Darkest Before Dawn (A Guardian's Diary Book 1)(24)

“Fucking whore, I’m gonna have fun with you and then you’ll join Jason on the rocks below.”

I kicked out, and got to my feet unsteadily. I felt his hands latch on to me at the same moment I jumped backwards—off of the cliff.

They say you see all sorts of shit when you are about to die. Like your entire life flashing before your eyes. Not me, I saw the toothless asshole and the fear in his eyes. I pulled him close, laughing briefly before I rolled, turning him below me in the air—and we hit the rocks…hard.

I smashed my head against his, and went blind with pain as something cracked in my arms and stomach. Landing on top of toothless only lessened some of the impact. I could hear Jaeden shouting and Addy’s screams, and knew I was dying. Or I thought I was. Bullets rained down from the cliff the moment I raised my head. I pushed myself from the bloody corpse and felt the cool water as I slid into it, and sank quickly.

I didn’t want to die, but my chances of living were getting slimmer with every passing moment. Every inch of my body seemed to scream with pain. I pushed off the bottom knowing I had to get air, but I had nothing left. I felt arms as they wrapped around my waist and took me to the surface.

I leaned my head against the last person I’d expected to save me. I couldn’t speak, and my lungs felt as if they were on fire. I pulled in huge gulps of air, as he laid me down on the riverbank and spoke. “Damn, lass, ye look like hell.”

I looked into Lachlan’s eyes and tried for a laugh, which only came out as a sob.

“Och nae, lass, none of that now,” his voice was a gentle croon as he began to look over my many injuries.

“Emma!” Jaeden shouted as he rounded the bend, with Addy close behind him.

Addy fell to the ground beside me bawling. “Emma, get up!” she cried as she fisted her hair in her hands as she stared in despair at me. She was about to lose it, and I couldn’t fix it. I didn’t have enough in me to reassure her that it would be okay because it wasn’t.

“No,” I whispered even though it hurt like hell to say it. “Something’s not right,” I whispered.

I felt broken, as in everything was on fire. I was pretty sure I was knocking on heaven’s door, and there wasn’t going to be any do-over’s. “You know what to do if it happens,” I rasped to Addy as I started to cough up blood.

“No, get the fuck up bitch! You don’t get to leave me! I can’t do what you can, I can’t, Emma. I need you! Grayson needs you! Get up! You don’t get to die! We have to grow old together, you promised. I’m not as strong as you are.” She was sobbing, and pulling on my useless arm. “You’re all I have left, you can’t leave me here alone, Emma, please get up!” she wailed.



“That hurts,” I whimpered.

“Lachlan, take her friend,” Jaeden ordered and I lifted my eyes to him.

“No,” I answered for Lachlan. “Home,” I said sternly. “They need me,” I said before trying to move my useless limbs.

“Emma, don’t do this to me, you have to get up. Let them help you, you don’t look good. Grayson can’t see you like this. They’re right. You look really bad,” Addy sobbed the words out.

“Not…dying, just—a scratch. Walk…it…off,” I struggled to continue. Addy’s eyes were wide with horror as she looked at me. It wasn’t a scratch; even I could hear the death rattle in my chest.





*~*Jaeden*~*





She’d been lucky to survive the fall; her body was a mass of broken bones and damaged flesh. I picked her up, listening to the faint beating of her heart as she lost the fight to stay conscious. I watched her eyes grow slack, as her life threatened to leave her. “Take her,” I snapped at Lachlan who was allowing the thin wisp of a woman struggling in his arms to win against him.

“Ye cannae do what I ken yer aboot tae do without her consent….dinnae do it. She doesna deserve tae become what ye are, Jaeden,” Lachlan’s voice was an angry demand.

“You owe me this much,” I spat out.

“Jaeden, that was long ago and I dinnae know. Ye ken I didnae plan on what happened.” He sounded reasonable, maybe he didn’t plan on it, but it changes nothing. I already had Shamus riding my ass to let it go. He isn’t exactly free of betrayal either. It still burns and festers to think of it even after all this time.

He waited for me to respond for a few moments and when it became clear I had nothing further to say, he bit out a curse, and picked up the small struggling woman and carried her away. Her grief stricken wails faded with Lachlan’s departure and the noise of the river.

I kneeled to the cold ground and ripped my wrist open with a sharp fang. I placed my wrist over her lips and pulled her mouth open, forcing her to drink my blood. “Drink, Emma,” I begged her, I couldn’t allow someone with so much fucking life to give up. Bringing her back as something like I am, well, it beat watching her die in my arms.

“Are you sure you wish to sire her? We are at war, and a neophyte is something we don’t have time for,” Bjorn grumbled as he kneeled beside us. “She’s losing this battle, old friend. Maybe it’s best to let her go.”

“That’s what they said about you, Bjorn, and I refused to leave you bleeding out on the battle field. I’ve never regretted bringing you over, yet,” I responded grimly.

I massaged her throat, working my tainted blood into her system. Her organs were damaged, her heartbeat was faint, and fading faster than my blood could repair it. I knew the moment it reached her organs, because she jerked in my arms. I remembered the fire, the burning of every cell as it was reborn. Her eyes grew wide with the pain. Her body convulsed, as she tried to push my wrist away. Her arms were shattered in the fall, and unable to do much of anything.

“You broke your new toy?” Sven’s bright blue eyes narrowed at the sight of her broken body as he moved closer. “Shit,” he whispered as he looked over the extensive damage.

Her skull was cracked and blood oozed from her scalp and dribbled from her nose. There were deep cuts and scratches all over her face; one showed the damage to her facial bones. Her heart had taken too much damage from the impact of the rock’s unforgiving surface, and the sound of it trying to push the blood was sickening. Her insides were a fucking mess.

“She took a leap off a cliff to escape being raped,” I replied as I felt her lips finally latch on. Good girl. I closed my eyes as the sensation of her feeding from my wrist made my cock stand up at attention. Feeding led to fucking, and she was a fucking mess. I moaned, uncaring of the men standing close to me. They knew what it was like, because they’d each made their own fair share of toys, as they called them.



My balls stretched taut as blood pulsed in my erection. Easy boy, she’s not available for you yet. She would be a hard turn, normally they weren’t this close to death. She was barely breathing, and even as I fed her, everything in her body was either bleeding out or shutting down.

“Get the truck; she needs more blood than this and we’re too exposed out here.”

“You got it,” Sven said as he turned and walked back through the thick brush to where the SUVs awaited us.

I continued to force the blood down her throat, even as she thrashed against my efforts. “Come on, sweet girl, you can do it.”

The sound of the engine as it turned over and headed this direction was a relief. She needed more blood than I alone could give her, and she needed sleep. Tonight she would sleep with me, and when her body turned cold, I would place her in the ground for the change.

“Shamus should be here tonight; you think he’s going to approve of your new toy?” Bjorn asked as he helped me secure her in the backseat.

“You think I give a fuck? He may be in charge of the Northwest, but he isn’t my maker. I’ve lived by the rules, Bjorn. It’s been over a thousand years since I’ve changed a female over to our world. He’s made several, including Cayla. I have only brought one female over, and she’s currently stuck on his dick.”

“Astrid was your wife,” Bjorn said calmly. “What she did to you was unforgivable.”

Unforgivable? I’d married her while I’d been human still. She’d been the pampered daughter of nobility, and my obsession. I’d earned the right to claim her in marriage, and I had to leave her with my seed just barely swelling in her body to serve my king. Not to go Viking like my father—and his before him—but to hold and defend a God-forsaken shit hole an ocean away. I had plenty of land and wealth from my family, but serving my king was paramount, so with promises to her of chastity and abstinence that would have made me a laughingstock to my forefathers, I left her to do my duty.

When I had been left for dead after the battle for control of York in Northumbria, and changed, I’d gone back for her. It was only after I had changed her that I discovered that while I had been serving king and country, she had been seeking the favors of every male with titles, land, or both that would pay her attention. My child wasn’t lost to miscarriage as I’d been led to believe, but deliberately killed in her womb as no man would look at her with my seed growing there.