Dawning of Light (17 page)

Felicia rested her hands on top of her protruding belly. Her eyes softened. “I assume the fact that he simply ran the other way means you won.”

He turned away, began packing again. “That just means he’s a pussy. And he sure as hell doesn’t deserve to mate with someone like Cecilia.”

“But you do.”

The words were like a physical blow to his gut. Him? Mate with…Cecilia? Cecilia the lightbearer? Cecilia the pain in the ass?
Cici?

“What I’m doing is taking her back to the coterie and dumping her on Tanner and Olivia’s doorstep. Whatever happens from there is up to them.”

Felicia seemed to understand that he did not want to talk about that topic any longer. “Are you coming back?” she asked instead.

“Sure. I’ll come back when you whelp this one. I want to laugh at Ben when he tries to figure out what the hell to do with a little girl.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

He did not respond.

“Your home is in that coterie.” Her words were soft, laced with sadness.

He did not answer her directly. Instead, he said, “It isn’t that far away.”

“No,” she said. “I suppose it isn’t.” She fell silent while he made quick work of packing the small amount of clothing he brought with him. It occurred to him that he’d never intended to stay, even when he first headed down here to see his sister and meet his two nephews. If he had, he sure as hell would have brought more clothing. And maybe that box of condoms tucked into the small drawer in the bedside table in his bedroom.

“Dad and Ben are talking about going searching for Reid. You’re the best tracker in the world, Finn. If you go with them, you’ll find him for sure.”

“Felicia, don’t do this.”

“Why not?”

He whirled around to face his sister. He caught a glimpse of his glowing eyes in the mirror. He stabbed his finger at the open doorway. “That guy came all the way to Tennessee because he’s obsessed with Cecilia. I can’t let her go back alone.”

Felicia cocked her head and studied her brother. “You’re choosing her over us, aren’t you?”

“I’m choosing my pack,” he ground out as he dragged the zipper closed on the duffel bag. As he said the words, he knew them to be true. The coterie was his pack now, for better or worse. Tanner was his pack master. Cecilia was part of that pack, and it was his responsibility to ensure her safety. However else she fit into his life, well, that remained to be seen.

“I can visit anytime,” he said after a moment’s pause, his voice softening. “You can visit me, too, you know. You’d get a kick out of the coterie. Bring the kids in the winter, so they can enjoy the snow.”

As he tried to walk past her, Felicia pulled him into a hug. When she released him, she swiped tears from her eyes. “I’m glad you came to visit,” she said.

“Me too. I’ll be back. Soon. I’ll make sure my niece isn’t five before I meet her for the first time.”

Felicia gave him a watery smile.

* * * *

As she stood on the porch and watched twin bright red brake lights drive off into the distance, Felicia leaned her head on her mate’s shoulder. He wrapped his arm around her waist and held tightly. Her mother sighed.

“My son found his mate.”

Felicia gave her mother a startled look. “You don’t really think…”

“A lightbearer and a shifter,” her father murmured, sounding awed.

“Remember, the heir to the lightbearer crown is going to be half shifter, half lightbearer,” her mother pointed out.

“Yes, but Finn?” Felicia still could not picture it, despite the very obvious proof she had witnessed. “Although she did tend to glow more brightly whenever he touched her. Did you notice that?”

“How could we not? How about the way his eyes tracked her, all the time, no matter what else was going on?”

“She was doing the same thing.”

They all fell silent for a few minutes. Then her father commented, “I suppose your grandfather didn’t die in vain after all.”

They fell silent again, as they shuffled back into the house, to resume life as it was before Finn came to visit. With one small exception.

Felicia was already planning a trip to visit her brother and his new pack.

Whatever transpired between them on that swing down in Tennessee disappeared by the time they reached the coterie. To be fair, it didn’t actually disappear until they were back inside the coterie. The ride back was uneventful, because Dane had no idea how to drive a vehicle, so Cecilia and Finn both drove separate trucks and were therefore unable to talk.

The arguing began after they parked the trucks inside the pole barn next to the beach house.

“You need to stay the hell away from that asshole,” Finn growled.

“You need to stop telling me what to do,” Cecilia retorted. “How do you know he didn’t go to Tennessee to warn me about something? Did you even bother to ask? Did you?”

“You were there, Cecilia,” Finn replied impatiently. “Of course I didn’t ask. I didn’t have to. The man’s obsessed with you. He wants to mate with you. I’m going to talk to Tanner, tell him to tell the king that if Samuel asks permission to hold a mating ceremony again, he’s to say no.”

“What do you mean, again?”

Finn shook his head. “He’s already tried once. You’re lucky I was there, or else your uncle probably would have caved and said yes. What the hell would you do without me constantly saving your ass?”

“Uncle Sander would never have mated us without me agreeing to it, and I wouldn’t have,” Cecilia protested. “I would have managed just fine without you.”

“Yeah, right.” Finn snorted and turned away from her to stride across the snow-covered lawn toward the beach house.

“I can manage my own life,” Cecilia reiterated as she chased after him.

Finn snorted again.

“If I want to mate with Samuel, I will.”

Finn abruptly stopped walking. Cecilia wasn’t expecting it, so she barreled right into his back. “You want to mate with Samuel?” he asked, his voice sounding strangled.

“Of course not,” Cecilia said indignantly. “How many times do I have to tell you? I do not wish to mate with anyone.”

Finn felt the surge of relief as it flowed through his system. Strange that it was mingled with disappointment.

“He’s sneaky, Cecilia. And he won’t give up. He wants you, and he intends to have you, whatever it takes.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Finnegan. Samuel and I talked, just the other day. He is no more interested in mating than I am.”

And on and on they argued, all the way into the house, down the hall, and into the breakfast room, where they found Tanner and his mother, and Olivia and her parents enjoying a pleasant, quiet dinner.

Until Cecilia and Finn showed up.

“Do you two ever stop arguing?” Tanner snapped at one point.

“We should,” Finn replied. “There’s nothing left to argue about.”

“There most certainly is,” Cecilia replied. As it turned out, there was.

* * * *

Samuel showed up at the beach house the next day. Tanner and Finn were out, helping with a structural issue with one of the barns that housed a fair number of the lightbearers’ horses. With winter nipping at their heels, they had to ensure the livestock was well protected against the elements.

A servant escorted Samuel into the main sitting room and then sought out Cecilia, who met him there. She hesitated in the doorway, Finn’s angry warnings echoing in her head. Finn was wrong…wasn’t he?

Even if he wasn’t, so what? She was her own person. She could handle an overzealous suitor, if that was what Samuel turned out to be. She did not need Finn to fight her battles. She didn’t
want
Finn to fight her battles.

She stepped into the room. Samuel gave her a nervous smile. “I wasn’t certain you would see me,” he admitted as he paced back and forth behind the couch.

“Why did you go to Tennessee, Samuel?”

“Why did you?” he shot back.

Cecilia almost sighed. Everyone kept asking her that question. She still did not want to admit the answer. Admit that she had been afraid Finn intended to stay there. Why that idea had frightened her so much was something she simply refused to contemplate.

“Would you like a drink?” she asked as she waved at the bar set up in the corner.

Samuel pointed at the couch. “Sit. Please,” he added. “I’ll get our drinks.”

She dropped onto the couch. Samuel appeared a moment later, holding a glass of burgundy wine in each hand. He offered one to Cecilia. She accepted it and took a sip, then wrinkled her nose.

“It has a funny aftertaste. The bottle must be bad.”

Samuel took a sip from his glass. “It tastes fine to me. Try another,” he encouraged.

Cecilia took another sip. “Better,” she admitted.

“Who were all those shifters?” he asked as they sat together and drank wine.

“Finn’s family. That was his sister’s house. His parents live within the same pack, a few blocks away. The younglings were his nephews.”

“You went to meet his family?” Samuel sounded appalled.

Cecilia lifted the glass and took a fortifying sip. Had that been an ulterior motive? Had she been that curious about his personal life, the family he once sacrificed so much for, yet had refused to visit for the last four months, simply because Tanner had directed him to watch over her? She felt a stab of guilt. If she would simply give up her wanderlust, Finn would be free to visit his family as often as he liked. Even move there, if he so chose. She assumed Finn had returned with her and Dane due to his obligation to her, but what if she promised to be good, to stop trying to leave the coterie?

Would he return to his family in Tennessee?

Cecilia shuddered and took another hefty drink.

“I was so worried about you,” Samuel said, pulling her from her own thoughts. “I have never been outside the coterie, so I had no idea what to expect.”

“It really isn’t so bad, is it?” Cecilia commented. Her voice sounded odd to her own ears. Her head was starting to feel fuzzy. She blinked at her wineglass. It was still half-full, yet she felt as if she’d consumed four or five glasses.

“Something wrong,” she slurred. Speaking had suddenly become exceedingly difficult. Her hands felt numb. The wineglass slipped from her fingers and bounced almost soundlessly onto the carpet. Wine splattered, leaving burgundy spots on the couch, the carpet, the coffee table.

“I’ll get that,” Samuel said. His voice sounded perfectly normal to her. Why was she so affected, when they’d had the same amount of wine?

“Wrong,” she managed, as Samuel waved his hand and magically cleaned up the splattered wine.

“No, no,” Samuel said in a soothing voice. She became dimly aware of her body moving, as if someone was lifting her into his arms. Her head lolled against Samuel’s chest.

“Nothing is wrong, Cecilia. Everything is finally going to be just right,” Samuel said, and then the world faded quickly to black as Cecilia passed out.

* * * *

“Cecilia, is Samuel still—Cecilia?” Olivia came to a stuttering halt just inside the sitting room, as she realized the room was empty, and she was therefore speaking to herself. She looked all around. “Cici?” Had she left the house? With Samuel? For some reason, that did not seem right. Why would Cecilia leave with Samuel?

She noticed the wineglasses perched on the coffee table. One was entirely empty, while the other was half-full. Cecilia was not normally a heavy drinker, and Olivia hoped she learned her lesson the last time she’d drunk far too much wine. She walked over and touched the wineglasses and wondered which had been Cecilia’s.

Something caught her eye, and she turned to look more intently at the stone-colored couch. She had to get on her hands and knees in order to see it more clearly, but once she did, what she saw was unmistakable.

Someone had spilled wine on this couch, very recently. She looked around and saw several more burgundy spots, far away on the carpet. Whoever had cleaned up the spill had not been terribly thorough.

Cecilia would have been thorough.

A sense of alarm raced through Olivia’s system. Why would Cecilia not have cleaned up the spilled wine, regardless of who spilled it? Even if Samuel spilled it and offered to clean it up, Olivia knew her cousin well enough to know that Cecilia would have gone behind him to eliminate the spots on the couch and on the carpet.

The entire scene felt off to her. She was still fretting about it when Tanner and Finn returned from the far pastures.

“What’s wrong?” Tanner asked, sensing immediately that she was distressed.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Possibly nothing. It’s just that Cecilia was here, with Samuel—”

“He was here?” Finn interrupted.

“Yes. They were here, in the sitting room. I came down not twenty minutes later to retrieve her. That’s our code, you see. If she was enjoying herself, she would lift her hand and touch her hair, letting me know that there was no need to rescue her. If she did not touch her hair, I would have entered the room and come up with some excuse to take her away with me, effectively dismissing the suitor.”

“Cute,” Finn muttered.

“But she wasn’t here.”

Finn looked around, as if he expected Cecilia to suddenly appear out of nowhere. “What do you mean, she wasn’t here? Where’s Samuel?”

“He was gone too. I know that doesn’t sound alarming by itself—”

“Actually, it’s plenty alarming,” Finn interrupted again.

“There were wine stains on the couch,” Olivia said with a wave at the offending piece of furniture. Both men bent at the waist and began searching for wine stains.

“Well, they aren’t there now,” Olivia said impatiently. “I cleaned them up.”

Finn and Tanner both straightened and gave her almost identical baffled looks.

“My point is, Cecilia would not have left wine stains on the couch. She would have cleaned them up.”

Tanner did not quite understand. Finn did. “You didn’t see her leave?”

Olivia shook her head. “I have no idea when she left, or where she went.”

Finn picked up the empty wineglass and examined it, then sniffed it. “This doesn’t smell right.”

Olivia furrowed her brow and plucked the wineglass from his hand. She studied it for a moment, and then she swirled her hand over the top. The inner bowl of the glass glowed with a sickly green color for a few brief seconds before fading to nothing again. Olivia’s eyes widened.