Forbidden Embers (38 page)

H
e’d never seen her look worse. Covered in blood and God only knew what, with her hair hanging in tangles around her head and her eyes bruised and sad-looking, she was a far cry from the woman he’d left on that rooftop a few hours before. A far cry from the woman he had met—and made love to—on a mountain that suddenly seemed thousands of miles away.

“Are you hurt?” he asked in a voice that was much harsher than he’d wanted it to sound. But it had just occurred to him that all the blood on her might not belong to other people.

Her spine stiffened at his touch, her chin coming up in a way that screamed
Go to hell.
Not that he hadn’t been expecting it, but it still hurt—whether he had a right to feel that way or not.

“Do you care, or are you just putting on a show for your little friend?” Her eyes shifted toward the foyer, where Shawn was currently standing, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible.

Gesturing for Shawn to come forward, he said, “Cecily, this is Shawn. Shawn, Cecily.”

“Nice to meet you.” Shawn inclined his head respectfully. She ignored him.

“He’s—”

“Dragonstar. I can smell it on him. And I assume you are, too?”

He was having a hard time meeting her eyes. It was a new feeling, and one he was definitely not enjoying. “I am.”

“Well, thank you for all your help with the Shadowdrakes earlier. I appreciate it. Now get the hell out of my house.”

Had he thought she looked defeated earlier? Dirty or not, covered in blood or not, she now looked every inch the queen he knew she was destined to be. “Cecily, let me talk to you. Please—”

“I think I’ve got a clear enough picture about what you were doing, thank you. Please show yourselves out.”

She turned and headed for the stairs, and Logan couldn’t help the hopeless surge of fear inside him. She was slipping through his fingers like he’d always known she would, but he wasn’t ready for it. Wasn’t ready for what they had to be over. Wasn’t ready to say good-bye to her yet.
Not yet. Please, not yet.

“It’s not what you think—”

She whirled on him, eyes narrowed and fire dancing across her fingertips. “It’s exactly what I think, and we both know it. You were using me to destroy my clan. I get it. I even understand why you felt you had to do what you did.”

“You do?” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Shawn slipping toward the front door. He didn’t blame his friend—if he could walk away without this confrontation, he would do it in a heartbeat. Looking at Cecily so angry, so hurt, was killing him.

But he couldn’t just walk away, not like he’d planned all along. Not without talking to her and telling her how he felt about her. He didn’t deserve it—hell, he knew he didn’t deserve it—but he wanted another chance with her.

“I know why you came here. And I want to apologize to both of you.” Her voice carried true and clear across the huge foyer—and made Shawn freeze with his hand halfway to the door.

“I didn’t know about the virus until tonight. I still don’t know everything about it or why my father created it, but I know that it’s awful and that he used it against you and the Shadowdrakes. I’m so very, very sorry.”

Logan didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what to say. He looked at Shawn, saw that the other shifter looked as baffled as he felt. “You don’t need to apologize to us.”

“Yes, I do.” Her voice cut like a scalpel, and he couldn’t help feeling like she was excising all the strings of their relationship so that there was nothing left between them. “My clan, my responsibility. My father has been dead for only five months, but from what I understand, Dragonstars have died during those five months, courtesy of some of my
factionnaires
.

“I can’t replace what you lost, can’t undo what was done. But I can apologize and tell you it will never happen again. Even if something is salvageable from the lab you blew up, even if the knowledge is stored somewhere else, I promise you, the Wyvernmoons will not bother you again. Please convey my deepest regrets to your king.”

“Goddamnit, Cecily! Don’t do this!” He was across the foyer in one leap, standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at her. Pleading with her. He didn’t care what it looked like, didn’t care that he’d lost his legendary detachment, didn’t care about anything or anyone but Cecily. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lie to you.”

“That’s exactly what you meant to do. It’s why you came here, why you had sex with me, why you accepted my offer to join us.” Her voice broke. “And I played right into your hands. I fell for you, hard, and gave you everything you wanted. Access to my people, access to my compound, access to the lab. I trusted you completely. That was my fault, that I was so dazzled by your smile and the first sex of my life that I gave you carte blanche. It was a very un-queenlike thing to do.”

Behind him, he heard the front door open and close, knew that Shawn had left to give them some privacy. “I didn’t know you when I put the whole plan in motion, didn’t know how brave and honest you were going to be.”

“I know. I already told you, I don’t blame you for how this came about. If someone was doing that to my people—” She stopped, her voice giving out, and the obvious manifestation of her pain nearly shattered him. “If someone was doing that to my people, I would do everything and anything I could to stop them.”

At her words, the knot inside him relaxed a little, even as his dragon warned him that he wasn’t out of the woods yet. The thing paced right below his skin, its claws digging in a little more with every step it took. It was angry at him, too. Angry that he’d hurt its mate. Angry that he was still at the bottom of the stairs instead of pulling Cecily into his arms like both he and his beast so desperately wanted.

“Then we can still be together. If you understand why I betrayed you, then we can work this out.” He hated having to say it out loud, hated how vulnerable he felt at that moment with her standing above him, watching him with unreadable eyes. But he had to try. He had to make her see that they belonged together, even after everything that had passed between them. Maybe because of what had passed between them.

“I said I understood why you came here, why you did what you did to get into the clan. What I don’t understand is why you didn’t tell me later, after we got back to the compound. You know me—or, at least, I thought you did. You made love to me, held me, listened to me while I talked out my fears and hopes for my clan, all the time knowing you were going to betray me.

“You promised to be loyal to me, promised to help me, and instead you made me look like a fool. You let me introduce you to the
Conseil
, knowing how badly I was struggling to gain their respect, and you didn’t care how that made me look.”

She reached up, brushed a stray tear off her cheek, and he felt the pain of it deep inside himself. “But even that I could forgive. Even that I might be able to get past. I’m that pathetic, and I love you that much. But I can’t forgive the fact that you believed I was capable of this, that you thought—after knowing me, after
fucking
me—you really thought that I could kill children. That I could set a virus on your clan and sit back and watch while it annihilated you.”

Panic was a trapped animal inside him, knocking down all the barriers he’d kept between himself and the world for longer than he could remember. “It wasn’t like that, Cecily. I swear to you, I didn’t think you had done it.”

“Bullshit! Don’t lie to me anymore.” She was screaming now, tears pouring unheeded and unchecked down her face. “I can’t take it. Can’t you see how this is ripping me apart? But you know what? I refuse to take responsibility for this. You’re the one who thought I was a monster and slept with me anyway. You’re the one who planned on betraying me all along, but took my virginity anyway—an extra fuck-you to me and the Wyvernmoons. And you’re the one who came to this house and let me fall in love with you, even knowing how it was going to end. That I can’t forgive you for. I
won’t
forgive you for it. Good-bye, Logan. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”

Sorrow held him frozen in place for long seconds as she swept up the stairs and onto the landing above. But then he was running, taking the stairs three at a time in his effort to get to her, to make her understand.

“Cecily, I love you.” He grabbed on to her elbow, turned her to face him. Shook her in his desperation to make her understand. “Yes, I lied to you. Yes, I used you to get in here. Was it right? No. But when I devised the plan, I wasn’t thinking of right or wrong. I was thinking that I couldn’t stand the idea of watching one more of my people die, paralyzed, bleeding out, in pain so excruciating that nothing could help him.

“I wanted revenge.” He shrugged, afraid that he was only making things worse but unable to lie to her anymore. “I wanted to stop what was happening, needed to stop it like I hadn’t needed anything since I escaped from my clan in Ireland more than three hundred years ago. But at the same time, I wanted to make those responsible for killing my clan mates as miserable as they had made us through the years.”

He shoved a shaking hand through his hair. “I don’t know that you can understand it if you haven’t lived through it, haven’t seen it. But one of my closest friends lost his wife and daughter. Dylan MacLeod lost his sister and niece. Our healer, Quinn, lost his brother and a lover. We all lost friends. We all stood by and watched them die in the most awful way possible. Hell, yeah, I wanted revenge. I wanted it so badly I could taste it—almost as badly as I wanted to ensure that not one more Dragonstar died a victim to that goddamn virus.”

“I can understand that—”

“No, you can’t. If you haven’t seen it, if you haven’t stood by someone’s bed as they’re organs liquefied in front of you, then no, you can’t understand it. And when it happens again and again and again and there’s nothing you can do to stop it, nothing you can do to keep the people you love safe, it’s torture. I had to try to stop it. I had to come here and blow that fucking death factory to kingdom come. I had to, Cecily.”

She was trembling, her arms were wrapped around herself like they were the only thing stopping her from shaking apart. “I already told you that I don’t blame you for coming here.” She was crying so hard he could barely understand what she was saying. He wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms, but knew she wouldn’t thank him for it.

“Maybe you don’t, but I need you to understand why I did it.” He was shaking now, too, afraid that he was going to break down and cry like a total pussy. But he could feel her slipping away from him and it was killing him.
Killing
him
.

“After we’d made love, after I got here, I knew you couldn’t be behind the virus. You didn’t have it in you. But by then I cared about you so much that I couldn’t tell you. I was afraid you’d kick me out, that you wouldn’t give me a chance to explain. And I didn’t want to lose you. I couldn’t lose you, Cecily.”

“You never had me, and I sure as hell never had you. All that’s between us is lies.”

“That’s not true.” He reached up, ripped the sleeve off his shirt. “Look at these, Cecily.”

“I’ve already seen your tattoos.”

“But have you seen how they’ve shifted, changed, in the past few days? Have you seen the mating bands?” He grabbed her hand, put her fingers on his shoulder. Shuddered when he felt her cool fingers tracing the intricate black circles. There were three now, and nothing had ever felt so right. Even as his entire world was collapsing around him, the fact that she was there, touching him, touching the bands that showed that they were intrinsically linked, lit him up deep inside like nothing ever could.

She was staring at him in wonder as she slid her hand over the tattoos again and again, and he knew he wasn’t the only one who felt the joy, the astonishment, the absolute perfection of being mated.

But then she jerked away, and the absence was a physical blow. He reached for her with his mind, needing to touch her. Needing to connect. But her shields were up, so high and so tight that he knew there was no way he could get in—not even if he opened himself completely, left his mind completely undefended.

He did it anyway; he couldn’t help himself. The world outside her house crashed in on him, echoes of pain and death and fear nearly crushing him. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but showing her what was inside him.

Her eyes widened, he felt a stirring in his mind, and for a second he thought she would let him in. But then she was gone, stumbling down the hall away from him. “It doesn’t matter,” she whispered.

Desperate, frightened, furious, he went after her. Grabbed her arms and yanked her against him. Heat, shocking and powerful, leaped between them. “Tell me this doesn’t matter,” he whispered. “Tell me you don’t feel the same way I do.”

She shook her head. “Logan, don’t—”