Dawning of Light (2 page)

Especially considering he wasn’t even attracted to the woman. At least, he shouldn’t be. He didn’t want to be. He didn’t mind sleeping with Daisy, and in fact, it had been a thoroughly enjoyable evening because she’d made it clear that she was only interested in one thing. Finn hadn’t felt any urges toward her, other than the basic urge to get laid and have an orgasm. There sure as hell hadn’t been any flare of magic, and his skin hadn’t shimmered afterward, like Tanner’s did almost all the time, now that he was mated to Olivia.

With Cecilia, Finn felt that flare of magic every time they touched. It was addictive. It made him want to keep touching her. It made him think about taking her in the way of shifters, making her his mate.

Which was damned fucked-up.

Finn didn’t want a mate, and he sure as hell didn’t want a lightbearer mate. While he didn’t hold to his former pack master’s beliefs about killing lightbearers for their magic, he did hold to the belief that shifters should mate with shifters. Even if his new pack master was mated to a lightbearer.

But that was different. Tanner had left his father’s pack ten years previously. He’d been living amongst the humans, had forsaken pack life. It was undoubtedly easy for him to turn to a lightbearer instead of his own kind. Finn had stayed with Quentin’s pack long after he wanted to, because he knew no other way of life.

It was hard for a shifter to change, to choose something new. They were hardwired to be pack-like creatures, just as they were hardwired to want to screw a female shifter-style, if she was attractive enough.

No wonder there were so many fucked-up shifters in the world. One date, enough mutual attraction, and a couple of orgasms later, they were trapped together, ’til death do they part.

Prior to sleeping with Daisy, Finn would have assumed it was simply lightbearers in general. Something about their magic was enticing to shifters. It made sense, considering Quentin had spent forty years obsessing over finding them, based on an ancient tale about inheriting their magic. But when he woke up the morning after he and Daisy hooked up, Finn hadn’t felt any different from the night before, except for the satisfaction of having found his release a couple times.

What was the difference between Cecilia and Daisy? Both were fair-haired and fair-skinned, both had blue eyes, with delicate features and a slight stature. Cecilia had a long, elegant neck and a petite body that, while it wasn’t truly sensual in the way a large-breasted, heavy-hipped woman would be, was still arousing in a way that enticed and baffled Finn’s senses. He tried to tell himself it was because of the magic, but he suspected that wasn’t entirely true.

Daisy, on the other hand, did not quite have that regal stature, that sense of carefree confidence that seemed embedded into Cecilia. Maybe that was it. Maybe that was why Finn found himself attracted to Cecilia, when he didn’t even really like her. Maybe he secretly wished he could develop that carefree attitude, that absolute confidence that the world really wasn’t such a bad place after all.

Or maybe living amongst the lightbearers was beginning to fuck with his head.

Not a day passed by that Finn didn’t consider just up and leaving the coterie, setting out on his own, maybe searching for a new pack to join. He’d left one that had a crazed dictator for a pack master and had more or less stumbled into this convoluted pack of lightbearers and shifters. But what if there was something else out there, something better?

If he hadn’t been assigned to
Cecilia Duty
, it might not be so bad. But Cecilia was determined to break every rule the king of the lightbearers ever imposed, and Finn’s responsibility was to ensure she did not injure herself in the process.

Frustrating didn’t begin to describe his new life.

He broke free of the swath of trees and waded through the shin-deep snow surrounding the king’s beach house. If Cecilia were in a better frame of mind, she could use her magic to carve a path for him, but considering she was still shrieking about his caveman behavior, he doubted that was going to happen.

The massive white house with blue trim and shutters was perched on a cliff that overlooked the village and then Lake Michigan beyond. Two sides of the oversize beach house were surrounded by several hundred feet of snow-covered lawn and then thick forest, and the fourth led to acres of rolling fields that were used for growing vegetation and raising various animals that provided both meat and other necessities, such as milk, eggs, and cheese. Thanks to Tanner, the lightbearers were slowly becoming self-sustaining, something they should have been all along.

Unfortunately, the king had run the coterie into near bankruptcy because he had been afraid his subjects would not like him if he did not provide essentially everything to meet their expected standard of living. No one had grown their own vegetables or sewn their own clothing or taken care of leaks in the roof. The king had paid to take care of it all. And never asked for anything but their bought loyalty in return.

Four months after Tanner stepped in, the coterie was a vastly different place. Tanner and Finn and a few other lightbearers had built several greenhouses, so that they could grow vegetables and fruit year-round. Tanner had purchased cattle, sheep, chickens, and other livestock from the humans, then they’d erected a couple of barns to protect their growing animal population from inclement weather.

The elders, who had been alive when the previous king ruled, were teaching the younger lightbearers how to sew, to build furniture, to once again become self-sufficient as they had been before Sander Bennett took over the throne. And in between all of this, Finn and Tanner taught them how to fight, how to defend and protect themselves. How to depend upon themselves, instead of someone else. Even the king and queen participated in Finn’s defensive-training sessions.

Most lightbearers embraced their new lives. Like all beings, they appreciated having such control over their own lives, their own destinies. There were a few who had become so spoiled that they protested, simply because they did not want to put forth the effort. Those were the ones Finn relished breaking, so that he could build them up again, to be stronger, self-reliant individuals.

There was also an exclusive group that resisted every effort Tanner and Finn put forth, simply based on the fact that they were shifters and not lightbearers. It did not matter to this group that the intent was to protect them. If the idea came from a shifter, it was considered wrong, evil, against their beliefs. These were the ones that Tanner and Finn had not yet figured out how to handle.

Cecilia had gone quiet and was no longer struggling against him. He spotted a lightbearer guard hurrying toward them and figured that was the reason why. Reluctantly—which annoyed him that he would feel that way—Finn lifted her off his shoulder and placed her onto her feet before forcing himself to release his hold and step away. He determinedly ignored his body’s protest at the loss of contact.

“What are you doing with Cecilia?” the guard demanded as he came to a halt a few feet away, clearly leery of getting too close.

Finn decided that was a smart move. He didn’t much like Samuel Umber, although he didn’t really have any basis for that opinion. The guard was pleasant enough, and he was bigger than most of the other lightbearer males Finn had met. He was also one of the few who appeared eager to learn whenever Finn or Tanner summoned the guards to training. Still, Finn could not get over his instinct not to trust the guy.

“Doing as the king commanded. Whether or not she wanted to come with me.”

Samuel shifted his attention to Cecilia. “Are you harmed in any way?” he asked, his voice going deceptively soft.

“For the love of fate, I didn’t injure the damn woman.”

Cecilia looked at Finn. She appeared to be going through some sort of internal struggle. Then she deliberately stepped closer to Samuel, wrapped both arms around his biceps, and batted her eyelashes, giving him an adoring look.

Finn’s temper spiked. It was so instantaneous, he was momentarily taken by surprise. He fisted his hands as he felt the magic of the shift course through his veins, urging him to turn into some sort of wild animal and tear this guy limb from limb. He actually growled before he caught himself.

What the hell was he doing? He blinked the world back into focus and pulled himself out of the jealous rage or whatever the hell he was feeling.

Cecilia tossed him a triumphant look, and he realized that her actions had been deliberate, that she’d intentionally meant to get a rise out of him. He had a renewed urge to toss her over his shoulder again, although he wasn’t sure what the hell he would do with her once he had her there.

“Samuel, would you mind escorting me to the beach house to see my cousin, please?” Cecilia cooed at the lovesick, slack-jawed guard.

“Y-yes, of course,” he stuttered, his tongue tripping over the words.

Finn was disgusted. Grown men did not act that way around females, no matter how badly they wanted to bed them. It was, frankly, embarrassing to his sex. He decided he would let Samuel know as much during their next practice session. It was the least he could do.

He watched as Cecilia and Samuel turned away from him and walked toward the beach house. One of them was using magic to melt away the snow as they walked. Probably the guard. He did not tear his eyes away until Samuel held the door open and Cecilia sashayed inside. He decided she was safe enough, for the moment. Finn turned and ran toward the cliff. He leaped off the edge and shifted into the form of a hawk at the same time.

He soared through the air for a short while, enjoying the feel of the wind, the sense of freedom. He was careful to stay within the confines of the magical wards, which shimmered just above his head, a steady reminder that he wasn’t really free. He would only be free if he soared through those magical barriers, to the other side, to the human world.

Then he could be free, could do whatever the hell he wanted. But then he would be alone, too, without a pack, without a pack master.

He couldn’t do it.

He was a shifter, and shifters needed to be part of a pack. It was something about their wiring. Whatever it was, it had caused him to stay with Quentin Lyons’ pack long after he should have left, and if he could endure Quentin Lyons, he sure as hell could endure the coterie. After all, the only real issue was Cecilia, and she wasn’t really an issue so much as a pain in his ass.

He aimed his beak at the ground and soared over the side of the cliff, toward the village located at the bottom. It was time to pay a call on Daisy. He needed to release some pent-up energy.

Badly.

“Lights above, I didn’t think we’d ever get away from him,” Cecilia complained as she flopped onto her cousin’s bed and began flipping through the human baby magazine lying there, while Olivia wandered over to stand in front of the full-length looking glass perched on two wooden, clawed feet next to the door to her closet.

“I’m happy to use my whelping as an excuse to pull you away from overzealous suitors any time,” Olivia replied as she stripped out of her dress and critiqued her naked body in the looking glass.

“Whelping?” Cecilia said with amusement in her voice.

Olivia twisted to the side, her eyes on the image of her belly. “It’s what shifters call pregnancy. And babes are pups. I cannot believe how quickly I’ve adapted to the lingo.”

“Being mated to a shifter helps, I’m sure,” Cecilia drawled.

“Just do not say the word
pup
in front of my father,” Olivia warned. “I still am not convinced he will name my future son as heir to the throne, considering he won’t be a full-blooded lightbearer.”

“I think Uncle Sander has come a long way since Tanner and Finn and the others moved into the coterie.”

“Not long enough,” Olivia murmured, and then said abruptly asked, “Do I look fat?”

“You look perfectly normal for a female who is—how far along are you?”

“Four months.”

“You look perfectly normal,” Cecilia assured her. “And if you’d stop wearing dresses with obvious waists, no one would even know you’re with child.” She flipped the magazine closed and slid off the bed, heading over to Olivia’s closet to find a dress that would better suit her current state.

“Are you kidding? The entire coterie knows every single detail of this pregnancy. My mother gives daily updates to anyone who will listen, and many who probably would rather not but feel obligated to do so, because she is the queen. She’s so excited, you would think it was her having a child, not me.”

“She is about to be a grandmamma,” Cecilia reminded her. “And still suffers bouts of depression as a result of her intention to have a hoard of younglings and ultimately only having one. A female, at that.”

“Well, assuming my father names him as heir, and assuming I have no issues with my pregnancy, we have solved one of the problems.” She splayed her hands on her midsection.

Cecilia looked at her from the depths of the walk-in closet. “Are you truly afraid?”

Olivia shrugged one shoulder, feigning indifference, Cecilia suspected. She could see the underlying worry in her eyes. “Tanner isn’t, or at least he is doing a marvelous job of hiding his fears from me. But the reality is, we have no idea what to expect with this preg—er—whelping.”

Her concern, unfortunately, was justifiable. Not in all of their shared history had a lightbearer and a shifter ever mated, let alone produced a child together. Cecilia knew her cousin was worried, although she rarely expressed those fears to anyone but Cecilia, and her mate, Tanner.

“Alexa insists the babe is a lightbearer,” Cecilia pointed out in an effort to soothe her cousin’s worries. Alexa was one of the resident lightbearer healers and was, without a doubt, the best in the coterie.

“Yes, but she also believes it is a shifter,” Olivia replied.

“Which makes perfect sense, of course, considering you are the mother and Tanner is the father.”

Olivia lifted her eyes and looked at Cecilia through the looking glass. “What if I cannot sustain this pregnancy?” she whispered her deepest, darkest fear.