Desire Untamed (Feral Warriors #1)(6)

Her plea, trembling with desperation, tore through his determination, slamming him with guilt and the harsh understanding of the damage he would do… had already done… by trying to extract her from her human world with as much finesse as a berserker on a rampage.

Kara stumbled up the rain-slicked steps to the back door, a desperate pounding in her ears as she glanced over her shoulder at the stranger following with her mother. There was a terrible irony in the fact that her kidnapper was the only one who could keep her mother from dying in the rain.

She held the door for him, then ran for the phone. "I need to call an ambulance."

"Kara…" Her mom's voice carried to her, thin as worn cotton. "Don't. The doctors…can't do anything."

A sudden crack of thunder rattled the windows and doused the lights, blanketing them in utter darkness. The portable phone in her hand went dead. Kara slammed the phone on the counter in a burst of helpless fury. With the electricity out, she was trapped. Cell phones had never worked out here, and her closest neighbor was almost a quarter mile away.

"Carry her to the car. I'll drive her to the hospital myself."

"No… Kara." As weak as her mother's voice was, the determination rang clearly. "Stay here."

Kara wanted to scream her frustration. Instead, she rummaged through the drawers until she found a couple of flashlights. If they were staying here, her mom needed blankets and towels, dry clothes and maybe some hot tea to warm her insides. Kara refused to let her die from this. Not from this.

Flicking on the flashlights, she stabbed the darkness with two steady beams of light, illuminating the big man, wet and dripping, holding her mother with surprising care. His expression remained closed, but no longer quite as cold or forbidding as before. The tiny bit of softening did nothing to ease her wariness of him. Her fear, however, was all for her mom.

Kara turned toward the living room and motioned the stranger to follow with a sweep of one flashlight. "Put her on the sofa." She set one light on the coffee table and took the other with her as she ran to the downstairs linen closet and grabbed a couple of blankets.

Hurrying back, she covered her soaked and shivering parent from shoulder to feet, then grabbed a towel and sank to her knees beside the sofa, dabbing her mom's trembling face as she tried to ignore the stranger looming behind her like the grim reaper.

"You're not human, Kara," he said. "You're Therian. And you've been marked as our chosen one."

His words vibrated through her like the discordant notes of a song. The man was certifiably crazy, but he could sing the alien national anthem for all she cared as long as he left her alone to tend her mom.

"You think you belong here," the man continued, his voice a deep, pleasant rumble so at odds with the absurdity of his words. "But you don't."

Her mom's lashes fluttered, her pain-ridden eyes filling with distress as she looked toward the stranger.

"Stop it," Kara hissed, turning halfway around. "What is wrong with you?"

"You need to understand the truth."

Kara turned her back on him, but he moved beside her, standing over her. "Tell her."

"Tell her what?" But when Kara glared up at him, she found his gaze not on her but her mother.

"She deserves the truth," he said.

Kara lurched to her feet and faced him, anger snapping her patience. "Leave her alone. She's been through enough tonight, thanks to you."

A hint of regret warmed his amber gaze. "For that I'm sorry, but her time in this world is almost over. Yours has just begun. And you need to know the truth."

"What truth?"

"That you're not her daughter."

"Of course I'm her daughter." But she found herself turning to her mother, seeking confirmation… and found tears and denial swimming in the woman's eyes.

Kara sank to her knees beside the sofa and took her mom's icy hand in hers. "I'm yours. Of course I'm yours,".

Tears pooled on her mother's ashen cheeks, her body no longer shivering. Her head moved from side to side in tiny, damning movements, a single word escaping her lips.

"No."

"Mom? What are you saying?" A chill that had nothing to do with the rain lifted goose bumps on her arms. It wasn't true. It couldn't be true.

And suddenly she understood. Kara swung her furious gaze on the stranger. "This is your doing. You're manipulating her just as you manipulated me."

He shook his head, his wet locks brushing his shoulders. "You're mistaken. The only wrong I've done is take you away when she needed you."

"I don't believe you."

His gaze fell to the sofa behind her, and his eyes flinched. "Radiant. Kara. Her spirit has fled. I'm sorry."

Kara jerked at his words and whirled back to where her mom lay still as….

"Mom?"

She grabbed her mother's thin wrist with frantic gentleness, searching for a pulse, but there was none. "Momma?"

It was over. Just like that, she was gone.

"No, Mom, no." Tears clogged her throat, choking her, as she sank to her knees beside the sofa and touched the cool skin of a papery cheek. "Please don't go. Don't leave me." Sobs broke over her in a torrent of grief as her head sank to the once-strong chest upon which she'd cried countless tears over the years. "I need you."