CHAPTER FOURTEEN
MORNING HIT HIM like a hammer cracking into the top of his skull.
Chase's eyelids blinked open, every fiber of his body on instant, full alarm. Something wasn't right in the house.
It was too damned quiet. As quiet as a tomb.
Fuck. How long had he been out? Bloodlust had ridden him during the night, but he'd resisted the urge to leave the Darkhaven and hunt. The last thing he remembered was fighting off that hunger, a battle he'd only narrowly won. Now he got to his feet in the study, mentally shaking off the niggling twitch of his blood thirst and the dull ache of his bones from having crashed on the bare floor. Every blood-starved muscle screamed in protest as he made a swift but heavy-footed trek toward the closed door of the bedroom.
Not a sound on the other side of that locked slab of hundred-year-old wood.
She'd been in bad shape last night. When he'd gone in to check on her, easily several hours ago now, she told him she thought she was dying. He'd doubted it, but she seemed so miserable he had almost taken her out of there as she'd begged him. Her pain appealed to him on a level he wasn't prepared to acknowledge, let alone submit to.
But now he wondered if he'd been wrong about how ill she'd been.
Jesus, if he'd been dead wrong -
"Tavia?" His voice was gravel in his dry throat. He didn't bother knocking, just willed the lock open and pushed the door wide. He stepped into the room.
It was empty.
The drapery cords he'd used to restrain her lay in a frayed tangle on the bed. Tavia was nowhere to be seen.
"Holy hell." Chase flicked a glance at the window, still boarded up with pieces of the desk he'd smashed apart to bar the cracked window and prevent her escape. He stalked farther inside.
And then he heard her.
A soft, rapid panting, like that of a small, frightened animal, coming from the other side of the big bed.
"Tavia." She was hunched on her heels in a tight ball, head drooped low. She didn't respond to his voice, just sat there breathing in a shallow, fast tempo. Her body trembled all over. Sweat dampened her limp hair and made the fabric of her black track suit cling to the curved arch of her spine. "Christ ... Tavia, are you all right?"
He reached out, placing his hand lightly on her back. She flinched away on contact, a violent lunge that put two feet between them. Her head swung around, hair drooping in a thick curtain over her face ... though not enough to hide the bright amber glow of her eyes.
Ah, f**k. The reality of what Chase was seeing made his blood chill in his veins. This couldn't be.
He could only stare as her lips curled back on a wild snarl. She drew in a ragged breath, then gave a fierce hiss through her teeth and the sharp lengths of her gleaming fangs.
Even though he had suspected she was something more than what she seemed, seeing it for a fact now took him totally aback.
Tavia Fairchild was somehow - impossibly - Breed.
Little wonder the restraints didn't hold her. They were no more effective than thread on one of his kind. Which this female clearly was.
Crouched low and seething, she held him in a glower that was at once startling and amazing in its fury. Her narrowed pupils were thinnest slits, swamped by the fiery embers of her irises. She growled at him, head cocked slightly, a deadly she-beast sizing up her prey.
It was the only warning he had before she sprang off her heels and took him down in a swift, vicious strike.
They landed hard, Chase's spine crashing onto the floor under their combined weight. His breath went out of him in a gust and a groan, Tavia's banshee cry echoing in his skull. She started fighting as soon as they hit the hardwood. Fast and strong, she clawed at him, shrieking and growling as he tried to ward off her frenzied assault.
The zippered front of her track suit hoodie was open just enough to give him a decent look at the web of dermaglyphs that spread in a flourish across her chest and up onto her throat. He had no doubt now that that's what they were: The Breed skin markings were flooded with color, variegating hues of deep purple, blood wine, and black. She was furious and pained from starvation, her glyphs told him that much on sight.
How had the genetic markings lain dormant until now?
What the hell had been done to her to keep her true nature suppressed?
Chase didn't have long to wonder about it. Tavia pulled her arm back and swung a fist toward his face. He dodged the blow, faster than her only because of experience and training. She was unschooled and out of control, a raw, natural power unleashed for what was clearly the first time. She was ferocious Breed might in a sleek, feminine form.
And goddamn if Chase had ever known anything hotter in his whole life.
She struggled against him some more, grunting as he deflected her every strike, roaring and snarling when he finally grabbed hold of her by the wrists and splayed her arms above him. Her pulse beat hard and steady in the sides of her slender neck. He could feel it banging against his fingertips where he held her strong wrists. And he could feel that solid, thumping throb along the insides of her thighs too, which gripped him like iron bands around his waist, pinning him beneath her with astonishing force.
She panted and heaved, those bright amber eyes and bared fangs telling him the fight wasn't drained out of her yet.
Not even close.
"Tavia, listen to me." Her muscles twitched with a warning that she was about to strike. Chase spat a curse, teeth gritted with the effort to keep his hold on her tense arms. "Tavia, for f**k's sake, you need to calm - "
She roared over his attempt to reason with her, but she didn't try to break free of his hold. No, she bit him.
Chase spewed a wordless shout as her fangs sank deep into the flesh and tendons of his left wrist. It wasn't the pain of the bite that shook him but the sudden, alarming realization that his blood was gushing freely into her mouth.