Chapter 17
Dmitri arrived at Kalinka a few minutes before five and claimed his favorite table in the back.
When he lived in Orlando, he used to stop by the tiny family-owned restaurant every two or three weeks for pirozhki and coffee. There weren’t any Russian delis where he and Gwen now lived, so he’d make a point of stocking up on supplies before they headed back home. Whenever that was. Time was money, and he’d already turned down one contract in order to help Adam. If things didn’t wrap up in the next day or two, he’d have no choice but to send Gwen home so their private security business didn’t suffer from neglect.
The older woman who owned the shop smiled as she approached his table. She’d been in the United States for over two decades, but she’d yet to lose any of her Russian accent. “Dmitri, where have you been? It’s been so long since you last came in, we thought you got hit by a bus.”
He couldn’t stop from smiling in return. With her stout build and kind face, Lyubov Vyazhevich reminded him so much of his babushka it made his chest tight. “My apologies, dorogaya moya. I’ve been busy. I got married.”
Lyubov’s eyes went wide. “You, married? I never thought I’d see the day. Is she a good Russian girl?”
“No, American. She’ll be here any minute.”
As part of their honeymoon, he and Gwen had traveled to Volgograd, his childhood home. The city, once known as Stalingrad, bore little resemblance to the way it had looked when he was a kid. Back then, war ravaged every street and the stench of death fouled the air. Now the city served as an industrial, cultural, and historical center of Russia. He and Gwen had visited the museums and monuments, including the Mamaev Kurgan memorial complex commemorating the Battle of Stalingrad. And before they left, he’d taken her to the street where his apartment building used to stand.
It was late for coffee, so he ordered a bottle of water and settled back in his chair. His Gwenya was running late, which wasn’t like her at all. She’d been acting strangely for a couple weeks now. Moody. Withdrawn. Unfocused. At first, he’d brushed it off as a side effect of the stress that came with being mortal and operating a business.
But now he sensed it was something more serious.
Why the change in behavior? Was she unhappy? Had he done something wrong? He couldn’t think of anything he’d said that would have pissed her off, and if he had, she wouldn’t be shy about calling him out on it.
Then he thought about how often she’d been sick in the past month and dread snaked down his spine. She’d blamed it on food poisoning and later the flu, but now he doubted the claims.
Now that they were human, they were susceptible to injury and disease. What if she was seriously ill? God, what if she had cancer? The possibility made him shudder. He loved her too much to live without her. If that was the news she wanted to share with him, he might as well slit his wrists now.
Just then, he spotted her walking through the entrance, and the sight of her lifted his spirits. She was dressed in a pair of faded jeans and a white short-sleeved peasant blouse. Her honey-blond hair hung loose about her shoulders, and her eyes seemed a little tired. He watched as she traded pleasantries with Lyubov before walking back to his table.
He rose from his seat and kissed her, and the taste of her warmed him inside. “I missed you, zaika moya.”
The smile she gave reached her eyes and went straight to his heart. “I missed you too, Dimusha.” She claimed the seat across from his and hung her purse over the back of the chair. “Did you order already?”
“No, I was waiting to see what you were in the mood for.” Usually, it was blinchiki, a crêpe-type pancake filled with meat, fruit, or cheese, but every so often she surprised him by choosing something completely different.
Less than a minute later, Lyubov came over to take their orders: blinchiki with cheese for Gwen, and pelmeni, thin dumplings stuffed with ground beef, for himself. As soon as the older woman left for the kitchen, he reached across the table and took Gwen’s hand. It never ceased to amaze him, how so much strength could fit into such a petite package.
“Why didn’t you answer my call earlier?” he asked, his thumb lightly stroking the backs of her knuckles.
The smooth column of her throat moved when she swallowed. “I, uh . . . I was busy taking care of a few things. There’s something . . . well, a couple of things I need to tell you.”
Shit, here it comes. Bracing for the worst, he forced his face to remain neutral. “Go on.”
“Well—” She went to chew on one of her fingernails, only stopping when she realized she’d already bitten them all down to the quick. No matter how hard or how often she tried, she couldn’t seem to break the bad habit. “I think we need to hire at least two more people. One for the field, and one for the office.”
Definitely not what he’d expected. “That’s a large expense.”
“I know, but we’re earning enough revenue to hire twice as many. At the rate we’re growing, we’ve got to get another person trained to work in the field. I can keep up with the paperwork now, but we need another person—at least part-time—in case I get too busy to handle it all.”
“Why wouldn’t you be able to handle it?” The thought of her becoming too sick to function curdled his blood.
“Crap,” Gwen muttered with a shake of her head. “I’m screwing this up.” Reaching into her purse, she pulled out a small box with a delicate yellow ribbon tied across the top. She bit into her lower lip as she pushed the present across the table. “Here. Open this. It’ll explain everything.”
Dmitri accepted the box, picking it up like it was packed with C-4. He pulled the ribbon loose, lifted the lid, and peered inside.
Confused, his dark brows furrowed. This was getting stranger by the minute. He pulled out a tiny translucent green pacifier. “What’s this?”
A shy smile touched her lips. “Exactly what you think it is.”
Meeting her gaze, he found warmth, love, and such profound tenderness it knocked the air from his lungs. And then realization finally dawned on him and he almost fell out of his chair.
“Are you—are we?” He hadn’t felt this choked up with emotion since the day they traded vows.
“Yes,” she replied, her face beaming with joy. “Daddy.”
With the twins working late at the restaurant and Cassie off shopping with her friends, Marlena had the entire house to herself. Which was fine by her. She needed some quiet time to work things out in her head. Like how she was going to deal with the bastards who’d abducted her. And what to do about Adam.
Sooner or later, she’d have to tell Adam about his real identity. It was the right thing to do, but she had no idea how to go about it without him thinking she was crazy. Without a doubt, he’d have a hard time accepting the truth. Who wouldn’t? It wasn’t every day a man found out his soul was over four hundred years old. Not to mention, he was mated to a shifter. And he certainly wouldn’t be happy to learn she’d kept him in the dark for this long. Once he learned the truth, could he find it in his heart to forgive her?
A knock at the door jarred her from her thoughts.
She hadn’t been expecting company, and her senses went on full alert. Barefoot, she quietly crept toward the front entry, her fingers elongating into claws. Not bothering with the peephole, she stuck her nose by the crack in the door and inhaled deeply.
Adam. She’d recognize his masculine scent anywhere. Her pulse sped up and her mouth went dry at the thought of seeing him tonight.
“Just a minute.” After retracting her claws, she slid back the bolt and pulled the door open.
“You didn’t check the peephole,” Adam said, a measure of accusation in his voice. He looked every bit as delicious as he had the night before. His shirt fit just a little tight across the pecs, while his jeans hugged him in all the right places. But something in his eyes seemed troubled, and she couldn’t help but wonder what it was.
“Didn’t need to.” She tapped the side of her nose. “I recognized your scent.”
His dark brows drew close together. “Oh, yeah. I hadn’t thought about that.”
Marlena opened the door wider. Obviously, something was on his mind, and she wasn’t in the mood to beat around the bush. “Is there something I can do for you tonight? I don’t remember us making plans.”
Manic energy rolled off him in waves as he stepped into the foyer. He dragged a hand through his short brown hair before scratching the back of his head. Then the confused expression dropped from his face, leaving one that appeared downright pissed off. “I had a few questions I wanted to ask you, Marlena. Or would you prefer it if I called you Magdala?”
Shit, she hadn’t seen that one coming.
The sound of her name—her real name—on his lips hit her like a punch to the gut. She hadn’t identified herself as Magdala since the day she’d been burned at the stake. She’d been Maria to the Gypsies, Maggie to the Irish, and Marlena ever since she’d immigrated to the United States in the early 1800s. Even Cassie didn’t know her true identity. She preferred to keep that part of her history buried in the past where it belonged.
How in the world did he find out? “Who told you?”
“Does it matter?”
“It does to me.”
Adam hesitated, as if internally debating whether or not to tell her. “Cassie told me about our connection, and my boss filled in the blanks.”
Oh, that little witch. It was a damn good thing Cassie wasn’t home. Old woman or not, she would have tanned her daughter’s hide on the spot. Still might. “She had no right to tell you.”
“No right?” His words came out in a growl. “How about my right to know about my own fucking past?” Eyes blazing, he slammed the door closed behind him and stepped closer, moving deep into her personal space. His pulse drummed at the base of his throat, his skin flushed with anger. “When were you planning to tell me, Magdala? A day from now? Next week? Next month? Never?”
“Don’t call me that,” she snapped. Warring emotions pummeled her senses faster than she could sort them out. She couldn’t think straight with him standing so close, but she couldn’t bring herself to step away.
“Why not, Magdala? That is your real name, isn’t it?”
“Not anymore.” Over time, she’d grown to hate that name and all of the bad memories that came with it. “Magdala died the day I buried what was left of your body.” For more than two years, she had no name, too consumed by guilt and sorrow to do anything more than live in the shadows of humanity and survive off their meager scraps.
Some of his anger seemed to have burned off, but his voice retained a sharp edge. “When were you going to tell me?”
She threw up her hands in a gesture of defeat. “Honestly? I don’t know. I was waiting until the time was right.” Whenever that was. With a sigh, she strode into the kitchen and opened the cabinet where Cassie kept the alcohol. She was going to need some liquid fortitude to get through everything she needed to tell him. “Do you want something to drink?” she called out.
She heard his footsteps enter the room, followed by the scrape of a chair being pulled back from the kitchen table.
“What have you got?” he asked.
“A little bit of everything. There’s beer and wine in the fridge.”
“In that case, I’ll take a beer.”
Knowing he liked his beers good and hoppy, she picked an India pale ale from the top shelf and then poured a small glass of rum for herself.
Mind racing, heart pounding, she stood with her back to the refrigerator and sipped her drink. Dark Jamaican rum warmed the back of her throat and loosened the knots in her belly. She had no idea how or where to begin, so she asked, “What do you want to know?”
Frosty silence filled the room as he took a long pull from his beer. He leaned back in his chair and the look of distrust on his face nearly broke her heart. “Let’s start with the basics. What was I like back then?”
If she closed her eyes, she could still make out Christopher’s features. That jet-black hair, those warm green eyes. The way his lips always seemed to be on the verge of smiling. Four centuries had eroded some of the finer details, but she could still recall the sound of his voice when he spoke her name. A flood of memories crowded her mind while mixed emotions clawed at her heart.
“He—you . . .” They were so different, it was getting harder and harder to think of them as the same person. Was that a good thing? Honestly, she had no idea. “For such a brawny man, Christopher was surprisingly gentle. He was shorter than you, but his work as a blacksmith made him a lot bigger around the chest.”
She smiled at the memory of Christopher coming home from work, tired, sweaty, and filthy. After cleaning off the grime, he’d tell her about his day over dinner, and then he’d take her by the light of the fire.
“How’d you meet him?” Adam asked before taking another drag off his beer.
“At church. My father and I sat four pews behind his family.”
He arched one eyebrow. “I didn’t peg you as the churchgoing type.”
“The entire town went to church,” she said simply. “Not attending would have invited speculation we couldn’t afford.”
As it was, she’d already been enough of an outcast. With her mother gone and her father drunk most of the time, she’d never fit in with the townspeople. And when she reached the age when her shifting abilities began to manifest, her father had given her only one piece of advice: Tell no one. It was short and sweet, but served her well, because if anyone found out just how different they were, their lives would have been in grave danger.
Too bad it hadn’t stopped the Reverend Finch from accusing her and Christopher of witchcraft.
Adam set the beer between his legs and rested his hands on his thighs. Some of the tension had bled from his features, but he still didn’t seem anywhere near relaxed. “Did he know about you? I mean, what you are?”
Marlena nodded. She’d only thought it fair to let him know what he was getting himself involved with. “I told him after he proposed, but he wouldn’t believe me until I showed him.”
“What did you turn into?”
“A wolf.” At the time she didn’t know anything about leopards. Looking back, she was amazed that Christopher hadn’t shot her on the spot. “After I shifted, he ran out of the house like a scalded cat. I didn’t see him again for a week.” She chuckled at the memory. “But when he came back, he asked me to marry him again, and that time I accepted his proposal.”
His family had been scandalized by the news of their oldest son sneaking off to marry the daughter of a dirt-poor farmer. But by the time they found out, the marriage had been consummated, and they grudgingly accepted their new daughter-in-law into the family.
The year they spent together as man and wife was the happiest of her life. Every day Christopher worked at the family smithy, and every night he came home and made love to her with a passion that left her breathless and limp. She had a roof over her head, food on the table, and most important, a man who loved her for who and what she was.
“Why him?” Adam asked. “Why not marry another shifter?”
She stared at him like the answer was obvious. “Because I loved him.”
Adam’s gaze dropped as he picked at the label on his beer bottle. “So what happened to me—I mean Christopher? How did he die?”
“He was burned at the stake for witchcraft.” Inside, she cringed at the memory. She tossed back the rest of her drink and set the empty glass on the counter. “After the crops failed for two seasons straight, the local pastor got it in his thick skull that witchcraft was somehow to blame. With the town’s blessing, he hired Reverend Finch, a witch finder who claimed to have cleansed two counties in England. By the end of the first week, seventeen people were arrested, and the village broke into hysteria. The next week, thirteen more were accused. They’d already executed twenty-eight people by the time Christopher and I were taken into custody.”
Bile rose in her throat at the memory of being stripped naked in the village square and searched for the devil’s mark. Of course, they’d found one in the form of a mole on her hip, and she was convicted of consorting with the devil. In spite of the torture, she’d refused to implicate her husband, but that hadn’t stopped them from convicting poor Christopher and condemning him to burn alongside her.
Even now, she could smell the smoke and charred flesh, and she could hear the taunts of the crowd. Witch! Devil’s whore! Burn in Hell! Her stomach churned and her eyes stung. “Please don’t ask me to tell you the rest.”
Before Adam could say anything, Marlena bolted for the bathroom and locked the door behind her. Dropping to her knees in front of the toilet, she tried throwing up but nothing came out. Nauseous and trembling, she leaned her head against the wall and willed her stomach to settle.
A few minutes later, the bathroom door opened and Adam stepped inside. He didn’t speak a word, but the sympathy in his eyes spoke volumes.
“How did you get in?” She wiped the tears from her face with a swipe of her hand. “I locked the door.”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips as he knelt beside her and gathered her into his arms. “I’m a reaper, remember? Breaking and entering is part of our job description.”
Try as she might, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d allowed a man to hold her. He felt so warm, so strong. For what seemed like an eternity, he gently rocked her back and forth while stroking her hair and murmuring words too low for her to make out. It felt so damn good to be held, to be comforted, that she closed her eyes and snuggled against him like a frightened child during a storm.
When her heart no longer felt like it was about to explode, she pulled away from his embrace. Already, she missed the feel of his arms, the strength of his body, the beat of his heart against her ear. His masculine scent still surrounded her and she inhaled deeply, drawing it into her lungs.
“Thank you,” she said, suddenly feeling foolish for having a minor meltdown on the bathroom floor.
Adam reached out and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “What for? Telling me what I wanted to know?” He stood and brushed his hands against his jeans. “I’m the one who should apologize for making you relive that.”
“It was the only way for you to know what happened.” And now that he knew, she’d never have to relive it again. Words failed to describe how much that relieved her. She took the hand he offered, and he hoisted her up from the floor as if she weighed nothing. “It’s not like there’s anyone else around to tell you.”
He didn’t say anything right away. Instead, he stared straight down at his shoes, a conflicted look on his face. “I wish you would have told me before,” he finally said. “You have no idea how much it sucked to hear it from somebody else.”
“I’m sorry. It wasn’t fair for you to get blindsided like that.” She reached out and gripped his hand, the simple contact soothing her nerves. “When I first sensed the mate bond, I didn’t know what to make of it. Then I realized you had Christopher’s soul, but you’re so different from him, and I wanted to make sure I wasn’t attracted to you just because of who you used to be. And once I realized my feelings for you were genuine, I didn’t know how to tell you everything without sounding like I was some kind of lunatic.”
Adam rubbed his hand across his face and let out a rough exhale. “Well, when you put it that way, I guess I can understand why you didn’t tell me. I’m still not happy about it, though.” His dark eyes lingered on her face. “No more secrets?”
“None, I promise.” It felt like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders, and for a moment, it left her feeling giddy. “Is there anything else you want to know?”
Tilting his head, Adam smiled down at her. “I’ve got about ten thousand questions burning through my brain, but we’ve covered enough ground for one night. Tomorrow I’ll hit you with more. Fair enough?”
“Fair enough.” Rising on her tiptoes, she pressed a kiss against his cheek.
His gaze met hers, and an unmistakable flare of desire pulsed between them. After so many years of feeling empty inside, it felt foreign to want a man so badly. She licked her lips, and his eyes darkened with an intensity that bordered on savage. But when she tried to slip her hand around his neck, he caught her wrist and held it against his chest.
“No,” he said with a shake of his head. “Not tonight. I want you, but not while you’re thinking of him.” Lifting her hand to his mouth, he pressed a lingering kiss against the backs of her knuckles before letting go. “Get some rest, Marlena. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”