Midnight Reckoning

And yet somehow, she felt as though she was stuck in the pit staring up at the pendulum as its gleaming blade swung lower… and lower…



Lyra poured vanilla citrus soap on her bath puff and lathered up, barely paying attention to what she was doing. She decided that wallowing for a little longer was therapeutic. Lyra’s lips lifted in a cynical half smile. Usually it was Jaden’s job to brood, not hers.



Jaden. There was no residual soreness from last night, nothing but the memory of his hands on her body, the way he had almost worshipped her as he’d made love to her. She sighed, glad to at least have those memories as one hell of a distraction from her horrible mood. If there were such a thing as perfection, joining with him had come very close. Imagining the act hadn’t done the reality justice at all. She only wished the night had ended better. Like, without a vampire ambush.



Of course, even if the Ptolemy hadn’t shown up, she’d been rattled. The lovemaking had been almost too intense, solidifying a connection with Jaden that was far more potent than anything she’d expected to feel. Moving inside her, Jaden had seemed more like an extension of herself than a separate being. Even the aftermath had been charged, hazy and full of jumbled thoughts and feelings that all boiled down to the same impossible thing.



She was falling in love with him.



Worse, she’d almost said so.



She’d realized it as they lay there afterward, feeling the rhythm their heartbeats made together. She’d been too euphoric, too content to fight it any longer. And as she’d thought it, there the words had been, right on the tip of her tongue, along with the deep certainty that she should always be near him, that she never wanted to be anywhere she couldn’t see his face.



Unfortunately, along with that had come another feeling, an unfamiliar sense that she belonged to him. Lyra grimaced at the thought. Ownership was a lot of what wolf matehood was all about, one of the reasons she had every intention of avoiding it. If she could feel like this from sleeping with a guy she couldn’t actually bond with, how much worse must it be between wolves? No one was ever going to possess her. The best solution would be to never fall in love at all, she knew. So she would just have to deal with this, try to stop the slide before she was in way over her head.



Of course, that was presuming she wasn’t already. But she had to believe she could make it stop, push back whatever this was turning into. Because not doing so would throw everything she wanted in doubt.



Lyra rinsed the soap off, brushing her hands over her skin to get rid of the last of the suds. She was barely paying attention, lost in her own thoughts. As she passed the puff over her arm, however, something registered as different. Lyra nearly managed to ignore it, through the distant warning bells going off in the back of her mind. But her eyes were drawn back, much against her better judgment. There, faint but unmistakable, she saw the intricate band encircling her right arm at mid-bicep.



The bath puff fell to the floor unnoticed. She stared. Tentatively, as though touching it might burn her, she raised her left hand and rubbed at the new mark with a finger. First lightly, then harder.



“No,” she said softly, her skin turning red as she scrubbed roughly. “No, seriously, come on, no.”



But no amount of begging removed it, and after a few minutes of fruitless effort, Lyra simply stood there under the running water staring at what she had done. What they had done.



It’s not possible. It’s NOT.



The numbness vanished quickly, replaced by an intense pressure in her chest that seemed to build and build, until it felt as though she might suffocate. Tiny starbursts appeared in front of her eyes, and Lyra knew she was going to pass out if she didn’t sit down and get a hold of herself. Bracing herself against the wall, she turned off the water and slowly sank to the floor of the tub, wrapping her arms around her legs.



Cats. She had cats wrapped around her arm. Stretching forward, lolling on their backs, each connected to the other by catching the tail. Cute, apart from the bared fangs of some and the fierce eyes of others. Not housecats. Cats like Jaden.



Anyone who saw this would know what had happened in a heartbeat.



“Oh no,” she said in a soft moan, and she hiccupped back the tears that wanted to come. She did not cry. Not ever. And certainly not about damn fool things she’d done to herself, even if they ruined… everything.



Had she really thought she wasn’t in over her head? Somehow, she’d bonded with Jaden.



With a vampire.



She sat there, stunned, for minutes that could have been hours. Finally, Lyra forced herself to go through the motions, standing up and toweling off. Her eyes, gazing back at her from the mirror, were dull with shock. It shouldn’t have been possible. But then… perhaps no one had ever been stupid enough to test the theory that wolves and vampires were incompatible. Until now, that was.



Did he have one too? Or would it just be her, bearing a singular mark as punishment for foolishly giving in to taking something she couldn’t, and shouldn’t, truly have?



She touched the band on her skin again, lighter than most marks of bonding she had seen but still very much there. Even as she did, the memory of Jaden filled her mind—the look in his eyes when he moved inside her, the way he touched her, as though she were some fragile, precious thing. His smiles, rare and beautiful and just for her. The longing that flooded her nearly took her back to her knees.



One of the few choices she’d had, now taken away forever. A forbidden mate.



What the hell was she supposed to do now?



A treacherous tear slipped down one cheek, and for once, Lyra gave over to the impulse.



She leaned against the counter and wept.



Once she’d collected herself, Lyra put on a little bit of concealer, sucked it up, and did what always got her through in the past: kept moving.



She hopped in her little pickup, peeled out of the driveway, and drove straight for the one place that might help her. She was at the Larison Silver Memorial Library in five minutes, and headed down into the basement in another five, her boot heels clicking and echoing on the wooden stairs. This was the part of the library that was only open to a certain subset of the public. The stairs themselves were hidden, and the basement musty enough to be a deterrent to anyone with a decent nose. But Lyra had an excellent nose, and she still pressed on.



She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it before. If there was an answer to her problem, it was here, in the Thorn Histories.



Teresa McFarlane sat at a scarred old desk at the foot of the stairs, utterly absorbed in what looked like a torrid novel. Lyra slowed to look at the cover, her curiosity piqued.



“Hey Teresa. How’s the ménage?”



Teresa, a plump and pretty woman in her early fifties who looked as though the word ménage might send her into palpitations, looked up, startled. When she spotted Lyra, however, her quick grin said it all.



“It’s just getting good. And I can’t decide whether I want Rafe to end up with the sexy biker boy who’s been worshipping him from afar, or the beautiful seductress who keeps coming between them. Literally.”



Lyra burst out laughing, glad to find she was still capable of such a reaction. She could always count on Teresa, who was the opposite of what she used to think a Keeper of the Histories should be, to lighten the mood. She was also pretty sure that Teresa had taken the job because it gave her hours every day to read without interruption. And some of the Keeper’s favorite subjects had introduced Lyra to a whole new literary world.



A multiple-partnered, very unclothed literary world. She wondered sometimes what Gerry thought of his wife’s active imagination and then decided he probably wasn’t complaining. Some of that stuff could just about set the pages on fire.



“Maybe he won’t have to pick,” Lyra said.



“That’s what I’m hoping,” Teresa said, sliding off her reading glasses to look at Lyra. “What’s up, honey? What can I help you with?”



“I’m, um, interested in bonding,” Lyra said. She’d tried to come up with a way to beat around the bush, but there simply wasn’t one. Fortunately, Teresa preferred blunt, and Lyra doubted there would be too many questions if she played this right.



“Aren’t we all?” Teresa said with a dramatic sigh, fanning herself. “So what’s the occasion? You finally find a wolf who can handle you? Or just one you want to handle?” She wiggled her eyebrows.



Lyra’s smile felt slightly more pasted on. Of course Teresa assumed she’d be looking for a nice wolf. Why not? Anything else for a woman in her position wasn’t done. Unless it was, and you wound up wearing a cat tattoo…



“Sadly no,” Lyra replied. “I was actually wondering about, ah, interspecies bonding. Sort of.”



Teresa’s eyebrows lifted so high they nearly shot past her hairline. “Interspecies? You mean like human and werewolf? I’ve got quite a bit on that. Honey, tell me you didn’t meet a human. It would break your father’s heart.” She pursed her lips. “It would make your aunt’s day, though. I swear that woman’s the biggest tightass in three counties.”



Lyra blew out a breath, exasperated and amused all at the same time. “No, honestly, Teresa, this isn’t for me. You know we’ve got the vamp staying with us.”



“Mmm-hmm. Couldn’t miss him,” she replied. “Got that dangerous bad boy thing going on. It’s a shame he smells like cat.”



“Well, I’ve been stuck kind of squiring him around, and he’s insistent that vampires and werewolves used to hook up. Like, actually bond. I bet him fifty bucks he’s wrong, but I don’t know how to prove it. I figured you would.”



Teresa relaxed immediately, and the relief nearly took Lyra down. She bought it. Of course she would. Why else could she want to know such a crazy thing? She was a vamp hater just like everyone else here, after all, a nice Alpha’s girl. Right?



Right.



“Good one, honey. And I’d love to see you fleece the vamp, but I’m afraid he actually has a point.”