Seduced by Darkness (The Seduced Saga Book 5) Read online

  Seduced by Darkness

  (The Seduced Saga, Book 5)

  Alex Lux

  Daring Books

  AlexLuxBooks.com

  Copyright © 2015 Alex Lux

  Cover Art Copyright © 2015 Dmytry Karpov

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Interior by Karpov Kinrade

  Edited by Anne Chaconas

  eBook License Notes

  You may not use, reproduce or transmit in any manner, any part of this book without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations used in critical articles and reviews, or in accordance with federal Fair Use laws. All rights are reserved.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only; it may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return to your eBook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Disclaimer

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination, or the author has used them fictitiously.

  To all the Seduced and Forbidden

  fans who encouraged us to keep this world going.

  This one's for you.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1 – Tis Within Ourselves - Rose

  Chapter 2 – Have Not We Affections - Rose

  Chapter 3 – Demand Me Nothing - Derek

  Chapter 4 – A Weapon - Sam

  Chapter 5 - For Surety - Drake

  Chapter 6 – Of Peace And War - Drake

  Chapter 7 – What Remains - Drake

  Chapter 8 – Dear Absence - Sam

  Chapter 9 – To Be Most Happy - Rose

  Chapter 10 – Be A Man - Drake

  Chapter 11 – Divided Duty - Derek

  Chapter 12 – This Sorrow's Heavenly - Drake

  Chapter 13 – Strongly Loves- Rose

  Chapter 14 – Yet I'll Speak - Drake

  Chapter 15 – When Fate Takes Me - Derek

  Chapter 16 – Every Tempest - Sam

  Chapter 17 – No Remedy - Drake

  Chapter 18 – Fury In Your Words - Drake

  Chapter 19 – She Chose Me - The Twilight Queen

  Chapter 20 – The Soft Phrase of Peace - Beleth

  Chapter 21 – My Soul From Heaven - Sam

  Chapter 22 – Have Not Patience - Derek

  Chapter 23 – Weigh Thy Words - Drake

  Chapter 24 – Put a Thief - Rose

  Chapter 25 – Prattle - Derek

  Chapter 26 – In Our Wills - Drake

  Chapter 27 – To Mourn A Mischief - Sam

  Chapter 28 – The Trade Of War - Derek

  Chapter 29 – No Contrived Murder - Sam

  Chapter 30 – Play The Villain - Derek

  Chapter 31 – Unknown Fate - Rose

  Chapter 32 – Patience A Mockery Makes - Derek

  Chapter 33 – A World Of Sighs - Rose

  Chapter 34 – Her Own Goodness - Drake

  Chapter 35 – Your Voices - Rose

  Chapter 36 – With Me - Derek

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ONE

  Tis Within Ourselves

  ROSE

  Tis within ourselves that we are thus or thus

  —William Shakespeare, Othello

  THE PULSE OF power called to me, pulling me into its web of temptations, but my eyes landed on my husband, close to death, fighting the infection from Ryder's claws. How could I leave him?

  I fell to my knees, screaming, when another wave of pain shot through my arm as it attempted to shift back to human, attempted to heal the broken bone, only to be locked into the gruesome half-shift of broken bird wing and arm.

  Ryder had faced three of us—me, Derek and Bishop Alaric—in an ancient Trial by Strength, and he had won. He had his life. His freedom. Even while Drake fought for his life back home.

  I didn't see him as I struggled with my decision to leave or stay, tears streaming down my face, knees bruised from the stone floor.

  A hand rested on my shoulder and I looked up at the White Wolf. "Go, child. We will care for him. Go."

  He'd said I alone could find the ancient Druid. And he alone could help me survive my powers.

  And so I pulled the robe the Lycans had given me to protect my naked flesh around me, and walked through the door that led to the white forest of snow.

  Barefoot, in too much pain to feel the cold, I followed the thrum of magic moving in me and around me.

  I lost all sense of place and time and found myself before a cave, with icicles covering it like a magic castle, finding warmth in the golden glow that emanated from the space.

  The man hunched by the fire looked up, his body a patchwork of different animals. Fur for skin, antlers protruding from his head and wings sprouting from his back. He raised a hand at me—a bear claw, actually—and smiled. "Come," he said. "I've been waiting for you."

  I took his gesture as an invitation and shuffled closer to the fire, the heat now searing my skin, burning away the cold that had seeped into my bones. "Who are you?"

  "I am Talon."

  He offered nothing more and I stared into the fire, fighting my pain and desperation. "Why am I here? The White Wolf told me to come, but why?"

  "You have a rare magic in you. It could destroy you. Or it could make you great. I am the last remaining Druid who understands this power and knows how to control it." He looked up at me, fire dancing in his dark eyes. "I can teach you."

  I slipped my broken arm out of the cloak. "Can you fix this?"

  "No, but you can."

  "I've tried," I said, sounding too much like a petulant child. "I can't do it."

  "You just don't know how to yet."

  "Derek said it's forbidden to shift into forms other than wolf. He said it's dangerous."

  Talon's lips twitched. "It is."

  "Why should I trust you?" My body shivered again, pain making me dizzy.

  "Because you have no other choice, unless you want to spend the rest of your life feeling the way you do right now."

  My chin fell to my chest and I choked back a sob, pulling myself together enough to look up with tear-stained eyes. "I'm in. What do I need to do?"

  I expected my training to be one of those action packed sequences you see in movies, with intense physical challenges mixed with obstacle courses, a soundtrack creating the emotional tension—but no. I got a lot of meditating.

  This wasn't as exciting as I'd hoped, but was about all I could handle, given how much pain radiated through my arm. I could barely walk straight, so I guessed I was lucky that this was all I had to do.

  And as it turned out, sitting still for hours on end required a lot of endurance, and wasn't easy with my arm screaming at me.

  For many hours nothing happened. I felt cold, tired, in pain, impatient and miserable. I wanted to go see Derek, to make sure he was okay, but I knew if I left I'd lose my chance to ever master my shifting abilities. I'd hurt myself and my husband in the process.

  So I stayed. As my knees cramped in the lotus position. As my lips dried. As my ears froze and my nose turned red and runny. As a bug crawled over my bare foot. As the fire dimmed and died and the last breath of warmth fled our little cave. I stayed.

  I'd nearly passed out from the pain and exhaustion when something changed. My mind dug deeper than it ever had before. I found a hidden corner of my consciousness that I hadn't known existed. Like a secret door that I'd lost the key to.

  Everything be
came so vivid and real I was half sure I was hallucinating, but I didn't fight it. I knew I needed to follow it through to the end to see what lay beyond the door, what mysteries I might discover of myself if I didn't give up.

  And so the door became more real. The color of blood, a deep red with grooves in the wood and a shiny silver door knob. I pushed it open, the silver cool on my hand, the grains of wood deeply textured with glossy coats of paint smoothing the roughness.

  Inside the room a low hum rose in the darkness, and from some unknown source of light the room became visible all at once, blinding me.

  I squinted, letting my eyes adjust to the brightness as I took in the sight before me.

  Animals.

  Animals everywhere.

  But they weren't wandering about randomly; they were each centered under a colored beam of light, the source once again unknown. They had vacant expressionless eyes, like statues, but they moved in small ways, breathing, shifting, scratching.

  I recognized the bear first. The bear from my dreams that I had shifted into during my fight with Ryder.

  Next to her hovered the hawk I'd shifted into during my recent fight. Something seemed off about her though, so I stepped closer and shuddered at what I saw.

  Instead of a wing she had a human arm. My arm.

  I looked down at my own wing/arm and cringed, then glanced at the other animals. My wolf, her golden coat soft and shiny, and other animals I'd never seen before but recognized at a soul level. A deer, innocent and sweet. A black panther, deadly and sleek, its dark fur reflecting a glowing purple light. A rabbit, sniffing at its own pawns, its ears twitching.

  And so many more.

  I walked closer to the hawk and placed my good hand on its wing. Darkness gripped me and I fell into an abyss, screaming without sound, crying without tears, my body no longer corporeal in this eternal nothing.

  Talon's voice called out to me through the darkness. "She is your way back. The hawk is you and you are her. You must reconnect with her spirit and give back to her what you took so that she can do the same."

  "How?" I think I screamed, but I couldn't hear my own voice, not even in my mind.

  "By finding her in you."

  My heart pounded, fear gripping me, my stomach no longer real but still dropping into my gut as I felt sure I'd fall forever.

  I tried to find my breath, find my happy place, but it no longer existed.

  So I looked for my hawk, tried to feel her in the frantic panic of always almost dying.

  And there she was. A faint flap of wings out of the corner of my eye. A soft sound almost forgotten, but there if I listened closely. I put the full force of my concentration into that sound, that memory of something, and honed in, grabbing more of her. The woody scent of her feathers, the powerful muscles in her wings, the sharpness of her beak and talons. With each detail, I became more real too, my body forming and shifting until I was her and she was me.

  We were one, flying out of the abyss and into the warm light of the room I'd been transported out of.

  When I reached the room, I released her, and she flew with both wings back to her waiting spot.

  I looked down at my two good arms and snapped back into my frozen body by the dead fire, breathing heavily, nearly unconscious, but whole at last.

  TWO

  Have Not We Affections

  ROSE

  “Have not we affections and desires for sport, and frailty, as men have?”

  — William Shakespeare, Othello

  I DID NOT anticipate my husband's reaction to Talon when they met, though I should have, if I'd given it any thought. To me, shifting was a new way of life, something I'd never dreamed I'd be doing. For Derek, it was his life, his whole life, and he'd been raised to believe that the forbidden ways of multi-shifting were dangerous and should never be practiced.

  And now his wife was one of the Forbidden.

  In light of this, his reaction to Talon made sense.

  "I don't like him," Derek sneered repeatedly through the long hike back to civilization. Talon joined us, but stayed behind, a ghost in the woods around us, which didn't make Derek feel more at ease.

  "He's the only one who can help me." We had stopped under a tree for a snack and the bishop, who was also returning with us, walked a few paces away to give us privacy—or maybe to give himself privacy. He still carried sadness about Ryder, even though Ryder survived. As much as I hated what Ryder did to all of us, I'd gotten to see into his soul a bit, and it softened me to him. It also softened me to the rigid and overly righteous bishop, who had just lost his son in every way that mattered.

  Derek ran a hand through his dark hair, his blue eyes bright and clear. He looked so healthy it was hard to believe he'd nearly died just a few days before. "Can't you just… I don't know… stop?"

  I bit off the sharp retort in my mind, trying to remember that he loved me and worried about me. "No. I can't just stop. I can't control it at all. That's the problem. I'm not trying to do this, Derek. It's happening to me against my will. Against my conscious choice. If Talon doesn't teach me to control this power, I could die from it."

  There. I'd said it. I could die. Derek had to understand what was at stake if I didn't learn from the one man who could help.

  He winced at my words and pulled me closer to him. "I can't lose you, Rose. I just can't."

  "Then he has to come with us." I had a feeling Talon could hear every word we spoke. He could be the squirrel in the tree next to us or the bird flying overhead. He changed shape with a breath, blending into the world around him so effortlessly it spooked me.

  I shivered and moved into Derek's arms, relishing the feel of him holding me, of his hard body, strong and tall, wrapped around me.

  "Isn't there anyone else?" he whispered into my ear, perhaps sensing that we weren't alone.

  "You'd know that better than I would," I reminded him. "Is there?"

  I looked up into his eyes, waiting.

  "No. None of us even knew he existed. Which begs the question, why you? Why now? Why risk his identity if he's stayed in the shadows for so long?"

  A bird landed in front of us and grew into a man. Talon stood there, naked and unashamed, perhaps even unaware of his nudity. I tried to avert my eyes, but was mesmerized by… well… his horns and hands weren't the only parts of his body that had taken on the form of an animal. At some point I thought he must have been a horse.

  I couldn't help but blush at these thoughts and forced myself to concentrate as Talon spoke.

  "I felt Rose's pain and knew I had to help. Never in a thousand years has there been another like myself, and I couldn't leave her to suffer as I had."

  With those few words, he shrunk back into a bird and flew away, leaving us all speechless for several moments.

  Bishop Alaric cleared his throat. "We should get going. We don't want to get caught out here after dark. There's a plane waiting in the city to pick us up and take us home. Should only be a few more hours of hiking."

  "Why don't we just shift?" Derek asked. "It would be faster and we don't have Ryder as prisoner this time around."

  They both looked at me. Was I ready to shift? Could I stay in wolf form? It would be warmer, that was for sure. I nodded, hiding behind a tree as I undressed, and closed my eyes, focusing on the one form, dipping into that room I'd found in meditation and allowing the light to shine only on my wolf.

  My body contorted and changed shape. For a moment panic gripped me as my bird started to push into the mix, but I turned away from her and focused all my will on my wolf. When I opened my eyes, they were the eyes of a wolf, seeing and smelling and tasting and feeling the forest around me with new lenses. I howled and nipped at Derek, who stood in wolf form next to me.

  Alaric's wolf looked too human and I turned away, not used to the unnatural site of the werewolf form.

  And then we ran, loping and dancing through the trees and brush, sailing over rocks and digging our paws into the cold snow, but feeling i
t all through thick fur and tough skin.

  We shifted back to human before we reached the town. Alaric had carried all our clothes in a bag and I changed behind a bush, feeling still part animal as we left to find our plane and head home.

  I slept on Derek's shoulder the whole flight home, still exhausted from everything that had occurred on our trip. I'd nearly forgotten about Sam and Drake and everything they were going through until we arrived at Elysium and I saw Drake for the first time. He looked different somehow, more ethereal, his skin almost glowing with a very faint aura of gold, particularly around his shoulders. His normally tan skin had paled a bit and his blond hair shone with that same golden light. His blue eyes now had a golden circle around each iris.

  He and Sam seemed… shy around each other and I knew something had happened, but he looked healthy and was alive. He'd survived the attack. I hugged Sam first and then hugged Drake. "It's so good to see you both well. We've been worried about you, Drake."

  Derek hugged Drake in that half hug, half handshake way guys do. "Good to see you up and about, dude. Thought we'd lost you."

  They talked so casually, but I knew what it would have done to Derek to lose his best friend. He'd always been a loner until he met me and we met our friends at Elysium. These people had become our family.

  "It's good to be alive," Drake said. An odd look flashed across his face and with my power I felt a shift in his energy, but I couldn't figure out what it meant. Whatever they'd had to do in order to save him had clearly changed him.

  "How did you survive?" I asked.

  "My father, Beleth. He… gave me his blood."

  There was more to it then that. But that told me something. Beleth was Nephilim, we'd discovered. Which meant…