Rhyannon Byrd - Edge of Danger

“I guess so,” he drawled with a deep, decadent rumble of laughter that sounded so purely male, her temperature spiked higher. It was an almost dizzying sensation, that wild, steady rise of her Merrick within her body, the primal creature shifting sinuously beneath her skin as it raised its head and sniffed delicately at the air. She choked back a low, sensual purr, the carnal sound vibrating softly on her tongue, and could have sworn that she could taste the rich, sumptuous flavor of her need. The Merrick was hungry with bloodlust, its craving for nourishment more intense than it’d ever been before, and Saige suspected she knew why.

It was Quinn. Her growing fascination with the dark, mysterious Watchman had easily bled past the woman and into the powerful creature living within her. Even though her awakening of that ancient blood had only just begun, she could feel the building heat in her gums, the fiery burn in her veins…and knew it was coming closer. Mounting. Growing stronger. She was driven by a primal instinct to touch…and taste…and possess—the visceral, sexual urges so potent, she felt almost drunk on their power.

Desperately in need of a distraction, she searched her mind for a topic that was guaranteed to get her mind off sex and back on track. “So we, um…obviously know that the Casus are after me, but what about the Collective?”

Saige watched his expression harden, and could tell from his tone that he held no more love for the ruthless organization than she did. “What about them?”

“Are they already hunting us? Me and my brothers?”

“We’ve had some scouts show up in Henning, where your brothers live…or lived,” he explained. “Ian is at the compound now, and we’re still trying to convince Riley to move up, as well. We’re worried about him being down in town on his own, but so far the scouts haven’t done anything more than sniff around.”

“That seems odd,” she murmured. “Do you think they know Ian is at Ravenswing?”

He lifted one rugged, beautiful hand, and rubbed at the back of his neck, his powerful bicep straining the sleeve of his T-shirt. “If they do, I’m sure we’ll know soon enough, seeing as how Collective soldiers aren’t ones to employ patience. But for the time being, our biggest problems are the Casus and the Consortium.”

Saige sent him a startled look of surprise. “But I thought you were a part of the Consortium.”

“You know about the council?” he asked, his own surprise evident in the softly spoken words. Turning right at the next corner, they continued deeper into the aged neighborhood, the winding road taking a slight incline up the mountainside, back toward the jungle, while the succulent scents of home-cooked meals thickened on the air.

“From what I understand,” she told him, “the Consortium governs all the ancient clans, like some kind of preternatural United Nations.”

And as far as Saige knew, it was the Consortium who had helped the Merrick imprison the Casus over a thousand years ago, after the Casus’s relentless killing of humans threatened to expose the existence of the nonhuman races. The council had fashioned the Dark Markers to destroy the immortal killers, only to be murdered by the newly created Collective Army before they could complete the task. Years later, the Consortium had finally been formed again, but by then its original archives had been lost…all traces of the Markers supposedly destroyed during the Collective’s bloodthirsty raids, which nearly led to the destruction of the clans. By the time the Consortium was back in power, no one knew where the Markers were, or how to find them…or even if they had ever truly existed. The new Consortium had supposedly been searching for the original archives for centuries, as had the Collective, hoping the lost records would lead to some answers, but as far as Saige knew, neither group had ever found them.

“You actually report to the Consortium, don’t you?” she asked, wondering if Quinn was even aware of the maps’ existence.

“Yeah,” he rasped, slanting her an odd look.

“What?”

Quinn rolled his broad shoulders with only a fraction of movement, finally shoving his restless hands into his pockets. “I guess I’m just surprised that with as much as you know about everything—which seems to be a hell of a lot—you never tried to warn your brothers about what you’d learned. It would have been nice if they’d known what was coming.”

Instead of getting defensive, Saige responded with a small, bitter smile. “Who says I didn’t?”

She could read the questions in his dark eyes as he cut her a slow, interested look.

Wrapping her hands around the frayed strap of her backpack, she explained. “The last time I saw Riley, I tried to warn him…to tell him that I feared I’d found the cross in Italy for a reason. That I was afraid it could be a sign, one that meant the legendary awakenings the gypsies had foretold were actually coming. And do you know what he told me?” she asked, barging ahead without waiting for a response. “He said we’d be monsters if the things I believed ever turned out to be true, same as the Casus, and that we’d be better off dead. Then he said that if I ever mentioned the Merrick to him again, I could forget he was my brother.”

Quinn frowned, turning his attention back to the encroaching shadows. “I don’t know what Riley’s problem was,” he said, “but I might as well go ahead and warn you now, Saige. Both of your brothers are going to be furious when they learn that your awakening has already started and you didn’t come to them for help. They really are worried about you.”

“I doubt that,” she offered with a soft laugh. She had no idea how to deal with such a bizarre thought…and couldn’t help but doubt its truth, no matter how much Quinn believed it.

He slanted her a curious look, studying her from beneath those heavy lashes, and Saige had the strangest feeling that he could see right through her, into all the embarrassing longing and churning doubts that plagued her. “You just might be in for a surprise when we get to Colorado.”

“Look, I don’t know what impression my brothers have given you, but we’re not exactly close,” she said, her gaze sliding away from those dark eyes that made her feel too exposed…too bare. “It’s been that way since Ian started getting older. Everything began to change after that. My mother’s preoccupation with the family bloodline drove a wedge between me and my brothers, until not talking about the Merrick became the axiom of our twisted little family.”

“If that’s true, then I guess it would help explain why Riley never mentioned your warnings to Ian.”

“To be honest, I’m not surprised that he didn’t,” she offered quietly, her mind taking her back to the past. “Something happened when Riley was in his teens, after Ian had already run away, but he’s never told me what it was. All I know is that he never talked about the Merrick again from that point on.” She drew in a deep breath, staring for a moment up at the peaceful beauty of the clear, star-studded sky. “Whatever it was, it still haunts him. When things started happening to Ian, Riley probably did everything he could to convince himself there was an explanation, logical or otherwise, that didn’t involve the Casus and the Merrick. I can imagine how he reacted when he was finally forced to face the truth.”

Another low rumble of laughter vibrated in his chest, the wry sound confirming what she’d already guessed. “He definitely didn’t take it well when my unit contacted him, but once we explained exactly what Ian was going up against, he came with us to help. And after he saw what the Casus was capable of, it drove him crazy that he didn’t have any way of contacting you. He was ready to come after you himself when we couldn’t get in touch with Templeton, but Kierland Scott, who heads up our unit, refused to tell him where you were. Said Riley was only going to run off and get himself killed, when he needed to be at Ravenswing, learning how to prepare for his own awakening.”