Blood Instinct (8 page)

She lowered her lips, gliding them from one nipple to the other before kissing down to his belly button and back up again in slow, tempered teases.

Despite not seeing it coming, despite knowing nothing of his Higher Order heritage that could have led her even to suspect, there couldn’t have been a more perfect leader.

Caleb Dehain, the vampire leader they had waited almost a century for, had been beneath her fingertips for all those decades – and she was going to lay claim to him all over again. She was going to unleash a force like none the world had ever seen.

‘The brother you threatened to kill a little over a week ago?’

‘Come on, Caleb. You know me. You know the banter. But this is no longer a game. You can have everything. And this time you can have me too.’

‘And Jarin – your betrothed?’

‘What about Jarin?’ she asked dismissively as she slid her hand back over his perfectly honed chest and down to the tattoo he’d had done for her all those decades before. She ran her fingers along it before unfastening his belt, sending him only a swift glance before opening his trousers.

Caleb finally cast his cigarette aside. He caught hold of her jaw, guiding her to stand as he eased himself to a seated position, his thighs either side of hers, his abs tensing distractingly with the motion.

She gazed deep into his green eyes; eyes only she knew the darkness of. The potential of.

‘Do you remember that one night?’ she asked, easing his hand from her jaw and placing his palm over her breast, freeing herself so she could kiss him on the neck. A kiss that was as much about her need to taste him as drawing him closer. ‘Out here? The things we did to each other? Remember when you had me over the balcony wall, whilst surveying your kingdom? That can be every night,’ she said against his ear. ‘
Whenever
you want.’

She traced her mouth across to his, their breath mingling. And she waited.

She wanted him to make the first move – to assure her she was back on the right track.

But he didn’t. Yet neither did his gaze flinch.

‘Can you smell her now, Caleb? On the breeze? That serryn? Your sacrifice?’

‘Right now it’s somewhat subdued by the overpowering scent of your perfume,’ he declared, his inactive hand dropping from her breast.

She exhaled tersely at his mild rebuke. ‘You want to punish me. I get that. But don’t punish your kind. They need you, Caleb. Do what you want to me,’ she said, moving that fraction closer.

She slid her hands back up his chest and up through his soft hair before teasing the back of his neck. ‘I’m yours for the taking.’ She held her lips only an inch from his. ‘
Any
way you want.’

A second later she was flat on her back on the table, the stone cold against her back, the silk of her dress a feeble barrier.

She held her breath as she stared up into his green eyes as he parted her thighs with his, relishing in the power and speed with which he’d overpowered her; savouring having him above her again – the first step in the right direction.

He unfastened her tie-belt with a quick and easy flick, his eyes not leaving hers as the silk slid across her bare skin and pooled either side of her.

She instinctively arched her back, willing him onwards. Soon enough she would have him back inside her body as she simultaneously burrowed back inside his mind. It had been too long since she’d felt him; since she’d remembered what it was like to have Caleb Dehain inside her. To feel his lips taste her, his hands caress her.

But she’d never forgotten. Caleb Dehain was impossible to forget.

She remembered the sessions when silence reigned between them amidst sex that was hard and wild and brief. Then there had been the sex that had lasted for hours, days even.

And then those moments where she’d had glimpses into the other side of him – the side that made him vulnerable enough for her to break him over and over again.

And all that time she’d unwittingly been creating a king worthy to lead their kind – to be as merciless as he needed to be in order to be a great leader.

As he glanced down at her bare breasts Feinith arched her back further, offering herself to his lips, to his mouth, to his touch. All she needed was for him to experience her once more and she knew he would be hers again.

She reached up to cup the back of his neck, edging his lips closer to hers. ‘It’s still there, isn’t it – that capability? That dark flame.’

‘It doesn’t spoil it for you now that I’m not your bit of rough anymore?’

She smiled. He cared – he still cared what she thought.

He was so angry with her for her betrothal to Jarin because he cared. He’d thrown his toys out of the pram. He’d had a fling with that serryn just to prove his worth and to try and prove to himself that he felt nothing for her.

But he did feel something for her. He always had – and he always would. She would always be his obsession as much as he was hers.

‘You’ll always be my bit of rough,’ she replied. ‘King or not.’

As he lowered his mouth towards her right breast, she smiled to herself and rolled her shoulders back as she felt his breath within an inch of her nipple.

But instead of taking her into his mouth, he blew. Gently. A steady stream of cool air to caress and tease one of the most sensitive parts of her body.

She lifted her feet onto the edge of the table, slid her hand down into his trousers to ease him out of their confines as he met her gaze again. Except this time he removed her hand and pressed it down beside her head as he rested his other palm flat alongside her waist.

‘Who paid The Alliance to try and kill me and Jake?’

Her breath snagged in her throat. She knew her eyes had flared despite herself. She knew he would sense the slight increase in her pulse that she fought hard to curb. He was too perceptive not to notice it. He was too perceptive of everything.

Worse, his tone was too calm, too in control.

He did it very occasionally but to good effect: making her feel that tiniest sense of vulnerability that no one else could. And
that
was why he had laid her out naked.

But he couldn’t have known. There was no way he could know it had been Jarin. More to the point, that
she
knew it had been Jarin.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Do you know?’ he asked.

‘Why would
I
know?’

As he searched her gaze, she knew she had to break away.

‘This is not the most important thing right now,’ she said.

Irritated by his lack of sexual intent, she moved to cover herself but he pre-empted her, slamming her other wrist next to her head too.

She caught her breath at the force of his manoeuvre, at those perfect bowed lips enticingly close to hers, reminding her what he was capable of.

She parted her lips in readiness as she waited for him to make the next move.

‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Maybe not.’

She frowned at his crypticness.

But to a mixture of her frustration and relief, he pulled away, walking over to rest both forearms on the barrier as he surveyed Blackthorn.

She eased herself from the table and refastened her dress as she stepped up behind him, further irritated by the detour. ‘Caleb, what is this about?’

‘It’s about asking the right questions, Feinith.’

‘
What
questions?’

‘Like why, if Throme has always wanted Kane so badly – badly enough to go to this extent – he let him go when he had him? If this was purely about this so-called cure, why did he let him slip through his fingers?’

‘Because the arrest Caitlin Parish made was illegal. Kane could have called me as the diplomat at any point if he’d chosen to.’

‘And Throme couldn’t have overruled you?’ His eyes narrowed on the mist, which had taken on a subtle violet hue. ‘More interestingly, with his precious Kane on the run again, it was Parish he sent after him.’

Feinith slid her hand down his back. ‘Caleb, I don’t see how any of this is relevant to—’

‘To what Throme is
really
planning?’ His green eyes locked on hers again. ‘This is about more than a cure. Throme wants Malloy for something else.’ He looked ahead again. ‘Something to do with Parish. And there’s only one thing that links Malloy and Parish beyond the obvious. Rumour has it Arana Malloy incited a soul ripper.’

‘Caleb, forget Sirius for now. Our focus should be on finding that serryn alive and well.’

‘Oh, she’s perfectly fine. I wouldn’t worry about that.’

He may as well have slapped her across the face. ‘You
know
where she is?’

‘I’m the best serryn hunter you’ve ever known.’ His eyes met hers for a moment. ‘Of course I know where she is. You just didn’t think to ask.’

Feinith clenched her hands, indentations forming in her palms from her manicured nails. ‘I’ve had my team out there working the back alleys of Blackthorn for the last ten hours turning up the heat on trying to find her and
now
you’re telling me you know where she is? Where?
Where
is she?’

‘You don’t need to know.’

‘I don’t need to know?’ Fury surged through her body at his continued concealment. ‘Sirius would already be tearing this district apart right now if it wasn’t for me and that serryn could have been caught in the crossfire. I have done everything, Caleb –
everything
– to make this run smoothly. I have planned it to the last second. I have moved mountains for you, for this to happen. We have less than twenty-four hours’ leeway and you’ve been lying here doing fuck all?’

‘Plotting, Feinith,’ he retorted calmly. ‘I’ve been lying here plotting.’ He raked her swiftly with his gaze. ‘I
never
do “fuck all”. You should know that better than anyone.’

He turned towards the door, his black shirt wafting in the breeze to reveal a torso as disciplined at his mind.

‘You can’t just walk away, Caleb! You are
not
in charge!’

He glanced across his shoulder at her. ‘Oh, I do believe I am,’ he remarked.

And gave her a wink before he stepped inside.

I
t had taken
Jask a twenty-minute underground journey to cross from the bunker on the east side of Blackthorn to the district’s north border. Once there, he’d had to opt out of the tunnel system to take the five-minute back-alley journey before he could head down into the next set of tunnels that would lead directly to the compound.

It hadn’t taken long for the meeting back at the bunker to be disbanded after Sophia’s swift exit – a swift exit that had been followed by Leila and Alisha, and then himself.

His return to the room had been met with Kane’s clear warning to place Sophia under more stringent measures before he and Eden had headed back out.

Solstice and Corbin had returned their attention to monitoring the pack, Jessie now joining them; Caitlin to managing the fourth species.

He’d mentioned nothing about Leila’s revelation to any of them.

Now he made his way up the wooden steps from the cellar into the burned-down greenhouse – a harsh reminder that his pack members were nothing more than dispensable pawns in Sirius’s continuing game.

It still stuck in his throat almost a week later.

He wouldn’t have returned there if it hadn’t been a necessity. It was all still too raw, facing again what had been their home for eighty years – the compound where the lycans had kept themselves to themselves; where he had nurtured his pack within the relatively safe confines of the reinforced grounds of the abandoned hotel.

At least it
had
been safe until it had been invaded by a faceless army – Sirius’s potentially superhuman army forged from illegal and covert experiments using angel tears. Experiments governed by Sirius Throme within the boundaries of The Facility in Midtown.

He would have removed the entirety of his pack into the bunker on the east side if he’d had a choice, but the containment rooms had been the only safe place to keep the four members of his pack who had opted for the official meds. Despite having taken them on time, they seemed to have been having little effect.

He’d wanted to believe it was down to the complexity and intensity of the seventh blue moon, but part of him suspected foul play.

Tried and tested over the past eighty years, he knew the rooms were guaranteed as secure, and now more than ever they needed that assurance. A morphed lycan couldn’t control their impulses. A morphed lycan, immersed in their own basic instincts, could barely respond even to their alpha. And ultimately it was the alpha’s job to kill those who risked other members of the pack.

Jask crossed the courtyard to reach the outbuilding. He unlocked and pushed open the heavy door. Silence descended, dust motes glinting in the dim surroundings as he headed down the steps that ran parallel to the meeting room.

He strode along the corridor, unable to look at the closed door to the chamber where Rone, his only son, had been brutally murdered during the invasion, a dried wreath of herbs now marking the entrance.

Reaching the door at the end, he knocked rhythmically on the steel: two quick raps followed by three slower ones – the code that was needed for the door to be opened from the other side.

Letting him inside, Phelan closed and locked the door behind them.

‘Corbin told me it’s not good,’ Jask said as he descended the wooden steps and headed down the stone corridor that housed the containment rooms, three wall-mounted lights marking the way.

‘Joel and Kyan aren’t great. Neither is Adam,’ Phelan said. ‘But Quinn’s in a worse way.’

They’d got him through each of the six previous blue moons by the grit of his teeth but the intensity of the seventh was always going to be the clincher.

‘Is Zeena still in with him?’

He and Zeena, his mate, had been inseparable for five years.

Phelan nodded. ‘She won’t leave him.’

Even after Quinn himself had tried to persuade her to join the others at the bunker, she’d refused.

Jask opened the door to the third containment room along and stepped into the sepia hue of the room, the subtle amber tones of the afternoon light exacerbating the brown tinge of the cellar’s stonework.

Zeena sat against the wall less than a foot from the bars. Everything about the look she gave him as he walked into the room told him she was more than aware of the situation.

Jask stepped up to the bars.

Quinn lay on his side on the mattress inside the cell, facing the dank wall, sweat glistening on his shirtless back. His breathing was rapid, his entire body trembling with the force of the changes in his body as it fought what the lunar cycle naturally inflicted.

But the seventh blue moon was intensifying the allergy too much. If his body insisted on fighting the morphing, it could kill him – and there was nothing Jask could do about it. The anaphylactic shock alone would be more than his body could take.

Quinn’s spine had already started to lengthen, the vertebrates stretched apart to account for new discs of cartilage forming within. The process altered their body shape, increasing their flexibility, their agility, their speed. Despite those eventual benefits,
if
they survived, the process was excruciating. His bones were breaking, skin stretching, muscles lengthening and contracting, the fluid that filled every part of his body feeling like a bubbling furnace.

They’d been likened to wolves once they’d morphed, but they weren’t shape-shifters. For most, the form they took merely had wolf-like traits – a comparison that had spread by word of mouth from the few witnesses who had ever seen a morphed lycan.

But those sightings had been only of those who had perfected morphing: the elite within whom the genes were strongest; those who were able to withstand it, control it; the ones who often went on to become pack alphas.

Like Jask.

They were the most wolf-like of all.
They
were the perfect killing machines.

It was the reason the Global Council had long ago hoped they could be trained to help keep order amongst the vampires, making the most of a human brain inside an almost animalistic body. They’d planned to turn them into the ultimate guards –
if
the lycans had been willing to play ball. Which they hadn’t been.

And Quinn was the prime example of why lycanthropy was not something to be embraced and celebrated. For most, lycanthropy was not a gift: it was a curse. It was certainly not to be used to anyone’s advantage to gain power and control over others.

Jask coiled a hand around one of the bars. It sickened him deep in his gut to see one of his own inflicted with such pain. But as much as he wanted to step beyond the bars, he knew he couldn’t. No lycan was safe approaching another during a change – not even an alpha.

He looked across at Zeena still snuggled under a blanket against the wall. He didn’t need to say anything to her and it seemed she had nothing to say either as she dropped her gaze back to the floor.

Jask stepped out into the corridor, closing the door behind him.

During times like this, he couldn’t hate his condition more. Despite fighting to accept it, to embrace it even, under those circumstances he loathed what he was. He loathed everything about it; everything it stole with so little gain.

He loathed what it did to his pack, the prejudice it created, the lack of understanding; how the animalistic associations deemed them bottom of humane capability on the third-species scale, emphasised by humankind’s attitude to their dominance over anything less than human in their own world.

For as long as those associations were fed, they’d always be seen as nothing more than scapegoats, a commodity, just like they were now.

‘It’s worse than Corbin described,’ Jask said to Phelan as they accompanied each other back up the corridor.

‘He’s deteriorated even in the last couple of hours. Jask, what the fuck’s going on? He took the meds. You’d think he’d taken nothing at all.’

Meds he’d been assured had been tweaked, as had their own concoction, to account for the pivotal blue moon that ended the Metonic cycle.

More
lies.

He suppressed his escalating tension, keen for Phelan not to see it. ‘Give him a little longer.’

‘And then what? What are we going to do if things don’t improve? How long do we leave it?’

Jask’s stomach coiled at the ultimate question, at the prospect of inevitability in the lycan’s eyes.

‘Until we know for sure,’ Jask said, ‘we never give up. We give it a few more hours just in case.’ He turned to face him at the bottom of the steps. ‘And we’ve got a few other issues, Phelan. We’re getting some low-level signs and symptoms back at the bunker. We’re keeping a close eye on those who took the later dose. I’m going to swap you for a short while so you can get checked. If you stay clear, I’ll let you come back here.’

‘Jask…’

‘No arguing,’ Jask said, despite knowing Phelan would want to stay close to his sister. ‘It’s safeguarding, that’s all. I’ll get someone down here shortly.’

Phelan nodded reluctantly before Jask made his way back up the steps, Phelan closing and securing the door behind him.

Jask headed back up the corridor. He looked down at the tremor in his hands, the couple of dark splinters in his nails. He clenched his hands into fists to suppress the involuntary lengthening of his talons as he realised he’d stopped at the wreath.

The reminder wasn’t helping his simmering, suppressed rage.

He made it as far as the steps before he sank onto the middle one, his elbows on his knees, his fingers digging into the back of his neck.