In an instant, Jamie had his friend against the wall, and his claws were out. “Don’t.” There were some lines that he wouldn’t even let Sean cross.
“Don’t what?” Sean demanded, not backing down at all. “I trusted you. I gave you my loyalty, my life. Latham’s a twisted freak, but he managed to walk the thin sanity line until he met her. Your brother couldn’t have her, and he went batshit. If she wasn’t his, then she was nobody’s. He locked her up and—”
Jamie’s fist and claws drove into the wall as his fury erupted. “He was always batshit! I saw it from the moment he came to the pack. He’d get off on torturing the weak. Hell, he almost killed you when you were only six.” But Jamie had stopped him. He’d always had to stop him. Story of my life. “You don’t remember, but I do. How the hell do you think you became an orphan? He was the one to kill your parents. He was the one who came after you. I told my father. I told him, but no one would believe me. Why would a wolf attack his own kind?”
Sean stared at him with stunned eyes.
“Because he’s a demented psychopath,” Jamie said, answering his own question as he yanked his claws out of the wall and stepped back. “And I am nothing like him.” He turned away from Sean and glanced over at the bed.
Iona’s eyes were open. She was sitting up in bed. Staring at him. Shit.
“You want her just as much as he does,” Sean said from behind him, but the werewolf’s voice shook with pain and sorrow.
I shouldn’t have told him like that. Sean deserved better. To him, Sean was his brother, not Latham.
“Remember your big plan?” Sean said and now he was getting angry. So Jamie wasn’t really surprised when the guy said—right in front of Iona—that, “Part of that plan was that I’d let Latham find me. I’d offer him a deal. Tell him that you’d trade her for peace.”
Jamie’s eyes were on Iona. “That was just a lie to bring him out. To get him to face me. I wasn’t going to make a deal.” I wouldn’t trade you. He’d thought to defeat Latham, not to actually give Iona to the bastard.
She just stared back at him. He couldn’t read a single emotion on her face or in her eyes.
“I held up my part of the agreement,” Sean snapped. “I went to him. Found him while he was torturing some human named Greg. I told Latham, and now he’s coming to meet you. Latham sent me to deliver a message. He wants you and the vamp to meet him at her old compound, at midnight.”
The plan had been to draw out Latham. To force him to face-off against Jamie. Only…Jamie had planned to be riding high off the rush that came from Iona’s powerful blood. Finally, a fair fight between the brothers. He’d planned to drink and drink from her.
Then use her to distract his brother so that he could go in for the kill.
I can’t. Because what if he was wrong? What if he wasn’t strong enough? And if Latham got to Iona…
Iona cut her gaze to Sean. She studied him a moment, then gave a curt nod. “We meet at midnight.”
No. Jamie hurried toward her. He leaned over the bed and had to fight to keep his hands off Iona. Don’t touch her when your claws are out. You can hurt her. “I’ll go after him myself. You don’t need—”
“I was supposed to be the instrument of your vengeance.” She pushed from the bed. Walked right by him. “And now you don’t want to use me?”
The blood memories. So she had gotten them all while she slept. No more hiding. His shoulders stiffened. “You know.”
Her burning gaze touched on him and said that she did.
“Good,” he told her and meant it. “Because I don’t want any more lies or secrets between us. I was an idiot then. I didn’t know you, and I thought—I thought who you were didn’t matter.” But she’d gotten under his skin. Into his very blood and soul. “You matter,” he said, the words too simple.
A furrow appeared between her eyes. “You expect me to believe—”
He hated that he had an avid audience watching his every word. Jeez, could Sean not give them some privacy for an instant? “I expect you to believe that I was an idiot. I was bent only on getting my own justice, and I didn’t realize the cost to you.”
Her breath seemed to come faster. Her eyes blazed. “You tied us together. For me to live, I’ll have to keep taking your blood.”
Shame burned through him. “I’m sorry, I—”
She waved away his apology with an angry swipe of her hand. “And you think I’d just let you waltz out there and face Latham alone? If he kills you, I’m dead, too.”
He realized the enormity of just what he’d done to her. Like an apology was gonna cut it. “I don’t plan on dying. I’ll kill him, and when this is over…”
“What? We’ll stay together, because you’ve bound us?”
He shook his head. “I’ll give you as much blood as you need, anytime you want it. You don’t have to stay with me. You can…” He stopped and cleared his throat. I want her with me. But he wanted her happiness more. “You can go anywhere you want,” Jamie forced himself to say, “do anything you want, and I’ll make sure the blood is always sent to you.” He’d be her personal donor, for as long as she wanted.
Forever.
She closed in on him and put her hand on his chest. Right over the heart that just seemed to beat only for her now. “And what about you? If you don’t get my blood, you won’t be the all powerful werewolf that you so desperately want to be.”
“He also won’t live forever without your blood,” Sean pointed out as he crept closer to them. His voice was controlled now, but Jamie knew the control was an act. I’m sorry, Sean. He’d kept the secret about Sean’s parents for too long. But if he’d told Sean the truth back then, the guy would have gone after Latham.
And gotten killed.
Sean was just a foot away now. Shoulders up. Head back. Eyes too determined. “All my research showed—”
Iona’s head jerked toward him. “Research? What research?”
Sean’s face reddened. “There’s…ah…a few mated werewolf and vampire couples these days. When they share blood, they stop aging. We even found one couple that had been together for seventy years, and the werewolf doesn’t look a day over twenty-five.”