Savage Hunger(103)
“You release me?” he repeated, barely containing his savage reaction. “Like hell.”
“Warrick, please—”
“You love me, Sienna. I heard your thoughts.”
She flinched, drawing her bottom lip between her teeth. “You’re right. I do. Which is why I can’t let you give up everything to be with me.”
Shock slammed into him, then relief. He gathered her close, burying his lips against her neck and kissing a path up to her mouth. She resisted at first, before surrendering with a soft moan and responding to his claiming kiss.
When he lifted his head, he found her eyes closed and her breathing unsteady.
“Sienna, you’re shifter.” He pressed another light kiss against her lips, murmuring, “I can now keep you as my mate without repercussions from the elders.”
“But…I’m only half shifter.”
“It doesn’t matter, baby. Shifter blood is shifter blood.” He lifted his head enough to press his forehead to hers. “And for the record, even if you weren’t shifter, Sienna, I would still keep you as my mate.”
She shook her head. “Warrick…”
“You mean everything to me. My existence would be meaningless without waking every day and being allowed to love you.”
Sienna’s breath caught. “You love me?”
“Did you ever think otherwise?”
“I didn’t want to. But I know what an amazing man you are. How you might’ve felt honor bound to stay with me.”
“I would never have marked you if you weren’t my future. My heart.” He kissed her again. “My soul,” he finally whispered.
Sienna choked on a sob and wrapped her arms around him, clinging. “I love you so much. I never wanted to lose you.”
Warrick closed his eyes against the surprising wetness that filled them.
“You never will,” he whispered. “Never.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The church overflowed with shifters from end to end. Men women and children of various ages reminiscing, mingling and mourning.
Sienna stood alone in a corner of the room and stared down at the picture of Quinton Meyers. She tried to figure out why her heart felt a bit pinched, why she could be affected by a man who’d ruined her mother’s life. Had turned hers upside down.
So much had happened in a week. So many changes and adjustments. The feral shifters had all recovered within days of being given the antidote. They all seemed to be physically healthy, some remembered almost everything that had happened, but some remembered nearly nothing.
Sienna glanced over at Grace, the lone female who’d been feral. She stood away from her fellow P.I.A. agents and kept a haunted gaze on Quinton’s casket. Sienna suspected Grace remembered more than she wanted to.
But at least some good had risen from the awful situation. Her father was exploring the use of the original drug developed by Feloray Laboratories. Testing it on the members of the community who were only half shifter. Those like her. It seemed that the drug, delivered just once, awakened the dormant genes and gave them nearly the same powers of the full-blooded shifters.
Acknowledging who she was came a little slower. Her new reality still felt surreal, but each day she struggled a little less to accept it. And true to Warrick’s words, the shifter community had welcomed her into its fold. A gesture that both warmed her heart and made it ache a little.
The ache was for her father. Even if his blood didn’t run in her veins, Kevin would always be her father. And she’d worried how he would adjust to the discovery. But to her surprise, he’d taken it relatively well, looking at it logically and without resentment. Had even blamed her mother’s infidelity on the fact they’d married too young and without the love that could sustain them.
He hadn’t come to Quinton’s memorial tonight, but she suspected it had more to do with wanting to avoid gossip than resenting the man. Everyone knew the story now. Knew why Sienna had been embraced into the community’s folds so immediately.
“Despite how it seems, Quinton was a good man.” Warrick’s words tickled warmly against her ear as he sidled up behind her.
He slid a reassuring arm around her waist and she leaned back against him. Taking a moment to absorb his strength. His love.
“I know he was,” she said, her throat tightening. “All these people wouldn’t be here if he wasn’t. The community loved him.”
“And he loved your mother. Probably as much as I love you, Sienna.”
“He didn’t love her enough. What he did—”
“Was terrible. Nobody is disputing that. Not even he did. And he had to live with that decision the rest of his life.”