Point of No Return (9 page)

Danial pulled back from me. “Are you sure?”
he said seriously, looking into my eyes. “I want you, but only if
you want me.”

“I want you, Danial. I’m your Oathed One,
aren’t I?”

“Yes,” he said, full of contentment and love
as he pulled me close to him to kiss me. “Yes, My Love, you
are.”

* * * *

After, I lay in his arms as he kissed me
contentedly. “Are you happy?” I asked.

“Completely,” he said, giving me one of his
rare wide smiles. “I have everything I ever wanted, Sar. I only
wish you were as happy as I am.”

“There will come a day when I will be,” I
said with a faint smile. “Just be patient.”

“It is easy to be patient now,” he said
confidently. “I will have you with me for many years, not just a
few. For the first time I see the future stretching before me and
am not somnolent.” He nibbled my neck, his fangs pricking lightly.
“My happiness aside, you should shower, Love. Theo will cooperate
best if you don’t have anyone’s scent but your own on your
skin.”

“Why?” I said recklessly. “He knows I’m with
you and Devlin. He’ll expect me to smell like one or both of you.
Even if he’s bothered by it, why should I care? We aren’t together
anymore.”

“Because you still love him,” Danial said
wisely. “Your jealously is talking, and you want to hurt him. Don’t
do it. You’ll just regret it. There is Elle to consider.”

“You’re right,” I said, chagrined. “As
usual.”

“I wish I was right more of the time,” Danial
said wishfully. “But you’re just being generous with me.”

There was a knock. “Danial, phone call,”
Brian said from outside the door.

“Just a minute.” Danial got up and put on his
robe. “Sar, if you’ll start the shower, I’ll join you shortly.” He
left.

When I used Danial’s shower, my toiletries
were still where I’d left them months ago. Happy they hadn’t been
tossed out, I used them, then began conditioning my hair.

Danial finally came in. He embraced me
immediately, almost in desperation.

“What is it?” I said, worried. “What’s
happened? Is Dev okay?”

“Another death threat,” he said wearily.
“This one for both Theo and I.”

“Tell me everything.”

“You remember Peterson?”

“Yes,” I said bitterly. Peterson was the man
who’d tried to kill us in Europe. His plan to use Theo and Danial
for experimental subjects for his new explosive bullets gun had
resulted in Theo’s abduction and our time apart, not to mention his
meeting up with Tasha.

“Well, he has a brother, Maury, who has taken
over the company. He knows Theo and I were behind the death of his
brother, and the carnage of that night. He knows where we live. He
knows Theo lived with you, Sar. Most likely he thinks he still
does.”

“Who told you all this? Dev?”

“Samuel.”

“Why would he care? He hates Theo and he
fought with you over me—”

“He would never have warned us, except that
he wants you safe, and he’s worried you may be injured or killed by
accident when Maury attacks Theo. He has information Maury plans to
send a bomb by mail—”

My eyes went wide. “The package!” I
screeched.

“What package?” Danial said sharply. “When
did it arrive? Where is it?”

“Right after Christmas, a small package came
to the house for Theo. I brought it with me today. It’s up on
Theo’s desk.”

“Who was it from?” Danial said, dialing his
phone.

“There was no return address.”

“Theo?” Danial said. “Get over here. I don’t
care what you were doing, get over here now! We’ve got a bomb or
something worse here.”

Danial hung up, and turned to me. “Sar, go
upstairs and carry it out of the house.”

I gaped at him. “Are you crazy?”

“If you could set it off, you’d already be
dead. I’ll wager any were who touches it will get a nasty surprise.
I might even be enough to set it off.”

“You can withstand an explosion better than I
can,” I shot back. “I might be pregnant, Danial.”

“Sar, you have been carrying that package
around all day. It won’t do anything to you. You are the only human
here to do it. Please, go now. Elle may come in at any moment. If
it was engineered to be activated by a werecougar, she will surely
set it off!”

I hurried upstairs, carefully picked up the
package, then carried it down the stairs and out of the house. I
walked down to the driveway and set the package on the ground,
backing away a few paces.
Should I leave it here? It was getting
dark. What if someone coming in the driveway ran over it?

“Mom!” Elle shouted. I turned as she started
running toward me, leaving Brian standing near the house.

“Stay back!” I yelled but she either didn’t
hear me or didn’t listen. She reached me before I’d gone two steps.
I grabbed her and pulled her close, and kept backing away from the
package. “Move slowly!”

“What is it?” Elle said, scared. “What’s
wrong?”

“There’s a bomb or something bad in there.
But don’t worry, your father’s coming.”

Theo pulled up in his truck. He slammed the
door and got out, swearing loudly, his clothes askew.

As he went to go inside, he saw us and
stopped still. Then he came running at full speed for us. Grabbing
our arms, he dragged us backward as fast as he could by our
clothes.

Danial came outside, still buttoning his
shirt. “Elle! Elle!”

Elle ran into his arms with a sob. “Dad!”

“What’s in there?” Theo said curtly, looking
from Danial to me and back again. “That’s not a bomb, unless it’s a
fake one.”

“Samuel warned me a bomb meant for you was
sent by Andrew Peterson’s brother, Maury. He’s out for blood, Theo,
yours and mine. That package came for you over Christmas to Sar’s
house.”

Theo swore yet again. “When did it arrive?”
he asked. “Why didn’t you give it to me before now?”

“It came while you were gone,” I said
icily.

He looked away from me. “Was there anything
you can remember about it? Weight? Was the contents heavy?
Soft?”

“I remember it was light,” I said, thinking
back. “It was too light to be a book, or anything metal, even a
bullet. There was no return address, and the postmark wasn’t
airmail, it was domestic. It felt like the package was empty,
actually.”

“The postmark doesn’t mean anything,” Danial
said. “It could have been sent here to the States from abroad, and
then resent again though a mailing company.”

“We need Terian,” Theo said finally. “I’m
betting it’s a poison, probably in dust form. We need to incinerate
it. Where is he?”

“Off checking something for me,” Danial lied
smoothly. “I can’t reach him.”

“Titus,” I said suddenly. “He can do it.”

Both of them looked at me. “How do you know
Titus?” Theo said, his eyes narrowing.

“Good thinking,” Danial said, nodding to me.
“I’ll call him now.” He headed inside, bringing Elle with him.

Theo followed me into the great room. “I
asked you a question, Sarelle,” Theo said angrily.

Elle let go of Danial’s hand and snarled at
Theo. “Go away!”

“Elle, go into your room. Stay there until I
come and tell you that everything’s okay,” Danial commanded. Elle
cast a last angry look at Theo, and then left.

I faced Theo. “He helped Devlin mark me, not
that that’s any of your business. But I’m glad you’re here, because
I’ve got something for you.” I walked upstairs, then returned with
the papers and DVD. “Here.”

He took the DVD, and lay it on the table, his
eyes scanning the papers. Then he handed them back. “I won’t sign
these, Sarelle.”

“Why not?” I said nastily. “Don’t you want
this over so you can ride off into the sunset?”

“I don’t want to wait a year to get divorced.
I want our marriage annulled for the farce it was.”

I gaped at him. “What? You can’t do
that.”

“I talked to a lawyer, and it’s the fastest
way,” he continued. “I committed adultery. I’ll admit it as the
cause. I’ll pay for it, even.” He took some folded papers from his
back pocket. “Sign these, and you’ll be done with me.”

My fury at his lack of caring boiled over. I
ripped his papers up and threw them at him. “That may be what you
want, but it’s not what I want! You don’t sign these papers, fine.
I won’t make you. But I’m not signing any paper to have our
marriage annulled. So you either sign mine, or you’ll never be free
to marry Tasha.”

He snarled at me, his eyes yellow. I faced
him resolutely, my eyes flashing.

Theo took the papers and signed them, almost
tearing the paper in his rage. He threw them down on the table,
where they separated, some falling off. “You won’t bring me back to
you, doing this,” he growled. “You’re just making things harder on
everyone, including yourself.”

He turned abruptly and left, slamming out of
the house. I gathered up the papers slowly, tears falling on them
and wetting the pages, glad no one had witnessed our fight. Leaving
the papers on the table, I went into Danial’s bathroom to wash my
face.

I fingered the bear pendant. Maybe it was
better to give in, to get free of Theo. Our love had been so
powerful it devoured everything. When he was out of my life, I
could concentrate on making a new life with Danial and Devlin.

Danial burst in. “Titus can’t come, at least
not right away,” he said quickly. “But I finally got Terian. He
insists on speaking to you privately before anything else.”

I put out my hand for the phone.

Danial shook his head. “He said to meet him
at his lab.”

“What about the package?”

“Brian is guarding the package in bear form
from a safe distance,” Danial said. “It’s not a bomb, but until its
ashes, I’m going to be uneasy. Finish as fast as you can with
Terian, and then bring him back.”

I nodded and vanished, teleporting to
Terian’s lab. He was waiting for me, pacing the floor.

“We need your blue fire,” I said hurriedly.
“Now what’s so urgent it can’t wait?”

“There’s no easy way to say this, Sarelle.”
He paused, searching for the right words. “You wanted to know what
was going on, why Theo didn’t wait for you as you had for him. Why
he loved someone else.”

“And?” I prompted.

“He didn’t have a choice. Theo’s under a love
spell.”

Chapter Six

“Love spell?” I said. “That can’t be right,
Terian. He loved not only Tasha but Aspen, too—”

“Tasha is similar enough in feature to be
Aspen’s twin, Sar. They look closer than sisters. He probably fell
for Aspen for that reason alone. She resembled the person of his
forced affection so closely he couldn’t help himself.”

“No, someone would have noticed—”

“No one could have,” he countered. “You
avoided Tasha and none of us had ever seen Aspen. If I had, I would
have suspected at once, as I did when I saw her in your
memories.”

“But he left Aspen easily for me,” I said,
confused.

“Aspen didn’t do this to him. She has no hold
over him except her appearance, and when you renewed the dream with
him, you lessened that. But if you had left him with her, he would
have come to love her as an aftereffect of the spell.”

“All this about renewing the dream,” I said
bitterly. “If our bond was as special as you make it out to be, how
did Tasha get Theo back with just a letter?”

“Most likely there was a little of the spell
on the paper,” Terian growled. “Theo was the one who opened it.
That together with his character was enough to make him run to her
rescue. Once he was with her again, it was likely easy to enfold
him under the spell completely.”

Theo had said that he’d planned to come back
to me after helping her, but that everything had changed in the
space of a day. Just as it had changed the first time he fell in
love with her. She’d used him to escape her father and her bored,
rich life not once but twice. I was so angry I could barely talk.
“You can break it, right?”

“No,” Terian admitted. “This spell was
specially designed to hold Theo. It’s complicated and powerful. It
had to be, to subvert what you and Theo share. Most love spells
wouldn’t work on either of you. Everlasting Love is the most
powerful spell of its kind. I don’t know how to break it. Even if I
did, I don’t have enough magical power.”

I screamed in utter frustration, and dialed
Devlin. Whatever Titus was doing, this was more important.

“Sar?” Devlin answered, purring. “Are you
missing me?”

I bit back my scream. I had no time for
games, but with his moods, I had to play this cautiously. “Devlin,
send Titus to me,” I said with forced calm. “Immediately.”

“Sar, as I told Danial, he’s busy working,”
Devlin drawled. “Now about this weekend—”

I lost it. “Dev, if you ever loved me at all,
ever, send him to me! Terian needs his help desperately! Stop
screwing around, God damn it!”

Terian let out a gasp. “No, wait—!”

“What in hell is going on there, Sar?” Devlin
said, agitated. “Are you under attack?”

“Come and see for yourself!” I yelled. “Do
whatever you have to, but get here! We’re in the werecompound, in
Terian’s lab.”

“I’m coming now, Sar,” Devlin assured. “Stay
there and don’t move.” He hung up.

“I’m not ready to see him,” Terian
grumbled.

“Titus can help,” I shot back. “Besides, he’s
your father and it’s about time you faced him and stopped dicking
around.”

There was a knock at the door, then Titus
strode in, followed by Devlin. Devlin came to my side immediately,
as Titus approached Terian.

Seeing father and son together, the faint
resemblance in their build and the shape of their jaw was
noticeable.

“Terian, this is your father, Titus,” I
said.

Terian held out his hand. Titus took it, then
slowly pulled Terian into his arms for a hug. Terian didn’t resist.
Soon he was holding his father as tightly as Titus was holding
him.