Bloodright (2 page)

Simultaneously, Rafael and Lucien shifted into their human forms and turned to face her. Falon cried out at Rafael’s condition. Large gaping gashes filleted his chest, thighs, and arms. His golden skin glittered crimson.

He reached out to her, taking an unsteady step toward her. “No, Falon,” he said hoarsely.

“The Blood Law has been avenged!” Sharia cried, stepping toward the alpha brothers. “You both know to kill an alpha is a death sentence!”

The grizzled old woman tottered toward Lucien and grabbed his bloody hand. “Kill your brother this day and lose your life before the sun sets.” She took Rafael’s hand and placed it over his brother’s. “Swear before the packs you will not break our covenant.”

Rafael yanked his hand from Sharia’s and spit on the floor. “The Blood Law has forsaken me! Only Lucien’s death will atone for it!”

Lucien stepped snarling toward Rafael. “The Blood Law has betrayed me
twice
! Only your chosen one’s death will redeem it!”

“No,” Falon whispered. “I do not want to die.”

Lucien turned and faced her. “You will not die by my hand. I swore to accept the verdict and so I shall.” He extended his hand, motioning her to him. “You belong to me now.”

“I don’t.” Desperately Falon looked past Lucien to Rafael, who stepped toward her. His ocean-colored eyes cried out with pain, longing, and a love for her so profound she felt it to her marrow. But shining just as passionately, she beheld his honor, his pride, his love for his people. And most heartbreaking of all, the truth of what she must do. Go with Lucien or refuse; either way, the outcome would destroy Rafael. She could not live with that guilt. She straightened and faced Sharia. “I reject both alphas. I choose to remain unmated.”

“You gave up that choice when you exchanged marks with Rafael,” Sharia said evenly. Her tobacco brown eyes glittered furiously. Her gnarled hands fisted at her sides. “See it done!”

Falon shook her head and stepped back. This was barbaric! She was not a commodity to be traded because of a law she did not live by. And she would not be a slave to any man
or
nation.

“Come with me now,” Lucien said softly.

She looked at him through blurry eyes. Lucien: the dark, mysterious, misunderstood alpha who maybe, in a different place and a different time, she could accept. But not now. Not when that choice would destroy Rafael. “No,” she whispered and pulled the trigger.

Pain exploded in her chest. Her heart shuddered from the percussion. Falon knew her body was shaking, but she felt only the profound loss of the life she had prayed for with Rafa. Barely able to stand, she blinked back the blood and tears as every eye in the great room stared dumbfounded at her. The only eyes she met were Rafael’s stunned aqua-colored ones. “Noooo!” he cried, running toward her.

The gun slipped from her bloody fingers. The pain mushroomed throughout her body. “I love you,” Falon said as she crumpled to the floor.

It was not Rafael’s arms that caught her but those of his brother. Lucien’s horrified golden eyes were the last thing she saw before she gave up her life for the man she loved.

One

LUCIEN GRABBED FALON to his chest before Rafael could touch her and whirled away from him deep into the safety of his pack.

Rafael lunged after him, but pack Vulkasin had the wherewithal to swarm around their alpha, as much for his protection as theirs. They understood what had to happen next.

Rafael snarled, wildly lunging, his powerful arms and legs held back only by the combined effort of a dozen of his men.

“I will give this warning only once,” Lucien growled from the security of his pack, speaking not only to his brother but to the council. “If Rafael or
any
of pack Vulkasin, including the Berserkers, make any attempt to take what is mine by bloodright, by the Blood Law, I will destroy them and in so doing be justified!”

He sneered at the assembled council of Amorak elders. “You are weak. By your failure to enforce the Blood Law as it is written, I will no longer live by it.”

“You would have her death?” Sharia demanded, pointing at Falon’s broken body in his arms.

“I would have the right to choose my own mate!” Lucien shouted.

“Then return her to Rafael and choose,” Sharia said sharply.

And what penalty would his brother have paid for destroying the woman Lucien chose to stand beside him? None. And that he would never accept!

Shaking his head, Lucien looked down at Falon’s naked bleeding body. An emotion he could not put a name to tugged at him. This half-Lycan, half-human female represented many things to many of his people. Whoever possessed her possessed her unusual powers. And through that connection they would gain untold power. But for Lucien personally, the true power Falon gave him was the power to destroy his brother. And for that alone, he would not allow her to die.

“You cannot have it both ways, Lucien,” Sharia said. “Live by the Blood Law, or refute it and return her to Rafael.”

Pride aside, Lucien was a fool if he returned her to his brother. From the moment he laid eyes on the sultry beauty, she became the one thing he must possess. And possess her he would.

He looked back at Sharia and nodded. “So be it. She belongs to me now by bloodright.” His eyes narrowed as he turned to face his brother. “As mine,
I
will choose if she lives or dies,” Lucien taunted. For sixteen years, he had waited for the day he would hold his brother’s chosen one’s life in his hands. That day had come. But instead of taking her life, he had been given it. Part of him resented it, part of him reveled in it, but another part of him feared it would blow up in his face. Her love for his brother would never die. And he would never share any part of her.

“You agreed not to take her life,” Maleek, an elder from the north, said, stepping around Sharia’s shriveled frame.

“It is my choice to allow nature to take its course or to redirect it,” Lucien defended. Now Rafe would finally know what it felt like to have the woman he loved ripped from his arms.

“Give her to me!” Rafael shouted, fighting against his men. “I can heal her!”

“As can I, Brother. If
I
choose.”

“You would not dare allow her to die!” Sharia screeched.

Lucien glared at the assembled packs. “I would dare, and more! I will kill any human or Lycan who dares to challenge my right to decide if she lives or dies!”

Lucien turned with Falon in his arms. Her pulse had weakened and her heartbeat had slowed to a death knell. Her lifeblood covered his body. Never more furious than at that moment, Lucien looked down at the woman who had driven the wedge deeper between the packs. His brother’s chosen one. The woman Rafael loved and who loved him equally in return. Why had she been given a second chance when his own chosen one had not been given even one? His heart still ached over the loss.

As would his brother’s for Falon. Because now she was Lucien’s. And though his vengeance burned white hot in his heart, there was the slightest sliver of it left untainted by the ugliness his world had become. That tiny piece of him cried out to Falon to love him as she loved his brother.

He looked over his shoulder to his frantic twin. It took the combined effort of pack Vulkasin and those of pack Ruiz’s alpha and sergeant at arms to hold Rafael back. “Take your honor and your Blood Law and find another mate, Brother.” Lucien raised the dying Falon in his arms. “This one is mine.” Rafael’s eyes blazed bloodred, froth covered his mouth, and the muscles in his body strained so tightly against his skin it looked as if his body would split at the seams. “Come near her, Brother, and I will kill her
after
I kill you.”

Rafael snarled and shifted. As he lunged at Lucien, a shot rang out. Rafael’s big body hit the floor with a heavy thud.

Stunned, Lucien looked past his brother to Sharia, who stood with the handgun Falon had used on herself, pointed at Rafa’s now-human body. A profound sense of loss he could not explain filled Lucien’s heart.

“My gods! What have you done!” Lucien railed at the old medicine woman stepping toward his brother’s still body.

She raised furious brown eyes to him and levelly said, “Leave here before he shakes off the wound and kills you, or I will kill you myself.”

Lucien stepped back, unsure how to interpret the emotions crashing inside him. So he did not try. “If he dies from the wound, you will answer to me.”

“What do you care?” the old woman scoffed.

“He is my brother! When his time comes, it will be by my hand alone!”

With Falon hanging unconscious in his arms, Lucien strode bloody and naked from the Vulkasin compound building to his waiting motorcycle. His pack swarmed behind him. Talia, his cousin and Mondragon spirit healer, shoved her way through the bodies to Lucien, her big purple eyes wide with concern. She pressed her hand to Falon’s heart. “She does not have much time left, Lucien.”

“I know.” He whirled away. Holding Falon to his chest, he mounted his chopper. Moments later, they roared out of the compound.

Luca.

Lucien ignored his brother’s desperate call.

Luca, please, I beg you, if you have any love for me left in your heart, heal Falon.

Rafael’s words tore at him. The devil that drove Lucien wanted Falon to die, to punish Rafael for what he had done to him. An eye for an eye; Rafael would finally live Lucien’s pain. But that barely perceptible part of the human that was left, stayed his revenge.

Save her.

Lucien ground his jaw, shutting off his mind to his brother’s pleas. The beast in him wanted to save Falon, because for selfish reasons, for noble reasons, for purely primal reasons, he wanted her for himself.

Save her, Luca. She is powerful and strong. Save her and you save yourself.

“What payment do you offer for her life?” he shouted to the wind.

As Lucien made the demand, he steered his chopper to the shoulder of the road where he abruptly stopped. He growled and looked down at the pale face. The face that had pitted Lycan against Lycan. The face Rafael had fallen in love with. The face Lucien dreamed would one day be his to kill. The face that could end the Lycan nation as a people. Because there was no chance for the packs to reunite now. Not as long as one of the brothers lived. Or, if she died.

Save her life and I swear on our mother’s heart, I will not come for her.

But she will come for you.

I will shun her.

And she will know it is a ploy.

I will make her think I love another.

Then swear to take another mate before the next full moon.

You will save her, then?

I will save her.
But that decision was made the minute she pulled the trigger.

I swear it.

That Rafael did not hesitate to give up the one thing he loved most in the world to save it was not lost on Lucien. He hated his brother for his honor. But despised himself more because he loved nothing enough to make any sacrifice.

Then it will be done.
Because honor was Rafael’s Achilles’ heel. Not only would he abide by the council’s decision, Rafael would keep his word and stay away from Falon. The cards could not have been dealt more favorably to Lucien had he handpicked them himself.

As Lucien laid Falon’s still body down on the side of the road, her heart arrested. Quickly, Lucien bit his wrist until his blood flowed in a thick, steady stream and then pressed it to Falon’s pale lips. He pressed his other hand to the gunshot wound in her chest. Closing his eyes, he called upon the Great Spirit Mother to spare her life, just as she had spared his and Rafael’s lives all those years ago.

Talia came up behind him and pressed her hands to his shoulders and began an ancient healing chant. Her hands infused him with a warm heat. It traveled from his shoulders to his arms to his hands, and into Falon’s body. His blood thrummed hot in his veins.

Iridescent energy flickered along Lucien’s skin to Falon’s. Her heart lurched against his hand, and in a slow, unsteady cadence, it began to beat. Lucien’s own heart beat with it, urging hers into a steadier rhythm. Falon choked as his blood drenched her lips. He pressed his wrist more firmly to her lips.

“Take it, Falon,” he commanded.

She moaned.

“Yes,” he whispered. “Take more.”

Her lips tightened around him, her tongue slid across the bite wounds, her lips pulled, sucking hard. A desire like no other thrummed through him, slamming into his defenses before filling every inch of him with a wild, possessive greed.

Lucien closed his eyes, fighting the call of the wild. But once he wrangled the beast to submission, he heard it again. Stronger this time: the inarguable call of her blood to his.

Like a lightning bolt striking a mountaintop, it struck Lucien that Falon was meant to be his. He believed strongly in fate, fate he directed, not fate directing him. He forced a tight smile and smoothed away a hank of blood-soaked hair from her cheek. She would be his now, and with her by his side, they would lead the nation against the Slayers and destroy each and every one of those murderous miscreants.

Lucien lowered his lips to the bullet wound that still seeped blood and licked it, sealing it enough to buy him some time to get to his own compound in the flatlands.

Falon’s body had stilled, but the strong beat of her heart told him she would live.

He looked up to Talia, who stood by silently. “She’s strong enough to make it to the compound.”

“I’ll go ahead and prepare your room.”

Lucien nodded. Falon’s other wounds could wait. He pulled out the spare clothing he always carried from one of the saddlebags. He wrapped one of his shirts around Falon’s shoulders, and quickly dressed himself. Carefully he picked her up and mounted his chopper.

Readjusting Falon’s limp body in his arms, Lucien gave the go-ahead signal to his pack, and they carefully continued down the steep mountain road to his own compound nestled in the flatlands at the base of Sierras.