Seeing Eye Mate (28 page)

“And what about Caelan?” she taunted. The doorway was only about five feet away. She could make it. To do what, exactly? Grab the lamp? Bash him over the head? Not likely. “Don’t you think Caelan will be a little upset about your plans? Were you afraid you couldn’t take both of us on at the same time?”

Jesus, shut up, Tieran.
His nostrils flared, his eyes lit up with pure hatred.

“Caelan will be lying beside you in the grave,” he roared and lunged at her.

She screamed and tried to dodge him but wasn’t quick enough. She’d only taken one step when his hand fisted around her ponytail and yanked her backward. His arm bent around her neck, squeezing her air off, the knife edging dangerously close to her face. Tieran clawed at his arm, gagging and choking. Her toes barely reached the floor as she thrashed in his hold.

There was no purchase beneath her feet. No leverage with which to kick off. Red spots danced in her vision. She was going to die and never see Caelan again. Or the baby growing in her belly. A baby created with their passion for each other. A baby who didn’t deserve what was happening, who would never even get the chance to follow in his father’s footsteps. It was a boy, too. A dark-haired, golden-eyed boy, the spitting image of his daddy. She saw him clearly.

“Yes, think, Tieran. You see him clearly.”

Her lungs burned. The boy turned, running in the grass and pushing a toy airplane in the air. His hair was mussed and he was laughing. Alive.

He was alive, which must mean she wasn’t going to die.

Renewed strength overwhelmed her. She dug her fingers into the arm strangling her. Time to fight. Tieran lifted her leg and kicked back with all her strength, slamming the heel of her tennis shoe into Hayward’s knee.

He buckled and howled in pain, releasing her with a shove forward at the same time. Her forehead hit an end table with a sickening crack, sending her sprawling to the ground. She lay there, stunned, and on her stomach while her head swam.

Tieran gasped, short, pathetic breaths that were all she could handle passed her smashed throat.

“You bitch,” he bit out.

As if. She crawled to her knees and swiped at her sweaty forehead. The red evidence that came away on her hand said there was more than sweat up there. A trickle of blood ran down her cheek. Swaying on her knees, she watched several crimson plops fall to the floor and soak into the cream-colored carpet.

“You’re gonna pay for that.”

No, I think you’re going to pay for the gash on my head, wolf-boy.

He limped over and pulled her to her feet by the hair. She winced but stayed silent. Content with the knowledge she would live through this night, she stayed stoic.

Caelan was another matter. She hadn’t seen him in her vision, just the boy. Would he die tonight leaving her alone for an eternity?

No. Not if she had anything to say about it.

The point of the knife pricked her battered throat.

“Move.”

Not much choice but to move when he kneed her, prodding her forward and toward the door. His unsteady gait got stronger as they walked silently, except for the harsh breathing, into the kitchen and out the back door.

Where were they going?

*

Caelan turned in the circular clearing in front of his parents’ house, his chest heaving from the heavy run. He hadn’t found Eli in the first place he thought to look, the ramshackle barn they’d played in for hours on end as kids. It was one of the few places either of them felt totally safe.

The lights glowed brightly in several rooms of the house. Caelan cocked his head. Was Eli here? He wouldn’t make his presence that obvious. Had his dad left in that much of a hurry or…

He didn’t let himself finish the sentence. Bounding up the front porch steps, he shifted into human form and groped beneath the potted plant by the door. After unlocking it, he threw it open and rushed inside. The TV was on, some comedy by the sound of a crowd erupting in laughter.

“Son? What the hell you doin’, boy?” Liam laughed.

Caelan closed his eyes briefly, sweat coating his naked body. Fuck. “Why aren’t you at my house, Dad?” he asked cautiously.

“Well now, why would I be?”

Caelan swallowed. “Son of a bitch.”

“What’s going on, Son?” his father asked, all business now.

“Hayward just showed up at the ranch. He said Eli had escaped and another woman was missing.”

“Where’s Tieran?” Liam threw his newspaper to the ground and began unbuttoning his plaid shirt.

“There, with him,” Caelan choked.

“What are you waiting for, let’s go get her.”

“What about Eli?”

His father laid a gentle hand on Caelan’s bare arm. “He was in the hospital at least up until two hours ago. I know because that’s when your mother left him to go play Bridge. Realistically, do you think he was capable of leaving under his own steam? With as bad as his concussion was, even if he could have shifted he still had to get out his cuffs and past the guards. Someone had to have let him out. Think, Son. Who stood to gain by doing that?”

A red haze overtook Caelan’s mind. He’d handed his mate over to the real killer. His heart slowed to near stopping, his chest felt like it might explode. He hadn’t been able to protect her.

He shifted with no thought to the grinding bones or popping joints. It would take them a good ten minutes at a flat-out sprint to reach Tieran. He hoped his father was up for the pace.

Caelan ran, hell-bent, dodging trees and the normal debris littering the forest floor without seeing anything. His superior hearing picked up a scream as it split the air, stopping him in his tracks. He lifted his muzzle to the sky and let out a series of howls, alerting the pack to the danger and asking for help. He hoped they would make it in time. Caelan found his feet moving even faster. He would feel it in his soul if it were too late, wouldn’t he?

The underbrush crunched beneath his paws and he heard his father close behind. How much longer? He passed the huge oak tree that they often used as a reference point. Only about a mile to go.
Hang on, my own. I’m coming.

*

“You’ll never get away with this, Hayward. It’ll never work. You have to see that.” Proud of how calm she sounded, Tieran relaxed a fraction. She would get through this. The bastard got off on scaring women. She wasn’t going to be one of them.

“Shut up.”

He’d brought her out to a barn, which looked more like a garage inside. Caelan’s truck was parked here along with a small red car. Several pieces of lawn equipment and a tool bench lined one wall.

Hayward dragged the chair from the tool bench in between the cars and placed it directly in front of the wide double doors. Pulling out a plastic zip tie from his pocket, he spun Tieran around and bound her hands together. She grunted and bit her lip.

Please, Caelan, hurry.
He was coming for her. She could feel their connection growing stronger. Something sewing their two separate beings into one whole.

“When I’m Prime, we won’t have this problem anymore.”

Jesus, he had said the same thing to that woman right before he slit her throat. “You mean you’ll stop killing women to get what you want?” she goaded. Sick bastard.

He backhanded her, splitting her lip. Tieran recovered slowly from the shock. He smiled and pushed her into the chair, yanking her arms up at the wrists and fitting them over the chair back. Wrenched as they were, her shoulders screamed in agony. She yelled out in pain.

“I must apologize to the Prime’s mate for hurting her.”

The sneering was really getting on her nerves.

“Does it make you feel like a big man to be stronger than us females?” She just couldn’t keep her mouth shut, could she? That strange feeling inside her grew stronger. Caelan was very close.

“There’s a certain justice in the Prime getting saddled with a bitch like you.”

“Eli told me any challenger had to fight the Prime to the death to take over,” she said, ignoring his comment.

“But this is so much more fun, don’t you think?”

“I think it’s the coward’s way out.”

Hayward growled menacingly and grabbed hold of her feet. He slammed them together, bringing tears to her eyes as the anklebones smashed into one another.

“Afraid you’ll lose to him in a hand-to-hand?”

“I will never fucking lose to a Graham,” he shouted. His eyes were wild and searched the confines of the enclosed space lit by strong overhead lights.

“Why here?” Tieran asked.

“Why not here?” His top lip curled up. He was definitely not firing on all cylinders. There was a craziness about him, a jerkiness that told her he was close to losing it. Whatever
it
was.

“I meant in this particular spot.” She jumped in the chair, emphasizing the space where he’d sat her.

“Because when Graham gets here he’s gonna open those doors and see you a second before you die.”

Well, that was comforting. “But if you kill me first, you’ll enrage Caelan and still have to fight him.” She swore his eyes changed color. The skin on his face rippled, his jaw elongated. Then it was gone.

Caelan was home. She could feel him just outside the door. Maybe if she got Hayward rattled, he wouldn’t see Caelan come in and this whole mess would be over.

“How did you do it? Make yourself look so much like them, I mean?”

His cruel laugh echoed. “Saw me, did you? I had so much fun after I found you there in Elizabeth’s head.”

Tieran gasped.

“Made things so much easier for me to try and pin it all on Eli.” He shrugged. “Make myself look like him, follow him, lead you to believe I was him.”

“But what about the scar?”
You can’t fake a scar on a hairy wolf’s body, can you?

“Oh the scar’s real. My daddy gave that to me one night after I’d lost a fight with that no good son of bitch Eli. Daddy said I ought to look like the man I’d tucked my tail between my legs and run from.”

Hayward sniffed and wiped his sweaty brow on his shirtsleeve. “Should have been done with this the first night Caelan spent in your bed. Eli was supposed to meet me. I’d been watching your house, waiting for Eli to leave first so I could follow him. He did, but a little too early for me, so I stuck around. Then Eli called and said he had car trouble and couldn’t make it. So I stayed and you left the house and I followed you instead. The whole night gave me the perfect excuse to jump into your dreams.”

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “It was you that night in my room. Not Eli.”

“Nobody, especially not a Graham, can do what I do with my mind,” he gritted out.

The vision of the man stranded by his car swam before her.
He was going to miss his meeting with the Christian guy.

“Supposed to meet with Eli that night,” she whispered, working things out in her head. “You’re Dane Christian.” Somewhere she’d overheard Caelan say that name. A false name to throw everyone off.

Christ, she’d done so many things wrong, had believed everything this psycho had led her to believe, which made her visions less than reliable. What if it happened again? What if she really didn’t get to see her son? Tieran swallowed back the sudden bitter taste of fear in her mouth.

She glanced at the single door to her left along the far wall. A shadow passed in front of it. Caelan. His face appeared through the glass, a brief look and then he was gone.

Her entire body relaxed in its restraints. The game was almost over.

“I still don’t understand how you think you’re going to kill Caelan.”

“It doesn’t fucking matter how, bitch,” he shrieked and lunged for her, his hands outstretched, the knife falling to the ground.

The door burst open. Caelan, in his wolf finery, dove through the opening in a growling, snarling, twisting mass of fur and teeth. Hayward fell to his side, shifting even as he hit the ground, but wasn’t quick enough. Caelan’s teeth bit into Hayward’s shoulder and ripped a strip of flesh off.

Hayward howled in furious pain and slashed back at Caelan who was much bigger and faster in wolf form than the detective. In the confined space between the double doors and the truck, the wolves attacked, parrying back and forth. Both their pelts were dark, but Tieran easily picked out Hayward’s from the familiar scar bisecting one shoulder.

A hand on her own made her squeal and jump in her seat. She twisted her head to see a buck-naked Liam standing guard. Her cheeks reddened and she quickly averted her gaze. Even in the midst of a disastrous situation, it wasn’t right to see your lover’s father in the buff. Liam made quick work of her shackles and led her out of harm’s way, completely unabashed by his state of undress. The god-awful barking and screaming of the wolves made her want to cover her ears but there was no doubt in her mind who the winner would be.

“God, but you do have a mouth on you, girl. Be prepared for a nice, long disciplining tonight.” Liam grinned. “Thought Caelan was gonna bust through that door and jump on you for the things you were saying. Why did you have to taunt him?”

“I was trying to distract him while Caelan took his sweet time coming in to rescue me.”