Rachel Lee - Forever Claimed

Now that she was cleaned up, he could see she was pretty. Her eyes had an unusual blue-gray color that reminded him of something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Her hair, wet and straight to her shoulders, showed premature streaks of white and gray amidst the dark curtain. Around her neck on a leather thong was an unusual crystal wolf’s head that caught and splintered light.

A curious, unusual human to be sure. If human she was.

Luc looked at Jude, who nodded. So he began.

“I saved you,” Luc said. “I took you from the park. I found you near death, and while I was preparing to take you from there, one of the rogues who attacked you arrived to finish you off. I gutted him, Dani Makar. I gutted him and broke his neck, then carried you away.”

Horror and satisfaction warred on her face. Horror, no doubt, at his description of the kill, but satisfaction from knowing one of her attackers had met such a fate. She scowled. “You didn’t save me for my sake.”

“No,” Luc agreed. “I brought you here for the sake of my friend, Jude. You were proof of what I had to say.”

“So why should I care?”

“Because you’re still alive.”

Her frown deepened, but she moved uneasily. He leaned toward her, lowering his voice to that hypnotic tone that usually got vampires what they wanted. He fixed her with his gaze, holding her in thrall.

“What are you, Dani Makar?”

She didn’t respond. Some mortals were immune to being vamped, although not very many, but he was disappointed anyway. They needed to know, and she was refusing to tell. He did note, however, that she didn’t quite seem able to break from his gaze. At least he had that advantage.

Then he noticed something else, something that unsettled him to his very core: her gaze was holding him as much as his was holding hers. It was calling to him almost as strongly as her blood. He wanted her in every way possible.

“Merde!” he swore and tore himself away.

Chloe’s sarcastic voice filled the room. “Another fail for the great St. Just.”

“Chloe,” Jude said sharply. “We have enough on our plates. Don’t give Luc a hard time.”

“At least not until you tell me I can,” she said too sweetly. “Or until the next time he interferes with my life.”

Luc barely spared her a glance. He was more focused on Jude, who had to make the next attempt. He noticed that Terri began to look uneasy herself, as if finally realizing that Dani might mean more trouble.

Jude spoke. He didn’t even attempt to vamp Dani. “Okay. You don’t want to tell us anything. But right now we’re wondering if you’re in league with the folks who want to start this war, because if there’s one thing we all know for certain, it’s that you’re not purely human.”

Luc switched his gaze back to Dani. She was looking at Jude now, so their gazes didn’t lock. She bit her lip, clearly hesitating.

“I don’t want to start, or even help in, a war among you bloodsuckers,” she said finally, an edge in her voice. “I wouldn’t mind if you were all dead. I want nothing to do with your kind. But I won’t do a single thing that would harm a human. Not one.”

“I feel enlightened,” Luc said sarcastically. “While I understand your animus toward us, given what those rogues did, you still haven’t answered the question. Are you a threat?”

“Not that I can do anything about it,” Dani said fiercely, “but I am your mortal enemy.”

She might as well have dropped a bomb in the room, she thought with satisfaction. Everyone stood perfectly still and regarded her with concern.

“Well,” said Chloe, breaking the silence finally, “I feel ever so much better. Since I’m human, I guess I can just take a hike now.”

“But you won’t,” Terri said. A frown creased her brow. “You would harm my husband?”

“If I could,” Dani said. “Husband? He holds you in thrall. You’re a slave to him.”

“No, I am not. He can’t vamp me at all. And you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Jude touched her arm. “Easy, my love. She can’t and won’t hurt me. As long as she’s not going to join the rogues, I don’t care what she does.”

Terri looked at him. “But we don’t even know what she is.”

“Dani Makar,” Luc said with quiet significance.

Ice water trickled down Dani’s spine, depriving her of any satisfaction she might have felt at making her opinion of vampires known.

Reluctantly, she looked at him.

“I know who you are.”

He couldn’t possibly know. Her heart began to gallop and her mouth turned dry. Even her family couldn’t identify her as anything except a normal.

“Who?” Jude asked.

“I heard of them when I was up north. Makar. You’re a member of the Makari pack, aren’t you?”

His eyes bored into her. They were golden now, no longer black, but they still seemed to pin her and cleave her tongue. Deprived of speech, she could only stare.

“So, ma belle ,” he said with soft satisfaction, “why haven’t you shifted shape? Are two of us too much?”

Her heart plummeted and her throat closed. Terror and hatred warred in her. Surely they would kill her now.

“But she doesn’t smell like a lycanthrope,” Jude said.

“Oh. My. God.” Chloe groaned. “A werewolf? Here?”

Luc never took his gaze from her. “She’s not a lycanthrope,” he said. “If she were, she’d have shifted to protect herself from us. They never meet our kind in any other form.”

He started smiling, and Dani wished she could spring at him like her family would and separate his head from his body. She did not like that smile at all.

“Poor, broken little wolf,” he said. “You can’t change. Did they exile you?”

Oh, how she loathed him then. But however she felt, she retained enough sense to know that springing at a vampire would only cost her, probably her life. She glared at him. “They’re not like that.”

He shrugged. “I really don’t care. What I care about is that the mystery is solved. Now I have another question. Are you going to send for your pack? Because if you do, given the gathering of vampires that is happening right now, your pack may meet more death than success. I really wouldn’t mind it, you know. The four of us can leave town.”

Dani swallowed hard, torn. If this war they had talked about really was about to happen, she certainly didn’t want her pack involved. Indeed, her mother would probably shrug and say to let the vampires kill each other. On the other hand, if she didn’t threaten these bloodsuckers with her pack, what might they do to her?

“If you let me go,” she said finally, “I don’t want to involve them.”

Jude spoke. “I already told you that you could go. I don’t keep prisoners.” He waved to the door.

“But,” said Luc softly, “it still might be wiser to wait for dawn, little wolf. Those with fewer scruples than Jude are amassing.”

“Why should you care?” she demanded, struggling toward anger to banish her fear and something approaching despair. “Your kind loathes mine. You hunt us like animals.”

“I thought it was the other way around,” Luc said, a faint amusement in his voice. “Your kind would like to see ours exterminated. From my perspective, I have no interest in lycanthropes. They make terrible food, and if they don’t attack me, then I care nothing at all one way or the other.”

She didn’t believe him. She’d grown up with warnings about bloodsuckers. “We don’t hurt humans,” she said. “You do.”

“Some of us do,” Jude said. “Which is the precise reason we’re evidently about to go to war.”

“Jude protects humans,” Terri said, unable to conceal her anger. “Do you? ”