Reveal (The Lamian Wars Book 2)

by C. M. Steele

  Charlotte stepped from behind Draco and said, “I didn’t send you there to die, as you can see that you are still here.”

  “If I hadn’t heard that ticking, I wouldn’t have been,” I tossed back, my fangs reared.

  “But you would have. Those first responders wouldn’t have. You saved twenty human lives by triggering the explosion. It was motion activated.”

  I froze. She had done the right thing and I lost it with her again. I grabbed Nora and teleported to my bed chambers, ashamed of my behavior and needing to compose myself before I addressed both of them.

  “Falcon, are you well?” Nora asked, brushing her fingers through my hair. I held her close and carried her to the settee. Our room was under repair, even though they had already fixed the wall.

  “Yes, but I’ve lost my comportment again. I can’t do that. I know your safety and our well-being is the most important thing, but I cannot be so damn antagonistic. I must go apologize before I do any more damage.”

  I teleported us outside their bedroom door, then knocked. “Come in, Falcon.”

  Draco stood in front of Charlotte as if to protect her from me. I felt more ashamed than before. I took a deep breath and composed my thoughts. “Draco, first I must say that I understand your reticence, but I must speak to Charlotte.”

  “You can do it from where you are standing, Falcon.” His words were hard and just.

  “Very well. Charlotte, I must apologize. I have behaved abominably toward you since your revelation of gift and the attack on Nora. It will always be my duty and privilege to protect her, however, I must learn to control my temper. It’s unbefitting someone of my station. In centuries of anguish and battle, I have never treated anyone such as I have you. I understand your duty and your limitations, so I beg you to forgive mine. Nora will always come before all others, but I will take heart that you have her best interests in mind all of the time. I am truly sorry.”

  She stood up from behind Draco. “Falcon, you again have nothing to apologize for. I’ve been less than honest with you. As a leader, you live your life via information and facts. My withholding them must drive you to madness. With your mother, her sins of omission were easily forgiven. I understand that I am not her. So, I accept your apology because I know that your love for Nora is strong.”

  “Thank you, Charlotte. I promise to be objective.”

  “Tell us what happened with Vigo,” Nora demanded.

  “They’ve captured him. I don’t know what they plan to do, but I believe that they will use him to find a cure or to get to you.”

  Immediately, Nora sobbed hard.

  Chapter 18

  Charlotte

  When Falcon gave us the news on Vigo, I knew Nora was going to lose it. "Men, please go plan and shit for our move. Nora and I need girl time." I gave them a look that said not to question me. They left the room after Falcon kissed Nora once more. His expression of helplessness crushed me more than Nora’s sadness. I led her to the settee and held her until the sobbing stopped.

  “This is all my fault,” she wept. The truth was it wasn’t. She didn’t attack Vigo, they targeted him now that the timing had been right.

  “It’s not yours. Stavros was going to do whatever he could to get to the cure. I hope that he doesn’t kill Vigo, but you must understand that it is war. The Lamians will do anything they can to win.”

  “How can you be so strong? Can you see the victory for us?” she asked. They always wanted to know if I had answers. The inside of my head was messy. The only thing that kept me leveled was my music and now Draco.

  “I can’t. Not all visions are clear and are usually based on other’s decisions.”

  She nodded, accepting my words, but her sweet, loving heart was still in pain. I rocked her, trying to comfort her. Since the moment Falcon and Draco entered our lives, it’d been a wild and dangerous adventure. They had been wonderful to us, but everything else had been one big pile of shit. I needed a way to calm her down, but the more I left her to her thoughts, the more it would make things worse.

  I had a plan that would push things forward, but I needed her to find her strength. The strength I knew she had inside. “Nora, let’s think about the babies. We haven’t really got to talking about them. We should be gushing and planning for them.”

  “Yes, we should. With everything going on, for the first time I forgot about this little one. Do you know what we’re having?” She’s asked me twice now. I rolled my eyes at her because it was getting a bit ridiculous.

  “No, I don’t, but it would be funny if neither of us had a girl.” There was a thought. As much as I wanted a little angel faced girl, I didn’t want the added weight of the responsibilities.

  “Or if we both did.” I liked that she was suddenly a lot happier. Her bright eyes were round and her whole being seemed enthusiastic.

  “Have you thought of names?” I asked her, trying to lighten the mood some more. We needed a bit of joviality in our lives. It had been one miserable moment after another. War was dirty, painful, and stressful. Thinking about the lives to come were a spot of brightness in this dark world.

  “No. You?” she asked me.

  “No, it’s not even something I considered. Strange, right?”

  “Our whole world is strange. One crazy thing after another. I feel so drained from all the insanity around us.”

  “Yes, it is, so let’s see if we can get some of this spotty internet to show us some baby names.”

  “I’m on board with that, but don’t you think we should include the guys?”

  “They’re busy. Besides we can pick the ones we like the best and then force them to choose the one we really want.”

  “I like your way of thinking, Charlie,” she replied, nodding her head with a wicked grin. Since we were in my room, we decided to share my laptop. When you were fast, the normal or even fast paced things seemed slow. My brand-new i-7 core processor seemed to move like a 1994 PC with a floppy drive and AOL dial up.

  “Wow, do you need a new computer or is it just me?”

  “It’s us. This puppy is fast for normal people, but we’re special now,” I teased.

  “Do we need like baby clothes like for weeks or things like that? Do the babies walk right away?”

  “Damn, we need to talk to these females. They have to know this shit.”

  There were about twenty different sites with names. Since our men are Italian, we figured an Italian or common name would do. I had the top boy names and they weren’t that great, but who knows what Nora liked. “How about a Michael or Anthony?” I asked, Nora. She scrunched up her nose at me.

  “With our men being named such bad ass warrior type names, I think the boys should match them.”

  “Well, how about Axel?” I started at the beginning. There were thousands of names, but we isolated it by category.

  “That sounds tough.”

  “It reminds me of Guns and Roses.”

  “Of course it does, maybe a music legend name for your baby? Jimi, Robert, Mick, or Keith?”

  “Haha. I’d still have to get it past Draco, and that man acts like he was just transported from the 1800’s to the present. Like he’d never heard of classic rock or anything. Let’s keep looking.”

  We perused the list for about twenty minutes, names just not sticking. Then she hit on some cool ones. “Davio, Demitri, Donatello.” Immediately the teenage mutant ninja turtles theme song came to my head and I started singing it.

  “You and your music.”

  “Tell me about it, but you don’t have much room to talk. What are you going to do, name him after a book character? Heathcliff, Edward, Edmund, Hamlet, Othello?”

  “Really, that’s the best you got? I mean they are old like our men, but damn, no new literary characters?”

  “Sorry, haven’t picked up a book unless it was a homework assignment. And Sigmund is the one that pops into my head.”

  “I worry for you. Maybe once this all settles down, I’ll take
you on a cultural tour of Europe.”

  “That’s awesome, I’m sure I’d love to see where the Beatles lived or maybe even The Stones.”

  She rolled her eyes at me for the hundredth time since we started the search, but it got her mind off of Vigo and the lab. I slammed the laptop close because my stomach was roaring, demanding sustenance. I mentally called to Draco.

  Busy? I asked.

  Never for you. What do you need?

  Food, I’m starving.

  Will do. Anything special?

  Chocolate covered strawberries.

  Okay.

  “Earth to Charlie, Earth to Charlie. You there?” Nora asked, waving her hand in my face. I swatted it away, then turned to her with a snarl.

  “Brat, I was getting us chocolate covered strawberries,” I told her, giving her a squinty-eyed pout.

  “Wow, nice. I’d love some strawberries,” Nora said with an exaggerated moan.

  “Other soon-to-be dads would be jealous if they knew how easy it was for Draco to get cravings to us.”

  “Another upside, I’d say.”

  “I agree. Are you ready to finish this? Or should we just scrap the idea?”

  “I want to finish so I can take a nap. I feel like falling out,” Nora muttered. I could see the fatigue on her face.

  “How about you take a nap and then we continue this when your head is clear?”

  “Okay, but don’t eat all the damn strawberries.” She got up and moved to the large sofa and rested there.

  Draco appeared before me with my goodies. He caught sight of Nora out the corner of his eye. “Tired?” he asked.

  “Yes, she needs a nap.”

  “Are you okay?” he questioned, sitting down next to me and wrapping one arm around my waist.

  “I’m well. We were just talking about baby names.”

  “Oh really? I’ll leave that to you,” he said.

  “Smart man.”

  “I may have been virginal, but I’ve seen centuries of marriages. ‘Yes, dear’ is the best response.”

  “Well, you are a wise man. Thank you for my berries.”

  “I love you, Charlotte.”

  “I love you, too, Draco. Now go before you wake her up,” I commanded but pulled him back for a long, deep kiss.

  “Later,” he muttered before teleporting from the room. I leaned back with my laptop to the side as I maxed on my strawberries. Moans escaped my lips with each bite, the flavors hitting my tongue with intensity. Damn, being a vampire really had some perks to the deal. But in minutes, I dozed off as well.

  Chapter 19

  Nora

  I woke up in our temporary bedroom with Falcon wrapped around me. The night was among us, but I’d slept the day away. I couldn’t believe that the time was after midnight. I rolled out of Falcon’s hold, which woke him up instantly.

  “Sweetheart, you’re awake. I was starting to worry,” he said sleepily.

  “I didn’t mean to wake you. Was I sleeping a long time?”

  “Longer than a nap, but you needed it. How are you feeling?”

  “I had a strange dream that we had a baby girl. I think it’s all this talk. I read that there are crazy dreams that hit pregnant women. But Falcon, I have to talk to some of the women here. Seriously, there’s like a thousand questions that Charlotte and I have.”

  “Okay, well, you can ask me, but I’m sure Mary will tell you.” I started to pace around the room, thinking about my dream. It wasn’t real, of course, because it was full of things that couldn’t happen, at least not at the same time, but it made me wonder if I was the one. My feelings on the subject were a bit muddled. I wanted to have a girl, but then again, the implications were massively heavy.

  “First, will the baby grow fast? Like will they learn to walk early?”

  “Since we’re part human, our tendencies and trends are similar. We mature faster, but it is still a long process. It’s not noticeable to humans that we have growth spurts.”

  “That’s good to know. But all of the sudden I forgot my other questions.”

  “Well, good. Come back to bed and let me hold you. I need you well rested. I want to take you out somewhere special.”

  “I like that idea.”

  “I haven’t been the best mate, husband, or whatever you wish to call me, but I love you, Nora. I love you to the point of madness.”

  Chapter 20

  Falcon

  Leonora and I joined Draco and Charlotte for breakfast before meeting with the soldiers. “There’s something I need to tell you, or even show you,” Charlotte said. She set down her napkin then continued, “After Falcon took you from the room, I continued our search on baby names.”

  “Okay, what is it? A cool name?” Nora joked, taking a bite of her eggs.

  “It’s the meaning of your name, Nora,” she said, causing Nora to nearly choke on the food.

  “What does it say?” I asked, a bit curious myself.

  “Her name means compassion; light.” The sound of forks hitting the plates echoed in the large dining room. I turned to Nora, looking for her expression of emotion. Shock covered her face as she stared at me with questions.

  “Are you okay?” Draco asked her. She really did look quite surprised.

  “I need to get back into the lab. We lost everything, right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “The insurance claims have been filed, but this place is not suited for a lab. And the island isn’t ready yet.”

  “It will be in three days,” Draco added.

  “Good, we need to get started.” She paused as the though her own words were choking her. “Vigo told me he was…close to a cure…when…when…they attacked.” I knew it was bound to happen again. I lifted her from her chair and onto my lap, cradling her head on my shoulder.

  “We’ll find him, my love. They have more to lose by killing him. They need him. They will use him as another path to the cure.”

  She lifted her head and said, “He wouldn’t surrender to them. I know it.”

  Draco added, “He may tell them what he knows if it leads to saving his wife. She needs the cure.”

  In truth, a cure to the darkness would benefit us all and my people want it now. Centuries of waiting have been too much for the damned. “I don’t care who discovers the cure anymore. It won’t stop us from destroying Stavros. I probably feel that way because my love is the light. You were born to find the cure.”

  “I told you I needed to go back,” Nora chided, turning to face forward in my lap.

  “Yeah, that wasn’t wise yesterday,” Charlotte piped in, reminding me that the entire lab would have gone up in flames with her in it or they would have captured her. The island must be proven secure before I would take her there. The castle is not as safe, and clearly, neither was my home. I underestimated Stavros’ willingness to out us to humans. It would be unwise at this juncture to do so, but it was his ultimate goal. I wondered if he already had a human leader on his side under the pretense of working together for world domination.

  “I know it isn’t wise, but I have this need that wants to take over me. It’s been that way since I could first remember.” She was definitely into science more than any person I’d ever met, and that was including myself.

  “We’ll get you set up soon, but you need to remember the baby comes first.”

  “I know. I will do everything to protect our baby, Falcon,” she remarked snottily, kissing me on the cheek before sitting back in her own chair. Her hormones were going wild and so was her temper.

  Chapter 21

  Nora

  I sat in our room that had been newly remodeled, thinking about the revelation of my name. Could it mean anything? Or was it merely a coincidence? I didn’t know why I was pondering it anyway. I knew the truth. It was my fate, destiny, or whatever they called it. I was supposed to find a cure to the darkness, to be their light. “No pressure, Nora,” I muttered to myself.

  “There is no pressure.” Falcon said as he walked int
o the room. “We’re not going to tell anyone.”

  “I’ve debated that in my head, too. If we tell them, then vampires might be hunting me down. On the other hand, telling them may raise hope for our cause.”

  “I’ve considered that as well, but I must consider your health and the needs of our baby first. They have waited centuries. A few more months isn’t going to destroy them.”

  “I know, but I cannot help myself, Falcon. I feel for them.”

  “Yes, as your name suggests. I love you, Nora. You’re everything to me and I can’t lose you, so promise you’ll wait until I have everything secure before you ask for your lab.”

  “I will,” I promised, kissing him and getting ready for another day roaming the castle. I think it was time I got Mary alone for some pregnancy questions. She has been hiding away, mourning her love. It hurt me every time I saw that look in her eyes. The thought of losing Falcon would turn me into an empty soul as well.

  “Can I go out to the garden area today?”

  “Yes, but please take Charlotte with you. I will be busy with the soldiers preparing for battle.”

  “Please be safe, Falcon.”

  “Always, my love.” He walked me down to Charlotte’s room and Draco exited at the same time.

  “She’s getting ready. Go on in,” Draco said, holding the door open for me. I walked in while waving goodbye to the two.

  “How are you feeling?” Charlotte asked as soon as the door was closed. “I mean with learning the meaning of your name.”

  “I don’t know. I mean, I will do all I can to find a cure, but the thing is, what if my parents named me that just because they liked it?”

  “There are tons of names they could have given you, but they gave you the name that represents hope to these people.”

  “Do you think we should tell them? Falcon wants me to wait until after the baby is born before working on it, but should the people be told?”

  “That’s a hard choice to make. Either way, it’s going to put you at risk. Skeptics will treat it as just a coincidence and others will beg you to work harder and faster.”