She was wrong.
“You and Keira…you were…lovers?”
“You and I were lovers.” The words snapped from him.
She flinched.
And he remembered the way she’d run away with the human. The doctor. While Alerac had been bleeding, she’d fled with Heath. Their hands had locked. She’d gone to that rundown building seeking the doctor.
With her memories gone, had Keira turned to another? To that bastard?
His claws burst from his fingertips. “Were you with him?”
She jumped away from that wall. Moved so fast. Vampire fast. And in the next instant, she had half the room between them.
He tried to leash his beast, but the possessive fury filling him was too strong to fight. “Your doctor,” he gritted out. “The man who left you during that vampire attack. Were you with him?”
Her eyes were wide. “If I say yes, what happens?”
Fuck, f**k, f**k!
He whirled for the door.
She grabbed him. Forced him back toward her. “I wasn’t with him.”
He couldn’t see past the fury of the beast.
“I wasn’t, okay? And even if I had been…”
His gaze fixed on her face.
“Why does it matter so much to you? I was here for six months.” Her words broke at the end. “My face was splashed in the paper. I was on the news. A lost woman with no memory.” She licked her lips. “No one came for me. I didn’t matter to anyone.”
Lie.
“You matter more than you know.” But he couldn’t talk to her any more. Couldn’t stand there and inhale her scent. She’d wanted him when they kissed. He’d caught the sweet smell of her desire.
No, he couldn’t stand there, not with his beast so close to the surface. That was why he’d turned for the door.
Why he had to leave.
To protect her, while he still could.
“Don’t try to leave the room. My pack is guarding you, and they won’t let you go.” He pulled from her. Spun around and grabbed the door knob.
“Your eyes…”
That whisper stopped him.
“They always glow. The other wolves—after they transformed—the glow in their eyes faded.”
He nearly smashed the door knob in that instant. “I’m not like the others.” His glow never faded. It couldn’t.
Lorcan had cut out his human eyes. It had taken a very long time for the beast to regenerate new eyes for him. When those eyes had finally come back…
Not the eyes of a man.
And they never would be.
Just as he would never be a man.
He yanked open the door. Then Alerac walked into the sun, leaving his vampire behind before he lost all control.
***
Tracking the traitorous vampires was easy enough. They’d left plenty of blood in their wake.
As the sun rose, Lorcan knew that those bastards would be seeking shelter. Unlike him, they weren’t at full power during the light.
But they didn’t know his secrets. He’d been trading in magic—and even in science—for centuries. He knew that he was destined to become the most powerful vampire to ever walk the earth.
Soon, with the right mix of blood coursing through his veins, he would be unstoppable.
Lorcan approached the house alone. He didn’t need an army. He could fight this battle on his own.
When he reached the door, he knocked lightly.
And then some fool actually just swung the door open.
Lorcan smiled at him. Inhaled. A human. One who carried a familiar scent. Jane. Only that wasn’t her real name. To him, she would always be Keira. “You’ve made a mistake,” he said to the blond human.
The vampires in that house rushed toward him. Attacking with claws and fangs.
Lorcan shoved the human aside. He would deal with him very, very soon.
He slashed out with his own claws. Took the head of one vampire. Disemboweled another. Drained a third. The blood flowed and screams filled the air.
The human tried to run.
Foolish, foolish human.
Lorcan followed him outside and slammed the human back against a tree.
“Y-you should be weak,” the human whimpered.
“Should I?”
“J-Jane was weak in the sun.”
His eyes narrowed. “Who are you, human?” He lifted him up and rammed his head into the tree once more.
“D-doctor Heath Myers.”
A doctor. Hmm. “Jane’s doctor.” The name was familiar to him. Because he’d had eyes on Jane. On those close to her.
I should have been watching this one more closely.
Lorcan dropped the human.
“You killed them all,” Heath’s voice was hoarse. He started to wretch on the ground.
A sigh broke from Lorcan. “You’re about to join them. You aligned yourself with the wrong vampires.”
Heath swiped his hand over his mouth. “I didn’t even know I was aligning with vamps,” he muttered. “Thought it was…someone else…until tonight.”
Curious now, Lorcan bent next to the man. His eyes narrowed on the human’s face. “Let’s just see what you thought.” And he sank his teeth into the man’s throat while Heath Myers screamed.
If you wanted to look at a human’s past, all a vamp had to do was take a bite.
***
Darkness. It was always the same when she slept. Jane instantly sank into a thick suffocating darkness.
She was trapped. Her wrists shackled. Her ankles bound. The darkness was complete and consuming.
She cried out, screaming again and again, but soon her voice was gone. Gasps were all that could escape from her throat.
Her voice was broken.
She was lost.
There was only the darkness.
Tears leaked down her cheeks. She knew that she’d been left in the darkness. Forgotten. There was no rescue. No hope.
There was nothing.
“Jane.” The voice, it was new. Voices never entered her dreams.
Yet she heard a man’s voice. Low. Rumbling. Demanding.
She tried to see the man in the darkness.
He’s not there. A taunt, from within. She was alone. That was the way that she would always be.
“Jane, open your eyes.”
She could feel him, touching her cheeks. As if he were wiping away tears. She knew that she cried. The darkness made her cry. No, it was the hopelessness that did that.
Slightly rough fingertips brushed her cheeks once more.
Why could she feel him, but not see him?
“A rúnsearc,” his rumble continued, and the language—did she know it? Yes. It seemed familiar, just as his voice seemed familiar, but the memory was just out of reach.