Cal lunged forward. Lance pushed his chair back, brought his hands up in defense, a smile still tugging at his lips.
“Now fellas, calm down.” Andrew rose from the table, his hands resting on the back of his chair. “This is getting serious. I thought for sure Morgan would want Cal to come to her tonight.” He turned his worried look to Cal. “You need to convince her to bond, Cal. She needs your strength.”
He sighed as he steepled his hands in front of him. “You saw as well as I did, she doesn’t want me to go up there after her. She clearly gave me a red light.”
“Maybe she was just doing that because she was in a room full of men,” Ken offered as he took another bite of his food. “Maybe she really does want you. I mean, all joking aside, I know what Lance is talking about. She did seem very into you earlier. I don’t think it would take much to get her to cave. She wants you.”
Cal shook his head. “She wants me and I want her—that’s not the problem.” He looked over at Andrew. “Doesn’t Kelly have some insight into this?”
Andrew shrugged. “She says that you’ll do the right thing.”
“Great,” he said as he dragged his fingers roughly through his hair and pushed himself back into his chair. “That could mean two different things.”
“Maybe you should go and speak with Luther,” Lance offered, his tone serious for once. “He’s been through this—he might be able to help you figure things out.”
Luther, a crazy man. The only Hunter to have lost his Huntress in the same way that Cal might lose Morgan—by his own hand. Luther was also Cal’s father and the Huntress he’d been forced to kill had been Cal’s mother.
Thirty years earlier, Cal had been only a small child, but he remembered the chaos, the heart-wrenching moaning, the violence. His mother, the only Huntress at the time, had gone up against Lazarus on the night of a lunar eclipse. She’d faced the beast in his human form, his more vulnerable and most bewitching form, the same as Morgan would. Cal’s mother had been well trained. She had been powerful. She had been confident. And yet, despite her love for his father, despite their bond, she hadn’t been able to fight Lazarus’s seductive power. She’d fallen into his trap and before Lazarus could claim her, before he could whisk her away to breed from her a powerful heir, Cal’s father had pierced her heart with an arrow, killing her instantly and ending any possibility of sanity for him and normalcy for Cal.
“The man is a lunatic,” Cal growled as he stood. “What could he possibly tell me that I don’t already know? If I fall in love with Morgan, if I care for her in any way, I could doom us all. How will talking to my father make it any easier to do my duty if she fails us? If Lazarus seduces her, if she succumbs to him, I will have to kill her. There is no other way. Father knew that. We all know that.” He flexed his arms, clenching and unclenching his fists. “Lazarus wants her, and he’s going to do whatever he can to claim her that night.”
“You don’t have a lot of faith in your woman,” Ken grumbled. “You’re talking as if she’s already betrayed us.”
He shook his head. “It’s happened once before with my own mother, Ken. What would be so different this time? Luther almost couldn’t do it, right? Isn’t that how the story really goes? My father loved my mother so much that he almost let her go with Lazarus rather than killing her.” He worked his jaw, grinding his teeth together. “If Lazarus succeeds in getting his heir, especially from a Huntress, we are all doomed. The texts warn us, we cannot let that happen, no matter what the cost.”
“But if she succeeds, Cal,” Lance said, his brow furrowed. “If she succeeds in killing Lazarus, the power would finally shift for us, we would be able to regain the ground we’ve lost over the centuries.”
Cal sighed. “She tempts me in ways that I can’t deny.”
Lance stood and stretched, raising his arms to cradle the back of his head. “Then go to her, man. Go be with her. She wants you too. Convince her.”
Cal nodded, still hesitant but willing to give it a try.
“And stop looking like you’re off to your death.” Andrew smirked. “It might be a challenge, but you’re the only man for the job.”
Chapter Thirteen
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