Blood Wolf Dawning

Jabbing him in the center of his chest with her finger, she said, “You’re damned right you had better be sorry. Because this is all. Your.Fault!”

Guilt settled heavily in his gut, and he knew he needed to tread carefully. “I know, and I’m sorry. But can we please just get on the road?”

Shaking her head, she said, “No.”

“No?” He sucked in a sharp breath, struggling not to shout at her again. “I thought we just went over this.”

“I believe that you’ve landed me in the middle of a freaking problem, but that doesn’t mean I’m running back to the Alley. However—” her voice sounded like she’d swallowed a handful of razor blades as she held one hand up to him in a hold-it-right-there gesture “—I’m willing to let you come inside and talk to me.”

“I’m not letting you stay here alone, Sayre.”

“Then you had better not piss me off,” she huffed as she walked over to where he’d tossed her gun and picked it up, “because I was planning on letting you take the sofa until we have this figured out.”

Shit, he thought, shoving a hand back through his hair. Staying here wasn’t what he wanted. He needed her in the Alley, where he knew it would be easier to protect her. “It’s safer there, Sayre.”

With the gun propped on her shoulder, she turned back to him, her expression impossible to read. “That may be. But I’m not going to let you rush me into any decisions right now. I will give myself some time to process this, and then I’ll let you know what I’ve decided to do.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, dropping his head back on his shoulders, and counted back from ten.

“While you’re struggling with whatever’s going through that thick head of yours,” she told him, sounding as if she were gloating a bit, “I’ll just run inside and grab my keys, then take you down the road so that you can grab your car and bring it back here.”

Opening his eyes, Cian lowered his head and watched her walk away, wondering how she made the money to pay for the truck and the cabin, knowing she wasn’t the type to live off her parents. Then again, the truck that was parked beside the shed was fairly ancient, so he knew she hadn’t unloaded a ton of cash on it.

“You were wrong,” he said in a low voice, when she came back outside, keys in hand.

“About what?” she murmured, keeping her gaze focused straight ahead as she made her way over to the faded blue Ford.

“When I first saw you today,” he muttered, following after her, “you said we’d never lied to each other. But we did. I did. I lied to you all the time.”

She didn’t ask what he’d lied about as she opened the driver’s-side door and climbed behind the wheel, and he wondered if she knew.

He’d told her time and again that he didn’t want her.

And each time, it’d been a lie.

In his entire life, he’d never wanted anything like he wanted Sayre Murphy. In his bed. Under him. Completely full of him, his body packed so deeply into hers she could feel him in every part of her. Every cell and breath and thought.

He just didn’t want the rest of her.

The last thing in the world that Cian needed was a woman’s heart, because he knew exactly what he’d do to it. And while he might not love Sayre Murphy, he liked her too much to want to see her crushed, which is what would happen. It wasn’t arrogance or his ego talking; it was a simple fact. She was too young to clearly separate sexual need from higher emotion, and he knew that if he touched her, she’d likely end up thinking she was in love with him. Wasn’t there a saying about how hate and love were simply two sides of the same coin? So while she might hate him now, that feeling could be twisted into the other. After everything he’d done, he owed it to her to keep that from happening.

Does that mean you plan to keep your hands to yourself? his wolf demanded, prowling beneath his skin. ’Cause I gotta tell you, that doesn’t work for me. If given the chance, I plan on getting between those perfect thighs of hers and staying there, where we belong.

He made a gruff sound in the back of his throat, wishing the animal would just shut up and leave him alone.

And by the way, I still think you’re an idiot. Jackass.

Irritated, tired and at the end of his rope, his grip tightened on the passenger’s-side door handle until he’d nearly ripped it off, the beast’s guttural laughter echoing through his head as he climbed up into the truck. It knew it’d gotten under his skin, and he wondered if his friends all had this much trouble with the possessive predators who lived inside them, or if it were only him. Seemed just his luck that his wolf would not only be a pain of the first order, but a sarcastic son of a bitch, as well.

“Cian?” Sayre said as she cranked the engine and slid him a curious look. “Are you going to sit there growling at your door all day or are you going to shut it?”

He didn’t bother to respond. He didn’t dare. He didn’t trust anything that might have come out of his mouth at that moment, and his pulse was thrashing in his ears too loudly to carry on a conversation anyway.

Instead, he slammed the door shut, rolled the window down and focused his attention on the surrounding woods, knowing that Aedan could very well be out there, watching and waiting, slowly biding his time. The human thugs had been his brother’s first play, but they wouldn’t be his last.

And now the clock was ticking.

Chapter 4 (#ulink_c5084617-58a6-5308-baa1-e0a4311398b7)

As soon as he parked the Audi behind Sayre’s truck and climbed out, a terrible sense of doom settled over Cian, hanging around his shoulders like a leaden weight. It sounded embarrassingly dramatic, but there was no denying the emotion. It was like a thundering death knell echoing in his head, warning him that nothing about this situation was going to end in the way that he wanted it to. He knew, damn it...and yet, he couldn’t turn back.

Instead, he simply followed her into the small cabin, doing his best to keep his attention focused on their surroundings and not on how tight her little ass looked in those too-short-for-his-sanity shorts.

Seriously? You sound like an old man who doesn’t even know how to get it up anymore.

“Fuck off,” he muttered under his breath, mentally giving his wolf the finger. It wasn’t a question of not being able to get it up. It was knowing how quickly she’d have his friggin’ balls kicked in if he let the sight of her in those shorts take hold of him.

While she closed the door behind them, he did a quick survey of the room. The cabin was built with an open floor plan, the walls lined with row upon row of packed bookshelves, the bindings on the books creased from use. A hallway on the right led to what he assumed would be her bedroom and the bathroom, the kitchen located off to their left. There was a high-tech sound system on a small table in the corner of the main room, but no television. If she watched movies, it was likely on her computer or iPad, and he recalled Jillian once talking about her sister’s penchant for comedies.

A scowl twisted his brow as he tried to recall the last comedy he’d watched. It’d no doubt been something he’d caught down at one of the cinemas in the human town of Covington with Brody before he’d left, but he couldn’t remember the title. Just that he hadn’t felt like he got even half of the jokes, and he’d hated how old that’d made him feel.

He hated it even more now, when there was a so-beautiful-she-hurt-his-eyes twenty-three-year-old walking away from him as she headed toward the kitchen. She would probably laugh her ass off if she knew he’d “technically” be pushing fifty in a few years.

His body might be young—he halted the aging process when consuming blood as one of his main food sources—but his spirit felt freaking ancient, as if he’d lived three times that long.

As she washed her hands at the kitchen sink, she looked at him from over her shoulder, eyeing his blood-spattered jeans and T-shirt, and jerked her head in the direction of the small hallway. “You’re messier than I am. Why don’t you go ahead and grab your shower? It’s the first door on your left. Towels are under the sink.”

Taking a few steps toward the kitchen, he said, “Actually, I should go and bury the bodies first.”

She turned around as she dried her hands on a towel, blinking back at him with those big, storm-colored eyes. “Um...of course. I wasn’t...I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.”

Because she wasn’t a natural born killer, like he was. And because she was also probably a bit in shock, after everything that had happened. She might have grown up in the hard, often brutal world of the Silvercrest, but Sayre Murphy had always been a dreamer at heart. And dreamers weren’t the kind of girls who were accustomed to burying three dead bodies out in the woods behind their homes.

“Is there a shovel in your shed?”

She pulled her lower lip through her teeth and nodded.

The sight of her white teeth on that plush lip had him sweating, and he cleared his throat a little as he swiped his arm over his forehead. “Then you go ahead and grab your shower,” he told her, the roughness of his voice telling him he needed to get back outside and cool the hell off. “This won’t take me long.”

Her eyebrows lifted slightly. “Don’t you need help?”

Shaking his head, he said, “I’m not letting you anywhere near them, Sayre. But I won’t go too far. I’ll be close enough that I can hear you if you need me.”

He turned and walked back outside before she could say anything more, and pulled in a deep breath of the humid air as he headed for the shed. A half hour later, he was shoveling the last scoops of dirt over the place where he’d buried the bodies, the grave situated between two thick blackberry bushes that would quickly grow over it. He’d checked all three males’ clothing before putting them in the ground, looking for anything that might give him a clue about Aedan’s plans, but wasn’t surprised when the search turned up nothing. His half brother might be seriously twisted, but he was too smart to make a dumb-ass mistake by trusting anyone like these jackasses with vital information. That was why Cian hadn’t bothered to keep one of them alive for questioning.

That...and the fact that he’d been too bloody furious to let them live.

After putting the shovel away in the shed, Cian made his way back inside the cabin, locking the door behind him. He couldn’t hear the water running, so he knew Sayre was out of the shower. The sound of a hair dryer clicking on told him she’d be busy for a while longer, so he washed his hands in the kitchen, then went through the French doors that opened onto a small deck and took out his phone. After scrolling through his contacts, he called Brody’s cell phone number.