His lips crushed against mine and I lifted, letting him feel me as the moan ripped through my throat, filling his mouth. I bucked against him, drinking him in, kissing him with everything I had ever felt for him, giving him everything I had as I rode him until he captured my head, staring into sightless eyes as I did what he wanted, what he craved.
He paused, releasing my head to still my swaying hips. I ground myself over him, coming undone while everything inside of me collided and crashed into a cataclysmic event that rocked through me. His hands held me still, watching me until I floated back to earth as the high started to fade and leave me with the reality of what I had done.
“What the fuck was that?” he demanded thickly. “Avery, what the hell just happened?”
“Our blood, yours and mine,” I whispered hoarsely. “I need more, and then you can hurt me.”
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered as he watched me. “I’ve never given you my blood mixed with yours.”
“Your father did,” I whispered roughly. “He beat me, and then fed me your blood. I love us. It’s like heroin when we are mixed together. It makes me feel nothing, and every cock I take is yours. It’s perfect, isn’t it?”
“That is impossible, he wouldn’t have had my blood there,” he snapped.
“Mayhem brought it to him,” I said offhandedly as I lay back on the bed. “Come with me, Conner.”
“Avery, something is wrong with you,” he groaned and dropped his head into his hands as he sat on the edge of the bed.
“I need you, my prince.”
“I’m the fucking King, remember? You slaughtered my father and any male that stood in my way of the throne.”
“I know, but they hurt me. They took my parts away. So I took their fucking souls. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” he hissed as he turned and looked at me where I played with myself to lure him to me, needing more of his delicious blood. “Look at you, you’re fucking high!”
“Mmm, and you’re not playing with me,” I laughed with an alluring smile, reaching for him as he watched me. “Come touch me, I can make you feel good.”
“You’re not willing, you’re drugged. It doesn’t make sense. Nothing you’re saying makes sense. Mayhem was with me, guarding me as I slumbered, Avery. I slept to let you go, and he was charged with safeguarding me by our father.”
“Fuck me,” I begged. “I need more, please. I’ll do whatever you want, you can hurt me too. Just give it to me, please!”
“No, no, I don’t want you drugged when I fuck you. I want you to want me, and not like this. You never needed to be drugged or forced to want me. Something isn’t right,” he uttered as he left the bed, withdrawing his phone from his discarded jeans. “It’s me; get the fuck up here, now. Something is wrong with Avery. She’s high as fuck… No, I didn’t fucking drug her. She cut her lip and drank my blood, and now she wants me. Yeah, I know it doesn’t make sense. I’m aware, get the fuck up here, Luca. Now,” he shouted into the phone as I pouted, running my hands down my smooth stomach.
Chapter 10
Conner
I stared at her slumbering form, needing to be buried within her and yet knowing whatever the fuck just happened wasn’t right. She whimpered in her sleep, and everything inside of me wished to know what was happening in her dreams. My Avery never submitted, she never cowered before me. She never fucking bowed her head to any man, so what the fuck had changed her?
“She’s highly drugged,” Luca said as he waved his hand over her slumbering form, and yet her eyes were wide open but unfocused, staring into nothingness as if she was dead. “You know the myth about mates who are linked on a higher level than any other kind, right?”
“Fated soulmates? The ones that withstand time and place to always come back to one another, those myths?” I snorted impatiently as my balls ached to find release in her tight, welcoming cunt.
“That particular myth, yes,” he agreed as his lime-green eyes held mine as his dark hair hung loosely over his broad shoulders.
“Avery isn’t my mate, remember? We couldn’t even force it to happen.”
“No, I couldn’t force her to be your mate. She is mated, but I can’t sense another male on her, no one but you. I’m saying she may be yours and you may not have realized it, and I sure as hell can’t tell you if she is your mate. I’ve heard that if a soulmate endures trauma, and can’t sense her mate, it can sever their bond. It would be her anchor, and without being able to reach into the universe and feel you, say if you were in the eternal slumber of your kind, she’d assume you had been dead, and the link would then sever as if you were actually dead. I’m saying that maybe something happened, and you weren’t there, and your bond died with hers. She’d be technically mated until she died, and her soul would be reborn to find yours. She can’t die though, so who the fuck knows what her soul is doing, ya know? Hear me out here, vampires mate by a blood bond, but she’s a witch. We still don’t know dick about the two breeds being able to bond or mate, so I can’t say if you are her actual mate, but I don’t see her screaming anyone else’s name, do you?”
“You’re saying she was traumatized and reached for her mate, but he wasn’t available, because she sure as shit wasn’t reaching for me,” I snorted, crossing my arms to study her sleeping form. I wanted to know if she was mated, and if she was, who was he, and how could he manage to stay away from her this long. I tried, and it had been the hardest thing I’d ever done in my entire life. It felt as if I’d ripped my own heart out and squeezed it when I walked away from her.
Avery had been a weakness since the first moment she tried to save me from the plague. She had tried to protect me from herself, while she was dying. She pushed me away, whispering about the Black Death, and that not even the angels like me were immune to its hold. I stood in that dark alleyway, watching her as she struggled to work the spell to save me from the plague, or one she thought might have worked to protect me. She had been so innocent, so pure and untouched by the hatred the other witches felt for my kind. I scooped her tiny form up from the pile of dead bodies they’d thrown her on top of and took her home.
In my room, I found my father’s witch Hemlock, and offered him the one thing he craved the most. I gave him pure, born vampire blood, only if he could save her life. I spent months feeding her my blood, only for the plague to come back, and each time, death got closer to stealing the little waif from me. He worked a spell to make her immortal, like me. When I was sure she was safe, and I felt her heart thundering in perfect harmony with mine, I murdered him to keep the secret of her immortality safe and guarded.
I watched her for an entire year before I found the little imp standing in the shadows of my room, watching me feed from one of the whores I used. Her eyes lit up every time I slammed into the woman I fucked, watching, learning what I enjoyed as I took them. The first time, she entered my room at fourteen, slipping in before I could bring in my dinner, she’d stripped her body bare as I watched from the shadows. Tiny hands shook with fear of the unknown; her perky breasts had yet to finish growing. She had slipped beneath the covers naked, waiting for me to discover her there when I returned. I never went to bed that night. Instead, I watched her until the dawn rose and forced me to slip from the room to find shelter from the light that bathed her iridescent skin with its warm kiss.
It became a game we played. Avery watched me fuck, and I watched her bathe, so fucking vulnerable that I could have taken her at any time I wanted. I wouldn’t though, because her innocence drew me to her, and the way she looked at me, the way her eyes danced with love, kept me her prisoner more than any chains would ever manage.
The day she turned sixteen, nothing could stop me from claiming her after she had come with my name escaping her pretty pink lips. We’d both danced around it for years, but I felt her so fucking deep within me that she was a drug, and I would never be able to get enough. I’d been
gentle, tender even, which wasn’t something I’d ever done before. Avery was my Queen, my heart in human form. I’d given her everything her world couldn’t give her and made up for everything she missed from losing her mortal life.
I kept her safe, and she kept me sane. I guarded her from monsters she hadn’t even known hunted her. She was a diamond among a pile of rocks, and I knew it from the first moment I found her. Avery was a fucking Cheveron witch, the purest and strongest bloodline any coven had ever known. She was my fucking unicorn, and that drew monsters to her. I slaughtered entire covens who sought to take her from me, who wanted to wield her as a weapon against us. I murdered vampires who thought to touch her, or even glance upon her with lust in their eyes. She spoke to me of love, about creating a forbidden life together, which caught my father’s interest. The covenant of coven and vampires had forbidden it, and yet I craved it with her. I relished the thought of creating a child with both her magic and my immortality, one that we would create together. I was warned of what would happen should I proceed, and I pushed her away from me for a time. But she was fucking Avery, my imp that argued anything she thought was right, and to her, we were right, and anything we created together couldn’t be wrong. How the fuck did you argue that logic? We were forbidden lovers, and fuck, I loved her so hard and so fast that it was just right. She was mine, and she taught me selfless love was something that couldn’t be taken, it had to be given. Then I slaughtered Javier, son to the King of Spain Vampires. It wasn’t just a crime; it was treason against the entire vampire covenant. I killed a prince to keep her safe, and she was my born enemy. Javier’s only crime was to look upon her with a longing I recognized too deeply.
I’d been given the option to take her head and end her life, or free my little bird to go back to her people while I slumbered deep in the mountains for a time of my father’s choosing. I chose to free her because no matter how selfish I was, or how rare she had become, I chose her life over my desires. Living in a world where Avery didn’t exist seemed like a world in which I wouldn’t choose to live. I’d walked her to my father, handed her over, and walked away from my imp. I’d been told she wouldn’t remember me or any time she’d spent within the hive, and I’d agreed to let her go so that she could live. Knowing that when I awoke from my slumber, she wouldn’t remember me, and she’d be my enemy once more.
Mayhem woke me and told me that Avery was missing and our family was murdered before piling feeders at my feet. He told me everything he knew while I drained them one by one, knowing he had to be wrong about what had happened to our family. It had to be a trick they played on me, and yet I’d walked into my father’s home to nothing but the ashes of those I’d loved. The scent of Avery’s magic and betrayal was so thickly embedded in that tomb I knew I was just as guilty by saving her life which ended in a betrayal so dark and deadly that my family had paid the cost. She’d given me love, and then she’d destroyed it.
I felt her hatred in that place of death, the stench of darkness sent a chill up my spine. It hadn’t been a simple act of revenge for leaving her; it was a slaughter done in a rage so dark and deadly that not even immortals had survived. She’d taken my family from me, and like a thief in the night, she walked away with her memories intact, and one by one, hives had been burned to the ground that no one had known about, no one except her. She murdered thousands of innocent vampires by the time she was finished, and I’d been too lost in my grief and blinded love to stop her.
“You’re not fucking hearing me, Conner,” Luca said, pulling me out of the memories and back to the current situation. “Fated mates were the shit of legends. It terrified anyone who thought they held the bond. It was forbidden even to whisper it when the world was new. Mating in such a way was deadly; it was an addiction that no one fucking wanted or understood. You had a connection on a level so deep that you knew what the other felt or needed before even they knew it. They didn’t get a visible mark, because it was more than a true mating mark. It was a mark so embedded within them it marked their souls. That’s called a fucking soulmate, in case you’re not following me, asshole.”
“What the fuck does it have to do with her?”
“She’s your soulmate, Conner.”
“What? No, I’d feel her.”
“She died,” he pointed out carefully. “She’s been brought back more than once. Not by blood, Conner. Not by your essence, but by a powerful witch who chose to save her. It’s in her aura, in her scent. Stop smelling her cunt and smell her. Something happened to Avery, and it may not be what she said it was, but something bad happened to her either way because I can sense trauma on her soul, and yet I can’t see it. You say you want to breed her, but she said she couldn’t, right? So why couldn’t she? You said she was high on your blood when it mixed with hers. Soulmates can experience such a thing in our world. There’s a fuck-ton of shit we don’t know about them yet. Hell, there hasn’t been one for decades that I am aware of. Avery wants you; she’s unable to deny it, which is the same for you. Ever consider the fact that your addiction to her isn’t an addiction at all? She committed genocide on the hive and yet you can’t kill her, ever question why that is? Fuck, you let her go. You caught a fucking unicorn, and you released it into the wild instead of taking its head as a fucking trophy. Cheveron witches are the shit of myths, and you have one, naked in your bed, and you pissed it off. I don’t know if I should pray or kneel at your fucking feet. Then there’s the fact you want to keep her like she’s a fucking pet. She’s not a kitten; she’s a fucking lion that will eat your fucking head the moment she can.”
“She will pay for what she did, and I’m very aware of how unique she is. She’s aware of it as well, and yet she chooses not to wield it, or use it. She isn’t bound, and yet she hasn’t lifted a single finger against me, although she thought to harm Amery because I was fucking her.”
“You have her best friend in chains below. She’s loyal, but how long will that last before she’s had enough and fights back?”
“She could whisper a spell and slaughter us all, Luca. She either has no magic within her, or she doesn’t want to hurt us.”
“Wait, you don’t know if she’s a bomb waiting to go off, and you’re waiting to see what she does?” he asked in a high-pitched tone as he pushed his fingers through his messy hair.
“How’s the memory spell coming along?” I asked, ignoring the question.
“Answer the question, Conner. I have stood beside you through thick and thin, and you’ve never taken chances with our lives. You do what is needed for the hive, which is why I choose to stay at your side. You’re a damn good King, but more than that, you’re my best fucking friend. Tell me you’re not doing this because you love her, tell me you won’t let her murder us all because you’re connected to her deeper than any-fucking-body should ever be!”
“I’d put her down before I let her hurt anyone here. I taught that girl how to wield her magic; I know the taste of it by heart. I feel it before she even knows she’s called it forth. How the fuck do you think I tracked her the moment she slipped out of the shadows? I felt her moving, felt the tang of magic that clung to her like a second skin, and knew the moment she stepped from the magic that prevented me from finding her. She’s mine, she always has been, and she always will be. I have never looked upon another woman and not compared them to her, and they always fell short. I may be an asshole, but I know she is mine. She loved me; she still fucking does, because when she fucks me, I feel it there below the surface.”
“Have you considered that maybe, just maybe, your father did as she said? If she is telling the truth, and you’re unwilling to believe it…”
I swung around, leveling him with crimson eyes as my anger reared to life. “He wouldn’t do that. He promised to keep her safe so I could go to my slumber and know she was safe from harm. He knew I loved her, which was why we were in the mess to fucking begin with. When I fell in love with that girl, it w
as a death sentence. They hunted her down, her own fucking people were trying to slaughter her any way they could. They intended to put her down like a rabid dog in the street because she loved me. My own people saw my affection for her as a weakness, and wanted to use her against her people.”
“The King of the England Vampires had a Cheveron witch, alive and living within his hive for an entire year and no one ever saw her once during that time. Don’t you think he made that shit known? It’s in the books, Con, your father put it there. You marked her for death by those covens by letting it be known he had one of them in his grasp, and not just one of them, but one of the most powerful bloodlines to ever rise from Hecate’s womb in his fucking house. When you went to ground to slumber, she didn’t. There are rumors within the witches of what happened, and they’re not pretty. Do you think he actually took care of her for you? Think again. If I’m the King, and I have a fucking unicorn in a cage, I make it known. I let them know she’s mine, and I’m keeping her. Pick up a fucking history book and read what he wrote. She’s there, in those pages from his own hand, not another’s. I’m not saying it to be a dick, I’m saying you left her, and only she and those who died know what happened there. Maybe the potion works, and you get answers, or maybe they’re so fucking hidden within her that not even she remembers them. I hope you get your answers, and I also hope your mate doesn’t murder us all when she is forced to relive the memories with you because that’s how that shit works. Both of you have to remember it together, and if it is as bad as she says it was, pray that you don’t also have to feel what she endured. There’s a cost for the spell, it’s a tit for fucking tat one, so maybe get drunk before you drink it.”
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