Home > Forever (The Lair of the Wolven #2)(14)

Forever (The Lair of the Wolven #2)(14)
Author: J.R. Ward

“I thought you said you didn’t know anything about the—”

“I’m not interested in arguing with you.” She needed to snap out of this: Not her problem. “And I can’t help you because I don’t know shit—”

“I’m dying. And I can’t leave her alone in this world. I just can’t. Please… help me.”

Well… what the hell did she say to that.

Can of worms, she thought. This was a total can of night crawlers, everything a tangle of big, fat fish bait.

“I really don’t know what I can do for you.” Over in the bathroom, the water was cut off, the dripping loud, the sound of her mate flopping a towel around his body quiet. “Yeah, I did go up that mountain once. But there was nothing there other than rocks, trees, and pine needles on the ground.”

“No, there are other things on that mountain,” he said roughly. “I’ve seen them myself.”

“So then take your mate to the trail and find them. You don’t need my help.” She switched ears. “Look, I gotta go. Sorry. Good luck.”

She ended the call just as John Matthew appeared in the bathroom doorway with a towel wrapped around his waist.

You okay? he signed.

“Yeah.” She put her phone aside. “It was nothing.”

As her hellren stared across at her, she eased back down against the pillows. For a moment, she felt entangled, but then she just let that tension go—and the fact that it was easy to segue out of the unease meant the shit wasn’t that important… and besides, she was feeling better than she ever had lately. More stable, instead of less.

Unlike certain other people. Who happened to have mohawks.

And maybe she was a bitch, but it felt good to turn her back on the grind of whatever bullshit destiny had tried, and failed, to line up for her. April had been the moment, and that was passed, she told herself.

“C’mere,” she murmured as she motioned for her mate. “I want to give you something.”

John Matthew’s lids lowered, as if he were reading her mind, and right on cue, her hellren came across the antique rug on a prowl, his body moving with sensual intent. When he stood in front of her, his broad dagger hand went to the erection that had thickened up at his hips. Gripping himself, he released the terry cloth wrap.

Then he let things fall to his feet.

“That’s what I want,” Xhex moaned.

Turning onto her side, she palmed her mate’s erection and pulled him forward. Opening her mouth, she had a moment of thanks for the fact that the grand antique bed they slept on, which was not ordinarily her style at all, was so built up with its carved head- and footboards that it placed her at just the right level.

Sucking John’s arousal in deep, she closed her eyes and snaked a hand around to lock onto his ass. In and out, slow and steady, with his fingers spearing into her short hair, and his breathing getting heavy, and his hips pumping to the rhythm she set.

This was what she needed. The crap about her past in the lab, and what had been done to her during those experiments… and V and his stupid visions… and that mountain, which was not her business and nothing she was interested in… and Rehv with his issues? Fuck it all. Here and now and with her hellren was the only thing that mattered.

As John started to come, her phone rang. The sound, like the dying man who was probably trying to reach her again, was easy to ignore.

Destiny was a goddamn shit salad, and no offense to the guy and his dread disease or whatever was killing him, and his GF with the four paws and the silver-bullet problem, Xhex was not going to add any croutons to what was already in her bowl.

For the first time in her life, everything was okay.

She was not fucking it up.

 

 

SEVEN

 


AT THE END of the day, as the last of the light was draining from what had been a cloudy sky, Lydia pulled up to the imposing gates of Phalen-ville. She didn’t have to wait long for the estate’s security department to clear her and unlock all that wrought iron. Hitting the gas on the borrowed SUV, she proceeded down an allée of trees that locked her into what she had started to think of as the Jolly Green Giant’s colon. The chute was the length of a football field, and there was no exiting once you’d started down the thing, no breaks in the lineup of all those matching conifers. At the end, things opened up and the stone house was revealed.

Funny, the sprawling mansion got bigger every time she saw it. Or maybe the size distortion was because she felt like she had to reacquaint herself with the grandeur every time she came back. Then again, when you’d spent your life living in two- or three-bedroom houses, you suffered from building dysmorphia if you got an upgrade like this.

Inside, she could forget the scale. Outside, she could see nothing else.

Pulling around to the side, she came up to the detached garage, hit the opener, and waited for the third door down the lineup of ten to open. After she parked, she turned off the engine and just stared at the varnished wainscoting in front of her. Like everything else in C.P.’s world, the interior of what was—or should have been—a utility building was finished as if it were a living room. Or maybe a stable for champion thoroughbreds.

She needed to go inside. Find Daniel. See how his day was.

See if he’d done what he’d promised her he would.

A look down the cars that were parked and she tried to do some math to give herself a delay. With all the matching blacked-out Suburbans, the three Mercedes sedans, and then something that looked like a spaceship with wheels, she couldn’t imagine what the value of the collection was.

“Lot of money in pharmaceuticals,” she muttered.

Getting out, she hit the button by the door and stepped over the laser eye so she didn’t impede the closing. Then she stopped. The garages were separated from the main house on the surface level, but connected by a subterranean tunnel. As she stared at the side entrance of the mansion, she pictured where it would take her: into the professional kitchen, where professional chefs would be making a professional-chef kind of meal for C.P. and herself… and whoever else was dining tonight, like lab staff or security.

Anxiety tightened her shoulders, and as she looked up to the sky, she searched the cloud cover that seemed to be thickening by inches with every lumen of light that was draining from the horizon. Darkness was encroaching upon the property, weaving out of the forest, crossing the meadow and making a bid for the house like an invader that meant to conquer. And yet the gloaming was beautiful, too, and she stayed where she was to watch the soft peach dim down until the very last of the sun’s glow was nothing but a hint of pale gray—

A figure came around the corner of the mansion, stepping off the edge of the terrace and following the little flagstone path that linked the back lawn to the velvet-black asphalt courtyard.

The cane and the uneven gait would have given Daniel’s identity away, but she knew him by his scent anyway. Her first instinct was to rush over, not because he was going to fall, but because she wanted to save him the effort of covering the distance—but he didn’t like when she coddled him.

Collecting herself, she put a determined smile on her face—

She never did get to speak the falsely cheerful hello. A blaze of light hit her retinas, blinding her so badly, she put her forearms up as a shield.

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