Blade to the Keep (23 page)

Celesse left, along with nearly everyone else. Rowan looked up at Susan, who’d bent to brush the hair from Rowan’s eyes.

“I’m sorry you had to come all the way out here.”

“It makes me so angry when you can’t see how much you’re loved.” Susan looked to Clive. “Go and have Dina help you get the basics ready for Rowan’s bath.”

To Rowan’s surprise, the powerful Vampire nodded, rising from his chair. He kissed Rowan’s knuckles and left the room.

“I could really slap your foster father’s face for letting this happen to you.”

Rowan cringed. “Please don’t. You don’t have a goddess inside you. Also, it’s really not his fault. I knew she’d be coming after me, but to attack me while I was unarmed the way she did? It’s not what Vampires do. She’s only estranged herself from all Nation-affiliated Vampires at this point. She’s a coward.”

“She nearly killed you. Rowan, she
did
kill you. I got here about an hour before you died the
second
time. There was so much damage. They gave you all their powerful blood, which helped. And Brigid, well, you had this aura around you the whole time, but sometimes it got so dim. I don’t want you to go after Enyo.”

“I have a job to do, Susan. I needed to get the amendment passed and I did. Now my job will be to track and murder this bitch extra-hard. Sometimes the job sucks, and it’s dangerous. But it’s what I do. I know everyone had to give up a few more days to be here, and I’m sorry for messing up everyone’s schedule.”

“You make me so mad! I love you like you’re my own. Rex too. Even your horrid foster father is drowning in guilt over what happened to you. You don’t even see it. You don’t see how many people gathered here? Not because of duty. But because we
know
what you give up for us all. I hate it when you make light of what you do every day. Rex told me a long time ago to stop nagging you over it, but I’m going to right now because I’m scared to death. Yes, the job is dangerous, and yes, we all know it going in. But you have borne such a heavy price from such an early age it breaks my heart. So you will not apologize because you are loved. You will take your pills and you will let everyone fuss and you will not tear off after this monster until you are in tip-top shape once more. And then you will track her and kill her and we will move forward.”

With a sniffle, Susan kissed Rowan’s cheek gently. “Now, I’m sure your Clive is outside feeling badly because he’s eavesdropping. Let him love you and let yourself deserve it or I will be so mad at you.”

She swept to the door, opening it.

“Susan?”

She looked over her shoulder at Rowan.

“I love you too. And thank you. For being here and for the pep talk and stuff.”

“That’s better, sweetheart.”

Clive moved past her into the room. “And you—” Susan pointed at Clive, “—don’t get her worked up.”

It was Clive’s turn to blush as Rowan did her best not to laugh but failed.

“One sponge bath, minus the working up.”

“If you’ll help me up, I can stand in the tub.”

He looked at her like she was insane.

“I didn’t do it on purpose, you know! I had every intention of living. The note said it was you. To meet you in the Orangerie. I was probably even going to let you have sex with me out there. Maybe.”

“We found the card in your clothes when we had to cut them off you as you lay on a table downstairs, bleeding out. I’m sorry. Gods, I’m so sorry.”

He unbuttoned the gown she wore, helping her sit forward to get a towel behind her and the gown away from her body so it wouldn’t get wet. She was one massive bruise only interrupted by stitched-up wounds.

“Sorry for what? That I’m totally not hot right now? I look like a bunch of crayons melting in the sun.”

He carefully rinsed her skin, drying afterward.

“I don’t want to talk about your injuries right now, and your joking about that makes me really angry. I’m sorry because you went out there because of me.”

“No way are you going to feel guilty for that!” Because she so rarely drank or used medications, the pain meds hit her in a warm wave. “Wow, this is sort of nice.”

He chuckled and brushed a kiss over her shoulder.

“Anyway, unless you were in some conspiracy with her to lure me out there to kill me, you can’t possibly be held responsible for what she did. I’m alive right now, and that’s what counts. Also—” she giggled, “—I told her I was going to start calling her Pirate Polly. We need to make that happen.”

He groaned. “I should have been sneaking morphine into your food long before now if I’d known you’d react this way.”

“Are you saying you want to drug me, Scion?”

“To keep you malleable and out of trouble, it would be worth it.”

She snorted and then shivered a little when his fingertips brushed the side of her breast.

“Are you warm enough?” He kept bathing her.

“Yes, that was a shiver of delight. Not that I’m in any shape to have sex with you or anything.”

“Glad you told me. The cast, bruises, stitches and sling didn’t clue me in, sex maniac that I am.”

“Oh, you made a joke.” She giggled again.

He finished up and helped her back into the gown. “I’ll have you know, I’ve got a wonderful sense of humor.”

“Sure, you do. If I need a chuckle about pocket squares or neckerchiefs or hand-sewn loafers, I always think of you first.”

Clive looked at her, laughing. Only she could make him laugh at a time like this.

She settled back and he pulled the blankets up, tucking her in. Her eyes had drifted halfway closed as he’d gotten the water and other bathing things cleaned up. By the time he got seated and put his feet up, she’d started to drift off.

For the first time since that night, the sight of her falling out of consciousness didn’t fill him with panic.

“I love you, Hunter,” he murmured, really liking the sound of it. He’d decided to say it more often because it pleased him. Because he’d nearly lost her. Because it flustered her, and because it was the truth and he didn’t like to lie to himself.

“You told me that. That night when you found me.”

Her eyes were closed, but her mouth curved up into a smile.

“I did.”

“Sorry I scared you.”

He swallowed as he watched the rise and fall of her chest.

“I was scared too.”

That tore at him. She was invincible. The boogeyman of Vampire bad dreams. Rowan didn’t get scared. She did the scaring.

She’d never really shared anything like that with him. Coming from her it was more intimate than a declaration of love.

“You were?”

She swallowed. “There was a point, toward the end, and I thought,
Oh
,
I’m going to die and it’s going to suck because she will win.
I didn’t want to die, Clive. I love you too, by the way. I don’t really want to. You’re uptight and bossy, and you iron your underwear.”

Though he grinned at her doped-up confession, tenderness swamped him. This hard-as-nails woman got to him in ways he’d never imagined possible.

“I’m glad you didn’t die, Rowan. And I’m glad you love me too, even if I am uptight and bossy.”

“Okay.”

She drifted off and he knew it wouldn’t be any time soon before she shared with him with such intimacy again. So he cherished it nearly as much as he cherished the fact that she lived. Against the odds, she was simply too much of a hard ass to give in to such incredible injuries and die.

She’d be back to annoying him on a daily basis soon enough. She had pushed through the amendment, and now she had a new task. Nothing could keep her down for long, and he knew she’d do everything she could to recover if for no other reason than she wanted to hunt down Enyo to kill her true.

He and The First had agreed after the first time she’d died on that table that there would be the worst kind of painful lesson for Enyo. He had people on it already. As did the First. Both men ached to kill Enyo, but both knew Rowan needed to do it herself. Needed to take control and kill the Vampire who’d nearly ended her.

When she was well enough, they’d start the hunt. The First would remain in the Keep. It was the only way to keep the peace while they hunted one of their own. It was too big a risk to have such a powerful Vampire out and roaming all over the place. And though he’d never say it aloud, Clive was glad he wouldn’t have to risk any sort of deterioration of The First’s mood or mental state.

Warren would come along, as would Recht. Rowan would have plenty of backup to keep her alive.

But he’d be there at the end, and when Enyo was dust, he’d finally convince Rowan to go on that vacation.

* * * * *

Look for the next installment of Rowan’s story, BLADE ON THE HUNT,
coming from Lauren Dane and Carina Press in Fall 2014.

Rowan, along with her team of Vampires and human Hunters, follows the bloody trail Enyo leaves in her wake. While Rowan is familiar with her smooth-talking, designer-suit-wearing Scion, Clive shows Rowan the ruthless warrior he’d only hinted at before...

She is a vampire’s worst nightmare...

Get introduced to Rowan Summerwaite in
Goddess with a Blade
, available now!

Goddess with a Blade

Rowan Summerwaite is no ordinary woman. Physical vessel to the Celtic Goddess Brigid and raised by the leader of the Vampire Nation, she’s a supercharged hunter with the power to slay any vampire who violates the age-old treaty.

A recent string of murders has her at odds with Las Vegas’s new Scion, the arrogant and powerful Clive Stewart. The killings have the mark of Vampire all over them, and Rowan warns Clive to keep his people in line—or she’ll mete out her own brand of justice.

Though her dealings with Clive are adversarial to say the least, Rowan is intensely aware of her attraction to him. But she can’t let it distract her from her duty—to find and battle the killer before more women die.

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About the Author

The story goes like this: While on pregnancy bed rest, Lauren Dane had plenty of down time so her husband took her comments about “giving that writing thing a serious go” to heart and brought home a secondhand laptop. She wrote her first book on it before it gave up the ghost. Even better, she sold that book and never looked back.

Today, Lauren is a
New York Times
and
USA TODAY
bestselling author of more than fifty novels and novellas across several genres. Though she no longer has to deal with Polly Pocket and getting those tiny outfits on and off, you may catch her in a nostalgic moment when the house is silent because the kids are all in school and she can get work done. Just a moment, though.

Visit Lauren on the web at
www.laurendane.com
, by email at
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and on Twitter
@laurendane
. You can write to her at: P.O. Box 45175, Seattle, WA 98145.

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ISBN-13: 9781426897634

BLADE TO THE KEEP

Copyright © 2013 by Lauren Dane

Edited by Angela James

All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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