Page 29 of Dark Embrace

“Beasts are prey or predator,” Brie said carefully. “We both know the Wolf is a predator.” He looked at her. “And animals do not have a conscience.”

“Yer meaning?” he asked, rather coolly.

“How convenient that Wolf is for you.”

His face tightened. “Aye, the Wolf serves me well.”

“But the Wolf has a conscience, after all, just as you do. I saw it.”

His shoulders lifted, stiffened. “Dinna challenge me.”

Brie hadn’t meant to provoke him. “I’m not! I was thinking aloud, trying to understand you. I’m sorry.”

“Ye dinna need to comprehend me, Brianna. Dinna even try.” His eyes flashed with anger.

She had raised a sore subject. She did not want to make him mad. “I am sorry about your son,” she said, meaning it with all of her heart. “I am so sorry. What happened is so terrible—tragic and unfair.”

He was so still he could have been carved from stone. Then she saw his chest rising and falling beneath the vee neckline of the leine. She could see the fang necklace he wore.

He folded his bulging arms across his chest. “Ye saw Ian,” he said bluntly, “when no one has ever seen him, except fer me.”

So Aidan could see Ian, too, although apparently not all of the time. She nodded, trying to search his gaze, but he wouldn’t let her. “Malcolm and Claire told me what happened. How long has he been haunting you?”

His face tightened. “He was murdered sixty-six years ago next month.”

Brie was shocked. Aidan had been haunted for a human lifetime!

“What did he wish o’ ye?”

“I don’t know,” she said truthfully. “He was trying to speak, but I couldn’t hear him.” She stopped. The little boy had been afraid and desperate, and telling Aidan that would only cause more anguish.

Aidan flushed with anger. “I can hear yer every thought,” he warned. “He was afraid.”

Oh, God, he was telepathic. “Yes, he seemed very afraid.” And suddenly a wave of grief hit her, very much the way an ocean wave might.

“Why did he come to ye, instead of me?” he cried. “He’s been tryin’ to speak to me fer all these years! What does he want to say?’

His desperation added to the flood tide of anguish. It was hard to speak. “I don’t…know.”

Suddenly the anguish and desperation vanished, tamped down in his soul. Brie breathed, shaking like a leaf. She had to monitor her thoughts, so as not to hurt him. “The other day, I felt your suffering, across time. There was so much pain and anguish, I thought you were being tortured. There was rage, and then, at the end, there was grief, and it was the worst emotion of all—like now. You weren’t being tortured, were you? It was about Ian.”

“Moray took my son from me.” He breathed hard. “I stood there, helpless, while he was murdered! I tried to stop Ian’s murder by going back in time. I tried again an’ again…. I failed.”

Aidan had witnessed his son’s death many times, and she had felt his pain as he relived the murder.

Her head ached now. “Did the demon bury you alive?” she asked carefully.

Aidan turned away. “I brought my own walls down.”

Brie wanted to reach out but didn’t dare. “So you were buried alive and you waited to die.”

He faced her. “’Twas sixty-six years ago. Now I live for my revenge.”

His savage, ruthless bloodlust overwhelmed her, frightening her. But she didn’t blame him—she couldn’t. She couldn’t help thinking about how his poor son’s soul was suffering, caught between this world and the next one. Ian did not deserve his fate, just as his father did not.

Aidan had heard her silent thoughts. He met her gaze, his mask briefly cracking apart. She saw a man near tears—she felt that oceanic wave of grief again.

Brie stood and grasped his arms, shocked by the steel-hard muscles there. “We’ll figure this out together.”