Magic Rises (34 page)

“So this is what it’s about? This is your mature response—to go off into the mountains rather than talking about it and have s’mores with a gnome and a mountain man.”

“Yep.”

“What’s your plan for tomorrow? Brunch with a unicorn?”

“As long as it doesn’t involve you, it’s fine with me.”

“So really? That’s it, just like that.” Curran turned around. “Wait a minute. Where is Hugh? Shouldn’t he be flexing for you?”

“I’m surprised you noticed.”

He squeezed his hands into fists. I picked up a grapefruit-sized rock and handed it to him. It went flying. Home run, Beast Lord style.

“I noticed. I just can’t do anything about it.”

“You know what the difference is? Hugh can stand there and flex all he wants. I can’t control what he does. I can control what I do and I don’t encourage him. You let her parade in front of you naked. You told me you had no interest in her and then you invited her to sit at the table in my chair. You went on a little rendezvous with her where you explained how you were lonely and cried about all the sacrifices you made by being with me.”

His eyes sparked with gold. “You. That was you on the balcony.”

“You spend every waking moment with her, while I get told endlessly that nobody has to answer any of my questions, because I’m clearly on my way out and she’s on her way in and since we’re not married, I’m easy to replace.”

“You want to get married? I’ll marry you right now. Is the gnome a preacher, because I’ll do it.”

“That’s a hell of a proposal.”

“What did he say?” Astamur asked.

“He wants me to marry him.”

Astamur relayed it. Atsany waved his pipe and Astamur translated back. Ha!

“What?” Curran snarled.

“Atsany says you’re not ready for marriage. You don’t have the right temperament for it.”

Curran struggled with that for a second.

“Let me know if your head’s going to explode, so I can duck.”

“We’re not married because every time I bring up marriage or children, you freak the hell out.”

“I don’t!”

“Three weeks ago I asked you if you wanted to have kids. You looked like you were ready to bolt.”

“I had just come from watching a child go loup for hours while trying to comfort her mother.” I waved my arms. “You know what, you’re right. Let’s have kids. Let’s have a brood of them. And when my asshole father comes through Atlanta burning it to the ground, we’ll both cry together as they die. Or worse, maybe our kids will be human.” I put my hand on my chest. “Heaven forbid.”

“Really? Human? What am I?” he snarled.

Ouch. “You’re a special snowflake, that’s what you are.” I mimicked Lorelei. “But they can never join you on a hunt. What torture . . .”

He stepped forward. “We’ve been together a year. How many times have you seen me hunt?”

Umm.

“How many times, Kate?”

“None.”

“That’s because I don’t hunt. I’m a male lion. I weigh six hundred pounds. Do you really expect me to scamper through the brush after deer? When I want a steak, I want a damn steak. I don’t want to chase it around the woods for two hours and then eat it raw. I have food brought to me, and the only time I get off my ass is when something threatens the Pack. I’ve been on exactly one hunt in the last three years. I went because I had to go, and once they ran off, I found a nice warm rock and had myself a nap in the sun. Do you know when the last time I really had to hunt to survive was? After my parents died. Until Mahon found me half-starved.”

I stared at him.

“Hunting together is something young werewolves do when they’re trying to learn how to work in a team. Most shapeshifters don’t cavort around in the woods, unless the urge to kill something strikes them. Do you have any idea how hard it is to actually catch a deer on foot? There is a reason why humans are the most successful predators on the damn planet. Lorelei doesn’t know this, because she’s young and naive and she has never been outside her uncle’s wolf pack. She never had to survive weeks in the forest, eating worms, mice, grasshoppers, and whatever other shit she could catch because she’s starving and desperate. She thinks every pack in the world follows the same pattern, but you know me. You know better. Or you should.”

I opened my mouth.

“I’m not done. Hugh understands this. He made that farce of a hunt because he gets off on making us run through the woods, fetching meat for him like we’re subhuman, like we’re his dogs, and then when we bring it back, he gives the one who debases himself the most a treat. If I didn’t have to keep Desandra breathing, I wouldn’t have gone. I just want to know, is that what you think of me? Am I a fucking dog to you?”

“No, you’re the man I love and who is supposed to love me back. Instead, you spend all your time with another woman. Apparently you pulled the plug on us and forgot to forward me the memo.”

“Am I with her now?”

“Where were you this morning when I went to speak with the packs?”

His eyes told me I’d hit home. It hurt. “Don’t bother to answer. I always thought that if you decided we weren’t working out, at the very least you would have the decency to tell me up front.”

“I’m thirty-two years old,” he said. “Women have thrown themselves at me since I was fifteen. Do you honestly think that Lorelei has anything I haven’t seen before?”

“She has the Wilson name.”

“And she can stick it up her ass for all the good it will do her. I don’t need to ally myself with Ice Fury. They’re four thousand miles away. What the hell would I do with them?”

He did have a point, but I was too mad to admit it. “Whatever.”

“Not only that, but if I wanted that pack, I would go to Alaska and take it from Wilson, and I would take everything in between me and him. I don’t need Lorelei. And even if I did, what does she have, Kate? She isn’t an alpha; she has no concept of leadership or obligations. She isn’t her father, and she doesn’t get to claim his accomplishments as her own because he happens to be her dad.”

I was suddenly so tired. “So let’s review: she didn’t impress you with her personality and brain, she has no strategic value, and you don’t really want to get into her pants.”

“Yes.”

“So why are you spending all of your time with her? What you are doing looks like a betrayal. A public, obvious betrayal. I know you understand all of this.”

He looked at me, his jaw set.

I sat on a rock. “Anytime.”

Curran sighed. “There is a contract on your life.”

I slumped forward, resting my face on my hands. No, he wouldn’t . . .

“The pirate attack was targeted—someone hired them specifically to kill you. They had your description: dark hair, sword, and so on. The pirate described a man who looks a lot like that asshole who hangs out with Kral, Renok. He said the man had a Romanian accent. They were paid in euros. Thirty thousand, which is a lot of money. Jarek isn’t about to drop thirty grand on getting you killed. He likes to do that sort of work himself.”

Why me . . . ?

“The euro notes are numbered. The first letter of the serial number on the money denotes the country. After we disembarked, Saiman took the pirate back to his people in exchange for looking at the money. It was printed in Belgium. That meant that Lorelei and Jarek Kral made some sort of deal.”

I just looked at him.

“Lorelei arrived here with three of her uncle’s people for an escort. I bribed one of them—they don’t like her all that much—and she said that Lorelei and Jarek Kral had signed a contract. She didn’t know the exact terms, but it involves Lorelei becoming alpha of the Pack and spells out your death. Lorelei did this because she’s a naive child and she actually thinks things in the real world work like that. Jarek Kral did it because he’s likely planning to either blackmail her with it or use it to his advantage in some other way. Either case, if I can get my hands on the contract, it will bite him in the ass, because it will give me proof that he plotted to murder my wife. I can legitimately kill him.”

You’ve got to be kidding me. “I’m not your wife.”

“I couldn’t fight the war on two fronts,” Curran said. “Something was attacking Desandra, and with everything concentrated on keeping her safe, I couldn’t gamble with your life. I didn’t want someone to shoot you or a giant rock to fall on your head. I couldn’t be there with you because they kept me busy. I was locked into choosing between getting panacea for the Pack or keeping you alive. So I became interested in Lorelei, because if they thought I was nibbling their bait, there was no reason to kill you and risk turning you into a martyr. I’ve been taking her on long walks where nobody would see us, while Saiman’s been walking around the castle pretending to be her, trying to find the contract and find someone who knows something about it.”

“Saiman’s in the castle?”

“He’s been in castle the entire time except for the first night. I walked him in as Mahon the morning after the first dinner.”

I knew the answer, but I asked anyway. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you can’t lie, Kate. Everything you think is right there on your face. I’ve met kindergarteners who are better actors than you. I needed you to look jealous and worried, and I needed it to be genuine, so they would dismiss you as a possible target. The entire plan hinged on it.”

Aha. “That’s some plan.”

“It was a good plan. I thought of it and I executed it, and it was going along fine until you decided to go off into the mountains.”

I hid my face in my hands.

“Kate?” he asked.

I should have been angry and screaming, but I just felt tired and hollow.

“Kate?” he repeated. “Are you okay?”

I looked at him. “No.”

He waited.

“You put me through hell because you think I’m a bad liar.” My voice was completely flat. I couldn’t scrape together enough feelings for anything else.

“That’s not what it is.”

“Yes, it is,” I said quietly. “Curran, think about it for a minute. My life is in danger and you don’t trust me enough to tell me about it. You have no idea how bad you made me feel.”

“I was trying to keep you alive. Even if it meant we couldn’t be together. Even if it meant watching Hugh making circles around you like a fucking shark. You don’t trust me either, Kate. All the shit we’ve been through should’ve bought me some time, but you believed I lost my head over some girl after three days.”

I didn’t even hurt anymore. I just felt this empty dry sadness. “And that’s exactly the problem.”

“Kate?” He crouched by me, one knee on the ground, and leaned forward to look at my face. “Baby? Punch me or something.”

I struggled to sort everything into words. It didn’t work. I just shut down like an overloaded circuit.

“Talk to me.”

Some sort of words finally came out. “Where can we even go from here . . .”

“I don’t want to go anywhere. I love you. You love me. We’re together. We’re a team.”

Suddenly my emotions sorted themselves out and anger finally ran to the front of the pack. “No, we’re not a team. You made me a patsy in your scheme. You treated me like I’m an idiot. I thought about hurting her. I thought about hurting you.”

“You wouldn’t hurt her. She’s weaker than you.”

“You’re an arrogant bastard.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “You got more?”

“Yes. You’re a smug asshole.”

“Yes, I am.” He motioned at me. “Don’t hold back. Tell me how you really feel.”

I punched him in the jaw. It was a good solid hook.

Curran shook his head. “I deserved that. Are we okay?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“You still don’t get it. Hugh is playing me. He thinks I’m gullible and naive, and he thinks he can run circles around me. And you, you did the exact same thing. I trusted you and you used it against me. You led me around like I was blind. We’re not okay.”

“What are you saying?” He was looking up at me. I saw something odd in his gray eyes and realized it was desperation.

“I’m really mad at you, Curran. This isn’t one of those fights where we both lose our temper, spar, talk, and we’re okay. This is my line in the sand. I don’t know if I can roll with this punch.”

“So this is it?”

“I’m trying to decide.”

I trusted him and he broke that trust, and while I could think around it, I couldn’t feel my way past it. It felt like he came up to give me a hug and slid a knife between my ribs.

Curran unlocked his teeth. “I did the only thing I could do. Everything I’ve done and everything I’ve said was to keep you alive. I’m sorry I made you go through it, but if I had to do it over, I would do it again. Even if that means you’ll leave with Hugh tomorrow. You being safe is more important to me than having you. I love you.”

I loved him, too. Inside me a small voice told me that in his place I would’ve done the same thing, no matter the fallout I had to endure at the end. Having him alive and mad at me was infinitely better than having him dead. But loving someone and being with him were two different things.

“If your father walked out of the darkness right now and said, ‘Come with me, or everyone here will die,’ you would go with him,” Curran said. “Knowing that I would fight for you with everything I’ve got, you would walk away. You would leave me a note that said I shouldn’t look for you, because you would want to protect me.”

There was no point in lying. “Yes.”

“That’s my line in the sand,” he said. “Would you still walk away?”

“Yes.” If his life were on the line, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

“Even if I leave you because of it?”

“Yes.”

He spread his arms.

“I can’t change who I am,” I told him. “Neither can you. I get it.”

“I love you and you love me, and we’re both too fucked up for anyone else. Who else would have us?”

I sighed. “Well, clearly we’re both crazy and this relationship is doomed.”

“I love you so much,” he said. “Please don’t leave me.”

He leaned forward. I knew he would kiss me a moment before he did, and I realized I wanted it. I remembered him holding me. I remembered him risking himself against impossible odds for me. I made him laugh, I told him things that would make most normal men run screaming, things I spent all my life keeping secret, and I drove him to the point of near-blinding rage. In my darkest moments, when everything was crashing down around me, he told me everything would be okay. The taste of him, the feel of his lips as his mouth covered mine, the way he made the world fade, as if kissing me were the only thing that existed in his life, pulled me right back through time, before the castle, before Hugh, and before Lorelei. Curran was mine. If my life were on the line, he would do it again, and I would be mad at him again. And if the reverse ever happened, he would rage and roar, and I would tell him that I loved him and that I would fight to the death to keep him breathing.