After Dawn, What Came Next

Christian sank onto the edge of the bed and rested his forehead in his palms. His neck muscles were stiff and the bruises throbbing. He supposed the damage would have been worse if not for her blood and its unusual gifts. He had spent his whole adult life chasing vampires and werewolves and here he was up to his eyeballs in weird shit. He could sense Cat’s lingering doubts. Her emotions did the tango with his and he honestly didn’t know if they were ok or not. He wouldn’t lie to her for his benefit or to spare her feelings. “Did you find your friends?”

Cat shook her head. Tears clogged her throat. She swallowed hard, trapping her sobs. Everything was so fucked up! She was supposed to be happy. Instead she was miserable absolutely miserable. Danni and Phoenix were missing. Barbara was probably dying. Her dad could have killed Christian with nothing more than a flick of his wrist. As for the Brat Pack, the search for their two missing members was the only thing holding them together. Her world was spinning too fast and changing before her eyes. Everything she thought she knew about her friends and about herself was just a convenient version of the truth.

Cat’s tears, the bravery in which she held them back and refused to let them fall shattered Christian’s resolve. He couldn’t leave her. He had been fooling himself to think he could. Sure, he was human and he had no more business in her world than she had in his. The two of them were fools, but he would rather be a fool for her and with her than be alone, empty hearted and handed with nothing. He crouched on his knees at her feet and gently parted her legs, working his way in between them. There was nothing sexual about his gesture. He only wanted to be as close to her as possible.

Cupping her cheeks, he brushed the tips of his thumbs over her damp lashes. She was heartbroken and what had just happened in this room was only part of the cause. Last night, they had come to each other as nothing more than overgrown children pounding their chests and pretending to be adults. In the morning light, with a lifetime lived in less than twenty-four hours they felt the pain and heartbreak of actually being an adult. He stared intently at her features, seeing a mix of her mother and father in the curve of her cheek and the upward tilt of the corners of her eyes.

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to figure out if you look more like your mom or your dad,” Christian answered.

“Some people say I look like my dad and others say I look like my mom. I don’t think I look like either one of them.”

Christian planted a soft kiss on her forehead. “You don’t.”

“Who do I look like then?”

“Yourself.” He wrapped his arms around her shoulders dragging her into the shelter of his chest. His little kitten needed him. She leaned on him, soaking in his warmth and his strength. He gladly gave it to her. All that he had was hers for the taking. Out of all the big bad paranormal sons of bitches in HQ, she leaned on him, an ordinary human guy, for support. “You will find your friends, Cat.”

“What about us?”

“I’m here aren’t I?” If she thought he was going to let her dad keep them apart. She needed to think again. He wasn’t going anywhere as long as she needed him so desperately. When he left, if he left. It would be because he chose to or they decided it was the right thing to do. It wouldn’t be because he had let her dad chase him off.

“You’re stuck here.”

“There is that, but Cat, but I’m here with you because I want to be and you want me to be. The rest of this mess…how we fit into each other’s worlds, we’ll figure it out as we go along.”

“And if we can’t?” Cat closed her eyes and let the gentle rocking motions of Christian’s body lull her into a place of calm. Of course, she’d find Phoenix and Danni. The brat pack would mend its wounds in time. Her dad wasn’t inflexible. He wanted her happiness in all things and if she found it with a human male. He would eventually come around. The warmth and strength of him made her feel like anything was possible and everything would turn out just fine. Christian moved and sat on the edge of the bed, tugging her into his lap. He held her, just held her and it was exactly what she needed and how she needed it.

“We will. I promise you, we will.”













































Chapter 73

Fallon got to work on Barbara. She was guessing, going on her gut instinct to guide her on how best to pull Barbara back from the brink. Thomas was too emotionally involved and Jan couldn’t assist her because she was too busy holding her husband and herself together. Thomas had already tried the usual cookbook medicine treatments before she had arrived. So far, the things that should have worked hadn’t.

Barbara’s pulse was a little stronger and less erratic. The cardiac drugs Fallon administered had leveled out Barbara’s heart rate a bit. The oxygen mask and bolus of synthetic hemoglobin had helped to calm her irregular breathing. But, the problem was as soon as Fallon thought Barbara had finally come around the bend in the road. The effects of the drugs wore off. Barbara’s hybrid metabolism simply burned off the meds too quickly. If she had been a little less wolf and a little more human, maybe the drugs would have the time they needed to work. Then again, if she were a little more human, she might be dead now.

Carter had probably saved Barbara’s life and his blood had been called upon again to keep her heart doing its job. Carter had sent the darts to a friend to analyze the substance on their tips. It was slow work isolating a particular drug, like finding a needle in a haystack. Could take weeks when Fallon needed an answer, like yesterday. Fallon hated to do it and hadn’t done it herself since med school, but with Jan out of the picture she was playing both doctor and nurse to Barbara.

There was one remedy they hadn’t tried and no other way to get it into Barbara’s stomach except by passing a tube through her nose and down her throat. Nana had guarded the recipe for her tea and had passed it down to Fallon and Fallon alone. The ingredients themselves shouldn’t have made the tea anything other than tea, but there was more to the tea than dried herbs and leaves. Magic, there was powerful magic in the tea. Nana had such ability. Sometimes, Fallon was lucky enough if her mix could cure a cold or maybe ease a fever. She had never tried it before on any thing beyond something a little Tylenol could fix. But, the pack believed and sometimes belief was more than enough.

She was a doctor and there were pills for literally any illness. She preferred pills. The tea, at least her version of it, was unpredictable at best. Modern medicine had never failed her before, until now. Gritting her teeth she did what had to be done and taped the tube in place. She prayed as she had never prayed before and poured the brew down the tube and into Barbara’s stomach.

Carter watched the female witch doctor do her work. In his day they would have burned her at the stake. Strange, what was once called witchcraft was now modern medicine. He had given another few drops of his blood to add to the tea. The wolf had drank deeply of him and still, it was not enough. Her one and only word after rousing rolled around in his head. Sebastian, she had said. Sebastian. What did Sebastian have to do with anything? Could be the girl was delusional. Could be she had simply said whatever had come into her fevered mind. But, he didn’t think so and neither did anybody else.

He had a tail on his second, watching the man’s every move. The only man he trusted to do the job was David. David was not a Guardian. He was not a brother. And he had nothing invested in the outcome either way. David owed no loyalty to anyone except for himself. Carter admired that in the man. David could not be bought either. Upon arriving, Catcher and Daniel had gone out to join David. Carter didn’t trust Daniel. He didn’t really know Catcher, but the man’s reputation preceded him. Catcher was an omega. He lived to serve and defend and if Sebastian was behind the abduction. Catcher’s loyalty to his niece and her father would take care of the problem without Carter having to deal with the mess himself. Catcher would tear the man limb from limb.

Thomas held Jan in his arms and watched Fallon do her work to save his daughter. He was absolutely helpless to assist. His hands shook and his heart pounded in dread. As a physician he had always avoided family members. Too much explaining. Took too much of his valuable time. Too easy to piss someone off. Family members hovered and got in the way and ultimately, what more was there for them to do but wait and watch and pray for the best? He was praying now, holding his wife and praying for his baby girl to open her eyes.

He exhaled a sigh of relief as Drew walked into the room. Drew took one look at Barbara and gently nudged Fallon out of the way. He spoke in soft whispered words, in the ancient tongue of the ancestors. Maybe it was the tea. Maybe it was the magic. Maybe it was simply the man in the room, but Barbara began to cough and gag, ripping at the tube taped to her nose as she opened her eyes. Drew had pulled her back. He had called to the part of her that was pack and like the alpha he was, he had simply commanded her to awaken, and she had.

Fallon took Barbara’s vitals. The bounding of her pulse was a cause for great joy. She was going to be ok. It would take a while before she was completely well, but at least she was out of the woods. Fallon would like to think her skill as a physician had pulled Barbara back, but every doctor knew a patient lived or didn’t live, not because of your skill but because of something deeper, something mystical and magical that went beyond the reaches of modern medicine. “Take a deep breath, Barbara.”

Barbara choked and gagged, snotting and snorting as Fallon pulled out the tube. Worst experience ever! Fallon refused to pull off the wires attached to Barbara and the little blood pressure cuff around her arm squeezed god awfully tight every fifteen minutes. Barbara watched her heartbeat flutter across the monitor’s screen. Really weird, she couldn’t feel her heart beating, but it was. Fluids dripped from a bag hung over her head and rolled down a tube and into her veins from the needle stuck in her arm. The oxygen cannula made the inside of her nose dry and itchy. Fallon wouldn’t let her take that or the little thing-a-ma-jig taped to the tip of her finger measuring the amount of oxygen in her blood off either.

She felt fine, tired, but fine. There were huge gaps of darkness in her memory. Everyone was dying to ask her a million questions. She could practically see the questions buzzing round in the air like a swarm of bees. Everything was so fuzzy and almost dreamlike. She couldn’t concentrate enough to answer the easy stuff Doctor Fallon asked her. The only thing she wanted was for everyone to quit staring at her like she was a circus monkey about to do a trick. She wanted her mom and dad and nobody else, not even her friends.

Ok, Fallon was about done with everyone bothering the shit out of her patient. She cleared the room except for Jan and Thomas. Not even the Great Father was exempt. Barbara needed her rest, not a bunch of people staring at her and wringing their hands. Fallon still wanted to know what was in those darts. She marveled at the spiritual that had actually saved Barbara’s life when medicine had failed. The miracle was just one more thing to add to her list of inexplicable things that simply happened for no apparent reason. She checked Barbara’s vitals one last time and moved to excuse herself from the room. Jan and Thomas weren’t going to let anything happen to their baby girl and the last thing the three of them needed was her hovering around. If there were trouble, they’d let her know.

Barbara was under strict orders of bed rest. She wasn’t strong enough to handle a barrage of questions at this point. When she was ready, Fallon would let the warriors question her. Thomas stopped her at the door with a gentle squeeze on the shoulder. Fallon could see the thanks in his eyes. She didn’t need his thanks. She hadn’t done a damn thing. Barbara had done the hard part for herself. Fallon had just sat on the sidelines cheering her on, just like everyone else.

Fallon eased the door closed behind her, giving the reunited family their privacy. She leaned her head against the wall and eased the tension out of her shoulders. She had been so busy with Barbara she hadn’t even given Catcher and Daniel a second thought. In a way it was a relief to put her personal life on hold. She had always been at her best in a crisis and her patients deserved her all, but with the worst of the current emergency behind her. Where else would her thoughts go but back to the men in her life?

God, what was she going to do? She loved them both. Daniel could say he didn’t love her, but he had proven in letting her go that he did. The two of them belonged together. Some small part of her still believed it…still wanted it.

Catcher deserved better than just the pieces of her heart Daniel had cast aside. One night with each of the men had changed her life. Daniel had set her free with a kiss. And Catcher…he had captured her with nothing more than a kiss. Shit. Maybe, she was better off sub existing in a dream where everything was perfect and had a happy ending.

Daniel wasn’t the man she thought he was and neither was Catcher. As for her, she wasn’t the woman she thought she was either. Time had changed her from that little girl so desperate for just a scrap of Daniel’s attention. She wasn’t desperate for him. She didn’t need Daniel and he had made it plainly obvious he didn’t need or want her. It was embarrassing that she had made such a fool of herself for him. For far too long she had blocked herself off from the possibilities the world had to offer. Well, no longer, she wasn’t going to turn away from happiness. Everyone was right about Daniel. Even Mouse, had tried to warn her. She simply hadn’t wanted to listen.

Fallon tried to envision her life with Catcher. So much of him was still wild and untamed. He ate from her hand, but there was always the fear that he would turn on her and bite the hand that fed him. He wanted things for himself so desperately. He wanted what his twin had. Fallon could see it whenever Catcher would look upon his brother and Shayla. Tracker and Catcher’s lot had not been easy. But, Tracker was such a different man than Catcher. Tracker and Shayla had wills of unbendable steel. They had worked hard to make a life for themselves out of the ashes. What they had worked because they made it work. Catcher bore the pain his brother had so willingly cast aside to attain his future. The pain Fallon had sought to ease was still with Catcher and to a degree probably always would be.

There were some who might say she was the crazy one. Lord knew she had given the pack plenty to gossip about in the last forty-eight hours. Maybe, she was just a sucker for a lost cause. After all, physicians healed the sick and the damaged and were there any two souls more damaged than Catcher and Daniel’s? Her whole life had been an exercise in abnormality. For as long as she could remember, she had been different from the other kids. Her family definitely wasn’t the Brady Bunch by a long shot. It had been her mom and her grandma for the first few years of her life. Just the three of them and then her grandma had passed away. After that, she had gone with her mom to live with her aunt and uncle. That’s when the real weirdness that had simply become everyday life began.

At the tender age of ten years old, finding out she was going to grow up to become a werewolf had been the coolest thing ever. Having a real vampire show up on her doorstep on Halloween night? What kid wouldn’t be flip-dizzy over that? Reality, as it turned out, wasn’t quite as fun as she had imagined it to be. She had grown up with so many secrets to protect. She went to college with ordinary everyday people. She had human friends on the outside. But, she had only been pretending to be as human as they were.

She would never be human and she would never be normal. Fallon closed her eyes and tried to picture herself with two kids and a white picket fence. Sending the kids to school every morning and coming home every evening to make supper for her family, sitting around watching TV and simply doing all the things that normal people did. It wasn’t going to happen. Hell, she probably couldn’t even own a pet. Her wolf would most likely eat a cat and if it didn’t one of her pack mates would. It was damn depressing. There would be no minivan or kitty named Fluffy in her future. There would be only weirdness and more weirdness.

Maybe, she should hold out for a well adjusted man or at least someone not quite as fucked up as Catcher. She didn’t want to think about the nightmares he dreamed night after night. Daniel wasn’t any better in the nightmare department. Both men didn’t just dream nightmares. They had lived through them. Fallon pounded her head against the wall and cracked open one eye at the sound of a masculine chuckle. Great. It was Carter and wasn’t that exactly what she needed? The damn prince of darkness mocking her as if he weren’t as fucked up as the rest of this demented circus she called normal. “Do you think they’ve killed each other yet?”

Carter snorted and raised a brow at Fallon. She had grown up to be a true beauty. Daniel and Catcher were working together to find the missing wolves. Funny that, considering the woman was the thorn in their sides. They probably would have torn each other to shreds over her if the situation weren’t what it was. Sometimes, a crisis made for strange bedfellows. Upon occasion, he too was forced to work with people he’d rather kill than cooperate with. “They won’t. Not until after Phoenix and Danni have been retrieved. After that, who knows?”

Fallon mimicked Carter’s cool shrug. She hadn’t seen him in years. He hadn’t changed a bit either in appearance or attitude. He was still the same cocky assed vampire you hated to love. She couldn’t help but feel sympathy for the man. She had been a little girl at the time, but rumors sometimes fell on little ears. He had stepped aside for Shayla’s sake. There seemed to be a lot of that, the love of a woman’s life graciously and boldly sacrificing his happiness for her own good.

An epiphany came to Fallon. The men: Carter, Daniel, and every other man that had ever walked out on a woman who loved them for the greater good, hadn’t done so for her sake, but for his own. Walking away was the most selfish thing a man could do. It was the act of a true coward. Daniel hadn’t set her free for her sake, but for his own. He was afraid, terrified of her and her love.

Fallon bounded off the wall and grabbed Carter, landing a wet, sloppy kiss on his cheek. “Thank you, Carter. Thank you!”

Carter wiped the slobber off his cheek and scowled down at Fallon. What did he do? Whatever it was. He wasn’t going to do it again. She stared up at him, her eyes twinkling with the zeal of revelation, as if he had discovered the secret to life, the universe, and everything in it. He wasn’t one to fop off a woman’s praise, but what could he have possibly done to earn such generous thanks?

“I think I should warn you. Shayla is here.”

Carter frowned and brushed a strand of Fallon’s red hair off his shoulder. “I know.” Fallon wrapped her arms around him and gave him a heartfelt hug filled with sympathy. He patted her on the back, embarrassed and ashamed of how much he had needed just a simple hug. A man like him did not receive them nearly often enough.

“Daniel is afraid of me. I never realized it until now. It isn’t me he doesn’t want. It isn’t even about me. Not really. It’s about him.”