DeliveredIntoHisHands

by Charlotte Boyett-Compo

  Marc studied her face then drew in a breath. “Oh my goddess. It wasn’t you,” he whispered. “You weren’t the woman in the window.”

  Her eyes shot to Garrick. “Someone was left inside when you set fire to the keep?” she asked, horror turning her face paler than it already was.

  He couldn’t answer. She was looking at him with shock and utter loathing.

  “We thought everyone was out,” Marc said. “The guards said everyone was accounted for.”

  “Save you,” Garrick said so quietly they barely heard him.

  “What happened that night? Why weren’t you with the other inhabitants?” Marc asked for him.

  She shifted her attention back to Marc as though she could no longer stand to look at Garrick.

  “After he departed, I went down to the postern gate and left. I didn’t want to face him after what he’d done. I was having a hard time dealing with it and I could not stay there and watch my home being razed. I walked for over an hour before a rebel troop found me and eventually took me to Alyx.”

  “It must have been a servant he saw in the window,” Marc said. “He thought it was you. When we found no body amid the ruins, we thought you had managed to escape. He has looked for you for years, refusing to believe you were dead. Where were you?”

  “Alyx’s men took me to the palace. The king gave me a new name so no one would know the Crimson Lord’s wife was living there.”

  “Yet the papers miraculously found you,” Garrick said. “When was that, Antonia? How long after that night?”

  “I always thought you would come for me,” she said. “I was terrified you would and terrified you wouldn’t. When you didn’t I realized you had washed your hands of me. You had cut your losses and moved on.”

  “How long?” he repeated.

  “Three years,” she said.

  “I’m surprised he waited that long,” he said with a snort.

  “I kept waiting for you,” she said. “Fool that I was. It wasn’t until he showed me proof that you weren’t likely to ever come that I finally gave up that foolish notion.”

  “What kind of proof?” Garrick demanded.

  “He told me you had taken another woman,” she said.

  Garrick turned his face to the side, eyes narrowing. “He told you what?”

  “He said you had a woman traveling with you, a Panthera warrioress who was fighting alongside you. He showed me a vid of you and her together.”

  “Kaitara,” Marc said on a long sigh. He shook his head. “I knew that woman was going to be trouble.”

  “Were you sleeping with her?” she asked.

  Garrick ignored her question. “What grounds for the divorce?” he wanted to know.

  “Desertion and adultery,” she said.

  “Were you sleeping with Clay?” Marc asked.

  “No,” she said. “No and the papers didn’t list Alyx as the man I supposedly cheated with anyway. It named Henry Belvoir.”

  “Who the hell is Henry Belvoir?” Marc questioned.

  “The man he killed in front of me,” she said, looking at Garrick. “An innocent man who had come to thank me for saving his child’s life.”

  “He was kissing you,” Garrick said. His hands were opening and closing into fists at his side.

  “He was happy, Garrick!” she said. “He and his wife had five girls and the boy child was a goddess-send to him. I don’t even think he knew what he was doing when he hugged me. He certainly wasn’t thinking about screwing me!”

  Garrick winced at the word. A muscle worked in his jaw. “How did Clay know about him?”

  “I told him,” she said. “I was sick about what you’d done. I’d never seen anyone die. You murdered a man in front of my eyes. The blame for that murder fell on me. I was horrified that I’d been the cause of Henry’s death. Then to have you tell me you were going to destroy my home and you didn’t care whether I was inside it or not when it fell? I was devastated.”

  “You said that?” Marc asked him.

  “I was angry,” Garrick replied. “And hurt. She had said mayhap she should reserve her touches for the man who wanted them.”

  “I knew you were following me!” she exclaimed. “It was Henry’s son I had delivered that night!”

  “He was kissing you, Antonia!” he shouted. “Have you any idea how much that must have hurt me? Infuriated me? I saw you in his arms with his mouth on yours and I went crazy.”

  “You told her you didn’t care if she was inside the keep when you set fire to it?” Marc said. “That’s cruel even for you, Rick.”

  “Shut the fuck up and stay out of this!” Garrick snarled. “I wasn’t in my right mind that night!”

  “You were calm enough when you said it,” she reminded him.

  “Men say things they don’t mean when they are senseless with jealousy, wench,” he told her. “I had found the woman I loved locked in the arms of another man. How would you have felt had you seen me in a similar situation?”

  “I did and that is why I signed the bloody papers!” she yelled at him. “I wouldn’t have signed them otherwise!”

  Marc looked at him with horror. “Did you sleep with Kaitara?”

  “Fuck no, I didn’t!” Garrick said.

  “Liar,” Antonia accused. “I saw the vid.”

  “What vid?” he demanded.

  “The one of her in your arms with your mouth on hers!” she flung at him.

  He stared at her—his mouth open—then slowly closed his eyes. “Oh sweet goddess,” he said, turning away. “Of all the times for a vid to have been made.”

  “You kissed that evil bitch?” Marc said. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  “That’s not what happened,” Garrick said, threading his fingers through his hair. “I didn’t kiss her. She kissed me.”

  “Your arms were around her,” Antonia stated. “Your mouth was on hers!”

  “She goddess-be-damned almost knocked me down,” Garrick defended. “I grabbed her wide load ass to keep from being bowled over and falling into the mud!”

  “Why did she kiss you?” Marc asked, eyes narrowed with suspicion.

  “Because she’d just found out I had recommended her for the Riezell Guardians,” he answered. “I would have put her up for sainthood to get her off Volakis and away from me.”

  “So that’s why she left in such a hurry,” Marc said.

  “Thanks to the goddess she was accepted,” Garrick mumbled.

  “You weren’t sleeping with her?” Antonia asked.

  “No!” Garrick snapped. “The woman is a lesbian. Everyone knew that and I am sure Clay did too!”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Just one more fucking lie Clay handed to you!” Garrick told her. “He played you, Antonia. He baited you with lies and you gobbled them up hook, line and sinker because you were so eager to think me a monster.”

  “You are a monster,” she said. “I realized that the night you drained poor Henry Belvoir to a husk before my very eyes then ripped his head off!”

  Marc flinched. “By the goddess, you didn’t,” he moaned.

  “I was angry!” Garrick said. “And consumed with jealousy you can’t even begin to understand, Zoltán. I loved this woman more than my own life and she betrayed me at every turn!”

  “I never betrayed you!” Antonia shouted at him loud enough to make both men blink. “You were all too willing to believe the worst of me, Garrick Warwyck.”

  “You married that lying rebel prick,” Garrick said. “You slept with him! Did you have brats by him as well?”

  “He couldn’t give me children,” she said.

  “Well, thank the goddess for small favors!” he threw at her. “I could have and I would have had you stuck around long enough!”

  “Aye, well it’s a moot point, isn’t it?” she said, her bottom lip quivering. “I am Alyxdair Clay’s woman now.”

  Something dark and evil and infinitely lethal moved through Garrick’s blue eyes. �
��Out,” he told Marc in a low, rumbling growl.

  “Rick…” Marc began.

  “Get the fuck out, Zoltán. Now!”

  “Don’t do something you will regret,” Marc warned.

  “Leave or by the goddess I will rip you in half!” Garrick bellowed.

  Marc gave Antonia a pleading look then flung the tent flap aside, mumbling under his breath as he exited.

  “Still bullying your friends, I see,” she said when they were alone.

  Garrick leaned his hips against the desk and folded his arms. He said nothing, just stared at her from beneath his lashes. He let the silence spin out for he had learned to do so unnerved any opponent he faced.

  But Antonia wasn’t just any opponent. Even after all their years of being separated, she still knew the man better than anyone. She held her ground—waiting him out—with a carefully blank look and steady eyes.

  He finally broke the stalemate, his impatience showing in the darkened depths of his stare.

  “I received a missive from your king this eve,” he said. “He has declared his surrender.”

  If he thought the news would surprise her, it did not. Antonia had been expecting it to come to that. The Volakis army was all but depleted of arms. Many of the major cities were in ruins from being bombed by Modarthan war planes. Entire villages had been burned to the ground and the fields laid to waste so food was a scarcity all over the planet. Hundreds of thousands of sons, brothers, husbands and lovers had perished in the fighting. The king was as weary of the war as his people were broken by it.

  “I told him I would accept if certain terms were met.”

  Antonia sighed heavily. “One of those terms being he turn Alyx over to you.”

  Garrick nodded.

  “He won’t do it,” she said and before he could argue otherwise, she told him why. “Any more than your father would turn you over to King Cormac.”

  Garrick frowned. “Are you telling me Clay is his son?”

  “By one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting,” she replied.

  “A bastard,” he said.

  “Aye, Garrick. A bastard like you.”

  “The war will continue until I have him in hand,” he stated.

  She shrugged. “As asinine as that is, I do not doubt it for a moment. You would rather annihilate an entire planet to exact your revenge than show even a modicum of mercy or restraint. I would expect no better from a man like you.”

  His eyes widened. “A man like me?” he questioned. “A man like me?”

  “You owe me your life,” she said.

  “What?” he asked, puzzled by the sudden switch in topic.

  “That night so long ago I could have left you staked to the ground,” she reminded him. “Let the Sun take you.”

  “As your lover planned,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “But I didn’t,” she said, unmindful of his interruption. “I showed you mercy. I helped you. I saved you.”

  “And now wish you hadn’t,” he snapped.

  “No, that’s not true,” she said. “If I had it to do again—despite everything you have done, everything you have put me and my people through—I would. You were my Chosen and no matter how much you have hurt me, I love you still.”

  He snorted.

  “I don’t respect you,” she said. “I even hate you as a man, as a warrior, but I can’t abolish my love for you no matter how hard I try and trust me, I have tried.”

  “While lying beneath Clay with his cock in your adulterous cunt,” he sneered.

  “I believed myself divorced from you. I believed my Joining to him to be legal,” she said.

  “Pitiful excuses,” he told her.

  “They are not excuses, Garrick. They are explanations.”

  “Do you love him?” he asked.

  “In some ways I dislike him almost as greatly as I dislike you. The two of you are so much alike you might as well have been cut from the same cloth using the same pattern with the same shears.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “I heard what you asked. What you really want to know is if I am in love with him. The answer to that is no. I’m not and never have been.”

  “Yet you Joined with him, let him fuck you!”

  “That is part and parcel of marriage, Garrick,” she said in a tired voice. “He took me in when you cast me aside.”

  “I did not cast you aside!” he shouted. “You fucking left me!”

  “After you told me in essence you didn’t care whether I lived or died,” she retorted. “Where was I to go after that, Garrick? I had no home—you saw to that. I had no money and only the clothes on my back. He took care of me and—”

  “Oh, I’m sure he did,” he snapped. He unfolded his arms and braced his palms on the edge of his desk. “And got a bedmate in the bargain. Did he teach you how to suck his cock in the way he liked?”

  She lashed out and slapped him, rocking his head to the side, her eyes furious. “How dare you?” she hissed. “He never asked such a thing from me because he knew I would not do it! My times in his bed were few and far between. The only nights I went to him was when the loneliness and the hurt got the better of me and I needed comforting. You can believe that or not. I don’t give a damn either way!”

  Slowly he turned his face toward her. The truth of her statement was blazing back at him. She was trembling, her bottom lip quivering and tears had formed in her eyes. He wanted to reach out, take her into his arms but he doubted she would let him.

  “A transport ship will be here tomorrow,” he said. “It will be taking our severely wounded back to Modartha. You will be on that ship when it leaves.”

  Her eyes flared. “No, I will not!”

  “You don’t have a choice,” he stated. “I’m not giving you one.”

  “I will not leave my world!” she said. “You’ve taken everything else away from me. You can’t take that as well!”

  “I am going after Clay,” he said. “And one way or another one of us is going to die before the end of the week. If I need to dismantle the entire palace and put every man there to the sword to find that bastard, I will. But I will have you safe no matter what! I will have you where he can never put his hands on you again!”

  “And what if Alyx kills you? How do you think your father will feel about me showing up on his doorstep?”

  “He knows how I feel about you and that is all that matters. You are my wife, the Lady Warwyck, and as such entitled to all I possess. You will never want for anything ever again and can live in seclusion if that suits you. No one would dare lay a hand to you, Antonia. Not even my father.”

  “And Warwyck Castle?” she asked. “What becomes of it?”

  “It can fall to the ground for all I care,” he replied.

  “Let me stay there,” she said. “This is my home world. I—”

  “When I kill him, I will be returning to my home world,” he said. “I will have my wife with me.”

  She shook her head. “I want to stay here,” she said, tears beginning to fall from her eyes. “This is my home.”

  “You will do what I tell you,” he growled.

  And she came at him with her fists. He barely had time to grab her wrists before she punched him. She was like a wild thing struggling in his arms and he had to deflect her knee twice as she aimed it at his crotch. Finally he threw his right leg behind and around her and snapped her to him so their bodies were jammed tightly together.

  “Enough!” he yelled. He was wrestling with her as she writhed against him, her fingers crooked so she could gouge her nails into the backs of his hands.

  She tried to head-butt him and when that didn’t work, she bit him in the shoulder.

  That was the last straw. He angled his head and before he knew what he was doing, sank his fangs into her neck.

  “No!” she screamed, flailing harder against him but he was drawing her blood, locked onto her flesh and as he drank, something strange was beginning to happen to
her body.

  Garrick hadn’t intended to Mark her for the Changing during a fit of anger. It had been his resolve to put her through the Changing, to make her One with the Blood with him, but he had wanted to do it gently while she was enthralled, glamoured. Now, there would be pain he had not wanted her to experience and a wild surge of animalistic passion on her part that he knew would shame her when she remembered it.

  And remember it she would.

  He groaned, not because his plan had been laid to waste, but because her blood was so sweet, so intoxicating that it was filling his senses, doing things to his body that he’d never experienced before. He could feel his fangs sharpening, becoming acutely sensitive to his penetration of her vein. He was feeding from her as he never had from any other living thing and it scared him. He knew he had to stop else he would do to her what he had done to the unfortunate Henry Belvoir.

  Snapping his head back, retracting his fangs though they ached almost as badly as the hard-as-steel erection pressing at the front of his uniform pants, he jerked her arms down and behind her.

  “Antonia!” he shouted to gain her attention but she was fighting him savagely, squirming like an eel against him—which only increased the need in his cock.

  Twin rivulets of blood were tracking down her neck, pulsing at the puncture wounds. Her breasts were pressed to his chest and her nipples engorged so he felt their hardness through his shirt. He wanted to drag his tongue over the blood. He wanted to nip the tight little buds thrusting against him.

  “Fuck me,” she said, shocking him to his core for he’d never heard her say such a thing. A part of him wanted to slap her for that part told him it was Clay’s influence that had corrupted her. Another part wanted to throw her to the floor of the tent and rut her like a stag.

  He could feel the Changing beginning. Already her body heat had gone up. There was a wildness to her eyes and he caught a fleeting glimpse of red sparks flickering there. It was getting harder to hold her for her strength was increasing. Though he had yet to share his own blood with her, he knew the enzymes he had transferred from his fangs into her bloodstream. The vampire-borne proteins that catalyzed and accelerated the biochemical processes of the Changing were already coursing through her veins and making rapid, radical changes in her DNA.