Any promise obtained from me would be given under duress. My conscious would be clear breaking that promise at a later date.
“Guess not.”
“Knew you would see it my way,” he said. “Don’t worry, you’ll like being part of my clan.”
I stepped back. Clan. Oh, hell no.
No way was I letting him get his hooks in and reel me into the fold with this.
He raised one eyebrow as if to ask if my situation had changed in the last few seconds. I growled. It hadn’t.
He held out a hand. I eyed it distastefully. Just do it. I didn’t know how long I’d been wandering in my mind, the sun could march across my skin at any moment.
“If this is how you force people to become part of your little ‘family,’ I wouldn’t be surprised if you end up dead before too much longer.”
He gave me a smug grin. “Don’t be ridiculous. The others weren’t nearly so melodramatic when I asked them to join.”
Guess I’m just special then. Yay me.
“Let’s just get this over with,” I said.
“This may be a bit painful,” he warned.
I opened my mouth to tell him to get on with it, but the words froze on my tongue as a wave of pain crashed into me. I sucked my breath in to scream, but the sound never escaped. It felt like I burning from the inside out. My skin was peeling, my insides boiling. A thousand hot needles being stabbed deep inside.
The most pitiful sounds assaulted my ears. A high-pitched keening that just never stopped. It was me. I was making that horrible sound.
Finally, the sensation ended, leaving me a shaking mess huddled on the ground. My eyes cracked open. What was left of the forest lay in embers. The great trees burned down to soot covered nubs and a thick ash enveloped everything.
“What the hell?” I croaked.
Aidan stared down at me, his arrogant face shaken.
A bit painful? That was agony on an epic scale.
“It didn’t work,” he said. He looked slightly scared and very unhappy.
“What do you mean it didn’t work?” I asked from my position on the ground. I hadn’t gotten all the sensation back in my limbs, and I couldn’t stop shaking. “How could it not work?”
“I mean it didn’t work. I couldn’t establish the connection.”
Connection?
“I thought this was just supposed to give me a boost. Enough to survive the sun.”
“It would have,” he defended.
That didn’t sound like what he promised.
I fought my way to standing, still shaking like a leaf. I wasn’t intimidating anyone like this.
“Explain.”
“The connection would have brought you into my clan. It would basically give me the same type of connection as if I’d sired you. I would have had limited tracking ability. We would have been able to talk mind to mind and most importantly, share power back and forth.”
That sounded close to what he’d promised. I wasn’t a fan of the possibility of him being able to track me, but I could deal with that later.
“Okay, so what happened?”
