Dawn's End

Megan had never given much thought to Biology class or her place on the food chain. She wasn't likely to wander to some remote plane in the middle of Africa to test the theory against a hungry lion or go up against a grizzly bear. So, it had never mattered, until now, who was at the top. She'd always assumed humans were at the pinnacle.

Idly, she picked up another cookie, dangling it in between her fingers. This one was heavy on the chocolate chips and had huge chunks of macadamia nuts embedded through out the perfectly baked golden-brown surface. Guiltily, the cookie still hovering over the milk mid dunk, she thought she should eat at least taste one. She'd already drowned almost half the plate and not taken so much as a bite of a cookie or a sip of the milk. Anna would never know the difference. Megan planned to dispose of the evidence by way of the garbage disposal. Halfway down to the milk, the cookie was snatched from her fingers and the stool across from her scraped noisily across the white marble tiled floor. "Bad night?" the man asked.

Megan looked up, frowning at the bitterness and sarcasm in his voice. Resigned to let him enjoy what she could not. She shoved the glass of milk across the stainless steel counter to him. If he was going to take the cookie right out of her hand when there was a plateful beside her, he might as well have the milk too. She scowled at him as he dunked her...well...his stolen cookie in her surrendered milk and took a big bite. She shrugged her shoulders in response, watching him chew and swallow down the entire cookie in one big gulp.

There was enough of a resemblance between Cole and the man, that she recognized him easily. He bit into a second cookie, taking his time to dunk it thoroughly in the milk before chomping it in half with blunt, human front teeth before swallowing it down. Through a mouthful of mushed up cookie and milk, he said, "Me too." With a sad grin, he pushed the milk to the center of the counter and motioned toward the plate.

Megan took a cookie from the plate and dunked it in the milk. Mimicking him as she took a bite and swallowed it down. They ate their fill in a companionable silence till the milk was gone and there was nothing but drying cookie shrapnel drying in the bottom of the glass. She should have been grossed out by dunking her cookie in the same milk that he did. The generation gap between them should have made her feel awkward and uncomfortable. What they shared though was something more than a couple of cookies and a glass of milk or a misery loves company kind of thing. They were misfits walking a tightrope of secrets. One foot in world that was too small for them and the other in a world that was much larger than they'd ever guessed.

"You need a ride home?" Robert asked. The girl was a teenage version of a Barbie doll from her wide baby blues, to the ends of her platinum blonde ponytail, and down to the tip of a perfect, pert nose. She should be waving pom-poms, cheering the home team to victory instead of sitting over one hundred feet under ground miserably sulking as she dunked cold cookies in warm milk. She looked as lost and abandoned as he felt. In one another they'd found a friend.

Megan went to the sink and rinsed the cookie crumbs down the drain. She gathered her purse and frowned in dismay at the designer label. The name on the handbag wasn't nearly as meaningful as it had been when she had gotten it as a gift on the morning of her seventeenth birthday... ages ago. Nothing was as she thought it was back then. She wasn't the person she'd always believed herself to be. In a matter of days, she'd grown up. With a smile and a nod she said, "Thanks."

Chapter 69

The gray of dawn's first light streaked across the sky. The woods around Shayla breathed with a sigh at the start of a new day. Birds sleepily shook off their slumber with a ruffle of feathers and the joyous sounds of morning song. After Tracker had finally drifted off with an arm tucked snugly around her waist effectively pinning her to his side, she'd stared awake for hours at the ceiling over her head.

Sleep was as illusive as Carter these days. She hadn't seen him for days. She felt him though. Always near, always watching, but so far out of her reach. This morning, she was going to find him. She wanted him to hear it from her lips before word got round and someone else told him before she got the chance. She owed him that much at least. There wasn't any use to deny it or kid herself about the truth any longer. She was pregnant.

Shaking off a wave of nausea, she trekked through the thick snow covered woods. Carter's footfalls were as soft as a whisper as he moved through the trees ahead of her. He picked up speed. By now, he had no doubt caught her scent and moved faster and farther away to escape its source. If she wanted to catch up with him she was going to have to work for it. Sucking in breaths of frosty morning air, she ran at a breakneck pace over the hard packed snow.

Clad in cumbersome boots and a heavy wool coat, she had little chance of gaining on him. The tread from her footsteps stretched out in a crisscross of footprints behind her. Exhausted from the sudden urgency of her run and winded from the miles she'd traveled through calf deep snow, she leaned against the base of a tree and panted for breath. "Carter, please! Talk to me."

Carter heard Shayla's voice, breathy and raspy, drifting heavily on the cold morning air. In his haste to get away, he'd bolted into the deepest part of the woods. She'd been a fool to try and keep up with him. He was the bigger fool for turning around to retrace his steps and follow the plea in her voice. She leaned against the base of a wide maple. It's brown-black bark the same dark color as the wisps of hair peeking out from beneath her wool cap. Her cheeks were rosy and flushed red from exertion and the cold.

Shayla's knees felt weak as she took him in. Ice crystals dangled from the ends of his blond curls, wrapping his face in a halo of rainbow light as the first peeking rays of the sun caught on the beads and reflected off their surface. He moved with predatory grace almost as if he were floating over the snow instead of wading through it. His skin was pale, almost translucent in the morning glow of dawn. Wild arctic cold blue eyes, raked over her body, tracing over every curve and making her shiver as if their iciness had razed across her skin. His jaw tightened, the muscle beneath his cheek ticking with tension. "Carter." She reached out a gloved hand toward him desperate for just a touch and the slightest hint of warmth.

Carter thought he knew what hell was. He knew nothing until she reached out to him. That desperate movement was hell. The need to feel her hands on his face and to be denied the only thing he craved more than life itself was hell. He'd suffered in its fiery depths for far too long. He moved so fast, he hadn't realized he had closed the distance between them until he held her locked in his embrace. His lips sought out the softness and the warmth of her skin. Clumsily, he fumbled with the gloves on her hands, freeing her fingers and pressing them to his cheek.

Shayla forgot what had driven her out into the cold pre-dawn. She forgot how to speak and how to breathe. She forgot the world and everything in it except for the touch of this man and the madness of his kiss. His lips were demanding, holding her mouth prisoner. His tongue traced paths, so soft and wondrous across her lips. She melted in the searing heat of Carter's arms and just let herself forget.

The more Carter demanded the more she gave. Kissing him in a whirlwind of frenzied, tangled tongues and gasping desperate breaths, tears formed in the corners of her eyes and froze on the fringes of her lashes. She cried for the truth she held in her arms and the man she was damned to lose because of it. Carter broke the kiss and gently ran his thumbs over her lashes, capturing her tears. He frowned at the regret he saw in Shayla's eyes and pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead. Every muscle in his body stiffened as he ran his nose along her hair and trapped her scent deep in his lungs. He scented the truth and dropped his fingertips from her cheek, rolling the moisture of her tears between his thumbs and forefingers.

Shayla wrapped her arms around her chest, as if she could trap the lingering heat from Carter's body and hold it close to her. Her tears fell freely in great heaving sobs. She loved Tracker. Only that love was a dim reflection of what she felt for the man backing away from her, savoring the feel of her tears on his fingers. "I'm sorry," she whispered. Her lips still burned from the fire of Carter's kiss. The words were a puff of white steam on the frozen air, suspended between them.

Carter moved to wrap his arms around her. Just to feel the press of Shayla's body against his one last time. "Don't be. I...I am the one who is sorry. I pushed you too hard. I left you alone for too long. Losing you is the bitter fruit of my actions. I only hope one day you can come to forgive me. I love you, Shayla. I only wish I could have realized it before I forced you into the arms of another." He lifted her trembling chin with his fingers, raking a long kiss against her lips and swallowing the sobs of her pain as they rose from her throat to fill his mouth.

The kiss was brief and sorrowful. He held her face up to meet his, searching her brown eyes beneath the watery fall of her tears. "Tracker is a good man and a lucky one." He bent and brushed his lips against hers, taking her scent deep into his lungs and trapping its essence into his body. "Have a happy life, Shayla."

Shayla dropped to her knees. The cold wetness of the snow bit through her jeans, but she didn't feel it or the frozen ground beneath her. All she felt was the last bits of her heart shattering to bits. There was no trace of Carter. Not even as much as one twig bent out of place to prove that he'd ever stood beside her, holding her, kissing her, and loving her, at all. With nothing left except for the emptiness in the place where Carter's love had been, she cried, and cried, till there were no more tears left to fall.

Tracker awoke to cold sheets and a chilly empty space in the bed where Shayla had been. Her scent was too fresh in the room. She hadn't been gone that long. Often, she slid out of bed for a brisk walk before the day officially started. The morning was bitterly cold. Her condition was too fragile for her to stray far from the house. Not bothering with anything besides sweatpants and a light jacket, he followed her scent and the trail of her footprints in the snow deeper into the woods.

Tracker approached Shayla's location on silent feet. His toes were numb from the icy cold of the snow, but he paid it no heed. The noisy clump of boots over the rough terrain would have given him away. A surge of sheer, animalistic rage beat against his nerve endings of the sight of her wrapped in Carter's arms, locked in a deep, passionate kiss.

He wanted to kill that vampire more than he'd wanted to kill anything else ever in his life. He held his position. If the occasion called for it, he'd kill the vampire later. Killing Carter outright in front of Shayla would accomplish nothing. She'd hate him for it. She teetered on the brink of loving him and he wasn't willing to risk it for wounded pride and a severely bruised ego.

His wolf howled for the right to challenge the vampire, scrabbling in his brain with claws eager to spill first blood. The cold nipped at his fingers and toes. He ignored the stinging bite and watched the scene between Shayla and Carter play out.

The fall of her tears jabbed daggers into his heart. Their salty scent tainted the air. If only she could look at him the way she looked at Carter. If only, just once, she'd cry with the same emotion for him, that she cried for Carter. Tracker had to give the vampire credit. He would have caved to the first teardrop. Carter stoically wiped them away, whispered an apology steeped in emotion and regret, turned his back, and disappeared into the woods. Tracker almost came undone as Shayla fell to the ground, drowning in sobs of loss.

Tracker's first instinct was to go to her, scoop her up, and dry her tears. He didn't. He stayed hidden behind a screen of bushy pines and did the only thing that would do her any good. He let her cry all her tears out. Only when she was finished, her body exhausted by the force of the sobs that wracked her slender frame, did he emerge from the blind of pines. Victory was a hollow thing. He'd finally won the woman he'd always wanted. But, he felt no sense of pride in winning, just a deep regret that her heart had broken in the process. He knelt in the snow in front of her and extended his hand. Whether she took it or not was up to her. His offer was the same as it always had been. His heart. His soul.

Shayla regarded Tracker's open hand. The palm up and the fingers extended. She wondered exactly how long he hid in the thick ring of pines surrounding her and what he'd overheard in his eavesdropping. He said nothing. Offered no words of comfort, not that there were any. He gazed at her silently, his hand stretched between them in open invitation. He had to be hurting. She could see the truth of his pain in his eyes. Although, he tried to hide his raw agony from her, he couldn't. She accepted his hand, lacing her frozen fingers through his.

She gripped his palm, not because she was out of options or out of a sense of duty to him or her unborn child. But, because, for as much as she loved Carter. Tracker loved her. Unlike Carter, who couldn't stand the thought of loving another, Tracker wanted nothing more in the world but for her to love him in return. It had taken a trial by fire to realize it and admit the truth. She was ready to love without doubt and any reservations.

Tracker tasted Carter on Shayla's lips. Carter's scent clung to her clothing and hair. He ignored the lingering traces of the vampire and focused on the woman in his arms. The urge to kill Carter no longer surged through his limbs. Carter would hurt far more if he were left alive than if he were dead. He'd been a fool to let Shayla go. He had to live with the realization he'd come to his senses far too late to change his decision. To Tracker that was revenge enough. A part of Shayla would always love Carter. Tracker knew this and as unwilling to share as he was. He realized he could share that small part of her heart for he had the bigger part of it.

Chapter 70

Bianca scowled at the cell phone in her hand. She loathed these calls. Sebastian, her second, listed the events of the day, as he did every morning just before dawn, in bleak detail. Didn't the man ever have any good news? The Guardians were holding their own in her absence, but barely. Every morning Sebastian's reports reminded her of her shortcomings as a leader. She could hear the accusations in his voice, even if he never outwardly verbalized them. One thing was clear. She needed to get her ass back to the city. Soon.

She ended the call on a sharp note of warning. Keep the Guardians together. Her followers weren't killers. They were capable, more than, as a force. But, without a leader, they were beginning to fall apart. Michael stirred next to her, hovering on the verge of wakefulness from the tone of her voice. Gently, she ruffled her fingers through his hair, easing the furrows in his brow, till his breathing leveled out and he settled into a deep sleep.

Michael, her dark angel, would follow her to the ends of the Earth. He had pretended to be happy in the city. Perhaps, with her by his side, he truly was...to a degree. She sensed that there was something lacking. It wasn't until they'd been forced to return to his home by O'Sullivan's capture, that she realized what it was. As happy as she made him, there was no place like home. And this place, surrounded by his brothers, was where he needed to be.

She'd practically sold her soul to the devil to gain control of the bunch of rabble known as the Guardians. Who was she kidding? O'Sullivan was the closest thing to Satan on Earth and she had made plenty of deals with him. Her secrets were guarded close to her heart. Not even Michael knew everything. Soon, it wouldn't matter. In three days time Eric was a dead man.

Bianca could kick herself now for her ambitions and the price she'd paid for the lofty goals she had back then. No wonder Carter had almost gleefully all but handed the Guardians to her lock, stock, and barrel. There were times she considered it herself. Leadership wasn't a job one could simply quit. Leaders were born, not made. Too bad, she hadn't realized it till now. The Guardians would have followed Carter into a shit storm. They respected him. She'd had to resort to more extreme means to ensure their obedience. The Guardians respected her as much as Carter, but they did so out of fear. Now in her prolonged absence, like a bunch of unruly children, they were starting to act out. Carter was the smart one, walking out on them like he did. Leadership sucked.

She didn't want to admit it. This place and these people were starting to grow on her. When she'd first come to the compound. She thought the country bumpkin lifestyle would make her lose her mind. Maybe, it was seeing Michael so at ease. In the city, surrounded by noise, light, and the pulsing throng of humanity, he was always on guard. Here, he could relax. He'd never truly trusted the Guardians. But, he trusted his brothers. He belonged here in the woods, surrounded by loved ones, not in the city. Much to her chagrin, she was coming to believe she belonged here too. She had two choices. Leave Michael behind and travel back and forth for conjugal visits or take him with her and watch him wither in the city.

The Guardians had to have a leader present at all times. Until someone strong enough to rule could take her place. By default, she was that leader. Sebastian was as ruthless as she and as cold and calculating as O'Sullivan. He was good as a second. But he wasn't strong enough to bind the Guardians as one over the long haul. Carter was the only one who could be counted on to guide them. If only, she could convince him to take the reins back. Too bad she hadn't realized the facts until after she'd forced Carter out. At the time, she'd only had herself to think of. She hadn't counted on meeting Michael. She certainly never thought she of all people, would ever fall in love.

The wheels of Bianca's mind were turning at a furious pace. Carefully, she slid out of bed. Michael was a warrior and as such could be up and ready for action at the drop of a hat. The conversation she was about to have was not one for his ears. There was work to be done. Quickly, she dressed and headed out. Carter and she had an accord. It was time to make good on their agreement.

Carter sought out the darkness deep in the bowels of the compound. He hated enclosed places. Reminded him too much of the grave he'd been robbed. He had no desire to stay out in the daylight. The sun served as a bitter, blinding reminder of everything he was not and of all the things he could never be.

The air was thick and dank. The constant rhythmic drip of trickles of water snaking its way over rock was the only sound. Mockingly, the drops fell from the rocky ceiling over his head into cold, shallow pools like the tears he could not bring himself to shed. He had no right to cry. Shayla was lost to him. Her body was bursting with new life. He was as stagnant and dead as the air that filled the deep cavern. He was too late. He'd waited too long. He'd been a complete idiot.

He could try to convince himself that he was better off without her. He was an expert at self-deceit. He'd been kidding himself since the minute he laid eyes on her. Clinging to grief and guilt, instead of embracing her like the idiot he was. He blamed himself for Yessette. He tortured himself in atonement for the sin of leaving her alive. He took all those years of guilt out on Shayla. He drove her into the arms of another. Now, he had to deal with his mistakes. She loved him. She always would. In some ways, knowing that the wolf was a second place winner, that he'd never have all of Shayla's love, almost made it worth his sacrifice.