Blood Rights [Wicked River 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (17 page)

“You’ve shifted?” Ryah’s hand went to her mouth to muffle her gasp. “You shifted into a demon?”

“How the hell did you change back?” Tate demanded, though he sounded thoroughly impressed.

“Uh, I don’t know.” Glancing at Brock and then to Koba, Moira finally settled her gaze on her sister. “I passed out, and when I woke up, I looked like me.” She looked around the room again, her eyes growing wider. “What? Did I do something wrong?”

“Damon and Tate are Gavalots,” Ryah explained. “They’re born hybrids—demon, vampire, and lycan. When a Gavalot changes into their demon form, it’s nearly impossible to come back from. They’re angry, vicious, terrifying monsters.”

“Love you, too, dear,” Damon murmured out of the corner of his mouth but said nothing to refute her claims.

“Maybe it’s different with real demons.”

“Moira.” Ryah crossed the kitchen and took her sister’s hands, holding them tightly as she searched Moira’s face. “Have you shifted into a wolf?”

“I’m working on it, but no, not yet. Brock thinks I will on the full moon.”

“Honey, I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

Brock winced and dropped his head, wishing he could avoid this conversation. He’d suspected for a while that might be the case, but he hadn’t said anything in case he was wrong. Once he and Koba had claimed her, Moira’s scent had changed—just as he’d expected. The problem was that she had no lycan scent.

“Brock!” Moira released her sister and spun toward him with fire in her eyes. “You knew? You knew this entire time, and you didn’t tell me?”

“I wasn’t sure,” he answered lamely, trying not to fidget under her heated stare. She might be half his size, but Brock had learned long ago not to underestimate an angry female.

“I really could be a pureblood demon.”

“And an omega,” Tate added.

“So, I was what? Adopted?”

“I would guess hidden,” Ryah whispered. “The way I was hidden with humans.”

“But that means…” Trailing off, Moira sniffled, and a single tear trickled from the corner of her eye. “You’re not my sister. I have no family.”

“Oh, shut up,” Ryah snapped, tugging Moira into her arms and hugging her tight. “We’re still family. It doesn’t matter if it’s by blood or not. We’ll
always
be family.”

The back door burst open, interrupting the touching moment, and Joss practically fell into the room. “Mo, you have to come now.”

Moira wiped roughly at her face before turning to face the beta. “What happened? What’s going on?”

“We found Tennyson Blakemore.”

“Alive?”

“Yes. He’s in bad shape, but alive. C’mon!”

Moira and Ryah raced out of the kitchen, most likely to get their shoes. The women’s aversion to shoes was kind of amusing. “Which hospital are they taking him to?” Brock asked, grabbing the keys to his SUV from the island.

“No hospital.” Joss shook his head firmly. “You’ll understand why when we get there. Casey and Gatlan are taking him back to my place.”

“Joss!” Brock barked. He didn’t have time for the guy to start playing Mystery Theater. “Why can’t he go to the hospital?”

“Ten’s a demon.”
 

“Hey, Ten.” Kneeling beside the bed, Moira took Tennyson’s hand in her own and smiled.

Joss hadn’t lied. The man looked like he’d been through hell and back with deep cuts on his face and multiple bites and bruises littering his body. He appeared to be healing, though, and even gave her a weak half smile in return. “Hello, sugar.” Ten chuckled softly at Brock’s growl. “No need to get your back up, Brock Lancaster. I don’t have designs on your girl.”

“Stop causing trouble.” Moira squeezed the man’s hand and winked at him. “It looks like you’ve had enough of that. Where you been, good lookin’?”

“Let’s just stop pretending that you don’t know what I am.” Tennyson groaned as he tried to sit up. “Help me up, will ya?”

Brock and Joss helped the vet into a sitting position and propped him up against the headboard. Everything in Moira wanted to jump right into the questioning, but it seemed kind of rude and overbearing. Tiptoeing around the issue wasn’t going to get her anywhere, though.

“Who took you, why, and how did you get away?” Brock asked as he settled down on the edge of the mattress.

“You cut right to it, don’t ya? And here I was expecting dinner and a movie first.”

“Ten.”

Brock growled, but Moira had to turn away to hide her smile. She’d always liked Tennyson. Even battered and bruised, he was still cracking jokes to put everyone at ease.

“Two elder lycans, a vampire, a demon.” Tennyson ticked them off on his fingers as he spoke. “A shit load of Shadow Walkers, other lycans, and vampires. No other demons, though. Oh, and some pup that thinks his shit don’t stink.”

“Why did they take you, Ten?” The who of it wasn’t nearly as important as the why. If Moira had any hope of surviving the full moon, she needed to know why they were after her.

“I’m a demon,” Tennyson answered simply. “They need demons. Fortunately for me, I wasn’t the right demon.”

“But I am?” There was a wrong kind of demon? Why couldn’t any of this be simple?

“They’re trying to create triple hybrids. Specifically, they’re trying to create triple hybrids with powers.”

“Are those the half-wolf things we saw?” Koba asked, speaking for the first time since entering the house.

“That would be them,” Tennyson confirmed.

“What power do you have?” The answer came to her almost as soon as she’d asked the question, but still, Moira waited for confirmation.

“Healing.”

Yep, that’s the one she was thinking. “The others that have gone missing?”

“Yes, they were demons, too. Some had abilities. Some didn’t. They killed them all.”

“Then how did you get free?” Brock asked a bit more harshly than Moira felt was necessary. Tennyson was cooperating, answering every question willingly. There was no need to strong-arm him.

“They dumped me for dead, just like the others. With the henchmen so busy watching you guys, they didn’t even see me crawl out of the woods.”

“Do you know why they want Moira?”

Tennyson bobbed his head slowly, his dark-blond curls swishing against his brow. “They never said, but I saw and heard enough to have an idea. The first demons they took were unmated, going on the assumption that their powers would be highly concentrated since they weren’t claimed.”

“What changed?” Moira really wanted to channel her inner Brock and snarl at the guy to get to the good stuff, but that would just make her a huge hypocrite. So she bit her tongue and waited somewhat impatiently.

“Well, it didn’t work, did it?” Tennyson looked at her like maybe she’d bumped her head a little too hard. “So, then they switched to mated demons, but they didn’t really need the mates. So they disposed of them.”

Moira felt a little green around the gills, and her stomach rolled uncomfortably, threatening to send the contents of her dinner back up her esophagus. “They just killed them?”

“Yeah, they did.” Tennyson looked away, wiping roughly at his eyes as he cleared his throat.

“Who did you lose, Ten?”

He cleared his throat again and sniffed. “A demon draws power from his or her mate,” he continued, ignoring her question. Then again, she’d had no right to pry. “So, you see the problem. No mate equals no power. Most of those demons died once their energy was sucked dry.”

“When did they figure out they needed to keep the mates?”

Tennyson glanced up at Brock and smirked. “Right about the time you came home.”

“They get Brock out of the way so they can harness Moira’s powers.” Pacing back and forth in the small space beside the bed, Koba looked down at his hands as though they held the secrets of the universe. “Once they realized they couldn’t harness powers a demon doesn’t have, they bring him back to claim her.”

“Rip saw,” Moira added quietly. “He runs off to give the good news, and two days later, Koba is kidnapped. Why leave me, though?”

“I guess they figured you weren’t done yet.” A mischievous grin spread over Tennyson’s face when Moira arched an eyebrow at him. “Another five minutes in the oven before you’re ready.”

“Actually,” Koba said slowly, drawing the word out, “they did say something in that direction. I just didn’t realize that Brock was the incubator.”

Moira wrinkled her nose and made a face at her mate. “That’s gross. You can seriously stop talking now.”

The wink she received in return wasn’t unexpected. Since it didn’t help, however, she ignored it. “This is all great.” She was finally getting answers, but it didn’t change anything. “We still don’t know how to beat them.” Knowing why they wanted her wasn’t going to help her escape them, and someone she loved was going to end up getting hurt. They would, unless…

“I don’t like that look, Mo. What are you thinking?”

Good thing Brock couldn’t read her mind. No doubt, he’d never agree to what she had percolating inside her brain. “I have a plan.”

* * * *

“No! Absolutely not!” Brock roared.

Koba snarled and slammed his fist down on the coffee table. “Have you lost your damn mind?”

Maybe she should have told them of her plan before they’d gotten home. At this rate, they were going to destroy everything in the house. “This will work.”

“You’re going to get yourself killed,” Damon snapped, sticking his big nose into business that didn’t concern him.

“It’s suicide,” Tate agreed, and she didn’t like him any better for it.

“No it’s not. If they kill me, they can’t use me for what they want. Put aside your feelings and think. You know I’m right.”

“Maybe, but too damn bad.” Jumping up from the sofa like he had springs on his ass, Brock stomped across the carpeted floor and grabbed her face in both hands. “What you are failing to realize is that this
is
personal. I’m not letting you go out there like some goddamn kamikaze.”

“Or a sacrificial lamb.”

Moira turned her head to look a Ryah, hoping her face portrayed all the betrayal she felt. She’d anticipated Brock’s and Koba’s reactions. Damon and Tate siding with them hadn’t been a surprise, either. Of everyone in the room, she’d thought Ryah would be the one to understand why she needed to do this.

“I want your support on this,” she said, letting her gaze travel over the room to include each person there. “I don’t need it, though. I’m not helpless, and I can end this before it even starts.”

“You. Are. Going. To. Die!” Brock bit out each word, his face becoming redder with every passing second.

“Then I’ll die!” She wasn’t into the whole self-sacrificing thing, but if her death saved the lives of dozens of others, then so be it.

“That’s not courage.” Koba rose from the sofa as well, but instead of coming to her, he backed away toward the hall. “That’s selfishness.” It wasn’t a dramatic exit, per se, but his parting statement cut her right to the bone.

Did he think this was what she wanted? “I don’t have a death wish.”

“Could have fooled me,” Brock muttered snidely.

“Just listen. If we give them what they want, they have no reason to attack us. They’ll leave town, you’ll track them, and we catch them by surprise.”

“Baby, I love that you care so much for the people around you, but it doesn’t work that way. They’ll know we’re coming for you. Besides, according to Ten, your powers will weaken unless me or Koba are with you. It’s too dangerous, and I can’t let you do it.”

Well, at least he wasn’t yelling at her anymore, and the little vein in his forehead had stopped throbbing. “I can’t sit here and do nothing.” Didn’t he get it? Didn’t he understand? “This is because of me, Brock. Everything that has happened is because of me. It’s my fault, and I can’t let other people die because of what I am.”

“You’re a demon not the plague.” Ryah snorted and rolled her eyes. “You really need to get over yourself, honey. No one was forced to come here. Even if you weren’t in the picture, we’d all be here fighting. It’s not just you, Moira. It’s everyone. These places, the demons, the innocent people in these rural towns—we fight for them, for the people who can’t fight for themselves. It’s not all about you.”

Perhaps Koba was right. She’d only wanted to help, to prevent as much bloodshed as possible. After the dressing down her sister had just delivered, she felt just as selfish as Koba claimed she was acting. There should be a how-to book on fighting maniacal bad guys.

“Fine.” She wasn’t going to back down that easily, but she could be reasonable. “No one thinks this will work, so fine. Come up with a better idea before the full moon, because once the sun sets in six days, I will do whatever it takes to protect the people I love.”

* * * *

It was bullshit. He could have just as easily turned himself over on a silver platter, but what would that accomplish? Moira wanted to talk about personal feelings, yet she was the one allowing her emotions to rule her.

Koba needed air. The closer the full moon crept, the more the walls seemed to close in around him until he felt like he was suffocating. They were all born to a blood right. He, as an omega, was meant to bring peace to his chosen pack. Brock had been born from a long line of alphas, inheriting a legacy dating back hundreds of years.

By birth and by blood, Moira was an omega, a demon omega. By heart and by will, she was a warrior. No one knew why she’d been hidden away in a lycan pack. They could only speculate as to what purpose her banishment served. All the secrets of her past rested with her father. Koba doubted the guy was in town to reunite and bond with his daughter, however.

Whatever their lineage, nothing was set in stone. They were each free to choose their own path, and Koba’s destination didn’t include dying on a sacrificial altar. Nor did he have any desire to help some psycho alpha douchebag increase his pack numbers and keep them in line.

“That’s it.” Spinning around, he found Brock standing in the doorway with his hands shoved in his pocket. “We keep them in line.”