Dawning of Light (34 page)

“You bitch,” he snarled. “I’m going to kill you, I swear it. Whether I die from this wound or not, my last goal in this life is to destroy you!”

“Why?” Cecilia cried. “Why do you hate me so?”

“Because you ruined everything for me,” he snapped, stabbing his finger at her. “Our parents adored me, paid all of their attentions to me, lavished me with their love. And then
you
came along, and suddenly I had to share them. And if that wasn’t bad enough, you didn’t even appreciate it. Forever disobeying them, forever doing exactly as you pleased, without a care for their opinions or beliefs or—” His voice abruptly cut off on a gurgle as Lisa grabbed the hilt of the sword and jerked it up, widening the hole in his gut.

Cedric’s mouth opened and closed several times, and his fingers curled into fists, and then there was an explosion of light as he crumpled to the stairs. Cecilia shifted to the side so as to avoid his body as it rolled down the steps.

“Sibling rivalry’s a bitch,” Lisa said into the ensuing silence. “And some idiots just don’t know when to stop. Everybody good here?” She looked at Cecilia, then shifted her inquiring gaze to Olivia and the queen.

Olivia dropped to her knees and retched. Her mother patted her back and clucked sympathetically.

“Whelping’s a bitch, too,” Lisa added, then she climbed to the top of the staircase. “Let’s go. I’m sure your respective mates are ready to see for themselves that you all are safe and sound.”

Cecilia obediently followed, even as she thought,
But I don’t have a mate
.

“Cecilia’s father is dead as well. Apparently, he jumped off the cliff, with his deceased mate in his arms. Alexa confirmed his death.”

Finn recited the list of casualties to Tanner and the king, along with the report of those who had been injured thanks to Cedric’s attempted coup. They were locked in the library, and the king had warded the doors and windows for extra security. They weren’t afraid of another uprising, but they had all agreed to do this part in private. It was the first time in the lightbearers’ five-hundred-year history that such a bloodbath had occurred, and the last thing the king needed now was for mass hysteria to occur if someone overheard Finn’s emotionless retelling of the events.

Dane and the queen were overseeing the arrangements for the burning ceremonies for the various dead. Olivia had been relegated to her bed by both Tanner and Alexa, and the healer had given her a sleeping draught that she assured Tanner would not harm the pup growing in her belly. She had also assured both parents-to-be that the growing pup had not suffered from his mother’s poison-induced illness.

Cecilia had crawled into the bed with her and had fallen asleep without the aid of a sleeping draught. Finn ached to be with her, to comfort her, to assure her that he would always be there for her. It killed him that he hadn’t been there when she’d stabbed her own brother. If he could change the hands of time, he would have arranged it so that he could do it for her. The man had needed to die, but Cecilia should not have been the one to do it. Killing another being was a heavy burden to carry for the rest of one’s life.

“What?” he asked, because he realized Tanner had asked him a question, but he hadn’t heard the words.

“I asked about Carley. What’s the prognosis?”

Carley’s crumpled, broken body had been discovered at the base of the staircase leading up the cliff wall. Miraculously, she had been alive when Alexa discovered her and had enlisted the help of the guard, Jake Azenor, to carry her back to Alexa’s cottage so she could heal her.

Alexa and Tanner had missed one another in the process, when he had been heading to see her for help with Olivia’s nausea. That was when he had been attacked by Cedric’s rebels.

“Alexa and several healers are taking turns working on her, round the clock. She will not give us a definite answer yet, other than to say, ‘I
will
save her.’ Which is admirable, but not exactly a prognosis.”

“And her mate?”

“We haven’t located him yet. My current opinion is that he left the coterie. Josh Tigre from the Detroit pack has agreed to send a small group up here to help us scour the area immediately surrounding the wards.”

“What do we do with the others?” Tanner asked, turning to face the king. “There are seventy-three lightbearers currently being held prisoner. Each one has admitted to being a follower of Cedric Druthers.” Like Finn, Tanner refused to call Cedric by the name he’d given himself, the Chosen One.

“Rehabilitation,” the king said, grimacing. “It is an exceedingly unpleasant process, and not one we enact with much frequency, but it is the only solution I can think of.”

“Death comes to mind,” Finn suggested, seemingly lightly. But the comment was anything but light. Cecilia and his pack master both had very nearly lost their lives, thanks to those bastards who blindly followed Cedric. As far as he was concerned, he’d kill them all himself.

“We are no longer part of a shifter pack,” Tanner reminded him. “And if you’ll recall, I did not kill my father’s followers after his death.”

“This community is too small to just disperse them and hope for the best,” Finn replied.

“Your soon-to-be-mate will be fine,” Tanner said mildly. “At least, I presume you want to mate with her? Considering you nearly chose her life over mine yesterday.”

Finn turned his head and looked out the window.

“If it helps, I would have done the same.”

“Me too,” the king added, surprising both shifters with the determination in his voice. “And I am happy to perform the mating ceremony. Er, the
lightbearer
mating ceremony,” he amended, a blush staining his cheeks.

“I grant permission as well,” Tanner added.

“We still have to work through the aftermath,” Finn said. He did not acknowledge their permissions. He was not ready to deal with it yet. Cecilia had been so distant, so quiet in the eighteen hours since Cedric died and the battle finally ceased. He couldn’t even read her emotions, although she had been sleeping for a vast majority of the time.

“You’ve done plenty,” Tanner said. “Why don’t you go to her? She needs you now, undoubtedly more than ever. You know more than any of us how hard it is to deal with taking the life of someone close to you.”

“Quentin was not close to me.”

“He was still your pack master.”

* * * *

Something compelled her to pull from sleep, even though her mind, and her body, didn’t particularly want to. Her body was exhausted from all that had happened over the course of the last few days. Her mind, well, it wanted to sleep forever. If she stayed asleep, she would not have to face the realities of her life.

Her parents were dead. Her brother was dead—officially, this time.

Olivia was fine, but she was mated to Tanner, and expecting her first child in five months’ time.

Her cousin Carley was at death’s door, and when Cecilia had fallen into Olivia’s bed and curled up and gone to sleep, she had no idea if Carley would still be alive when she woke.

She was all alone in the world.

Soon, Olivia and Uncle Sander and Aunt Genevieve would be too consumed with the newborn pup to notice whether Cecilia was even in the vicinity. And she had no one else.

She’d fancied at one point that Finn might be that someone else. That he might be hers, despite what he’d said when Samuel had asked her to mate with him. But now that the battle was over, that the bad guys had been defeated, doubt had crept into her mind.

They argued, they disagreed, they had nothing at all in common, other than an appreciation for regular sex. Finn could find that anywhere, and eventually, he could find all the rest of it too, with someone else. Probably with another shifter. Now that Cedric was gone, he could go back to his sister’s pack, make his home there. She burrowed more deeply under the blankets, not wishing to wake and deal with those unpleasant thoughts. Her new reality.

“Fine. If you won’t wake up, I’ll just pick you up and carry you to my cottage in your nightgown.”

Her eyes shot open. “Finn?”

“Why is it I always have to reduce myself to threats to get you to react to me?”

“What threats?”

He shook his head. “Come on, get up. Olivia’s still asleep, and I don’t want to wake her.”

“I’m not ready to get up yet.”

“Too bad. Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“To my cottage.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to talk to you, and I want to do it in private.”

Now he too is leaving me
. She shrank away from him. “No. Tell me here. I’m not leaving.”

His gaze darted to Olivia’s sleeping form and then back to Cecilia. With a gusty sigh, he crouched on his haunches, next to the bed, and placed his hands on the sheet next to her.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m tired.”

“No, you aren’t. You’re trying to avoid dealing with reality.”

Damn it, she hated that he knew her so well. Especially considering he was about to tell her he was leaving.

“So?” she challenged. “What do you care?”

“I’ve been there, Cici.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Why not?”

“Because. Because…Only those close to me can use that nickname.” She lifted her chin defiantly.

“You don’t think we’re close? After all the things we’ve done together? The fact that I can feel your emotions? And share your magic?”

Her cheeks flamed. “I’m sure that will go away.”

“What will?”

“Me, giving you my magic. I don’t know how to control it, since I didn’t even know I could do it in the first place.”

“Why do you want that to go away?”

She glared. “Because you’re leaving,” she blurted. “Why would I want to share my magic with someone who will be five hundred miles away?”

The look on his face shifted to confusion. “Leaving? What the hell are you talking about?”

“You—you’re planning to move to Tennessee. To join your sister’s pack.”

He blinked owlishly. “No, I’m not. Where the hell did you get that idea? If I want to go anywhere, it’s to a deserted island, somewhere in the Caribbean.”

“Oh, because that’s even better, since you’ll be three times farther away,” she retorted, completely irrationally. Didn’t the man have any idea what he was doing to her heart?

“With you.”

“With…me?” It took her several long seconds to comprehend. And even then, she wasn’t sure she truly understood. “What do you mean, with me?”

He made a noise of annoyance and then stood up and scooped her into his arms, wrapping his arms around her waist and holding her so that her feet dangled several inches off the ground.

“I mean, I want to take you away, go on a vacation. Just the two of us. Somewhere where you can regenerate your magic and your emotional wounds can heal. Somewhere where it’s just the two of us, and I can convince you that you are worth more than your brother and parents combined, and that they were fucked-up individuals, and you did nothing wrong in that battle yesterday.”

It was her turn to blink owlishly. After a moment’s hesitation, she asked, “Would this vacation involve sex?”

Finn laughed. They both heard a sniffle and shifted their attention to Olivia, who sat on the bed, dabbing her eyes with a tissue. “Sorry. Ever since I began whelping, happy endings always make me cry.”

Finn laughed again. Cecilia joined him.

“Hey.”

Cecilia turned her head and watched as Finn bended at the waist and offered her a mug of coffee. “Thank you,” she said. She accepted the cup and continued to watch as he folded his tall, muscular frame onto the blanket next to her. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You left the bed,” he said simply. She understood. She always felt just a little better, a little more secure, calmer, when he was there. Especially when he was touching her.

“Besides, I knew you’d sneak out here to greet the sun.” He squinted as he looked at the horizon. The bright yellow mass was just beginning to peek over the wavy line that separated the dark blue of the ocean from the paler blue of the sky.

Cecilia smiled. “Silly of me, I know. Down here, it’s as if the sun never stops shining. My magic has never felt stronger. I’m not sure I ever want to go back.”

“I think you do. Despite everything that happened, family is too important to you to stay away.”

He was right, of course. Olivia, her aunt and uncle, Olivia and Tanner’s unborn pup, even Tanner had become family to her.

“Thanks, by the way, for going to my sister’s house with me first, before we came down here to paradise.”

Cecilia smiled. “Of course. Your new niece is utterly adorable.”

“Yeah, she’s pretty cute. Looks just like my sister did when she was a pup.” He paused and then added, “I noticed the two of you were getting along better than the last time we visited.”

“I showed her a couple of cooking tips I picked up from Carley. Now that they have three pups, she said she needs every shortcut she can find. And I think she’s finally accepted that you’re going to stay in the coterie.”

Finn nodded and sipped his coffee. “Ben said they’re planning to come visit for a week next summer.”

“That will be nice.”

They fell silent, sitting side by side on the beach, watching the sunrise and drinking coffee. After a few moments, Cecilia asked, “Do you think…?”

“Carley’s still alive? I don’t know. But if she is, we’ll find her. Alexa said she’d healed her almost entirely before she disappeared, so there’s hope.”

She liked that he could finish her thoughts, without her having to speak them out loud. “Do you feel guilty for spending this week down here, when so much is still unresolved back at the coterie?”

“Nope. You needed this.
We
needed this.”

Cecilia very deliberately placed her coffee mug in the sand and twisted her body so that she faced Finn on the blanket they shared. “Do you want to know what I truly need?”

He arched an auburn brow.

“To mate with you.”

She’d shocked him. It gave her a little frisson of pleasure to know that she could, especially considering they could feel one another’s emotions. She had been worried that he would have figured it out by now.