Rapture Untamed (Feral Warriors #4)(59)

But how could she ever help him see that? He'd been living with that guilt for more than three hundred years.

As she lay there listening to the sound of the shower, she feared she was in danger of falling in love with him, with a moody, difficult, mercurial man. A man she knew deep in her heart would end up hurting them both.

Chapter Eighteen

The night was cool and clear, the breeze light as Jag stood beside Olivia deep in the woods, his arm tight around her shoulders. He felt the fine tension in her body as she tilted her face to the breeze, waiting for the draden. There was a sadness about her. A melancholy left from the pyre ritual. A short while ago, in the ritual room beneath Feral House, they'd sent Niall's spirit off in a blaze of mystic fire.

But his jealousy was gone, lost in their lovemaking and the knowledge that she'd feared for him as much as he had for her.

She'd pulled her bright hair back and secured it in a casual knot, leaving her lovely features drenched in moonlight. Gazing down at her, his chest ached.

"I feel them," she said softly, looking up to meet his gaze with warm eyes alight with hunger and excitement. "Dozens of them. Maybe more."

A tendril of fear skated down his spine at the thought of her attacked by so many draden. He'd feel better if they were hunting with the other Ferals upriver, but of course the others couldn't know what Olivia could do. What she was.

"Liv, I'm not sure about this."

Pamela Palmer Rapture Untamed

"I am. I'm starving, Jag. I'll be fine."

"The Hummer's just through those trees if you need it. It's unlocked."

She lifted up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. "Thanks for worrying about me." Her words were soft, but no less heartfelt for their quietness.

Her arms went around his waist, and she pressed her cheek against his bare chest as he pulled her close. He'd stripped down as soon as they got out here, ready to shift when the moment came.

They stood like that, locked in one another's arms, until he saw the dark blotch against the night sky that never went completely dark thanks to the light pollution of nearby D.C.

"They're here, Red." He kissed her hair. "Be careful."

"You, too. If I start draining you, move away."

"You can feed from me even in my animal?"

Pamela Palmer Rapture Untamed

"I'm almost positive. I've fed off creatures before when there were no people or draden around."

They pulled apart and he shifted into his full-sized jaguar, watching with cat eyes as she pulled two six-inch knives from inside her ripped leather jacket.

The cloud grew closer, not as big as some he'd seen lately, but a good-sized swarm, nonetheless.

His gaze went back to Olivia, and he saw the quick trace of fear that tightened her features.

What's the matter?he asked sharply. She'd sounded so sure she could handle this.

"Nothing."

You're afraid.

She glanced at him with surprise. "No. I've done this a thousand times."

You've never done this. You've never taken on a swarm this size, have you?

Pamela Palmer Rapture Untamed

"Once." A small tremor went through her. "The night my mother died. The night I was turned. I don't know how many there were, in truth, but it seemed like thousands."

He heard the pain in her voice, a pain so old, yet living inside her as sharp as if it had just happened. Some things you never forgot. He knew that all too well.

I'm sorry, Liv. Sorry you had to go through that.

She nodded, her face turned toward the approaching draden cloud. "Life is what it is, Jag. You choose to deal with it, or you don't, but it is what it is."

Her words pricked at him. He dealt with it just fine.

As Jag watched with gut-wrenching dread, the swarm descended on her. Without hesitation, he attacked, snapping his cat's jaws around draden after draden, sucking their tasteless hearts down his throat, destroying them in puff after puff of smoke.

Olivia could have simply stood still, sucking the life from the mass around her, but she didn't. With fascination, he watched her fight them, digging out their hearts with her knives. She was magnificent, twisting and stabbing, moving with a dancer's grace as if she'd choreographed the fight, the moon glowing on her vibrant hair.

Those draden foolish enough to bite her died almost instantly. Those close by lasted only a little longer. She was a far-more-effective draden-killing machine than the Ferals.

Lyon would be ecstatic if he could see her.

If he didn't kill her first.

"Jag, I can feel them." She glanced at him with eyes as filled with excitement as her voice. "I can feel each one as a distinctive life force. This has never happened before."

A draden high above her head turned into a puff of smoke. Then another, a draden she'd touched with neither hand nor knife.

"Jag." The excitement lit her face, turning her impossibly beautiful. "I can target them!"

She pointed her knife at the group rushing toward her, filling in for those who'd already died. Like a conductor marking beats, she flicked her wrist, pointing at each, one by one.

One, two, three, four.

Puff, puff, puff, puff.

"I feel like I was blind and can suddenly see." She grinned at him, the smile illuminating her face. A fist contracted around his heart even as his chest swelled and swelled and swelled.