Tempting Gray - Untouchables 02 by T. A. Grey

It wasn’t
time yet. They couldn’t take her away. Not his bruid . Not Anita. She was
the only thing he had.
    Eventually they did wrest him away from her. It
was a battle. He fought until all three of his brothers had to pin him against
the wall to keep him from going after those who touched her. Only after a crew
of people wrapped Anita’s body in white gauze and took her away did Gray
finally collapse into his brothers’ embrace.
     

CHAPTER 6
    Grayson insisted on being here for the process
as the Passers, ordained morticians, prepared the body.
    A great fire crackled in the center of the
room. On top of a sacred stone pyre deep beneath the earth, Anita of Redenver
house’s body had been stripped, cleaned, and adorned in a fresh linen gown and
wrapped once more in gauze. They would place her body on the flames to place
her body to rest.
    He’d watched in morbid fascination as they’d
sewn her head back onto her neck so they could properly wrap her body. Grayson
watched the whole process feeling raw inside and out.
    It’d been three days since his bruid was
murdered in their own home. In the baby’s room.
    His stomach churned like a wheel spinning in
water. His eyes hadn’t stopped burning from the time his tears began. He’d
cried a lot during the past few days. The tears just came, sometimes at
unexpected times, when he saw a photo of her or remembered something special.
Then, the waterworks would come. The cold numbness that weighed his body down
didn’t allow him to stop those tears, didn’t allow him to even care that he was
doing it.
    His family kept talking at him. They wanted to
know so many things. Things that didn’t matter. But they didn’t see it that
way. They didn’t understand. They’d never lost a mate. Good, bad, or ugly, it
was his job to protect Anita. And he’d failed that job with staggering results.
    Amazing how Grayson had spent his whole life
becoming a protector, a bodyguard. He’d always wanted to save lives. Sure there
was some bullshit psychology behind it. Dr. Rudy had already revealed Grayson’s
own inner-workings. Apparently Grayson felt the need to save those weaker than
himself. Even now just thinking the thought made him stand a little straighter.
It was true. The need to help others, to protect them, had been engrained in
him from the moment his mother’s drunken lover beat her. He’d watched that
beating in utter horror as a little boy. He didn’t even have to think hard to
conjure up that first time. He could still hear his mother’s cries as if they
were happening right now. The sound of flesh beating flesh in violence—could
never be unheard.
    His mother had sustained a beating that day.
But the next time…the next time that nameless man came around, Gray had
reacted. He’d only been eight when he beat the man with a tree branch and threw
him out of their house. If the man hadn’t been as slobbering-drunk as he was,
he might have fought back better. Who knows how Gray would have turned out if
that night hadn’t happened? It’d changed him.
    And now he stood at the next turning point in
the road. His life had come to a staggering halt the moment Anita died. Ahead
of him he could only see one path to take. Just as a kid, after that first act
of violence, Gray went deep inside his head and began planning.
    He was going to kill the Donato family. They
wouldn’t receive easy deaths. No quick kills, but slow torture until they were
in so much pain they begged him for their lives. Only, they’ll never get it.
The Donato family will die.
    Vampires and Weres filed into the mortuary in
stony silence. Family from both houses came. When the room was full, a Passer
picked up a wooden torch. The Passer wrapped the end of the torch in white
cloth, then dipped it in oil. Slowly, he walked to Grayson. Bowing his head, he
held the torch out. Grayson took the torch without a word.
    All eyes were on him. He didn’t recognize most
of the faces. When his gaze finally stopped