Immortal Craving: Immortal Heart (3 page)

Kale was still pulled by that charge in the air. The fleeing female form was familiar, but she was skinnier and her hair was shorter than Katarina’s had been. Kale couldn’t push the thoughts away. Would he have been greeted by the most stunning shade of emerald eyes if the Succubus had just moved out of the shadows?

Memories flooded Kale as he flew through the deep, endless black of the night sky…

“She’s not coming.”

Kale had twirled at the unexpected voice. A small pixie flitted near the edge of the small clearing where Kale had waited for Kat. She was late. Kat was never late.

“Who are you?” Kale asked suspiciously.

“Katarina sent me. She can’t make it to you, but asked that you come to her home.”

They never met on Dark territory; it was safer in his land. “Is she alright?”

“She is not well and asked that I bring you to her.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Kale demanded.

“She needs to feed and is too weak to come to you.”

That wasn’t right; he’d fed Katarina only a week ago. She should have been fine. His chi sustained her for weeks at a time. But it didn’t matter the reasons, he would go to her. He would always go to Katarina—she was what mattered most in his life.

“Take me to her.”

Kale dropped into
Izzy’s back yard, shook the memories from his foggy mind and fished the house key out of his pocket as he made his way to the back door. He had to find the Succubus—he needed to see her face. He needed to reassure himself that while he wanted it to be her, it simply wasn’t… The Underworld had a heavy hand and Makyle and his brothers never relinquish souls. Their domain is for forever.

Yet something niggled at Kale’s brain. The voice, the body, and the movements of tonight’s Succubus were all so similar to his Katarina. He had spent those precious months they were together committing everything about her to memory. Her silky golden hair, flawless curves, sinful lips and those emeralds that had looked upon him with such unyielding love—deep, open and even vulnerable when they would lay
together. He remembered all the things that had made him love her so deeply. But time warps memories. It takes liberties with the details and while the voice was so familiar, he couldn’t guarantee that it wasn’t simply his desire for her to still be alive that drove him to want to believe.

Kale sighed and let himself into the house.

“You’re back sooner than I expected,”
Izzy said from the kitchen counter. Her eyes never left the apple she was slicing.

“And you’re up later than I expected,” Kale said as he reset the alarm.

“I was hungry; have a seat.” She gestured with the knife to the table as she grabbed another apple and began slicing it. She moved to the microwave and pulled out a small, warm bowl.

Izzy
smiled wide at Kale as she set a plate with one of the cut-up apples and the small bowl of melted peanut butter in front of him.

“Milk?
Or would beer or tequila better suit you?”

Kale raised a brow at her and dipped his apple in the peanut butter.
Izzy had some odd choices in food combinations, but he found that the apple and peanut butter one wasn’t so bad.

“Beer sounds about perfect right now.”

“You got it.” Izzy grabbed her plate of apple slices and set a beer in front of him as she sat with a tall glass of milk.

“Thanks,” Kale smiled as he popped the top off the pale ale and took a deep swig.

Izzy eyes were glued to him as he tipped his head back. After he set the beer down, she was up and forcing his head back to look at his neck.

“What the hell happened to you?” She ran her soft finger over what he guessed was the swollen and possibly bruised skin from the
Trow
’s not-so-gentle touch. Kale pulled his head away from her and instantly felt bad at the look it caused on her pretty face. Izzy was more than Bain’s female. She was part of their family and she was concerned about him.

Kale patted her arm and smiled at her. “It’s nothing. Eat your apple before it turns brown.”

Izzy’s wide blue eyes studied his face as she reluctantly took her seat. “Are you ok?” she asked again, still studying his face.

“I’ll be fine,
Iz
. I just had a little run in with a
Trow
.”

“A
Trow
? In the Human World?” Bain asked as he entered the kitchen, wearing a pair of low-slung pajama pants and nothing else.

Kale took a second to look at
Izzy. How had he not noticed she was in a short white robe and, he guessed, little underneath? Kale shook his head, glad he hadn’t come back in time to interrupt anything. Bain grabbed a beer, flipped one of the honey-oak chairs around to straddle it, and then let his eyes fall on Kale’s neck.

“A
Trow
did that?” Bain asked as he tipped back his bottle of beer.

“Caught me off guard—I didn’t even know he was in the alley.”

“What were you doing in an alley?” Bain asked, no judgment or mention of the fact that Kale had let a lesser Fae sneak up on him.

“Following a Succubus,” Kale said, popping another apple slice in his mouth.

“Was he with her?” Bain asked, a little surprise tainting his features.

“Yep, she told him to let me go and the hulk of a
Fae threw me across the alley. Never met a
Trow
that strong.”

Bain nodded, “And you shouldn’t have, not here anyways. There are too many lesser
Fae flooding the Human World.”

“
Lesser
?” Izzy asked. There were all kinds of accusations in her voice. She didn’t like them treating other species as less than them. It made them sound like bigots and she would never admit it, but it hurt her too. She wasn’t Fae but she wasn’t human anymore—so part of her wondered if they considered her
lesser
.

“It’s not derogatory, sweetheart. It refers to the amount of power they wield. They are not strong enough to pass through the same portals we use.”

Izzy nodded in understanding. “So how did the
Trow
get here then?”

“The Drifters.
Maybe?” Kale shrugged.

Kale wasn’t so much thinking about the
Trow
but the Succubus. He took another bite of apple; he’d lost the bowl of melted peanut butter to Izzy. When he raised a brow and smirked at her, she smiled wryly and set the bowl back in front of him. Kale chuckled and turned back to Bain.

“Probably,” Bain nodded and grabbed a slice of apple off
Izzy’s plate while she playfully swatted his hand away.

They bordered on nauseatingly sweet together but still they gave Kale hope. If an ass like Bain could score a female like
Izzy, there was hope for the rest of them.

Kitty tossed her keys in a crystal bowl on a table just inside their little apartment’s door. Jake locked it behind them as she moved to the curtains.

“Katarina, talk to me.”

She knew Jake was serious. She was
Kitty
to him… not Katarina, not Kat. And he was almost always Jakey to her. He was among the few she allowed to call her Kitty and she never heard a single person attempt to call him Jakey. But pet name or nicknames or whatever didn’t matter right now—nothing did. She needed to keep busy and if she was honest she didn’t know what to say…

She’d seen Kale. After all this time she’d seen him, and while her heart thumped at the sound of his voice, her
brain told her to run—fast and far away. The heart was a messy muscle that had gotten her into a world of trouble all because it had loved a Light Fae. It was a plain and very real illustration of ‘from the wrong side of the tracks’.

Only it wasn’t tracks; it was an invisible line that separated the Middle World and the lives of all the Dark and Light
Fae. But that hadn’t stopped her. She loved him and he’d used her, and then thrown her to a fate worse than she had ever imagined.

Katarina pulled the thick, cream-colored, blackout curtains across the large, picture window that made up nearly one side of their home.

“Kitty, stop and look at me. Please.”

Katarina couldn’t ignore the pleading of Jake’s voice. He was worried
about her weirdness, but she didn’t want to talk to him about Kale.

Jake had found her in
Darion’s dungeon and had taken an immediate protectiveness towards her. There had only been so much he could do to help her, but he kept the other guards away. Even when Darion had decided to move her from the dungeon to one of the rooms in his castle—that was no less a prison for its opulence—he had still checked in on her. Still treated her like a friend. He was what kept her from ending her own miserable existence in that horrid castle.

And she still hadn’t been able to tell him her whole story.
The story of a girl loving the wrong boy.

“Dawn’s breaking,” Katarina said absently. The glow of a new day was chasing away the night’s darkness. “We need to cover the windows.”

Jake nodded and helped close all the spots in which daylight could find him. After the night they’d had, he couldn’t afford to turn to stone. Kitty needed him. That was the bad thing about having a
Trow
for protection—if he was kissed by the sun he would become stone until night found him again.

With one final scan, Katarina was assured that the house was light tight. She smiled at Jake as he stared at her.

“I need to get some sleep. Thanks for the rescue, Jakey.” She lifted up on her tiptoes and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I know you want explanations, but I can’t give them right now. I’m too tired.”

Jake nodded.
“Ok, Kitty... whenever you’re ready.”

The weight of the evening’s events crashed down on Katarina as soon as she shut herself in her bedroom. She stripped
off her clothes, replaced them with a pair of sleep shorts and a tank top, then climbed under her thick comforter.

“
Kale,
” she whispered his name in the dark. How was it possible that her heart and body still longed for him? How come her brain couldn’t overpower those primal feelings? She deserved better than to love a man who had betrayed her…

“You’re nearly too pretty to be in a dungeon.”

Katarina lifted her head from the dank, hay-strewn ground that was the floor of the cell she’d found herself in for the past week, to the sound of her leaders’ voice. Its condescension pulled at her.

“Why are you keeping me here?” she asked through the scratch of her throat.

“You’re aligned to the Dark. You’re one of my subjects, are you not?”

“Yes, my Lord.” She found the proper amount of respect needed when addressing her leader.

“So tell me what you were doing on the Lights land and consorting with the Immortal Warrior, Kale?”

Katarina’s eyes widened with understanding. He knew about them, but how? They’d been so careful; the only ones who knew about them were his brothers and his leader, Rowan.

Darion
smirked at her. “That’s right. Would you like to hear how I know?”

Katarina didn’t respond. The question was more rhetorical then an actual question deeming an answer.

“Imagine my surprise when I got a visit from Rowan and her Warriors, telling me one of my subjects had trespassed on her lands. Seems whatever you had with the Warrior has passed. They called for your immediate execution—claimed you used your Succubi gifts against the warrior.”

“No…” Katarina shook her head. Kale wouldn’t... he loved her. “No, that’s not true. He loves me.”

“Ah, such a stupid girl with stupid notions of love… They believe you used your Succubi powers in an attempt to snare the warrior in your web.”

“I would never… and there’s no way Kale thinks that—it’s not true.” Katarina eyes narrowed with anger. She would never use her body against Kale… not in the way
Darion was implying.

“I assure you it is. They wanted your head. But you see I am more forgiving. You won’t be sentenced to death, but you will remain my prisoner.”

Katarina shook her head. Kale wanted her dead? He thought she had used her Succubi gifts to make him love her? She felt the warm trail of tears stain her cheeks as she took in her situation. She was a prisoner now because she fell in love with the wrong man.

She’d been young and so foolish back then, and yet somehow her heart was still as irrational—still longing for something that had only broken it all those years ago.

She was aware of everything about Kale. He was different somehow; she saw it in the depths of his dark eyes. She’d gotten a good look at him in that alley. The facial hair did little to hide that baby face she had loved studying, his eyes were as dark as always, bottomless orbs of heat—melted chocolate as she’d always thought of them.

The piercing on his eyebrow was new, as were the tattoos peeking over the collar of his shirt. He was handsome, even more so with that edge of danger that now surrounded him. He was the proverbial bad boy.

An intense heat low in her belly, which she hadn’t felt in a decade, flared to life. She was a Succubus. She’d taken lovers since Kale, but none had caused that chain reaction on her nerves—the one that left her flushed and aching.

With a deep groan, Katarina pulled the pillow from beneath her head and held it against her face to muffle the frustrated scream that was manifesting in her throat. A scream of anger, betrayal and so help her—need and lust.