Dark Highland Fire

She shook her head, slowly at first, then more firmly. The look in her eyes had shifted almost entirely to denial, and fear. "No," was all she said. But he had begun, and he wouldn't be stopped now.



"Yes," he said, taking her shoulders in his hands, hating the way they went rigid. Heat, so intense that she might have been nothing more than a live flame, burned his fingers where they dug into her flesh, but still he hung on. She needed to know, and if this was the way it was to be between them, it might as well be now. "You are my mate, Rowan. Just as the women of your tribe have mated with the men of mine since the beginning. I can't change it, and neither can you."



"That's not possible," Rowan insisted, taking a step back. "I would have known. You should have told me this could happen. Why didn't you tell me this could happen?" The pitch of her voice steadily rose with her distress.



Gabriel glared at her, if at all possible even more affronted than he had been a few minutes ago. Would she have avoided him had she known they would bond permanently, irrevocably? It certainly sounded like it. And he didn't care to know that at all.



"What did you think, woman?" he snapped, his gestures becoming more exaggerated the more agitated he became. "That I always telepathically share memories when I make love? That biting in the heat of passion is commonplace for werewolves? That's the kind of thing that kills people, Rowan! It killed my own mother." He saw the shock like a slap her across the face and ignored it as best he could. He had said it to make a point, not to earn her pity.



"Yes, Rowan, believe it or not, I've lost people I loved too. Yet somehow I manage to stay true to my family, and to who and what I am, no matter what you think. And no, I didn't want to bond with you, just for your information. I didn't really want a mate at all. Especially not one who's so prickly and uncooperative. But I'm stuck with you, just like you're stuck with me. I don't give a damn how high-handed you think it is. I'm keeping you, and that's all there is to it."



There, Gabriel thought. He'd said it. They could go on from here, wherever that was. Rowan was back to looking like she wanted to incinerate him, and that was actually somewhat comforting. At least it was a footing with her that he understood.



"I don't care what blood runs in your veins, Gabriel. You can't keep me, as you've so charmingly put it. I've sworn to marry no man. I'm afraid you qualify. And I have things to do that you have nothing to do with."



Gabriel crossed his arms over his chest and looked down his nose at her. "I do now."



She looked up at him, aghast. "I have to go home, Gabriel. I'm leaving. That was never negotiable."



He didn't budge. "Then I'll come with you. Our mating is also non-negotiable."



Her mouth dropped open, and Gabriel had to suppress his satisfied smirk. He was not a MacInnes male for nothing.



"Just because we were together once ..."



"A mind-altering once, as you said earlier."



"And I happened to bite you ..."



"Right after asking me to bite you, which sealed it right there."



Rowan stopped talking for a moment, eyes wide. She looked, if he wasn't mistaken, like she was about to shoot right over the edge of angry and land smack in the middle of apoplectic.



"You barely know me!" she cried, gesticulating wildly. "I barely know you! We argue constantly! You seem to think that my presence may get you killed, and yet you refuse to think with any useful part of your body! I don't have time for this, Gabriel!"



"You know what? You're right. Neither do I," Gabriel replied in a flat voice, suddenly desperate for a little air, a little space between him and Rowan so he could clear his head. "I'm going down to the pub for a bit. You stay here, and don't think of taking off. The vamps and God-knows-what-else are obviously laying for us, and I'd rather not have them ruin anything else around here."



"I can take care of myself," Rowan retorted.



"Certainly. Right here in my bloody apartment. Until your would-be boyfriend makes his move, this is the best that can be done. If anyone unpleasant shows up, just light them up or whatever you like and then yell for me. My sense of hearing, you'll be pleased to know, is a little better than my sense of smell."



"I can't be your mate, Gabriel!" she screeched. "You're just ... just blinded by lust. It happens all the time. With some time and distance you won't remember me at all. And anyway, I have no desire to be tied to some big, boorish, overbearing, controlling, potentially violent Wolf for the rest of my life. So I won't. I make my own decisions."



Gabriel swept past her, heading for the door. "Not this time, you don't," he managed in a half growl. "You're officially overruled by nature. And maybe while I'm out you can decide to start telling me all of the truth, instead of just what you think I should hear."



"I don't want this!" she finally yelled in despair. "And I don't want you!"



"Yeah you do. Deal with it," he snarled, and slammed the door.



Chapter 11



Rowan sat as she had for the past week, slumped in Gabriel's ratty old armchair, flipping idly through yet another of his seemingly endless pile of Maxims and half watching something called Monty Python on his humongous television. Gabriel was at the pub. Again. She might have thought he slept there, in fact, but for the rumpled blanket and pillow on the couch every morning.



Truth be told, she was tired of not speaking to him, mainly because she was bored out of her skull. She would sooner die than tell him that, though. He might have ripped away most of her pretense, but she still had her pride. Which was a good thing, since if she watched too much more about Vikings who sang about something called Spam and people who seemed inclined to randomly explode, there wasn't going to be much of her mind left. The human sense of humor was always going to be a mystery to her.



Though, the Goddess preserve her, she'd found she'd actually begun to laugh at some of it.



Rowan uncurled herself from the chair, which she'd begun to think she was somehow melding with, and got to her feet. She stretched, yawned, and then looked around her tiny prison with a heavy sigh.



Something was going to have to give. Dying was something she knew she would do one day, possibly soon, but dying from boredom was completely unacceptable. She'd heeded Gabriel about staying put, though she hardly knew why. Some days she told herself it was because he was right about the danger, even if there had been no further sign of the vampires since the day they'd arrived, though that alone made her very uneasy. Some days she told herself it was because she didn't know where the hell she was anyway, and leaving and getting lost was a lousy idea. Particularly because she needed to get back to Iargail, where she would undoubtedly be held up by even more annoying werewolves.



Other days Rowan simply tried not to think about it and just skulked around in the oversized sweats and T-shirt she'd swiped from Gabriel's closet (taking great pleasure in his obvious irritation about it, which he stubbornly refused to express) and found things to do. Unfortunately, ever since the tense, painfully silent cleanup operation she and Gabriel had undertaken for his bedroom the day they'd arrived, there hadn't been much to do in what basically amounted to three rooms, four if she were being generous and counted the kitchen separately. The entire place had been spotless since Tuesday. It was now Saturday, and even her inner voice of denial was beginning to wonder whether she was hanging around because she was prolonging the inevitable, pretending that there would be some way to avoid presenting herself to Lucien like a beribboned gift. Pretending she could stay with the company she probably liked a little too much.



Or would have, if the man would say more than two or three monosyllabic words to her at a time.



She had to give him some grudging credit. Gabriel was as stubborn as she was, and among her family she had been the gold standard for intractability. But any pleasure she'd gotten out of the tension in their current situation had worn off days ago. She was tired of lying around in borrowed and extremely ill-fitting clothes, wiping at the occasional dirty dish and waiting for Gabriel to show up so she could eat and watch him scowl for a few minutes. She was tired of worrying and wondering what Bastian was getting up to back at home, feeling as though the other shoe dropping was always just around the corner. If she'd had money, she might have tried to distract herself for a bit and redecorated the place in silks and pillows like her tent back in the Carith Noor since she was stuck in it all the time. The look on Gabriel's face alone would have been worth the expense.



Instead, her only option for artfully posed lounging was on the bed she'd burned a massive hole in when she'd attempted to cleanse it of blood.



Gabriel had graciously offered her the bedroom for herself after that, which would have been slightly more of a triumph if it would stop smelling like a fire sale in there.



"Damn you, Wolf," she muttered, wandering into the bedroom to glare at herself in the mirror. She looked like the Drak's own wrath, that was the truth. Rowan wound her fingers in her hair and tugged irritably, growling at her wan reflection. Never had she taken so little care of herself, slouching around in the same shapeless clothing day after day, only occasionally bothering to brush her hair. It was all Gabriel's fault, of course.



But it had even gotten tiresome to sit around blaming him.



If only he hadn't called her his mate. She didn't truly hold him responsible for the fight itself ... they'd both been spoiling for one, and in her opinion, a good fight now and then was a balm to the soul. But if only he hadn't given voice to the thing she had felt, the thing she had both known and railed against since she had foolishly shared that magical, singular bite along with her body.



If only it wasn't permanent.



I don't want you, she'd told him.



Yeah you do. Deal with it, he'd replied. And though she had no intention of telling him, he was right. And she was trying. But oh, it was unpleasant.