by Caris Roane
With her hand on the box the room began to spin, faster than ever, a sure sign that a revisiting vision was upon her. Again.
“Reyes.” She gestured for him to come to her.
“A vision?”
“Yes, an important one. Please hold me.” She just had a feeling.
An image swept through her of a woman with auburn hair sitting on a cot, her legs shackled. The room had a stand with a pitcher of water and a chamber pot in the corner.
Angelica’s heart beat hard in her chest. “I think I’m seeing your mother. Tell me what she looked like.”
Reyes took a deep breath as he leaned his head close to hers. “Show me. I have a sense that I’ll be able to see her because of the Ancestral chains.”
Angelica relaxed against him and let her mind flow.
The woman rocked softly on the cot.
“I can see the vision. Oh, God, it is her. That’s my mother.”
“Reyes, where is this? Do you know where this is?”
“No, that is, it feels familiar. But can you tell me when this took place?” Revisiting visions were always in the past.
Angelica was shocked as she turned in his arms, forcing the vision to disappear. “This vision is of something that occurred just a few minutes ago. Reyes, your mother is still alive.”
* * *
Reyes felt hot and cold at exactly the same moment. He’d grieved his mother’s death for well over a century. Sweet Dove had relayed the progress of her demise step by step, how she’d stopped eating and taking blood and had devolved into blood madness, afterward dying.
Sweet Dove had lied to him.
Maybe it was the blood-chains or his increasing Ancestral power, but he could feel his mother now. He just couldn’t believe it was true.
His mother lived.
“Can you sense where she is?” Angelica asked.
He closed his eyes and focused at the same time, letting his Ancestral power surge through him. “She’s alone. Dear God, Sweet Dove kept her sequestered all this time.”
“Do you think she hurt your mother?”
“Almost two centuries of solitary imprisonment would have been torture enough. But let’s go. She wasn’t far from Sweet Dove’s office.”
He held out his arm, and Angelica climbed onto his booted foot. The moment she secured a hold on his neck, he shifted to altered flight and sped through rock and into the air.
A few minutes later he slowed his approach, diving through more rock, centering his path on the image of his mother. Angelica had touched the silver box and the vision had come to her. She had given him so much and now this.
A moment later he passed through the final layer of rock.
When his boots hit the solid rock floor, he stared at the woman in the white, sack-like dress, still sitting on the edge of her cot. She looked as young as he remembered, and her blue eyes were as full of life.
“You found me,” she whispered, rising to her feet. “I knew you would. I never gave up hope.” She opened her arms, her eyes filling with tears.
He gathered her up, holding her tightly against his chest, tears coursing down his cheeks. She clung to him and wept. He didn’t think he ever wanted to let her go.
At last he murmured, “I bought our home back, the one at Cordillera.”
She drew back and planted her hands on his face. “You did?”
He nodded. “As soon as I escaped my captor I began building my fortune. The moment I had enough money to tempt the owner to sell, I bought it back and recovered as many of your things as I could. Remember your silver boxes?”
“Yes. Treasures that belonged to the women of my family for centuries.”
“I found most of them.”
“Brogan Reyes, my darling son.”
More tears followed, until eventually she asked, “But how did you find me? After all this time?”
Reyes finally released her and turned slightly so that Angelica came into his line of sight. “My woman found you. I had just taken her to Cordillera and she touched one of the boxes. She has the revisiting vision gift and saw you here. Right here, not fifteen minutes ago.”
His mother left Reyes’s side and moved in Angelica’s direction. She lifted her hands to Angelica, who in turn took them. “Thank you, my dear.”
“Angelica, I’d like you to meet my mother, Faylen Reyes.”
Angelica nodded as more tears slipped down her cheeks. “I’m so happy to meet you, Mrs. Reyes.”
“Faylen please.” Her gaze fell to Angelica’s throat. “And you’re bonded to Reyes?”
Angelica met Reyes’s gaze. “I am.”
Reyes felt as though nothing had been so real in his life as what stood before him: a mother believed dead and now come to life, and a woman to whom he would give himself for the rest of his days.
“Let me take you home, Mother. I’ll go very slowly, which means this will take some time.”
“I have all the time in the world.”
* * *
Later that night, with Reyes’s mother asleep in a real bed for the first time in almost two centuries, Angelica lay in the arms of the man she loved.
She knew that, in time, she would reunite with her own mother, though she had no idea how she would explain her vampire husband, the constant wearing of the blood-chains, or that over the years her aging would slow to match Reyes’s. But those were small issues to be worked out in the larger scheme of things.
She had every confidence that Reyes would take down Starlin, piece by piece, as he’d sworn to do.
For herself Angelica had only one desire, at least for the present, and that was to continue to be a comfort to Reyes.
She felt a profound sense of wonder from Reyes and an ever-flowing wave of emotion that moved back and forth, like the waves at the shore’s edge, rising up on the sand, drifting back, a constant push-pull.
She was content, deeply so, and awestruck. She still couldn’t believe that she’d been instrumental in metaphorically bringing a woman back from the dead. Reyes had never believed she’d survived the deaths of both her husband and her son. Sweet Dove’s recounting had seemed entirely plausible to Reyes.
She stared up at a beautiful piece of red crystal that lay embedded in the slate-colored ceiling, the natural shade of the mountain stone.
She shifted onto her side slightly, turning toward Reyes and drawing close. She was naked, as was Reyes, but he hadn’t made love to her yet. Right now she lay next to him, as each settled into the extraordinary moment of coming home.
They’d spent hours in his mother’s company, sharing the empanadas with her, talking and talking. Faylen was very thin and ate only a few bites. Her body would take months to fully recover from her captivity.
Reyes wasn’t asleep. He lay on his back, also looking up at the ceiling.
She rose up slightly. “You know I’ve been turning this over in my mind, and what I don’t get is why Sweet Dove kept your mother alive.”
He shook his head. “I don’t really know. Maybe Sweet Dove had planned on using her, or she might have forgotten all about her. You heard what mother said, that a group of caregivers had been in charge of her for decades. She’d only actually seen Sweet Dove three times in all those years.”
“You know what? I believe in grace. I believe your mother lived so that your life could be restored in just this way.”
He shifted this time, turning to face her. He took her chin in his hand. “You were the first evidence of grace, more than I ever deserved.”
Angelica kissed him softly. “I have a feeling that we will have many arguments on the subject of what you deserve before you finally give way to my superior opinion of who you are. Because if a man ever deserved grace, and all good things, it’s you.”
He searched her eyes and pushed her hair away from her temples. He kissed her forehead and her cheeks. “I love you, Angelica, more than I’ll ever be able to express.”
He made love to her after that, moving slowly over her b
ody, holding her gaze while he brought her to ecstasy. The double-chains added a new layer of intensity. She could even feel his pleasure as he released into her, which brought her crying out as once more she reached the pinnacle.
As she fell asleep within the warm comfort of Reyes’s embrace, a different kind of vision came to her, something that surprised her beyond words and made her smile. She held a dark-haired baby in her arms, and when he opened his eyes they were as crystal clear as the mountain sky.
She’d been abducted into the vampire world, fallen in love with one of their kind, and would one day give birth to a child who would know only love and security in their care.
In the vision Reyes came to her, moving in close behind and embracing them both. “I don’t deserve this bounty,” he whispered.
She smiled. Their only real argument, what the man deserved. She turned her head and kissed him. The baby cooed his pleasure. And life was good.
SAVAGE CHAINS
Surrender to your darkest desires.
Don’t Miss Any of the Installments in This Sexy Serial from St. Martin’s Press!
Savage Chains #1:
Captured
Savage Chains #2:
Scarred
Savage Chains #3:
Shattered
Get even more sexy romance with Caris Roane’s
full-length Men in Chains series from St. Martin’s Paperbacks!
Available July 2014
Caris Roane is the author of the Guardians of Ascension series and the Men in Chains series, both featuring powerful vampires and the women who love them. Caris lives in the Phoenix area of the Sonoran Desert, really doesn’t like scorpions, and in her spare time tries to stay off Facebook. You can find Caris at www.carisroane.com.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
“Shattered: Savage Chains: Part 3” copyright © 2014 by Caris Roane.
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Cover art © Golden Czermak
eISBN 9781466832947
First eBook Edition: June 2014