Midnight's Temptation

you to take me away from the cabin. I didn’t want to tell you there.”

“Tell me what?” He didn’t like the fear he saw in her eyes or the way her lips trembled as she spoke. Nor did he like the way her magic quaked around him. He also didn’t like the way Charon was looking at her as if she were his next kill.

Aisley jumped when lightning flashed above them followed quickly by thunder. “I thought you knew at first. I thought you’d come to kill me.”

“What?” He was getting more confused as the minutes ticked by. “I thought we’d already been through this. I doona want to kill you.”

“Ask her what her surname is,” Charon said.

Phelan cut him a glare before he turned back to Aisley. He recalled when she had told him she thought he would kill her. At the time he’d thought she was fearful of Warriors. Now he was beginning to suspect something else entirely. “Who are you?”

Tears streamed freely down her face now. “Please understand that I planned to tell you tonight. I had valid reasons.”

“Tell me what, dammit!” he bellowed, uncaring of the looks the passersby gave him.

“I’m drough.”

He gave a snort. “That’s ballocks. I’d know.”

“It’s true,” Charon said. “I can feel her drough magic.”

Phelan looked from Charon to Aisley’s tear-streaked face. Her eyes were filled with regret and sorrow so deep he wanted to pull her into his arms. It was the knowledge that he hadn’t known she was drough that made him step away from her.

“I’m sorry,” she said and tried to cling to him. “I thought when you found me in Glasgow you were going to kill me. You didn’t. You kissed me.” She shook her head as the rain began to fall. “Then you took me to your cabin. I knew then there was a chance I could stop Jason myself, and I knew he was after me. I wanted to see if I could stop Jason before I told you. But not at the cabin. That place is too beautiful to be sullied with my blood.”

“You’re damned right,” he said between clenched teeth. He took another step back and jerked his arms away from her. “I took you to my house. My house! No one has ever seen that. No one even knew of it. You let me make love to you. I told you my secrets! And you betrayed me.”

She jerked with every word that left his mouth. His anger was so great he didn’t care what it caused her. He could barely stand the thought that he had shared his body with a drough.

“I … I know it was wrong. But I went with you because I knew you could keep Jason away until I could fight him. Then, I knew you’d kill me.”

He blinked and recoiled from her. Everyone knew he sought out droughs to kill, but the thought of ending Aisley’s life was too sickening to even consider.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured.

Phelan shook his head, thankful the rain had sent most people indoors. There were few on the sidewalk to overhear what they were saying. “Just leave.”

“I’m Jason’s cousin.”

Phelan’s eyes closed at her words. Would the hits ever stop coming? When he opened his eyes he looked anywhere but at her. He had made love to a drough. “Get out of my sight. I can no’ even look at you.”

“I can stop Jason. Please,” she begged as she grabbed his arm.

Phelan tugged away from her, which sent her off balance and crashing to her knees on the concrete. He fisted his hand to keep from reaching for her when he smelled the blood from her skinned knees.

Despite all she’d told him, he couldn’t stop his feelings for her. But he must. The idea that he had willingly bedded a drough—and Wallace’s cousin—several times made his stomach roil.

To think he’d considered taking her back to his cabin so they could spend weeks, months together. He was crushed, utterly shattered.

Would there ever come a time someone didn’t betray him?

“Was everything you told me a lie?” he demanded.

She shook her head, her black mane of hair hiding her face. When she looked up at him after settling back on her heels, she said, “No. None of it.”

“You just conveniently left out the part about being Wallace’s cousin and a drough. Even when I asked about the scars on your wrists! Did you get the information you wanted from me?”

“No! I stayed because you asked me to, and because for the first time in my life I’d been given something good.”

“Fuck that. You know how I hate droughs. How could you even look at me?”

“Because I knew in the end you would end my suffering.”

Phelan was so taken aback he couldn’t respond for several seconds. “You want me to believe that your suffering will end with your death? Are you too stupid to realize your torture will only begin once you’re in Hell?”

She got to her feet instead of answering. Blood coated her knees and palms, but she didn’t seem to notice. “It’s your loathing of droughs that I’ve been counting on.”

“Where is Wallace?”

“I don’t know.”

“Bullshit. Where is Wallace?” he shouted.

“I don’t know! I don’t care!”

Aisley watched Phelan’s lips that had kissed her so tenderly and brought her unimaginable pleasure peel back in a sneer. Her heart tore in two at the betrayal she saw in his blue-gray eyes.

She’d known it would be this bad, but she’d hoped she would be the one to tell him on her terms, not have his friends interrupt things.

Regardless, it was done. And it was past time. The weight she thought would be lifted with her secret only grew heavier. She knew that was because of Phelan. It was because of her love for him.

The way he pulled away from her, as if he couldn’t stand to have her near made her heart splinter into a million pieces. She’d just thought she was broken before. Now she truly knew what that statement meant.

He turned and walked away from her without another word. Charon and Laura followed close on his heels. Aisley was left all alone in the rain.

She turned in the opposite direction Phelan had gone and began to wander the streets. There would be no returning to the hotel for her clothes or money. Nothing mattered anymore.

The sound of drums echoed dimly in her mind, but she quickly shut them out. She wanted no part of magic anymore. She wanted no part of anything anymore.

She couldn’t even think of Jason or fighting him, because she didn’t have the strength for it now. Phelan had been her strength. She was as weak as Jason had always claimed.

When she came to the suspension bridge over the River Ness, she stood on the side and looked over the long drop to the water below. If Phelan wouldn’t kill her, she’d have to do it herself.

Aisley let go of the metal and jumped.

A punishing grip on her wrist jerked her to a halt. She looked up into the familiar blue eyes of Jason.

“Hello, cousin,” he said with a terrifying smile.

*   *   *

Phelan sat on the corner of the bed in the hotel room staring at Aisley’s bag with her clothes hanging out of it and spilling onto the floor.

“What all did you tell her?” Charon asked from his position leaning against a wall.

Phelan shrugged. “Nothing of importance. I told her the story of how Warriors came to be. She’d never heard it. I told her of Deirdre and Declan.”

“You told her how you were taken, didn’t you?” Laura asked softly.

Phelan nodded and dropped his head into his hands as he leaned forward. How had he not known what Aisley was? “I doona know why I couldna feel her magic was that of a drough.”

When Charon and Laura didn’t respond, Phelan lifted his head to spear Charon with a look. “You know, I bet.”