The Dark-Hunters (727 page)

Still, there was no denying the similarity of their features. This was her father’s doppelganger.

“Who are you?” they asked simultaneously.

Medea hesitated when he didn’t answer right away. Why was he being reserved when it was obvious he was a relative she hadn’t met? Maybe a cousin even her father didn’t know about?

Curiosity got the better of her so she answered first. “I’m Medea.”

“Medea…” He seemed perplexed by her name. “I’m Urian.”

Urian.

She gasped at the name of her mysterious half brother she’d heard about, but never expected to meet. He was now a servant of Acheron. Enemy to all of them after he’d betrayed her father.

“Filthy traitor!” she spat.

He didn’t take that well as he gripped her arm and yanked her toward him. “Who are you?”

She wanted to see the shock on his face when she delivered the truth. “
Your
sister.”

Urian blinked twice as that news sank in. He’d only had one sister. There was no way he could have another and not know it. “How?”

“Stryker married my mother, then divorced her to marry yours. She was pregnant with me at the time and he never knew.”

His jaw went slack. Why hadn’t Davyn told him about this? Davyn had told him about Stryker’s first wife returning, but a sister …

A living, real sister. Why would Davyn have kept that secret? Suddenly he remembered Acheron telling him.… Shit! The bastard had removed that memory. Why would Ash have done that?

And with that thought came a really bad feeling. “What are you doing here?”

“Sightseeing.”

He knew better, especially with someone sired by his father. “You’re spying for Stryker.”

She jerked her arm out of his hold. “Don’t take that tone with me, little boy. You served him too and for many more centuries.”

The thought made him ill. “And I paid the ultimate price for that blind stupidity. Trust me.”

She scanned his body. “I don’t know. You look pretty healthy and happy to me.”

“Yeah, right. Let me tell you something,
little girl
—I was his favorite. His pride and joy above all others. For
thousands
of years I served at his side, doing everything he asked me to.
Everything.
Without question or hesitation. And in the blink of an eye, because I dared to marry without his permission, he cut my throat. Literally.”

“He cut your throat because you married his enemy.”

Yeah, right. It had nothing to do with whom he’d married and everything to do with his father’s ego. Stryker couldn’t stand the thought of anyone questioning his authority.

Not even his own son.

“I married a kind, gentle woman who never hurt a soul a day in her life. She wasn’t a warrior. She was an innocent bystander whose only mistake was falling in love with a monster.” And making him human. Making him care for someone other than himself, and he would sell his soul if he could have one more moment with her. “Don’t delude yourself for one minute. Stryker will turn on you, just as he turned on me.”

“You’re wrong about that.”

“For your sake, sister, I hope to the gods that I am.” But the bad thing was, he knew better. It was just a matter of time before their father went after her, too.

*   *   *

Sam felt lost in Nick’s house. It was huge. But luckily he had all the windows closed even though she knew from her protection detail that for some reason,
he
could walk in daylight. No one was sure why and Ash refused to comment on it.

They had hazarded guesses of everything from he was really a demon to a Daimon plant. To the fact that he was sleeping with Artemis. The Dark-Hunter scuttlebutt could be as creative as it was entertaining.

Personally, she believed it was the result of the fact that he hadn’t been murdered like the rest of them.

He’d killed himself for vengeance. Somehow, she was convinced, that had altered his Dark-Hunter powers and made him something more than the rest of them. She suspected that Acheron knew what he was and was afraid to tell the rest of them.

Perhaps the people coming for him, that she was charged with protecting him from, were a result of his unnatural rebirth. Whatever the truth, both Ash and Nick were keeping it close to their vests.

Sam sighed as she pushed those thoughts away. No matter how much she pondered it, she wouldn’t get an answer. And right now, she should be sleeping. But she couldn’t seem to manage it. Her emotions were too raw and bleeding.

She wanted Dev and it was the one thing she couldn’t have.

Without thinking, she reached out and touched one of the photos on the wall of Dev and Nick playing pool. The moment she did, her powers surged and she saw that moment occurring in crystal clarity.

“Come here, you little hustler.” Dev laughed as he pulled Nick around the table for his shot. “You beat that and I’ll pay you a hundred dollars.”

Nick gaped at him. “Dude! You’re so on.… Um, do I have to pay
you
if I lose?”

Grinning, Dev shook his head and ruffled Nick’s short hair. “Nah, but you will have to wash dishes for a week.”

“That sucks.”

Dev tsked at him. “You a coward?”

“Oh, you’re going down, Bear. Open the checkbook. Daddy’s going to show
you
how it’s done.” Nick lined up the shot.

Dev danced around the table, trying to distract him. “Your mother was a hamster and she smelled of elderberries.”

Nick scoffed at the Monty Python reference. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Grizzly Adams. You’re the one whose mom is covered in fur. My mom just wears sequins.” He let fly the cue stick and the balls scattered across the table. Unbelievably, he made the shot into the upper left-hand pocket like a pro.

“Ha!” he shouted triumphantly.

Dev snorted. “Lucky shot.” But it hadn’t been lucky. Dev had used his powers to put the ball in the correct pocket. Nick had no idea.

Feigning disgust, Dev had pulled his money out and handed it over to Nick. “Next time, kid, it’s double or nothing.”

“Bull. Next time I’m not taking the chance that I could miss.”

Dev jerked his chin toward the money in Nick’s hand. “So what are you going to do with all that?”

Nick folded it up and slid it into his pocket. “I’m going to take my mom to Brennan’s to eat for Mother’s Day. She’s never been there before and she’s always wanted to.”

Dev clapped him on the back. “All right, Pool Shark. Have a good time. I better get back to work before you completely clean me out.”

Nick had reset the table while Dev went back to his station at the door.

Sam swallowed at his kindness that made her ache deep inside. Dev, unlike Nick, hadn’t changed a bit.

“What are you doing?”

She jumped at the sound of Nick’s deep voice behind her. “I was just looking at your photos.”

Nick moved forward to see the one of him and Dev. There was a sadness in his eyes that actually brought a lump to her throat. “We had a lot of good times back then. My mom used to save and frame everything she could.”

And she’d put them on the wall and then rotated them out at random times—it’d been a game she’d played with Nick to remind him of the things she thought were important in his life.

Friends. Family. Smiles.

His mom had been a great lady.

Sam cleared her throat. “You and Dev look pretty tight.”

“He was always a good friend to me, which is why I’m glad you sent him home.”

His words didn’t match the feelings she got from him whenever he was near Dev. Nor did they match the emotions she was picking up from him right now. “Then why do you hate him?”

Nick stiffened. “I don’t hate him. I’m just mad—basically at the entire world. Dev let my mom leave Sanctuary with a Daimon disguised as a Dark-Hunter.”

“Dev would never—”

“I know, Sam.” She felt his pain as he said those words in a trembling voice. “He had no idea he’d put her in harm’s way and I know he’d have never done it intentionally. But I can’t get over that night and I can’t forgive anyone who had a hand in her death. I just can’t.”

She could understand that. “It’s hard to live with that kind of guilt all the time.”

“You’ve no idea.”

“You’re wrong, Nick. I know exactly what it’s like to watch the people I love more than anything be slaughtered while I was powerless to save them. I, who trained my entire life to fight, couldn’t save the very people I’d vowed to love and protect. How could I not be there to save them?”

A tic started in his cheek. “How do you live with it?”

She answered honestly. “Angrily. Every single day. Every single night. I want blood and all the killing in the world never changes it. Never eases it.”

He let out a tired sigh. “So this is how I’ll feel forever?”

“Unless you can find another reason to live. Find something that gives you peace.”

He looked down at her. “Have you found that peace?”

Yes, she had. But it was so corny and clichéd that she couldn’t bring herself to admit it.

“A wise man once told me that peace has to come from within. We have to learn to like ourselves before we can find our place in the world.”

Nick curled his lip. “Acheron.”

She smiled. “He’s said it to you, too?”

“No. We don’t talk much these days, but it sounds like something he’d say.” His gaze turned dark. “Don’t trust Acheron, Sam. He’s not what he seems.”

She sensed …

Sam concentrated, but she couldn’t get a handle on it exactly. There was something Nick knew that none of the rest of them did. It was like he was hating Acheron for the same thing he protected about him.

It made no sense, but there was no denying what she felt. Nick did know a major secret about Ash.

And he knew one about himself that he would die before he gave up.

“How do you mean?” she asked, trying to get him to verbalize what she was sensing.

He refused to elaborate. “Believe me, there’s a lot more to him and he’s not really on our side.” With that, he walked off to leave her alone.

Sam scowled at his hostility. Part of her knew there was a lot more to Ash than he let others see, but she didn’t believe for one instant that he would ever hurt any of them.

Nick, on the other hand …

She didn’t trust him at all. He was infected by evil. She was sure of it.

Her heart heavy, she started back to her room, wishing Dev were with her.

I did the right thing.

He was safe and that was all that mattered.

Sam had just reached her room when she felt her hand beginning to burn. Hissing, she blew air across her palm, trying to soothe it.

Just when she was ready to scream from the pain, it stopped burning.

To her instant horror, she watched as a design drew itself across her flesh. There in her palm was a mark that looked like a tribal bear claw.

Oh shit.

She was mated.…

Chapter Nineteen

Dev came awake to a scorching hot pain. At first he thought he was under attack, until he realized it was only his palm that hurt. Scowling, he shook his hand, then looked at it to see what he’d done to it.

His stomach drew tight. No …

It wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t possible.

Yet he couldn’t deny what he saw. There in his palm was the one thing he’d waited a lifetime to see.

His mating mark.

And there was no doubt who his mate had to be. He hadn’t been with anyone else in months.
How could this be?
Sam was a Dark-Hunter. How could he be mated to one? No Were-Hunter ever in their entire history had been mated to a Dark-Hunter.

“You bitches are crazy.” The Fates had to be. Why else mate him to Sam?

Artemis would have a fit when she found out.

Incredulous, he wanted to go to Sam, but he knew better. She’d tossed him out and she wasn’t the kind of woman a man went to. At least not without a Kevlar cup.

His phone rang.

He reached for it and flipped it open without checking the ID.

“Dev?”

He went hard at the sound of Sam’s voice. “Hey.”

She hesitated before she spoke again. “I … There’s … um…”

He understood the panic he heard in her voice. He felt it too. Closing his palm so that he’d feel closer to her, he licked his lips. “You have a mark on your palm that looks like a bear claw.”

“Yes. Does this mean what I think it does?”

He took a long, deep breath before he answered and tensed in trepidation of how she’d react. “Yeah.”

She sucked her breath in sharply. “We can’t do this, Dev. You know we can’t.”

He winced at the determination he heard in her voice. “You know I can’t force you.” Mating was always up to the female. “But if you reject me, you might as well kill me.”

“Dev!”

He clenched his teeth. “I’m not a eunuch, Sam. I don’t want to live in celibacy for the rest of my life. I’d rather be dead.”

“Don’t be so fatalistic. It’s just sex. You can live without it. Trust me.”

She didn’t understand what he was trying to say. It wasn’t just the sex. It was knowing that she was his mate and that he was forbidden to be with her that would ruin him. Were-Hunters were always insanely protective over their mates. They never liked to be apart.

Knowing she was out there alone …

It
would
kill him.

Sam let out a tiny breath. “How long do we have to decide this?”

“Three weeks.” After that, he’d be impotent. Gah …

“Okay. I need to think about this.”

Take your time, by all means. Not like you’re the one who’s going to be impotent. Whatever you do, think about yourself first.
He had to bite his tongue to keep from saying that out loud. But if he did, then he’d be as selfish as he was accusing her to be and that he’d never do.

“You know where I am, Sam.”

“Okay. I’ll talk to you later.”

He turned his phone off and hung his head in his hands as his emotions overwhelmed him. The bear inside him wanted to go over to Nick’s and take her whether she wanted it or not. The man knew he couldn’t. The Fates didn’t work that way. This was completely in her hands and there was nothing he could do except wait.