The Dark-Hunters (813 page)

Neither position was desirable or enviable. Both left you isolated, lost, alone, and insecure. No one to trust.

No one who gave a shit about you. The only real difference was that when they thought you weak they didn’t try to kill you when your back was turned.

Sighing, he released her, then rolled over and rose to his feet. She got up and dusted herself off.

When he started to walk away from her, she put her hand on his arm to stop him.

“For the record? You’re not a pathetic wretch, Ren, and you don’t have to end the world to prove it.”

He snorted at her naiveté, but a part of him he didn’t want to acknowledge took flight over her kindness—even if it was feigned. “I have the blood of three competing pantheons, two of which are born warring, flowing through my veins. Since the hour of my birth, I’ve been at war with myself. You want to know why I stutter?”

“Why?”

“I was suckled for a year by a demon. Her milk infected me with her venom and it was her language I learned first. It’s so radically different from anything human that I was five before I could even begin to comprehend our speech patterns. By that time, they all thought I was slow and stupid because of it. Then when I finally learned how to make their sounds, I stuttered with them because I have to translate from demonspeak to human. It’s taken me a million lifetimes to speak without hesitation. And still whenever I think or dream it’s never as a human.” His gaze burned her. “Because of what Artemis sent to care for me, I became a conduit of evil.
That
is my true nature.”

She shook her head. “I don’t believe you. If you were truly evil, you wouldn’t fight that nature. You’d go with it and let it swallow you whole. Yet you don’t. You came for me when you didn’t even know me, and rescued me. You have fought for strangers for centuries. How is any of that evil?”

“I killed my own father while he begged me for mercy.”

Kateri hesitated at his confession. But as soon as she felt compassion, she remembered her visions of his father’s cold brutality. “The same father who left you to die in the woods alone when you were a defenseless infant? The one a demon had to threaten in order for him to care for you?” One who had abused and belittled him? “Pardon me if I don’t shed a tear for that bastard. I mean c’mon, Ren, really? You’ve kept yourself celibate for eleven. Thousand. Years. Eleven,” she repeated.

He scoffed at her tone. “You don’t have to keep saying it. Believe me, no one is more aware of how long that is than I am.”

“Yeah, well, excuse me for being impressed. That kind of self-control is off the grid. Seriously, off-grid. Especially to a woman who can’t pass by a donut without having a bite of it. Sad, but true.”

He snorted at her disbelieving tone. “It wasn’t as difficult as you think. Trust me. It’s kind of hard to have sex when no woman wants to be seen in public with you, never mind share your bed.”

Yeah, right. What woman in her right mind would turn down all
that
yummy goodness? He was far more tempting than even a chocolate-drenched donut.

“Obviously you’ve been living in a closet. Alone.” The instant those words were out of her mouth, she saw Ren in his past.…

He was with his friend who spoke to him in sign language.

His friend kept glancing over to a group of women who were shopping at a nearby vegetable stand. Two of them were insanely beautiful—the kind of perfectly formed women every woman wanted to be, but only a tiny handful were lucky enough to attain. The third was cute, but she paled in comparison to the two goddesses flanking her.

“Go on, Makah’Alay,” his friend urged him. “It’s a perfect opportunity to speak to her.”

Ren shook his head.

His friend rolled his eyes. “You are the fiercest fighter we have … fearless in battle. Eldest son of our chief. Are you honestly telling me that you’re so scared of a woman that you won’t even go talk to her? Really? You’re going to let a mere woman cow you?”

Rage darkened his gaze at his friend’s insult.

Clenching his teeth and glaring at him, Ren turned and headed over to the women.

Kateri held her breath, expecting him to go to one of the two perfect girls.

He didn’t. Instead he skirted around them to the third girl, who didn’t have enough to pay for her purchase.

Tears swam in her eyes. “It’s all I have. Please. I can’t return without it. My mother told me that I had to have it or else.”

“We don’t lend credit here. You’ll have to go beg from someone else. There’s a price to be paid for every drop of sweat.” The vendor reached to take the bundle of maize back from her.

Ren stopped him. “I’ll cover it.”

The man curled his lip. “How do I know
you
have it?”

Ren pulled out a piece of gold and handed it over.

After inspecting the gold, the vendor returned the maize to the girl.

“Thank you,” she said to the vendor, not Ren. In fact, she wouldn’t even look at him to acknowledge his presence.

Placing it in her wicker basket, she moved to join the other two, who were waiting for her.

“Itzel?” Ren called as he tried to catch up.

She hesitated before she turned to pin him with an irritated grimace. “What?”

“I-I-I was w-wondering…” He hesitated as if searching for the right words. The quivering in his jaw worsened as her look turned from irritation to disdain.

“Wondering what?” she snapped.

He bit his lip before he tried again. “W-would you m-m-mind if I c-c-c-”

“If you’re asking to see me, yes I mind.” She glanced toward her friends. “Do you think I want to be laughed at and mocked? That I’m desperate enough to be courted by
you?
” She sneered that word, twisting her face up into an ugly mask of cruelty. “Forget it. Go find yourself a woman as stupid as you. Oh wait, there’s no one here that dumb. Not even the whores will take you when you pay them for it. Maybe you can find a horny goat or something in one of the other towns.”

Ren stood ramrod stiff as she stalked off and left him to hear the vendor’s laughter. As soon as she reached her friends, they all three looked at him and burst out laughing. He lifted his head, but as Kateri watched, the pain in his eyes brought tears to her own.

His friend started toward the girls, but Ren stopped him. “Don’t m-m-make it worse.”

Shaking his head, his friend headed off in the opposite direction, leaving Ren to glance back at the girls with a wistfulness that shredded her heart.

Kateri winced over what they’d done to him. No wonder he was celibate. Those bitches had trained him well to avoid women. Drawing a ragged breath, she sniffed back her tears. What could she say to ease that kind of meanness? What could ever undo such cruelty?

Unable to stand it, she pulled him into her arms and held him close.

Ren was completely stunned by her actions. Worse, his body roared to life as she pressed her warm curves against him. He stood there completely stiff, in more ways than one, unsure of what to do. “Why are you hugging me, Kateri?”

“Someone needs to.”

That only confounded him more. “I don’t understand.”

Kateri pulled his lips to hers so that she could give him a scorching kiss the likes of which he’d never expected. The intensity of it, the sensation of her tongue dancing with his, made him light-headed and breathless. He growled low in his throat as he wrapped his arms around her and reveled in the taste of her lips.

He didn’t think anything could be better. Not until she slid her hand down his chest and stomach, blazing a trail that left him trembling. Then, to his complete shock, she cupped him in her hand.

Completely stunned as she stroked and fingered him through his jeans, he broke off their kiss. “What are you doing?”

“I’m about to rock your world.”

CHAPTER 10

Kateri had never been so forward with any man in her life. She had no idea where the courage came from, but she wanted to soothe him in a way she’d never wanted to soothe anyone. No one should be so alone. So abandoned. So humiliated. Especially not a man who had spent eternity protecting others.

A man who had bled to keep her safe. No one had ever given so much to her, and he barely knew her. No wonder he’d gone after the world so ferociously. All it had ever done was kick him in the teeth. She couldn’t get over the cruelty she’d witnessed.

For once in his life, he needed to feel appreciated and cared for by someone he’d reached out to.

She nipped at his chin as she unbuttoned his jeans and slid her hand inside to touch him.

Gasping, he caught her hand in his and pulled it back. His breathing ragged, he shook his head. “Don’t.”

She frowned at his actions. “What’s wrong?”

The raw agony in his dark eyes made her ache for him. “I c-c-can’t.”

His rejection stung her hard. She’d more than felt the proof that he
could.
He was already hard and wet. What he meant was that he didn’t want
her.

Clenching her fist, she nodded in understanding. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

Ren scowled at the catch in her voice, at the embarrassed humiliation in her eyes. It was a feeling he knew all too well, and he hated himself for making her feel it now. But the last thing he wanted was to be her pity fuck. That was the only thing worse than being rejected and ridiculed.

Even knowing that he meant nothing to her, it would weaken him where she was concerned and turn him into a mindless toy for her to jerk around. It was what he hated most about himself. If anyone ever managed to show him an ounce of kindness, he was pathetically loyal to them over it.

I am a wretch.…

Still, he didn’t want her to feel bad. It’d been a kind offer. More than anyone else had ever given him. But he didn’t mean anything to her and he knew it. She felt sorry for him and that was all. She didn’t really want to sleep with him, and he wasn’t desperate enough to take advantage of her kind heart.

“It’s not you, Kateri. It’s not. The last time I slept with a woman, I almost ended the world. I’ve been twice adopted by evil, and I know better than to tempt that part of me. I can’t trust myself where you’re concerned. If I let my guard down for even an instant, the darkness takes hold of me and I’m lost to it completely.”

“I’m not asking for your soul, Ren. I’m only offering you comfort.”

He laughed bitterly at his own frail stupidity. “And that is my weakness. Do not be nice to me.”

Kateri stood there, staring at him in the dim light. He was serious about that. He honestly wanted her to hate him. And for what?

Fear of intimacy?

No, it wasn’t that. She could feel it inside her. He was terrified of becoming her lapdog. Because in his mind, he was so desperate for any kindness at all, that once given, he would do anything to get more of it. Like a junkie wanting a fix.

Her heart broke for him. “Comfort is not a weakness.”

“Yes, it is. In the wrong hands it’s the cruelest weapon of all. And I don’t want your kindness or your comfort. I don’t need it.”

But she knew better. He wanted to be held as much as she wanted to hold him. How sad that he couldn’t trust her for the most basic human needs of all.

To be accepted and valued.

“Is there really no one you trust?”

“Only Buffalo.”

An image of the handsome man in her visions flashed through her mind. “The friend you had as a boy who stood up for you? The one you used to sign with?”

His face went pale. “How do you know about that?”

She held her hands up to assure him that she wasn’t intentionally prying into his past. “I’ve seen a lot of your life through visions. I never asked for them. I swear. They just come and go, in snippet pieces that I don’t understand most of the time. But they’ve told me a lot about you. I even know that Ren is short for Renegade because you consider yourself a traitor to your family and people.”

He stood in front of her, looking bereft of everything except self-loathing. “I don’t consider myself a traitor. I
am
one. I have twice over betrayed everyone who trusted me. And I do mean
everyone.
”

She didn’t believe that for even a heartbeat. “Your father never trusted you.”

“My brother did.”

Kateri drew her brows together as she tried to picture what he described. Oddly enough, she’d never seen a single vision with his brother in it, other than the one when his brother had been ill as a child, and even then, his brother had been nothing more than a shapeless lump underneath bedcovers. She’d only seen allusions to his brother, but never his face or form.

But the one thing she had seen and that she could feel was that he did love his brother. Dearly. “I can’t believe you’d betray him without cause.”

His features hardened. “You don’t know me, Kateri. What I’m capable of. I swore a sacred oath to protect my brother and for over a year I brutally tortured him.”

A shiver went down her spine at what he said and from the look of hatred on his face. “Why?”

Shame filled his eyes as he stepped away from her.

As she suspected, he hadn’t done it for pleasure. He’d been motivated to it by something or someone. “Tell me, Makah’Alay.”

He turned back toward her faster than she could blink. Rage contorted his features as he curled his lip. “Don’t call me that!” he snarled between clenched teeth. “Ever!”

His anger caught her off guard. She’d never seen any inclination in her visions that his real name bothered him. “Why?”

“It’s not my name either.” He returned to stand directly in front of her so that he dwarfed her with his height. His ravaged emotions were tangible as he glared down at her.

Yeah, okay, he was really fierce and scary. But she refused to cower. She would stand toe to toe with him no matter what, because that was what
she’d
been taught.

The Cherokee don’t run. Sometimes they might want to. Sometimes they ought to. But the Cherokee don’t ever run. Whatever the danger, you stood strong against it and faced it with everything inside you. That was her grandmother’s greatest legacy, and it was hardwired into her DNA.