Feverborn (Fever #8) - Karen Marie Moning Page 0,68
wall around Mac and me. One I’d seen them fail repeatedly to breach, standing in the cavern below the abbey.
“Aye, you could kill me, if you could catch me,” I acknowledged the unspoken threat blazing in both their dark gazes. “But you’ll never touch me.” I smiled faintly and without mirth.
Nor, likely, would anyone else. I hadn’t risked fucking since the cliffs, fucking I needed like I needed to breathe. But I had no taste for killing another woman. Such things threatened my Highlander’s heart, blackened it.
“Barrons,” Mac said urgently, “forge an alliance. We don’t want a war with Christian. You’ve pushed his back to the wall. The two of you would do no less than he’s doing, under the same circumstances.”
“Alliance, my ass,” Ryodan clipped.
“She’s right,” I said. “We can be enemies or allies. Choose carefully.”
Barrons looked at Ryodan. “He could be useful.”
I snorted. “There will be many conditions if I agree to be allies. The first is that you return my uncle’s remains.”
In my arms, Mac sighed and went supple. “I told you that you should tell him,” she said to Ryodan.
I angled my head to look at her. “Tell me what?”
“I told them they should trust you. That you had a right to know.”
Truth. I relaxed my grip on her and she straightened in my arms but didn’t try to break free.
“You wouldn’t have done what you did,” Mac said to Ryodan pointedly, “if you hadn’t been willing to live with the essential makeup of the one you did it to for a very long time. That, more than anything, is a testament to what you think of the Keltar clan. Trust Christian. Make him an ally, not an enemy. We have more than enough enemies out there already.”
Ryodan looked at Mac for a long moment then smiled faintly. “Ah, Mac, sometimes you do surprise me.”
“I take that as one hell of a compliment,” she said dryly. “My point is, yes, you can keep trying to kick Christian’s ass. Yes, you could hunt him and, if one day you catch him, kill him. You could all stalk around for a small eternity being the testosterone-laden brutes you all sometimes are.”
Barrons and Ryodan shot her a nearly identical look of disgruntlement, and I laughed softly.
She ignored them. “But consider the power he has. Do you really want that turned against us? You, Ryodan, more than most, have the ability to clear a logical path through dense emotions. Think about the potential if you become allies. Think about the grand waste if you become enemies. Three incredibly powerful men stand in this corridor. If you want to brawl, make an alliance, then beat the shit out of each other. With limits. No killing. Ever.”
Ryodan growled, “You fucking Highlanders. I knew the moment I laid eyes on you that you’d be trouble.”
“Friend or foe?” I said.
Ryodan stared at me, unmoving for a long moment. Finally, “There are times I could use a sifter,” he allowed.
“You think I would let you that close to me?” I snorted.
“For you to take someone like Dancer or Jada to inspect various places.”
I inclined my head. That was easy enough. “There are times I may need assistance as well.”
“Such as the cliff we just dragged your ass off of,” Ryodan said flatly.
“See how well you’ve been working together already?” Mac said brightly.
“You will never speak of what you learn tonight,” Barrons said.
“I won’t agree to that,” I said.
“Then destroy my club,” Ryodan said coldly. “And I, and all my men, will hunt you until the end of time. Enemy or ally, Highlander. We’d make stupendous ones, either way.”
“Pledge your alliance to me. Tell me you will never try to kill me. Say it,” I demanded. So I could take fair measure of it. These were men of honor, in the same way I was. Corrupted as we are, there must be a solid core or we become the villains. If Ryodan spoke and it rang true, he would adhere to the letter of the law he’d chosen. As would I.
“I can’t guarantee I can make that claim sound like truth,” Ryodan warned. “There’s a part of me that obeys no one and nothing. And if you focus on that part, no words of mine will ever sound like truth to you.”
“Then we’ll be enemies. I suggest you convince me.”
Ryodan glanced at Barrons and they exchanged a long look. Then Ryodan glanced away as if consummately chafed. “We are allies,” he said.