Edge of Dawn (27 page)

MIRA’S DREAMS WERE VIVID, WRENCHING. NIGHTMARES filled with tears and anguish and loss.

Such unbearable loss.

Kellan . . .

She came awake on a start, her eyelids lifting in the dark silence of a room that smelled of damp stone, distant brine . . .
and him
.

Thank God, only nightmares.

Kellan was right there with her, both of them naked in his bed. His heart thudded leisurely beneath her cheek, his bare chest warm under her palm. He was there. He was safe.

He stirred beneath her, and Mira held herself very still, not wanting to disturb his sleep after the long vigil he’d kept atop the bunker.

Not to mention the hours of unrushed lovemaking, which must have worn him out as well. Though she wouldn’t have imagined it then, when he brought her to shattering orgasm three times, his own release never far behind.

The thought of his passion, the pleasure they’d given each other just a short while ago, helped soothe the panicked beat of her heart. It calmed her to recall his words—his tender promise of love—as they’d embraced under the waning starlight in the moments before he’d brought her to his bed.

Kellan loved her. He didn’t want to leave her; she knew that. But he would. As he’d told her so gently tonight, when he was ready to surrender to the Order, he would do it alone. He didn’t want her there.

And thinking about him facing judgment—and her vision’s prophesied outcome—by himself put an icy knot in the bottom of her stom-ach.

She had to work to tamp down her dread, willing herself not to go back to her nightmares of a few moments ago or to the unbearable thoughts of what Kellan had described seeing in her eyes. Although the urge to cling to him now as he slept verged on desperation, Mira was too wired to lie still. Her head was buzzing, her limbs restless, worry nagging at her like tiny fish nibbling at her sanity.

Carefully she extricated herself from Kellan’s side and eased her way to the edge of the bed. He sighed and rolled over, his breathing settling into a deeper slumber. Mira rose, unsure what to do or where she could go to shake off the heavy weight of her anxiety. What she needed more than sleep or distraction was answers.

She needed to know what her future held with Kellan. More than anything, she needed some glimmer of hope that they could, somehow, overcome the trouble they were in and find a way to be together.

She shot a glance over her shoulder, toward the foot of the bed. Her eyes lit on the trunk that rested there on the floor. The trunk that held Kellan’s grandmother’s mirror.

No. It was dangerous even to consider it.

She didn’t even know if it would work.

And yet she reached for her empty contact lens case on the night table beside the bed, then her feet were moving her silently across the floor, carrying her to the wooden locker. She crouched down in front of it. Silently lifted the lid.

The silver hand mirror lay facedown on top of a stack of Kellan’s shirts. Mira picked it up, her fingertips brushing over the carved design of the Archer family emblem.

She had to try.

She had to know, even if it terrified her to do this, something she’d never attempted before. The worse terror was not knowing, fearing that what Kellan saw might actually be his fate.

If there was any chance that looking into her own unprotected gaze might give her even a slim hope of a future together with Kellan, she would risk anything. She would pay any price to know for certain if he was destined to live . . . or doomed to die.

Mira pivoted, putting her back to the trunk as she kneeled on the floor and removed her contact lenses to their case. The mirror in hand, she closed her eyes and took a steeling breath deep into her lungs.

She could do this.

She
had
to do this.

She brought the mirror up in front of her face, her eyelids still shuttering her talent. Her heart banged in her chest, so erratic and nervous, so loud in her ears, she half expected Kellan to wake from the sound of it. Her palms were damp, mouth dry as ash.

She had to try.

She had to know.

She lifted her lids and froze at the sight of her face staring back at her in the oval of polished glass. She looked so different without the purple lenses muting the crystalline intensity of her gaze. She hardly recognized herself like this—her features, of course, but lit with an icy fire that seemed ageless, not quite of this world.

Extraordinary,
Kellan had said.

Startling, she thought. Unsettling. So unfamiliar, she couldn’t . . .

The thought fell away as the clear pools of her irises began to ripple as she looked at them in the mirror, their surface wobbling as if a small pebble had been dropped into a serene lake.

Transfixed, astonished, she couldn’t look away.

And then, within the fathomless, colorless depths, an image began to take shape. Several images, shadowed figures, a group seated at the front of a large, high-ceilinged room, a tall, raised bench in front of them, separating the group from the smaller figure that stood before them, awaiting their response.

Even before the images began to take clearer shape, Mira recognized the silhouette of the person standing before the court. She felt the person’s trepidation, the bone-deep dread and uncertainty.

She knew, because that person was her.

In the vision, she tried not to tremble as she faced Lucan and the other members of the Global Nations Council seated in judgment on the bench, knowing that they held the power to either save her or destroy her with their decision. Their faces were impassive, without mercy.

She watched in anguished expectation as her vision-self pressed for leniency and got only stoic faces in reply. In the vision, she began to weep, her face dropping into her palms, shoulders shaking with the force of her sobs.

The pain of that image skewered Mira’s heart in real time, made her lips tremble in echoed reaction. She wanted to look away now, before she saw any more. But then all heads in the gallery turned to look behind them as the accused entered the chamber to hear the sentencing.

Kellan.

Oh, God. It was just as he’d said.

He strode forward, broad shoulders squared, head lifted, but she could see resignation in his handsome face as he looked at her. Mira could nearly feel his stoic acceptance as she watched the scene unfold in her reflected gaze.

Her vision-self whirled back around to face the ones who held Kellan’s fate in their hands. She pleaded with them. Tried to draw some of the blame to her instead. To no avail. They announced their edict just as Kellan had told her they would. For the capital crimes Kellan stood accused of . . . death.

As the vision continued, Mira knew her anguish could not possibly be worse.

But she was wrong.

Because then the terrible vision Kellan had prepared her for began to fade into a misty darkness. Another image began to take shape in her reflected gaze. Something dreadful. Something far, far worse than the prospect of Kellan’s execution.

His lifeless body, pale and unmoving, laid out before her.

No . . .

No!
Her mind screamed in anguish. Or maybe she’d actually screamed her horror out loud. All she knew was the incredulity, the bone-deep grief, that overcame her as her vision-self collapsed atop his dead body and began to wail.

It couldn’t be true.

It could not possibly end like that for them.

She could never bear that level of pain.

She would rather die along with—

The mirror flew out of her hands and crashed into the nearby wall, raining shards of broken glass.

She jumped at the shock of what just happened, the abrupt startlement yanking her out of the vision’s unbreakable hold.

Kellan loomed over her, seething so fiercely he shook with the depth of his feelings. Heat rolled off his body in palpable waves. His eyes were throwing sparks, his lips peeled back from his fangs.

“What the hell were you doing?” His voice was pure thunder, more furious than she’d ever heard him. “Mira, goddamn it. Tell me you didn’t try to—ah, Jesus.”

He looked away from her now, turning his head away from her naked eyes. Still shaken, still raw with the grief from the awful things she’d just witnessed, Mira scrambled to put her lenses in. By the time she had, Kellan had sunk down to his knees on the floor in front of her.

“Mouse, for fuck’s sake. Why would you . . . What in God’s name were you thinking?” He took her upper arms in a tight grasp, trembling. “Look at me, baby. I need to see you. I need to know you’re okay.”

She lifted her face to meet his blazing stare. His face blurred through the tears filling her eyes. “I’m . . . Oh, God, Kellan! You were right. The vision. The judgment. All of it.”

“You saw,” he murmured, and his grip went a bit slack then. “You used your vision on yourself. Mira . . . why?”

“I had to know. I didn’t want to believe it. I couldn’t make myself believe it . . . until now.” Her voice caught, scraping in her throat. “I saw everything, just like you described it. And there was something more. Oh, God. Kellan, they sentenced you to death and then I saw you. You were—” She couldn’t speak the word. On a sob, she fell against him, exhausted and hurting. “I can’t bear to lose you. Not again. Not like that.”

He gathered her close, wrapping his muscled arms around her. “I don’t want to face that reality either. If I could keep you with me, hold you forever, I would.”

She nodded against his warm chest, wishing desperately for the same thing. She needed to feel his arms around her. She needed to feel his heartbeat, his breathing, his body’s strength and heat. She needed to feel for herself that he was with her, whole and hale. He was alive.

As she clung to him, her gaze drifted over the broken mirror and scattered, glittering splinters on the floor nearby. A new grief tore at her. “Your grandmother’s mirror . . . Kellan, I’m sorry. It’s ruined because of me.”

“I don’t give a damn about that,” he whispered against the top of her head. “All I care about is you. You can’t even be sure of the damage you’ve done to yourself tonight, Mouse. Do you realize that?”

“I had to know,” she said, her outstretched hand drifting over one of the shiny pieces of glass. She plucked it from the floor and held it between her fingers, regretting that this one surviving memento from Kellan’s past had been destroyed in his desire to protect her. “I wanted so badly to prove that you were wrong about what you saw. I just wanted some hope—even a little bit—that we would be together. But it was worse than I imagined. It was so much worse than anything I want to believe.”

She didn’t realize she was curling the razor-edged shard into her fist, until she felt its jagged edges biting into her palm.

But Kellan knew.

He’d gone still, his muscles immediately tense, his body taut like a cable. He drew away from her only slightly, enough that she could see his nostrils flare with his intake of breath. The embers that had been sparking in his eyes a moment ago had now turned into red-hot coals bisected with the thinning vertical slits of his pupils. He growled, a rumble that came up from his chest, vibrating into her bones. “Mira . . .”

He took her fist in his hand and pried it open, let the glass tumble out to the floor. Blood covered her palm, tiny rivulets trickling down her pale wrist. He stared at those dark crimson trails, and the curse he hissed through his fangs was raw, though not with anger.

He transformed even further, his face becoming starker, wilder. Otherworldly. She had seen him in his true natural form before, but never like this. This was Kellan Archer fully Breed, primal and thirsting, a formidable male predator with his sights set squarely on her.

He wanted what she would offer him now.

What had been his to claim all along.

“I belong to you, Kellan. There will never be another for me. Not even if I can’t be with you. Not even if you’re gone.” She glanced down at her bleeding hand still caught in his grasp. The wound in her palm wasn’t bad, but it didn’t take much for a bond to be activated. One taste. That’s all he needed to take, and he would be linked to her forever. “I need to be connected to you. In every possible way. Never mind what my vision says. It can’t stop us tonight. It can’t stop this.”

He made a strangled sound in the back of his throat as his fevered gaze lifted to meet her eyes. His fingers didn’t release her, remaining clamped around her wrist like a vise. His fangs elongated further, sharp points filling his mouth as he parted his lips on a groan. His
glyphs
pulsated, dark hues of thirst and desire churning all over his beautiful Breed skin.

Mira reached out with her free hand to stroke his face. “I offer you my blood freely, Kellan. If you’ll have it now.”

His blazing amber eyes slid back to her red-stained palm, his breath rasping through his teeth and fangs. He said her name, and it sounded like a tormented mixture of profanity and prayer as he drew her hand up to his mouth and licked the rivulet of blood that was running down toward her elbow.

Mira sighed as his tongue traveled back up her wrist, soft as velvet against her skin. He took his time, lapping up every bit that had spilled. Then he put his face in the heart of her palm, his trim goatee gently tickling, his lips hot and moist, his breath like steam against her sensitive flesh. He settled his mouth over her wound and drew his first true swallow.

She felt his body tense up, a jolt going through him as the bond to her took root. He moaned into her hand as he pulled in another taste of her. The vibration of his mouth, the wet heat of his tongue, the graze of his fangs against her palm—it combined into one of the most erotic sensations she’d ever known. Her body responded with a surge of pleasure and liquid fire.

Desire coiled deep within her, flowing out to every nerve ending as Kellan suckled from her palm. Her blood stirred to new life with each passing second, awakening to his kiss. She could feel it racing through her veins, eager to feed him. Arousal burned hot and fast within her, wet need pooling between her thighs. Twin points of radiant electric light bloomed inside her, one in her core, another at the spot where Kellan’s mouth was fixed to her.