Broken Dreams (Broken Promises Book 1)

by Charlotte Brice

  “Guess I could give up being a veggie for you.” She grinned, then left them in awe, returning to the dining room.

  “Sorted,” she chirped triumphantly and sat back down. Seb raised his eyebrows and nodded approvingly at her as Arlo and Roken skulked back into the room with their metaphoric tails between their legs, and Heather grinned. Her sorrow that she might leave had been replaced with the joy of being here, now. The future could wait.

  Shit, Seb cursed silently. This was too close. Too much like his life before, when he ruled the roost with his wife Dharla by his side. He had mourned her for so many years, but maybe it was time to move on. He caught Roken's eyes and the shifter gave him a gentle smile, like he knew Seb's mind. He nodded and thought, Maybe we can move on too.

  “Right,” he sighed, steering away from the uncomfortable place his thoughts had taken him. “Slack time is over. Let's get this house gleaming.”

  Oscar and Arlo stood up first and headed out of the room. Roken waited a moment, still staring at Seb, but if Roken was hoping for some clue about Seb’s feelings, he wasn’t going to get it. After a bit, Roken stood up and walked out like a sulky teenager. Heather collected plates and Seb felt obliged to give her a hand with the few things they had on the table.

  “We should do up this room next,” Heather suggested, then smiled, glancing around.

  She wasn’t really paying attention, so Seb let his hand brush against hers. Instant blush! That was good. It meant Seb had a chance to build real feelings with her before taking her to his bed. And he would take her to his bed. There was no way he would let Arlo and Oscar mark her and not he. He didn’t mind the others pleasuring her, but she would be his mate.

  “Sorry,” she muttered, moving her hand away. Her eyelashes fluttered, though her eyes were still red and watery from her earlier tears.

  “No problem,” Seb said through a wide smile. “We’ll do this room next. The dining room gets full sun at breakfast, so we usually eat in the kitchen, but it’s perfect for evening meals.”

  “I’ve had sex with Arlo and Oscar.”

  Heather’s announcement came quite out of the blue. Did she need his forgiveness? Or approval? Or was she confessing because of some unspoken feelings for Seb? That thought made him smile.

  “They are good men.” Seb gave her the response he hoped she wanted.

  “I’m, uh... at least I don’t think I’m...” She paused, unable to finish. Her glance at Seb begged him to predict her question and answer without her needing to say the one thing it hurt so much to think about.

  Seb didn’t answer, just an uncertain tilt of his head, his frown barely wrinkling his brow.

  “You know... I’m getting very physical with Arlo and Oscar, and then that thing with Roken.” Her face pleaded with him, but he was just as lost.

  “Do you think I was a lady of the night? Before I forgot.” Her words were confusing Seb more and more and he continued to stare at her, brows drawn together in confusion. To him a lady of the night meant more vampire than hooker.

  “A prostitute. You know, paid for sex.”

  “No. You’re not,” Seb answered quickly. “Having a woman in the house has got everyone’s emotions a little charged. Hormones, pheromones, whatever you call it.”

  “You think that’s it?” Heather sighed visibly.

  “I’m sure of it.” He hesitated to hug her, unsure how she felt, how she would react. Everyone is as horny as hell, and I’m the only one you haven’t touched yet, he thought, but he bit his tongue. He would wait until the time was right. Whenever she was ready, however long, he would wait.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  E very single screw was a nightmare. Each one took an incredible amount of effort to grind out of the shelves they had held for the last several decades, and it was his turn with the power drill. They'd all taken turns, all except Heather. Roken understood the fragile human part, but part of him wished he could ogle her working the drill the way she had been ogling him.

  He wasn't paying attention, not to the drilling anyway, when suddenly the screw broke and the iron bracket came free from the wall. It slammed into his face and he stumbled back. Knees buckling, he collapsed onto his backside and elbow stunned. Damn that hurt, Roken thought, moving his hand to his throbbing nose. It was wet with blood, that delightful substance his three friends loved to drink so much, and they were all looking at him with the red tint of bloodlust in their eyes.

  “Ok there Ro?” Seb muttered, closing in on the fallen shifter. Actually, all three of them were closing in on him in a way that made him uncomfortable, and he shuffled back a little, almost involuntarily.

  “No!” Heather ordered loudly, stepping between Roken and the three vampires. Her response surprised her as much as it did them, but she stood her ground. “Back off!” and they all backed off from her immediately.

  “It's ok,” Roken intervened. He stood up too quickly and stumbled sideways, but Seb was there in a heartbeat to catch him. The vampire held him in his arms, supporting him until they reached one of the remaining chairs in the room, and Oscar appeared by his side. The vampire’s speedy arrival made him jump, but in his hand was a box of tissues.

  “I am so sorry,” Heather gasped, and her hands covered her mouth. “I thought you were going to try to drain him,” she admitted, horrified.

  “Don’t fret,” Arlo called from the floor where he was clearing up Roken’s blood. “We have enough control to resist him. Think of it like looking at a lovely cake but knowing it belongs to your friend. Would you eat it?”

  Roken smiled reassuringly at Heather. He hadn’t helped by moving back from them. No wonder she had been worried. He felt bad for alarming her, and to make matters worse, his nose really, bloody hurt! Still, it was nice of her to care and brave of her to put herself between the three men and the thing she thought they wanted. “Thank you,” he mouthed at her, and she grinned in response.

  Poor little Roken, needing saving by a little human, Oscar chuckled to himself. Heather had impressed him by jumping in front of the injured shifter, although he hadn't actually needed saving. As amazing as the shifter’s blood smelt, Oscar had never tasted Roken himself, which was good, because it would be awkward if everyone lusted for the blood of one of the others over a simple cut. But Heather hadn't known that. That ‘little human’ was genuinely going to face off with three vampires to try to save him.

  Arlo got to finishing the drilling while the rest of them began washing down the walls. Except Roken, who just sat in a chair bleeding into his tissue and looking vacant.

  “Doesn't he heal instantly?” Heather asked, glancing across at Roken.

  “No,” Oscar answered, looking around at all the shelves they still had to move. He stood up and stretched his protesting body as he continued, “he'll heal faster than a human but not as fast as a vampire. If he shifted, he'd heal instantly. The body repairs itself when it changes form. But even without shifting he'll be better by tomorrow.”

  “So, he doesn't shift anymore?” Heather questioned. “Not even to heal?”

  “It's complicated,” Oscar muttered. It was something he wasn't prepared to talk about with Roken and Seb right there listening.

  “Maybe he forgot how to,” Heather suggested, shrugging.

  “Yeah, maybe.” Oscar glanced over at Roken. He knew damn well if Roken ever shifted, he'd kill every vampire in the city, starting with them.

  Roken’s nose was throbbing, but the tissue seemed to be containing the blood. He certainly wasn’t bleeding enough to drive his housemates crazy, even if they hadn’t fed in days. It was nice having Heather fussing over him, and her hand rubbing through his hair was kinda cute. It made him feel… strange. He was stoked she had been willing to throw herself between him and the others. No one but Seb had ever defended him so valiantly, but it made him wonder what Heather might want from him in return.

  “No more drilling today,” Seb decided, pulling the final shelf away from the wall. “Tomorrow we strip th
e paper back, sand the walls and slap some paint up.”

  He made it sound so easy, rather than like the monotonous job it would be, and Roken wondered how long he could milk his broken nose. He smiled to himself, thinking about spending the rest of the day pampered by Heather while the others continued the tedious decorating.

  “Since we’re all done for today,” Seb began, handing Roken a clean tissue for his nose, “who wants pizza?”

  “Oooh, pizza!” Heather squealed with joy.

  “You’ve had pizza before?” Roken questioned, looking at Seb quizzically to see if the vampire had the same thoughts.

  Heather looked thoughtful for a moment. “I definitely know what a pizza is,” she replied, frowning when she caught the look shifting back and forth between Roken and Seb.

  “Close your eyes and think about pizza,” Roken encouraged her, hoping maybe they could recover a memory. “Think about its taste, what toppings you like, how you feel when eating it.”

  Heather closed her eyes obediently, and he could tell she was thinking about the pizza as her mouth closed and started chewing on air. “Is there cheese?” she asked, keeping her eyes closed.

  “Yeah, there’s cheese on pizza,” Roken replied, glancing again at Seb, but Seb was looking away, having a silent conversation through a shared look with Arlo. This was not a normal memory wipe. Memory spells wiped everything, not just personal memories. When her mind first experienced pizza, it was attached to a personal memory. How could she remember the pizza without remembering eating it.

  “So, we’re getting two or three then?” Oscar asked, subtly trying to refocus the discussion and take the spotlight off Heather. He didn’t want her to feel too much pressure to remember something she might not, but that wasn’t the whole reason. The longer she couldn’t remember who she was, the longer he would have her around, the longer she would be theirs.

  “Peppermint!” Heather cried suddenly.

  “Pepperoni?” Roken couldn’t stop himself from laughing, but he put his arm around her shoulders, a reassuring hug for someone who thought they had made a breakthrough while really just asking for a toothpaste flavoured pizza.

  "What's peppermint then?" Heather muttered.

  "It's more of a flavour than a thing," Seb perched on the arm of the sofa beside her, "what did you picture when you thought about the pizza?"

  "It’s round, with cuts making triangle pieces, the cheese is yellow and stringy, the… pepperoni is pinkish-red circles." She looked up for approval, reassurance she was picturing the right thing.

  "We’ll get a pepperoni pizza and see if that triggers a memory," Seb smiled warmly, giving her the confirmation she needed.

  “Let’s hope the delivery guy is human this time.” Arlo snickered, giving the men something else to laugh about.

  “What do you mean?” Heather asked, a frown pulling at the corners of her lips and creasing the skin of her forehead.

  “There is a spell around the house. It stops Darklings from entering the property, including the garden.” Roken smiled, rubbing her hand to comfort her. “We ordered pizza, and it turned out the poor delivery guy was a werewolf. He was just a guy living his normal life, no idea why he couldn’t walk through the gate and up the path.”

  “A spell? What kind of spell?” Heather asked.

  Her look was innocent, of curiosity, not the look of someone trying to milk information out of them. Even so, it wasn’t an answer Roken could give her. He didn’t know why or how it worked, only that it did. So far it had only ever been a precaution put in place by the overcautious and overprotective Seb.

  She didn’t push his silence. She just tried to accept that she wasn’t going to get an answer.

  “Let's go down and see if we can find one of those menu things,” Seb instructed. He wasn’t comfortable talking about the reason behind the spells. As much as he wanted to protect the world from Roken, he needed to protect Roken from the world more.

  They moved downstairs to escape the blood and find a pizza menu if they had one. It had been a long day, and Arlo was glad to be sitting down, even if the living room was a mess all around him. He understood why they started in the most unused room in the house, but they had also started in the living room. Roken’s accident had brought progress upstairs to an unplanned halt, and as they waited for their pizza, Arlo was reminded why so little progress occurred in the living room. That thought made him smile.

  He sat on the sofa on one side of Heather while Oscar sat on her other side. Seb placed five glasses and a bottle of whisky on the coffee table then sat in the vacant seat next to Roken on the two-seater opposite them.

  “Here.” Seb held out a double whiskey to him. “Me and Oscar will head out later to get some shopping and to feed. Can you manage another night?”

  Arlo nodded. He didn't need to feed as often as the true vampires. If he stayed in human form, he didn't need to drink at all, but his shift beast got cranky if it went too long, and it was hard to feed in beast form. His wolf was less choosy about who he drained.

  The whisky was good. It had been a long time since they had drunk at home, but the 20-year-old scotch was as good as he remembered. The dust covering the container showed just how distant they had become in the last decade or so. Having everyone together in one room was a nice change, but it didn't help the conversation any. It seemed they had simply run out of things to talk about.

  Arlo nearly wasted his drink with laughter as Heather took her first sip. She clearly wasn't a whisky girl. How she didn't spit the mouthful back out was beyond him. Her lips pursed up tighter than a bunny's bum, her eyes watered, and her whole body gave an involuntary shudder. Oscar tended to her promptly, fetching a bottle of wine from the drink cabinet.

  As the giggling at her reaction settled back into an awkward silence, Heather found her eyes drawn to the mantle and the collection of old photos adorning it. “Who is that?” Heather asked, unable to recognise any of the guys in one faded snap.

  “Arlo's parents,” Seb answered, and Arlo sat up straight in response to Seb's words. He sighed and nodded. The photo was old, taken in 1911 before he joined the army to do his bit in the war. He'd taken it himself on a camera borrowed from his alpha. His parents were standing together outside the house smiling like they'd love him forever.

  He'd taken it to France with him, carried it all the way to Poland, and then Serbia, in the most bitter weather. After he'd been bitten, all the shifter packs had turned their backs on him, and getting home proved to be a bigger challenge than getting out into the middle of nowhere. He'd written his parents dozens of letters and never received a reply. Now he lived in the same country and he had never even looked them up. He'd been 54 at the time, not a young man in need of his parents, but it still hurt. Even a century later, their photo sat on the mantelpiece.

  As Arlo turned away, Oscar stood up and walked over to his own family photo. “This is my Mama and Papa, my two sisters and my dog, Albern,” Oscar said and held out the photo for Heather to take. It was a nice family photo. Oscar was in it, a tall, scrawny lad at the front, kneeling by a pretty little dog.

  “My parents died in 1914. My sisters went to live with my aunt, and I signed up for the special unit and became a vampire. I had to sign a form saying I would never see my family again. I haven’t, but I’ve kept an eye on them.” He ran his finger across the face of his eldest sister. “She lived until she was 95, married with 4 kids, 9 grandchildren. She even named one of her sons Oscar, after me. They all think I died in the war.”

  “I have no photographs of my family,” Seb muttered, pouring himself another whisky. “There was no such thing back when they were...” He paused and downed his whisky in one gulp, and Arlo glanced across at Roken. This was a sore subject for him too, and he responded by necking his own drink.

  “Anyway, it’s all in the past now.” Seb glossed over the moment, much to Arlo’s relief.

  “Roken?” Heather asked, smiling at the final man.

  �
�Nope.” Roken shrugged. “No family, no friends, no photos.”

  “What about your parents?” Heather pushed him for information that his companions knew he didn’t have.

  “I don’t remember,” Roken said, pouring himself a generous double and topping up the other glasses. “Don’t remember being a kid, don’t remember having anyone.”

  Arlo placed his hand on Heather’s knee. It was time to drop the topic.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  W ell, that was a painful evening, Heather thought and sighed. She’d done it again. A lot of old wounds had been opened up in a round robin of who have you lost in your life. Arlo and Oscar mourned their families for very different reasons. Seb grieved at the thought of his family and found it easier not to think about them. Roken didn’t like being reminded how alone he really was. But these were questions that Heather had to ask, things she needed to know about them.

  “I think these photos need to be put in the basement with the books, to keep them safe,” Heather suggested.

  Seb was beginning to like this girl more and more and he was moved by her concern for what was precious to them. He took the photos and left the room, but he wouldn’t put them with the books. He would put them somewhere better, safer: his secret box in the study. It was hidden behind a wall hanging and looked just like the rest of the panelled wall. A simple push opened it, and inside was the drawing that made his heart stop.

  He remembered posing for it, standing tall and proud with a stick in one hand, his wife in the other and his four adult children sitting on low stools in front of them. He didn’t look happy in the portrait, that wasn’t the way back then, but it was the only way he could remember their faces anymore. He had no such memory of his grandchildren, no portrait of them, even though they had been over 100 years old themselves when Roken had... No, he couldn’t dwell on it. He’d moved on. He had to keep reminding himself, but he had moved on.