Sliver of Silver (Blushing Death) (15 page)

“Dahlia, please, stop fighting it,” Patrick begged. Reaching out his hand to touch me, he hesitated just on the outside of the power that now pulsed with my heartbeat. He finally inched his hand back when I cringed. “I know you want to fight it like you fight everything else, but you have to let it in,” he begged.

The hell I did!

“Do what he says,” Alex said behind me. She was a soft pressure at my back but I could sense her power several feet from me caressing the bubble of power to find her place. I didn’t care what either of them said, I didn’t want to let this thing inside me without a fight.

“Dahlia,” Patrick said. My skin tingled as he ran his hand along the invisible bubble that I could feel, like a haze moving a dense atmosphere around me. It ached as he touched it, making my bones grind in my joints with each pulse. “I believe that if you accept it,
this
will go away.” His voice was soothing and calm as he fanned his fingertips against the wall surrounding me like a cocoon. “Trust me,” he breathed.

I took a long, pensive breath as I fought the bubble of power around me, poking and prodding at me, seeking a way in.

His eyes focused on me with determination. A small, self-assured smile crested his full, kissable lips and lit his dark eyes.

I took another deep breath and closed my eyes, shutting as much of the outside world out as I could.

I let go.

I let go of everything and dropped every shield I had as the power rushed into me like a tidal wave. I arched my back in reflex from the force of it consuming me. The wind of a magic storm whirled around me, slamming into me and prying me open for the entire world to see. My insides tightened and my breath caught in my chest in a solid ball of ice. My heart stopped and my brain froze as power infiltrated every part of me, every cell.

Suddenly, there was nothing. No wind. No magic. No pain.

“How you feelin’?” Dean asked.

As I caught Patrick’s eye, relief and anxiety filled his expression, unfurrowing his brow beneath his coal-black hair. He placed his shaking hand on my shoulder with trepidation.

“Like I’ve been run over by a fucking truck,” I joked. “You?” 

Patrick yanked me into his arms, securing me against his chest in a tight embrace. It felt really, really good. 

“What just happened?” I mumbled into his chest, cuddling against him. I welcomed the contact and his strength as I held myself together.

“Later,” Patrick whispered as exhaustion hit me like a brick in the face.

I closed my eyes and slumped against him. He caught me, holding me tighter as my body and my strength gave out.

“Is she falling asleep?” Dean asked.

“I think so,” Patrick whispered, cradling me with an arm behind my back. He slipped his other arm beneath my knees, picked me up like I weighed nothing, then carried me to the couch in the living room.

I was almost asleep, lingering in a lovely place between wakefulness and complete and utter oblivion. My muscles had given out and turned to rubber, making me putty in Patrick’s hands. The cushions dipped as he sat on the edge of the couch beside me. He brushed a strand of hair from my face with cool fingertips skimming across my skin. I wanted to go to sleep but I fought to keep my eyes open. My mind was restless and I needed answers.

“She’s asleep,” Patrick said.

I didn’t have the energy to correct him.

“You can’t deny it any longer,” Alex’s anger-filled voice echoed from the doorway behind me.

“She’s more powerful every day. We can’t hide her for long,” Dean said. His voice was close, as if he was kneeling down beside me.

“No, we can’t. She
is
Fertiri.” Patrick sounded sad as he said it. “Did you get any information from Garrett?”

“No. He knows no one old enough on this side of the Atlantic to remember,” Dean said. He sounded frustrated. “Garrett thought maybe the older European Packs. They could have histories old enough to remember the last one. I don’t want to ask too many questions . . . draw too much attention.”

“That was a good decision,” Patrick whispered. “I don’t know how to help her control it. I’m attempting an educated guess, and it’s not doing her any benefit.”

“Maybe the Fae?” Dean offered, fear making his words unsure.

I’d never heard fear in his voice before.

“That’s why I agreed so quickly to their request. They will most definitely remember the last Fertiri and they will owe me a tribute,” Patrick replied.

“You sneaky bastard,” Dean said with a soft chuckle and a twinge of relief.

“I’ll not risk her,” Patrick said, determined. “This instance was much stronger than the last,” he said, almost as an afterthought.

“What do you mean?” Dean asked.

“We experienced something similar with Danny but it was . . . almost fuzzy. The experience was not nearly as strong as what we experienced here tonight.” Patrick’s voice was distant and introspective.

“It was feeling him out,” Alex said.

“What?” Dean barked.

“The magic. It was looking for the bond to solidify her power. The Pack was right. The power wasn’t. Not until tonight, anyway,” Alex explained with a huff.

“You speak of her as if the power was separate from her,” Patrick snapped.

“It was, until she accepted it.”

“How do you know all of this?” Dean asked with a low rumbling growl in his question.

“My maker killed the last Fertiri. He liked to brag to me and anyone who would listen about doing so. I never actually believed him, or that they ever existed. Until I met her,” Alex said.

“Alex’s information is illusive, garbled at best. Her maker killed the last Fertiri before Christ was born. Oriel the Hittite didn’t come across our Alejandra in Madrid for another 600 years. Most of what he told her was, most likely, exaggeration. I need firsthand knowledge. I can’t risk Dahlia,” Patrick stated.

“We won’t,” Dean agreed.

“Alex, are you suggesting that Dahlia’s power has chosen for her?” Patrick asked.

Even half asleep, I could feel the tension in the room prickling my skin like static.

“Yes.”

“What do we do?” Dean asked.

“We proceed as normal until we can get information from the Fae envoy,” Patrick stated.

“Pat, we need to tell her,” Dean said.

“No!” Patrick jumped from the sofa. “On top of everything else she’s been through, I won’t burden her with this. I don’t want to say anything until I have all the information.”

“She knows something is wrong,” Alex chastised.

“Pat?” Dean probed.

“No, not yet,” Patrick almost begged, sitting back down. His lips brushed mine, and I couldn’t help but smile even in my half-conscious state.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

Dean laughed as I slipped off to sleep, and for the first time in a long time, I didn’t dream.

Chapter 15

I strode into the downtown office of Trevelyan Dean Construction Company a few minutes before our scheduled meeting at 10 a.m. The offices weren’t what I’d expected. When I thought about Dean, I pictured warm hunter greens and mochas with a homey feel like a log cabin in the middle of the city. The offices I entered were stark and unfriendly.

The office doors were glass and the company name stretched across the two doors in large black block letters. The reception area through the glass was just as cold, with ultramodern, black leather couches, and a rounded reception desk curving through the space like a boomerang. The office was too clean, too empty, like it had never been used. The business had to be successful in order to afford downtown offices. Maybe stark and unfriendly was what people expected. It just wasn’t what I’d expected.

I stood silent, with my back to the opposite wall, peering in, wondering how the two worlds met up.

The elevator
pinged
and the doors slid open. I shoved off the wall as Dean stepped out into the hall from the elevator in a light, almost airy step. Jackson followed a step behind. His steps were much heavier and laden with anger. His hands were in tight fists at his side and his jaw clenched so tight, I thought I could hear his teeth grinding in his mouth.

Fabulous! Just what I needed this morning. A pissed off werewolf that hated me.

Dean nodded as he passed. Jackson glared as he passed. Reaching down, Dean slid a key in the lock at the base of the glass and held it open for me. Jackson thumped by me with a huff and a soft growl as he strode through first. I rolled my eyes. Dean snatched Jackson by the collar of his shirt and flung him back, growling deep in his throat. His eyes flashed the bright crystal blue of his wolf. Jackson stumbled a few steps backward but kept his head bowed and his eyes on the floor.

“Don’t test me,” Dean growled.

I strolled into the offices with my head held high, rubbing it in a little. I knew it but I didn’t care.

Jackson moved ahead of both Dean and I, opening the door farthest to the left. The office he opened was a wide expanse, more than a simple twelve-by-twelve. Another closed door on the right was locked behind a solid black oak door with a smaller room on the far left. A quick peek showed supplies and a kitchen.

Stepping through the open doorway, I entered the office a few steps behind Jackson. He stalked behind the desk, sifted through papers without a glance in our direction. I stopped in the doorway, astonished.

I wouldn’t have been surprised if Jackson had said the office had been bombed, hit by a tornado, or shaken in a giant martini shaker. Paper was EVERYWHERE! It wasn’t even like they were in semi-neat piles. It looked like someone had thrown the papers over their head like confetti. My mouth fell open in disbelief and horror.

Dean came up behind me, the warmth of his power and his body pressed into my back like a hot water bottle. I shuddered as he inched closer. I itched to take a step away just so my heart wouldn’t race at the thought of him being near me.

“Now you understand,” Dean whispered behind me, his breath warm against my ear. I took a step into the office, needing to put some distance between us just so I could think. Sliding on one of the many sheets of paper scattered across the floor, I fumbled to catch my balance. Graceful, that’s me.

Dean stepped in behind me and caught my arm in his grip, steadying me with a strong hand around my bicep. I managed to keep my feet as I clung to the wall for support.

Smooth, Dahlia, real smooth.

I shrugged away from him, letting his fingers fall from my arm. Space, I needed some damned space.

“We don’t need her. I’ve been doing just fine for almost two years,” Jackson spit out.

I scanned the contained catastrophe and wondered what he thought ‘doing just fine’ actually meant.

“I need you on the New Albany job site. Not here half of every day,” Dean snarled back. Dean’s sharp tone and the hard edge to his jaw suggested that this was an old argument.

“I can handle it,” Jackson said defiantly. He glared at me with a fire in his eyes that burned with hatred.

By the state of the office, it didn’t look like he enjoyed the work. I was going to take it off his hands. It was a win-win. Did he hate me that much?

Dean’s phone rang on his belt and he reached down to grab it. Turning to Jackson before he gripped his phone, Dean snarled, “Are you disobeying an order?” Caribbean blue played around the edges of Dean’s olive-green eyes. My stomach tightened and my nostrils flared with the scent of his wolf. The heady scent of musk skimmed the surface of his skin and filled the air.

“No, Gaoh,” Jackson answered as he fell instinctively to one knee and bowed his head.

Dean turned those deep eyes on me and said, “I’m going to take this in my office.” He touched the screen on his still ringing phone and said, “Jerry, go ahead.”

Dean exited and took with him any sense of good will that had been in the office. Not that there was a whole lot anyway.

Jackson turned on me with his chest heaving and his shoulders squared. I widened my stance with a quick stabilizing step to the side as I reached for the holster at my back. He was a shit and I wasn’t about to show him that he scared me, even if he could rip my throat out without breaking a sweat. His eyes blazed with his hatred as the muscles along his jaw tightened in aggression.

“You are a contagion that needs to be wiped from the Pack and if I were Gaoh . . .” he said through clenched teeth as a growl resonated in his chest.

I wasn’t about to let him finish that statement, let alone think it. That thought made my heart race and my stomach clench with fear.

“Well, it’s a good thing you
aren’t
Gaoh, now isn’t it?” I smirked.
Cocky and stupid?
Yes.
Worth it?
Absofuckinglutely!

“I’d kill you myself if I thought it would do me any good,” he growled.

“I believe Dean wanted you to leave, now go,” I ordered as I narrowed my eyes on him. His resistance filled the shrinking office with a hot, searing power that would’ve been intimidating if I’d never met Dean. He didn’t want to do what I told him. Trying to physically disobey me, he planted his feet on the floor while the wolf in him urged his body to move. I smirked, finally understanding he couldn’t disobey me. Now he knew it, too.

He spit at me but I stepped out of the way before his rank saliva reached me. He stormed by me and left the office, slamming the door behind him, unable to do anything else.

I tiptoed over to the desk, being careful not to slip on any of the papers flung haphazardly about on the floor. That’s all I needed was to break my leg in Jackson’s managerial mess.

I glanced around the office at the job ahead me. It was daunting, but I didn’t have a choice. I needed the job, needed to feel needed and have something to do that wasn’t killing. Someplace deep down it made me happy to cause Jackson aggravation, too, even if it did cause me more work.

I sank down in the chair and sifted through the papers scattered on the desk. Dean strutted, surefooted and silent back into the office. The office was a mess.
How did he do business this way?

“I’m sorry about Jackson,” Dean said.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said in a lighthearted tone to try and lighten his mood as I sifted. He seemed
tense
.

“Can you make sense of this?” he asked.

I glanced around the office as he swept his olive-green eyes over the mess. If his whole business was like this, Dean was in trouble.

“Sure,” I said with a bright, certain smile as I finally met his gaze. A shock of electricity hit me straight in the gut as I sank into the warmth of his eyes. “I just need to figure out what all of
this
is.” I shrugged. “I do have a question,” I said while I could still tear my attention away from the mess around me.

Dean watched me with anticipation in his eyes as he stopped sliding envelopes into his briefcase. Funny, I’d never imagined him as the briefcase kind of guy in his jeans and simple button-down shirts or T-shirts but there he was with a very lovely black leather briefcase. It looked good on him. Really good, actually.

“Who is the Trevelyan half of Trevelyan Dean Construction?” I asked, searching for a topic that would slow my heart, a safe topic.

Clearing his throat, Dean’s eyes shifted down to his briefcase in what I could only assume was embarrassment. He wouldn’t make eye contact with me.

“I am,” he replied.

“But,” I said, trying to put the pieces together. “Oh.” I stopped, realizing that Dean was his last name. I peered up at him and he met my eyes, with a small, embarrassed smile. I’d never asked. It had never occurred to me to ask. I should’ve asked. He’d done so much for me in the last couple of months, and I hadn’t taken notice of him or asked about him. I knew him, inside and out, but the details . . . I was missing the details.

“See why I go by Dean,” he said, closing his briefcase and standing there, daring me to make a joke. He graciously ignored the fact that I’d never asked his name.

I couldn’t make a joke. I was named after a flower, for Christ’s sakes. Who was I to mock someone else’s name?

“It’s not
so
bad,” I said with a playful wink. I meant it, too. He could have been named Dexter or Ezekiel. There were way worse names out there.

“It’s bad.”

I was caught in his gaze, waiting for something to happen, waiting for him to break the trance I seemed to be in. I couldn’t pull my eyes away from his. 

The phone rang, scaring the shit out of me, and I jumped. Dean chuckled to himself as I picked up the phone.

“Trevelyan Dean Construction, how can I help you?” I answered. I listened for a few minutes, then said, “I’ll make sure he brings your invoice and the specs to your meeting today. Thank you,” I concluded and hung up the phone. “Mr. Carlisle wants you to bring his current invoices and the building specs with you this afternoon. He’d like to make some changes.” I searched through the papers for whatever the hell Mr. Carlisle wanted.

Of course it wasn’t right on top. Why would it be?

Dean came around the desk and leaned over me, attempting to help locate the invoices and building specs he needed. His warmth brushed against my skin like a heated towel. The scent of musk and a spring forest filled my nose. My pulse quickened as my fingers fumbled in the papers.

God, he smells so good.

It took everything I had not to lick the arm he propped on the desk next to me.

His fingers slid over mine, pressing my hand down to the desk beneath his much larger palm. When his skin touched mine, that voice that was mine and hers all at the same time echoed in my head,
home . . . safe . . . warm
. She was happy and I breathed a heavy sigh of relief as something in me clicked into place.

Dean turned my chair, spinning me around to face him. He placed his hands on the armrests, imprisoning me in the chair. His safe olive-green eyes of everyday were gone, revealing the Caribbean blue of his wolf. He breathed deep, flaring his nostrils as his nose dragged a hot line up the side of my neck, skimming my skin with the tip of his nose. I tilted my head to let him have complete access to my skin.

A shudder ran through me as warmth tingled between my thighs. His fingers clasped my wrists on the armrests, trapping me where I sat. A pleasure-filled moan escaped my throat in a quivering release.

“I can feel you in my bones,” he whispered. “God help me!”

“Tre,” I breathed in a desperate plea. I had no idea what I was even begging him to do. I couldn’t think. I don’t even know why I called him that. It was out before I had a chance to think. Leaning back slowly from me, his eyes were wide as his gaze found mine.

“Not even Janey could find a way to say my name that I didn’t cringe. Here you are two minutes after hearing it and I want to . . .” He didn’t finish, and I was thankful for his restraint.

“What do you want from me?” I whispered. My voice shook from desire and fear. My head spun, my womanhood ached, and a familiar guilt flourished underneath everything else. Dean watched me for a long moment. The Caribbean blue of his wolf melted and disappeared from his eyes as his gaze returned to the peaceful olive-green that I adored. He yanked his hands from the chair, putting much needed distance between us. I instantaneously missed the warmth of his skin against mine, the feel of him surrounding me, and the safety of his magic.

He stood and stalked to the window overlooking High Street. His broad, muscled back was to me and I was thankful for the momentary relief from his intrusive gaze as everything I’d known conflicted inside me.

“Say it again,” he requested.

“Tre, what do you want from me?” I asked again in a more controlled tone.

“Dahlia,” he said with a heavy sigh.

“I don’t understand what this is,” I said, flinging my hands wildly between him and me. “I don’t understand what I am, or what I’m becoming. I don’t understand what this pull to you is when I shouldn’t need it. I love Patrick. That should be enough. Shouldn’t it?” I blurted out, hurt, angry and desperate for an answer I could live with. I’d vowed to myself never to share any of those lingering misgivings with anyone and for the second time since meeting him, I’d blurted out my secrets as if they were nothing.

He turned to me then, his expression sad and his gaze filled with pity. Tears burned behind my eyes. I wasn’t going to cry, god damn it. I was tired of crying.

Dean took the several steps back over to me and crouched at my feet. He took my hand in his, warming me from the inside out. His thumb made small circles in the center of my palm, soothing me with the strangely intimate caress. His warm power engulfed me and soothed my troubled mind, filling me with a peace I hadn’t known in months. A warm glow surrounded me, making me feel rested and peaceful. 

“I need you to listen.”

“What?” I asked, both frightened and pleading for whatever scrap of information he had.

“I don’t think Patrick will ever be enough for you. No
one
man will ever be enough. You’re . . .” he started, then stopped. 

“WHY? What? What am I?” I asked through clenched teeth.