Obsession Untamed (Feral Warriors #2)(61)

“She may be.” Hawke frowned. “You just can’t hear her anymore.”

Tighe closed his eyes, listening. He had to be able to hear her. But, except for his own turbulent thoughts, his mind was silent. And he suddenly realized that the warmth that had brushed against the inside of his skull was gone. The connection was gone.

“What happened?” But like a fist to the gut, he knew. “The binding.”

Hawke nodded, his expression bleak. “I’m afraid so. The accidental connection was probably severed when the new one between you and her was formed.”

“Except it only went one way. If I’d bound myself to her, I’d be able to hear her like I did before.”

“Yes. Probably more than before.”

The knowledge pierced him like a dozen blades. He’d intentionally cut himself off from her. In not binding himself to her, in trying to protect her, he’d sealed her fate.

Inside him the tiger spirit shook his head and let out a furious roar.

Tighe squeezed his eyes closed, fighting the tiger’s accusation. And losing.

Because he hadn’t done it for her, as he’d told her. The pain of that realization shredded his heart. He hadn’t been protecting her. He’d been protecting himself. Against a marriage he couldn’t believe would turn out any better than his first one had.

He’d protected himself. And lost the only thing in his life that mattered.

Delaney.

Chapter Twenty-two

Delaney groaned, trying to rise out of the fog that encased her brain. God, my jaw hurts. An ice-cold vise clamped around her wrist and pulled, yanking her across…

Her hip plowed into something hard, jarring her fully awake. She was in a car. In a garage.

In a shock of an instant, everything came flooding back. The clone. He’d caught her.

She grabbed hold of the door handle as the man who looked just like Tighe tried to haul her across the center console and out the driver’s side door. He’d kill her. If he got her out of the car, he’d kill her.

The clone reached in, hooking his arm around her shoulders and yanked her toward him, tearing her loose from the car door. No. She whirled toward him, jamming her finger deep into his eye socket.

A shudder of revulsion traveled from her hand all the way to the soles of her feet. His eye socket was perfectly dry. Inhumanly dry.

Her attack had no effect. He didn’t scream as any normal man would have. He didn’t even rear back. Instead, he jerked her harder, manhandling her out of the car and into the house as she kicked and fought for her life.

The moment he hauled her through the door, into a small laundry room, the smell hit. The hair rose on her arms. Decomposing bodies.

“You killed somebody here.”

“Yes. This was my first stop after I escaped. My first feeding.” Tighe’s voice washed over her, at once wonderfully familiar and terrifyingly wrong. Because the man…the thing…speaking wasn’t Tighe. “I’ll show you.” He said the last with a lilt of pride that had her stomach roiling.

“I’ve seen dead bodies before.” She struggled to keep her voice calm and even. The creature fed off fear and pain. Swallow your fear. She tried, but her skin was turning clammy, her breaths coming in tight, uneven pulls.

Pinning her against him, the clone half pushed, half carried her into the kitchen.

Dear God, dear God, dear God.

In the middle of the floor, beside a cracker-strewn high chair, was a pile of rotting corpses covered with flies. A pile. As if the despicable creature had killed them and tossed them away one by one.

Delaney looked away, swallowing desperately against the rising bile, but the image was carved into her brain. Flies crawling across the face of a small boy, his head dangling over the curve of a man’s shoulder, the rest of his body hidden by the bathrobe of a woman. A woman draped faceup over the pile, her arms spread as if even in death she tried to protect her family.

Delaney breathed through her mouth, panting between swallows. Her mind screamed at the wrongness, at the waste of life, even as hatred burned through her with the force of a wildfire.

“You sick bastard.” She stomped her heel hard onto his instep.

He jerked her around and slammed her against the wall, her head crashing into a picture frame and sending it clattering to the floor as pain crackled along her skull.

Pressing his body hard against hers, pinning her to the wall, the clone grabbed her face in his hand.

“Do you know what I’m going to do to you?” His green eyes had jagged black streaks running across them like cracks in two windshields. Streaks that hadn’t been there the last time he attacked her. Would Tighe’s look the same?

Oh, Tighe. Find me.

She spit in the clone’s face. “Go to hell.”

He didn’t bother to remove the spittle. “You’re going to scream, human. By the time I’m through with you, your vocal cords will be shredded from your screams.”

His words twisted inside her, sending her pulse spinning like a tornado. He wanted her afraid. Fight it. Fight him.

The clone gripped her face, forcing her to look at him. Oddly, his expression softened, warmth flowing into his eyes. For a heartbeat, she saw Tighe in his face. Tighe as she’d never seen him, his sunglasses off, his eyes filled with soft emotion.

But this wasn’t Tighe.

Any resemblance disappeared as cold rushed back into his eyes. His hand gripped her breast and squeezed until he brought tears to her own. His face took on an expression of deep pleasure.