Desire Unchained (43 page)

His raw, erotic growl swept through her like a muscle-deep caress, warming her,

preparing her for him. Right now she was little more than a raging mass of hormones, and deep

inside her womb contracted and her sex clenched. Still, when he reached for her, she slashed him

with her claws.

In an instant, he was on her. She snarled, snapping at him with her teeth, but he locked

his jaws on her scruff and held her in place. With one last burst of power, she threw herself

sideways, dislodging him momentarily as they crashed into the side of the cage.

Her victory was short-lived, and in a blur of fur and fangs, he had her where he wanted

her once again, and in one smooth, powerful stroke, he filled her.

Ecstasy exploded through her body, far more than a sexual high. Seminus bond or no, this

was her true mate.

Shade’s howl joined hers, a celebration in the night.

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Shade woke, naked, battered, and exhausted, spooning with Runa, who stirred as he

stretched. Wincing at the twinge of sore muscles and aching joints, he stroked her arm. His eyes

were still closed, mainly because he planned to go back to sleep for a week.

The last three nights and days had been the most exhausting of his life. Not that he was

complaining. He and Runa had mated constantly in both their warg forms and true forms, taking

breaks during the day only to eat. Someone, probably Tayla or Eidolon, had left them meat the

first night—he didn’t recall them coming in to take away the males he’d fought and to lock the

cage door so he and Runa wouldn’t escape, but he was pretty glad he didn’t remember. No doubt

they’d gotten an eyeful of werewolf mating habits.

E would never let him live this one down.

Beneath his hand, Runa’s silky skin heated. Not just heated, but seared his palm. He

struggled to open his eyes. His vision was blurry, and having Runa’s mane of hair in his face

didn’t help. Groaning, he shoved himself up on one elbow.

“Mmm.” Runa yawned. “What are you doing?”

“I’m—” He froze. His breath lodged like a plug in his throat. Her left arm … holy hell.

Runa shot him a concerned look over her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

He couldn’t tear his gaze away from her arm. “You’re marked. You’ve got my

mate-mark.”

“Seriously?” As she squirmed into a sit, her grin hit him right in the heart. “Oh, wow. It’s

real, isn’t it?” Her hand came down on his, and she twined their fingers together as she traced the

patterns on her skin. “We’re bonded.”

“Yeah.” Intense emotion made him sound as if he’d swallowed a truckload of crushed

glass. “You’re mine now.”

Her hand stilled, and her gaze locked on his. “I always was. You just couldn’t see it.”

“I’m so sorry—”

She pressed her fingers to his lips. “You couldn’t see it because your life was on the

line.”

He kissed her hand, as lovingly as he could, letting his lips linger. “You deserved so

much better than what I gave you.”

“Yes,” she said smartly, “I did. But, like you, I couldn’t see it.” She reached up and

skimmed the pads of her fingers over his personal mark at the top of his
dermoire.
“An unseeing eye.”

“I always wondered why that was my symbol. E has a set of scales, but he was born to

Justice demons, so that made sense. Wraith’s got an hourglass … we always joke that it’s

because he’s impatient and never on time. But mine … mine never made sense.”

“It’s open now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your mark. It’s an open eye now. No longer unseeing.”

Shade’s eyes stung. “Eidolon’s scales were unbalanced until he bonded with Tayla.” He

swallowed, trying not to do something wussy like cry. “He didn’t discover the change for days.”

“So he’s balanced now … and you’re no longer blind.”

“Never again.”

She rolled over, hooked her leg over his, and drew him in. After the last three nights, he

hadn’t thought he could get turned on again—not for weeks, at least—but having her naked,

heated body rubbing against his triggered sensations he couldn’t deny.

The ringing of a cell phone interrupted his inappropriate thoughts.

“I’m not answering,” he murmured.

“You need to. It’s your brother’s tone.”

Shade tucked Runa beneath him and let voicemail pick it up. Eidolon was going to have

to wait.

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Eidolon’s voicemail message turned out to be urgent, so Shade and Runa showered,

scarfed down breakfast—he made her pancakes, because nothing tasted better than carbs after

three nights of raw meat—and sped to UG on his Harley. They found Eidolon in his office,

scowling at a stack of paperwork on his desk.

“I finally got the inventory report back for the storeroom,” he said without a hello. “We

have a problem.”

Shade took a seat and pulled Runa into his lap. “So Roag definitely got away with

something?” When E nodded, Shade cursed. Their brother was gone forever and yet he was still

causing trouble. They’d known he’d broken into the storeroom somewhere around the time he’d

tried to kill Luc, but they hadn’t known what, exactly, he’d stolen. “What did he take?”

“Among other things, Eth’s Eye and the mordlair necrotoxin.”

Eth’s Eye was a crystal orb used for divination, but the other … the name rang a bell, but

only vaguely. “And that is?”

“A poison for which there is no cure.”

Shade cocked an eyebrow. “And you had it … why?”

“Because I’ve discovered that in microscopic amounts, it can cure Lecepic Pox in

Trillahs.”

Hell’s rings. “I’m going to guess that Roag wasn’t after it to go on some demonitarian

mission to save Trillahs from a disease that strikes one in a thousand every hundred years.”

“You think?”

Runa’s warm hand slid up his back to his neck, where she massaged the muscles that

were starting to tense up. “Well, the bastard is, for all intents and purposes, dead. He can’t hurt

anyone with it.”

“I hope you’re right,” E said, and then rolled his eyes at Shade’s amused snort. “Yeah,

I’m paranoid.”

“No shit.”

E gave him a blank stare.

“You need to get laid.”

Eidolon’s eyes lit up, and Shade knew his brother had Tayla on the brain. Shade pressed a

kiss into Runa’s neck, because he knew exactly what it was like to have a sexy, gorgeous female

on the brain. And on his lap. And on his—

“What’s E paranoid about now?”

Shade looked up to see Wraith standing in the doorway, one shoulder braced against the

doorjamb, arms crossed and …
holy shit.
This was the first they’d seen of Wraith in a month, which wasn’t unusual.

But he sported a facial
dermoire.

He’d gone through
s’genesis.

A full year early.

Silence stretched, and Runa’s hand stilled on Shade’s neck.

“Son of a bitch,” Shade muttered.

E leaned back in his chair, arms across his chest, a grave expression on his face. “Is there

something you want to tell us?”

Wraith shrugged, like all of this was a big joke. “The sorceress who gave me the transfer

chant for Shade’s curse? She helped the
s’genesis
along. For a price, of course.”

From the sly grin on Wraith’s face, Shade could guess what the price had been. He

wanted to ask why Wraith had done it, but he knew. As an unmated Seminus capable of doing

what their species had been born to do, he’d have few cares or concerns save for

one—impregnating females. Wraith had lived in hell for the last ninety-nine years, and while

The Change wouldn’t erase his past, it would make it seem distant. With no time to think on it

and his mind completely full of no thoughts other than where to find the next female, Wraith

would, in a way, be free.

Hell, Shade was shocked that Wraith had even bothered to stop by the hospital.

“Why is his mark on his face instead of his neck?” Runa’s fingers feathered over Shade’s

throat, and Shade nearly started purring.

“Because he’s an unmated male.”

“And he’s going to stay that way,” Wraith said, shifting his gaze to Runa, who had

shrugged out of her jacket. “Hey, she’s mate-marked!”

E’s head swung around. “How?”

“Cool, huh?” Shade brought Runa’s marked hand to his lips. “No idea how it happened.

Or why. We woke up this morning, and there it was.”

“Last night was a full moon,” Wraith mused, and then it was his turn to frown as he

looked at Runa. “Were you in season?”

Runa turned about eight shades of red. Shade stroked her arm, tracing the new marks, and

answered for her. “Yeah. And I have the fucking scars to prove it. Why?”

Wraith shook his head. “Something Luc told me once. He said wargs only become mated

during a she-warg’s season, and then, only if she gets pregnant.”

Shade’s breath caught. “That’s what it might have taken to complete our bonding.”

“You mean …” Runa’s voice was a whisper.

“Let’s see.” Shade’s hand shook as he grasped her hand in his. His
dermoire
shimmered,

and warmth spread down his arm as his power entered her body. He traveled through her

bloodstream until he reached her womb. He held his breath as he probed—and found what he

was looking for. A fertilized egg.

“Shade?”

He had to swallow the lump in his throat before he could talk. “Wraith’s right. Oh, man,

we’re going to be parents.” He paused, his power flaring to another egg. And another. “Three of

them. We’re having
three
babies.”

By the stunned expression on Runa’s face, he couldn’t tell if she was happy or not, but he

was grinning like an idiot. Sons. He was going to have three of them.

“Congrats, bro,” Wraith said, slapping him on the back on his way out the door. “Better

you than me.”

With that, Wraith was gone. Eidolon started after him, his worry over Wraith’s new

condition coming off him in waves. Wraith was an unpinned grenade ready to blow.

But at the door, his brother paused. “I’m happy for you, man. Just don’t ask me to

babysit.” Eidolon grinned, and he was out of there.

Shade drew in a shuddering breath and framed Runa’s face in his hands. “Are you okay

with this? With everything that’s happened to you because of me?”

A slow, radiant smile lit her face. “I’m more than okay, Shade. For the first time in my

life, I’m alive. And you gave me that.” She trailed a finger down her
dermoire
. “Guess you’re still cursed. Cursed to be with me.”

“I can live with that,” he croaked, his eyes stinging again. Runa brought out the best in

him when he’d believed there
was
no best in him.

Being cursed to love Runa was the best curse of all.

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One

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When you are dining with a demon, you got to have a long spoon.

—Navjot Singh Sidhu

There were three things Wraith did well: hunt, fight, and fuck. He was going to do all

three tonight. In exactly that order.

Crouching on the rooftop of a shop run by immigrants who had probably come from such

a shitty country that the violence in the streets of Brownsville, Brooklyn, didn’t faze them,

Wraith waited.

He’d spied the gang members earlier, had scented their aggression, their need to draw

blood, and Wraith’s own need to do the same stirred. Like any predator, he’d chosen his target

with care. But unlike most predators, he didn’t go for the weak or the aged. Screw that. He

wanted the strongest, the biggest, the most dangerous.

He liked his pint of blood with an adrenaline chaser.

Unfortunately, Wraith couldn’t make a kill tonight. He’d already met his

one-human-kill-per-month limit set by the Vampire Council, and no way in Sheoul would he go

over. He hadn’t once since learning that his oldest brother, Eidolon, paid the price when Wraith

went over his allowance—E’s martyr complex at work.

Both Eidolon and the Council had refused to negotiate new terms now that Wraith knew

the truth. They figured that with E taking the punishment, Wraith would be more careful about

breaking the rules.

They were right, but given Wraith’s history, they’d taken a risk. Ten months ago, Wraith

had happily gone through his
s’genesis
, a change that should have made him a monster who

operated only on instinct—an instinct to screw as many demon females as possible, with the goal

being to impregnate them. An added bonus of the
s’genesis
was that male Seminus demons

became so focused on their sex drives that they cared little for anything else. But, in Wraith’s

case, he was also a vampire, so killing things was in his blood. So to speak.

Eager to get started with his new life, Wraith had found a way to bring on The Change

early. Unfortunately, it didn’t
change
a damned thing. Oh, he wanted to screw and impregnate

females, but that was nothing new. The only difference was that now he
could
impregnate them.

Oh, and he also had to shapeshift into the male of their species to do it, because no female on

Earth or in Sheoul, the demon realm, would knowingly bed a post
s’genesis
Seminus demon. No one wanted to give birth to offspring that would be born a purebred Seminus despite the mixed