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  Each thrust seemed an earth-shattering event. Every soft, very real sound of encouragement she made hurled him toward hot, sweet, ecstasy.

  She was so very...fine.

  This couldn’t go on, of course, his mind warned. They couldn’t continue like this because they wouldn’t be allowed to. Rosalind’s father waited on the other side of this same wall, and he was going to take her away.

  Colton realized that the roughness he used to get at her was tearing Rosalind apart, and he couldn’t help it. His mind was set on having her in every possible way, carnal and emotional. If she was to be taken away from him for any amount of time, he needed sustenance.

  Rosalind accepted the roughness of this act as if she had been born to it. As if she had to have this as badly as he did, if only to put off and outrun her own demons.

  She writhed against him, opened herself, rose to meet him. Her body took him in, massaging his hardness, accepting him with a passion that was ferocious and feral.

  This wasn’t merely good, it bordered on insane. And not once did she ask him to stop.

  He had bites all over his mouth and cheek and neck from Rosalind losing herself in this mating. Colton smelled the blood that seemed to drive her further into a state of euphoria, and let that pass. He would confront that issue another time.

  Touch, feel, taste and the sleek, silken sensation of being inside her rendered him worthless in curbing his need to possess her. Being embedded in her blistering heat was everything.

  It was life itself.

  It was as if he somehow temporarily shared hers.

  When the crescendo inside him had built to an impossible level and screamed for release, he penetrated her just one more time with a deep, forceful thrust.

  Rosalind moaned, then cried out again, vocalizing her gratification, forgetting where they were.

  He came. With her. Simultaneously. The flood gates opened, and his soul’s liquid ecstasy mingled with hers. Theirs was a unanimous gasp, a last reach for something beyond themselves that crowded out all other thought...for a while.

  And though he wanted to stay buried inside Rosalind, their shouts had an unanticipated domino effect.

  An instantaneous response came from beside them; a gruff, angry stringing together of senseless words intended as a warning, and quite possibly as a threat.

  In the time it took for Colton to zip up his jeans and turn Rosalind to face him, he found himself surrounded by Weres that had appeared from nowhere. All of them were elders, all of them were in human form, their auras saturated with hefty, polarized power.

  With terrible timing, Jared Kirk had arrived with the big boys in tow.

  But before any of them could offer up a protest or more harsh words on Kirk’s behalf for Colton taking such liberties with the Were’s daughter, a terrible new odor flooded the area on the south side of Landau’s wall.

  Everyone turned to face this new wave, including Colton.

  “They have arrived,” Rosalind’s father grimly announced.

  Vampires.

  Above the loaded silence that followed Jared Kirk’s remark, Colton heard Rosalind’s soft growl of fear. His own fear took shape. He had faced these creatures before. He glanced nervously to each elder Were. As far as he knew, none of these Lycans could shift shape without a full moon. As men they were exceptionally strong, but against the supernatural flood of danger rushing in, they were much more vulnerable.

  Taking a step back, Colton pressed Rosalind to the wall, placing himself protectively between her and whatever approached. His hunger for her was barely appeased, but Rosalind’s father stood beside him, too close for comfort and reeking of anger. A tall, broad man with silver hair and a long face crowded him on his other side.

  “Surely that’s impossible,” Colton said, his anxiousness escalating as the foul odor of sour earth wafted in. “Bloodsuckers don’t dare to trespass here, so close to Were boundaries.”

  “Nothing about this is usual,” Jared Kirk snapped, scanning the park where the trees were the densest.

  “Luckily we’re prepared,” the silver-haired Were remarked in a voice backed by the steel of a practiced authority that made Colton sure this was the infamous Judge Landau himself.

  “There may be no moon,” said another of Landau’s friends, as if he had read Colton’s mind, “but since we have fingers and pockets, we have the next best thing.”

  The familiar smell of metal wafted to Colton, a smell he had lived with nearly every day on the job with the Miami PD. These Weres had weapons. They had guns.

  “You don’t imagine that will do the trick?” he protested impatiently.

  “Special guns,” one Were said. “Wooden bullets should do the trick.”

  Rosalind squirmed behind him, registering her tension with a sound that made the hair at the nape of Colton’s neck stand up. She knew a fight was coming. Maybe out of all of them, and with her new fangs, she had the most to fear.

  Her father stepped closer to her wearing an expression of wary concern. “We’ll go now,” he told her. “If it’s not too late.”

  “We can hold them off,” Judge Landau promised. “As soon as you go, I’ll call the boys.”

  Kirk took his daughter by the hand. It could be that Rosalind’s father realized what had happened to her the night Colton had become a ghost, after all. But maybe not. What was fair to assume, however, was that Kirk and the other elders had been expecting something like this and were ready to take on an influx of fanged parasites.

  God help us all if there are hundreds.

  “I’ll help,” Colton volunteered, looking around, sensing the vampires’ closeness.

  Turning to look at Rosalind, he saw that her eyes were downcast and cloaked by fluttering ebony lashes. She was fighting feelings that none of them really saw or recognized. He also noted that a single streak of white hair, two or three inches wide, ran from her forehead to the tips of her waist-long tresses. He had no idea what had caused this, or if he could simply have missed the discoloration before.

  Now wasn’t the time or place to address it.

  “Rosalind,” he whispered to her. “Tell me what this is. What comes here?”

  “No,” Kirk protested. “It’s too late now. You’ve helped to cause this, and must help get my daughter to safety. Get her away from them. You must guard my daughter with your life.”

  All eyes turned to Colton, except for Rosalind’s. She seemed to have retreated into herself. But her heartbeat had become his heartbeat, pounding, thundering in their arteries.

  He wanted her all over again, here, now. He had to be inside her. Nothing else would do. No one else would do. Below his waist, he was still hard, still aching for Rosalind’s molten sweet spot.

  Yet the way the elders were staring at him put a quick end to his lust. Lycan anxiety filled the area with a palpable heaviness.

  Colton didn’t like how cold the night had grown in direct correlation with his thoughts about what hid in the park’s shadows. And though he wasn’t sure what the next vampire onslaught would entail, he sensed that Rosalind knew they were near, and that her current quiet exterior was misleading.

  Jared Kirk seemed privy to this, as well. Rosalind’s father knew the real answer as to why they all believed these vampires were coming for his daughter. Rosalind had confided to Colton that this council of elders kept secrets, and that she feared they had met to discuss her.

  Without waiting to see what Landau and the others had in mind—besides wooden bullets—Colton, for the third time since he had met Rosalind, gathered her in his arms. Not because she was weak or helpless, but because of his intrinsic need to keep her close. Though her dark eyes glowed with rebellion, and her breath hissed out, she allowed his closeness, and seemed to understand how necessary it was.

  Ignoring her father’s
expression of worried anger, Colton said, “Guard her with my life? Gladly. I probably owe her my life, or what’s left of it. So, what are you waiting for? Lead the damn way.”

  He tossed Rosalind atop Landau’s eight-foot stone wall with a seemingly effortless grace that left his weakened arms shaking, and left the others murmuring incomprehensible phrases behind him.

  Chapter 12

  Rosalind couldn’t speak. But she did know that with one concerted physical protest, she could get away from all of them, and that if she did, the others here would be safe, at least for a while. Her white wulf, Killion, would be safe, too, except perhaps from his own demons.

  Yet swell after swell of longing for him washed over her, as did the fear that if she left him now, he might never find her again. She might be alone forever after knowing the pleasures of bonding with this magnificent male.

  Terror over that was like an added layer of pain.

  If her father knew what they had done, and what their sex had accomplished, he made no mention of it. Things had too gone far. All was chaos, her father was thinking, and he was right. After planning to separate her from her white wulf, he had asked that same wulf to protect her.

  On Landau’s side of the wall, she allowed herself to be led away as if she were a senseless child. Her father’s grip on her arm pulled her forward. His anger pushed her on.

  She felt every step her ghost mate took. Each labored breath he took moved through her lungs as if it were her own. His pain was becoming her pain, as if such things were contagious. She still felt him between her legs...a ghostly leftover sensation of their lovemaking. She felt him sliding in and out of her, hard and dangerous and filling, with each pulse that struck her throat. Yet her father would see that it didn’t happen again.

  As they moved away from the park, Rosalind also knew that the effort to escape another vampire attack would be in vain. The Weres here would face them any minute now, and she would be gone.

  Deep in her gut, she sensed that the fanged monsters would find her eventually, wherever she was, because of something she had done while in their presence that had exempted her from the fury of their fangs.

  The call...

  It had been that soulful howl she’d made out there that had slid her closer to the unforeseen abyss where vampires lived.

  Making their way past the Landau house, where outside lights now blazed with the wattage of full daylight, Rosalind saw more Weres running for the wall. Young males turned to look at her only once before obeying the call to arms.

  Landau’s pack. They were all preternaturally beautiful, and terrible in their own right.

  I have done this. Brought anger to them all.

  One lapse in the rules, and the world had gone mad, taking her with it. No matter how much she wanted or wished, it was too late to change anything.

  Hunger. Hunt. Kill. Rosalind flinched as the remembrance of vampire hatred invaded her mind. The rancid emotion behind those words caused her to stumble, catching her father off guard. He dropped his hold on her wrist, and glanced behind them.

  Rosalind spun toward the wall in the distance with a shriek of despair on her lips. She felt heavy, awkward now, as if the enemy’s existence, so close, was causing her to drown. Unfamiliar fangs were extending, slicing through her gums, bringing hot jabs of discomfort. She could barely move her legs.

  Her lover’s arms encircled her waist. Killion. Cop. Were. Lycan. Ghost. “No, Rosalind,” he said in her ear. “Whatever is happening, you can rise above. Bring up your wulf. Use your strength.”

  To her father, he said, “They’re here now. We only have minutes.”

  “How do you know?” Jared Kirk demanded.

  “Look at your daughter.”

  Her father, to his credit, showed no sign of panic as Rosalind’s body transformed in her lover’s arms, surrendering to the cult of the moon, and to his closeness. Only her white wulf’s humanlike grunt of approval filled the silence for several seconds as his arms tightened around her.

  For the briefest of moments, her eyes met with his. She saw herself in the brilliance of his gaze. Black wulf. Small, sleek, but with one noticeable difference: a vampire’s fangs.

  The white wulf wanted her desperately. She read that in him. He wanted to take her right there. Throw her down and impale her with the evidence of his glorious sexual vigor. A growl had stuck in his throat. Yet he was also afraid.

  “The car is by the garage,” her father barked.

  There was a sudden rumble of a well-oiled machine. Someone had started the car’s engine in anticipation of their departure. As they approached the vehicle, a dark-haired young woman stepped out of the SUV. Rosalind recognized the she-wolf. This close to Killion, she heard his thoughts.

  Good cop, he thought. Bless her, Delmonico is on our side.

  Though Rosalind growled, Officer Dana Delmonico, whom they’d met on the street, faced them as if they were old friends. And the white wulf’s thoughts told her that Delmonico was soon going to be Dylan Landau’s wife.

  “Small world, after all,” she heard Colton say as he opened the back door of the black SUV and waved Rosalind inside.

  Her father nodded to Delmonico and jumped into the front, behind the wheel. He stomped on the gas pedal with a heavy foot. As the car screeched out onto the asphalt driveway, her mate’s thoughts transmitted one more thing before the world went dark with images of bloodsuckers cutting through a line of Weres:

  Delmonico and Landau. A pure Lycan and newly inducted Were have bonded together. Further proof that rules can be stretched or broken by a concept as simple as love.

  * * *

  They drove a long time, heading west from Miami and then south toward Florida’s gulf.

  Colton kept his eyes on Rosalind. One of the first things she had told him was that she came from the bayou country. This could have meant anywhere in several Southern states, but in Florida meant the Everglades. The last road sign Colton noted was of a place called Cape Sable before he finally succumbed to sleep without meaning to beside Rosalind, who had faded back into human shape once they’d left the Landau compound behind.

  She hadn’t said a word. Neither had her father.

  When he woke, dazed, startled, the sun had risen, and he was alone in the car.

  He sat up straighter, experiencing a rush of disorientation. His muscles were painfully bunched and aching.

  How long have I been asleep?

  Where the hell am I?

  He felt sick, tired and apprehensive. The sunlight hurt his eyes. His joints were rigid.

  “Rosalind?” he whispered, reaching for the door handle.

  The clunk of the SUV’s metal was the only sound in an otherwise silent clearing when he stepped out. Panic kicked at his stomach.

  Colton waited, straining to hear any sound at all, and finally heard birds and the oddly foreign croak of frogs, signifying how close they were to water. There were no traffic noises. No planes passed overhead. There wasn’t one sign of the everyday cacophony of people rushing around.

  “Everglades,” he muttered with distaste. “Jesus.”

  As a city boy, he felt adrift in unknown territory. He’d never even visited here. This was a foreign landscape, as different from his world as being dropped onto another planet. There wasn’t even a sidewalk, or a streetlight. There was no movement at all, save for the quick rise and fall of his chest.

  Colton glanced down, half expecting to find an alligator at his feet, and stubbed at the dirt with his foot. He expected to see something else in the lush jungle greenery surrounding him: vampires, hanging upside down from branches. But that was an impossibility, he realized with relief. Bloodsuckers were creatures of the night, and had to hide from the sun.

  With a sweep of his gaze, he saw the house, or what posed as a house. He
hadn’t considered the sort of residence Rosalind and an elder Lycan like her father would call home, but this was a surprise.

  The small, squat building was really a cabin built of rough-hewn timber log walls, with some sort of gray-green mortar packed in the cracks. It couldn’t have contained more than a few rooms, beneath a green-hued pitched roof and a couple of chimneys made of river rock. A wide covered porch wrapped around the front and sides. The windows next to the front door had glass in them and the shades drawn, giving the place an abandoned look.

  His cop background made him take a further survey of the site. Foliage, thick and riotous near the small garage, had been cleared fifty feet away from the cabin’s foundations. The SUV was parked on a dirt road that wound in a curvy manner through the center of a particularly dense grove of unrecognizable trees.

  Cop or not, Colton felt utterly alone as he stood there trying to get his bearings. Rustling sounds roused him. He braced himself, called out “Rosalind?”

  The cabin’s front door opened, but it wasn’t Rosalind who stepped out.

  “My daughter is resting,” Jared Kirk said from the top of the steps.

  Colton nodded without moving to meet him. He remained wary, and on guard. “Is she okay?”

  “That’s a matter of one’s point of view, I suppose,” Kirk replied frankly. “Sedation will become Rosalind’s best friend in the days to come.”

  “Why? We’re far from the vampires, aren’t we?” Colton pressed.

  “You don’t understand what it is that you’ve vowed to protect, do you? What you’ve dared to love and befriend?”

  Colton said, “A very hyped-up she-wulf, hyped because of reasons I can’t yet fathom.”

  “Ah, then you have your eyes closed to the possibilities, my friend,” Jared Kirk remarked.

  The elder Were was being purposefully cryptic, and that was flat-out unacceptable after everything Colton had been through. Still, his training mandated that he remain calm and start the necessary interrogation.