Love Bites Read Online Free Page B

sight!”
    But she hadn’t said why, not even when Morgana had tearfully begged to know. Penniless, the girl had ended up taking shelter in a village not far away.
    Which, tragically, had proven to be the home of a certain Father Bennett. After Bennett’s death, the village’s elders had sheltered mother and son—possibly out of guilt as much as anything else—until Mordred was ten. That was when Morgana decided to travel to Camelot to seek the position of royal healer.
    Arthur had taken one look at Mordred and promptly realized he was his son. The childless royal couple greeted them with open arms.
    After nine years as Arthur’s heir, learning he was the product of incest was the final straw for Mordred. From then on, he’d seemed to see himself as cursed, even evil. It was as if the knowledge gave him permission to ignore any sense of honor and decency Morgana, Arthur, and Guinevere had ever taught him.
    But then, maybe he’d always felt that way since suffering the less-than-tender attentions of Father Bennett. In any case, her sweet, sunny little boy had grown up to be a twisted, vicious man.
    “I’ll do everything I ever fantasized about, and you’ll be helpless . . .”
    Just as the poets wrote, Mordred had gone on to lead a failed rebellion against Arthur. The king had ultimately been forced to kill him. Morgana had felt only relief at her son’s death; he would have destroyed them all.
    Today, on what would have been his birthday, the memory of Mordred paced at the edges of Morgana’s mind like some bloody Shakespearean ghost. Her cheek seemed to sting from the spectral weight of his fist, just as his remembered threats made her stomach twist in revulsion.
    She’d known today would be bad the moment she woke this morning.
Maybe I should have stayed home.
    But no. The team needed her.
    Percival needed her.
    She started to glance toward him, only to freeze as she sensed a wave of dark, boiling magic rolling through the bar toward her. Morgana’s eyes narrowed as she went on high alert. Reinforcing her magical shields, she cast a probing spell. Something was definitely coming, something that felt almost oily in the weight and texture of its evil. There was no doubt about it: Their quarry was here . . . or something just as bad.
    Pivoting, Morgana swept her gaze across the bar just as a wave of force hit her, vicious and alien, almost punching through her magical shields. She had to catch the edge of the bar to keep from being knocked right off her stilettos. With an effort, she shook off the effects of that dark attack and focused her attention on the club’s entrance.
    It seemed the murdering werewolf had arrived. Now they just had to kill the furry bastard . . .
    Except . . .
    Morgana frowned in puzzlement. She knew the feel of werewolf magic from painful experience.
Claws raked across her skin as the wolves closed in, their eyes glowing orange with bloodlust . . .
    The taste of this creature’s power was different, much stronger than anything she’d felt before from any other wolf. A tsunami of malice and magic that was both alien and all too familiar.
    “That’s
not
a werewolf,”
Percival said over the mission link, echoing the thought that had made her heart skip in dread.
“That’s a dragon.”
    “Oh,”
Morrak groaned,
“we’re so fucked.”
    They were both right. Heart pounding, Morgana started toward the club’s entrance, pushing through the laughing, dancing crowd, grimly determined to intercept the killer.
    The creature who strode into the bar a moment later didn’t look like a murderous shape-shifting dragon. He was just tall enough to draw a woman’s eye in a crowd, lean and muscular as an Olympic swimmer in a well-cut gray suit that suggested its wearer had both money and taste. Morgana could see how an unwary woman might follow him to her death, deceived by his smoldering
GQ
looks and artfully tousled black hair.
    But the gaze he swept over the crowd was so