffened. The detective pulled out a small notebook and opened it. He glanced at it, then looked back up at Toni. “You wrote numerous emails to your brother stating that you were at a hematology seminar in St. Louis.” He flipped the notebook closed with a short swing of his wrist. “Now why would you have done that, if you were really at some super hush-hush job interview?”