Noah (40 page)

She stopped short suddenly. So suddenly that it yanked her hand out of his. He turned back to look at her with surprise etching his handsome face.

“I…need to walk. I’m…I need to walk.”

The stammered explanation was all she could manage before she ran away from him. Noah was left speechless and torn. With a Vampire threat so soon behind them, it was not safe for her to risk being alone and out of touch with him. Not only that, but in a dress made of a fabric little more effective than gauze, she was going to freeze to death. He swore violently into the cold night. How could he protect her while allowing her the opportunity to protect herself as she wished him to, all at the same time?

“Damn!”

How could he give her respect and privacy, yet provide the care and comfort she needed? As well as take care of his responsibilities in the easing of her heart and mind? How the hell could he serve as a true and loving mate when she refused him access at every turn?

She was exhausted, cold, frail after her attack, and twisted into knots he could help untie if only she would let him. What was he going to do? What should he do?
Sweet Destiny!
He had never been so indecisive in his entire life! How many times had he orchestrated the fates of the lives of others with such glowing success? He had brought Jacob and Bella together, more certain about their success than they had been. He had done the same for Elijah when the warrior had questioned his feelings toward the Lycanthrope Queen. Why couldn’t he handle Kestra with the same confidence of thought and emotion? It was making him crazy!

Positive he was going mad, Noah began to pace a wide swath of the lawn, his breath clouding on the air reminding him that Kes was as good as naked in that blink of cloth she had called a dress. He should fetch her back. He should demand she see reason. He should at least bring her a damned coat. He ran both hands through his hair, growling in frustration under his breath. Abruptly, his pacing was disrupted by a sharp implosion of displaced air and the solid body of his sister.

“Legna! What are you doing here?” If he sounded impatient, he did not care.

“Hmm,” she mused, swinging back the huge braid of hair that had come over her shoulder during her teleportation. “I am an empath, Noah, and I am your sister. Add a dash of Samhain where it is all magnified, and I believe you will come up with the answer.”

“I appreciate your concern, but I have not asked for your interfe—your assistance,” he corrected hastily.

“I know you have not. First…” Legna reached out for him with both hands, holding tight when he would have shrugged her off. “Gideon is watching over her in astral form. She is being looked after.”

“She will sense him or see him if he is not careful.” Noah laughed without humor. “Then she will blame me.”

“He will be careful. Trust him as you would trust me.”

Noah looked at her with surprise, suddenly jolting out of his self-absorption.

“I have trusted Gideon all my life. Longer than you have even been alive. He was my
Siddah
, fostering me since I was a boy. Why would you think I do not trust him?”

“Perhaps because you have not been acting like it since the day you discovered we were Imprinted.”

Noah was shocked and dismayed right to his soul that Legna would think such a thing. “That is untrue. I have long since accepted your marriage. It was merely the shock of it in the beginning…and because I feared he would be a key reminder for you about…the day Mother died.” He reached out to tug her hair out of age-old habit. “Come now, surely you do not believe I hold ill will toward Gideon for stealing you from me?”

“You have been all politeness,” she said neutrally.

The flatness of the remark cut him to the quick. His tenderhearted sister, speaking without emotion? His heart filled with dread as he raced through his memories of the past two and a half years of her marriage to Gideon. He needed to know what he had done to make her think these things.

“Legna…” he said helplessly.

“Do you never wonder why Gideon does not visit socially with me when I come? Oh, he attends all Council matters now, and I know you are glad to have his voice back at the Council table,” she amended quickly, “but he does not feel welcome in the home of my brother. The home I grew up in and lived in knowing the greatest of love and memories until the day I wed. When was the last time you called on him? I mean truly, in a social capacity, and not when you needed him for some emergent medical or political problem?”

Noah’s mouth hung open as he searched his memory for several examples. Surely he had—the man was father to his nephew, his
Siddah
, his sister’s husband—surely he had sought to make time for them socially.

Noah flushed with sudden shame. What was more, he could not believe Legna had said nothing to him before now.

“I do not tell you these things to make you feel bad,” she said gently, her love for him coming through powerfully as she reached to smooth soothing hands down his arms. “I only wish to make you aware. I think…I think it hurts him. I think he feels used, though he would never say so outright. You sometimes forget that, for all his age and wisdom, Gideon is still a being of great emotion and love. He may not show it like his wife does, but he is.”

“I know,” Noah said hoarsely. “I have known him all my life, and I know his love. I am sorry.”

“I know you are. Yours is an enormously sensitive soul, Noah. And a passionate one.”

Noah instantly sensed the redirection of Legna’s comments. She was no longer referring to Gideon. “It is overwhelming to be a receptacle for your emotional extremes. It is mind-numbing to be the focus of your love. This is not a bad thing, my love,” she assured him with a soft touch to his warm cheek. “Only, you must allow that for Kestra, there will be an adjustment period.”

“I am trying. Legna, I feel as though my hands are tied. I need to protect her, but she sees that as an insult to her independence. One moment she agrees that the threats out in the night are too much for her to handle. The next she runs into the dark, making me stand here impotently because I know she craves privacy. To chase after her would betray her trust in my understanding of that.”

“She is not thinking about danger at the moment. You would know that if you touched her mind.”

“She does not like my intrusions into her mind. I always thought the intimacy of the touching of Imprinted minds would be a beautiful thing, I always craved it, but she balks at it. I fear she even hates it.”

“She is not familiar with it. It is a disturbing thing for humans, one they accept easier with time and when they fall in love with their mates. You have altered her life considerably, Noah, and she is struggling to maintain shreds of her former identity.”

“Tell me, Legna, do I press my suit on her, or hold back? Tell her my feelings for her, or protect her from them so I do not scare the hell out of her? One moment she is empowered, the next a frightened chick. Legna, I cannot make heads or tails of it!”

“Easy, darling, easy,” she said softly, pitching the power of her calming voice in an effort to relieve her brother’s turbulence. “I know that to love a wounded woman is like walking a high wire. Balance is crucial, and so easily lost if you are not careful. But you are the kindest, most patient and loving soul I have ever known. Center yourself. Calm yourself. Try not to let the volatility of the holy moon affect you so. You are letting it run away with you. Be at peace in the knowledge that whenever you have loved someone, Noah, they have always come seeking more. Be easy. Be patient.”

Noah felt that peace stealing over him with every word she spoke. Legna was right, of course. She always was. He longed to have it back, that clarity of thought that came with perfect calm. He was being unreasonable, almost like a child in a tantrum, to expect Kestra to fall into line like a good Demon or Druid should. He had promised her patience, but had found it impossible to provide. She kept begging him for it, reminding him of her need of it, and he had barely managed to remember that fact from hour to hour.

Noah took a deep breath and looked into his sister’s tinsel eyes.

“Thank you,” he said gratefully. “I have been behaving poorly…in many ways.”

“I know it has been torturous for you these past couple of years since my departure. I had buffered your emotions during the Hallowed moons for so long, I was shocked to feel the release the first time after I was away during one and living with Gideon.”

“You felt that? All the way in Russia?” Noah was shocked. He hadn’t comprehended how sensitive Legna was.

“How could I not? It was so horrible for you.” Legna shuddered with the memory. “It took me a while to realize that was why I kept having nightmares about you every holiday. Gideon helped me to figure it out.”

“I see. I am sorry.”

“No. Do not apologize for our bond with each other or you will upset me,” she said sternly.

“Yes, madam,” he said politely with a bow of his head and a laugh. “You are correct. It is not in need of an apology.”

“But it is ended now,” she added, her exhalation of relief profound. “She is everything that you need and more. Her power builds with great speed, astounding even Gideon. You will not have to fear for her safety for much longer. Though all you have seen is passive power, Gideon feels sure that on the near horizon she will rival you in ability. You must help her prepare for that.” Again, that stern tone. “Let the rest flow naturally. All will be as Destiny decrees. You, my love, are just along for the ride. Pick the waves to surf, instead of creating them.”

“You know,” he said, throwing a brotherly arm across her shoulders and turning her toward the castle, “you are beginning to sound like a certain pompous Ancient I know. Perhaps this marriage was a poor idea after all.”

“Noah!” Legna punched him in the ribs.

“Ouch.” He pouted. “Is that any way to treat your King?”

“Yes, when he is being a jackass!”

Noah reached behind her head and lovingly pulled her hair.

Hard.

Then he ran.

When Kestra entered the castle some time later, Noah was waiting at the door to greet her, a warmed blanket in his hands. He wrapped her up like a human burrito, drawing her in tight, adding his body temperature to aid against her violent shivering as he herded her directly toward the fireplace. He sat down, dragging her down ungently into his lap, a silent scowl on his face as he rubbed her arms and legs to encourage circulation.

His silence was a little unnerving, but she just sighed and snuggled into his warmth, her head on his shoulder and her cold nose pressed to his heated neck. She didn’t have to read his mind to know he was probably pretty pissed off at her. She did give him credit for not scolding her like a child, though. Frankly, in spite of her effort to freeze out all of her troubling thoughts, she was still on overload and she just didn’t know if she could’ve handled a scene at the moment. She felt as if she’d somehow failed him. After all, she’d promised him to be the steady one tonight, to help him through all the tumult of Samhain.

It was a hell of a way to pay him back after what he’d done to save her life.

Again.

She sighed. The heartfelt emotion behind it prompted him to cover her head with his hand, the heat and comfort of his palm bleeding into her. The added touches somehow ratcheted up the feeling of being protected and cared for. What she couldn’t always understand was why it always felt so damned good. She closed her eyes and tried to fast-forward the moment, the entire relationship, five years into the future.

Where would this lead in five years?

Oh, hell. She was thinking in human terms still. She was immortal now.

Immortal
.

That sort of gave her all the time in the world to screw up, fix it, and then try again. And she no longer had to worry about illness and being easily killed. Even in the face of a daunting enemy tonight, she had proven she was no easy target. With these Demon healers, the bounce-back rate was something else. Her senses were fired up to the max, and she was earning some wicked respect for the power she was developing as a Druid.

It was like being reborn. That, she realized, was how she’d been feeling these past few days. It was as if she’d been trapped for interminable ages in a chrysalis, and had just now figured out how to break free. She felt like a newborn butterfly. A kick-ass butterfly.

The fact that it all started and ended right here, in the arms of this man, was definitely in his favor. Noah made her feel beautiful and new, like she could risk shedding her protective shell. Not just physically. No. She’d been physically superior amongst humans for a very long time and she was used to that. Emotionally, she was navel lint. Or she had been.

That understanding made her heart pound, but this time she refused to push it away. Noah made her feel again. He made love to her and proved to her that she was capable of depths only he had imagined in her. He’d never once doubted it. Not even in dreams. He’d made it possible for her to accept easy touching and affection as if she’d been doing so all her life. The way they were sitting in cozy silence, for instance. She would never have accepted sitting in a man’s lap. Enjoyed the stroke of sure fingers through her hair? The brief, brushing kisses across her forehead through her bangs? No. It was an act of submission and vulnerability to allow these things. This was how she had felt.

Before Noah.

And before Noah she’d been all alone. Strong, independent, powerful, and safe. But alone. Wrapped in sadness, heartache, and scars from the past. This man had stripped that all away, making it raw again, but only in order to repair it. Cosmetic surgery of the heart.

So that tonight she’d taken pleasure in the idea that they’d argued fruitfully.

It was such a normal thing to think about. A normal concern for a woman trying to have a relationship with a man.
Trying
to have one. Making the effort toward, and not against. And then to realize that she was happy to be shedding the Kevlar she had spent so much time strapping around herself.

She suspected she was setting herself up for a world of hurt.

Kestra laughed softly, and she could tell by a random muscular twitch that it had gotten his attention. Yet he still sat quietly. Was he listening to her thoughts? She didn’t think so. She’d gotten the impression from his questions and honest perplexity earlier that he was trying to give her the privacy she was used to. She also knew he wouldn’t always be able to do that. Even without trying, she could hear the hum of his presence in her mind. She suspected that as the ability progressed, it would be rather like having two people in her head.

Great. Now she would be a schizophrenic. She’d always figured she’d end up mentally unstable one day.

She sighed.

She supposed she would just have to stop resisting and learn to get used to it. In spite of having grown up with an empath in the house, Kestra suspected that this was going to be a huge adjustment for Noah, too. In fact, she realized that she hadn’t given much thought at all to the changes and sacrifices he’d be making in order to accommodate her. All they’d spoken of was the benefits of her presence.

“You have been living the life of a bachelor for more than six centuries,” she said suddenly.

Noah sat quietly for several heartbeats, each of which she could feel against the tip of her nose as it pressed to his pulse in his neck. She knew he’d heard her because his hands closed a little tighter against her.

“More or less,” he said at last, releasing his hold so she could look at him. His expression was quizzical. “Why do you mention it?”

“Just that you’re used to a certain lifestyle, and I’d say after that much time, they are easily what you could call habits of a lifetime.”

“You…” His gaze narrowed until all she could see was slashes of smoke between the slits. “Are you saying that I’m incapable of changing my ways to accommodate you?”

“I’m asking why you would want to,” she countered.

Noah relaxed beneath her, and she tried not to giggle when she realized it was so terribly easy to read him.

“I think you have the wrong impression of what my life has been like,” he said dryly. “You must understand that Demons are very close to their families. We almost never choose to live alone if we have other single family members or parents still living. The holy moons play a part in that, but a minor one. Mostly it is about home and hearth.

“That does not mean I did not strike out on my own for travel, decadence, and overt troublemaking in my time,” he pointed out. “But I was given responsibility as King at a very young age, so I sped through that period of my life fairly early on.”

“That’s good to know,” she said firmly, a sparkle of humor in her eyes giving her away.

He smiled crookedly, looking far too charming and far too capable of all kinds of dissolute behaviors she dared not give too much thought to.

“The point is,” he continued, “after my parents died and I moved my court to England, Hannah and Legna lived with me. Until Hannah married about thirty years ago. And then it was just Legna and me until two and a half years ago. In truth, I have only had my…bachelor pad…to myself for the sum of two years.” He cast a wry look around the grandeur of the castle that looked far more like Grand Central Terminal than it did a lair for seduction.

“And how do you like living alone?” she asked.

“I hate it. With all my heart. I do not even have the number of guests I once did. Elijah and Jacob used to stay here constantly before they became wed. The children come often. A plethora of nieces and nephews,” he explained quickly when she arched up a brow. Unable to resist, he pulled the pert eyebrow under the press of his lips as he chuckled.

“I was wondering how you have managed to maintain a child-free existence for over six centuries,” Kestra remarked. “Because I know you didn’t practice celibacy.”

He gave her a dry look that made her laugh.

“Hardly,” he said. “Demons are actually very funny about the nature of childbearing. Old-fashioned, you might say. We believe it takes a village to raise a child, but it must start with a marriage. We rarely give birth out of wedlock. Our healers have methods of seeing to that by request. It is not illegal to give birth out of wedlock, and there is no scourge against it, but it is understood that when it comes to a child of power, it is best to bring him or her into a complete family. It provides the best balance and control.”

“So your healers have a way of keeping the women from getting pregnant?”

“Actually, they do, but it often is the male who takes responsibility for these things.”

“Get out!”

“Seriously,” he assured her. “Most Demon women do not need to practice birth control. Or they
did
not. There has been a change with cross-species relations now becoming acceptable. It is one thing to have fun with a Vampire or Lycanthrope, quite another to bear a child. Though I think everyone is still fairly prejudiced about these things. We were…” He frowned. “Well, I think racist is the best term for it. Elitist. And it holds over. A great many of the races are like that, and they would not sully themselves in an interspecies fling.”

“But there are always the adventurous ones.”

“Always,” he assured her with a low chuckle. He looked into her eyes, brushing a finger through her bangs. “You are not going to ask me how many women I have been with, are you?”

Kestra burst out in a hard, shocked hoot. “Can you count that high?” she asked.

“Mmm…” He shook his head, the gleam in his eye nowhere near repentant.

“I didn’t think so. Therefore, I won’t be asking.”

“Good.” He gave a theatrical sigh of relief and she couldn’t resist pulling his hair in punishment. “Ouch,” he complained. She rolled her eyes.

“You have no shame,” she accused.

“None whatsoever,” he agreed. Then more seriously he added, “I have lived a long and full life, and I am not in the habit of looking back with regrets or second guesses about things I cannot change.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to. I’d rather focus on the here and now. I think I had a point to this conversation, but it got lost somewhere.”

“I think you were disparaging my ability to give up my wicked ways.”

“No. That wasn’t it at all.” She huffed out a sigh, sending her bangs fluttering. “I only meant to understand the changes you’d be forced to make now that…well…to accommodate…” She struggled to find a way of saying what she wanted to without attaching a presumptuous permanency to it.

“You,” he said softly. “To accommodate you. To bring you into my life. To make you my mate.”

Kestra’s head dipped down and color flared over her cheeks until she was bright red. It was such an ingenuous reaction for such a jaded woman to have that Noah felt his heart swelling with his love for her. He wrapped his arms tightly around her and hugged her hard to his chest, almost as if he could make her feel it if he brought her close enough.

“It is okay to speak freely of my expectations, Kestra,” he murmured gently to her, his lips against her blushing cheek as he did so. “I know what I want. I also know that speaking of the possibilities is not agreement or assent on your part. When you choose to stay with me, you will make yourself very clear.”

“You’re so arrogant.” She laughed weakly.

“Hopeful. I am hopeful.”

He lifted his head and then stood up with ease, keeping her in his arms the entire time. That was when she realized he hadn’t ever really made a display of his strength, except in Sands’s penthouse. The men she was used to took great pleasure in showing off. Living with Marines had been nothing but a constant exercise in testosterone. Noah kept his power understated. He knew he had nothing to prove. Just as she had nothing to prove to him.

She had thought he would never accept her as a woman of strength unless she proved it as she had been doing all her life. But she realized now that Noah had spent his entire existence around women of awesome power who were all treated as formidable equals. When he had tried to protect her, it was because he’d known she was out of her league.

Kes sighed as he walked away from the fireplace and began to climb the stairs with her. She was running out of arguments against him. She was running out of reasons why she shouldn’t be with him. She couldn’t conjure a single excuse for why this relationship couldn’t work as it traveled into the future.

And that was perhaps the most frightening precipice she’d ever stood on.

Jasmine paced and cursed, cursed and paced, her temper having cleared out remaining partygoers long ago. The citadel echoed with her booted footsteps and her swearing fury. She was a raven-haired virago, her dark brown eyes flaming with red-limned rage.

She would never forgive herself for this.

Never.

She should never have allowed Noah to talk her into staying in Demon territory. Who besides Damien and herself would have been suited to fight these Vampire brigands? The Demons had done well enough, but at such a price! Too late. Too late to save him.

Stephan.

She heard a familiar footstep on the stone stairs and she raised distressed eyes to Damien. He held out an arm and beckoned her forward. Without thinking of the vulnerability it showed, she flung herself against him, allowing him to draw her into his embrace. He silently soothed her, as she would only ever have allowed
him
to do, sharing grief with her of his own. He had lost too much tonight, and he had felt it keenly. Felt it still. Would feel it far into the future.

Because tonight he had failed to protect his own, and come the morrow the entire Vampire society would be made aware of it. The weakness would shatter centuries of respect and properly discouraged ambition. The safety of his citadel would be in question for decades to come, if not forevermore. They would think him weak or infirm, consider him incapable of leading properly. They would see him as sharks would the scarlet cloud of blood upon the water. Those who would never have thought to challenge him before this now would.

For the throne of the Vampire monarchy was won by merit of combat alone. Only his death would force his abdication. And while he had always faced all comers and challengers in the past with easy success, there had never been any great number of them. Not since he had torn through a third of the Vampire population, all of whom were stupid enough to show up in high form on his doorstep during the first three centuries of his reign. After that, they had wisely given up and set about repopulating their ranks.