Bloodmark (29 page)

“We should stop,” he said.

I leaned up and kissed his lips again. No part of me wanted to stop. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to touch his skin. I wanted it to lead anywhere we wanted to go as long as I was with him. I trusted him and loved him inescapably.

His lips, reluctantly at first, followed mine in another deep kiss. The energy in the room vibrated around us, but he pulled away again, but this time I pursued him, after another kiss. Unrelenting. He nipped at my lip in return, catching my plump lower lip between his teeth. Nibbling it. Stimulating every cell in my body. A mischievous smile consumed his face. It was dazzling how cruelly handsome he was, and having his lips this close to mine without being able to touch them was completely distracting.

As he studied my face, concern washed over him; something was bothering him, but he guarded his feelings well. “Did I do something wrong?” I asked. I felt uncharacteristically shy.

“Never,” he said. He lightly rubbed his nose on mine, but he still seemed disconnected. Part of him was lost somewhere, somewhere he couldn’t or wouldn’t take me.

I felt jealous that he would keep secrets from me. The energy in the room still throbbed with excitement. “Kiss me,” I said.

The corner of his mouth turned up again, showing his gleaming teeth just below his upper lip. The wolf was obvious in him. He was wild too—I could see it in his eyes. Years of his obedience were just waiting to spill over and rebel, and I wanted so much to be there with him when he let go of the restraint. I wished it would be now. I wanted to know where that could lead. But I saw plainly in his eyes—he had made up his mind to behave at least for
tonight
. Though his naughty little smile still played at his lips.

“You want me, don’t you?” he asked.

I felt my face flush. I wasn’t sure why I was so embarrassed by his statement, but I felt like a little kid who had been caught red-handed. “Yes,” I said.

His smirk turned into a full-out wolfish grin. “Good,” he replied, “that’s how I like it.”

“Overconfident half-breed,” I said as I shoved him off my bed. My hair wildly framed my face as I leaned precariously over the edge of the bed above him, calculating my attack. He pretended to be hurt by what I had said, but I knew he was up to no good. No matter how he tried to contain his smile, it kept breaking through his reserved expression.

I leapt off the bed, landing with all my weight on his chest. He didn’t even flinch. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath of his scent, holding his musk in my lungs. My eyes flashed open, and I jumped off his chest to my window. In a miraculously smooth movement, I opened it and leapt out into the falling snow. Everything was coated in white as I caught my footing on a tree branch.

It was a winter wonderland. Simply beautiful.

The snow-covered world allowed an eerie blue essence to surround the forest. I looked back to my bedroom window, hoping Grey was surprised by my stealth, speed, and grace, but he wasn’t there. I crept out on the branch toward the house to peek in and get a glimpse of where he was hiding, then the hair on my neck went rigid. I heard the branch crack behind me and watched snow plop down to the ground. My gaze unconsciously followed it.

The once-pure snow was now stained red.

I could smell fresh blood behind me. It made the animal inside me scream with hunger. I worked up the courage to turn my head over my shoulder to see the predator that had made me as its prey. My hair caught in the wind, and the swirling snow around my face pierced my skin.

“Boo.” I heard Adomnan’s vile voice behind me. I turned to see him crouching a few feet away, holding the small, lifeless body of a little boy in his cruel hands. Blood still dripped from his cold lips. “I was hoping you’d join me for dinner.”

The child couldn’t have been more than eight years old, and his skin was an unnatural blue. My heart ached for his poor young soul. The sadistic look on Adomnan’s face sent chills down my spine. He looked straight out of a horror film, but his clothes were pristine as always. Even with the blood on his face, his beauty could not be denied.

I looked around for his brothers, certain they had me surrounded, but to my horror, they were nowhere to be seen. My only thoughts were of them attacking my unsuspecting family. Panic raked through my body in a shudder. He smiled back at me, answering my fears with his happiness. The branch cracked again from our joint weight, and the tree groaned at our intrusion.

“You’re a monster,” I said.

“Indeed,” he replied, licking the blood from his lips.

The sickness in him was far deeper than I could have imagined, and I knew he would never stop until he had me. This wasn’t just a game to him. This was where it would all end. If I went with him quietly, maybe he would let my family live. Mund would have remorse and always wonder if he could have done more, but he would have Tegan and Nia. He’d move on eventually, and I knew Baran would look after Grey.

I just had to accept
my
sacrifice. My life for theirs.

In a blur, Grey’s body flew past mine, violently smashing into Adomnan, knocking me off my branch. My body slammed into the ground, and the pain spiraled through me. The pain from my leg vibrated up into my pelvis, causing me to gag. It must have broken. The little boy’s body fell in a lump at the base of the tree. Ignoring the excruciating throbs in my leg, I crawled over to the boy and held his cold, lifeless body in my hands. I didn’t want to cry in front of Adomnan, but my tears ran down my cheeks for the boy. I chanted to Old Mother to welcome him to her kingdom.

When I looked back up, Grey’s hand was on Adomnan’s throat, holding him against the tree. “Get the hell out of here or die,” Grey said. His voice murderous.

Adomnan replied with a wicked, howling laugh. Adomnan lunged at Grey, knocking them both back onto the branch, breaking it. The two dropped to the ground, landing on their feet. The branch thudded into the snow between Grey and me.

“Fleshy and stupid,” Adomnan said as he dusted off his coat. “Very well, boy. We can make a game of it.” Grey dropped down into a crouch. He couldn’t fight Adomnan. Adomnan was a skilled killing machine. He had hundreds of years of blood on his hands, innumerable murders of innocents. I couldn’t let this happen, I couldn’t let Grey die for me. I couldn’t bear the idea of his blood spilling in the place of mine.

Mund and Baran came running around the front of the house. I was scared for their safety. They were all in danger because of me.

“Mund!” I screamed, but before I finished, Baran and Mund stood between Grey and Adomnan. Menacing growls on both sides. It was indistinguishable whose they were. I needed to shift to heal my leg, but I couldn’t with human eyes possibly on us. I wanted to close my eyes and let it be over. I didn’t dare watch, nor did I dare look away.

Grey made a mistake the day he met me. He should have seen the signs. He should have known better. I knew he couldn’t live in my world. He would die because he met me. They would
all
die because of me. I should have left this place when I had the chance.

“Just give up, Adomnan,” Mund said. His cool confidence calmed my mind.

“And give up what is rightfully mine?” Adomnan said staring at me.

Eamon and Bento flanked Adomnan as they emerged from the trees. Bento seemed to be sizing up Baran and Quinn. He must have seen them as his threat and Mund as Adomnan’s. Eamon seemed more concerned with Grey, which seemed odd. Grey was only a human, and yet Eamon’s eyes didn’t leave Grey’s, not even for a moment to blink.

I wanted to help them fight. I needed to help. They couldn’t always just hold me back and protect me. I was a part of this family, and I needed to fight to protect them too. Prophecy or no prophecy, I couldn’t live with myself if I let them all fight for me. If only I could shift so I could heal quickly. I moved to stand, but fell back to the ground, gasping from pain.

“So little boy, do you really know
what
we are?” Adomnan said.

Grey just smiled defiantly back at him.

“Your blood isn’t even appealing. But I would make an exception to kill you,” he hissed.

Grey’s heart was beating slow and steady. He had to be controlling it somehow. He was surrounded by werewolves, growling all around him. Was he really that unaware of what we really were and what we could do to him? Or was he really that confident? I found myself wondering if he hunted with his father and how much he really knew about us. Maybe I had been wrong to assume he understood what we were . . . or maybe I was wrong to assume he didn’t.

“Leave,” I demanded.

Adomnan looked at me again; I swore he was seeing me for the first time. Wild hair, barely clothed, with a broken leg in the cold snow and the little boy in my arms. “You dare to tell me what to do?” he hissed at me.

“I’d happily punish you for your crimes, but there are innocents here,” I replied. My angry venom dripped from my words with hate. “So get the bloody hell away from my family.”

Adomnan looked at my family around me, all ready to die to protect me. “As you wish, my princess,” Adomnan said. “For now.” His evil smile was still on his lips as he licked the remaining blood off. Bento reached for the boy’s body, and I growled a deadly warning.

“Leave it,” Adomnan said. “I was done with it anyway.” He locked eyes with me as they disappeared into the trees.

My heart filled with desperate sadness as I wept for the child’s soul. Grey held me in his arms as we sat in the cold snow. “Call the authorities,” I said.

“We shouldn’t bring the police here,” Baran said.

“We could move the body somewhere they will find it,” Mund suggested.

“No. We will not keep his body from his parents any longer. He wants his mother,” I said, cradling him in my arms. I could feel the reverberating fear from his departed soul, and it clouded me with sadness.

Baran walked into the house and returned moments later, wrapping a wool blanket around Grey and me. “They are on the way,” he said.

We waited in the cold snow in silence for the police to come. They asked endless questions. We claimed I saw the boy out the window and that I rushed to try to save him, but it was a lie. He was dead because of me. If I didn’t live here, Adomnan wouldn’t be here killing innocent souls. They took the boy’s body with them, leaving us in the cold in our blood-soaked clothes.

My leg pulsed with pain. When Grey and Mund had fought in the parking lot at school, I hurt when Grey did. But now that my leg was broken, Grey wasn’t injured. How could that be? Or was he hiding his pain? I reached out my hand and lightly touched his right leg where mine was broken, and he flinched.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. He delicately kissed my cold forehead.

“You made the right decision for the child,” Baran said. “Thank you for being strong enough to choose it.”

I would have agreed, but the pain in my leg vibrated through my body again, and I gasped. “I need to shift,” I said.

Grey scooped me up in his strong arms, carried me into the house, and whispered into my ear, “I’ll take care of you.”

He sat me down on the sofa and took his seat next to mine. He watched me, expectantly. He wanted to see me as an animal. Was I just some sideshow attraction for him? The beast-girl . . . how positively horrifying. I wasn’t sure I wanted him to see the wolf again.

Everyone filed back into the living room. Baran shut the door with a solid thud. He looked to me and Grey and back again. Fear and exhaustion were clearly on his face. He wanted to say something, but he didn’t have to. I already knew I had been reckless and had endangered the whole family with my actions. No one had to tell me how stupid and irresponsible I was; I was already ashamed of myself. I had nowhere to look but down at my own feet.

I heard Mund’s footsteps as he walked over to me and wrapped his big, safe arms around my shoulders. A small whimper escaped from his lips, just barely audible to even me. His deep sadness rolled off him and onto me, nearly crushing my body. That one small sound was enough to break my heart. For so long, Mund had been my only friend, the only one who understood me, but now I knew he was also afraid of losing me.

“We had a great realization today,” Baran said with the fierceness of a leader. “We aren’t able to protect our humans—we are barely protecting ourselves. Every move we make jeopardizes them more. Ashling, is it still your decision to stay and fight?”

I looked at my family around me. “It is our duty to protect these people. We endangered them by being here, but even if we leave, it doesn’t mean Adomnan won’t kill them all before he continues hunting us,” I said. “We fight for our family and we fight for these people.”

“I fear for all our safety,” Baran said. “No one is to leave the house alone. We need to fight them on our terms far from the city. This attack will take time to plan and orchestrate, but I believe we can win.”

Our quarrel would continue another day. Even if we fled as a family, it would do no good. They would just track us. If I alone ran and they stayed, it would put them off my trail for a while. It would buy me a little time to hide. Somewhere like the Himalayas or Antarctica, though eating penguins didn’t sound too appealing . . . they were too cute.

Grey held my hand, connecting us, and Mund gestured for Tegan to come to him. She puddled herself and Nia into his lap, and there they embraced each other, but Mund kept one hand on my shoulder. Gwyn and Quinn kneeled in front of us on the floor, and Quinn placed one hand on Grey’s shoulder, creating the web of life. Still, no one yelled at me for my childish behavior. No one punished me or sent me away. Baran kneeled down with the others, putting one hand on Nia and one on Gwyn completing the connection. Their power flowed through me, and it pulsed with their strength. I had yearned my whole life for this moment, for this connection. Together we silently became one.

When we all let go, the energy still thrived inside me—it was the energy of a pack. I’d never felt it before, and it was intoxicating. Despite me not having a Bloodmark, we all connected as one pack, one heart. The enchanting feeling of it filled my broken heart with happiness. I finally belonged.