Rhyannon Byrd - Primal Instinct 04 (6 page)

“So they just abandoned the two of you?” Rough words
that practically vibrated with outrage.

“It wasn’t like that,” she told him, turning to stare
through the front windshield. “Remember, they’re human, like me. They don’t
know anything about the clans or how Monica really died or what’s happened to
Chloe. As far as they know, a wild animal attacked Monica, and most of them
believe Chloe’s flighty enough to take off on her own without telling anybody.
Several of my aunts invited me and Jamie to stay with them, but how could I say
yes, knowing the danger we would have brought with us? I can only assume that
the sheer number of people we’ve had at the house forced the Casus to bide
their time, but they wouldn’t be daunted by a few humans once our numbers were
smaller.”

“So you decided to leave?”

Olivia nodded. “I packed up the car early this morning
and we left the house. I figured it would be safer to drive out of town at
night, and I actually had an important meeting in town late this afternoon with
Monica’s lawyer that I couldn’t miss. So we went to my friend Connie’s house
for the day. I thought we’d be safe there, but I guess my mistake was in
telling Georgia where we were going.”

Slanting him a worried look, she said, “You don’t
think the Casus have hurt her, do you? She must have told them about Connie’s
house, the same way she told you.”

“Maybe not. Depending on how good a lead they had on
your scent, they might have simply tracked you there.”

“They can do that?” she whispered, feeling as if every
ounce of blood had just drained from her face.

“Yeah, and you didn’t travel that far from home.” He
took a deep breath, and his voice seemed even deeper as he said, “Your scent
is…unique, Liv. Different. I’m not sure if they can track Jamie’s Merrick
blood, like they do with the other Merrick, since she’s so young, but there’s a
good chance they could have followed you.”

“Great,” she groaned, wondering why she would have to
be the freak with the “unique” scent, whatever that meant. “Will they be able
to track us out of town?”

“Not as easily, and we can keep ahead of them if we’re
careful. But it’s still going to be a dangerous trip. They’re going to guess
we’re headed for Colorado, which means we’re going to need to avoid the direct
routes as much as possible.”

“This all seems so unreal.” She shook her head again,
her voice thick with emotion. “I don’t even know what I’m doing.”

“Naw, you’re doing fine. Hell, just look at how you
handled yourself tonight. You drove like a demon, and not everyone could have
done that.” Her pulse rate climbed as he gave her another one of those sexy,
lopsided smiles that just seemed to intensify his outrageous appeal. “I never
thought I would say these words, but you are one badass kindergarten teacher.”

Though she felt oddly torn between laughter and tears,
his husky words filled Olivia with a strange bubble of warmth that managed to
ease some of her fear, which was probably what he’d been after. “You know,” she
said shakily, looking away as she felt her face go warm, “this is probably
going to sound crazy, but I think that’s the nicest compliment anyone has ever
given me, Aiden. Thank you.”

As the heat from his gaze lingered on her profile, she
wondered what he was gearing up to say, but then his phone rang, interrupting
the moment. He quickly took the call, asking if everyone was okay, while Olivia
twisted around in her seat to check on Jamie, who seemed to be quite happy as
she studied the beautiful cross that Aiden had hung around her neck.

“When you’re done taking care of the bodies,” he said
into the phone a moment later, “meet us over at the gas station we stopped at
earlier. Had to leave my truck back at the house, so we’re in a red Honda.”

“Are they all right?” she asked when he ended the
call.

“Yeah.” He slipped the phone back into its case, then
raked his hair away from his face again. “A little banged up, it sounds like,
but then they’re used to that. Kellan thinks they took down around seven of the
bastards in the woods, which means there were about twelve of them altogether,
if you count the ones that attacked the car.”

“That seems like a lot,” she murmured, pulling back
out onto the road. The only gas station remotely close to their location was a
mile away, so Olivia headed in that direction, assuming that’s where his
friends would be meeting them.

“They’re coming through faster and faster,” Aiden
grunted, his right arm braced against the door, his hand resting against his
mouth as he sprawled against the back of the seat in one of those casual poses
that had always struck her as beautifully male. “But to send that many tells us
that your sister was right. They’re eager to get their hands—” He cut himself
off, obviously not wanting Jamie to hear, but Olivia knew what he’d been about
to say. The monsters wanted to get their hands on her niece. On a precious,
innocent little girl.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered. “It just…it
doesn’t make any sense.”

“Yeah, well, you can’t apply logic to these things,
Liv.” The words were straightforward enough, but she could tell from his tone
that there was something more. Something he either didn’t want her to know or
that he couldn’t say in front of Jamie. Her body ached as the worry settled
deeper into her bones, the past few weeks making her feel as though she’d aged
ten years.

They pulled into the gas station a few moments later,
and she parked in the back of the lot. While they waited for his friends to
arrive on foot, Olivia made a quick call to Georgia, who thankfully was fine.
The elderly woman claimed that Aiden had been the only person to come asking
about her and Jamie, which meant that the Casus had likely followed her scent
to Connie’s house, just as Aiden had suggested. Unnerved by the chilling
thought, Olivia fought to put a smile on her face as she twisted back around in
her seat and chatted with Jamie some more. The little girl still seemed
remarkably calm, considering what they’d just been through, and she couldn’t
help but wonder what was going on in her clever little mind.

Though Jamie was like a human child in so many ways,
Olivia knew that her niece was far from what the world would consider normal.
Her Merrick blood might have been dormant, but she was still a Mallory. Once a
powerful, diverse clan of witches, the clan’s magical powers had been bound by
a curse—and it was because of this centuries-old curse that the Mallory now
magnified the emotions of all those around them. All of which meant that Jamie
would carry a tremendous amount of power trapped inside her body as she grew
older. She would also eventually suffer from the curse, the same as her mother
and her aunt Chloe. But Olivia didn’t care that Jamie wasn’t normal. The fact
that she wasn’t human certainly didn’t make her love the little girl any less,
as Aiden had suspected.

And yet she couldn’t help but worry, not only about
the dangers that lay ahead but whether she understood enough about the world of
the clans to be a good protector for Jamie.

You’ll learn what you need to know, because you love
her. Because you love her enough to do whatever it takes.

Silently praying that she wouldn’t fail, Olivia tucked
a fuzzy pink blanket around Jamie’s small body as the child cuddled up with her
teddy bear to watch a Disney movie on Olivia’s iPod. She’d just turned around
and settled back into her seat when Aiden said, “That’s Kellan and Noah over
there.” He nodded toward two dark, muscular men who were making their way
across the empty parking lot, and she shook her head, wondering what it was
about these guys. Did all the Watchmen look like this? The one named Kellan was
tall, and nearly as gorgeous as Aiden, though he looked as if he’d just taken
part in a vicious fight, his face scraped down one side, his black T-shirt
ripped at the shoulder. He had auburn hair a few shades darker than her own, so
that it appeared almost black in the moonlight, and piercing blue-green eyes
that were still glowing unusually bright, attesting to the fact that he was
something more than a mere man.

While Kellan’s heavily muscled physique reminded her
of a professional football player, the guy walking beside him could have stepped
right out of a rock video. He was attractive in a dark, sinister kind of way,
his long body wrapped entirely in black, the corner of his sensual mouth
bloodied from their run-in with the Casus. His thick black hair was spiky from
the wind, and despite being human, his eyes burned a pale, unusual shade of
blue, almost like that of the creatures that had just attacked them. Trying not
to stare, Olivia wondered if Aiden had been completely honest with her about
Noah’s species, but couldn’t imagine why he would have lied.

“I need a few minutes to talk to them,” Aiden said in
a low voice, the gruff edge to his words making Olivia wonder if he didn’t care
for the way she’d been looking over the other two men. Not that that made any
sense either, but then, it truly seemed a night for the bizarre. To be honest,
at this point she didn’t think anything could surprise her.

She didn’t realize how lost she was in her own little
world until he barked her name so sharply it made her jump. “You in there?”

“Sorry,” she murmured, gesturing her hand toward his
door. “You go on and talk to your friends. We’ll wait for you here.”

SO THIS IS IT, he thought, shutting the car door and
heading across the tarmac. Crunch time.

If he was going to pass her off to Kellan, Aiden knew
it was now or never.

Glancing back at the car, he felt the idiotic urge to
go and toss Jamie’s blanket over Olivia’s head. He didn’t want the guys ogling
her, knowing damn well that they would. Noah’s reputation with women was nearly
as sordid as his and Kell’s. And Olivia wasn’t the type of woman that a man
could miss. Everything about her was designed to draw a male’s attention, from
her smoky gaze to her full mouth, and that red hair of hers was something else.
Even with the fiery strands tangled around her face from their earlier scuffle
on the lawn, she looked delicious. Touchable. Earthy and soft and warm.

She’d actually put her trust in him to get her and
Jamie out of there alive, and he couldn’t stop thinking about it, even though
he knew it was dangerous to make too much of it. To allow it to mean anything
to him. Who knew what she was really like? What she was really after? Women
were tricky creatures at the best of times. After a lifetime of experience,
Aiden knew this as a given fact, just as he knew that he’d do well to stay as
far away as possible from the very female, very human Olivia Harcourt. And yet
he couldn’t do it.

Alarm bells were going off left, right and center in
his head, but he ground his teeth and ignored them. It just wasn’t going to
happen. He couldn’t simply walk away, knowing her life was in danger, and leave
her under another man’s protection.

Hell, even if he passed her off to Kellan and tried to
protect her from afar, he knew the Lycan would charm his way into her pants the
second he got the chance. Then Aiden would end up having to kill Kierland’s
little brother, and he’d have the bloody wolf at his throat night and day.

Thanks, but no thanks.

“So is that the little lady?” Kellan asked when they
drew closer, the Watchman’s curious gaze trained on the car…and the captivating
woman sitting in the front seat. Kell drew in a deep breath, pulling in her
scent, then gave a low, rumbling groan. “Oh, man. This just isn’t fair, Ade.
How come I get stuck with Winston and you get the yummy redhead?”

“Don’t start,” he warned, taking note of the
Watchman’s bloodied knuckles and battered face. Kellan looked as if he’d
single-handedly taken on the entire force of Casus himself, and Aiden sent a
questioning look toward Noah, who responded with a slight roll of his
shoulders. Ever since the crap that had gone down in Washington the month
before, when Kellan had unknowingly hooked up with a female Casus who’d been
plotting against them, the Lycan had been playing an increasingly dangerous,
risky game with his safety—one that was worrying everyone who cared about him.

“Where’s the kid?” Noah asked as he turned his
attention toward the car, his ice-blue gaze searching the windows. Though
they’d gotten off to a rocky start when they’d first met, Noah had quickly
proven invaluable to their unit, and Aiden liked the guy’s dry sense of humor.
He also admired the human’s wicked fighting skills.

Answering Noah’s question, he said, “She’s cuddled up
in the backseat watching a movie.”

“She isn’t freaking out?” Kellan asked, his concern
obvious as he eyed the gouges the Casus’s claws had made in the Honda’s doors.
“Looks like the bastards hit you guys pretty hard.”

Aiden shoved his hands into his pockets and frowned.
“She’s holding together a lot better than I would have expected. But I imagine
her nightmares are going to be bad.”

Kellan all but vibrated with leftover adrenaline as he
finally looked Aiden in the eye. Rolling back on his heels, he said, “Well,
knowing how you feel about humans and kids, I guess I’ll go introduce myself
and let ’em know that Noah and I will be taking over from here.”

Without any conscious direction from his brain,
Aiden’s hand shot out and caught hold of the Watchman as he started to move
past, his fingers digging deep into Kell’s powerful biceps. “Not. So. Fast.” He
ground out the words, his throat feeling as if he’d swallowed a mouthful of
gravel.