Authors: Sherrilyn Kenyon
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Romance, #Paranormal, #Vampires, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Paranormal & Urban
The Dark-Hunters (652 page)
Dressed in a winter white sweater and jeans, her mother stared at her as if she were a ghost. Her breathing intensified. “Is this a sick prank?”
Her gaze went from Delphine to Jericho, and then it narrowed in hatred. She screeched in outrage. “You bastard! Haven’t you done enough to me!”
Delphine caught her as she lunged at Jericho. “Mom?”
Her mother fought her until that one syllable registered in her mind past her fury. Tears filled her blue eyes as she stepped back to look at Delphine again. “Iole?” she breathed in disbelief. “Is it really you? Can it be?”
Delphine sobbed as she nodded. “It’s me, Mom. Cratus didn’t kill me like Zeus ordered. He hid me away to protect me.”
Leta pulled her into a hug so tight that she could barely breathe, but Delphine didn’t care.
This was her mother. Her
real
mother. She was alive and here … and she remembered her.
It was such a silly thing, and yet up until now she had honestly been afraid of her mother rejecting her. Of her having forgotten her.
“I loved you so much,” Leta sobbed, stroking her hair. “I’ve hated all of them for so long.… Never a day has passed that I didn’t think about and wonder what you would have been like had you lived.” She kissed Delphine’s hair, then her cheek. Shaking her head, she cupped her face and stared at her with pride shining deep in her blue eyes. “Look at you! You have your father’s beautiful eyes and you’re so grown.”
Delphine laughed through her tears. “You look like my sister.”
Leta laughed until her gaze returned to Jericho. It was condemning once more. “Why didn’t you tell me she lived? How could you have kept that from me?”
“Zeus punished him mercilessly,” Delphine explained.
Jericho met Leta’s gaze levelly, wanting her to know that he hadn’t hurt her on purpose. “If there had been a way to get word to you, I would have. I swear. But had they known she lived, Zeus would have killed her.”
Leta reached up and touched his scarred cheek. “Was that…”
“From saving her? Yes.”
Leta’s tears fell even harder as she pulled him into her arms and kissed his scarred cheek. “Thank you, Cratus. Thank you for saving my baby and for bringing her back to me.”
Delphine saw his own eyes mist as he looked at her. “Believe me, I’m the one who owes gratitude here.”
Leta pulled back with a frown. “What do you mean?”
Delphine sniffed as she reached out to take Jericho’s hand. “He’s my husband, Mom.”
“You’re married?” Leta returned to hug her. “Oh this is … this is … wonderful!”
“Leta? Are you all right?”
Delphine wiped at her tears as a tall blond man came through the door. But what surprised her most was that she knew him.
Aidan O’Conner. The famous actor. She didn’t know how many dreams she’d been in with women who fantasized about him.
How very odd.
Yet the most shocking thing was the black-headed toddler swathed in a pink jumper in Aidan’s arms.
Laughing, Leta took the little girl and held her close. “I couldn’t be better, Aidan.”
“Then why are you crying and standing out here where it’s freezing without a coat on?”
She kissed his cheek before she turned back to Delphine. “Kari, meet your big sister, Iole.”
Delphine laughed as the baby waved at her and said a very shy hi.
“I have a sister?” she asked, delighted by the news.
“I have another daughter?” Aidan gasped.
Leta nodded. “Aidan, meet Cratus—”
“Jericho,” he corrected.
Leta scowled in confusion. “Jericho?”
He nodded. “Cratus died a long time ago.”
She inclined her head as if she understood completely. “Jericho saved my baby from Dolor when he attacked us and raised her.”
“Uh, no,” Jericho corrected with a nervous laugh. “I gave her to peasants who raised her, otherwise that would be really creepy.”
Delphine shook her head at him and his paranoia. “And I go by Delphine.”
Leta looked surprised by that.
Jericho gave a sheepish shrug. “I didn’t know what name she had, and you weren’t exactly being helpful to us that night. Not that I blame you. I just handed her off and went back before anyone realized what I’d done with her. They gave her their own name. Sorry.”
Leta waved his words away. “Never apologize for what you did. I would never question you on that topic.” She stroked the baby’s back as the girl sneezed. “But Aidan’s right. It’s really cold out here, and we have a nice fire inside. Please come in and join us.”
Jericho followed them into a quaint cabin that was decorated in navy and green with country bears. The view of the mountains through the picture windows was incredible. “Nice place you have.”
“Thanks,” Aidan said.
Leta set Kari down so that she could stand by the coffee table where her toys were scattered. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“No, we’re fine.” Delphine sat on the couch.
Her mother sat down beside her at the same time her sister left her toys to slap at Delphine’s knees. Delighted by her, Delphine picked her up and placed her in her lap so that she could cuddle her.
Aidan and Jericho hung back in tough-guy poses. “So when did you guys get married?”
Jericho shrugged. “A few weeks ago.”
Aidan frowned. “I wish we’d known. We’d have definitely been there.”
Leta smiled at him. “Actually, that’s not how the gods do it, sweetie. You merely declare yourselves married and you are.”
“Kind of anti-climatic, isn’t it?”
Jericho shook his head. “Maybe, but in marriage it’s more about the commitment than it is the vows.”
“No,” Leta said as she hugged both Delphine and Kari. “Marriage is about the love more than anything else.”
Delphine looked up at Jericho and smiled. Her mother was definitely right. And she was grateful that she had the people in her life who made up her family. Both those related to her by blood and those related to her by choice.
Vanishing Isle
Madoc sat alone in his office, watching the scene with Delphine and her family. Yes, he was prying, but she’d talked about it so much that he was afraid of it turning out bad for her. Luckily it hadn’t.
But then Leta had always been kind-hearted and loving. Too much so at times.
And in truth, he envied her that happiness. There had been a time when he’d craved that kind of domesticity, but too much had happened to change him.
Now he had much more pressing things to deal with.
The winds of change were blistering as they gathered force, and soon they would be rolling in.
He felt a sudden shift in the air behind him.
It was Jared.
Madoc glanced at him over his shoulder. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m helping to train the new Malachai and I just wanted to know something.”
“That is?”
“Does anyone else know you’re related to him?”
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
DREAM WARRIOR
Copyright © 2009 by Sherrilyn Kenyon.
All rights reserved.
For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
ISBN: 0-312-93883-7
EAN: 978-0-312-93883-3
St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / February 2009
St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
eISBN 9781429991179
First eBook edition: February 2014
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to
[email protected]
BAD MOON RISING
SHERRILYN KENYON
Contents
The Beginning of The Were-Hunters
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To my readers, who have taken countless trips with me and who have been begging for Fang’s book for the last five years. Never have I felt closer to the Kattalakis brothers than I did here. I was finally able to speak for Fang and show all the depth of his character and all the beauty of one of my favorite wolves.
To my team at St. Martin’s, which is the best in the world, and especially Monique and Matthew for letting me bend rules and have way too much fun. To Merrilee for all the hard work you do. Holly, who works so wonderfully behind the scenes, taking care of details.
To my friends who are always there when I need them: Kim, Dianna, Loretta, Sheri, and Ed. Thank you, guys, really, for keeping me sane. And to the best staff in the universe, Team Fabulous: Dianna, Erin, Kim, Jacs, Ed, Judy, Marie, Loretta, Sheri, Scott, Bryan, Julia, CiCi, Webbie, Alex, and if I forgot someone, please, please forgive me.
And last, but absolutely never least, my family. To Ken for being my anchor and support through all dark storms and for always being my best friend. My brother for being the best bro any sister ever had. And my boys, who fill my life with laughter and my days with joy. I couldn’t make it through without any of you. Thank you.
THE BEGINNING OF THE WERE-HUNTERS
Long before recorded history there lived a bold king. One who refused to yield before the wills of the Greek gods who commanded him. Like so many before and after, he made the mistake of falling in love with the most beautiful woman in his kingdom. A woman whose very smile was his life’s blood.
Little did he know she bore the darkest of all curses. Because of the actions of her forefathers against the Greek god Apollo more than two thousand years before her birth, her people had been damned to die brutally on their twenty-seventh birthday. It was a secret she kept until the day when she, like all the others of her Apollite kind, began to decay and die.
In only twenty-four hours she went from a beautiful young woman to a crone, then nothing but scattered dust.
Lycaon was devastated by the loss of his love, but worse than that was the haunting knowledge that soon his own sons would join their mother and die every bit as horrifically.
Like her, they would die for something none of them had had a part in.
Unable to bear the injustice, he confronted the gods and told them to screw themselves. He would not stand by and watch his children die. Ever.
That very night, he began using the darkest of magick to splice the genes of his wife’s people with those of the strongest of animals. Wolves, jackals, lions, tigers, panthers, jaguars, cheetahs, bears, hawks, leopards, even a rare dragon—those were his chosen few to be the saviors of his children.
When his experiments were complete, he’d created an entirely new species. No longer human, no longer Apollite nor animal, they were something else entirely.
The experiments turned his two sons into four separate beings. Two creatures who held the hearts of an animal and who lived as an animal by the light of day. And two who held the hearts of a human. By day, human would be their base form.
This was their gift.
And so was born their new curse.
From their mother’s Apollite race, they inherited magick and psychic abilities. From their father’s tampering they would live by day as their base form, either human or animal, and at night they would be able to switch to their alternate form. Man became beast and beast became man.
Under the light of the full moon, when their powers were strongest, not even the laws of time or physics would hold sway over them. From that day forward they would live for centuries, immune from the curse of Apollo.
The gods were not pleased. They demanded the king slaughter all the creatures he’d made. How dare
he,
a mere mortal, be contentious enough to thwart their will.
But the king refused. “I will not allow my children to suffer for
your
vanity! You can all die for what I care.”
So while his children were spared their Apollite curse, the gods gave them a new one. None of their species would ever be able to choose a mate of their own free will, only the Fates could assign them that. And there would
never
be peace between the animal Katagaria and the human Arcadians that the king had created.
Eternal enemies, the two races would become known as Were-Hunters because each would hunt the other. Throughout all time, they would battle and slaughter their own kind—forever suspicious. Forever angry. More than that, they would become the chosen food source of their own cousins, the vampiric Daimons who needed souls to live past their twenty-seventh birthday.
No peace. No succor. Their fate to suffer and to exist in spite of the gods.
Until the day the last two survivors kill each other.
That was their prophecy.
And none were to suffer more than those who bore the name of the king’s direct descendants. Those who bore the surname Kattalakis.…
CHAPTER 1
January 2003