Her plea, trembling with desperation, tore through his determination, slamming him with guilt and the harsh understanding of the damage he would do had already done by trying to extract her from her human world with as much finesse as a berserker on a rampage.
Kara stumbled up the rain-slicked steps to the back door, a desperate pounding in her ears as she glanced over her shoulder at the stranger following with her mother. There was a terrible irony in the fact that her kidnapper was the only one who could keep her mother from dying in the rain.
She held the door for him, then ran for the phone. "I need to call an ambulance."
"Kara" Her mom's voice carried to her, thin as worn cotton. "Don't. The doctorscan't do anything."
A sudden crack of thunder rattled the windows and doused the lights, blanketing them in utter darkness. The portable phone in her hand went dead. Kara slammed the phone on the counter in a burst of helpless fury. With the electricity out, she was trapped. Cell phones had never worked out here, and her closest neighbor was almost a quarter mile away.
"Carry her to the car. I'll drive her to the hospital myself."
"No Kara." As weak as her mother's voice was, the determination rang clearly. "Stay here."
Kara wanted to scream her frustration. Instead, she rummaged through the drawers until she found a couple of flashlights. If they were staying here, her mom needed blankets and towels, dry clothes and maybe some hot tea to warm her insides. Kara refused to let her die from this. Not from this.
Flicking on the flashlights, she stabbed the darkness with two steady beams of light, illuminating the big man, wet and dripping, holding her mother with surprising care. His expression remained closed, but no longer quite as cold or forbidding as before. The tiny bit of softening did nothing to ease her wariness of him. Her fear, however, was all for her mom.
Kara turned toward the living room and motioned the stranger to follow with a sweep of one flashlight. "Put her on the sofa." She set one light on the coffee table and took the other with her as she ran to the downstairs linen closet and grabbed a couple of blankets.
Hurrying back, she covered her soaked and shivering parent from shoulder to feet, then grabbed a towel and sank to her knees beside the sofa, dabbing her mom's trembling face as she tried to ignore the stranger looming behind her like the grim reaper.
"You're not human, Kara," he said. "You're Therian. And you've been marked as our chosen one."
His words vibrated through her like the discordant notes of a song. The man was certifiably crazy, but he could sing the alien national anthem for all she cared as long as he left her alone to tend her mom.
"You think you belong here," the man continued, his voice a deep, pleasant rumble so at odds with the absurdity of his words. "But you don't."
Her mom's lashes fluttered, her pain-ridden eyes filling with distress as she looked toward the stranger.
"Stop it," Kara hissed, turning halfway around. "What is wrong with you?"
"You need to understand the truth."
Kara turned her back on him, but he moved beside her, standing over her. "Tell her."
"Tell her what?" But when Kara glared up at him, she found his gaze not on her but her mother.
"She deserves the truth," he said.
Kara lurched to her feet and faced him, anger snapping her patience. "Leave her alone. She's been through enough tonight, thanks to you."
A hint of regret warmed his amber gaze. "For that I'm sorry, but her time in this world is almost over. Yours has just begun. And you need to know the truth."
"What truth ?"
"That you're not her daughter."
"Of course I'm her daughter." But she found herself turning to her mother, seeking confirmation and found tears and denial swimming in the woman's eyes.
Kara sank to her knees beside the sofa and took her mom's icy hand in hers. "I'm yours. Of course I'm yours,".
Tears pooled on her mother's ashen cheeks, her body no longer shivering. Her head moved from side to side in tiny, damning movements, a single word escaping her lips.
"No."
"Mom? What are you saying?" A chill that had nothing to do with the rain lifted goose bumps on her arms. It wasn't true. It couldn't be true.
And suddenly she understood. Kara swung her furious gaze on the stranger. "This is your doing. You're manipulating her just as you manipulated me."
He shook his head, his wet locks brushing his shoulders. "You're mistaken. The only wrong I've done is take you away when she needed you."
"I don't believe you."
His gaze fell to the sofa behind her, and his eyes flinched. "Radiant. Kara . Her spirit has fled. I'm sorry."
Kara jerked at his words and whirled back to where her mom lay still as.
"Mom?"
She grabbed her mother's thin wrist with frantic gentleness, searching for a pulse, but there was none. "Momma?"
It was over. Just like that, she was gone.
"No, Mom, no." Tears clogged her throat, choking her, as she sank to her knees beside the sofa and touched the cool skin of a papery cheek. "Please don't go. Don't leave me." Sobs broke over her in a torrent of grief as her head sank to the once-strong chest upon which she'd cried countless tears over the years. "I need you."
Misery swallowed her in a loss so deep she was afraid she'd never escape. She didn't even notice the hand on her shoulder until the weight that crushed her heart started to lift enough that she could breathe again.
He was trying to steal her grief as he'd stolen her fear.
Kara surged to her feet in a sudden, blinding fury. "Get away from me! She's dead, you monster, and it's your fault ."
She launched herself at the man, slamming her fists against his massive chest, unthinking, uncaring that he was twice her size and could snap her in half with his pinkies. But he didn't move. He took her blows without trying to defend himself, without touching her at all.
The maelstrom finally ran its course, leaving her exhausted and aching as if she'd been the one beaten instead of the one administering the blows. But before she could move away, he grabbed her and shoved her behind him.
" Shit ." The word exploded under his breath even as he yanked two knives from his boots and held them aloft.
The man was certifiaibly.
The thought fled as she eased around his broad back and saw what was coming through the windows the closed windows.
A scream lodged in her throat.
Draden.
Lyon shifted his weight to the balls of his feet, twin knives at the ready as half a dozen of the semicorporeal fiends flew straight for him, each of their bodies little more than floating gas beneath a head shaped like a hideously melted human face. His only thought was to protect the Radiant from the monsters that would drain the life force from her just as surely as the disease had stolen the spirit from the woman who'd raised her.
"What are they?" Behind him, Kara's fear washed over him like an icy stream.
"Stay behind me." He had no more time to talk as the enemy closed in. Lyon dodged fanged mouths, stabbing cleanly through the bodies and popping out the hearts of one, two, three.
The fourth latched onto his scalp from behind as the fifth went for his throat.
The sixth.
He heard a shriek and whirled, two draden still attached to him. The sixth swooped in on the Radiant only to collide with her upraised fist. Kara screamed with pain as her hand disappeared inside that razor-sharp mouth. Her gaze slammed into his, her eyes twin pools of blue terror.
"Grab the heart!" Lyon fought the creatures locked on to his neck and head, desperate to help her. Six months it had taken him to find her. He'd be damned if he'd lose her now.
CHAPTER 3
Panic engulfed her, pain ripped through her hand and body as Kara struggled against the monster, hitting its gelatinous head with her free hand, trying to pull her captured hand loose of its fiery mouth.
Pain shot up her arm as if she'd stuck her hand into raw flame. The thing was trying to suck her in. She could feel it pulling at her as if it meant to swallow her whole. Terror threatened to cut off her air.
"Pull out its heart!" The man's words barely penetrated the fog that encased her brain.
Its heart. Its heart ? How could a body with no form have a heart? But her free hand reached inside the ghostlike body as if she'd been doing this all her life, and closed around a beating, pulsing glob. Holy cow . With a hard yank, the creature disappeared in a puff of smokelike energy, freeing her ripped and shredded hand. Bone showed through ribbons of bloody flesh.
Her head spun with dizzying lightness. Her legs refused to hold her, and she slid to the ground, curving around her injured hand. Beyond screaming, beyond crying, all she could do was shake, her body quaking with pain. Disbelief. Shock.
She couldn't think. Refused to think about what she'd just seen. About all that had just happened. Her world had gone insane.
Cold. So cold.
Her mom was dead.
"Radiant." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the stranger lower his big body to the floor beside her until he was sitting, his back against the love seat, his long legs stretched out in front of him. "Let me see your hand.".
"No. I'm fine." Words were coming from her mouth, but she wasn't sure what she was saying. She barely recognized her own voice. So cold.
She felt a warm, callused hand slide across her jaw and cheek, one long finger curling behind her ear as it had earlier just before she'd lost consciousness.
"Do it," she whispered. "Knock me out."
"You want to escape."
"I can't do this." Tears burned and slid down her cheeks as the pain in her hand nearly rivaled that in her chest, but the grief was worse, tearing so much deeper, "It hurts too much."
The man released a heavy breath. "Making you sleep won't get rid of the pain." Slowly, he removed his hand. "I can't take it all, but I can help. I owe you that much."
His hand slid beneath her hair to curl around her neck, but instead of easing her pain, misery swamped her, a hundred times worse than before.
"Oh, God. Oh, God."
"Easy, little Radiant, I had to strip away your defenses to get to the real emotions. Give me a minute."
Grief tore through her body like a muscle-wrenching poison, doubling heir in half. "I can't do this. I can't"
All at once, the pain eased, and she began to breathe again. In the space of half a dozen heartbeats, her grief lessened, aging, as if she'd been living with it for weeks or months, instead of minutes, dulling around the edges and slowly losing the ability to cut. The fear and confusion quieted in her head. Only her hand still swam with pain.
Kara lifted her gaze to his, meeting enigmatic amber eyes. "How do you do that? Are you some kind of healer? "
"It's just a skill."
She stared at him, really looked at him, her gaze skimming over the hard bones of an undeniably arresting face. His expression Remained cool, perhaps guarded, but his eyes had warmed considerably.
"What's your name?"
"Lyon."
"Is that your first name or your last?"
"My driver's license would say my last. But only humans use the first."
She looked away, a succession of chills snaking through her body before being snatched away, one after another, through the man's touch. Only humans . As if he wasn't one himself.
With a breath-stealing slam of understanding, she knew he wasn't. The things he could do She dipped her forehead to rest on her updrawn knees. "I can't deal with this."
His thumb slid down her neck and back up again in a gentle and oddly sensual caress. "You can. Any woman with the courage and presence of mind to kill a draden the first time she sees one can handle a bit of truth."
Kara laughed, the sound more hysterical than humorous. "A bit of truth?" She raised her head to meet his gaze. "You're not crazy, are you? All that talk earlier of a different race it's real."
"Yes."
"You're not human."
"No. Neither are you."
And somehow she knew that. She'd always known in some dark corner of her mind that she wasn't normal. Her cuts healed much too fast, and she never got sick. Had never, in twenty-seven years, even run a fever. Was that why her mother never let the doctors near her?
Had she known?
"What are we? Aliens?"
The man's smile, wide, crooked, and utterly charming, was so fleeting she almost missed it, but for an instant it transformed his face.
"We're Therians. A race similar to humans, but far less fragile. We don't age, and we heal most wounds quickly."
"So we're immortal?"
"To the humans, yes. Or virtually so. But we can die like any creatures. We just do it far less easily."
Questions crowded her mind as fear tried to clutch at her heart, but he held the emotion at bay with his touch.
"There's no need to be alarmed, little Radiant."
"Why do you call me Radiant?"
"You are the caller of the energies of the Earth. It's through you that your race renews its strength."
"I don't understand." She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. "I don't care. I don't want to be your Radiant."
The very thought that she was some kind of immortal chosen one was absurd. She was just Kara MacAllister, preschool teacher. A woman of average looks, average intelligence, average athletic ability. She was average in so many ways her picture ought to be inserted beside the word in the dictionary.
"I can't possibly be the one you're looking for. There's got to be a mistake."
She curled in on herself even tighter, inadvertently squeezing her injured hand. The wave of fresh pain brought tears to her eyes.
"I've got to heal that injury, Kara."
"It'll heal on its own."
"No. It won't. A wound from a draden is different. Let me see your hand." His thumb slid under her chin, and he tilted her face up to his. "I won't hurt you."
She believed him, though she figured he was probably forcing trust into her while he was taking the other emotions out. As she eased her hand away from her body, the pain exploded. Breath hissed into her mouth between clenched teeth.
Lyon took hold of her wrist and lifted her mangled hand to his mouth.
She looked at him in disbelief. "Kissing it is not going to make it feel better." No matter how much her preschoolers believed otherwise.
Her words seemed to amuse him. "I heal through my tongue."
"Your ?" She gasped as her aching thumb slid into a cocoon of warm silk. His velvet tongue stroked her skin, stealing the pain, sending shivers of heat flowing into her blood.
Her eyes widened as she felt her body begin to melt. Her breath quickened with a desire that shouldn't be there. A desire she didn't want.
He watched her with sharp eyes as he released her thumb and took each finger into his mouth, one by one, healing the flesh, easing the hurt, ensnaring her in a web of restless need. Her fingers healed, he pulled the back of her hand to his mouth and stroked his warm tongue over the cuts until the only pain remaining was from the raw tears on her palm.
When he turned her hand and pressed her palm to his mouth, fire leaped deep inside her, a living ache centered low in her body, at her very core. An ache that built and grew with every stroke of his tongue.
"Lyon"
Her breaths came in small gasps as the pressure between her legs built. She was racing toward.
No. This wasn't right. Her mother lay dead only a few feet away. She clamped her knees together, fighting the rising tide, and lost. The orgasm broke over her in a sudden rush, tightening her womb in spasms of hot joy. Wave after wave of glorious sensation ripped through her, release singing through her veins. The bestthe absolute best.
With a shudder of pure perfection, she collapsed against the coffee table and met Lyon's shocked gaze.
"Oh, God." She buried her face in her free hand in a. useless attempt to hide from the utter mortification. How had she gotten so excited from such a simple touch?
She hadn't. Not by herself. She peeked between her fingers, then lowered her hand and glared at him.
" You did that to me. You're a master of manipulation, aren't you?"
He opened his mouth, then closed it with a snap, "We need to get going." His voice was gruff, almost strained, as he released her hand and rose to his feet. "The draden found us once. They'll find us again."
Kara shuddered and stood, happy to drop the subject of her small sexual overreaction, even as aftershocks tightened her womb, refusing to let her forget.
"What about my mom?"
"She's dead, Kara. We can leave her for others to dispose of in a more traditional manner, or we can bury her now. Your choice. But we can't stay. The longer you're here, the more likely other draden will find you. And there's no protection."
Kara opened her mouth to argue, then sighed, feeling her control over her life slipping from her hands. She was going with him. Tonight. Not only was it no longer safe for her here, but she had to know who she was. What she was. And there was only one way to get the answers.
Lyon.
"You found her," Tighe called, hopping down from the cockpit of the small Cessna several hours later.
Lyon nodded as he ushered Kara across the dark tarmac. The rain had finally stopped while they'd dug the grave for Kara's adoptive mother. He'd called Tighe to come get them, deciding to leave his BMW behind. After the evening's events, he'd given up any thoughts of driving cross-country with the woman. They faced the danger of another draden attack, of course. But the bigger danger, he'd realized, was to himself.
He'd always been somewhat sensitive to others' emotions, but he seemed to read Kara's extraordinarily clearly.
Sweet goddess, all he'd done was heal her injured hand, yet with every stroke of his tongue, her excitement had risen, driving his own right along with it until he'd been on fire for her. When her passion broke, he'd nearly lost it in his pants. Since he hadn't quite he was still hard as a rock and painfully aware of her. Her sweet scent, the curve of her jaw, the fine silk of her skin.
Goddess help me . The last thing he wanted was an obsession for any woman, let alone the chosen one. Yet every time he touched her, he felt need power through him like a charge of pure lightning.
When they reached the plane, Tighe greeted him in the usual fashion, extending his hand as they clasped one another just below the elbow in a slam of hard flesh.
Tighe looked at Kara curiously as he bowed his head. "Radiant."
"I'm Kara." Wariness and exhaustion laced her voice. "Kara MacAllister."
Tighe threw Lyon a questioning look over Kara's head.
"She's the one," Lyon confirmed. "She was raised human, with no knowledge of the Therian race."
Tighe whistled low. "That's awkward." He took Kara's suitcase from Lyon, then turned to Kara, flashing a pair of dimples that had slain too many feminine hearts to count. "So, it was a bit of a surprise to you, huh? Being chosen to live with a bunch of sh-"
"Tighe" Lyon warned, silencing the man with a look. She wasn't ready for any more surprises. "Kara's had a tough night."
Tighe nodded. "Understood." He slipped on his dark shades, then slung his arm across Kara's stiff shoulders, ushering her to the plane.
Something dark and jealous deep inside Lyon sprouted claws. There was only one reason Tighe put on sunglasses in the middle of the night. He was becoming aroused. When this particular warrior's interest was piqued by a female, his eyes turned from emerald green man's eyes to golden cat's eyes. A change that would send a human woman screaming into the night. Or a woman who had been raised human.
A growl rumbled low in Lyon's throat.
Tighe glanced back with a questioning look, then dropped his arm with a smile that conceded nothing. He followed Kara up the steps, leaving Lyon to follow.
"Would you like to ride up front with me, Kara?" Tighe asked, closing the hatch. When he took Kara's hand, Lyon sprang, pulling her down beside him.
"Leave her alone."
Tighe stared at him for one startled moment before his face broke into a grin. "Looks like the Pairing Ceremony may not be necessary after all, eh?"
"Like hell." What was the matter with him? He was acting like his beast had already claimed her. But she wasn't his and probably never would be. Hell, he didn't want her to be.
But the thought of anyone so much as touching her burned a hole in his gut the size of his fist.
Lyon dug his hand in his hair, raking it off his face.
He was so screwed.
Kara stared out the window of the Land Rover as Tighe pulled off the narrow, thickly treed road onto a long drive. Though dawn was breaking to the east, the heavy blanket of trees held the morning at bay like a shield against the encroaching light. And made the approach to her destination, possibly her new home, dark and unsettling.
In the front seat, Lyon and Tighe discussed their ongoing war against the terrifying draden. Tighe turned toward Lyon, his strong face animated. With his fashionably short, sun-bleached hair and wicked smile, he was every bit as good-looking as Lyon, though in an entirely different way. Though both men were far larger than most, Lyon had the broad shoulders and chest of a linebacker. Tighe had the sleek, muscular build of a quarterback and an overabundance of sexy charm.
But it was Lyon, with his intense amber eyes and air of command that pulled at her. And when he glanced back, meeting her gaze, made her breath quicken and her pulse kick up. Was this attraction real, or yet another thing he was forcing on her?
Kara clenched the fingers of her entwined hands, pressing them against the tense knot of her stomach. What am I doing, coming with him ? The refrain had echoed like a litany in her head since the plane took off from the small airfield hours ago. Her first plane trip had whisked her away from everyone and everything she'd ever known. Everything.
Kara pulled her jacket tighter around her. With each passing minute, the events of the night seemed more and more unreal. Talking with immortals, or almost-immortals. Fighting a creature who could fly through a pane of glass without harming it yet tear her flesh to shreds. Burying her mom who was not really her mom.
The ache of grief had settled in her chest, aged and mellow as if she'd been living with it for months, if not years.
How could any of this nightmare be real?
Yet it was. Even as she questioned the insanity that made her agree to this trip, part of her shook with the nervous excitement of discovering who and what she really was.
Ahead, scattered lights peeked through the trees until the car drew close enough to illuminate the whole of the house. Feral House, they called it. The home of the Feral Warriors. And their Radiant.
The house was nothing short of a small mansion-three visible dark brick stories with dormers on the top floors and black shutters at each of the windows. In the dark, the house appeared cold and forbidding like something out of a gothic novel. All it needed was a rollicking thunderstorm and a few crows to make it a perfect setting for a horror movie.
The thought did nothing to ease the apprehension twisting her insides into knots.
The drive widened and curved in front of the house and was lined with expensive-looking cars. A couple of low-slung sports cars, a Hummer, and a yellow Porsche among them.
Tighe parked the Land Rover behind a red convertible and glanced at her in the rearview mirror. "Welcome home, Kara. We're a lot to take in all at once." He grinned, the smile carving deep dimples into his cheeks. "But you'll grow to love us."
"I'm sure," Kara murmured, but the thought of living with nine men like these two was enough to take her breath away.
Lyon held the car door for her and ushered her out into the damp morning chill. She glanced at his profile as they started up the short brick walk to the house. "Are there draden here, too?"
"They're everywhere we are. But the house is protected. You're safe."
"Why haven't I ever heard of them before?"
"Humans can't see them and generally don't attract them. The draden feed off Therian energy. Lost among the humans, with your energy untapped, you were safe enough. Until I showed up. You'll be safe here as long as you stay inside at night."
"They're nocturnal?" Kara followed him up the wide brick steps to the front door.
"Yes." Lyon ushered her into a circular, high-ceilinged foyer dimly lit by a pair of electric sconces. Twin stairs curved to the second floor, framed by ornately carved wood railings, then traveled up to a third. Her wide-eyed gaze traveled down, following the line of chain from which hung the biggest chandelier she'd ever seen, teeming with hundreds of crystals. Her gaze slowly descended farther, taking in ornately papered walk covered with paintings of gardens and flowers, coming to rest on the magnificent scene painted on the wood floor beneath her feet. Like something out of an ancient temple, naked men and women played hide-and-seek in a woods teeming with unicorns and centaurs and all manner of mythical creatures.
Feeling as if she'd stepped through the doors of a small palace, she met Lyon's gaze. "How many women live here?"
"Pink is the only female, besides the Radiant, who resides here on a permanent basis. Some of the men bring in girlfriends to stay for a time, but none of the men are currently mated. Pink does the cooking and keeps the house." He led her across the painted floor to the right-hand stair. "Why? Looking for allies?"
"No, though a friend would be nice, I'm trying to reconcile the fancy decor with a house full of males. I expected wood paneling, maybe some stags' heads on the walls."
Tighe made a half-choked sound behind her. "We're not much on mounting animal heads." He started up the stairs. "I'm going to catch a few more hours of sleep."
Lyon nodded and turned back to Kara. "Believe me, the decorating was Beatrice's doing, not ours. Beatrice was your predecessor. The previous Radiant."
"What happened to her?"
"She died six months ago."
"How?" Kara frowned. "I thought you said we were all but immortal."
"We're not indestructible. We can, and do, die. Beatrice fell asleep with her window open. The draden got to her before we knew what happened."
"I'm sorry."
Lyon nodded. "No one lives forever. Not even Therians."
Kara shivered at the thought of being overpowered by those horrible little fiends, their teeth ripping her to shreds as they sucked the life out of her. Definitely not the way she wanted to go.
Lyon swept his hand outward, encompassing the foyer. "You're free to redecorate any way you like."
Redecorate. The thought was so absurdly mundane she almost laughed out loud. She was in a strange, unsettling house full of powerful males who claimed she was their chosen one. She didn't know who they were, who she was, or what they really wanted from her.
The wallpaper could wait.
She followed Lyon up the stairs and down a long, dark hallway lit only by the faint glow of dawn. Lyon seemed to have no trouble finding his way in the near dark as he led her to the end of the hall and into one of the rooms. He flipped on a bedside lamp, illuminating the biggest bedroom Kara had ever seen. The decorating was so overwrought, it made the foyer seem plain by comparison. A mammoth tester bed draped in burgundy velvet and gold silk sat in the middle of a room papered in a busy pattern of lush foliage and birds. Even the ceiling was plastered with heavy gilt scrollwork and painted with fat, playful cherubs.
"This was Beatrice's room?" Kara asked.
"Yes. She was a great collector of art." He motioned to the many oil paintings hanging on the walls. "They're all originals."
Lyon set her single suitcase on a carved chest at the foot of the bed, then closed the red velvet drapes and retreated to the door.
"Sleep, little Radiant." His expression was closed, yet not unkind. "You can unpack when you're rested. If you need me, you have only to call my name, and I'll hear you. My room is directly above yours."
Lyon strode to the door, and Kara started to follow, her pulse rocketing at the thought of being alone. She forced herself to stop. As badly as she wanted to beg him to stay, there was only one way he could possibly construe such a request, and she wasn't that kind of girl. Kara MacAllister didn't have sex with strangers, not even ones who sent her hormones into such paroxysms of excitement that she orgasmed from the simple stroke of their tongues on her hand.