Dawning (4 page)

As I stood
there, out in the open and vulnerable, I thought maybe this wasn’t
the smartest thing to do. I should get back on my bike and get the
hell out of there.

Sure, I had
training in defensive techniques—I studied S.I.N.G. like everyone
else (solar plexus, instep, nose, groin)—and some martial arts, but
not enough to take on a huge wolf that could rip out my throat with
one swipe of its lethal claws.

I started to
back up towards my bike. Maybe I could get on it and start it
before something big and hairy and hungry leapt out at me from the
shadows. If I ran, I wondered if it would chase me.

“Are you
injured?”

The sexy
accented voice came from a line of shadows near one of the old
buildings. Turning, I searched the night for him. I could see a
form moving in the shadows. Then he stepped out into the glow of
the street lamps and I nearly lost all reason.

Unabashedly
naked, he strode into the street toward me. His skin shone with
sweat and I admit fully to ogling him from head to toe. Possibly
pausing much too long on the middle part to be considered polite.
But by the enticing grin on his face, he didn’t seem to mind in the
least.

“No,” I finally
managed to say.

As he neared, I
realized he was maybe only an inch taller than my five foot ten
inches. But he was wide, like a linebacker on a football team.
Powerful shoulders, muscular arms, flat stomach, and ripped
athletic legs, he was incredible to look at. I tried not to stare
too long at his other attributes, but it was impossible not to.

Severin Saint
Morgan was a big man.

Clearing my
throat, I finally found my voice, although it was a bit shaky.
“What were you doing in the middle of the road?”

“Prowling.” His
wet hair fell forward. He ran his hands through the lustrous brown
waves, pulling them back off his face. His light blue eyes seemed
to dance in his angular face. They were striking, intense. And they
hadn’t left my face since he stepped out of the shadows.

“Well next
time, maybe you should stick to the sidewalks.” I was wringing my
hands together when I noticed that my skin was unnaturally white.
They almost seemed to glow a little. I quickly hid them behind my
back.

He grinned at
that.

I felt
something warm begin to flow inside. Heat swirled in my stomach and
threatened to venture lower if I didn’t put a cork in my carnal
thoughts. This was extremely difficult with an incredibly alluring
naked man standing in front of me smiling.

“You have a
beautiful smile.”

My heart picked
up a few extra beats. “Thank you.” God, I was scared out of my
mind, but at the same time desire flared over me. A strange
combination.

He nodded.
“You’re a nurse.”

His words
weren’t a question.

“Yes,” I said,
my voice cracking. “How do you know that?” And my thoughts flitted
back to the moving shadows on the rooftop by the hospital.

He gestured
with his hand. “Your scrubs.”

I glanced down
at myself. I had on my light blue hospital scrubs still. They were
pretty distinctive. “Oh, right. Yes, I work at St. Paul’s.”

“It suits you.
You give off this healing vibe.” He continued to stare into my
eyes.

I should’ve
felt unnerved but I didn’t. I liked his intensity. Which was
strange because I usually didn’t like people looking at me for so
long. Hiding was harder when someone’s trying to stare right
through you.

I stared back
at him, letting my gaze drift slowly down his body. That was when I
noticed the long red gouges on his chest.

“You’re hurt.”
I had the sudden urge to reach out and touch him, to soothe the
angry looking cuts. I wondered where he’d gotten them. During his
prowling about town?

“Just a
scratch. It’ll be gone in a couple of days.” He touched the
swelling marks, pushing on them as if to prove his point. “We have
remarkable healing capabilities.”

“Yes, I know. I
saw you on Breakfast Television talking about some of your…ah,
differences.”

He just
continued to eye me, as if in consideration of something, making me
nervous and fluttery in odd places. By the flash in his eyes, he
knew what he was doing to me.

“What were you
doing in this neighborhood? Not a likely place a university
professor would hang out,” I asked, still curious about his
injury.

“I had business
nearby.”

I eyed him, not
quite sure what to make of him. I wasn’t one hundred percent
positive that he wasn’t a danger to me in some way. Because he was
dangerous. No doubt about it.

“You weren’t
over at St. Paul’s earlier, were you?”

A few seconds
passed before he answered. “Why would you ask?”

“Because a
woman came in with a gut wound and marks just like those.” I
gestured to his chest. “She died on the table before we could
stitch her back together.”

“That’s
unfortunate. I’m sorry to hear that she died.”

“You followed
me, didn’t you? From St. Paul’s? I saw you on the rooftops.”

He nodded. “I
heard about the attack and I had to follow up on it. My job is to
keep the werewolf community in check.”

I shivered
again from his intensity. This man had a lot of power, it radiated
from him. I sensed that if he knew who’d been responsible for the
attack on that woman, he’d take care of it. With his own type of
justice I suspected. It made me curious how werewolves punished
their own.

“How did you
know that I was even involved? We get tons of trauma patients in
every night.”

He tapped his
nose. “I could smell the attack on you.”

I had no idea
what to say to that.

After a few
more moments of staring at one another, he bowed to me. Which I
found extremely odd but pleasant. “I must take my leave but first
if you would grant me your name.”

“It’s Nina
Decker.”

“Nina.”

The way he said
my name made me think of someone sampling a delicacy and finding it
extremely pleasant. My belly and lower clenched in response.

“Stay safe.”
With a last nod, he turned and walked back across the street toward
the shadows along one old building.

I had to admit
I watched every swagger of his tight ass.

Glancing over
his shoulder, he said, “I hope to see you again, but this time
under different circumstances.”

Speechless, I
remained glued to the spot and watched as he disappeared into the
night. I don’t know how long I stood there, but by the time I
turned and got back on my bike, my legs were sore from standing in
one spot on the pavement for too long.

Chapter
Three

On the drive
home, I thought about Severin. It was difficult not to—the man was
unforgettable. And I had to admit I knew more about him than
probably was normal…or safe. I’d spent a good two hours Googling
him after the first time I’d seen him on TV. For curiosity sake, of
course.

I managed to
find an article he’d written for the
Scientific Journal
about the evolution of wolves. He’d discovered a recessive gene in
one of the species—a gene closely related to humans. In response
came a few articles debunking his theories and work. I kept those
too.

The man was a
triple threat—intelligent, ambitious and devastatingly gorgeous.
And probably not someone I should be thinking, or daydreaming,
about. Or anything else of the kind. He was of a different species.
One I knew nothing about. It was one thing to get into a
relationship with a man you didn’t know, but with a werewolf…

Who knew what
came with that.

And speaking of
alternate species, I thought about how my hands had seemed to glow
earlier in the lamp light. I glanced in my side mirror at my face.
Moving right and left, I examined the skin. It didn’t appear as if
I was glowing. I was certainly pale, like fine-boned porcelain,
someone had once told me, and add the fact that my hair was as
black as ink. Despite that I didn’t think I was actually glowing.
At least, I hope I wasn’t. Now that we were a brave new paranormal
world, something that bizarre would make
someone
want to do
tests on me. If werewolves existed, what other legends were true? I
had no doubt plenty of people wanted to find that out. I was not
prepared for that to happen. Ever.

A half hour
later, after parking my bike in my garage at home, I flipped on the
light in my kitchen, tossing keys and my canvas bag onto the
granite counter. In the sink were a dirty plate and a pot
half-submersed in greasy water. Shaking my head, I pulled them out,
rinsed them off and put them in the dishwasher.

I hadn’t even
closed the dishwasher door when the sound of footsteps brought my
head around.

“Kinda late to
be coming home, don’t you think?”

Instantly, I
relaxed. “I had a twelve-hour shift.” I finished closing the door,
latched it and turned the knob. “Would you like some tea?” I opened
the cupboard and took out two tea cups knowing he would say
yes.

Nodding, he
pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and lowered his frail frame
into it.

As I filled the
teapot with water and set it on the stove, I looked at him, my
heart breaking every time.

He was tall and
gangly, all long thin limbs with no substance. I remembered a time
when he wasn’t like that. He’d been strapping and handsome, full of
vigor, up for anything at any time. We had some good times
together, laughing, and playing. Jason Decker, my father, had
always been one for games.

Now he was old
and withered, looking and feeling ancient beyond his sixty-two
years. And there was nothing I could do but watch him slowly fade.
My mother was to blame. She’d sucked the life and joy out of him,
and left without a second thought to his welfare. She cared only
for herself and her own selfish pleasure.

“What did you
do tonight, Da?” I asked as I put chamomile tea bags into our
cups.

“Sat by the
garden.”

He did that
just about every day. All his days consisted of now were napping,
sitting in the garden, and painting. He had a little studio off the
living room where he spent hours creating portraits of my mother.
Whether he used charcoal, oil-based paint, or watercolor, every
single painting was of her in some form.

Some paintings
were lovely, with exquisite attention to detail and eye-appealing
color, and some were so dark, so violent and twisted, I even had
trouble looking at them. And I knew that was what his soul looked
like, a mixture of beauty and darkness, twisted together. Light and
dark in conflict. Always in conflict.

That was what
being fae-struck did to a person. Made them fractured, disjointed,
with a mind barely able to hold onto reality. And an aging withered
body to match.

That was my
legacy, my secret and my curse. My mother was from the realm of the
dark fae, a place steeped in darkness and mystery. I was born to
it, but would never see it. Never wanted to either.

The fae were an
ancient race of people cloaked in magic and mayhem. Some had even
been worshipped as gods and goddesses during the time of the Celtic
people. Fairy tales had been invented to describe them, but in
reality, there was nothing whimsical about them. They were a dark
and dangerous species that I had worked all my life to forget
existed.

Fae blood may
have flowed through my veins, but I was human—mind, body and
soul.

The teapot
whistled and I poured the hot water into our cups, taking them both
to the table. I set his in front of him with a spoon. “I hope you
wore a sweater. The air was a little cool earlier.”

“I saw some
pixies playing in the lavender.”

I dunked the
teabag up and down in my cup, trying not to look into his expectant
face, set it on a napkin on the table, then picked up my spoon to
stir. “Da, I told you to ignore them.”

He banged his
fist on the table, rattling his spoon. “I don’t want to ignore
them, Nina. I like to watch them. One even talked to me for a
spell.”

I rubbed at my
forehead where a headache was starting to take hold. I really
didn’t want to have another conversation like this, not at one in
the morning. “Why don’t you take your tea to bed with you? You
should get some sleep.”

“Don’t treat me
like a child, A’lona.”

Sighing, I
reached across the table and squeezed his withered hand. “I’m not
her, Da. I’m not A’lona. I’m your daughter, Nina, remember?”

At first, his
eyes were clouded over when he looked at me, but after a turn, they
seemed to clear and he smiled as if truly seeing me for the first
time.

I returned his
smile, overjoyed that he was lucid. He had days where he had no
idea where he was. It wasn’t Alzheimer’s. We’d had all the tests. I
knew what it was but he didn’t want to admit the truth. He didn’t
want to accept that my mother had done this to him.

“I know who you
are, my darling.” He squeezed my hand tight. “You just look so much
like her, so much like your mother.”

I know he was
paying me a compliment. My mother, A’lona, had been breathtakingly
beautiful with lustrous dark hair, spring green eyes, and luminous
pale flawless complexion. But because of my anger toward her, I
hated being compared to her in any way. I hoped and I prayed that I
wasn’t anything like her and would never be, no matter what life
threw at me.

“Yeah, well,
unfortunately I can’t seem to help that. Genetics and all.” I gave
him a quick sardonic smile and sipped my tea.

“One day you’ll
have to forgive her.”

“Why?”

Picking up his
cup, he sat back in his chair and regarded me. “Because some day
you may need her.”

“I can’t see
that day ever coming, Da. Not when I have you.”