Dark Flight (The Shadow Slayers) (21 page)

She closed her eyes to block him out, and lifted up just to drop herself on his shaft again. Her orgasms should have left her satisfied, but she felt desperate instead. Frantically bobbing up and down on his perfect erection. “Hard.”

He lifted her away from the tree and laid her down on a patch of short grasses and decaying leaves. With the ground under her, he thrust his hips and rode her hard, capturing her scalp in both hands to hold her in place. “Is this hard enough for you?”

Kara moaned, her clit so swollen it almost hurt. “Harder.”

Gavin pulled out almost completely then rammed his cock back home. “Like that?”

Kara only growled in response, licking her lips for the last remnants of Gavin’s essence.

Probably taking that for a yes, Gavin kissed her, breathing out as Kara breathed in, sharing her air. Seated deep within her, he ground his pelvis against hers, as if unwilling to pull out again. “Forever, Kara. That’s how long I will want you in my life. Forever.”

Feeling his love, thinking past her blood-induced stupor, Kara pulled him closer until her bare, sweaty breasts rubbed against his chest. “Forever, Gavin. That’s how long I’ll love you.”

His breathing changed. Deeper and more guttural were the sounds he made as he lost himself in her. She knew he was going to come, and she wanted him to. Wanted Gavin in every way possible. His seed, his blood, his life and his love. Forever.

Kara cried out as he groaned and thrust deep, then held. She felt his life force flowing into her, actually felt it, like an explosion of energy deep in her being. And with the invasion of his purity and love, the last flame of her anger and aggression sputtered out…and Kara with it.

“Kara,” Aiden prodded. “Wake up.”

She gasped and shot into sitting position, yanking the sheet further up her bare body. “Huh?”

“Fuck.” Aiden stood and took a deep breath. “I’m glad you decided to join the living—again.”

Kara looked around. They were back in Gavin’s room, but he was nowhere in sight. “Where’s Gavin?”

“He’s where he needs to be, preparing the invasion against Brakken’s army. He’s gone to sort out the final details with Julian, and the silver-winged warriors have started a steady trickle into the Shadowland, so the energy levels don’t shift too abruptly. They’re amassing in the Land of Desolation, near Julian’s ‘kingdom’.”

“Without me?”

“You’ve been passed out for the last four hours, Kara. Gavin already missed the window of when the invasion was to begin. He was sick with worry for you! And why, I ask myself—
why, in the name of all that is holy
—do we need to be worrying over Kara Reed when there is so much more at stake happening in the world?”

Kara was speechless. Had she really thrown off the battle plans with a post-coitus snooze?

“Is it true? Did you take Gavin’s blood?”

“I only took a little.”

“You shouldn’t have taken any! Females don’t imbibe blood. What the hell happened to you on that mountain? You fail to get the feather but come back a bloodthirsty hellion?”

“It’s not a big deal. I’m better now. I can accompany Gavin to the battle.”

“Hell no! You’re not going to distract him at the time he most needs to focus. You did your part. You convinced Mazeki to help Julian, and Julian is doing better with his gifts than we ever imagined. Now you will wait here, in this very room, and not move a muscle, until we return.”

Kara’s first attempt to respond was merely a sputter. “No…that isn’t what Gavin wants. He promised I’d be there.”

“Well, he had to go, didn’t he? And most every silver-wing is with him. Good luck charming one of your demibreed guards to take you to the Shadowland. Oh, wait—I forgot! They don’t have wings.”

Aiden’s own silver wings stretched from his back. “Men!” he called, and three wingless warriors burst into Gavin’s room.

“Yes, my lord?” the one in charge said.

“Keep Lady Kara comfortable as we discussed. She’s been unwell and she needs to stay in bed. No travel whatsoever until this thing is finished, understood?”

“Yes, sir.” With a collective nod, they went back out the door, closing it behind them.

Aiden pulled a small knife from the belt at his waist. Kara went wide-eyed when Aiden slowly brought the blade to her throat, but she didn’t move. There was no way he would hurt her, and she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of flinching.

He grasped the leather cords around her neck, the charms jangling in his grip, then he cut them free and thrust them into his pocket. “I am sorry, Kara, but I can’t allow you to summon one of those men you have wrapped around your finger.”

“You bastard,” she whispered, feeling truly stranded and scared for the first time on Mercury Island.

He straightened with a nod. “As I said…I’m sorry.” Then he shocked her by taking her hand and getting on his knees beside the bed. She tried to pull away, but he held firm. “There’s a chance I may not come back, and there’s something I need to say to you.”

Seeing the earnest expression on his face and then adding to that the fact that he’d just mercilessly stranded her here on the island, she was gob-smacked, unable to say “go ahead” or even “take a flying leap”.

He looked into her eyes and took a deep breath. “The first time I saw you, I was stupefied by your beauty, your scent, everything about you. I looked at you, and I knew you were different from the other ladies. I knew I wanted you.”

Kara swallowed, and the room began to spin like a pinwheel with Aiden’s face at the center. She had to open her mouth and tell him to stop, but she couldn’t.

He sandwiched her hand between both of his and continued. “And then I got to know you—the real you that you so often hide. And I have to say, Kara, you may have good intentions, but you are one
enormous
pain in the ass. I don’t hate you, but even if I return from this battle, you and I…we’re never going to happen. I’m truly sorry.”

What the fuck?
“Uhm…that’s okay. It’s probably for the best.” She gave his bottom hand a hearty squeeze—hopefully painfully hearty—and released it.

He stood and bowed and an instant later, Aiden was gone. And with him, so was her final chance to help Gavin reclaim his son.

So that was it? She was really gonna give up that easily? No. Not after she’d come this far.

She jumped from the bed with the sheet wrapped around her and with a quick glance, found her clothing folded neatly on the seat of one of Gavin’s antique chairs. Then she thought better of it and shoved the clothing under a cushion.

“Uh, guys? A little help here?”

A demibreed warrior poked his head in. “Yes, my lady?”

“I’m feeling better now. Lord Aiden said you would find me a silver-wing to take me back to my apartment to get changed. Who have we got still on the island?”

A man she couldn’t see chuckled from the hall. “I owe you ten silver pieces. How did you know?”

The one who’d answered her summons smiled. “Because she’s a crafty one. Just look at her, asking to return to her apartment for clothing as though Lord Gavin hasn’t provided her with a full wardrobe in the very room next door. That is exactly the deception we are to watch for.”

He laughed again, and Kara’s cheeks heated. “What? I’ve never seen any clothes here. Are you serious? I haven’t even tried them on. They probably don’t even fit.”

“Let us look, shall we?” He offered her his arm, but she breezed past him and went straight to the double armoire in her huge suite.

She pulled the doors open and her jaw sagged. Dresses. Dresses. More dresses. “What? How am I supposed to fight in these? I’d trip on the hem.”

Plus, most of them were pastel.
Battles clearly called for primary colors, preferably on the dark end of the spectrum.

The warrior shrugged. “I think they would look splendid in bed—where you were told to stay.”

Her temper had never been good when it came to sexism, but now, her fangs and claws slid instantly into place. Her voice was a rumble when she growled, “I’m not getting back in that bed. You wanna try to make me?”

“If you force the issue, then yes.”

Kara’s claws bit into her palms. “Ten silver pieces to the man who tries it. I double-dog dare you.”

“Double-dog?” asked the other man. “That sounds serious.”

“My lady,” said the first warrior, “let’s not go down that road. I will be skinned alive if you so much as set foot outside the palace. I can find you something more suitable, even pants perhaps, from one of the human camp companions. Would that be acceptable?”

“Oh, whatever.” Kara stormed back into Gavin’s room and slammed the door. She went to the chair and dropped the sheet, then she latched her bra and pulled her long-sleeved black shirt over her head.

As she began to thread her foot through one leg of her black pants, she heard a huge commotion in the hallway, shouts and screams, no swords clashing as she might have thought. And then just as she was yanking her pants up the final way and fumbling for the button, the door to Gavin’s room literally blew off its hinges.

The first warrior’s body fell through the doorway, riddled with arrows from his chest to his face. And over him stepped a white-haired man with black eyes—a man she never thought to see here on the island.

Brakken.

Chapter Seventeen

“Ah! My sweet daughter-in-law! At last we meet!” When the black-wing smiled at Kara, his mouth was an expanse of sharp, pointed teeth.

“H-how did you get through the wards?” she stammered.

“This is my son’s land, is it not? Are you suggesting I was not invited here?” Brakken looked hurt and confused, and Kara couldn’t tell if it was an act, or if he really believed that Gavin would have welcomed him to the island.

Kara thought frantically, but there was no escape. She couldn’t use her charms to call for help from a silver-wing who could get her the hell out of here. She couldn’t fight Brakken. Even if she screamed loudly enough to get another demibreed’s attention, Brakken would only kill them.

“Gavin isn’t here. Would you like to stop by later?”

Brakken smiled. “No, I thought it would be more fun to take you to my home and wait for Gavine there. He loves you, you know. I never thought I would see my boy attach to one woman, but he has. It warms my heart. I can only imagine how special you must be to have won his love.”

“No, I’m not that special. Really.” She’d heard Brakken had black eyes, but she didn’t realize how terrifying it would be to look into those completely bottomless orbs. There was no other color, not white on the edges or anything in the center at his pupil. Just black.

“Nonsense.” He stepped closer and she noted his gaunt cheeks and pallid skin. Aniliáre weren’t supposed to look old, but it was as if his wicked soul had started eating at his exterior. “You’re just being modest. I imagine you must have wondrous attributes to garner Gavine’s attention. After all, you did kill his twin brother. The closest living relative to him in existence. For him to so easily forget that, you must be quite…amazing.”

She saw it in his eyes when his game ended, and she couldn’t help it, she turned and bolted. She didn’t make it two steps before he grabbed her by her long brown hair and slammed her head into the nightstand. Pain blasted through her skull, but she didn’t lose consciousness.

A moment later, the darkness engulfed her. She waited for the agony of flashing to the other realm, but the only things she felt were the substantial pain in her head where Brakken had thrown her into the nightstand and the now constant low-grade pain from her back injury.

A few seconds after he’d abducted her from Mercury Island they were already in Brakken’s kingdom. Gavin knew where his father’s kingdom was, but would he figure out Kara was missing before it was too late? And even if he did, how could he get past his father? This was so, so bad.

“Who is that?” a soft voice said from behind her.

Kara tried to spin, but Brakken still had her hair. All she could see from her vantage point were drab gray walls.

“This is Kara Reed, daughter of Teras and Deanna. I also consider her a part of my family, seeing as Gavine traded his brother for her,” Brakken told someone.

“I didn’t want to hurt Gable,” Kara said. “He had my friend tied up, and he was killing her. And then he almost decapitated Julian. I was next.” She couldn’t control her quaking. “What else could I have done?”

Brakken grabbed Kara’s cheeks, and his claws pushed out so far they were as long as his hand. “Yes, you killed my favored son and turned my second against me—but that’s all in the past. It’s nothing to worry your pretty head over.” When he leaned in and kissed her cheek, his breath was putrid, like rotting flesh. “What we have to look forward to is our future, Kara Reed. You and I.”

She swallowed down the bile that rose in her throat. There were so many things she wanted to say, but she remained silent. Anything she said might give away Gavin’s plans of sending Brakken to where he most deserved to be.

“In the meantime, meet your new sisters. Get acquainted, and I will be back to check on you soon.” And with that, Brakken vanished.