by Caris Roane
He didn’t know the why of it, but he spoke first about the worst moment in his life, that during a family picnic, the Invictus had slaughtered his parents and younger brother while he’d been in the woods exploring. In addition, an un-bonded wraith had gotten hold of his older, sixteen-year-old brother and hauled him away, forging the hated Invictus bond.
Years later, when he began battling Invictus wraith-pairs, he came across his brother. He’d become a killing machine, without conscience, and Seth had been forced to destroy him. The despair he’d lived with for years afterward had added another layer of solitude to his life.
By this point in his story, Lorelei stood next to him, her hand on his arm, rubbing back and forth. “I understand what it’s like to lose someone you love, who you’ve lived with your whole life.” She shared with him all about her governess, Genevieve, the woman she would always think of as her real mother, how Genevieve had helped her escape Margetta’s prison-home, but who in turn had died in the process.
“Do you miss her?”
“Every day.”
He surrounded her with his arms, pulling her against him, her nakedness more a comfort in that moment than anything else. He’d never had someone close to him like this, someone he could share his past with. And their early experiences had a similar feel, loss of a family connection, a lot of grief to process for young minds.
“I’m glad you had Genevieve.”
“Me, too. I can’t imagine what my life would have been like otherwise. Afterward, that’s when I went to work as a servant in Davido’s home. I loved being there because it was an incredibly peaceful place. I used to watch him with Vojalie. I’ve never seen a man dote on a woman like that before. Have you ever seen them together?”
He chuckled. “A few times. He’s very affectionate with her.”
“You’ve known him a long time, then?”
“Yes. He’s what I’d call a real family man. Over the centuries, he’s had dozens of children and makes time for them all. But he’s very old and no one really knows his age. I suppose, as far as that goes, we might all be related to Davido.”
She laughed at that. “Maybe we are.” After a moment, she leaned back to look at him, pulling out of his arms to float once more. “So, tell me about Walvashorr, about the realm you’ve ruled for a thousand years.”
His heart expanded as he thought of his world, of his people, how he knew every farm, hamlet, town and city, the way he knew his own reflection in the mirror.
And he opened up a little more, telling her about the terrain itself, the seaside in the south, how the land rose up and up to the vast Shauck Mountain Range that covered the entire northern part of the realm, how he loved the hundreds of deep gorges, the tall mountain peaks, the ruggedness of the land and that he had such a large shifter population that roamed the mountains.
“I have a connection with the shifters that I’ve never understood, although perhaps it’s starting to make more sense now, especially with what Davido said about our basic DNA. But I do seem to understand your shifter qualities better than most vampires.” He smiled as he met her gaze. “Okay, your turn. What happened after you left Davido’s home.”
She shared how she’d lived, moving from realm-to-realm. How hard it was, how lonely. She’d kept a low-profile, usually working in restaurants or hotels and leaving the moment she felt Margetta’s presence, knowing that her mother had found her yet again.
But she’d also explored every realm, mostly on foot at night. She’d come to know a lot of wonderful people, most of whom she’d had to leave behind. “So you can see why, when Quinlan and Batya championed me, helping me get to Ferrenden Peace, that I couldn’t believe I might have a chance at a normal life.”
His heart stilled. “Yet, now, instead of normal, you’re a blood rose and a prime female.”
“Yeah.”
He felt her sadness, that these new realities would probably make it impossible for her to ever have a simple life.
“What do you want most?” he asked, heading the subject in a slightly different direction.
At that, she chuckled. “I’m a pretty boring person. I just want what I think most women want: a home, a family, a man to love.” Her gaze skittered up to his face then fell away. She paddled in a circle.
“Yet here you are in extraordinary circumstances, the daughter of an extremely powerful couple.”
Facing him once more, she frowned. “Seth, for that reason alone, because of my parentage, how could I ever have a normal life? Won’t I be blamed for their evil? Sometimes when I think of who they are and all the people who have died because of their creation of wraith-pairs, I feel overwhelmed with guilt. I mean, how could you even consider being connected with me?”
The question surprised him, but he took his time answering. Finally, he said, “Because I don’t think of you as connected to either Margetta or Gustav. You’ve been as much a victim as any of those who have died and you’ve escaped death at your mother’s hands more than once, I’m sure of that. When Quinlan and Batya told me about their journey to Ferrenden Peace, I know Margetta reached a point where she intended to destroy you. That’s true, isn’t it, that she tried to kill you?”
“That’s exactly what happened. I was convinced I was going to die.”
“Did Margetta ever show you kindness when you were a child?”
“She was never around, not that I can recall.”
He spoke stridently, wanting her to know how much he believed what he would say next. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re the daughter of Genevieve, the troll. You have no other parents than her.”
Tears glistened in her eyes. “Thank you for that. I live with such terrible shame about who my mother is. But you’re right. She was never my mother, just my captor.” She nodded several times in succession. “But what of you? Who is your family now?”
“My realm.” He’d made the statement so quickly that until this moment, he’d never understood just how much he thought of his realm as his family.
“You’ve lived a kind of enforced solitude over the centuries. But what did you do for that first hundred years? Were you a Guardsman? Did you ever fall in love?”
He debated how much to tell her, but in the end decided not to hold anything back. “A long time ago, before I reached mastyr status, I fell hard for a woman named Kristen. But it wasn’t until I’d already given my heart that I found out she’d been working for the current Mastyr of Walvashorr, a vampire by the name of Gryffith. Apparently, he’d received an advance warning about my forthcoming mastyr power and decided he wanted me dead.”
“Sweet Goddess, what happened?”
He refused to reveal the specifics of what had turned into a bloody mess of a fight. Summoning up, he said, “Gryffith and a couple of his friends laid a trap for me and we fought. But somehow the situation launched my mastyr calling and I got the upper hand over them all. The problem was that Kristen showed up toward the end and in an effort save Gryffith, the man she really loved, she got caught in the cross-fire and died. It was a terrible scandal at the time. I was exonerated before the Sidhe Council and made Mastyr of Walvashorr not long after.”
“What happened to Gryffith?”
“He died in prison two years later.”
Seth had never felt so free sharing his past, but he had to admit that Lorelei’s empathy had made it possible. She’d known suffering as well.
In many ways, Lorelei’s current situation felt similar to his own journey, that while she’d been ready to embrace a more normal life, she’d been thrust into extraordinary power, just as he had all those years ago. In addition, he thought it likely that his presence in her life had ignited her blood rose ability. But it was also clear that if he continued on this path with her, his life would change as well. He’d be bonded to a blood rose and become regis to the shifter population in his realm, something he’d never believed possible.
But he needed to be honest with her. “I’m not sure I’m capable of love.
”
She searched his eyes. “That makes sense given all that you’ve been through, but I still can’t believe Kristen could have done that to you, or to anyone. I’m appalled.”
He realized something about Lorelei in that moment. She truly didn’t know herself. He smiled, thinking it felt damn good to have a champion in his life.
“Hey, why are you smiling suddenly, because I don’t find anything amusing about that woman’s betrayal.”
“It’s not that. I’m smiling because it’s absurd for you to be worrying about your parentage, since you’ve just proved Genevieve’s influence all over again. If you’d had even the smallest part of Margetta’s character living inside you, I believe you would have applauded Kristen’s conduct, instead of condemning it.”
Her lips curved and her dark eyes sparkled. “Seth, did you just offer me a compliment?”
“Yes, but let me state it plainly. You’re a good woman and I value that more than I can say. But I’ve spent enough of our two hours together talking about me, so why don’t you tell me about Batya’s free clinic in Lebanon.”
Lorelei still floated, knees up, as she told him with many smiles what it was like to work with such a talented artist and a woman who gave herself so selflessly to the entire ex-patriot realm community living in Tennessee.
She talked about the gallery, the clinic, and finally the night that changed everything for her when Quinlan showed up.
She gave him a mountain of details, especially when he prodded her about the uber powerful wraith-pairs that Margetta had created from disenfranchised mastyr vampires. When a mastyr vampire bonded with a wraith, and became essentially an Invictus wraith-pair, the resulting power was beyond anything even he or any of the other mastyrs could battle effectively. Margetta’s growing use of these extraordinary wraith-pairs threatened all the realms. The second wraith-pair in Loperz Canyon had been exactly that and both he and Lorelei had nearly died because of it. Only through siphoning Lorelei’s power had he escaped the deadly net, and even then, the arrival of the packs had saved both their lives.
She told him in great detail of the night of the attack, of seeing her mother, and how Batya’s enthrallment shield had saved them all.
“You do know that Quinlan almost died during that attack.”
Seth nodded. “I suppose Batya fed him.”
“We both did.”
The muscles in Seth’s chest and arms tightened suddenly. He planted his feet on the bedrock of the spring and stood up, the water hitting him just below his pecs. “You did what?” Despite that Lorelei had helped save Quinlan’s life, a warrior he valued, Seth couldn’t bear the image in his head of Quinlan’s fangs in Lorelei’s throat and drinking from her.
She turned in the water, easing toward him, her eyes glinting with purpose. “Why are you so mad, mastyr? Quinlan was a dying man, and I fed him, gave up my blood for him. You have a problem with that?”
He recognized the shifter-like gleam in her eye, very challenging, and something within him, something very male, responded. He lunged, grabbed her beneath her arms, and hauled her against him.
“You’re not to feed anyone else, got it?”
“I can feed whoever I want, Seth.” She smiled, taunting him. “You’re not my master.”
The use of the word ‘master’, and her push-back attitude, went straight to his groin. He slid a hand down her back to her waist, then lower to fondle her buttocks. He pressed his hips against her so that she could feel him, all of him, and that he was fully aroused.
He shouldn’t be doing this right now. Davido had sent them here to try to make a connection, not for him to sex her up. But her apple blossom scent now perfumed the misty air, so he knew damn well she’d had enough talking.
She was so soft in his arms, a juxtaposition to his tough warrior body, the perfect balance. “You’re mine, Lorelei. All mine.”
He kissed her, sliding his tongue deep, pummeling her mouth and letting her know he was her master whether she liked it or not.
He heard a soft growling sound, very guttural, and drew away from her just enough. Her lips trembled and as he looked down at her throat, he saw that she’d sprouted her thin white ruff of fur.
He buried his nose in her ruff, and drank in her rich sexual scent that had his hips flexing as he pushed against her abdomen.
Without using his fangs, he took her throat in his mouth and held on, shaking her gently, a move more shifter than vampire. He had a sudden image of taking her from behind and holding onto the back of her neck as he plowed into her.
He’d been with a few shifter women before, but he’d never felt this possessive and demanding. Her fingernails found him next, digging into the muscles at his shoulders, and scraping downward just short of drawing blood. The sensation struck home, teasing his balls and sending shock waves the length of his cock.
He wanted her like he’d never wanted a woman in the course of his entire life.
* * * * * * * * *
Lorelei dugs her nails into his flesh and could feel how much he liked what she was doing. For herself, she loved the way he’d clamped onto her throat, not in a vampire fang-hold, much more like a shifter claiming.
Her body roared with need. She wanted to wrap her legs around his waist again and let him use all the strength of his lean powerful body to give her what she craved.
She was in a heightened state, moving along the crest of desire, part blood rose and part prime female, needing her man. But was any of it real? Or were they just two chronically lonely people caught up in a bizarre, realm experience?
Whatever the case, her body demanded release.
But just as she locked her arms around his back preparing to literally jump him in order to take that beautiful length deep inside her, a familiar vibration hit her skin like an electric shock.
At first, she thought perhaps Margetta was nearby. But then she recalled that she’d felt this way in her den when she’d first experienced a communal call through her shifter frequency.
She pushed against Seth’s arms and twisted from the hold he had on her throat.
“What’s wrong?” He looked pained as she climbed onto the spring’s bank.
She shifted to wolf for a brief moment, giving herself a good long shake to get rid of the water, then shifted back to her fae form almost completely dry. “Our time’s up. The packs are about to implode.” She scrambled quickly into her clothes.
Seth levitated in a sudden bolt of movement straight up through the water and high into the air. She watched him go, pretty sure she understood that his intention was to dry off. She zipped up her jeans, pulled on her boots, then put on her fur hat.
He returned a moment later, completely dry from air friction, except for some dampness to his hair. Moving swiftly, he dressed as well. “And you can sense the packs?”
“All four of them with greater clarity than before. Each pack wants to go to war.”
She started to shift, ready to run back to Big Timber, but he caught her arm. “I’ll fly us back.”
She nodded. “That would be faster.”
He grew very solemn, so much so, that she quieted her shifter need to be going and met his gaze. “What is it?”
“I need to say something.” He drew a deep breath. “I want you with me, Lorelei. I don’t know how this is going to work, or if it will work, you and me, I mean. I’ve been alone a long time—”
“So have I.”
He nodded briskly, a furrow between his brows. “But I’m willing to do what we need to do here, even though I don’t understand it all. What about you? Can you take a risk on me? Can you stand with me as my blood rose, as my prime female? More than anything, I want to keep the shifter community from falling apart. Which means my motives here are more for what’s best for the realm than what might be best for you, or even for me, which makes me sound like an asshole.”
She grabbed his arms and squeezed hard. “Seth of Walvashorr, I have met a lot of brutal, selfish men in my tim
e, but you’re not one of them. Do I have concerns? Yes, of course. And we’ve been together for just a little longer than one moonrise, but I am willing to start down this path if you are.”
“I am.”
She smiled. “Good.”
He planted a kiss on her lips so that she felt both his determination and his commitment.
What she feared had more to do with the unknown than with her doubt about the man kissing her, especially what tricks her mother might have in store for Walvashorr.
When he drew back, he slung his arm around her waist and she followed suit, balancing her foot on top of his and holding onto his neck. “I’m going to make this quick, so don’t let go.”
She tightened her grip and he launched, straight up, then angled south. When he said ‘quick’, he meant it. The G’s he pulled made her stomach turn, especially as the forest flew by in a blur.
She finally just closed her eyes, and a handful of seconds later he dropped her back to the center of the Big Timber conference grounds.
Davido was waiting for them, but despite the chaos of the packs, he smiled when they touched down. “I have to go, my sweetlings. May the Goddess give you wisdom and protect you.” Then he vanished, one of the few, or perhaps the only realm person, capable of disappearing with a thought.
Though the Shifter Brigade had dined well, and the scent of roasted venison still permeated the air, all four packs boiled with the need to fight, half the number already in wolf form and howling.
She stepped off Seth’s foot, but looked up at him. I guess we’re on our own.
Looks like it. As Seth released her, however, he took her hand. All right, prime female. You’ve got the dominant shifter gene here, so I say have at it.
She nodded, smiling ruefully. There’s just one problem. I have no idea what I’m doing.
He met her gaze and his green eyes warmed up as he smiled. Well, don’t look at me. I’m just a vampire.