by Caris Roane
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dear Reader
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Thank you!
About the Author
Checklist
EMBRACE THE WIND
THE BLOOD ROSE SERIES #7
BY
CARIS ROANE
THE BLOOD ROSE SERIES #7: EMBRACE THE WIND
By Caris Roane Copyright © 2015 by Twin Bridges Creations LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this eBook may be reproduced in whole or in part, scanned, photocopied, recorded, distributed in any printed or electronic form, or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without express written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Formatting and cover by Bella Media Management.
Dear Reader, Welcome to the seventh installment of the Blood Rose Series, EMBRACE THE WIND. In this book, Mastyr Zane joins forces with a powerful shifter, Olivia, to destroy an enemy encampment. Having lost his wife five years earlier, Zane doesn’t want a woman in his life. Being half-human, Olivia has never belonged anywhere. Can these two build a life together?
A powerful mastyr vampire, with a surly temper, meets his match in a beautiful half-human shifter who challenges him at every turn…
Mastyr Vampire Zane didn’t want another woman in his life not after the dreaded Invictus killed his wife five years ago. He serves Swanicott Realm, the land he rules, and doesn’t want anything to interfere with his war against the enemy. But when he’s captured by the evil Margetta, only one woman can save him, a shifter with unusual powers to track him and to provide him with special protection. But will his sudden unexpected desire for the shifter, shake his commitment to go it alone?
Olivia has always lived as an outsider. Being half-human, she never really belonged anywhere. Growing up as a fur-sprouting shifter in the U.S. made her an easy target. When she finally moved to Swanicott to be with her kind, suddenly she’s tracking a mastyr vampire and falling hard for the man. Except for a need to jump his bones, she has no reason to align herself with a surly warrior type. But can she find a place in her new world by getting involved with a vampire?
Enjoy!
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Now Available: RAPTURE’S EDGE 1 AWAKENING, the continuing saga of the Guardians of Ascension, featuring Duncan and Rachel. He’s a warrior to the bone, but she only wants peace! Check out RAPTURE’S EDGE on my website. http://www.carisroane.com/raptures-edge-1-awakening/
Coming Soon: Book #8, Mastyr Ian’s story: EMBRACE THE HUNT!!!
Also Coming Soon: Episode #2 of RAPTURE’S EDGE, more of the continuing saga of the Guardians of Ascension http://www.carisroane.com/raptures-edge-1-awakening/
Be sure to check out the Blood Rose Tales Box Set – TRAPPED, HUNGER, and SEDUCED -- shorter works for a quick, sexy, satisfying read. For more information: http://www.carisroane.com/blood-rose-tales-box-set/
CHAPTER ONE
Zane held the tall fae woman in his arms.
“Thank you,” he whispered. He had her pressed up against the bathroom wall, door locked. She was breathing hard.
So was he.
She’d offered her body and donated from her vein as well, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember her name. It had become a pattern of his in recent months to seek out willing females from those who frequented the Elf Lords Hideaway. The infamous biker bar had a cross-section of shifters, vampires, trolls, and the occasional fae who all had one thing in common; a love of riding.
Having his blood needs taken care of helped. A little. He suffered from the results of chronic blood starvation, as all mastyr vampires did. Which meant he was still left with the usual stomach cramping, just less intense because of the woman’s donation.
He leaned his forehead against hers. He’d gotten them both off, but he felt like shit.
She’d been willing, of course. He made sure his doneuses knew the score going in. And he always took care of the woman. But lately his soul felt crushed each time he took a woman like this. It was no different now.
“Thank you,” he said again, just to make sure she knew he appreciated her sacrifice.
She had her hands clasped behind his neck and a loose, satisfied look in her eye. “You’re welcome, mastyr. Anytime. Really.” Her smile widened. “And my name is Jewel.”
She was a lovely fae woman, who liked her men on the rough side. She released her hold on him, for which he was grateful. “Ask for me again,” she suggested with a smile. She started buttoning up her leather vest.
“I will.” Not likely, though it wasn’t personal. Jewel – so that was her name – seemed nice enough, someone he might even have dated at one time.
He didn’t date now. Hadn’t for the past five years. Not once since his wife, Emily, had been killed by the Invictus.
Damn, he was still raw from the loss, destroyed in ways he didn’t understand. For one thing, he doubted he’d ever marry again. For another, he was always mad when he thought about his wife. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to get past his rage.
He’d wanted to have a family with Emily, but she hadn’t. She took terrible risks by going out alone to deserted places to paint, always against his advice. They argued every morning at dawn when he came home from Guard duty. He’d loved her, but they’d been oil and water.
Then one day, after returning from battling Invictus all night, he found a pool of blood on his kitchen floor and no sign of his wife.
Crushed was the right word.
He left Jewel in the bathroom to pull down her short denim skirt and do whatever else a woman did after hot, quick sex in a public place.
He headed into the men’s room, took a pee, and tried not to feel like the ass-end of hell.
These days, he made war against the Invictus and not much else. All the mastyrs of the Nine Realms were engaged in the exact same way, battling the Ancient Fae and her army of vicious, bonded wraith pairs. The woman wanted to rule their world and was coming damn close to achieving her ambitions.
His realm, Swanicott, suffered almost constant Invictus intrusions every night so that his Vampire Guard was in a worn out state as were his Shifter and Troll Brigades.
He left the bathroom. The rough boards of the bar creaked beneath his leather hip boots and two-eighty frame. He was taller than most mastyrs since he topped out just shy of six-seven.
The place smelled of beer, whisky, and good times. Something out of Nashville played on the radio, crusty and gut-wrenching. He was at home here, having a proclivity for hard-drinking women and bar fights.
Lately, he’d been doing a lot of the latter. He’d gotten into the bad habit of letting his starvation run way too long between feedings, which tended to ramp up his already surly temper. He needed to stop that shit, but he wasn’t sure how. Ever since Mastyr Malik had hooked up with his blood rose, a woman designed to ease the pain of a mastyr’s starvation forever, Zane had been irritable as hell.
He didn’t want a blood rose of his own; he wouldn’t know what to do with her even if she happened to come a
long. And he sure as hell didn’t want that kind of intimacy with another woman. His difficult marriage had finished off any desire to pursue another relationship.
Now that his stomach had settled into a series of dull cramps instead of the knife-like pangs he’d been experiencing, he headed to the door. Time to resume his duties as Mastyr of Swanicott and kick some Invictus wraith-pair butt.
He gave a shout to the bar-owner, a lovely troll named Heather, bidding her good-night. The entire room shouted back, a friendly well-wishing that made him smile.
He pushed the door open and a string of bells jingled, an odd sound for a place full of tattoos and hardass.
Outside, the air was cool and fresh. He took a deep breath, his gaze moving in a swift arc over the dark green house opposite, the red and gold autumn forest on either side, then up and down the street.
He saw no sign of the Invictus, no tell-tale red wind in the trees that would announce their presence.
All clear.
The Elf Lords Hideaway was located way off the main drag of a small town called Barker’s Bend, not far from the beach. There was a row of houses to the north of the bar and a three-office strip center to the south. The latter was a sad affair housing a tattoo parlor, a hair salon that advertised something called glitter nails, and a liquor store that was robbed about once a week.
After a moment of taking it all in, he relaxed a little.
Harleys were lined up one after the other in front of the bar. He’d owned at least a dozen in the last couple of years alone and now rode a Valkyrie just to mix things up. Though vampires might be good at flying, sometimes there was nothing better than wheels on the road.
He never kept his bikes long, not so much by design as happenstance. He rode everywhere, but when he was called away by his Communication Center to do battle, he often had to fly off, leaving his motorcycle wherever he happened to be.
His realm had an abundance of sneaky forest gremlins and those bastards didn’t hesitate to steal anything not chained to a cement slab, including his abandoned bikes.
Mounting his street-facing Valkyrie, he was about to fire her up when a chill ran across his shoulders. He had a sudden and profound sensation he was being watched.
Letting his arms fall to his sides, he once more extended his senses and made another pass visually up and down the street.
His gaze became stuck on the small house opposite, with dark green shingles on the exterior walls. No lights were on and he saw no one moving around inside. But he would swear someone was there, watching him.
A breeze rustled the fall leaves, whipping a few up into the air then bringing them down to roll along the street. He loved this time of year. The air was crisp and clean. Rains came often now, adding the occasional snow flurry, reminding the inhabitants winter was on the way.
Finally, he turned the key. The deep rumble of the machine, with vibrations that got his juices flowing, eased him all over.
Just before he took off, however, a familiar sensation crept over him. Besides the sense that he was being watched, his gut told him that forces in his realm were winding up for a show-down. And he asked the question that had been on his mind since returning to Swanicott: Was his enemy, Margetta, the Ancient Fae, already in his realm?
~
Olivia Hart, half-human, half-shifter, stood on the porch of her small Swanicott home, sniffing the air. She knew full well Mastyr Zane had just had sex and that the same woman had fed him as well.
Some aberrant part of her growled at the thought of the unknown female having her paws all over the man. But her rational mind repressed the odd, possessive sensation; Zane belonged to no woman and hadn’t since the supposed attack on his wife a few years back.
Though there was absolutely no reason why she should have a claim on him, she growled anyway.
Apparently, the shifter part of her had long since decided Zane was her pack, a man she needed to protect, a man she belonged to. So, it was hard not to feel a need to rip his donors to shreds, especially when they’d spread their legs for him.
At least he looked a lot better than when he’d gone into the Elf Lords Hideaway, but still not great. He had a constant pained expression between his brows because of his chronic blood starvation. Most mastyr vampires did. It was a terrible curse for these men that when each gained a phenomenal amount of power, their ability to be satiated by the average woman’s blood, disappeared.
And how they suffered.
He kept looking her direction while revving his bike, but she knew he couldn’t see her. She wore her cloaking frequency, or at least that’s what she called it. She couldn’t remember exactly when she’d discovered she could hide herself from the world around her, but that day had given her some of the first peace she’d known in her twenty-seven years.
Growing up in a small New England town, and constantly sprouting fur, had been a difficult experience. The Nine Realms had only become known to the States three decades prior, around which time some damn Realm shifter had shown up, taken her mother for a joy ride, and Olivia had been the result.
She hadn’t truly understood how different she was until it was time to attend public school.
She’d been so excited at first because she wanted to be with other kids, have lots of friends. And though some of the children had quickly gotten past her fur, most of their parents were horrified by her half-breed DNA and prevented the attachments. She essentially grew up without friends and as the years advanced, the taunts became increasingly cruel.
She’d lived a very isolated life in Maine and as a teen, boyfriends had been few and far between. She would have moved to Swanicott sooner, but by her early twenties, her mother had been diagnosed with cancer. Olivia had stuck with her for years, taking care of her for a long time until finally her beloved parent had left the earth.
Nine months ago, Olivia had finally made the leap and moved to Swanicott Realm.
She’d hoped her new life in a land full of shifters would be different. But she’d lived so long in isolation, she found it hard to reach out to others, even to her own kind. She still didn’t have a true friend, someone she hung out with. But then life had mostly taught her to be wary of others so she held back. That she had special abilities even by Realm standards hadn’t helped her to jump into Swanicott society.
The problem had always been that just about any strong emotion brought out her wolf. She glanced down at her fingers. The moment Zane had arrived at the Elf Lords Hideaway and because of her powerful attraction to him, she’d sprouted silvery gray fur across the backs of both hands, long enough to cover the first set of knuckles.
She’d also sprouted a thick fur ruff that ran from the opposite ends of her collarbone and extended in a V down her chest to frame her cleavage. When she was completely unclothed, a similar line of fur ran from one hip bone to the other. What remained of her trimmed pubic hair matched the fur, even though she was otherwise a very blond woman.
She wondered what Mastyr Zane would think of her markings.
Ah, Zane.
He looked hot as hell sitting on his cherry red bike.
He had his long leather coat folded up and strapped to the back, which gave her a solid view of his broad shoulders. He wore snug black leather pants and hip boots, as all the Guardsmen did. Although in Zane’s case, a long row of silver skulls ran the entire outer seam of each boot. A diamond stud winked on his left earlobe and more often than she cared to admit, she’d imagined taking that lobe in her mouth and feeling the stud against her tongue.
But if the diamond wasn’t enough, he had a sexy tattoo along the right side of his neck that weakened her knees: a dagger and three red drops of blood.
Zane was all man.
He was good-looking as well, with clear blue eyes, strong, arched brows, and a tough jawline frequently covered in an attractive scruff. He had long black Guardsman hair that he wore in a woven clasp, very traditional for the Realm’s premier fighting force. All the Guardsmen grew their hair
out and she loved the look.
He was a tall, muscular man and the shifter part of her could look at him for hours.
As Zane revved his bike again, she sat down on the front porch of her home, preparing herself to make use of yet another strange power she possessed. In addition to cloaking herself, she could track along with Zane wherever he went in the realm, without ever leaving her house. She called the power ‘ghosting’, because she felt like a spirit when she made use of it, traveling with Zane completely apart from her corporeal self.
As he took off, the rumble of his bike blasted the small, two-lane street.
She followed along, ghosting with him as though living inside his mind, seeing everything that he saw and hearing every sound that hit his eardrums.
The forest opened up to a level but rocky stretch of land, the road narrowing to a single-lane. Much of Swanicott was in a rough state, something she also loved about this realm, from the rugged beaches to the tall mountains.
Zane slowed, taking an even narrower side path, no doubt because he enjoyed the challenge of navigating a more difficult trail.
Though she remained cloaked on the porch, she traveled on and on with him, her heart beating hard in her chest.
She loved this part of the journey, with Maris Luna off his right shoulder, as well as a cliff that dropped sharply to the beach fifty feet below. On his left, a grassy incline led to a ridge and more mixed forest, some of the trees in autumn splendor and the pines majestic and dark green. Huge gray boulders jutted everywhere.
All the while, the ocean glittered beneath a large moon.
She didn’t know how it was possible, but she saw everything through her ghosting vision as though the world was lit in a warm glow. Of course, her shifter vision was similar so that when she took on her wolf form and ran, she could see the land around her in the same way. Her human vision was less useful, night being just plain dark.
The narrow trail had lots of dips and rises, twists and turns, but Zane took it at top speed. She sensed his excitement, which ramped up her own.