Desire Untamed (Feral Warriors #1)(3)

A spark lit his mind, a connection formed that could not be severed. Relief surged through his brain.

He'd found her.

His nose high in the air, he let out another fierce roar and shifted back into his human form. Around him, his fellow warriors watched, their eyes glowing with the feral light of the animals they'd shift into once they got their Radiant ascended.

"Did you find her?" Vhyper asked.

Lyon grabbed his jeans and pulled them on while the knowledge from his beast's senses flowed into his brain. "West. Beyond the Blue Ridge. Beyond the Mississippi."

Vhyper grunted. "How did she get all the way out there?"

"Beats the hell out of me."

"You'll take someone with you?" Tighe asked.

"No." Lyon shook his head once. "I go alone."

Vhyper frowned. "I wonder if she even knows what the mark means."

Jag laughed, an ugly sound. "If she doesn't, our little Radiant is in for one hell of a surprise."

For once, Lyon had to agree

Kara MacAllister paced the floor of her mother's blue-sprigged bedroom, frustration and grief shredding her insides as rain slashed at the windows.

"Kara, honey." Her mom's words sounded pained and slurred as she eased out of another drug-induced nap. "Why don't you hire a nurse?" The same question every day.

"No nurse, Mom." Kara's heart shriveled as she met her mother's pain-filled gaze. Propped up on thick pillows stuffed into white, lace-trimmed pillowcases, her mother looked twenty years older than she had just a few months ago. Her once-full cheeks lay sunken in pools of skin, the pasty gray of the terminally ill. The doctors had opened her up to remove a tumor on her left lung only to close her back up and send her home to die. A few weeks, they'd said. Maybe a month. That was two weeks ago.

It felt like two lifetimes.

"But your job, honey. You'll lose your job."

Kara squeezed her mother's thin hand. "It's okay, Mom. I found someone to cover my class until I get back." If she went back. For nine years, ever since high school, she'd been content to stay in tiny Spearsville, Missouri, to share the old farmhouse with her mom and teach preschool in the basement of the local church. Maybe it wasn't the most exciting life, but her mom had begged her to stay, and she'd been okay with it. Even happy.

Until three months ago. Two days after Christmas, she'd woken up a frustrated bundle of restlessness as if overnight she'd developed a chronic, severe case of PMS. Everything annoyed her all of a sudden. Her boyfriend, her friends, her life, even the preschoolers she adored. She'd felt as if she needed something, but didn't have a clue what.

The only thing she knew for certain was that her mother's dying wasn't it.

Her mom squeezed her hand, her grip weaker even than yesterday. "I want you to… have fun, honey. Not watch me die."

Fun. As if she could possibly enjoy herself doing anything under these circumstances. Kara leaned down and kissed a fragile cheek. "I love you, Mom. I'm right where I want to be." For now.

Her mother was all the family she had, all the family she'd ever had, and her cancer was killing them both. If only Kara could share with her a bit of her own remarkable health. It was so unfair. Kara was never sick. And her mom lay dying.

She rose, unable to remain still a moment longer. "I'm going to heat some soup and make a batch of blueberry muffins. After dinner we can watch a movie. How's that?"

"Lovely."

On her way out of the room, Kara reached for the television on the dresser and flipped on the local news. Glancing back, she caught her mother's sad smile twisting in pain.

It wasn't fair. She slammed the heel of her fist against the blue-painted wall as she started down the stairs. Her mom didn't deserve this. She didn't deserve this.

Kara blinked back the film of moisture that suddenly clouded her eyes. In a few weeks' time, she'd be all alone. Orphaned.

Could you call it orphaned at twenty-seven?

The sun had set while Kara was upstairs, and the main level of the old farmhouse was shadowed with dusk. But she'd grown up in this house, lived here all her life, and could find her way blindfolded.

She slipped into the dark kitchen… and froze.

Silhouetted against the thin gray light coming through the back window was the dark form of a man inside the house.

Her heart rushed to her throat. Her stomach buckled beneath the slam of fear even as her logical mind screeched, It's just a neighbor. But when she flipped the light switch, the sight that met her gaze beneath the fluorescent strips did nothing to dispel her terror.

He was huge, well over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and thick, bulging biceps. Tawny hair hung in waves to his shoulders, framing a hard face and cold amber-colored eyes. With his dress pants and expensive-looking shirt, he could never pass as one of the local farmers even if she hadn't known everyone within a ten-mile radius of town. This man was a total, and frightening, stranger.

"What do you want?" Her words came out breathy, forced around the constriction in her throat.

Her mind screamed, Run! But she couldn't. Not with her mother upstairs and helpless. Heart thundering, she gathered every last scrap of her courage, rose to her full five-foot-five, and lifted her chin.

"Get out of my house."