Taken Over

   His hand tightened on me, he was silent for a long moment. “I hated you with him, I truly did, but yes I would have left you alone to live your own life. If I thought they would have allowed me to be with you, to marry you, I would have come for you in a heartbeat but though we do not have children with them we are only allowed to marry influential and powerful people, if we marry people at all. I was to marry one of my kind, she was adopted by couple who possessed old money and lots of power. It was a match that was made as soon as I was placed with the Marshall’s, we were going to meet at college and marry after graduation. I’ve never met her.”

   Pain flashed through me, I could only gape at him. He was so cold, so analytical about marrying a girl he’d never even known. And he would have, I was certain of it. “If I’d ever hinted that I wanted to marry you, wanted to be with you, they would have killed you. If I’d tried to deny the arrangement they would have killed me.”

   “You would have married her.”

   “And I would have known where you were every moment of it. When they decided to invade I still would have come for you. I would have taken you, Bret, your children…”

   “Cade...”

   “And I would have saved you all if it made you happy Bethany. It would have destroyed me to let another man have you but I never would have put your life in danger.”

   “You could have come to me, you could have explained,” I breathed. “I would have listened to you, I would have believed you; I would have run away with you.”

   “And left your family behind?” I opened my mouth to say yes, but the word froze in my throat. “They had already known the loss of your father; would you have left them still?”

   “I would have loved you.”

   His head tilted, a single strand of midnight hair fell into the corner of his eye. “I know you would have and it would have gotten you nothing but a life of secrets, pain, and misery. It may have even cost you your life. I wasn’t going to let that happen, no matter how badly I wanted it to.”

   My heart swelled with love for him, tears slid silently down my face. “What do youtake your souls from?”

   “Animals mostly, but when it’s been absolutely necessary I have taken from a person without their knowledge. Not you,” he reminded me forcefully when I looked at him in shock. “I never take too much either. But sometimes the craving is too strong for just an animal to help me. It’s rare that happens though, maybe twice a year, sometimes three. It’s the blood we need more than the soul. That’s at least once a week, preferably more. And since all of this has started my hunger has been even more intense, more demanding.”

   It was disconcerting, but not awful I decided. His gaze came slowly down to me. The ice in his eyes thawed, affection lit the darkness. “It’s harder when I’m around, isn’t it?”

   “Not so much harder.” His voice was tight, hoarse. “I just want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything.” I gazed in wide eyed wonder up at him, frightened and yet enthralled by his words. “Nothing will satisfy me the way that I know you would.”

   My mouth parted, my heart hammered with excitement and desire as my toes curled. What did that say about me? What normal person would actually want for someone to feed off of their soul, off of their blood? I didn’t want to think too much on it, I was disconcerted by the implications of my intense need for him to touch me in such a way. “You could…”

   “No,” he interrupted briskly, his face hardening. “That ca

   “You’re amazing to deny yourself even when I’m offering myself freely to you.”

   “Am I?” he inquired, his eyebrow quirked in wry amusement.

   “Yes.”

   “Careful love, you shouldn’t flatter the devil too much.”

   I started at the reminder of what the girls in school had called him. The black devil. They hadn’t known just how spot on they had been with that description. Perhaps that’s the way another legend had been born. I imagined that these invaders must have resembled the devil when they arrived to decimate populations.

   “What are we going to tell the others about Ian?”

   His face darkened again. “I’ll take care of it.” His eyes raked the wounds on my neck. “I’ll have to find you a shirt that hides those first though. I’m sure they’ve already looked for you in your room.”

   I nodded as I bit on my bottom lip worriedly. I trusted that he would be able to handle it, but I was an awful liar, and Aiden had always been able to read me like a book.

CHAPTER 17

   A week later Aiden was still staring questioningly at me, still watching me carefully. I tried to ignore his scrutiny, but it was becoming increasingly harder to do so. Everyone seemed weary of everyone else within the group, but I was certain that Aiden knew I was lying about sneaking out to be with Cade at the time that Ian had been killed. Certain that he suspected Cade as his gaze slid slowly toward Cade and I found him studying Cade with the same weariness I had seen grow over the past week.

   The decision to leave the hotel immediately had been made before the two of us had even returned to the hotel. We came back to find our stuff waiting for us and Aiden, Bret, and Lloyd preparing to set off in search of us. Darnell and Bishop had just finished burying Ian’s broken body. I hadn’t had to fake the blush that stained my cheeks when Aiden confronted us. The turtleneck Cade had managed to smuggle from the hotel helped with our story, even if it actually wasn’t hiding hickeys beneath the high collar. It couldn’t hide the bruises on my face though, but they had been explained away by training, and a clumsy accident with a tree branch.

   That explanation hadn’t been bought, at least not by Aiden, and I suspected some of the others.

   Bishop was still openly mourning the loss of his equipment, data, and fresh samples of my tainted blood. I didn’t know how I was going to tell him that I didn’t want him taking anymore of my blood, but I decided to cross that bridge when we came to it. If we ever came to it. I hoped Cade had formulated some kind of plan, but we had not discussed it, and I didn’t really want to. Not yet anyway.

   Ian’s death had been attributed to the fact that he must have interrupted someone in the act of stealing the supplies, or vandalizing them. Some had bought the explanation, others hadn’t. The group was disjointed, not as close anymore. They wanted to believe that it had been someone outside of the group that had killed Ian, but the doubt was obviously festering. A few more people had decided that they would be better off on their own. I wanted to tell them that they were safe, that even though the killer was still amongst us, he would not hurt them.

   But I couldn’t do that without betraying Cade’s trust. Instead I had stood motionless, miserable, and guilty as they slipped away into the forest. Cade clung to my hand, his solid strength helping me to get through the sadness that encompassed me.

   We had not settled into any one area for more than enough time to sleep since we had left the hotel behind. The days were starting to become colder, October first rolled around as we reached the outskirts of Boston. For so long the large alien ship had hovered over the city, but on the day of The Freezing it had moved over the ocean. Cade had explained it was a safety measure because there were not as many on the ship now that they were needed to guard over their prisoners, and take pleasure in hunting down the less fortunate. They did not think us much of a threat anymore, especially since they had managed to disarm so many before The Freezing had occurred, but they weren’t going to take any u