Elijah (20 page)

The very idea made Siena’s stomach churn with nausea and a fear she had never known. Now that it had been removed, the collar could only be returned to the Queen’s throat by the hands of a member of The Pride, or, if the legends were true, by the hand of the lover who had originally removed it. The puzzle was out of Siena’s scope of knowledge and was purposely kept that way to keep the ruler who wore it from doing exactly what she was trying to do…hide the fact that she had taken a mate.

Her true mate, if legend had its truth.

“This is insane,” Siena hissed under her breath as she turned to make yet another circuit around the room.

A Demon the destined mate of a Lycanthrope? What did it matter that they were so…so compatible? Chemistry and sexuality aside, there was more to ruling thousands of people then the ability to have good sex. She slid her hand into the pocket of her caftan, closing it tightly around the links of the collar. She marched up the steps of her throne and sat down, staring really hard at the whispering women across from her for a long minute.

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Syreena might know how to return the necklace to its rightful place. She had lived amongst The Pride for over a century. Perhaps she had picked up the secret during her time there. But Siena knew she could not ask Syreena to betray her mentors. It would be like someone asking her to reinitiate the war. And now, more than ever, she had reason to despise the idea of such an abomination.

No! she cried out in her thoughts. There are no more reasons than there were before! That would intimate I have some sort of feelings for…and I do not!

The Queen was back on her feet and pacing a heartbeat later.

She needed a solution to this awful conundrum, and she needed one fast. There was no way she was going to introduce a Demon male of such infamous renown to her court, name him King, and sit him by her side! Such a warrior? The idea revolted against every good intention she had forged for her people in order to lead them into a brighter, more peaceful future. She had intended on ruling by herself until the day she died, and somehow she was going to find a way to continue that plan. She would hang herself before taking part in such an abomination against everything she stood for, and she would be damned before she would take that man back into to her bed!

Siena stopped in her tracks as searing agony clawed through her at the very thought. She could hardly breathe for the pain of it, and she clutched at the place over her womb that ached with the most intensity. She felt so hollow, so bereft of life and reason when she thought about abandoning Elijah for all time. He had promised it would not be the end, and, Goddess help her, she screamed with every molecule of her body for him to keep his promise.

Siena dropped to the floor with a sob, doubling over with the pain and nausea of self-betrayal.

She knew she craved him, knew that her cells screamed for the nourishment of his hard, aggressive body around and inside hers. She had been taken to remarkable heights, unimaginable places of pleasure, and, like a fast-addicting drug, the idea of never returning to it was almost impossible to bear.

But she must find a way to bear it. She must break this spell, defy this magic of legend that claimed he was perfect for her. She had far more to consider than just her body. She had thousands of people who were counting on her to make the wisest and most considerate choices for their well-being that she could manage.

She had not been doing that when she had fallen into Elijah’s arms. Unfortunately, a few days ago she had made the choice to save a man’s life, and, it seemed, she hadn’t made a single proper decision since then.

Siena was determined to change that.

It had been almost two days since she and the Demon had parted company. Yet she knew his presence still clung to her. She knew Anya must suspect something, even though she had yet to let her half-breed General close enough to get a good whiff of her. But it was more than that as well. It was as if the Demon warrior still followed her everywhere. Sometimes she imagined she could still feel his touch. In her mind. On her body. It haunted her, half memories and half fantasies, always leaving rivers of heat bleeding throughout her system in its wake. If this obsession was the nature of a mating, then she truly, more than ever, wanted no part of it. It made her mad to think of it, in terms of both sanity and temper.

As soon as she was through healing from her sun sickness, she was going to go to the Demon court and demand that Noah resolve these issues by making his Captain keep his distance from her.

Siena discarded that thought a moment after thinking it. The last thing she needed to do was go anywhere near where Elijah might be. Samhain was mere days away and she knew enough about Demons, thanks to Gideon, to know she would be tying the cat up in the doghouse if she went anywhere near their territory during that volatile time. The last thing she needed was to come up against the power of the Demon warrior’s passion and irresistible seduction, magnified by the Hallowed moon to an intensity far beyond anything she had experienced so far.

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She did not trust herself to resist him if she did.

Siena gained her feet once more, her hands sliding over her stomach as she paced, rubbing back and forth in a soothing motion that was habitual for her when she was uptight. But something had changed about the sensation, making it more sensual rather than comforting, as it had always been. It was because, she realized suddenly, she could feel his touch on her torso as keenly as if he was still administering it. Her breasts, belly, and hips seemed to burn with the imprint of his hands, to the point where she wondered why they did not glow brightly, the damning fingerprints showing themselves for all to see. She could still smell the masculine musk of his scent on her skin, and wondered if others were aware of it as well. Or was it just the madness of this untenable situation that made her believe in an illusion? She had bathed more than once since they had parted ways, and yet it would not leave her senses.

Truly, she must be going mad.

Siena crossed the room toward her throne once more, but could not sit in it. It was too symbolic of all the things at stake in the moment. She could not have sat still in any event. The Lycanthrope Queen resumed her pacing under the watchful eyes of her companions.

Isabella leaned over Elijah, brushing his damp hair off his forehead, biting her lip with concern.

The warrior had been dreaming fitfully on and off since he had finally fallen into a restless sleep.

It was an unusual occurrence for someone under Gideon’s powerful sleep inducements. Usually the healing sleep was a still one, quiet and calm and allowing for the most healing in the shortest time.

The warrior had not answered any questions from those who were so perplexed by his state of injury and the clues from Bella’s visionary trances of his activities during his disappearance. The healing of Elijah’s wounds had been simple enough for the Ancient medic. Gideon had spent meticulous time extracting iron, bacteria, and a slew of other detriments to the healing process from the warrior’s body. However, he was equally tight-lipped when others questioned him about the nature of the warrior’s injuries and any suspicions he might have as to where the Demon had been all this time. All he would say was that they would have to ask Elijah themselves. It was cryptic enough to have more than one male pacing the marble floors down in the Great Hall.

Isabella should not have been there, what with Jacob still raw from the scolding he had received from her. She was perhaps meanly pushing his patience by spending all this time at the warrior’s bedside. She had not meant to lose her temper, but was glad she had after all. Jacob was a brilliant man, sophisticated and wise with over six hundred years of life experience behind him.

One would think such a man would be above something so petty as jealousy.

She tried to understand that having never known love before, Jacob had also never known jealousy. He had no experience with it and needed to learn just as anyone else would. But with his possessiveness fueled by a nature imbued with the temperaments and skills of all the animals of the earth, it would probably be quite some time before he came to grips with the volatile emotion. In the meantime, it was driving her up the bloody wall.

Since it had been a millennium since the last Druids had lived amongst the Demons, there was no one other than the long-lived Gideon who knew anything about them. Even he had been a fledgling at the time, a youth with only minimum knowledge about the Druids his people had been intent on destroying in the war at the time. A great deal of history had been rewritten since then. The truth was buried deep in the Demon library, and they had not yet begun to unravel the history of the Druids to be found there.

Along with the eradication of the Druids had come the reduction in instances of Imprinting.

Demons Imprinting on one another, as Legna and Gideon had just done, was a one-in-a-million occurrence. It was now believed that all along, Destiny had intended the Demons would find their purest mates in the Druids, the very creatures they had systematically destroyed a millennium ago. It was written in a prophecy that had been lost to them for a thousand years.

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No Druids, no Imprintings.

So, there was no standard in the current Demon generation for the behaviors and emotions a Demon would have to contend with during Imprinting. That meant, unfortunately, that they were walking around blindly, finding the answers as they went. Bella tried very hard to understand that. Jacob was a strong man, for all his sensitivity when it came to her well-being.

He would learn to cope with it just as she would. She had no doubts that he would accept her help and eventually overcome. She should not have lost patience so easily.

Isabella heard the door open behind her and she looked over her shoulder to see a red head peeking into the room. Bella put a finger to her lips and gestured for the visitor to enter.

Corrine, Bella’s sister and, amusingly enough, also her sister-in-law, entered the room and silently pulled up a chair beside her. She leaned forward so that they were almost touching foreheads, just as they had done all through their childhood when sharing secrets.

“I knew you’d be here,” Corr said, picking out a single coil of her long red hair so she could nibble on it in an old nervous habit. “Jacob is going to throttle you.”

“You worry about your husband, I’ll worry about mine,” Bella responded, her voice extremely hushed but clearly amused. Her violet eyes danced with irreverence. “Besides, my day is not complete without the daily Jacob lecture. I do hope his brother has better tolerance.”

“Well, Kane was born over five hundred years after Jacob and wasn’t brought up in the Stone Age.” Corrine laughed softly. “So my husband tends to be a little more forward thinking than his brother.”

Isabella grinned and impulsively reached out to grasp her sister’s hand warmly. They had always been close, but after coming so near to losing Corrine a year ago, she had forged an even more powerful bond with her sister.

As mentioned earlier upon Corrine’s arrival at the castle, Corrine had transformed from a regular human to a Druid/human hybrid just as her sister had after a brief encounter with her destined Demon mate, Kane. It was contact with a specific genetically appropriate Demon that triggered the birth of power in a Druid. Even a hybrid Druid. However, no one had even known hybrids existed until Isabella began to enter the process shortly after being exposed to Jacob.

But Druids needed constant exposure to the triggering Demon from that first moment on, or they would become ill and “starve” to death.

Corrine had been deep into the starvation before they had realized what had happened. It had taken months of exposure to Kane for her to recover. Much in the way the victum of a serious accident had to go through extensive physical therapy, Corrine had been forced to develop far more gradually than the norm, recovering her power slowly over the past year.

This brush with death had been the glue that had reforged their already tight sisterly bond. Plus, they had often turned to each other as both had adapted to the lifestyle of a Nightwalker race as complex in culture as the Demons. They had also helped each other discover new ways to control and use their budding abilities.

“Does Kane know you are here?”

“No.” Corrine gave her a conspiratorial wink. “Looks like both of our big, strong men are sleeping. One of the blessings of being half human is that we aren’t driven to sleep in daylight as strongly as they are. What an awful feeling that must be, to be so lethargic that you have to sleep whether you want to or not.”

“The same thing happens to humans. It’s just not limited to daylight hours and we can sometimes push off the inevitable. I hear Gideon is at a point where he can remain awake all day without even a yawn.”

“He is extremely powerful,” Corr agreed, her awe clear in her voice. “So are you trying to get a premonition, or just playing nursemaid?”

“A little of both.” Bella turned her head to frown at Elijah’s sleeping form. “I have never seen him so weak. We can’t get him to tell us anything. Gideon told Jacob that the wounds were not fresh, that the wound in his chest had obviously been healing for a couple of days before
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reopening. It looked as though it had been bandaged and that, when Elijah had transformed, he had left the bandage behind without taking it into account, reopening the injury.”

“He’s lucky he made it here alive. But that’s a mistake I wouldn’t expect an Elder Demon to make,” Corrine remarked.

“I was thinking the same thing,” Bella agreed, once more putting her head together with Corrine’s. “Something happened to him.”

“Yeah, well, that’s obvious. I don’t need a premonition to tell me someone kicked the shit out of him.”

“No,” Bella chided quietly. “I mean something else. Something that made him…act rashly. Make mistakes. And I have no idea what it was. I just keep seeing this image of cat’s eyes. It’s the only thing I get when I try to focus on this.”