by K Loraine
Fighting tears of anger and sorrow all rolled together, I took a slow breath and said, “Then tell me you weren’t sent here to ruin my pack. Tell me you didn’t try to seduce me away from them. Tell me your father wasn’t going to legitimize you. I gave you the chance once to make me understand, but you couldn’t. Now you’re destroying my mating ceremony, my life, for what?”
“Because you’re mine.”
“I’m not.”
I saw him out of the corner of my eye. Nik with a silver stake in hand. Fear raced through me. He couldn’t kill Lucas. As much as the vampire had hurt me, I wouldn’t survive watching him die. I spun myself into Lucas’ arms, hoping Nik saw me before he struck. His eyes found mine, a flash of surprise followed by a flicker of rage in them. Then he plunged the stake deep into my chest, the silver tearing through my heart and into my lung. I felt every inch of it, the burn of the metal lighting up the edges of the wound like cold fire. Of course, the warrior even armed himself for a wedding.
A gurgling gasp left me, the sound floating through the air in a surreal cloud of sound I could almost see. And then I was falling, sliding down Lucas’ body before he could comprehend what had happened. He came with me, his breaths trembling as understanding seeped in.
Nik reached down and pulled the stake free of my chest. That was it. I didn’t stand a chance now. I wondered if he knew. If he was making a statement akin to, if I can’t have her, no one will.
My lungs were wet and heavy, making breathing hard, like I was sucking air through a straw that was being pinched closed. It made my head foggy and my lips tingle. Everything was cold and seemed to move slower than normal from where I lay on the ground. I had to get up. I had to stop the fighting.
“Briar, oh, Jesus, Briar,” Lucas said, his hands pressing on my chest, then my shoulder, then back to my chest. “Don’t close your eyes, all right? It’s going to be okay. I’m not going to let them take you from me again.”
His voice was exactly what I’d been dreaming of night after night. Warm and smooth, like a bit of velvet sliding across steel. I couldn’t talk, but I had so much I wanted to tell him. A tear trickled down his cheek, one glistening piece of evidence that he had humanity inside him.
“Briar?” He sounded panicked now, and my vision was fading in and out. “Please, stay.”
I felt his wrist pressing against my lips even as my brain closed off and everything stopped. Even if I hated him, I still loved him. I whispered his name, a soft exhalation I wasn’t sure he’d hear, and then I was swallowed by the darkness. By the fate I hadn’t been able to escape after all.
18
LUCAS
* * *
“Briar!” I screamed her name, commanding her to return to me, but nothing worked.
The presence of shifters closed in around me, their wild magic suffocating me. Nik reached for her, his claws still covered in her precious blood. “Touch her and lose that hand,” I warned.
I waited, my blood running into her mouth, trickling out the side of her perfect lips. No. No. No. She had to drink. It was the only thing that would heal her. Shifters were strong, that was true enough, but Nik had savaged her with a blow meant to kill a vampire—a blow meant to kill me.
“Blackthorne, leave her be. She’s lost. Your blood is doing her no good.” Nik’s voice was nothing but an irritant. He told me things I couldn’t admit. I would not give up on her. She was mine, and I was hers.
“Azriel, you cannot take her!” I screamed the words at the sky, hoping the angel of death would hear me and heed my warning.
I moved my wrist away from Briar’s motionless lips and stared down at my fully healed skin before dragging my fingernail over the same spot again.
“No,” Rowena said, her palm on my shoulder. “It won’t help. She is beyond the magic in your blood. Let us take her and observe the rites of our pack. Let me bury my daughter.”
“Her blood is on all of our hands,” I said, staring at each stricken face. “She was innocent. Guilty of only one thing, loving me. Look at where this feud has gotten us. Death and destruction.”
I pulled Briar into my arms, her body cold when it should have been warm. She’d always been so warm. She still smelled of magic and pine, fresh and powerful, even with her blood staining the white mating gown.
My skin burned where Nik had destroyed the mating mark she’d given me, blood making the fabric of my shirt stick to the wounds. I had lost everything. The mark might have been ruined, but it was still etched on my soul. My mate was dead, and all I could do was follow her into the dark.
I stood, cradling Briar in my arms as I rose to my full height. Then, fighting the anguish tearing up my heart, I handed her to Rowena. “Deal with him, or I will,” I warned, staring at Nik.
She clenched her teeth and nodded. “It will be done.” Then she glanced behind her and said, “Thomas, Jonah, take him.”
Two wolves snarled and leapt atop Nik, gruesome tearing sounds accompanying his screams of agony. He deserved it. Every ounce of pain wasn’t enough to repay what he’d done to her. He may have been aiming for me, but his reflexes were quicker than that. He’d known it was her the moment he made contact with her body. He’d known, and he kept going.
“Leave this place,” I said. “As long as my father is here, there will not be safety for your kind near our lands.”
Magnus retrieved Nik’s stake from where it had been dropped to the ground, then handed it to me. “I do not know the pain of losing my mate, but I have always said when Rowena leaves this earth, so too shall I.”
I took the weapon and nodded, the two of us understanding each other for the first time. Sadly, it hadn’t happened sooner. “Thank you. She won’t be alone for long.”
Heartbreak was written across every single one of them as Rowena passed Briar’s body to Magnus. It paled in comparison to the ache in my chest where my heart had been burned to nothing but a cinder. With the stake firmly in my grasp, silver burning my palm, I swallowed back the sob threatening to break free. I’d let my guard down with the shifters once; I couldn’t risk it again. Not with my family chomping at the bit for a reason to exact revenge. If I didn’t come home, my father would use me as a martyr to stir the pot. I knew him.
I’d return home and end it all on the throne of the man who fostered our hatred for the shifters. I’d be nothing but a pile of ash, and then he’d lose any control over me. But I could hope I’d find Briar in the afterlife. If I didn’t deserve to keep her in life, I at least deserved her in death.
“I need you to put that stake down right now before I shove it up your idiotic ass.” My brother stood in front of me, his body vibrating with anger.
I sat on the throne, exactly as I’d planned, but I hadn’t had the courage to shove the stake into my heart. It was one thing to contemplate suicide, another to carry out the deed. The point of the stake pressed against my chest, the slightest amount of pressure, but enough for me to know it was there.
“I’ve lost everything. Why should I stay here?”
“You’ve been pardoned. Returned to the family.”
“You don’t understand, Cashel. You never could. You have no humanity amplifying your emotions. I feel everything, but at double the intensity. And right now, that means I feel like my heart has been through a meat grinder and then set aflame.”
He groaned. “You are truly the most dramatic vampire I know.”
“Come to me when your mate dies before your very eyes, and you can do nothing to save her.”
He clenched his jaw and narrowed his eyes before rushing me. In less than a second, he had the stake in his hands, lips curling into a snarl as his skin burned. I watched as he crushed it down to nothing but a lump of sizzling metal.
“Fine, I’ll just meet the sun.”
“No, you won’t. This is not a Shakespearian tragedy for you to reenact. No good comes from dying. You know that as well as I. And for us…our creator is a fallen angel. We come from darkness, that’s where we�
�ll return. Don’t kid yourself that you’ll find her again in Heaven. Creatures like us don’t go to the light.”
Tears burned in my eyes, but I refused to let him see me so weak. I’d mourn her in private. “I fell in love with her.”
Sympathy flickered in his eyes. “I know.”
“She’s dead. She’s gone. Because of this ridiculous feud.”
“Then killing yourself won’t do any good. Get revenge. Get even.”
“And what if our father is the one who deserves my vengeance?” I asked, thinking back to the moment he handed me to Gabriel without a second thought.
“So be it.”
I stood and pulled together what composure I had left. “Thank you, brother. I owe you a great deal more than you know.”
“Oh, I know. Believe me.” Cashel clapped me on the shoulder and stared hard into my eyes. “The hurt will ease as time goes on.”
“Don’t lie. It doesn’t work on me.”
He grinned. “You are more intuitive than Father gives you credit for.”
I shrugged. “No. I just had to learn if I was going to survive in this family.”
“Where will you go?” he asked as I walked away. The question surprised me. I hadn’t told him any part of my plan.
“How did you know?”
“It’s what I would do. If the woman I loved died because of me and my family, I would want to be as far away from the memory of her as possible.”
I nodded. “I think I need to have a chat with the angel of death. He and I have some unfinished business.”
Then I left the throne room and made my way upstairs. My room was silent, empty, and every surface was covered in a blanket of memories of the night Briar and I spent together in between my sheets.
Everything smelled like blood and Briar, and when I glanced down my body, I realized it was because I was drenched in her blood. Tearing my ruined shirt off my back, I balled it up and threw it in the rubbish bin. Then I did the same with my pants and finally just stepped into the bath and turned on the water until it was hot enough to scald. One of my favorite perks of this new century…indoor plumbing with heated running water. One day soon it would be something not just reserved for the wealthy.
I scrubbed my skin raw, then stared at the slowly healing scratches on my chest and side. These were all I had of her now. Just pain. I didn’t want to lose them to my nature. To my kind’s healing ability.
‘Callie. I need you.’ I called to my sister in my mind as I dressed, desperately hoping the brilliant woman would have a solution to my problem.
“Lucas? What happened?” She rushed to my side, no doubt sensing the pain in my heart and mind.
I lifted my shirt, and she let out a horrified gasp. “Who did this to you? I’m sure I have something that will heal it quicker.”
Gripping her hand before she could touch the wounds, I stared hard into her eyes. “No.”
“What?”
“No, I want to keep these here.” I touched the ragged grooves running across my lower back and hip. “What can I use to ensure they scar so I can never forget tonight?”
“Lucas,” her voice was sad and confused. “Why would you want this?”
“I can’t explain. But…she’s dead, and it’s my fault. I couldn’t save her. These will be my penance.”
Her lovely face crumpled as emotions swarmed her all at once. “Please…”
“Come now, Callie, I’m the one with a human mother. You’re a full-blooded vampire. Emotion is frowned upon.”
“Fuck you and your emotion. I will not turn it off just because Father thinks we shouldn’t feel. This is breaking my heart.”
I took a sharp breath. “Mine too. Please help me?”
She squared her shoulders and nodded. “Follow me. I have something in my laboratory.”
“Thank you,” I said, taking her small hand.
“Don’t thank me yet. This is going to be terribly painful.”
Swallowing back the fear knotting in my gut, I said, “Good.”
“Bite down on something,” Callie said as she strapped me to her metal table. I was face down, stripped naked, with my ass covered by a white sheet.
“Is this an embalming table, Callie?” I asked. “What have you been doing down here?”
“Research,” was all she said.
She grabbed a small vial of amber liquid and held it up to the light.
“What is that?” I couldn’t keep the curious suspicion from my voice.
“Colloidal silver. It’s not deadly unless it pierces our hearts, but it has other uses.”
“What do you plan to do with that?”
She set the vial down and donned a pair of thick leather gloves after slipping an apron over her body. “I am going to pour it along the wounds. It’s going to hurt like hell, but those scars will be permanent.”
“Promise?”
Sad eyes met mine. “Yes.”
“Do it.”
She held the vial over my back and out of sight, but I knew the moment she began the painstaking process of pouring it into my wounds. Fire ate through my body, and I swore it should have done the same to the table. Part of me prayed for the bliss of oblivion, the other wanted to welcome the pain as a reminder of what Briar suffered.
It went on for hours, application after application until the silver was gone, and I was nothing but a shaking shell of a man. My skin was clammy with sweat, nausea curled in my stomach, and a constant burn seared my back. I used to love pain, but not now. Now I realized I’d finally had my fill. From here on out, the only pain I experienced would be inflicted upon others.
The clink of the buckles at the base of each strap being released roused me from my state of…nothingness. “Brother,” Callie said, her soft voice pulling me back to the present. “Are you…all right?”
I sat up and winced, but was able to stand. Holding the sheet around my waist with one hand, I steadied myself on the table with the other. “It will be permanent? You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m not sure you should thank me for that. But I hope it helps.”
After dressing, I gingerly walked toward the stairs that would lead me to the main floor of the house, but something in the back of my mind had me turning my head. “Callie?” I asked.
She looked up from the notes she was taking, documenting tonight’s activities. “Lucas.”
“Colloidal silver was the poison put in Magnus Dumond’s drink the night of the ball.”
She nodded.
“You were the only one near him.”
Again, she nodded.
“What did you do?”
Her face a stony mask, she said, “What I had to do to survive.”
My skin crawled. I had to get out of here, away from the monster who also happened to be half of me. I wouldn’t do his dirty work any longer and wished I could take Callie with me. But he wouldn’t care about me leaving. Elias Blackthorne wanted to throw me away the moment I was born. He’d come after his brilliant daughter who looked just like her mother. The same for Sorcha, our Valkyrie warrior. He’d come after Cashel, the son who would be king if we didn’t cure Callum’s sickness. But me? I offered little aside from the prospect of being cannon fodder.
“Goodbye, Callie. Don’t let him tarnish you.”
“It may be too late for that, but perhaps I’ll shine again one day.”
I left with a heavy heart, but a plan to find my way back to Briar somehow. If Cashel was right and we were destined to burn, perhaps Azriel would know something about redemption. London would serve as my path to forgiveness and the first step in my journey to Briar.
Hell didn’t seem so bad when I was going to live it every night.
19
PRESENT DAY
LUCAS
* * *
Hunger was the first thing I felt as I came back to consciousness, heartbreak the second. I shouldn’t have felt anything like the pain of her loss, bu
t humanity was a hard thing to kill. I never wanted to be back here, but I knew without a doubt where I was. The Dumond Estate. Even after a hundred years, it still held the ghost of Briar. Her energy was everywhere. In the air, in the bones of the house, fuck, she was still in me.
“Release me,” I growled, shaking my head to attempt to free my eyes from the blindfold they’d tied over my face. “I know where we are, Rowena. It’s obvious. I’d smell Briar’s scent a mile away no matter how long she’s been gone.”
Sharp pain blossomed across my cheek as something connected with my jaw hard enough to send me toppling over onto the floor. I spat out the blood filling my mouth.
“Always straight to violence,” I gritted out. “No wonder your alpha left you high and dry.”
“Do not speak of Magnus. He left because of the shame you brought our pack.”
“I didn’t bring shame to your pack. You did. Forcing her into a mating she didn’t want. Refusing to let her love who she wished.” I took a slow breath and tried to break the bonds holding my wrists behind my back. “Her death is on your head.”
A harsh growl filled the air right before the pointed toe of a shoe crushed my rib, sending searing pain shooting across my side.
I coughed and rolled away, working to get my feet under me. “Her death? You ruined her death. How dare you tell me I’m to blame for what happened to my daughter.”
The blindfold was ripped off my face, and I sat curled on my side, blinking through the pain that had my vision graying around the edges. The house was the same as it had been on that fateful night so long ago. Except now every surface was covered in a thick layer of dust.
“Why did you bring me here, Rowena? To kill me finally? To get your vengeance?”
She let out a bitter laugh. “If I could kill you, believe me, I would have done that the night we first met.” Standing in front of me, she was a fierce opponent. The points of her black leather boots shone in the moonlight beaming in a waterfall of light from the broken window at the top of the staircase. A reminder of the pain she could deal out with no remorse.