Dark Wolf (Spirit Wild) - By Kate Douglas Page 0,118
on the five hundred thousand acres abutting your dad’s property.”
Lily turned and stared at him, wide-eyed. “Ya think?”
“And there’s also the house in the city. It’s over in the Sunset, not too far from your place in the Marina District. I have to admit, though, I like yours better.”
Her smile lit up her entire face. “Me too.”
He wondered if she was thinking of that sybaritic bathroom and remembering what they’d done there. He nodded. “We’ll make a decision after a thorough cleansing of all the bad vibes around my father’s properties. I don’t want any essence of dark magic anywhere.”
He stared at his glass of cognac and thought of all that had happened in such a short time, how much his life had changed. “We just might have to tear it down and build something new.”
Anton wasn’t sure what woke him, but he was a man who’d learned to listen to his instincts. He left his wife sleeping, slipped on a pair of worn sweatpants, and padded down the hallway.
He paused outside the room Lily and Sebastian had taken this morning. They’d not come out once during the day, though Keisha had delivered a couple of meals that hadn’t been turned down.
He remembered days like that, staying in bed with his beloved mate for hours on end. Making love, talking, learning one another.
He opened his senses and chuckled softly. Lily’s sleeping mind was strongest, but it appeared Alex and Annie had joined them, just as Stefan and Xandi had so often spent the night with Keisha and him. As they still did.
Then he realized one mind was missing. He didn’t sense Sebastian’s thoughts, at least not here. Following a hunch, Anton walked back to the den and slipped through the door to the deck.
Sebastian was out there, wearing a pair of sweats that looked suspiciously like an old pair of Stefan’s. He was leaning against the deck railing, staring out across the meadow.
Anton walked up beside Sebastian and rested his elbows on the railing. It was a full minute before Sebastian spoke.
“Remember that story in the news a couple years ago, the one where some doctor was cloning babies to harvest body parts?”
Anton nodded. “I do. It was terrible, but at least they were able to save the children, find them good homes.”
“I remember being really disgusted by the whole thing, the ethics of it, the inhumanity, but I never really thought of the children’s point of view. What it would feel like for them, when they got old enough to understand that their very existence was due to the fact that rich old men were willing to pay to grow them like a crop to harvest their parts. I wonder how that’s going to affect them once they’re old enough to understand what that means?”
“That’s what Aldo did to you, isn’t it?”
Sebastian nodded. “He knew my mother was a shapeshifter, knew she had the genetics to be nearly immortal, but he didn’t understand enough about Chanku physiology to know how he could get that for himself, other than to get her with child, raise that child until he was sure he had a real Chanku shapeshifter, and then kill the child and take his life force.”
“But your mother took you and ran.”
Sebastian turned and looked at him. “Yep. She didn’t know what he planned, but knew it couldn’t be good. That’s why she warned me against finding him. I should have listened to her.”
Anton studied him a moment—the strong profile, the intelligence in those fascinating eyes—and then shook his head. “No. You did the right thing. If you hadn’t found him, you wouldn’t have stopped him. You stopped him tonight, son. You ended a reign of terror that law enforcement now believes has gone on for decades. They’ll be following up on missing person reports for a long time, trying to figure out which ones might be linked to Aldo Xenakis. He’s used death magic for years. That’s what allowed him to become so powerful. Death magic gave him almost unlimited power. It didn’t run out because he never stopped killing.”
“How did he control the Berserkers? They followed him with such devotion. It makes no sense.”
“I imagine it was a combination of magic, what he could offer them, and his natural charisma. He must have known about the military tests, the fact there were shapeshifters who were different from the rest of us, and when he discovered the strength of their bloodlust, their need to kill, he provided the