Primal Heat 04 - Forever in Darkness

it.
    Determination and focus pulsing
through him, Ian stretched the piece of fabric between his hands. The white
fabric was stained with blood from the wound that had killed her, a grim
reminder of what would happen if he succumbed to the curse and failed her again.
    He couldn’t truly blood bond with
her while she was dead, but he was going to do it anyway. He would honor her
with the promise of a Calydon to his mate, and create a connection that would
hold them together until he could find her again.
    Ian sliced the tip of the mace
across his forehead. The cut oozed with his lifeblood as he set the strip of
fabric across his forehead. He positioned the part with Alice's blood on his
wound and let their blood merge together. There was no magic, no hum of
connection the way there would have been in a true blood bond, but it didn't
matter. Their blood was mingled, and it was done.
    As he tied the ends of the fabric
around his head, he gave her the promise that someday he would offer her for
real. In person. The ritual words of the blood bond between a Calydon and his
mate. Mine to you. Yours to me. Bonded by blood, by spirit and by soul, we
are one. No distance too far, no enemy too powerful, no sacrifice too great. I
will always find you. I will always protect you. No matter what the cost. I am
yours as you are mine.
    Rightness rippled through him, and
power flooded him.
    Alice was in his soul now, and he
was keeping her there.
    Ian took one last look at the woman
lying on the grave of his ancestor. I will find you, Alice. I give you my word.
    He touched the tips of his fingers to
the bloodstain on his headband, a salute to both the woman at his feet and the
grave that cradled her, and then he turned away, striding across the grass
toward his motorcycle.
    This time, he would not look back.
    This time, he was only looking
forward, to the woman he would find before it was too late.
    This time, he would triumph.
    And he would make her his.
    *Ian's full-length
novel, Darkness Arisen , will be available late 2012*

Sneak Peek: DARKNESS REBORN
    (Order of the Blade, Book Five)
    (dark & sexy paranormal romance, available late Summer 2012)
    Even with his chest heaving from exertion, his weapons burning in his hands, steam rising from his bare torso from the humidity, and the very earth itself ruthlessly torn up from the battle, Kane Santiago wanted more.
    He needed more. He needed to keep going until sheer, raw exhaustion clawed at him and dragged him ruthlessly into the sleep that wouldn’t come, until he was so drained that he couldn’t think any more.
    Kane had been driving himself relentlessly for eleven days straight, but it hadn’t been enough to chase away the gaping void trying to consume him. It had been coming at him for months, this great pit of hell, stalking him at every moment, but now it felt like his entire soul had been sucked from his body and thrust into a bottomless void of blackness.
    He didn’t know what was coming for him or how to stop it. He didn’t have answers. All he had was a scarred body that looked like an artist had used his flesh for a canvas and a knife for a paintbrush.
    Kane’s skin looked like ancient designs had been traced into it, but no one on this God-forsaken earth could explain why he had them or what they meant. Kane’s memories of his life began five hundred years ago, the day Dante Sinclair, the Order of the Blade’s former leader, had hauled him out of the gutter. How old had he been that day? Thirty? A hundred? Two hundred? How had he ended up there, covered in body art of the most brutal kind?
    He had no idea, but the story carved on his body and the enormity of the blackness overtaking him made it clear that there was shit he needed to know about his prior life, and he was running out of time to do it.
    The air in the southern Oregon woods was thick with moisture, rich with the scent of earth saturated by the rain that was too cold for this time of year. Steam was rising off the warm moss, and thick fog was rolling in fast, sucked in by the dance of the heat and cold. The very air Kane was breathing was alive with vibrant energy, and yet all he could feel was the endless freefall of his very soul into the bottomless chasm of darkness.
    “These guys were serious shit.” Caked with sweat and blood from the battle, Ryland Samuels crouched beside one of the two rogue Calydons they’d been hunting for the last six hours, deadly bastards that had put up a hell of a