Leaning back in his chair at one of the dining tables several hours later, Zeeland regaled the others with tales of his life with the British Guard. While his tablemates leaned forward, listening intently to his stories, his own attention remained elsewhere. On the music wafting in from the grand piano in the living room.
Julianne’s music.
Not Beethoven tonight, but Vivaldi. She wouldn’t play Beethoven in front of him. But not even Vivaldi was safe from the emotions that must be wreaking havoc inside her.
Her musical gift was as rare and fine as any he’d ever heard, weaving her heart and emotions into a brilliant, visceral tapestry. A tapestry he sometimes thought only he could see. Tonight was a prime example. Could no one else hear the anguish in the music flowing around them? Could no one else sense the fear?
The sound of it seeped into his flesh, tearing at him until he felt as if he’d bleed from the plaintive cry of Julianne’s heart. Not since she was nine had he heard such anguish torn from those keys.
She’d been sent to them from the New York enclave after her parents disappeared in an apparent Mage attack. For two weeks, she’d shed no tears, but she’d played the enclave’s piano incessantly, pouring her grief into her music. Beethoven. Only Beethoven.
Even then, she’d had an extraordinary ability to weave the music. From the start, he’d heard the depth of her grief in her music.
She’d had no one her own age, for children were rare among the immortal Therians, so he’d befriended her and found a delightful and precious friend in return. He’d watched her grow up, watched her turn from a cute child into a beautiful young woman. A woman he’d eventually come to desire.
She’d been eighteen the first time he’d realized it. Eighteen when his love for the child began to morph into something altogether different. Altogether inappropriate. She was seven years too young.
Therian law forbade the young from entering into the highly physical, carnal world of their elders until they were twenty-five. A not-unreasonable demand as most Therians lived for millennia.
For two years, he’d played the role of best friend as his desire for her had grown. And as her own for him had blossomed. When she was twenty, she’d come to him, raw desire burning in her virgin’s eyes, and told him she wanted him to be her first. That very night. She couldn’t wait another five years.
He’d sent her to her room with barely contained control, then lain awake all night in a fever of need, imagining her beneath him.
The next morning, he’d packed his suitcase and returned to Scotland, where he’d trained with the Therian Guard years before. He’d known he wouldn’t survive another night in that house with Julianne, let alone five years.
But he hadn’t stayed away five. He’d drunk himself into a stupor the night she turned of age, but he hadn’t come home.
Now he was furious with himself for leaving her unprotected from whatever had hurt her this time.
“Hey, Squirt!” Grayson called into the living room, using the name for Julianne only he used. “How about some show tunes?”
Serenity rose, signaling the end of the meal. The half dozen with kitchen duty started clearing tables while the others sauntered into the living room, most gathering around the piano.
Zeeland stayed back, propping a shoulder against one of the ornately carved pillars holding up the high ceiling, where he could watch the pianist without crowding her. Yet.
With the others pressing around her, she dutifully switched to livelier music, holding her heart and emotions at bay. The music, while beautifully played, rang flat and false. As false as her smile.
No one else seemed to notice.
Hell, from the way the men were watching her, he suspected she could play nursery-school ditties, and they wouldn’t notice.
From out of nowhere, a fist of raw jealousy punched him in the gut. His hands clenched as the primal need to rip out their throats barreled through him. They had no right to look at her that way. She wasn’t…
Wasn’t what? Old enough?
With a slam, he remembered she was. And had been for more than five years.
The thought of what that meant nearly brought him to his knees. Five years, she’d been of age. Sexually active.
And Therians were nothing if not sexually active. Unlike humans, Therians saw neither need nor desire to be monogamous.
Conception was rare. Having different partners increased the likelihood that a female might conceive. And taking a mate was even rarer. The mating bond between two Therians was more than a mere promise. It was a physical bond that could never be broken. No one in his right mind willingly bound themselves to another…any other…for eternity.
He watched Julianne, his gaze caressing her lovely, pensive face. A Therian female five years past her maturity had likely made love scores, if not hundreds, of times by now. A woman as beautiful as Julianne would have males lining up, seeking her attention…and her bed…every night.
Jealousy threatened to choke him. But it was regret that tasted like bile in his mouth.
She’d asked him to be her first. Perhaps he might still have been had he come back when she turned of age. But he hadn’t.
Goddess, he was an idiot.
“Those are damned dark thoughts going through your head, Zee.”
Zeeland turned as Hawke joined him. The Feral Warrior, one of three who’d joined them tonight, was built much as Zeeland himself, tall and lean, with the sleek muscles of a swimmer or distance runner. The hawk shifter had been his tutor when Zeeland was a kid, before Hawke was marked by the goddess to become a Feral Warrior. He’d known Hawke all his life and counted him among his most trusted friends.
Zeeland fought to smooth the lines of his face. “Just thinking.”
Hawke merely lifted a single steeply arched eyebrow in the way he always had when he didn’t believe him.
“Does Julianne have a favorite among that lot?” Zeeland knew he was giving away his thoughts, but didn’t really care.
Hawke shrugged. “I’m not around here enough to know. She’s grown into a beauty, though, hasn’t she?”
Acid ate into his bones. How many men had Julianne known?
I could have been her first.
The thought of Julianne in another man’s arms, spreading her thighs to cradle another man’s body, had his teeth grinding to dust inside his mouth.
Even the other two Ferals watched her, dammit. Kougar and Jag had arrived with Hawke shortly before dinner. While Jag watched Julianne with the eyes of a hunter stalking prey, Kougar’s cold gaze followed her every move as if she were a bug under a microscope.
He knew none of the Ferals all that well except for Hawke. Most had been marked centuries before he was born. It used to irk him that he’d never been marked by the spirit of one of the animals to become a Feral Warrior himself, but the animal spirits could only mark the strongest of their own lines. And the only Feral who’d died since Zee’s birth had been the fox shifter four years ago, his animal spirit marking the kid, Foxx, in his stead. The Therians had no way of knowing their own animal heritage except for the stories told by their forebears. And occasionally the dreams.
For all he knew, he was descended from none of the nine remaining lines. So he served his race in another capacity, as a member of the Guard, protecting the enclaves that were too far away to be under the Ferals’ protection.
Julianne played for nearly an hour, her audience remaining tight around her the entire time. But as her last song came to an end, and she rose gracefully, she was immediately surrounded by men vying for her attention.
Including the Feral, Jag.
Jag stood out among the other men, a little taller, a little broader through the shoulders and chest, and carrying a hell of a lot more attitude.
He pushed the others aside and slung his arm around Julianne’s shoulders. “Nice job, sugar. How about you trail those magic fingers over me?”
“Jag…” Hawke groaned beside him.
Julianne attempted, without success, to free herself from Jag’s hold. Was the Feral the reason she was playing Beethoven? Had he hurt her?
I’ll kill the son of a bitch.
Zeeland didn’t think, only acted, pushing his way through the throng to reach Julianne’s side.
“Release her, Jag.”
The surly Feral’s lip curled, and he pulled her closer. “Finders, keepers.”
Fury surged. Zeeland balled his hand and swung, planting his fist solidly in the jaguar shifter’s jaw. Another man, he might have tackled, but not a Feral. Not if he wanted to live.
As Jag stumbled backward two steps, Zeeland grabbed Julianne’s arm, freeing her even as he kept her from falling. As he shoved her behind him, Jag righted himself, violence in his eyes.
The shifter’s fingertips erupted with claws. Inch-long fangs dropped from his upper jaw, while the incisors in his lower jaw grew and sharpened. His eyes changed, the irises expanding until no white showed, until his eyes looked like those of a jungle cat.
A very pissed-off jungle cat.
Jag hadn’t actually shifted into a jaguar, but only gone feral—that in-between place between man and beast, a place of lost tempers that could be fatal to any creature who couldn’t draw claws and fangs of his own.
Pulling one of the knives he always carried, Zeeland crouched into a fighting stance and met the angry Feral’s gaze. “You really want to do this, cat?”
Jag smiled with that mouth full of fangs, a look in his eyes as sharp as a well-honed blade. And oddly cunning. “Julianne and I are old friends, aren’t we, sugar?”
Jealousy roared in his ears, but as he tensed to spring, Hawke and Kougar pushed between them.
Kougar cuffed Jag hard. “Time to go.”
“Like hell,” the jaguar shifter growled.
Hawke’s hand landed on Zeeland’s shoulder. His gaze turned to Jag. “You’ve already been ordered to stay away from two enclaves. Do you really want to make it three?”
Jag made a sound deep in his throat that sounded exactly like the growl of a jaguar. But his fangs and claws retracted, and he swung away, stalking out of the living room, Kougar close behind him.
Zeeland stared after him, his breathing heavy, his fist clenching tight around his knife. Everything inside him itched for a fight. If he found out that Feral had hurt Julianne, no one and nothing was standing between them next time.
Hawke turned back and met Zeeland’s gaze, Hawke’s own seeing too much, asking questions Zeeland wasn’t prepared to answer.
“I’ll be back tomorrow night for the Valentine’s party.” He lifted one winged brow. “Without Jag.”
Hawke released Zeeland’s shoulder and thrust out his hand, but when Zeeland would have clasped it, Hawke reached farther, gripping Zeeland just below the elbow in the greeting the Ferals reserved for one another and a select few outside their ranks. Being offered such was a sign of deep respect and friendship, and Zeeland accepted it as such.
Zeeland dipped his head. “It’s good to see you, Hawke.”
Hawke smiled. “Tomorrow.”
As Hawke strode off behind his companions, Zeeland sheathed his knife and turned to find Julianne slipping away behind him. He was in no damned mood for any more games.
He caught up to her in three long strides, his hand clamping around her upper arm.
Her surprised gaze jerked up. For a single moment, fear glittered in her turquoise eyes. Then a curtain fell, a mask of indifference.
“We’re going to talk,” he told her. “Now.”
“I need to help in the kitchen, Zeeland.”
“Damn the kitchen.”
She tried to pull away, but his fingers tightened. It occurred to him he was treating her little better than Jag had. But where Jag had been looking out for his own needs, Zeeland’s sole concern was Julianne.