Embrace Me at Dawn

Page 30

“Then tell me. We will work together to repair the damage he’s done to your psyche,” Lucan vowed. “But neither your heart nor soul are black, love. Don’t paint yourself that way and settle for loneliness. Don’t let him defeat you or us.” He caressed her cheek.” I’m not perfect, either. Far from it. But the one thing I know without a doubt is that my love for you is true. I believe yours is, as well. If we start with that, if we begin with the knowledge that we belong together, then the only thing that can keep us from our happiness is our own foolishness.”

Damn it, his words were beautiful but wrong. He didn’t understand because he didn’t have the wretched knowledge she lived with each day. She refused to burden him…or risk the censure she feared seeing in his eyes. “What you’ve said, it’s very romantic, but too simple. There are so many things… My family wasn’t good enough for yours.”

He frowned. “That never mattered to me, and my parents came to love you.”

“But they, along with everyone else, wondered why you chose me as your mate.”

“Because I love you, and whatever you imagine their opinions are don’t matter in the least to me. Why do they matter to you? And what does this have to do with Mathias? You’re grasping at straws, trying to keep us apart.”

Anka’s heart stopped at his keen insight. Of course she was grasping at straws. How else could she put him at arm’s length without confessing that she’d neglected to mention for over a hundred years that she’d been born a banshee? Or the horrifying things she’d done with her “gift”? Telling and releasing him might be the most humane thing. Sadly, she was too much of a coward to risk his horror and condemnation.

“I see your mind turning. Mathias raped you, I know that. I’ve seen that he abused you terribly. How can you think for a moment that it’s your fault?”

Yes, that was another black stain on her soul. “I begged him,” she sobbed, “for more. Always for more.”

“Terriforz, love. He forced you to crave him. You know that.”

Regardless, the truth hurt like hell. “When I close my eyes at night, I hear my pitiful pleading for that monster! It haunts me, and it plays again over and over in my head.”

“Is that why you asked Shock to dominate you? To replace Mathias’s touch with something else?”

Bloody hell, he would bring that up. Her needs would be another rift between them eventually. She couldn’t imagine Lucan throwing her onto his bed, forcing her face-down while he smacked her backside red with a crop, sometimes until she bruised. It would pain his compassionate heart to hurt anyone. And she understood completely. Self-loathing ate at her for her urges.

“Not…exactly.” She did her best to be honest. “After I came to stay with Shock, I’d bottled up all my anguish and misery. I refused food or comfort. And as long as I was coherent, I refused energy. He forced me to take it and found a multitude of ways to make me release my emotions so I could cope.”

“You wanted to lie down and die?” He sounded aghast, his question almost an accusation. But didn’t he see?

“Of course I did. I’d lost everything. And as my memories returned…”

She tried to cover her face with her hands, but Lucan grabbed them, pressing them into the mattress. “Whatever it is, we face it together. No hiding. I’m here for you.”

Anka struggled to free her hands, but Lucan wasn’t budging. “Let go! You wouldn’t say that if I told you everything.”

“So tell me everything, every dirty little issue that you think I won’t be able to deal with. Mathias made you beg him to fuck you. He whipped and used you. What else is it you think I can’t handle?”

“He made me kill!” She flung the furious words at him. Then bit her lip to stop herself from confessing the rest of the awful truth. If she had a spine or she could scrape together some courage, she would tell Lucan everything—and release him once and for all.

But even in that, she failed. She lacked the bravery or will to drive them apart forever. For that, she hated herself even more.

“Kill who?” His voice had gone soft, like he finally understood the gravity.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember very much. I blocked that night out. But Mathias teleported me to someone’s home and forced me...” She shook her head. “Dead, all of them. Wizards, witches…younglings.”

Horror dawned over his face. Anka couldn’t look. She turned away, eyes closed, as fresh tears streamed down her cheeks. “I’ve done something despicable and repulsive that I can never take back! I stole lives.” She drew in a shuddering breath of regret. “And it hardly matters whether I was compelled to kill or that I would never have had any hand in their deaths ordinarily. The fact is, I did. And there’s no taking it back. I am haunted by the screams of the little ones crying for parents who already lay dead…” Their ears bleeding with her banshee song. But she still continued to wail because the consequences of stopping were too terrible to contemplate. So the nightmares of little younglings frantically covering their own ears as they sought cover, only to fall, screaming and writhing, until she’d sang them to sleep forever, continued to haunt her. She would spare Lucan that pain.

And now he might have planted a youngling of his in her womb. No! Oh God, no. She had no business being a mother after what she’d done, or consigning an innocent babe to be hunted and hated for her blood.

She shoved him off of her, frantically scrambling out of the bed. Grabbing her clothes, she began untangling them, trying to don them—even as the feverish need from Morganna’s spell possessed her again, filling and tightening her nipples, throbbing through her sex. Even her lips ached to kiss away the frown on Lucan’s face until he wanted only to thrust his way into her body and make love to her again.

Impossible. She could never give him another opportunity to plant a seed in her womb.

Lucan sat up, grabbed her wrists, and hauled her into his lap. “Stop, Anka. Stop! You can’t run from what happened. It’s tragic. You’re a gentle soul, and I can only imagine how deeply that scarred you. But I don’t love you less for being forced to hurt others. I love you more for enduring. Don’t let Mathias win.”

Had Lucan gone utterly mad? She met his stare, her mouth gaping open. Then she closed it. He would assume that Mathias had put some terrible spell on her to compel her to kill others, that she hadn’t chosen that fate of her own free will. The alternative had been unthinkable.

“You might think you love me still, and that proves what a giving, kind person you are, but I can’t stand myself anymore, Lucan. I hate looking in a mirror. I loathe what I’ve become. You can’t save me or be my hero. You can’t convince me that nothing is my fault. You can’t persuade me that my ‘good heart’ absolves me of all my wrongdoing. But you can let me go and believe me when I tell you that you’ll be so much better off without me.”