Munro (Immortals After Dark #18) by Kresley Cole

            She caught her reflection in the window. Her face looked almost lupine in the rain-slicked glass. Fitting. From tonight on, she would be the wolf.

            In sheep’s clothing.





THIRTY-FIVE





            Munro liked this solitary night not one whit. He was unused to being alone—had spent nine centuries all but attached at the hip to Will. And yet Munro often suffered from loneliness. Being around Kereny had allayed that feeling, making it all the more acute now.

            As the wolves outside continued their plaintive howls, he paced the guesthouse, haunting it like one of Loa’s spirits. When he meandered upstairs and put his palm against the bedroom door just to be closer to Kereny, he realized he’d been like those gray wolves for his entire life, desperate for things tantalizingly out of reach.

            In time, he heard her return to bed. When her breaths grew deep and even, Munro allotted himself an hour to sleep.

            If he rested his eyes and cleared his mind, he’d stand a better chance of winning her over. Then, once they’d strengthened their bond, he could help her through her grief.

            He programmed his phone alarm and sat on the floor outside the bedroom. Sleep came swiftly for one so deprived. As if to make up for his weeks without dreams, reveries bombarded him. He drifted from one to another in a bewildering montage, back, back centuries in time . . . to the last argument he’d ever had with his eighteen-year-old son.

            . . . “You canna continue to take these risks,” he told Tàmhas. “How many times must we speak of this?” He’d discovered his son trying to play sports with Lykae lads. Again. “You canna go up against the others. It’s much too dangerous.” He knew in his gut that Tàmhas’s next close call would be his last. How foolish Munro had been to take a fragile mortal into the pack!

            Cheeks flushed to match his red hair, Tàmhas said, “If you’re this worried about my safety, then let me get a protection spell from the witches.”

            “Blasphemy! I raised you better than this. We doona truck with their kind!”

            “Then I’ll become a Lykae. I told you Heath would bite me, Da.”

            Hotheaded Prince Heath. “That will never happen.” Munro’s hands balled into fists. “No’ while I live. If I have to fight a prince of the Lykae, then I bloody will!”

            Clearly surprised by his da’s unusual show of anger, Tàmhas said, “I’ve thought and thought about this, and my path is clear. I canna live like this. I must have immortality, Da, or I must go. And if that is what has to occur, I will never be able to see you again.” Voice breaking, he said, “I’ll never want to be reminded of all I’ve lost.”

            Munro had known this day would come, the ever-present worry like an aching wound that refused to regenerate. To Tàmhas’s obvious shock, he said, “I know. You have to go.”

            As Tàmhas left that very night, he’d looked back over his shoulder and said, “I only ever wanted to belong, Da.”

            “That’s all most want. But it is no’ possible here for you, son.” Choking back his grief, he’d watched his beloved lad set off into a perilous mortal world, lost to him forever.

            Yet they had met once more. “Da, how did this happen? How?”

            Munro’s reverie tumbled from that agonizing memory to another scene, one that had never been. . . .

            He and Will stood in the Fyre Dragán’s lair at the edge of its fiery pit. Instead of the sound of crackling flames, an irritating ringing echoed throughout the cavern.

            Sunken-eyed and broken, Will said, “Time for me to take a bow.” All he had to do was jump into the fire, and he’d be gone forever.

            “Never! I’ll no’ let you do this.” For centuries, Munro had felt that if he could just say the right thing, he could fix Will. Now he struggled to ignore that ringing as he grasped for the words to change his twin’s mind. “Bràthair, do you no’ understand? You canna dive off the deep end when we’re on the platform together. You canna leave me behind.”

            Will smiled his soulless smile. “Like father, like son.” He leapt.

            “Nooo!” Munro watched in horror as Will melted away. Then he realized it wasn’t Will in the fire.