Chapter Twenty-Three: “The Flush”

“Can I ask you a question?” Katherine said where she rested with her head in the crook of his arm. Her left leg was curled over his and her left hand was draped gently over his abdomen. They’d been laying there for an hour or so and Byron was in heaven. He had no idea what was coming or what was in store, but at that very moment, he knew a kind of peace he’d thought he would never obtain. All because of Kat.

“You just did,” he teased gently.

“Another few?”

He smiled and kissed the top of her head. She was a fast learner. “Shoot.”

She hesitated a moment, shifted a little, and then said, “The vampire princess had her father’s blood in her veins.”

Byron nodded, though she couldn’t see it. “Yes.”

“And for fifty years, she gave you her blood.”

Byron’s gaze narrowed. He thought he could see where this was going, and it didn’t feel good. “Yes,” he admitted softly.

“So you carry the warlock king’s blood inside of you. And now so do I.”

Byron didn’t know what to say to that. What could he say? It was true. Katherine’s veins ran with a soup of magical blood – the warlock king’s, the vampire princess’s, Byron’s blood, and her own.

“Byron, he’s inside of me. The man who killed my father.”

Byron moved then, shifting so that he was at eye level with her, his body gliding over her own, caging her in. “Listen to me, Kat,” he said, capturing her gaze with his. “There is no one in here,” he said, lightly touching her chest and then her temple, “but you.” He shook his head. “I have never known a being with more will and more intelligence than you, Katherine Dare. Blood is a transfusion, nothing more. People have them all the time.”

“Then why can’t we go out in sunlight without it burning us?” she asked, her beautiful eyes wide open.

Byron stilled. Fuck, he thought. She was going to make this hard. “Blood can be tainted, little one, but it doesn’t mean that the person who donated it is inside of you.”

“You would say that,” she told him. There was a hint of something in her voice that he didn’t like at all. It sounded like resignation.

It made him angry.

Slowly, so that he wouldn’t hurt her, he moved away from Katherine and got to his feet. “We need to find shelter before dawn,” he said, hating the way his words only served to verify her claims. But the vampires had obviously decided their business with Byron and Kat was through and Byron wasn’t certain whether the one protection spell they’d enjoyed would last through to morning.

Katherine didn’t say anything. She stood as well, and made her way to the clothes he had more or less ripped from her body. Byron watched as she bent and retrieved them one at a time, the curves of her legs and hips beckoning as she moved. When she turned to face him again and pull her top on, she stretched, taunting him with a flash of her perfect breasts and torso before the shirt was sliding over her skin and covering it up.

He swallowed hard. She pulled her long blonde hair out of her shirt and eyed him suspiciously. “You gonna get dressed or just stand there watching me?”

“I was thinking option three.”

Katherine’s plump, kiss-bruised lips curled in a small smile. “Well at least you’re honest.”

Byron turned away, hiding his smile. He breathed a private sigh of relief. If she was gently reprimanding him, then she was no longer thinking about the fact that her blood ran flush with the blood of her father’s murderer.

A few minutes later, they were both fully dressed once more, though looking a bit worse for wear garment-wise. Katherine’s dark clothes were covered in dirt from where she’d rolled to avoid darts and grabby Hunters. Byron’s clothes were ripped and blood-stained and his shirt was missing all of its buttons. Not that Katherine seemed to mind the fact that it stayed open; her eyes kept wandering to his chest.

Byron had never been so happy to be a wolf. His kind were blessed with impressive builds, but he’d always taken it for granted and not really paid it much heed, despite the fact that women had always shown him interest. Now every time he won Kat’s violet-blue gaze, he felt like crowing.

About fifteen minutes out of their make-shift camp, Byron could sense that they were drawing closer to the shore line. The air was saltier and a bit windier. It smelled like the sea.

“I love the ocean,” Katherine said, breaking their shared silence.

Byron blinked. He hadn’t been expecting that. Clearly, her senses were just as sharp as his own and she’d realized they were nearing the coast as well.

“I love the way it goes on forever,” she said. “It’s this uncontainable thing. Like the Earth keeps popping up points of land here and there, trying to pin the water down, but the sea just laughs and moves around them.”

Byron was stunned… which was often his state around Katherine Dare. What she’d just described was so deeply beautiful and fundamentally true, it was breathtaking. What was more shocking though was that he felt the same way. It was why he’d always stuck to the coast while riding with his gang fifty years ago in Australia. He loved the ocean and the freedom it represented. He felt that way now more than ever.

Byron stopped in his tracks and Katherine stopped too, turning a confused look to him. “Kat,” he said, feeling a warmth in his chest that he didn’t recognize. “I… Have you any idea how – ”

He never had the chance to finish telling her what he wanted to tell her because the forest shifted just then. A flock of birds in a grove of nearby trees took to the sky at once. The air grew warm and filled with the familiar scent of magic. And Byron was spinning and pulling Katherine behind him with blurring speed.

There was a flash of light that expanded from a central spot in a small clearing a few yards away. Byron covered his eyes with his arm, temporarily blinded. But the flash faded and the light receded, and Byron lowered his arm once more.

“Wwwow,” said a female voice. “That’s definitely an alpha.” Byron blinked, taking in the figures of at least a half a dozen people; wolves, from the smell of them. His heartbeat sped up, and his head felt light.

“Christ, you could almost be twins, Lucas,” came another female voice.

Lucas.

Byron inhaled sharply, his stormy gaze scanning the faces of the people present. It was still dark, but his wolf vision was clear enough to see it when a tall dark-haired man stepped around another man and Byron’s storm gray eyes met those of star-studded black.

He almost couldn’t say it. But somehow he managed. “Lucas?” he breathed.

“Byron…” came the almost whispered response. A heartbeat passed, filled with recognition and memories and hopes fulfilled – and fear. And then the other man was moving forward and Byron was rushing to meet him.

A hurricane of emotion ripped through him as he took his little brother in his arms. He felt the muscle and bone of his brethren, heard his brother’s heart beat, and caught the sound of his kin’s shaky breaths as Lucas squeezed him back just as hard.

Oh God, he thought helplessly. Let this be real. Countless times during his imprisonment, he’d dreamt things like this. He’d missed his brother and his friends so badly. He’d imagined what it would be like to see them again, hear them again.

But he knew this was real, because in his dreams, it had never been this good.

When he and Lucas finally pulled away enough to look into each others’ eyes, Byron felt the wetness on his cheeks and couldn’t help the deep laugh that bubbled up inside of him. He cupped his little brother’s face and looked him over. “You’re all grown up,” he said through a half-sob. The last time he’d seen Lucas, the boy had been fifteen years old. Tall and strong, yes, but not the man he saw before him now. Not yet.

Lucas looked pained, his own cheeks wet with emotion, his dark eyes rimmed with red and beginning to glow. “For a while now, big brother,” he said softly. And then Lucas was pulling him roughly into another embrace and Byron felt a racking sob go through the other man.

It was a long while before either of them moved. Byron couldn’t even open his eyes. He was lost in the past, captured in the present, once again prisoner to something – but this time, it was something wonderful.

Finally, he sensed the air warming and thought of Katherine. He could feel her there, not too far away. He could still smell her on him and hear her heartbeat; different from the others. Despite the world being turned on its axis, he needed to get her to safety before the sun came up.

No one in the clearing had spoken. It seemed eons since he’d heard a voice or a even a throat clearing. He slowly pulled away from Lucas and looked around. There were at least half a dozen other wolves in the forest around them, all of them watching the reunion with stark, emotion-filled expressions. Clearly these were friends of Lucas’s.

The boy had done well.

Byron turned to find Katherine watching him with glistening violet eyes that glowed slightly with emotion. She’d been crying; he could see the tear tracks on her cheeks. He moved from Lucas to stand before her, taking her hands in his. She smiled up at him and then blushed, looking down at the ground. He knew what must have been going through her head. He knew she must have been wondering what it was like to hold someone you never thought you’d see again – someone you loved this much.

“Byron,” Lucas said softly, and Byron glanced at his brother over his shoulder. Lucas was pinching the moisture from his eyes and sniffing loudly. “We have to get you to shelter.”

Byron’s surprise showed on his face. “I know,” he said. “But how did you?”

“It’s a long story,” came a woman’s response.

Byron turned to see a young woman with beautiful golden hair and equally golden eyes step forward beside a tall black-haired, blue-eyed man. The man was very obviously her mate by the way he slid a possessive arm around her waist and watched Byron with a completely natural mixture of relieved happiness and male dominant wariness.

“Lily is our seer,” Lucas explained with a respectful and grateful nod to the golden haired woman. Lily blushed prettily.

“And I’m guessing this is Katherine,” came another female voice. It was the first one he’d heard after the flash that had brought them all there to that spot in the forest.

A tall, gorgeous African American woman came forward, her dark eyes searching past Byron and landing on Katherine. “Lily said you looked like a fairy princess,” she said softly, her bright white smile lighting up her lovely face. “She wasn’t kidding.” Her voice purred like audible sex. It gave Byron a strange buzz in his limbs.

And he didn’t miss the way the woman gazed at Katherine in all kinds of admiration.

He cursed inwardly at the automatic tightening in his crotch and glanced back at Kat to see that her blush had deepened and her long lashes brushed the tops of her cheeks in embarrassment.

She was a vision.

“Everything can be explained once we’re safely secured,” came a deep, commanding voice.

Byron turned to find a very tall, broad, and serious looking black man stepping forward into the clearing. It was at once clear to Byron that the man was of a different caliber than those around him. He had the physique of an enforcer and the stature of a sentinel – but an air of steadfast, resolute responsibility. Byron at once recognized the feel of that kind of power. The Overseer, he realized silently. Something had changed. Where was Alexander Kavanagh?

The Overseer nodded at a young woman with long black hair and multi-colored eyes. Byron felt a fissure of recognition shoot through him at the sight of her. He’d never laid eyes on her before, but he felt he knew her.

“Dannai,” the Overseer said and then turned to the woman who looked and sounded like walking sex. “Imani,” he continued, nodding at her as well. “Will you do the honors?”

“Of course,” they said together, and they raised their right hands above them.

Byron instinctively pulled Katherine into his arms and tightened his grip. Just as he’d suspected, the air around them began to warp and shift once more and for just a second, he had the sensation that he couldn’t breathe. A bright, white light filled the area, blinding him and those around him as they were transported from the forest.