Fateful 2-Fractured (30 page)

“What’s got you up at this hour?” he asked
gently. Kindly.

If this man was a threat to her, he sure was
good at disguising it. But Ethan never said he felt the prince was
a danger to her in that way. So would kidnapping her be a more
likely scenario? More his style?

His expression remained benevolent as he
waited for her answer. Was he a threat or not? He didn’t look like
one. Before her stood the charming Black Prince, not the moody,
quick-to-anger one that she’d seen before. And so she wasn’t sure.
Danielle felt really confused.

Absentmindedly her hand touched her stomach.
“A craving,” she managed.

He smiled. “I see. Off you go now.”
Again his words were amiable. And when he talked like that, she
definitely
felt
the age
difference.

She turned and continued on her way to the
kitchen. The sound of his heavy heals clapping against the floor
completely covered any sound her bare feet might have been
making.

The house was dark except for the glow of
moonlight that filtered in through the windows. The curtain-covered
panes of glass looked much like back-lit rectangles surrounding the
front room as she passed. She turned right toward the kitchen and
that too glowed as moonbeams painted a square of gold on the tile
flooring.

As she entered, she noted the stream of
illumination that flowed through the French doors leading to the
back porch from the kitchen, and Danielle almost didn’t feel the
need to turn on the light, but she did.

She paused to consider what she was in the
mood for ... definitely something sweet, and then she frowned. She
knew they were out of strawberries at the moment; she’d eaten the
last of them earlier that evening. Her eyes landed on the
double-layer cake under the glass dome in the center of the
counter.

Danielle turned to retrieve a plate, a fork,
and a knife and then shrieked because Richard was in her space
again. “Uh, excuse me,” she said stepping around him.

“Can I be of service?” he asked, his voice
uncomfortably close.

“I’ve got it, thanks.” She sidestepped him
again.

As she opened the cupboard and drawer she
could feel him staring at her, and shuddered.

“Are you cold? Should I fetch you a
blanket?”

“I’m fine, really.” She lifted a dull knife
from the drawer.

He snatched it away. “Please, princess, let
me do the honors.”

Figures.

She carried the plate and fork to where he
stood with the butter knife and the open cake dome. He didn’t ask
her how much she wanted he just sliced off a large piece and
dropped it onto her plate. “There you are.”

Danielle settled at the table to eat, then
dwelled on the fact that he sure did stare a lot, just as Ethan had
said. It made her feel uneasy. After taking two bites with an
intent audience, she decided that maybe she could finish this in
the privacy of her room. Lifting the plate, she tucked the fork
under her thumb and stood. “I’m going back to bed.”

“But you’ve only taken a couple of
bites.”

“I’m taking this with me.”

He shoved away from the counter to escort
her back. But her eyes locked onto the French doors when movement
caught her attention, and then they both stilled when a man yelled
from the yard. It was an alarm, a warning. And then another shout
rang out. It sounded just as intent as the first.

Richard’s expression twisted with concern
and became quite fierce. He snatched her by the shoulders and
tugged her to his chest. His action knocked the plate to the floor
and it shattered on impact. The frosted cake on it plastered pieces
of stoneware to the floor.

Danielle screamed when the glass door behind
Richard exploded and he was forced to use his body to shield her
from the shower of shards slicing around them. Then a second later,
he shoved her to the floor as two large beast-like arms burst
through the opening and latched onto Richard’s throat and
chest.

A grunt was forced from him. “Run,” he
whispered as he was dragged through the doorway like a victim in a
horror film, except he didn’t look appropriately terrified.

She knew she needed to run, karate would be
useless against these things as well, but she couldn’t run, she
couldn’t stand, and there were no bones in her legs, and no air in
the room.

Horrified by what she was seeing, Danielle
scooted backward, trying to brush the glass away, but did feel it
biting into her hands as she slid. She kept going until her back
bumped into the lower cabinets as she witnessed the scene play
out.

She watched in trembling horror as groping,
growling werewolves fought to gain entrance but were wrestled back
by vampires. The vampires appeared just as terrifying with their
faces twisted with fury and their fangs exposed and snapping as
much as the cursed beasts of the full moon.

Werewolves were easily as disturbing as
she’d imagined they would be. They were enormous creatures with
long snouts, glowing gray eyes, were covered in thick fur and had
nightmarish claws. No, wait … it was an image of a beast that
flickered over the giant man. Like a hologram projected over a
living being. Freaky. That was well beyond anything her imagination
could have ever dreamed up.

The guards from inside as well as outside
struggled to keep the wolves from touching her. The battle was so
fierce that none of them could pull her away from the cacophony as
they were all engaged.

Guilt for suspecting Richard skated along
her conscience as she remembered watching him be dragged away. Was
he all right? Could werewolves kill vampires? She really didn’t
know. And what about Ethan? And Max? And Merrick? And Cedric, and
all of the others who had sacrificed so much to protect her? Never
had she felt so worthless and undeserving of what they were doing
for her.

Finally Ethan shoved past the wrestling
match between a dark wolf and tall vampire. “Danielle!”

Her eyes swam with tears as they locked with
his. She hadn’t realized she was crying until she tried to focus on
the blurry image of his face. More than anything she wanted to
reach for him, but couldn’t. It seemed that the communication
between her brain and limbs had seized up.

Ethan’s shoes made a crunching noise as he
traveled over the broken glass to her and tugged her upright. He
then stripped her glass-covered robe from her, scooped her up into
his arms and raced to Nadia’s room upstairs.

Which, of course, was where Nadia was, but
she’d awoken and appeared just as freaked out as Danielle was
feeling.

“Shhh, Danielle, it’s okay. We’ve nearly
defeated them,” Ethan cooed as he lowered her onto the bed.

Deep down she wanted to stop sobbing like
this but she’d never been this scared, or felt this defenseless
before. There was a sense of security being a black belt, even
knowing the skill didn’t work against vampires, but that security
was slashed to pieces with what she’d just seen. There truly were
things worse than vampires out there.

When Nadia got a closer look at Danielle she
slapped a hand over her mouth and shrieked into it.

Right, Danielle realized, she was
bleeding.

“Did they scratch her?” Nadia asked, clearly
horrified by what that would mean.

“No, it was the glass, which I need to get
out of her hands. I need you both to stay here while I get the
first aid kit.” His tone was tainted with intense worry. That
concern was clearly more about this development than her injuries,
which were not life threatening.

When Ethan returned and began plucking bits
of glass from her palms with a pair of tweezers, she asked,
“R-Richard—?”

“He’s fine, Danielle. They can’t kill us, or
us them.”

And she recalled the prince’s lack of fear
as he was pulled into the melee. A weak sigh trembled past her lips
as she winced at the discomfort she was suffering from his
treatment. “He tried to help,” she said, remembering how Richard
shielded her from the glass, “You’re wrong about him—”

“If he does want you, Danielle, then of
course he’d keep you safe.”

She groaned at that and at the stab of pain
that ripped through her flesh as he slid a large piece of glass out
and then dropped it into a cup. Ethan was right; she couldn’t know
where the prince really stood. He could still be a problem in some
way. But she was too tired to care, and still hungry, and now
worried about how Ethan was dealing with this gore while the
influence of the curse hovered over him.

“Are you okay with this? I can do it—” she
reached for the tweezers.

“I’m fine! Just hold still.” He certainly
didn’t look fine but continued with the tedious task and then his
frown deepened. “Sorry. Lean toward me.”

She did, and he exhaled his breath into her
face. A moan that Danielle couldn’t prevent tumbled out as she
dropped onto the mattress. Well, that certainly helped to numb the
pain.

Ethan ignored her drugged grin and continued
tending to her hands until all of the glass had been removed, he’d
applied an ointment and then bandaged them up.

When he was done, he fished a candy bar from
his pocket. “Sorry, it got a little smashed, but it should still
taste all right.”

“How? How did—?” she stammered as she
accepted the chocolate bar.

“I noticed the cake on the floor and figured
that was why you were in the kitchen so late.”

“Oh, right.” She was recovering from the
dose of magic he’d given her as she tore at the wrapper, then
lifted the treat to her lips with trembling hands.

They sat in silence while listening to the
eerie call of wolves whooping in the night. It was more frightening
than the lightning storms that used to scare her when she was
little. But it did sound like they were getting further away just
as the sounds of a rumbling storm did as it passed by in the
night.

Nadia muttered, “Will they come back?”

“You’re feeling really mortal right now,
aren’t you?” Ethan asked.

The black-haired girl bobbed her head up and
down in agreement.

“Do we need to worry about them every
night?” Danielle asked around a mouthful of chocolate, caramel and
nuts.

“Well, since they are werewolves, they can
only be a real threat when it’s a full moon.”

“Are there really that many of them hiding
right here in Glenwood springs?”

“No, I’d say they’d gathered just for—”

“—
for me,” Danielle uttered weakly as
she nearly choked on her last bite. “Nadia, you should move out. Go
to the place you and Max had purchased, or better yet, go back to
England. Get as far away from me as you can.”

“No.” Danielle could honestly admit
that she’d never seen Nadia’s eyes that dark with intensity. “None
of us will be left alone. We’ve all been participants in this cure.
Even Beon and Sophia have continued to deal with problems,
even
after
we
left.”

She sucked in a breath. “I didn’t know that!
Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked shooting an accusing stare at
her husband.

“There’s nothing we can do about it except
fight. None of us can hide from this.”

Right, this was war, and clearly he accepted
the situation even though it must have been torture for his
protective nature toward her and his unborn child.

Could she deal with this? Could she cope
with the threat of werewolves every full moon added to the other
perils surrounding her? Thanks to these thoughts, those hormones
struck with a torrent of tears down her cheeks.

It seemed watching her cry always touched
something deep within Ethan, because he dropped onto the bed next
to her and enveloped her in his arms. “Don’t lose faith, darling,”
he whispered while stroking her hair. “We were able to stop the
beasts, and they are such a rare concern. We’ll be better prepared
next month.”

“What else is out there?” she barely managed
to get out before a sob shook her.

There was a long and distressing pause
before Ethan answered. “I’m certain the pixies are still watching
for us to enter the woods.”

“What else?” she repeated.

He hesitated again. “I honestly don’t
know. But don’t get distracted by the other creatures that
might
try to capture you. It’s the
vampires we need to be concerned with the most. That hasn’t
changed.”

With thick sarcasm, she said, “What a
relief.”

Ethan held her for a while until her eyelids
became too heavy to hold up any longer.

She was only slightly aware of Max entering,
promising to guard Nadia, and Ethan lifting her from the bed to
take her to another bedroom, on the top floor. Which, she figured
dreamily, might be a little harder to get to ... she hoped.

Chapter 20

Loss

“What do you think of this one?” Danielle
asked as she lifted up the decorative clock she was admiring.

They’d talked the men into letting them shop
again after being cooped up in the house for a couple of weeks.
Nothing more had happened which was probably the only reason the
guys had allowed it. Plus they traveled with a troop of thirty-four
guards to watch over them, including Ethan and Max. The other men
remained hidden, but lurked with listening devices in their ears,
while Ethan and Max attempted to make it look like a simple double
date.

“I like it,” replied Nadia. “It would look
nice in your sitting room, with the soft colors in there.”

“I like it too,” Ethan said. “Go ahead and
get it.”

He began fishing his wallet out of his
pocket, but she stopped him. “I have enough. I want to pay for
it.”

“Very well,” he said, even though he did
look rather unwilling.

As they left the shop, Ethan asked, “What
would you like for dessert this evening?” She smiled up at him, and
he laughed as he added, “Why do I even ask? I’ll need to get some
fresh strawberries, and I’m low on chocolate.”