by Scott, Helen
Stained Bonds
The Salsang Chronicles Part IV
Serena Akeroyd
Helen Scott
Copyright © 2019 by Serena Akeroyd & Helen Scott
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
1. Marcella
2. Keiran
3. Keiran
4. Marcella
5. Cade
6. Darius
7. Gideon
8. Henrick
9. Keiran
10. Marcella
11. Cade
12. Raven
Epilogue
Also by Helen Scott
Also by Serena Akeroyd
1
Marcella
My father’s face was a revelation to me.
But then I’d never seen him before thanks to the mask he’d always worn when, as a child, he’d visited his mate… The poor woman who just happened to be my mother.
How fucked up was it that I’d never seen my father before? And yet, I knew it was him because of his voice. I’d recognize that anywhere. How couldn’t I? That voice belonged in my nightmares. It had been the precursor to my mother’s countless screams. It was the devil’s voice in the flesh to me.
If he’d approached me at any other time, I might have been weak. I might have cowered before him as I had as an infant. The lines between woman and girl blurred as I came face to face with the man I loathed, and who also loathed me. But this wasn’t any other time. This was now. And the Marcella of today surprised even me.
“Marcella, how you’ve grown,” he stated, his voice husky but not from emotion. Well, not a heartwarming one at least—he didn’t give a fuck about me—but from rage. A rage he was trying and failing to control.
Why he was so angry, I didn’t know, but I was sure he intended for me to find out soon enough.
“That’s what happens when two decades pass, Father,” I bit off, staring him square in the eye and not wanting to look away.
I wasn’t scared.
I wasn’t.
Truly.
If I’d ever imagined meeting him again, I’d figured I would be, but fear didn’t swirl around inside me like a whirlpool gaining strength as its momentum surged. No, ire was the emotion that overpowered me. An ire that was as powerful as the one he was trying to scorch me with as he raked his coal dark eyes over my form.
That he found me lacking was a given. That I didn’t give a fuck, wasn’t.
I was back at Westbrook, the Academy that had been a home of sorts since this piece of shit sperm donor had dumped me here when I was a kid. My mates and I, all six of them, had been heading over to a hilly area on the campus grounds where we believed a Sire was Sleeping. And yeah, that was no typo. It was with a capital S, because a Sire? He was a dangerous beast.
There were four in total. Three Mothers and one Father, and each of them belonged in the legends of yore. They shouldn’t have been real, but they were. I’d come face to face with two of them four days ago, and they belonged in a nightmare as well, except I was learning bad dreams came with different grades. FU, WTF, and my favorite of them all, M for motherfucker.
And that was why I was stronger.
Handling a recently awoken Sire made dealing with my father a walk in the park.
The Sires were the makers of each of the supernatural races, and each was born of Merlin’s blood. King Arthur, the dude Excalibur had chosen, was the Father of the Walkers. Those special creatures who could slip into the dreams of others and manipulate them, who could rifle through someone’s mind like it was a filing system, and who could walk through time and rewind or fast forward it to whatever point in the past, present, or future they so desired.
Then there was Morgana. She was the Mother of the Vampires.
Elayne was the Mother of Druids, and finally, there was Morgause—the Sire of the Shifters.
These four Sires were dangerous. Their powers were beyond anything humans could even begin to comprehend, and I had proof of that considering I, myself, was overwhelmed to learn of our true creation story, something that was shared with a meager few.
Arthur had yet to Awaken, and we’d been on our way to do just that but, for whatever reason, Arthur had warned me, had warned us all that someone was coming. I’d just never imagined it would be my father. Sylvester McCray.
The Father’s warning had come in the form of lightning bolts of pain shooting across my nerve endings. I’d never felt such agony, and while that agony should have drained me as I sat in the back seat of our SUV, staring at my dear papa, I felt recharged. Rejuvenated.
Like I could take this son of a bitch on and win.
Foolish?
Perhaps.
Did I care?
No.
Almost as though he sensed my lack of fear, his eyes, black as night, narrowed upon me. His hand shot out and almost connected with my arm, his intent to drag me out of the vehicle as he and his cronies had with my mates, but the second before his fingers could curve around my wrist, a growl sounded behind him.
He flinched, surprised enough to yell over his shoulder, “I thought I told you morons to contain the shifter.”
My lips curved of their own volition. “I’m sure they did. I’m quite certain Barclay isn’t able to shift.” Though the notion of Barclay being captured made my need for revenge mix with my ire, the fact that I had my father exactly where I wanted him took away the sting. “I’ll let you in on a little secret, Father. Barclay isn’t the only animal around here.”
Overhead, an eagle squawked, loud enough to make my ears ache, and Sylvester jerked in surprise, his head soaring upright. And that was when I pounced.
It was a power-grabbing move. One that was fraught with risk, but the second I widened my jaw and bared my fangs, I plunged them into his throat. My hands curved around his arms as I pushed him back and down, not stopping until he connected with the ground, his body thudding with a satisfactory ‘thunk’ as he hit the grass.
Of course, the second I attacked he came at me. His own claws appeared and raked down my spine, but it didn’t stop me from pulling at his throat and ripping a large chunk out.
He screamed with pain, with agony, and when I pulled back, men came at me. Their hands grabbed at my arms and tried to hold on to my shoulders, but I allowed my shadow animals to crawl forward, to defend me.
With a quick glance around the periphery, I saw there were seven men, including my father. Three had contained my mates, who were unconscious—which made me wonder how the fuck they’d been overcome and so swiftly with no fight—while the final trio came to collect me.
They were in for a surprise.
The eagle swooped down and began pecking at one male’s eyes. The hellcat, who looked more and more realistic each time I cast shadow into this form, tore at the other’s belly, and my Asian black bear had a penchant for dicks by the looks of it.
Satisfied that those three were contained and that Sylvester was down for the moment—even he had to recuperate from the blow I’d doled his way—I got to my feet and reached up to wipe my mouth.
Sylvester was gasping, but the sounds of a death rattle meant nothing to our kind though. We weren’t like humans. It wasn’t a killing blow because I had no intention of killing him. Patricide wasn’t beneath me, but he’d have answers to questions that my mates and I needed.
His blood was delicio
us. Pursang blood often was, and I felt the thrill of a familial connection. It was powerful, and if I hadn’t recovered from Arthur’s warning bells earlier, I was now. It sang through my veins, recharging me wherever it connected with damaged tissue, and made me feel invincible.
Not that I allowed that feeling to grow.
That would lead to idiocy.
But it made me wonder if this was why he’d kept my mother around.
She’d been a blood thrall. Only good for feeding in his eyes, even though she’d also been destined to be his. In our world, she had started out as his prostitute, but then, after meeting, he’d realized who she was to him, and the rest was history. A miserable history, but mine nonetheless.
Darius was a pursang, a full-blooded Vampire, and when I supped from him, I felt a similar boost, but this familial connection was beyond that.
It made me wonder if my father and mother had been of the same line. I knew that sounded like incest, but lines were huge. Families were interconnected but not to the point of consanguinity, and it made sense. He’d kept her around to torment and to fuck, but also because she healed him. Healed him in a way that surpassed a regular feeding.
Brain whirring with theories, I heard a ferocious roar that jerked me back to the present. My animals were dealing with three males, but I had two still to challenge while the last guard hovered over my mates.
In a ‘gimme’ motion, I beckoned the men over to me. They looked at the animals, down at Sylvester, and backed off. Their feet stumbling as they tripped over themselves to get away from me and to one of the vehicles that had brought them here.
As they drove off, the final male blanched when he saw that I was striding toward him, and I couldn’t stop myself from drawing on the shadows around me. I trapped us both in a wall of water that gushed in a great torrent, like a waterspout but on the land.
His screams of terror as he gaped around him, trying to find a way out, thrilled me, and I realized how bloodthirsty I was becoming. How much I enjoyed making those who were against me suffer and pay.
I was tired of being the underdog. Bored with always being perceived as weak.
My father thought he could come here, take my mates, kidnap me?
He was in for a fucking lesson.
I called on the water and forged it into a knife that was beyond the realm of possibility, but that was the joy of weaving shadows. They came at my command, and they did whatever I asked of them. Within seconds, I had a weapon in my hands and I tossed it like a javelin, spearing it straight into the Vampire’s belly.
The agonized cry he released sent chills racing down my spine. Not of disgust or horror, but delight.
His pain fed me, nourished the beast inside me, and I knew right then, right there, that I needed my mates to calm me down. If they didn’t, I wasn’t sure what would happen.
I could feel the darkness tempting me in a way that it never had before. Could feel it swirling around me, as though each time I called on the shadows, they found their payment for their services in my soul.
I wasn’t as upset by that prospect as I should have been, but I knew my mates would be. They loved Marcella. Not a creature who was tainted by an evilness that linked me to the Mother of my kind: Morgana.
Even as the thought struck, I remembered what happened four days ago. Even as I reveled in the man’s screams as he died an agonizingly slow death thanks to his guts being shredded, I remembered just how twisted I could be.
I’d been asleep, stuck in a dream that my dream walker mate, Keiran, had crafted for my benefit. I’d gone into heat and my mates, not wanting me to get pregnant, had imprisoned me in slumber. Sure, I hadn’t been happy about it. If anything, I’d been furious. My pursang had wanted everything I didn’t, and that was how Morgana had gotten to me.
She was the Mother of Vampires, after all. She’d called to my pursang, had demanded she awaken and take charge, just as she was doing now. As she called on that side of me to act, to take over, to remove all trace of humanity and gentleness that was within me.
Morgana had blinded me to the truth, had cast me in a spell of her own making, one that had disguised the men who loved and adored me, and had turned them into the girls at the Academy who had all tormented and tortured me over my many years at Westbrook. I’d butchered them, reveled in their deaths, and then I’d had the mind-bending realization that I’d been manipulated.
It had broken me.
Shattered my spirit and my soul as I saw the men I had slaughtered. As I’d seen the truth of what that bitch had urged me to do.
She’d attempted to tear any goodness from my being, and while the screams from my father’s men were a siren’s call, I knew that wasn’t the real me.
Just a part of me.
So, no. I would not let this darkness overwhelm me. I was not just Marcella anymore. I was theirs. I belonged to Keiran, Darius, Barclay, Gideon, Raven, and Cade.
Theirs.
A shudder whispered down my spine as I let the waterspout retreat. When I did, I saw the guards had all been felled by my animals who were now cleaning themselves of blood and gore. My mates were still unconscious from whatever the fuck my father’s men had done to them, and Sylvester was sputtering away on the ground, writhing from side to side in the half-death I’d bequeathed upon him.
I could leave him in the sun, let him burn and roast under its hot rays for days on end, but I wouldn’t. I could have let the beasts feast on him as though he were an all-you-can-eat buffet. But I didn’t. Tempting, to be sure, but no. I had a to-do list and patricide wasn’t on it.
Not today, at any rate.
Instead, I let the animals fade back into the shadows, then, touching upon the magic of Gideon’s druid half, I called on the earth and buried my father in a pit of blackness.
He thought he was the king of torture?
I’d been reared by his hand.
* * *
Darius
My head pounded as I came to. The last thing I remembered was yelling at someone, and immediately, my senses were on alert as I searched for the enemy and tried to figure out what had happened. No one got the drop on me, ever, but somehow, I’d found myself unconscious, leaving my mate exposed to danger.
My Vampire didn’t like that in the slightest, and unease flowed through me until I found her safe and well when I checked the bond. It was strong and healthy, but in my head, it had always been a shining light, like a series of fluorescent bulbs all connected to one another. Now, while it was still light, it was dim, as though they were covered in something. The sound of her voice distracted me and my eyes flew open just as I saw Sylvester McCray disappear into the earth.
Huh.
Out of everyone I had expected to attack us or try to stop us, he had not even been in my top ten.
My eyes took in the scene around me while Marcella appeared to be trying to calm herself down. There were remnants of others, and as I stretched my senses, I knew that at least two had escaped and were running, but the rest were all dead. Some were torn to shreds while one of them just had a pool of blood on his torso. Survival wasn’t an impossibility but it would be tough considering the blade, or whatever it was that had injured him, had been deadly accurate. I could practically smell that the blood was pouring free from his innards.
I was sure these men deserved what they got simply because Sylvester wasn’t exactly the type to hire innocents, and he would have some of his top men with him if he had come to retrieve his daughter himself. There was no doubt in my mind that he had intended to capture Marcella. Why he was so interested in her now, after she’d had contact with at least two Sires? That was a whole different kettle of fish.
When I found her next, she was moving toward me, her eyes bouncing between each of her mates, most of whom were still unconscious. Something had put us all down at once, but I couldn’t remember what it was.
Head banging, ears ringing, I pushed to my feet, feeling a little woozy as I did so, and seeing me, Marcella ran t
o me, thudding against my chest as she clung to me with relief. I was still weak, so her momentum almost took me down, but before I could, she’d wrapped her arms around my neck, hauled me into her, and tugged me down into a kiss that reached my very soul.
“Thank the Maker you’re awake,” she whispered, as her gaze sought answers from my own, relief spilling out of her as freely as the downed male’s blood poured from his wounds.
“The last thing I remember is yelling when I got out of the car. What happened?” I nodded my head to the blood and body parts on the ground.
“I let my animals out to play,” she said with a shrug, as though that level of destruction was the most normal thing in the world.
“And putting your father in the ground permanently?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. That was definitely new. But then, what wasn’t in Marcella’s box of tricks?
“I needed somewhere to store him while I made sure you guys were okay. I gave him a fairly nasty bite, so it’s not like he’s going to be up and around any time soon.”
“You bit your father? Where?” I inquired, making sure I understood her correctly.
Marcella simply tapped at her neck then let her fingers trail over her throat in a decidedly sensual move that, along with an unsettling smile, had my cock twitching before she turned to the others and dropped to the ground to monitor them.
Her irreverence told me she didn’t care what she’d done. But I did. Even as her power, her strength called to my pursang in a silent demand that had the beast inside me wanting to paw her, I knew there were larger things at stake than sinking my cock and fangs into my mate as many times as I could.
Biting another Vampire on the neck as an attack was, for all intents and purposes, a declaration of war on their House. What I was struggling with was whether or not my mate realized that. If she did, then was she counting on the Maximus House to back her up or was this a lone crusade she was undertaking? If so, the seven of us were, in no way, a large enough army and certain death beckoned if we didn’t clear this shit up soon.