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  “I’ve been hurt,” Colton said. “My world is changing, as, it seems, are my alliances. I’ve just left everything I have always known and loved behind, most of it lost to me, so why don’t you fill me in on a few things that might make this trip to the middle of nowhere make sense.”

  “Will details affect your willingness to protect my daughter?”

  “Do you really expect me to answer that ridiculous question?”

  Jared Kirk descended one step slowly, in the manner of a man who had been pushed to his limits. “You made a vow to guard Rosalind, and I will hold you to that vow.”

  “I’ve never broken a vow.”

  The elder Were’s voice remained steady, in spite of how tired he looked. But Colton needed to know what was going on.

  “Do you believe I’m responsible for what has happened to her?” he asked. “What is happening to her?”

  “No. I’m not stupid or unreasonable. My daughter would have had problems with or without meeting you. Her acquaintance with you merely brought her to that end result quicker.”

  “You’d better explain that,” Colton said.

  “I’m not sure it’s my place to try to dissect what no one truly understands.”

  “Try.” Colton was adamant, his voice firm. Cop voice. Cop demand.

  “Very well. I suppose you’ll have to know some things if you’re to comprehend what guarding her entails.”

  Kirk took another step with his hand on the carved porch railing before going on. “Rosalind is not like you.”

  “And?”

  “She comes from Lycans, and our blood is in her veins. But she is also something else whose shape has been handed down from a distant side of her mother’s family.”

  The rare black fur. Yes. She was different.

  In the silence following Kirk’s announcement, Colton got a question in. “How can Rosalind carry the scent of a full-blooded She, as well as the mark of the moon, if she is something else, as well?”

  Jared Kirk managed to descend the last two steps. Facing Colton, he raised his hands and let them fall back to his sides in a gesture that suggested the futility of attempting to answer Colton’s question correctly.

  “Issues of the blood are tricky,” he finally replied. “With those distant genes remaining dormant, my daughter had the potential to become so many things. We hoped she would be fully Lycan, and only that. Only time would tell us this.”

  Colton fisted his hands in frustration. The conversation wasn’t moving fast enough. Nor were they getting to the heart of the matter in a clear enough fashion to satisfy the needs welling up inside him.

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” he said. “You’re either Lycan, or you’re not. Half-breeds are another thing altogether. Bitees are still more distant.”

  “Are you prejudiced against diluted blood, Colton?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “What if that diluted blood came from a vampire?”

  “Can’t happen. Our blood doesn’t mix.”

  “Can’t it? You were injured by vampires. The brutality of their attack and the venom in their fangs has changed you into what you are now. You’re Lycan, but fully? Do you know that for sure?”

  The allusion to his current condition was for Colton like a sudden slap in the face. He waited, speechless, for the elder to continue, considering the possible ramifications of what Kirk had said and feeling unsteady in his open-legged stance.

  Kirk’s hand again moved, reaching for the railing as if groping for support. He spoke in a lowered tone. “The medication the Landaus gave you will slowly leave your system. It has temporarily given you access to some of your former strength, but what is left after that’s gone is anyone’s guess.”

  Hell, this was ominous news that Colton didn’t need or care to dwell upon at the moment, though he probably should have cared. He was tired, sure. Bone-weary. But his wulf was still there, coating his insides, waiting for a chance to be freed.

  If they thought he might become something other than wulf without special medication, as Kirk had just suggested, then why would the Were entrust him with his daughter’s welfare?

  The last thought was accompanied by a tingling sensation that rivaled the moon’s influence on his bones. Seconds of light-headedness came and passed that could have been an omen of the nebulous future Kirk had hinted at, if Colton believed in omens. As it was, he just took it for another symptom of fatigue.

  Nevertheless, the situation here remained unclear. Shoving the hair back from his face and looking directly at the Were in front of him, Colton asked with trepidation, “Did the vampires bite her? Is that what you’re alluding to?”

  Kirk eyed him wearily before speaking in a voice hushed by sorrow. “They didn’t need to bite her. In order to change my daughter, those creatures only had to get close to her. They only had to touch her, brush up against her, exhale their foul breath on her.”

  Colton observed Kirk closely, thinking his response ridiculous.

  “This is why I’ve kept her from the world,” Kirk explained, without having actually explained much at all. “I have sequestered her here for the same reason I would have kept her away from you and any other potential suitor. I had to explain to Landau and the other elders why Rosalind can’t be in their gene pool. It’s not your fault this has happened. It’s mine, for taking the risk of having her with me at the Landaus’. I couldn’t allow them to come here when this place has to remain secret, and I couldn’t leave Rosalind here alone.”

  Colton’s unease had grown by bounds. He felt extremely uncomfortable now. The tingling sensations on his face and hands had gotten strong enough to resemble a swarm of insects walking around. The muscles of his upper back twitched with the intensity of a recurring spasm.

  He was shirtless, and shivered in spite of the muggy heat of the place. In his peripheral vision he watched strands of white hair blow in an unusual breeze that smelled sultry but brought on a chill. Those colorless strands in his face were locks of his own hair, longer than he remembered, thicker than before and peppered with Rosalind’s floral scent.

  With that scent, memories flashed.

  A call in the park from a she-wulf.

  A black whirlwind tearing into the vampires, fighting savagely by his side.

  Rosalind in his arms, leaving bites on his mouth, face and neck.

  Rosalind on the windowsill, holding up her shaky, blood-tinted hand.

  The heat of Rosalind’s insides as he thrust into her.

  Her groans of pleasure. Her blackened eyes.

  Her shock over discovering that her mouth was filled with something no other wulf had. Needle-sharp fangs.

  Those fangs dragging across his skin when he had...

  “It would seem,” Jared Kirk said, “that Rosalind’s genes didn’t remain dormant, and that they are showing up in full force. If she had been near to you first, Colton, she’d have been like you. Lycan, for all intents and purposes. But instead vampires overpowered her senses with their insatiable thirst and their craving for blood, and my daughter has taken on some of their characteristics.”

  Kirk’s voice cracked with submerged emotion. After a long, deep breath, he went on. “If we hadn’t gotten her away from them quickly, her adaptation likely would have been more complete than it is. From what I’ve seen, Rosalind is stuck midway through a transition between wulf and vampire that none of us recognizes. Maybe it’s not too late for her to change back. Perhaps there’s hope. I pray for that.”

  Colton stood there, feeling completely useless and only partly appeased. He supposed there was light at the end of this explanation, but he wasn’t able to reach it. Though he opened his mouth to speak, no words came out for some time.

  “That’s why you have allowed me to come here with her, and to hold her,” he f
inally managed to say. “You’re hoping that between the two of us, between you and I, she will revert back to normal? To wulf?”

  Jared Kirk shook his head and pointed at Colton. “Normal? You think you’re normal? Look at you. No, my current fear is that if you get near her again, she may take on more of your ghostly attributes. That has already started. You’ve seen the white in her hair. But you were the second thing to change her, not the first. The result of being with you is more subtle. The vampire traits remain, though yours seem to have influenced Rosalind, as well.”

  Colton stared at Kirk.

  “Hell,” Kirk said. “My daughter is now part wulf, part vampire, and part whatever else that you are going to turn out to be, with the multitude of bites you received in that park.”

  “Yet I remain wulf,” Colton said, “in spite of my injuries. Other than the color of my hair, I feel Lycan. A ghost of a wulf is better than a creature of the night.”

  “True,” Jared Kirk agreed. His expression didn’t soften. He didn’t seem to realize what effect on Colton his words had; the suggestion that Colton might lose the wulf, and himself, in the end.

  “So here we are,” Kirk said. “You and me and whatever now swims in Rosalind’s veins.”

  The sickness in Colton’s stomach worsened, threatening to bring up bile. His legs had grown more and more restless. His mind warned that he should run now, get away from this crazy interlude...but he was still in the dark in more ways than one, and the Were across from him seemed to hold a handful of clues as to what that iffy, nebulous future hanging over him might bring.

  What I might become if I don’t fight for myself. And for her.

  “I won’t change,” he said to Jared Kirk.

  “Who can be sure?” Kirk tossed back.

  “Yet you asked me to protect Rosalind.”

  Kirk nodded. “I don’t know what else to do. You’ve bonded with her. Maybe you can influence Rosalind in ways no one else can. I will hold you to that promise, as I will hold you to a promise not to touch her again until we see what your changes might bring.”

  Colton shook his head. “How can I protect her if can’t be near to her?”

  “You must promise me, Colton, not to touch her.”

  “You know that we have imprinted.”

  “Yes. But I repeat that if you have a care for my daughter’s safety and her future, you must comply. You must honor my request not to touch her again.”

  This was an utterly useless warning, Colton wanted to shout, and quite impossible. Even sick and shaky, he wanted Rosalind so badly, he had begun to taste her presence in that house. In his mind, he saw her outline. She was lying on a bed, with her long hair fanning over the edges of a pale pillow.

  So very lovely, and so very silky, her midnight-black hair had spilled like that across his skin when he had taken her. When they had joined their bodies and their souls. He could taste her, feel the exquisite texture of her body, still.

  He rolled his shoulders to stop the insanity.

  “I’m not sure I can stay away,” he earnestly confessed. “Not now. You don’t understand.”

  Kirk held up a hand to stop Colton’s protest. Colton ignored the Were’s warning.

  “I’m to stay here, be her guard dog, without getting close? How close is too close? How is that kind of relationship supposed to work? You have to see how absurd your requirement is. What about her? What she wants?”

  “Her needs don’t count. Cannot count.”

  “It’s to be one freak protecting another, then?” Colton was angered into taking a step. “Is that it?”

  “No. It’s a male who has accepted a female, taking care of that female. Your police training will come in handy here,” Kirk said. “I can’t be sure they won’t find her here. I can’t be sure they won’t try. If they don’t, others will, now that she has come of age. Now that you’ve opened the door to her womanhood and dispersed the scent of her uniqueness into the world.”

  What Colton wanted to say in response to this absurd diatribe was You are a crazy bastard. The words he managed to get out were “What do you mean by Others? Others trying to get at her?”

  He had heard and internalized the meaning of that special emphasis, the capital O. But it soon became clear that Jared Kirk had said all he was going to say.

  Looking bone-tired and far older than his years, the Were’s broad shoulders drooped. His face had taken on a gaunt, sunken appearance. Rosalind’s father was worried. There was no doubt about that. Jared Kirk honestly feared for his daughter, and who might come after her.

  Turning from Colton, Kirk said in a wavering rasp, “There’s a place for you in the shed, and clothes and boots in the wardrobe. You must be hungry. I’ll bring some food.”

  Then Rosalind’s father was gone, closing the door on what Colton supposed had to be only the beginning of a brand-new nightmare.

  Chapter 13

  Rosalind stirred. Feeling a sensation of coolness on her cheek and a burning sensation below her right knee, she awakened fully, overcome with a sense of impending doom.

  She wasn’t drowning, running, howling, or pressed up against a stone wall by her lover. She was in her room, on her bed. Familiar scents were everywhere. Waning daylight seeped through the curtained window, casting long shadows along one wall.

  Covering her eyes to close out the suddenness of the light, she waited for whatever would come next.

  The room was quiet, undisturbed, but her heart drummed, its rhythm chaotically rising and falling without perceivable instigation or trigger. The nag of an awful pain below one knee demanded her immediate attention. Between her thighs, a flickering spark informed her that her lover was near.

  She sat up and looked to the door expectantly.

  “I’m here,” her father said, dashing her hopes for the big ghost wulf as he appeared in the doorway too quickly to have been anywhere else. “You’re safe.”

  The throb in her private places didn’t lessen. Her wulf was near. It hadn’t been a dream. None of this was her imagination. She could almost smell the magnificent Killion. Her body was telling her that she couldn’t bear to be long without him in spite of recent events.

  “Where is he?” she asked her father.

  “Who?” he replied. But Rosalind read him easily enough, and in her new, even more impatient incarnation, despised the old games they played. She was no longer a child, nor childlike. In the past few days she had become someone else. Something else.

  “I know he’s here. I can sense him,” she said.

  “Colton is outside.”

  Colton. Hearing his full name brought her pleasure. Her lips parted as she sucked that pleasure in.

  “Your protector is standing guard,” her father explained, his voice backed by the strain of this announcement. He wasn’t happy about having the ghost here.

  Rosalind swung herself to the side of the bed in an attempt to get to her feet, and was yanked back before getting far. Tossing the blanket aside, she found the reason she couldn’t budge, and the source of her leg’s burn. She looked at her father questioningly.

  “It’s for your own good,” he said, sadly.

  “It’s a chain.”

  “Yes. You might have chewed through a rope.”

  Automatically, Rosalind put a hand to her mouth.

  “The fangs will probably appear as soon as the sun goes down,” her father said. “Yet I’m hoping for progress since you’re awake in the daylight and adjusting to the silver chain, when those things should have been problematic.”

  Waves of fear hit her and retreated, carrying flashes of memory and feelings of dread.

  “What am I?” Rosalind demanded, tugging against the restraint, wanting to tear it off.

  Her father crossed to the bed and sat down beside her. As
his weight hit the mattress, Rosalind suddenly understood about the necessity of restraint. If she’d had fangs, she might have used them. The urge to do so, and to be free of the damn chain, was there, lurking in the darkness of her soul.

  “I believe you’re a mixture of vampire and Were at the moment, with the latter maintaining some hold,” her father said.

  “Secrets,” Rosalind muttered, pointing to the chain. “Is this the result of withholding things from me?”

  “I doubt that any explanation would have curbed your enthusiasm for ignoring rules, Rosalind. As parents, we can only do so much.”

  “Then the fangs are penance, payback, for desiring freedom? Could you possibly think that? How did this happen? I’m owed an explanation.”

  Her father patted her hand, allowing his fingers to rest on hers as he leaned in to place a kiss on her forehead. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I prayed this wouldn’t happen to the extent it has, but saw it coming long ago. I tried to keep you from it, and assumed that if you didn’t know what resided within you, that thing would stand no chance of showing itself.”

  Another wave of darkness hit Rosalind. The shadows from the window had moved to the bed. The closer those shadows got, the more restless she became.

  “How can I be part vampire?” Her tone was insistent. “And how could you have watched for it? That’s insane.”

  “The Blackout,” he whispered.

  The sheer weight of her father’s closeness and the kiss he’d placed on her forehead temporarily robbed her of the terrible, irrational urges to tug on the chain. His scent was familiar. His face was very dear to her. He was worried, and not bothering to hide it.

  “It was different for you,” he went on. “The Blackout phase came on earlier, and so very intense. As your body rewired to allow your wulf in, there were signs of other changes, as well. In your fever, your body mimicked other things, the likes of which I had never seen, as if those things had somehow gotten in through an open door.”

  Her father winced, remembering. “You shifted in and out of form relentlessly, fighting to be what you needed to be. You pulled through. Your abilities and powers grew, almost as if there weren’t enough abilities to master, and then you furred-up into a rare, very beautiful, black-pelted wulf.”