Primal Burdens: (The Uruwashi Series #5)

by Christina Moore

  She nodded and in a tiny voice, broken with emotion she said, “Yes, go on.”

  “I figured it out before Nastasia, but I knew you only did it to save me the same pain you’ve had to live with for centuries. And now, finally, with all the puzzle pieces of your life put together, I get it. I really do.”

  She swallowed dryly, lowering herself to kneel before him. “But you were no longer angry with me when we reached Japan again.”

  He shrugged. “I’d worked through it by then, mostly, on my own. But, these past few days really solidified it all for me. And you biting me—if that isn’t enough to prove just how much you really trust me—” He shook his head and pulled her up into a tight hug. “I don’t need to read your mind, or your blood, to know what I mean to you.”

  Ash slumped against him, her fingers digging into his flesh as she held on tightly. “Everything,” she whispered. “You’re everything.”

  He nodded, taking her face in his hands, looking her in the eye. “But… now that I finally trust you, completely, I… I doubt myself.”

  “Doubt?” she asked, looking surprised.

  “I don’t really know who I am anymore, what I’m willing to do. There is one thing I know sure about myself, though. I am a monster and an abomination, I don’t doubt that even a little, but I am not a murderer. I never will be that person.”

  Ash sighed, nodding thoughtfully and Tristan pressed forward with his mind vomit, getting it all out.

  “Anyway, realizing I’m half pythia now… I can’t help but wonder if some—all my dreams are part true. I swear, there’s been so much déjà vu for me lately that I’ve just ignored because it was easier to pretend it was nothing. To pretending everything’s okay.” He shook his head. “Fucking stupid. And so much… pain and death, even if not by my own hands, is my fault. If I wasn’t this thing that I am then my parents wouldn’t have died. Haruka, Audric’s scions, Sebastian, Mamoru… Maybe, somewhere in my dreams, I knew their fates. Maybe I could have helped them. I should have helped them.”

  “No,” Ash said gently and lifted his face in her hands when he tried to hide against his chest. “None of this is your fault. You cannot think like that or…”

  “I’ll lose my mind? I already am, Ash. Jesus Christ!” He pulled away from her, jumping to his feet. “I’ve killed people. Killed. With my own hands. And don’t fucking tell me it was their fate or my own. There’s no way fate can be that fucking cruel to condemn anyone to a life of willful killing.”

  Ash sighed, bowing her head. “But it is. Fate is cruel, Tristan. She always has been. I’ve only just accepted it myself.”

  “I won’t! I can’t be a pawn to something so fickle as fate anymore!”

  Ash stood slowly, something dark and dangerous in her eyes as they fixed with his. “Then don’t be. Knowing now what you are, what you are capable of, be your own master. Be strong enough to make your own fate.”

  The panic was taking hold, pushing the anger aside and he shook his head frantically. “Ho—how? We don’t even know what being half vampire, half pythia means.”

  Ash was shaking her head before he even finished. “Your true strength is not your physical but your mental. You are stronger than all of us weak, sorrowful, pitiful vampires, wallowing in our own delusions and self-loathing. You are stronger than any human, shinwa or heikō. You just have to accept what the rest of us have for it for it to be true.”

  “I—I can’t.” He sunk to his knees there in the middle of the bathroom. The first tear fell and landed on his wrist. He started when he saw that it was a blood tear and something in him broke at the reality that he could never go back to a simple life, a life without death and darkness. This was it for him, this was his reality now and he had to either accept it or die.

  Ash reached out a hand to touch him and stopped when his head jerked up, face streaked in red tears. He grabbed her wrist where it hovered before him and yanked her to him. Her eyes widened but she didn’t try to pull away, instead she waited.

  “I’m not going to give up and die but I don’t accept.”

  Her expression softened. “Then trust yourself and live as you never have before, make your own fate. And if you cannot make it on your own, know that I will be at your side and together we shall forge a future with our blood and tears.”

  A low growl left him and he pulled Ash down, pressing her back to the floor. He covered her delicate frame with his larger mass and smothered her mouth with his, tasting her deep and moaning when their mouths filled with blood. He grabbed greedily at her flesh, clammy as they both were, making her moan and writhe under him.

  Fumbling like a drunken human, she tore open his pants, plunging her hand inside. Her hand distracted him, so when she bit down onto his shoulder, slipping her fangs expertly into the very same holes Desmond had left him with, he cried out in surprise.

  Tristan’s back arched as the pain of the violation sizzled like electric fire down his spine. A moment later the pain dissolved and he was moaning his pleasure, pushing his pants down to his knees as her saliva mixed with the blood in his body and lit up the pleasure center of his brain times three.

  He could barely contain his need, jerking Ash’s hips in line with his own and when she wrapped her legs around his ass and thrust against him, he lost all sense. Ash’s mouth broke from his neck with a pop and a cry as he entered her with an animalistic grunt. Her nails dug into his back and he shivered at the delicious zing of pleasure that shot to his groin.

  “Again,” he grunted into her ear. “Bite me again.”

  A desperate noise whimpered out of her. “Then fuck me harder,” she demanded. “I won’t break.”

  Ash’s teeth tore new holes into his flesh and Tristan’s control slipped. “Fuck!”

  He pounded against her with abandon, taking her in a way he’d never had anyone. Even without his new strength he thought he might break Ash, he was so rough. But she didn’t mind, in fact, she urged him to push himself harder, faster. Her fangs tore into his neck a second time, a quick strike, and withdrew. She locked her mouth onto him and pulled hard on his blood.

  The strain of it on his heart made him gasp as a hard missed beat nearly took all the breath from him. He turned his head and pressed his lips to her upper arm. He grabbed her arm, tearing her claws out of his back and brought her wrist to his mouth. The smell of the vampire blood within her veins, just there below the surface, he was mad for it and bit down.

  Aggravated that he didn’t have fangs, he groaned in her flesh, worried at it like a dog. Ah, but there, on her hand, under her nails, that was blood, wasn’t it? Blood from a living being, Ellie’s blood. He groaned and sucked her fingers into mouth, trying desperately to lap up the blood. The heat in his groin distracted him and he let go of her hand when that heat burst from him. Ash held onto him with her teeth clamped down on his shoulder, riding out her own climax with a long muffled groan.

  Huffing and puffing, and exhausted he let himself collapse on top of Ash. She let go of her hold on his ruined shoulder and fell limp under him, eyes unfocused and face slack in bliss.

  “Ash?”

  She blinked once, eyes coming into focus and smiled at him. He smiled back, taking her face into his hands and kissing her.

  “Did I hurt you?”

  Her smile turned into a smirk. “I am far sturdier than I look.”

  He laughed and kissed her again before sitting up. He poked at his shoulder. “Damn… pretty sure we just made it worse.”

  “Here.” Ash slipped away and grabbed a towel to wrap around her. Pulling up his pants, Tristan took a moment to admire her ass, poised so lovely in the air and was just thinking about jumping her again when she turned back to him, smirking. “Drink this, the other should be poured directly into the wound.”

  Tristan opened his hand and looked at the two vials she’d given him. He really had this thing about taking pythia spells, but then, he trusted the source with his life. More than that, technically, this was his sp
ell. It held his blood, his signature, even if Ash made it.

  Holy shit, he really was a pythia. And an Uruwashi. He was the impossible.

  “Yes,” Ash said softly. “You are the first of a new race.”

  He started and then snorted a laugh. “And the last if it’s up to me to make more...” With a vampire for a lover. “Unless… Do you think there’s others out there? Someone else like me?” Why hadn’t he asked Apos? The dude was crazy enough to have answered. Which meant the answer couldn’t be trusted either.

  Ash frowned. “If there were—No. I really do not believe so.”

  “I guess that’s a good thing.” He could decide his own path, but if there were another like him, less good, that might be very bad for all of life on earth. He sighed and lifted one of the vials. “Bottom’s up.”

  Surprise wasn’t quite the right word for it. Elation? Perhaps. All he knew was that was the first spell he’d ever taken that tasted good. And felt amazing, warming his insides.

  “Mmm,” he grunted, sounding pleased. “Apple?”

  Ash frowned. “No.”

  He shrugged and went to the mirror. “Whatever, it didn’t taste like death.”

  He took a moment to clean up the wound with a wad of wet toilet paper. Looking at his shoulder up close in the mirror made his stomach turn a little. Desmond started the party but Ash brought the drugs because things got wild and when wild lost control, well, there was always a big mess left behind to clean up.

  “Sorry,” she said meekly, standing behind him. “I hadn’t meant to make it worse.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?” He turned around to face her. “That was the best sex I’ve ever had, biting and all. Besides, I asked for it. And now that we know I’m a super duper pythia whatever, I can learn to make these things myself.” He saluted with the vial and then dumped it over his shoulder. “Ah, son of a whore,” he hissed. “Burns like a bastard.”

  “Good.”

  He caught Ash’s smirk in the mirror before she turned away and went to turn on the shower.

  “That means it is working properly.”

  Hearing something in her voice, Tristan turned, leaning on the counter. “You weren’t sure it would… were you?”

  “No,” she admitted. “Not really. Like you, I’m having a hard time accepting the truth of it.”

  He nodded. “Well, I guess we know now for sure. I really am half pythia, half Uruwashi.”

  “Yes, I can say so with full confidence.”

  “But that bothers you.”

  “As well as you.”

  She had him there.

  “Touché.” He shrugged his shoulder, trying to wiggle the ache out of it. Burned a little too. He had to fight himself to not touch it. It did look better cleaned up, at least. And his blood didn’t dissolve like a vampire’s, he wondered if that would change still.

  “Are you feeling better?”

  Tristan sighed, looked away, forced himself to look her in the eye. Did she mean what happened in France or his problem with killing? He decided to make it about France. “No. But I’m not going to let the past bother me, not right now with everything else going on. I’m not ignoring it, but—” He shrugged. “I need to focus on the now, on… Nastasia.”

  He had to hand it to Ash, she didn’t flinch, even if something in her eyes flared at the name. She let out a huff that he almost didn’t hear over the shower running and came to stand before him. “I will not ask anyone to do what is my responsibility. If anything, I owe dear Trevor that much.”

  “Ash…”

  She held a hand up and Tristan knew that hard set of her jaw. “No. I understand we are a partnership, you and I. But I must be the one to do what needs to be done when the time comes. I will not go out looking for her, hunting her like a beast. Next time she comes, if she still cannot find it in her to speak to me like an adult and talk through our differences, continue to threaten those I love, then and only then will I do what I must.”

  He didn’t know what to say so he just hugged her, held her tightly against him. “I love you, you know.”

  She sniffled a little, almost unperceivable and nodded her head against his chest. “I do know.” She moved back enough to look up into his face. “And I love you, more than anything.”

  He smiled warmly. “I know.” Smoothing the hair back from her face, he couldn’t help but wonder with all the shit in his life, how he managed to find the one thing he needed to keep him together. Would he even be here now if it weren’t for Ash? “And, I can’t make any ultimate promises on how far I’ll go to help you with Nastasia, just know I’ll be there for you, to the best of my ability.”

  Her turn to smile lovingly and she patted him on the chest, taking a step back. “It’s more than I’ve ever expected from anyone in my life.”

  He didn’t know what to say to that so he watched in silence as she moved behind the frosted glass and under the water.

  She tipped her head back and let out a long sigh as the water washed over her. “Join me?”

  “Mmm,” he moaned. “I’d love to. But we both know if I do, we’ll end up in there… and the tub, and the bed, the floor—fuck, maybe even the armoire for a challenge.”

  Mirroring her sudden grin, he marched over and kissed her, lingering a little, wanting more. It was hard to be brooding when he was so in love. “And as much as I’d love to fuck and make love and bask the night away in bliss,” he whispered. A kiss on her neck made her shiver. “And I really do want that… I should go check on Ellie… And Desmond, I guess. You know, do responsible adult shit for once.”

  Ash nodded, a slow frown forming. “Elinore is in Trevor’s room until the other room is put back in order.”

  “Trevor’s room,” Tristan chortled, turning away. God, the wolf had his own room now. Looked like Desmond and Ellie did too. Just what the hell was happening here? Not even officially moved in and they had roommates out the ass. “A fucking hostel is what we are… Hey, you’re not really going to give that kid over to Desmond, are you? He didn’t really do any of this on purpose. Even if he was being snarky downstairs, he’s just scared.”

  “Absolutely not,” Ash answered. “I said that in anger. I didn’t mean it.”

  “Yeah,” Tristan sighed. “It’s easy to lose yourself to anger…”

  On the way out of the bathroom, Tristan stopped short and stared at himself in the mirror. The skin on his shoulder and collarbone were a ruddy pink color but the wound was healed over already. He snorted an astonished laugh and looked back to find Ash smiling, satisfied.

  All right, so maybe it wasn’t so bad to be part pythia after all.

  19: Control

  HE IS but a wild beast,” Wren whispered, expression pained as he looked away from his deranged Master. Locked behind a thick—very thick—steel door, Desmond continued to roar and rail. Truthfully, Tristan had been a little worried when Ash split the big vampire’s head open, and, yeah, was sort of relieved when he first heard the vampire melting down.

  Now, though, five minutes in, it was getting on his fucking nerves. And poor Wren, he’d been listening to it for the better part of twenty minutes now. He’d been crying too, his tears didn’t dry all that fast and there were still a few red stains on his white cheeks. Tristan was happy to pretend that he didn’t notice.

  Tristan sighed, pushing off the wall he’d been leaning on and lowered his arms from across his chest. “What did Kiba say about it?” He nodded towards Desmond. “Is this supposed to happen?”

  Wren shook his head, shifting his hair to hide a face that no longer appeared deformed. “He doesn’t know.” Wren shrugged, straightening, lifting his chin. “He says that Lilith told him one day he would save the life of a vampire with that spell. He’s been holding onto it since he was eight, just waiting for the time to use it.” Wren threw his hands up. “He doesn’t even know if he was meant to give it to Desmond.” He shrugged again but Tristan could see the tension in it. “Such is the way with all pythia
predictions.”

  “Jesus,” Tristan hissed. “I know I’m supposed to be half pythia, but fuck, I’m really starting to hate them.” His straight-forward, honest nature made the vagueness of their visions, prophecies, whatever, just downright annoying. Just say what you mean, for fuck’s sake.

  Wren flinched, looking startled.

  “You forgot.”

  Wren bowed his head, a small smile caught by Tristan before he could hide it. “It’s easy to. You don’t feel pythia. In fact, since you’ve been bitten, I hardly feel you at all.”

  Now it was Tristan’s turn to be startled. “You…”

  “Ash wouldn’t know, you’ve a strong bond to her as her scion. She’ll always know where you are now—but think on it, a bitten Uruwashi that a vampire can’t sense…? A frightening foe.”

  Tristan was nodded, thinking deeply on Wren’s words. “Do I… scare you?”

  Wren had the decency to laugh—But, seriously, it gave Tristan so much comfort, that incredulous, genuine laugh. “Not even a little, Tristan. Why would you ask such a thing?”

  “Because I’m…” He frowned, remembering Lilith’s words. “I’m an abomination.”

  Wren got close to him, his expression full of pain. “No,” he said in a hushed tone, taking Tristan’s shoulders in to his hands. “No, not that. Never that.”

  He shook his head. “Lilith—”

  “Says what she must—Is she the one you picked up this atrocious word from?”

  Tristan nodded, feeling naked and vulnerable, and completely okay with showing that side to Wren. The man was a friend, always was. Was that fate, their meeting and his immediate acceptance? No, he couldn’t consent that something as fickle as fate was dictating who he was or how he felt. Fate didn’t make him like anyone, that was his choice.