Dark Secrets

  Dark Secrets

  Madeline Pryce

  The worst moment of Micah’s life was when Ella nearly died in his arms. Her miraculous recovery should have been the start of their future. Unfortunately, a new demonic heritage, the Shadow Agency’s corruption and Julian, the vampire who turned Ella, are testing their relationship. Despite hotter-than-ever sex and a variety of new places and positions to explore, Micah begins to wonder if a relationship based on lust can survive for more than a few scorching-hot months.

  Ella has forgiven, but not forgotten, the fact that Micah once plunged a dagger through her heart. Everything with Micah is passion, excitement and an uncontrollable desire to explore his body in a variety of very satisfying ways. But as buried secrets, ongoing lies and murderous deceptions pile up, Ella is reminded that her and Micah’s relationship was based on a curse. In order to forge a future together, Ella and Micah will have to face down their personal demons—and prove that love and trust are more than just words.

  A Romantica® paranormal erotic romance from Ellora’s Cave

  Dark Secrets

  Madeline Pryce

  Chapter One

  A swirling mass of orange and red flames cut through the air, the sound of its approach deafening. I narrowed my gaze, shutting out everything except the firebomb hurtling in my direction. Time slowed. Oxygen vaporized into thick, curling strands of smoke. Heat waves wrapped around the outside of the blazing inferno barreling ever closer.

  I should be doing so many things right now. Years as a lethal killing machine afforded me the training I needed to protect myself. Ducking, phazing… Hell, even something as simple as a side shuffle to the left would have saved my ass.

  Except I didn’t move. Instead, I had a complete and total what-the-fuck moment. Our routine training session had just taken a complete one-eighty in the wrong direction. Micah McGregor, my half-demon lover, had just thrown a fireball at my head. Holy crap. Since when had he been able to conjure flames out of thin freakin’ air? Knowing he was a demon and actually seeing it were two very different things. Proof that his demonic powers were manifesting lay in the ribbons of black magic twisting from the starburst pattern embedded in his palm.

  Demons. The word in all its various meanings lay heavy on my mind—a fitting end, I supposed, to be killed by one, considering how many I’d slaughtered with cold detachment. Guilt burned brighter than the flames ready to consume my darkened soul. Heat caressed my cheeks and blew the brown strands of my hair off my face. This was probably going to hurt like hell.

  “Fucking Christ, Ella, don’t just stand there!” Micah shouted. “Get out of the damn way!”

  Like a moron, I just stared at him. He surged in my direction but there was no way he’d make it in time. The rapid slap-slap-slap of bare feet on the smooth wood floor hit my senses and came from my right, the wrong direction to be Micah’s. The only other person in the room with us was Elijah McGregor, my sorta-kinda brother-in-law. The sound was my only warning before his muscled body tackled me from the side.

  Air swooshed from my lungs. I crashed to the floor, crying out as one hundred and ninety pounds landed on top of me. Bone cracked. Agony stole my breath. Some vampire queen I was. I’d just been taken down by Micah’s little brother because I was lost in la-la land.

  So much for me proving to Micah I was over my emotional melodrama and was ready to resume the fight against good versus evil. The moral crisis I’d been sucked into over the past few weeks was poor timing on my part. I would have liked to blame PMS or some other bullshit but the fact was—I no longer knew the difference between true evil, pond scum and troublemakers. Why should I get to decide who lived and who died? With each death I dealt, the black shadow wrapped around my soul grew a little bit bigger until I feared the darkness would suffocate me.

  Light exploded from the trembling body on top of mine, shining into my eyes so I couldn’t see anything except more stars. I might not be able to see, but I could feel. Warm, slick fluid splashed onto my stomach and rolled over my skin. The liquid was something all newbie shifters faced—their flesh dissolving into water during the transformation. The weight pinning me to the floor transformed, no less heavy, just proportioned differently. Bones popped, shifted. Muscles convulsed and rearranged. Where skin used to be, a thick pelt of silken fur emerged and stuck to me.

  I struggled under the unnatural sensations. The low, ruffling growl emerging from Eli’s throat vibrated through me. Thick, razor-sharp claws bit into my flesh and drew blood. The rusty scent hit my senses and my fangs grew, crowding my mouth.

  Rolling flames whooshed overhead, close enough, hot enough, to lick a line of pain up the hand and arm not covered by werewolf. The only smell I’d be able to remember for days was the sulfurous odor of burnt hair—Eli’s and mine.

  The stream of fire intended for my head collided with the wall and exploded. The roar in my ears turned into a booming explosion that sent sound waves rippling. The three-story house rocked with violent shudders. Shards of glass whistled overhead, spearing through the air. Sharp-edged chunks of black rock rained down, splintering the floorboards. I looked up through the dust as the metal pieces of shutters once covering the windows embedded themselves in the opposite wall.

  Holy fucking shit. Karma—the bitch—had cashed in my meal ticket and tried to send me to hell.

  One of my greatest nightmares, creepy hospitals aside, was my own death. Since being gutted by Lizbeth Tepes—psycho Queen of all Vampires—I often dreamed about my demise. How would my compromised soul land in hell? A stake to the heart? A Silverstone blade across my throat? Perhaps at the hands of my obsessed sire, Julian? For some reason, Micah offing me by fireball had never crossed my mind.

  My father always had warned me about demons…

  The Shadow Agency had burned black and white truths into my brain all my life. Vampires and demons—bad. Humans—good. For nearly two decades, I’d followed my orders and killed indiscriminately.

  The truth had changed two months ago when I’d become a full vampire, discovered an underworld dimension of passive demons and inherited a throne. It’d been a busy week, even by my standards.

  My oath to kill otherworldly creatures and protect humans was no longer black and white. I had no idea who was evil anymore, not when so many things I’d once taken as fact were proven false.

  Not all demons were malevolent. Not all vampires wanted to skin puppies. Not all shape shifters were mindless animals.

  The agency I’d dedicated my life to had drawn their lines. I, Ella Gray, Vampire Queen, was evil. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t take a life—demon, vampire or insect—since Lizbeth. In the council’s eyes, I’d done something worse. I’d broken the one promise I’d sworn to uphold—I’d taken blood from a human.

  In less than a week, I was going on trial for my life. As much as I wanted to say fuck it and tell them to screw themselves, my safety, and that of those around me, depended on me playing nice with the agency. If I didn’t, they’d ruthlessly hunt me down and eliminate anything in their way. I wouldn’t risk my family’s life.

  What Richard McGregor—Micah’s fascist father and leader of the Shadow Agency—didn’t know was that they were about to get so much more than they’d bargained for. I hadn’t bitten a human. I’d bitten a demon.

  The piercing wail of an alarm cut the otherwise silent room in half. Cool water sprayed from the ceiling, and within seconds, the lingering flames sizzled out. No one moved, breathed or spoke for a full sixty seconds. I knew because I’d counted. Grunting, I rolled the animal suffocating me to the side. Stabbing pain radiated from my ribs and down the entire left side of my body. Accelerated healing might come with the vampire package, but I’d found bones took longer to heal than flesh wounds.<
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  I stared up at the vaulted ceilings and the finger-like sprinklers I hadn’t even known were there. Water ran into my eyes and my open mouth. The deafening din of the explosion faded, leaving a ringing noise in its place. A gust of cold winter air whipped into the room, soothed my singed flesh and swept away the smoke.

  The pitiful howl from the animal beside me sounded over the alarm. The noise would have raised the hairs on my arms if I’d had any left. Eli, now a massive werewolf, staggered onto all fours. Defined muscles rippled under singed blue and silver fur. In wolf form, Eli was the size of a pony.

  I struggled to my feet and pressed a hand against my ribs to keep the pain in check. Water, blood and goo dripped to the ground—a definite plus to the impromptu shower. I held out a hand and scratched a spot under Eli’s silken muzzle.

  “Thanks, Eli,” I whispered.

  I turned my head, searching for the spot where I’d stood before being tackled. In place of the wall, there was now a gigantic hole. I squinted, turning my face away from the last rays of golden sunshine dropping behind the sea of snow-kissed evergreens surrounding the secluded house.

  Thirty minutes earlier and the sun would have fried my retinas. I waved away the remaining smoke and sought out Micah. He stood speechless in front of me, his blue-green eyes wide, sensual mouth open. Under the pungent scent of sulfur mixed with singed hair and fur, I picked up the faint muskiness of demon blood.

  Dark-red lines dripped in a horizontal gash on Micah’s cheek, caused most likely by the flying debris, but he didn’t seem to notice. Dirt smudged his bare chest, and pieces of wood tangled in his shaggy golden hair. The shadow inside me—my feral inner vampire—just as much a part of me as my fangs and beating heart, preened at the sight of sweaty, dirty, alpha male.

  Lethal. Deadly. Demon.

  Mine.

  Micah wore nothing except athletic shorts slung low on his hips, his normal attire when we trained together—something we hadn’t been doing much of lately. The stark, crimson lines of our mating tattoos traced his hip, curved down over defined muscles and disappeared beneath the band of his shorts. Water dripped from his hair, plastering the dark strands in clumps to his forehead and nape. Each breath flexed an impressive show of muscle in his chest and abs. Good to know his assassination attempt hadn’t damaged my hormones.

  I moved my gaze from the trail of hair down his stomach to the hand he held fisted at his side. The flesh smoldered. I looked from his smoking fist to the hole where the wall used to be.

  I turned back to Micah, used a thumb to gesture behind me. “If this is about leaving the toilet seat up, I’ll stop bitching about it.”

  “The toilet seat? What?” He shook his head. “Jesus fucking Christ. I just threw a fireball at you and you’re talking about the crapper? Are you okay?”

  He crossed the distance between us, his bare feet impervious to the bits of gleaming glass and splintered wood. He never let me answer. Micah cupped my cheeks and tilted my head back until the only thing I could see were his eyes. The moment he touched me the supernatural bond, an unbreakable demon mating, flared to life. His blue-green irises swirled with color until they glowed.

  “I did not mean to do that,” he said in a solemn whisper. His grip tightened where he held my face.

  The adrenaline rushing through me vanished, leaving the shakes in its place. I rested a trembling hand over his hammering heart, one that beat in the same too-fast tempo as mine. Water sprayed from the ceiling and mixed with the frosty air, bathing me in a layer of ice. The alarm, still blaring, pierced my eardrums. “Can you shut off the security system and the water?”

  Micah held my gaze for a long moment before he pulled away and crossed the room to one of the gun safes, broken open by a flying piece of wall. His choice was a small black pistol, a Glock—something or other. One-handed, he lifted the gun, aimed at a small red light and fired. The weapon jerked back with a bang and then there was nothing but silence. Sweet, sweet silence. Another shot, another bang and the water also shut off.

  He was back at my side before I could blink. Micah pushed his fingers through the tangled knots of my wet hair, smoothing the strands. Between his thumb and forefinger, he turned my face this way and that, checking for injuries. The tips of his fingers glided over my right shoulder, tracing the slender crimson lines marking me as his mate. He saved the most obviously injured part for last—my ribs.

  Micah sank to his knees, cupped my hips in his hands and gazed up the line of my body. He was so tall, and I so short, he didn’t have to tilt his head back very far. I looked into his face and my breath caught. Raw, heart-breaking guilt shone in his eyes.

  As if his emotions were corporeal, his angst slammed into me so I felt every facet of his feelings. I sucked in a breath at the intensity of sensation washing over me. The discordant rift we’d fallen into over the last couple of weeks as one disaster after another piled on our plates disappeared.

  “I almost killed you.” His rough voice sent a shiver racing down my spine.

  I pushed my fingers through his golden hair, urged his head against me and held him. This was the closest we’d been, physically, in over two weeks. “But you didn’t. I’m okay.”

  Turning into me, he rubbed his cheek against my belly. He hadn’t shaved when we’d woken, and the familiar scruff against sensitive flesh sent a line of goose bumps over my skin. I craved his touch—the ever-so-light brush of his lips.

  “Where are you hurt?” he asked and I wondered if he felt my pain through our bond as I felt his.

  “Ribs.”

  He pulled back and peeled my hand away from the black-and-blue blotches covering my side. We both winced at the sight.

  Probing and pushing, he assessed my injury, a job he’d taken over since my uncle Roy had taken off to rally supporters for my trial. I’d assumed when I’d been fired from my job as a hunter with the agency that my copious injuries would decrease. No such luck. My new job as Vampire Queen was even more dangerous than the last.

  My promotion had caused a stirring in the underworld—one I feared wouldn’t relent until I was dead. The master vampires—and most of the former queen’s sacred eight—no longer wanted a monarchy. Considering how the psycho-bitch had abused them, I couldn’t blame them. Too bad abdication wasn’t good enough for them. Wusses.

  A week ago, Hannah, my younger sister, who hadn’t been coping well since being tortured by Lizbeth, once again got caught in the crossfire. A master vampire set his sights on her. I, the horrible sister I was, had been too preoccupied with my world crashing down around me to notice something was amiss.

  Micah pressed his palm over my damaged bones. The heat of his skin chased away the chill wafting in through our new glassless window. Looking down, I marveled at the size of his hand, its spread covering my entire rib cage and stomach. Next to Micah, I felt delicate and feminine, two things that went against every ounce of my hunter training.

  “I think you cracked a few when Eli tackled you,” he said.

  Exhaustion took hold and the smile I’d conjured faded. “A small price to pay for not burning to death. I’ll heal in an hour or so.”

  Micah turned to his brother. “Can you shift back?”

  Eli whined, sat on his haunches and shook his large head. A long pink tongue lolled out of the side of his snout and drool dripped, adding to the water pooling in the cracks and crevasses of the ruined floor.

  Micah opened his mouth but quickly shut it when the pounding of paws accented by the scrambling of claws against the wood flooring out in the hall stopped us all in our tracks.

  “Shit,” Micah muttered and swept a hand through his wet hair, pushing the too-long strands out of his face.

  Locks be damned, the heavy oak doors burst open and eight snarling werewolves bounded into the room. Their silver-blue fur was the same shade as Eli’s. Claws scratched and slipped along the now ruined floorboards.

  If only the former queen could see what we’d done to her sprawling Vict
orian sanctuary. The once frilly pink and yellow parlor was now a combat training center. Gleaming Silverstone knives replaced rose-decorated wallpaper. Guns in dark oak cabinets stood where girly dressing and vanity tables had once been.

  Because I was the one who’d killed her—not painfully enough, considering what she’d done to my sister—I’d inherited her throne when she’d met with the pointy end of the makeshift stake I’d plunged into her heart. I’d also gained control over her secluded fortress nestled deep in the forest and an elite pack of bloodthirsty feral werewolves known as the Fenrir.

  Considering these elite combat-ready wolves had kidnapped my sister, taken her to the queen and nearly killed Eli, no one was happy with our live-in roommates.

  The largest of the Fenrir strutted ahead of the pack. Eiven’s shoulder blades rose and fell while muscles rippled under fur. He prowled the room, searching for the external threat before he approached me.

  Vampire Queen and Demon Son—together they will wreak havoc and total destruction. So far, the ancient prophecy hadn’t been wrong. Where Micah and I went, destruction reigned. Only the telling wasn’t quite adequate—the mayhem referred to the demon son Micah and I would one day produce. A shudder ripped through me at the thought of being a mother—of the added responsibility of caring and protecting another person.

  The air rippled with a crackling, touchable energy. The bright light I’d seen when Eli shifted filled the room. Mid stride, Eiven transformed into a large, very well-built, naked man.

  I jerked my gaze up from his partially hard cock to his ice-blue eyes and tried my best to hide the blush heating my cheeks. Damn werewolves and their utter disregard for public nudity. All the shifters I’d met seemed to possess a feral sexuality that drew you in and left you wanting. Animal magnetism at its finest.

  “Are you hurt?” Eiven asked, his attention darting from the car-sized hole in the wall back to me. His blue eyes flashed, morphing to amber. He moved his gaze over my wet skin and licked his lips.