To Love a Shifter: A Paranormal Romance Boxed Set (104 page)

I didn’t even want to think about that.

“Breathe fire, live on heat—”

“Excuse me?”  I wasn’t sure what he meant with his last words. 
Live on heat?  Did he mean live in heat?

He laughed.  “I’m not talking about
that
.  Evren mainly subsist on heat, Deli.  We live on it.  Some food makes us stronger, but we can live without it.  We can live without just about anything except heat.  Do you understand me now?”

“Oh.”  I brightened as another thought occurred to me.  “Then this means we don’t have to drink blood, right?”

“
Deli
.”  He roared with laughter.  “We’re Evren, not vampires.”

“It was a perfectly sensible assumption.  I mean, monsters are monsters and—will you stop laughing?”

The doorknob rattled and a strange bout of shyness grabbed hold of me as Lucian took a step inside the room.  “I heard some noise—”  He stopped on the threshold when he saw Dyvian almost doubled over laughing.  No doubt, the sight puzzled him, but with his typical I-don’t-do-emotions-because-I’m-not-human aloofness, he simply raised a brow.  “Are you all right, Deli?”

A memory…or a vision—Lucian watching over me as I slept—struck my mind.

I turned my head away from Lucian, feeling more self-conscious.  Surely, that couldn’t be real?  It was probably my mind playing tricks on me.

Lucian didn’t seem to be the type to do that.  He was just too indifferent…
and
busy.
  I was still trying to avoid his gaze.  He looked like he had a million things to do, and my heart sort of squirmed, in a guilty way, at the thought of adding to his burdens.

“I’m fine.”  I pointed at the still-laughing Dyvian.  “But I don’t know about him.”

“You should hear what Deli thinks about us—”

“I wanted to learn about Evren.”  I cut Dyvian off, not liking the thought of Lucian knowing how silly my assumptions were.  “I was hoping that understanding what happened would make my nightmares go away.”  The mere mention made me remember them, and I forgot about being annoyed at Dyvian as a fresh wave of pain washed over me.  Another vision—my parents dead faces, inhumanly disfigured by a fiend lurking in my nightmares—slashed my mind, and I had the urge to throw up.

Why did I have to be alive when my parents were—

“What have you learned so far about Evren?”  Lucian’s question penetrated my thoughts.

I shuddered, relieved at being given something else to think about.  “W-we…”  I took a deep breath to steady my voice.  “We have dragons for our souls and we can turn…
you know
…if we, uhh, want to.”  My chest slowly eased as my mind focused on the less painful, albeit equally disturbing, topic of the Evren anatomy.

“So articulate,” Dyvian teased.

I glared at him even though I was secretly glad for his teasing.  It helped push the images farther away.  I needed a few moments to ready myself before facing the past again.  “Stop showing off.  I know some big words, too, you know.”

“Like what?  Monstrous?”

“Here’s one for you.  Ass—”

“Children,” Lucian scolded.  But he was smiling just the tiniest bit, and there was something about him that made me automatically smile back.  It was almost like I felt better just by seeing him smile, which was plain ridiculous.

“Feel better now, Deli?”

Dyvian smiled, too, and this time I burst into tears.  They had done it again.  “I’m really lucky you guys saved me,” I sobbed.  I was a stranger to them.  Why were they so nice, and why did they care so much that they did everything possible so I wouldn’t feel sad?

“Oh, damn,” Dyvian whispered in a panic-stricken tone.  I would have laughed if I hadn’t been so busy crying.  It was funny how grown men, even sophisticated ones like those two, could get so uncomfortable just because of tears.

Lucian drew closer and patted my head awkwardly.  “It’s okay now.  We’re here.”

His words only made me sob harder.  “I know,” I wailed.  “And that’s why I’m crying.”

“Right.”  Dyvian was trying hard to look like he understood me.

I smiled in spite of my tears.  “Don’t you see?  I’m happy.  I know I should be alone right now, but I’m not because I have you two.”

They gave me several minutes to compose myself, and I sniffed out the last of my tears.  “Okay now?” Dyvian asked uncertainly after a while.

“Yes.”  One last dab using the corner of my pillow erased the remaining traces of my tears.

Dyvian visibly hesitated.  “Well—”

“I’m fine…and I still want to know what happened that night.”

Lucian clasped his hands behind his back.  “What can you remember of that time?”

The memories came back swiftly, like they were always there, ready to ambush my thoughts.  I swallowed.  It hurt to relive those moments.  It hurt to speak.  But I forced myself to do both.

“We were just driving…  Davie was sleeping.  I was listening to…Ne-Yo.  I had my iPod with me.  My parents were in front, talking, laughing.  They teased me about moving out of New York and asked me if I was okay with living in Nevada if Dad’s business deal would push through.”

My eyes flew open, and I stared at them in remembered horror.  “Someone, something, had suddenly appeared before us, forcing my dad to swerve in the opposite direction.”  I hugged my arms to myself, remembering what the man looked like.  His eyes had glowed red, and there had been a feral quality to him that made me realize something bad was about to happen.  He looked human, but he wasn’t.  He couldn’t be, not when his evilness was almost like a breathing, salivating creature inside him.  “I knew…”  I gulped back the sobs.  “Oh, God, but I knew just by looking at him that my father should have run him over.  Just one look and my instincts had gone c-crazy…like they were telling me I had to do anything possible to kill him.  B-but I was t-too late.” 

“It wasn’t your fault,” Lucian grated out.

“He was incredibly strong,” I whispered.  Sweat drenched my skin.  More excruciating images swept through my mind, so vivid I could almost smell the scent of fire mingling with the dry, cool air of the desert.

“He grabbed hold of our car and he tossed it upside down like it was nothing.”  My voice rose and the words tumbled out in a rush, as if I believed that saying them quickly enough could prevent the past from becoming true.  “And then the others came out of nowhere…three or four of them, maybe?  They looked…
excited,
like they were having fun. 
Oh, God, how could they feel like that? 
Two of them dragged my parents away.  I could hear them screaming.  Davie was still stuck inside the car.  The crash broke her leg somehow.  I tried pulling her out of the car, but I kept falling, I was too dizzy.  My hands were smeared with blood—”

“That’s enough.”

“We got out just before the car exploded.  But someone had grabbed Davie, and I tried to get her back.  She kept on screaming my name, and I tried…I really did try but I couldn’t go to her because someone kept hitting me and—”

“I said that’s enough, Deli.”  Lucian’s hard voice snapped me out of my reverie.

Air swished out of my lungs.  I hadn’t realized I had been holding my breath the whole time I was talking.  My body slumped forward, and I would have fallen if Lucian hadn’t been there to catch me.

“It is enough,” I agreed tremulously.  “Because the next thing I remember was you waking me up, asking me if I wanted to be saved.”

I expected Lucian to explain, but he remained silent, still holding me in his arms.  It was Dyvian who spoke.  “We had received news from other Evren about Zekans coming to our territory.  We could only track them by their scent.  When we finally caught up to them, it was too late.”  Pained regret filled his voice.  “I’m sorry, Deli, but there was nothing else we could do.  Your parents were dead.  Davie had already been taken away, and we were lucky to get ahold of your captor.”

“You killed him?”

“Yes.”  Lucian spoke dispassionately, like it was something to be expected, and I instinctively knew he had been the one to kill the creature holding me captive.

I closed my eyes.  “Good.”  An odd sort of peace settled on me.  I didn’t care if that made me bad.  All I knew was how glad I was at least one of our attackers was dead.

I bit my lip.  “Do you know why they were after us?”

Lucian shook his head.  “Not yet.”

I nodded against his chest, knowing even without Lucian speaking that he meant to find out.

“They were Zekans, you said.”  I recalled a bit drowsily.  Lucian moved to tuck me in.  I didn’t protest, but I forced myself to keep my eyes open.  I didn’t want to go back to sleep until my mind was sufficiently clear about that night.

“They’re our ancient enemies,” Dyvian said softly.  “We were created together.  But while we descend from dragons, Zekans are born from snakes.”

“It fits,” I mumbled.

Dyvian smiled.  “Yes, it does.”

“Are there many of us?”  I held my breath.

“Evren, you mean?”  Dyvian smirked.

“Yes.”

“Not really.”  Dyvian’s voice became bleak.  “Not as many as there are Zekans.”  He bent down and placed a kiss on my forehead.  “But it’s not your place to worry about that.  Right now, all we want is for you to sleep well, okay?  We can talk more about your scales tomorrow.”

I was too tired to make a face.  “Whatever.”  My voice was muffled slightly by the pillows as I turned to my side.  Just when I thought I was alone, the sound of approaching footsteps tickled my ear, followed by another pair of lips pressing against my skin.  It was a kiss on the cheek and my eyes flew open.

Lucian.

My cheek tingled as an almost painfully restless sensation zinged through my body.  This was probably how being struck by lightning felt.  Lucian had kissed me.  It was both thrilling and heavenly, like God was reassuring me that life could still be okay.

“You will be safe with us.”

Instinctively, I reached out for his hand and squeezed it.  He crouched down.  “I know.  I think I’m going to be happy, too.  Thank you for taking me in.  Thank you for saving my life.”

He nodded.

I wanted to laugh.  I might not have known my reluctant rescuer for long, but it was something that I had expected him to do.  He wasn’t just a man of few words.  He was a guy who almost seemed to hate interacting with other people, and I could only count myself lucky that he hadn’t been feeling indifferent enough to leave me out that night to die.

I gazed at his face, exhaustion making me feel even more vulnerable to its beauty.  It was a mushy thought, but I really did feel I could drown in his eyes, their lush green color reminding me of twin pools of endless summer.