Dark and Damaged: Eight Tortured Heroes of Paranormal Romance: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set Read Online Free PDF

with deeper gold.
    Then his eyes changed to human again, and Seamus gave Bree a nod. “I am grateful.”
    Bree let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Seamus didn’t loosen his grip, and he didn’t look away.
    “Good.” Nadine clattered her instruments into the pot. “Bree, get out some clean sheets.”
    ***
    Seamus lay on the couch in the dark, a sheet pulled up over his jeans to his bandaged chest. He was wide awake, staring at the living room ceiling. His bare feet stuck out over the end of the sofa, his frame too long for him to stretch out.
    Bree had taken his ruined shirt away, darting into a laundry room off the kitchen to toss it into the washing machine. The bandage around Seamus’s torso itched, but it was a hell of a lot better than the hot bullets in his side.
    He owed these people his life. Bree had gotten him away from the hunters in the nick of time—giving him a crazy, wild ride. Nadine had competently removed the bullets, which would allow Seamus to heal cleanly. His Shifter metabolism might have closed flesh around the shots, but they could have festered. Shifters were tough to kill, but infection happened.
    Directly above him, separated from him by the ceiling, Bree lay in her bed. Seamus sensed her with his entire being, imagined her breathing quietly, covers over her body. Her golden hair would be rumpled on her pillow, her hand curled under one cheek.
    His heart beat faster, but Seamus tried to suppress the vision. He didn’t have time for an amorous encounter right now, didn’t matter that the simple act of holding Bree’s hand had both aroused him and eased his pain.
    Bree was not for him. Seamus had bigger things to worry about than cuddling up with a woman, no matter how enticing she was.
    He smiled in the darkness. Bree wasn’t a meek, weak creature. She’d make someone a good mate.
    Seamus saw the deep sorrow in her. The brother, Remy, Bree spoke of, who was very obviously not here, was dead. Seamus recognized the grief in Bree’s eyes and that of the mother. Photos in the living room showed a young man in a uniform. Probably Remy had been killed in one of the endless wars humans waged with one another. In every decade there was one, the new war usually segueing from the previous one.
    Not that Shifters couldn’t fight bloody battles when they had to. The time was coming, Seamus knew, when such a thing would have to happen again.
    Far above him, Seamus heard a soft thump and a rustle. He was already wide awake, but his Shifter self woke up further.
    The sound hadn’t come from Bree’s bedroom, or Nadine’s. It came from higher, at the top of the house—the attic.
    Quietly, Seamus pushed back the sheet and rose to his feet. The rustle came again, as though someone had gone up to look through the boxes of junk left above.
    In silence, he flowed up the stairs, already knowing which steps creaked and how to avoid them. He wouldn’t be able to avoid making noise pulling open the attic door, though, so if he couldn’t be stealthy, he’d simply have to be quick.
    Seamus crouched down on his heels, and in one movement, sprang the distance between floor and ceiling, shoving the door out of his way as he went. He caught the frame around the attic door and swung himself upward, half scrambling, half leaping into the attic. His feet found beams on which to land, his vision changing to his lion’s as he looked around the pitch-dark space.
    Across the attic was a wavering light, which brightened into one clear beam as Seamus looked at it. In that light he saw that boxes had been upended, books and papers strewn about.
    Then the light winked abruptly out, bathing the room in darkness. A few papers fluttered to the floor.
    “Shit!” came Bree’s whispered voice. Seamus looked down, finding her directly beneath the attic’s trap door. Bree’s eyes were wide, her cheek lined with creases from her pillow. “Please don’t tell me my mom’s right, and there really is a