The Darkness in Dreams (Enforcer's Legacy, #1)(39)
“I can’t trust her.”
“You haven’t tried.”
“She’s too much like Gemma.”
“Different girl,” Arsen said. “Different life.”
“She’s stubborn, difficult. Completely unreasonable.”
“And now you’re just looking for excuses.”
“For what?”
“To keep hating her.”
The distant figure disappeared into the growing mist.
CHAPTER 16
Twenty minutes later, Christan lay prone on the rock. He’d been unsettled after his talk with Arsen and the rock was his favorite place to meditate. His massive bulk was relaxed, yet every nerve alert. He was most at home as a predator. He could think more clearly, without the distraction of human emotion, and while most warriors would shift for a few hours, he could remain in an alternative form for an entire day.
When Christan did shift, it was into any animal he desired. But he preferred the big cat known as the puma—the American panther. The size he utilized was larger than the natural species; his five-foot body was currently sprawled across the boulder, while the long tail, tipped in dark brown, extended another three feet. His eyes remained obsidian but surrounded with gold, distinctly cat-like. His body was the color of the dusk, his stillness the calculation of the hunter.
And he watched her.
She didn’t see him, but she suspected he was there. The closer she got to his position the more frequently she stopped, glanced carefully around, and then bent to press both hands into the ground. If she sensed anything at all, it would seem like the normal environment. Christan was masking his energy, from both friend and foe alike. But it was foolish to be out at dusk—surely Arsen had warned of the dangers. And yet here she was, stubbornly jogging alone.
It irritated him.
But this woman had always been stubborn, in every lifetime. He growled deep in his throat while the tip of his tail flicked. When she’d been Gaia she took life as it came; she’d been straightforward and honest, accepting the life that he lived. It was only through the next lifetimes that she began to mistrust who he was.
Christan understood the essential difference; during that first life, humans believed in the unseen powers affecting the direction of their lives. But the human world changed with each century until gods and their magic were feared. Christan kept his secrets and he was not the only one; no warrior risked telling the lovers the truth. But perhaps none had experienced the disastrous results that he had.
An image came to mind of when she’d been Gemma. He saw the same winter light in her hair. Remembered the way her body had been silhouetted by the firelight. The thin cotton shift that flowed when she walked, barefoot, across the red-tiled floor.
Christan hadn’t told her he was leaving—hadn’t wanted the fight. He’d been gone so much as it was, fulfilling the terms of the Agreement used against him by a vengeful Calata. Instead he’d taken her by the hand, tugged her into a chapel scented with incense and candle wax, and married her before a warrior priest who knew how to keep secrets. He’d made love to her on a bed with white linens, and in that dark hour before dawn, he’d walked silently out the door. When she woke, he had been gone.
He’d believed marriage would be enough. He wanted to bind her to him, let her know she was his. He had miscalculated. Monumentally.
Christan shifted his weight, stretched his paws forward and felt the claws extend. When he drew them back they scored the surface of the rock, scattered the rusty pine needles that collected in the crevices. Even in predator form he realized how harsh he’d been in Gemma’s lifetime, leaving her that way. He’d been harsh again, when he entered Lexi’s mind two weeks ago and dug into her memories. Harsh when he dealt with the man who killed her cat—so harsh even Phillipe had commented, and the immortal could be more brutal than the Enforcers. Arsen said he wasn’t giving her a chance. That he looked for reasons to hate her.
Perhaps he did.
But there was still no fucking way he would ever need her. Not the way he’d needed her all those centuries ago and she’d walked away. He’d severed the connection, knew she had, too, after she’d pushed that one word back into his head. They’d both spent centuries fighting over something they never really possessed beyond that first life.
The evening grew quiet. Christan watched as she straightened and stretched out her back. He stood slowly and shifted his weight forward. With a sinuous, lethal movement he disappeared into the shadows of dusk.
Lexi jogged up the slight incline. The sun had dropped below the horizon and she paused, glanced around at the mix of shadows beside the path, then stared deep into the sparse undergrowth beneath the pines. On instinct, she crouched down and pressed her palms to the warm earth. Small animals were scurrying for cover. Somewhere in the distance a large predator was on the prowl, dangerous after sundown. Arsen had warned her, said she’d need an escort when she ran—in daylight as well as the evening. But tonight, everyone was busy and she’d been unaccountably restless; she took the risk to go on her own.
She was at the top of the ridge where the path branched off in two directions, one leading around the lake while the other turned back toward the lodge. Lexi was in the mood for the longer run, but abruptly, an animal leapt down from one of the large boulders lining the trail. The predator was half-hidden in the purple light, and with three slow steps he blocked the path.