Denial ripped across his face, his gorge rising at the very thought of it. He wasn’t stupid, he knew what she said was true. She had to have fed him her blood for him to still be alive. His hatred hardened, grew, reached out and overwhelmed him completely. “When I heal I’m going to kill you,” he promised; his voice low and guttural.
“By the time you heal enough to try it will be a moot point, little doggie,” she laughed, standing and scooping up her documents. “Seeing as you’re not going to sleep anytime soon, I’ll finish my work elsewhere. You’re distracting me.” She headed further into the back of the room, disappearing through a door he hadn’t noticed before.
Dayton cursed loudly, furious at his helplessness and the way she laughed at him. Her cryptic comments crashed through him and he tried hard to work out what she meant by them. Was she leaving the area? Everyone already thought she had. She was obviously working on something judging from the documents she was poring over. Was she tidying up last minute details to do with her finances before she vanished completely?
The thought of her escaping without punishment was a knife to his heart. He knew he didn’t stand a hope in hell of actually killing her but if he could at least hear her scream once before he died, it would be worth it. He ignored the fact that she had healed him, saved his life. To do so, she had forced her blood inside him, tainted him even more than she already had. He had no desire to thank her for that, only to curse her even more.
It went against all his natural instincts for self preservation but he lay back down and closed his eyes. One thing Freya Eriksson was right about. He did need to sleep to heal faster. And the faster he healed the quicker he would be able to end this war with the stunningly beautiful vampire who had shredded his heart in a way no one else ever could.
Freya leaned against the closed door, listening intently until she heard the sound of Dayton’s deep slow breathing, signalling he was once more asleep. She had mixed a clear sleeping potion into his water, something that was practically undetectable. She had known the wolf wouldn’t have voluntarily slept once he knew he was helpless before her and he needed the rest so his body could repair itself.
She re-entered the room and walked to the sofa, standing over the sleeping man. The hate was gone from his expression though his mouth was tight with the strain of the damage done to his body even as he slept. He looked so helpless, so vulnerable that she couldn’t resist reaching down and touching the long streak of silver that marred the perfection of his thick brown hair.
What must it feel like to love so deeply, to care so much for another living being that a person’s hair lost all colour at their passing? She loved Nors so much, Ashleigh and Liam too, but would their loss cause her hair to turn silver, her heart to break so badly that decades later it was still shattered in a million pieces?
She wanted to be able to understand this man, this proud wolf who raged against the injustice of his life even as he believed he wanted it to end. He was quite frankly the most complex person she had ever come across, complicated and fascinating at the same time. His emotions were in turmoil, ripping him apart and the only way he could cope with them was to latch onto one and hold onto it with a tenacity that was breathtaking.
That emotion was his hatred for her and while she admired the strength of it, the lethal, dangerous edge to it which she could relate to so well, she was also astounded to find that it cut her deeply, lancing against the cold heart beating in her chest.
This wolf would never rest until she died. Maybe he would find the way out of his personal abyss when that happened but she doubted it. She’d been alive too long, seen and done too many things as she’d roamed the world. She knew the truth of it; hate solved nothing. It festered, twisted and corrupted a soul until there was nothing left but pain and emptiness. She was a living, breathing advertisement of that.
“Don’t let it claim you too,” she whispered softly, her hand tracing the strong jaw beneath her fingertips. “Fight, Dayton. Fight with everything within you because you’re so much better than I’ll ever be. So much stronger, so much more deserving. Don’t surrender to it. Remember what it was like to live, to laugh and love with your beautiful Faith. Live for both us and maybe, just maybe, I will have done one good thing in my life which made it all worthwhile.”
Words whispered across his sleeping mind, a soft feminine voice so full of anguish his heart ached at the sound. He couldn’t hear the words, couldn’t understand them but he knew the sound of agony when he heard it because it was an echo of what he felt. Every day since Faith had died he’d replayed the moment of her death at least once, his heart shattering all over again as he cradled her body in his arms and howled his grief into the forest air.
Pain was something he understood, something he reacted to; instinctively. He tried to swim up from his drugged sleep, tried to reach out to the woman whose voice shed tears of agony though he knew her eyes were dry. But sleep claimed him completely, the voice whispering in his subconscious, his wolf howling mournfully as he surrendered to the blessed relief of unconsciousness.
When Dayton next woke it was early morning and he could tell he’d slept the day and night through. The smell of food cooking wafted from the kitchen and his stomach rumbled. His body needed food almost as much as it needed liquid to replenish his blood loss. He shifted slightly on the sofa and found himself able to move a little bit easier, his weakness having receded a bit though his body still ached.
A mug of coffee was on the table beside him and he looked at it suspiciously wondering if it was drugged. He’d tasted the slight aftertaste of some kind of drug in his water too late the day before. He didn’t trust the vampire not to drug his coffee as well.
“You needed sleep yesterday.” Her voice drifted in from the kitchen. “Today you need to start moving around.”
He bit his lip not to respond to the cold amusement in her tone. Could she read his mind? He’d always believed vampires couldn’t mess with Were minds, not without a great deal of difficulty.
Taking a deep breath he threw off the blanket blinking in surprise when he found a pair of male silk pyjama bottoms covering his nakedness. Had she gone shopping while he was sleeping? Sliding his legs down to the wooden floor he noted that the material was a few inches too long for him. Understanding came a moment later. They would fit Nors perfectly. This retreat must have been one she shared with her brother at one time or another.
“Bathroom’s through the door, second on the left. Do you need any help?”
“I’d rather piss myself first,” he muttered under his breath, forcing his aching body to stand on unsteady feet.
Tinkling laughter, full of genuine amusement sounded. “Well you can clean it up if you do. Being a nursemaid doesn’t come naturally to me and there are some things I most definitely won’t do.”
He bit off a curse, forgetting her enhanced vampire hearing. Her response made the corner of his mouth twitch a fraction. Imaging Freya Eriksson getting her hands dirty like that was actually amusing. For a second she almost sounded a little human.
He pushed the thought away ruthlessly and made his way slowly but steadily in the direction she’d indicated. Once safely in the bathroom he looked down at his injuries, surprised to see how many there were on his upper torso alone. They were vivid red in colour, painful in the extreme but none of them appeared to have been life threatening which had to have been a miracle in itself.