Chapter 8

“Take the nearest exit you bastard,” Kane roared. He transformed back to his human form and pulled the unconscious beast to the yard. He was sure when the moon came out, it would have found its way out of town. He was guessing it was a rouge. Well, he hoped it was as he really didn’t want a pack war on his hands because some idiot didn’t respect boundaries. 

Kane made his way to his library, stacks of old books with rumpled edges which smelt of age occupied the shelves from left to right. A small table and a chair were at the center. Kane found a special kind of solace in the pages of a book, any book. In his former life he had been a professor of geophysics. But he left all that to find the enchanter who had the wrathvamp, the only threat to his life. Sometimes he thought about dying. Ending his never-ending days of just being alive. Everyday blended into one. Would death finally bring him peace? 

***

Divina didn’t bother getting back into the river. Her injured foot would only cause her more trouble. She started limping slowly back to the trail which led back home, she had to treat her injury before any infection could get to her. The cut was deeper than she had first thought and her whole ankle had started to swell. 

She had been walking around for an hour at a slow pace and she was already weak. Counting her steps didn’t help any way but it had served its purpose to some extent. 

Her mind was far from reality to the extent that she had missed the trail which would take her to the field which was behind Pa’s house. She had wandered so far away that she couldn’t really say where she was. 

Divina noticed that she was now in the middle of thick long trees without leaves. This was far from the woods she knew.

Not sure of where she was, she became terrified but her determination to find her way home kept her moving. The next five minutes was spent wandering around the woods until she found a castle up front. She was familiar with the rumor that the castle was inhabited by demons and spirits. Anyone that entered never returned. But someone had bought it and must be living there. It didn’t look dingy or scary as they claimed it to be. It looked like the place had been renovated recently with new roof tiles and glistening windows. 

She could get some help and find her way home. Besides there was a car parked outside she wasn’t shy so asking for a lift home didn’t bother her. It should have. She had no idea who lived in the huge castle like house. It could be a murder for all she knew. At that point she just wanted to go home. 

It had no gate or fence. She walked up to the door and just as she was about to knock, someone pushed open the door. Surprised at whoever must have done that, the answer was right in front of her. The handsome guy with his dark hair and seductive eyes was no-one else than Kane. His eyes diving into hers like he was trying to get to know her inner thoughts. 

She shifted on her feet uncomfortably with the way he was looking at her. 

What now? He thought Humans can’t just stay away from danger. Its like a drug to them. 

“Uhm . . . Hello” Divina tried to muster a few words.

“Yeah, what do you want now?” Kane sounded very rude. Divina flashed him a glare. That’s no way to speak to a visitor. 

“Just a little help that’s all,” Divina could pick out the offensive tone that was laced with heat. 

Before Divina could say anything else. Kane had slammed the door on her, made use of his super speed to get an antiseptic bottle, cotton, and some bandages.

Although it was hard to find items like that in the house because its inhabitants never made use of them for any reason, Kane was able to ransack the house in split seconds and was at the door with the items. 

The urge for blood had now gotten so strong. His dark pupils morphed into a red color. 

A thick line of deep blood circled around his eyes, which spread to his eye lids, which almost enveloped his face. Quickly he turned back to hide his face from Divina. 

“Hey, what’s going on?” Divina asked still very confused. The guy was defiantly a weirdo. 

Kane dropped the items and pushed them with the back of his heel to her. It was extremely easy for him to do so because all first aid items were placed in an old dusty basket. 

“You really need to get that cleaned up,” Kane spoke with urgency in his voice. And shut the door again. 

Humans! They can never stay away from danger. Naïve souls. He thought as he ran back to the back of the house, far away from Divina as possible until she had wrapped her injury neatly. Even though he could smell her blood then, the urge would have subsided. Somehow when he was around her, he could feel something he couldn’t explain. 

Not like butterflies in his stomach, his heart didn’t skip whenever he saw her, it was something more than that, like they were destined to be together, but a mirage of problems and impossibilities stood between them. 

“She is still out there,” Kane looked up to see his nephew leaning against the doorframe. To look at them both you would say that Byrd was older than Kane. He had a more mature look to him. 

“You could have helped Ares hole,” Kane snapped at him.

“With the girl or snooping Lycan?” Kane gritted his teeth at his question. Byrd had a way of winding him up. He knew all the right buttons to press. 

“Both!” he snapped. 

What a jerk! Divina thought as she dressed her injury. After taking diligent care of her injured ankle, she contemplated on knocking on the door or walking back home. Then she remembered that she couldn’t really find her way home except through his help. Her knuckles knock on the door in two quick knocks. 

This time it wasn’t Kane who answered the door. Divina couldn’t get her eyes off the person who showed up. Okay, he wasn’t her type, but certainly he was a piece of eye candy. A rugged breed of a male having a complete set of bulging muscles, tattoos, and faded scars. Divina could only guess where he had gotten the scars and the hardships of life he had faced. 

Divina’s body was reaching supernova levels of heat in an embarrassing, shocking, completely unforgivable act of pretense. The person standing before her now had hard, sleekly muscled physique attested to what she could have called an athletic lifestyle. His body was more than what she could imagine. 

Even his forearms were marked by ropey muscles and lean lines of sinew. 

Accentuating this look was his dark body hair lying flat against the deep, sun-darkened color of his skin. 

Without a doubt, he was the most masculine, athletic person Divina had ever seen. His features couldn’t hide the truth that he belonged there, to the wild, rugged terrain of the forest where the house was situated. As Divina watched him, he flexed his big hands at his sides on purpose of cause. Like he was working out a cramp, his arms rigid, heroic biceps stretched the seams of his white T-shirt. That T-shirt was just a transparent glass for Divina to see through. It was like a fierce wave of tension originated from him, blasting against her face like a hot wind or a cold rush of air in the snow. She was both hot and cold at the same time. It was uncanny and not right. 

Well, despite all the predatory intensity he radiated all around him, all but oozing from the least pores to the largest on his body, she wasn’t afraid of him. Somehow, she didn’t think he was bloodcurdling or menacing. 

Divina knew how she was feeling, but out of her innumerable vocabulary, she couldn’t just find a word to describe what she was feeling now. 

It was like something dark and uncomfortable- yet warm and charming. This didn’t help, it only bolstered her sense of emotional insecurity.

“Well? Am . . .” she snapped from what would have been a fantasy in the unadulterated utopia. Her voice-wispy, having an iota of fear which purred at him. 

“How can I help you?” His voice hard, developed, delicious and deep embellished around with some roughened edges. 

Divina fought the urge to roll her eyes, thinking they certainly grew them breathtakingly big around here, but truth be told-her eyes could do more than that, but her concentration had been buried a long time ago in the pits of lust. For some seconds, the pain from her injured leg had dissolved. 

“What. Do. You. Want?” she asked slowly, mumbling each word incoherently. She regretted that absurd question after she had vocalized the last syllable. She was in no position to ask him what he wanted. 

He blinked; a conspicuous corner of his mouth suddenly twitched. A smooth spill of surprise which did nothing but to warm her insides. His reaction was more sarcastic with a touch of humor. 

“No, am sorry. Kane, I need to see him” Divina tried this time to make sense. 

NO! It wasn’t Kane she wanted, all she wanted now was for him to leave her alone. She wanted to just disappear into her room at home to get some sleep. He had been rude and……. She hoped she would be able to forget this fluttery feeling he had placed in her belly. 

Although it felt so damn good. Hazardously delightful-this only propelled her thoughts to a nervous primitive intensity of sexual desire. This was a dangerous trap, she couldn’t have fallen for it, and she didn’t need to fall for it.

In her head she began searching for a successful defensive mechanism. She had to ignore it fast, no matter how good it felt, no matter how the rush in her pulse fondled.