Dark Highland Fire

"You're telling me."

The two of them sat in unhappy, contemplative silence for a long time. Gideon toyed with a cold cup of coffee that sat on the counter in front of him, while Gabriel simply brooded. He really didn't think he'd been overstating the problem. Rowan might have gotten lost in some sort of blood lust-induced haze with him, but any woman who would pick him up with nothing but the power of her mind and throw him bodily out of her room was not interested in his company. And women always liked him, he thought with a spark of insult. He was charming, damn it! But then it was possible, he allowed, that he might not have been as charming as he'd intended with her. Something about her quick, sharp little tongue had rained a bit on his usual good humor.

Hell, who was he kidding? Rowan's temperament mixed with his caused more of a torrential downpour. A tornado. An apocalyptic thunderstorm. Something.

"Bollocks," he growled. It didn't pain him to admit that he had a healthy need for control, and the fact that he had exactly none over his reaction to Rowan the Stripping Drakkyn was apt to drive him mad within days. Especially if she resorted to violence every time she saw him from now on. Her instructions, after all, had been rather clear.

Stay away from me.

Well, he was just going to have to find a way around it. The MacInnes stubbornness, legendary in its own right, was going to come in handy. He was going to have to use every weapon in his arsenal to win her. Gabriel glared at his clenched fists. He hoped like hell that Rowan was worth winning. Because there was no way he was going to be one of those Wolves who let his mate go for their own good, and he was certainly not going to spend the rest of his life wishing he were having sex with someone he couldn't bloody well have. He liked sex. A lot. And he'd already surmised that sex with Rowan was going to blow anything he'd ever experienced to microscopic pieces.

He was already having to rethink his distaste for the feeding habits of the vampirically inclined. Being bitten himself had been ... interesting. Might even be worth trying again.

"You've got that look on your face," Gideon sighed, scattering his thoughts. Gabriel looked up at him, one eyebrow raised.

"Look?"

"Yeah. The one that says you're going to pursue this no matter how inadvisable, dangerous, or flat-out stupid it might be." He smirked then. "You know. The MacInnes look."

Gabriel chuckled. "The Pack has never been known for running from a challenge, Gid. I can't help what my instincts are telling me, any more than you could last winter. I don't know a thing about her. Well, nothing I much like, in any case," he qualified, shaking his head. "I just know I have to have her."

"That may be easier said than done."

"Because she's a Drakkyn?"

Gideon laughed, but there was little humor in it. "I think that's the least of your worries. We had a short conversation this morning—she and Dad and Carly and I—over a rather abbreviated breakfast. She's still, ah, unhappy about our refusal to see her back to the States."

"Shocking, considering her obviously even temper," Gabriel muttered.

"Exactly. So we only got the bare bones of the issue at hand before your Rowan excused herself. But it sounds like most of her family was killed by the Andrakkar and their friends, who, as our luck would have it, all command the ability to shift into fire-breathing dragons. And they're still hunting her."

"You mean them. Don't forget the accommodating Bastian." The root of all of his current trouble.

Gideon gave him a sidelong glance. "Not really. It sounds like he's utterly secondary. Bastian is only trying to protect her. Because their tribe was slaughtered over Rowan's refusal to marry Lucien, Mordred's son."

Gabriel exhaled, long and low. "God. That's terrible." He thought of her, proud and beautiful, shrugging off offers for help as though she needed no one. And he wondered what deeper feelings she was fighting so hard to conceal—loss, he imagined, and anger and fear at her brother's abandonment. And then there was the guilt. From the little he'd seen of the Andrakkar, he could understand why Rowan would not want to chain herself to one of them. But he knew how he would feel if one of his decisions compelled the destruction of his loved ones.

He would probably never forgive himself.

And whether it was an instinctual reaction because of his bond to her or simply a natural human response, Gabriel was suddenly consumed with the need to be with her, to help her. To protect her in any way he could.

He stood quickly, the decision made in an instant. If she would accept nothing else from him, then he would start with friendship (no matter how much it pained him, Gabriel thought with a cringe). She'd been given into his care because he was the only one who could match her for sheer, asinine intractability. He planned to exert some of that right now.

Anyway, he consoled himself, it wasn't as though people were going to be lined up to spend time with such a moody, prickly creature. The woman was going to need someone to talk to. He hoped.

"Is she still at the house?" he asked. Gideon eyed him speculatively.

"She said something about going for a walk. Alone."

Gabriel smiled. "I imagine that part was emphasized."

"You imagine correctly." He paused. "She looked a great deal healthier today, I have to say." His eyes dropped to Gabriel's neck, curiosity evident in his gaze. "I know you promised you'd feed her, but I didn't necessarily think you'd do it yourself. Or quite so immediately, for that matter."

Gabriel shot his brother a withering look. "What, you thought maybe I'd lure in some unfortunate sheep? She was starving."

"Not to mention scantily clad."

"An added bonus. Did you happen to see which way she went?"

Gideon sighed. "Utterly one-track today. No. But I'm sure you'll sniff her out. I will say, she doesn't smell like a vampire, even if she does appear to act like one ... at least in the nutrition department. And she looked a lot less like one in that old T-shirt you gave her to wear." He smirked. "Smooth, by the way. Though it inspired my wife to take pity and donate a few things that might fit." He shook his head. "I can't think why everyone always likes her better than me."

"T-shirt." There had been clothing removed, Gabriel remembered, but none given that he could recall. And he recalled a great deal about last night, though he wasn't yet convinced that was a good thing.

Gideon lifted one inquisitive brow. "Yeah. A fairly nasty old specimen from your college days, which covered a lot more than her getup from last night did. I assumed you'd given it to her as a sly way of getting your scent all over her. I take it she pilfered it instead?"

Gabriel thought about Rowan slinking into his room, the room that of course contained the bed he longed to get her into, and pawing through his things with those long, slender fingers. What was she thinking of as she'd gone through his clothes? he wondered. How did she think of him? She'd breathed in his scent all night, Gabriel realized. Willingly. Maybe he had more than a ghost of a chance with her after all.

And if he ever got that shirt back, he was never washing it again.

Gideon groaned. "Your eyes are glazing. I'm sorry I mentioned she'd been intimate with your clothes. Tell me, honestly, was I this mind-numbingly boring about my wife?"

"You have no idea." Gabriel shoved the stool back beneath the counter and headed for the front door, completely focused on the tasks at hand. He was going to get back into Rowan an Morgaine's good graces if it killed him. He was going to do whatever it took to keep that foul Andrakkar away from her. And he was going to stick to her like glue until she accepted him as her mate, either out of undeniable love or extreme battle fatigue.

The first order of business, however, was simply finding her and getting her to speak to him. It might, he worried, be easier said than done.

"I just hope she hasn't teleported out of here or whatever the hell her brother did in the meantime," he muttered.

"If she could have, I think she would have by now. And I doubt she'd look quite as unhappy as she did this morning." Gideon followed him to the front door, grabbing his arm before Gabriel could step through it. It was all Gabriel could do not to snap at the offending hand.

"What? I'm busy, damn it!"

Gideon looked at him blandly, but he didn't move his hand. "You might want to consider being busy after showering and putting on a shirt. You look like you just crawled out of a cave. After eating pasta, I might add." He poked a finger at the dried spots of Carly's pasta sauce dotting Gabriel's collarbone.

"Later," Gabriel replied, pushing past him and stalking out into the sunshine with purpose. "I have every intention of selling myself, but it's going to have to be as is. Besides, with my luck she'll be hiding up some tree or invisible and it'll take me hours to find her."

Gideon watched his brother go. "Only if she knows what's good for her," he called after him, the only response being an irritable little backward wave. He leaned against the door frame, thinking, until he felt Carly slip beneath his arm and snuggle into his side. Gideon smiled despite himself, toying with her hair as she sighed contentedly. He'd found his heart, against enormous odds, he reminded himself. No matter his misgivings about the situation with Rowan, which were greater than he'd let Gabriel know, he needed to remember that. There was no reason his brother shouldn't be allowed the same happiness. Even if the mate he'd found was decidedly ... unconventional. He'd worried about Gabriel for years, knew his younger brother had never really felt he had a purpose or a place. This could be just what he needed.

Then again, it could be an unmitigated disaster. Only time would tell. But he would be there to back him up, either way.

Chapter 7

Rowan swung her long legs as she perched on one of the gnarled branches of an ancient oak tree, trying to simply enjoy being surrounded by nature for the first time in almost a year. A soft breeze ruffled her hair, which tumbled unbound down her back. The temperature was perfect, warm but nowhere near hot, and she was thankful that the pretty blonde who'd been crazy enough to attach herself to this family of werewolves had brought her some shorts and T-shirts. The men might be hulking, barely civilized cretins, Rowan reflected, but Carly seemed almost normal. A little lacking in the height department, she thought, casting a critical eye over the vast amount of leg left uncovered by the shorts, but normal.