The Vampires' Blood Mate: A Paranormal Reverse Harem Romance

by Lili Zander

  “She’s soft. She's frail. I could shatter her.”

  “That's where you're wrong.” I’m on a roll contradicting the prince. Future career prospects: dim. “Look at her. After everything she's gone through, she should be thinking only about herself. She should be hard and bitter and angry, and yet she's none of those things. She's kind and empathetic, and she cares very, very, deeply. And when she loves, she loves with her whole heart.”

  Zeke laughs at something she says and kisses her, his expression affectionate.

  “Strength is more than brandishing a dagger, Prince Ragnar. Strength is more than cage fights in the Lower Deeps, more than getting your bones broken over and over again to learn to fight. Strength is about staying true to who you are, despite all the adversity thrown at you.”

  He doesn't say anything. But he takes the data stick from me, and he puts it in his pocket, and that is going to have to be enough.

  23

  Zeke

  So much death. So much carnage. I stand on the balcony and stare down at the bodies of my family. I should feel something. Sorrow. Grief. Anger. Anything.

  There’s nothing left. I’m empty.

  My father and my mother lie next to each other. In death, both of them look more peaceful than they did in life. I can almost forget that they starved me to get me to hack into the financial systems of their rivals. I can almost forget their callousness toward the children my father had killed. Lying there in death, you wouldn’t believe Ben Leyva had killed his father over a gambling debt. You wouldn’t believe that Paris Leyva would import slaves from across the galaxy and make them fight wild beasts in an arena for sport.

  Saber and Nero are tiptoeing around me. Saber’s asked me a hundred times if I need something. Nero’s brought me food I don’t want; drink I don’t need. They’re trying to help, I know.

  But I don't feel the grief that they are expecting me to. I'm just numb.

  My cousins Anton and Sergei had been children when I left, eleven and thirteen. They’re young men now. Too young to die. What had they grown up to become? Had they become like the rest of the family, corrupt, entitled, and self-centered? Had they been sucked into the family’s machinations, or were they looking for a way out, the way I had been, nine years ago? I’ll never know now.

  Then I focus on the corner I’ve been avoiding, and I see the three dead children, and a pit opens up inside me, a deep dark place in which there is only despair. It threatens to tear me from the inside out, it vows to suck me into its darkness, and I don’t know how to escape being swallowed whole. I don't know how to survive.

  Raven comes out and stands next to me, her shoulder touching mine. “Did Saber send you?” I ask her.

  She nods. “He’s worried about you.”

  “He doesn’t have to be,” I lie. I was estranged from my family. I was stricken from the rolls of Family Leyva. This shouldn’t matter. This shouldn’t affect me. “It’s been nine years. I don’t even recognize most of the family. Just my parents.” I laugh shortly. “I can’t recognize most of them, and Levitan still targeted them. How’s that for irony?”

  She links her fingers in mine.

  Below me, men and women, dressed in mourning white, walk among the corpses, drenching fuel on the pyres. Sari Nayaju, the woman in charge of the clean-up team that Mazer had sent ahead of our arrival, had asked me if I wanted to light them.

  It just seems so final. Only a few days back, I was talking to Nero about coming back to Zola Prime. Offering Anton and Sergei a way out, if they wanted one. And now it’s too late. No more time. No more second chances. No more faint hope of reconciliation.

  I’m not capable of setting the biers on fire.

  Ragnar and Nero enter the courtyard, also dressed in white. Saber joins them a few minutes later. They talk among themselves, and then Captain Nayaju and her team hand them torches.

  Ragnar heads toward the children. Saber stops him, putting his body squarely in Ragnar’s way. The two of them have a quiet argument, and then the prince relents and heads to a different corner of the courtyard.

  I can’t bring myself to perform the final rites; Saber, Nero, and Ragnar are going to stand in my stead.

  This is what a bô is. It’s not about sex; it’s not about sharing a partner. It’s a bond. A promise that nobody stands on their own. When it is dark, there will be somebody to light the way. When sorrow presses down, thick and suffocating, someone will share the weight.

  Raven loved her family. “What was it like to lose your parents?”

  “I couldn’t bring myself to believe it,” she says quietly. Her voice is soft, remembering. “I wanted so much for them to be alive. It took me months to give up hope.” She takes a deep breath and puts her arm around my waist. “And it took me years to find hope again.”

  “Does the wound ever heal? Does the gaping hole ever close?”

  “Yes,” she says simply. “The scar will remain, but the hole can be filled. You, Nero, Saber, the three of you filled my hole.”

  I know it's a serious moment, but I can't stop the twitch of my lips. She hears the words she said out loud and groans, burying her face in my shoulder. “I didn't mean that literally.”

  “I know.” We don't talk again for a long time, but I’m glad she’s here. I hold her hand as Saber, Nero, and Ragnar light the pyres. We stand and watch Family Leyva burn, the flames illuminating the night sky. The sun is rising on the horizon when I finally turn away.

  The pyres have burned to nothing. All that is left of my family is ashes and dust.

  What happens now? I stare at the horizon, and something clicks into place. We’re here, and we’re together. Harek Levitan did his worst, but it hasn't broken us.

  Now, we fight.

  I’ve spent days trying to break into the tracker chip. At every turn, I’ve been beaten. Tomas, who is a really good hacker, as good, if not better than me, has given up. “It’s Jowth in origin,” he said, throwing up his arms in frustration.

  I even asked Lin Perscule for help, but while he got further than Tomas, he was ultimately stymied.

  The problem is in the nature of the encryption. Most ciphers are either numbers-based or puzzle-based. This chip isn’t. The cryptography is a gameworld. I will have to neuro-dive into a hostile setting, fight my way through obstacles that have been spawned from the mind of a psychopath, defeat fire-breathing monsters and rage-filled armies.

  Being killed in the gameworld won’t kill me in real life. But it provides a nasty jolt. “Don’t do it,” Lin Perscule had told me when I’d asked about it. “I got killed once. I spent the next two weeks in a coma. Our minds aren’t set up for that kind of shock.”

  I’ve dived into the gameworld repeatedly in the last week, but I’ve never been able to get past the fifth obstacle—a literal pit of snakes, probably Levitan’s ironic homage to Shayde society on Starra—before I have to pull out.

  It’s impossible to defeat. It’s dangerous. It could seriously damage me.

  But this time, when I tackle the chip, there is no possibility of failure. There is no cloud of uncertainty hanging over my head. This time, I'm cold and crystal clear.

  I slice into Levitan's protections with the precision of a scalpel. Obstacles are flung in my way; I hurtle past them. I behead the monster and use its ax to chop a tree down. Using the trunk as a bridge, I speed past the pit of snakes. A swarm of poisonous insects zooms toward me, and I dive over the edge of a cliff. Sharks glide through the water, but I scramble to safety just in time.

  Bullets ricochet past me. Packs of werebeasts hunt me. Fire-breathing dragons circle the sky. Vines of ivy come to life and coil around me, squeezing the air from my lungs. Monsters with venom-tipped swords swing at me.

  I cut my way past them all.

  I faced these obstacles before, and I’ve pulled out every single time they seemed insurmountable. This time, I stand my ground, and I fight.

  They come in waves. Over and over. Relentless. Battering. You canno
t pass, they seem to say.

  But today, I will.

  Today, the waves won’t drown me. Today, the cyclone won’t sweep me away. Today, the snarling beasts will face me and die.

  The gameboard launches an attack; I counter it. Another, and yet another. I am an arrow. I am a blade of light. I am power and purpose and grim determination.

  Then I’m in front of the gates, and there’s just one final obstacle. One last mountain of a beast stands in front of me.

  It is the stuff of childhood nightmares. Its body is covered with flint. It is three times my height, and four times as broad. Its tail is as thick as my shoulders. Its two hands hold stone clubs, each club taller than me.

  Well, fuck.

  My adrenaline drains away as I face the giant beast and try to plot a way to get past. I shoot it with the gun I’ve collected in the gameworld, but the bullet bounces off the monster’s rock hide, causing no damage.

  All it succeeds in doing is pissing off the beast. It snarls in challenge, opening its jaw wide, revealing row after row of vicious teeth. Its claws are wickedly long and dangerously sharp. Spikes stick out of its back, each one cruelly serrated, and tipped with red.

  Blood. I don’t have to be a genius to figure out how I’ll die if I touch that blood. Levitan does love his fiendish virus.

  Nero would charge the beast. Saber would mutter a curse about recklessness, but he’d charge the beast too. Both of them are born warriors. Not me. I've had to work at this. I’ve put in the time. I have the scars to show for it.

  Think smart. There’s a weakness somewhere. There’s always a weakness. I study the beast, and I have it. There is an inch-wide gap in the flint where its head meets its neck.

  Behead the creature with a sword. Got it.

  I throw away the gun and grab my dagger, just in time. The beast charges. It swipes at me, and its razor-sharp claws slice through the air an inch from my face. I step aside and let its momentum carry it forward, and when it’s past me, I run up the monster’s tail, dodge past the blood-tipped spikes, and plunge my sword into its neck.

  Everything vanishes. The beast, the jungle, the gates.

  I’m through.

  I grab everything I need and jump free. I wake the others. “Call Mazer,” I tell Ragnar. “It’s urgent. I got through the tracker chip. I have the details and locations of all the missing people. Eighty-five thousand, five hundred, and thirty-seven people, hidden in forty-seven different locations. Mazer will need to muster troops fast. He needs to secure the humans before Levitan moves them again.”

  We’ve been playing defense for almost two weeks. We have just ten days left, and then, catastrophe will strike. But we finally have something to work with. We’re finally playing offense.

  I can only hope it’s not too late.

  24

  Raven

  Zeke’s done the impossible. He has broken through the tracker. Laid out in front of us are the names, ID, and locations of every single person that was rounded up and infected with the virus.

  All eighty-seven thousand, five hundred, and seventy-three of them.

  Ragnar gets on the comm immediately. By the time we return to Starra, all the missing people have been found.

  That's the good news.

  The bad news?

  The tracker yielded a list of names and locations, but it didn’t shed any new light on the virus. We don’t have a vaccine. We don’t have a cure. My transfusion failed, and Dr. Karling hasn’t attempted another one, which makes me believe he doesn’t think it’ll work.

  And because we don’t have a cure for the virus, we can’t let the infected humans leave.

  As bitterly unfair as that is, I understand where Ragnar is coming from. There are thousands of infected humans. Some of them might like vampires, some of them might be indifferent to them. But there's bound to be a few humans that loathe vampires.

  Ma Kaila wanted to use my blood to poison the blood supply of Boarus 4. Equality Pact would have used me as a weapon. Now, there are more than eighty thousand such weapons. As much as I hate to admit it, we can’t release them. Until we find a way of getting rid of the virus, these people have to stay imprisoned.

  We’ve become their new jailers. The food’s better, and the sanitation conditions have improved dramatically—no more peeing into a bucket in the corner of each cell— but for all intents and purposes, the humans are still prisoners.

  But finding them has given us a much-needed shot in the arm, especially after the horrifying death of Zeke's family. We needed this win desperately.

  “What now?” I ask Saber as we land in Starra.

  “We question the prisoners,” he replies grimly. “Vampires were guarding them; we test their blood. A vaccine exists; Ottar Thistle was vaccinated when he bit you. Maybe we get lucky, and some of the guards are vaccinated too. If we get a blood sample, Dr. Karling should be able to isolate the vaccine and replicate it.”

  From the look on his face, I can tell he thinks this isn’t a very likely scenario. “Can I help question the prisoners?”

  “Sure.”

  Nobody is looking very excited. “It's still good news though, right?” I prompt. “We figured out Levitan's plan, and we found the people he was going to use to implement it. For the moment, we’ve thwarted him. Why aren’t any of you looking happier?”

  Ragnar lifts his head. “It’s too easy. Levitan will have a Plan B.”

  That’s the first thing he’s said to me since Mazer broke the news about what had happened to Zeke’s family. He hasn’t talked to me; he hasn’t sought me out. He’s avoided me as much as he can.

  I can’t lie; it hurts.

  But can I really blame Ragnar? I’d do the same thing in his place. People keep dying around him. I understand why he wants to isolate himself.

  I wish things were different. I wish things were simpler.

  Don’t be foolish, Raven. People are being murdered. People are being imprisoned. We’re no closer to a cure for the virus than we were two weeks ago. This is not the time for you to be thinking about sex.

  But it's more than sex. Had this been about simple lust, I would have slept with him back on Merin. It’s more than lust. My emotions are involved. I have feelings for Ragnar.

  And he won’t even look me in the eye.

  25

  Raven

  Eight days to the three-week deadline. Eight days until Astrid needs to give Harek Levitan an answer.

  Ten vampires are lined up against a wall. Ragnar walks into the room, Dr. Karling on his heels. The darkness within him straining to break out and destroy everyone there. “Let me see if I understand what happened here,” he says, his voice dangerously calm. “The ten of you were given five hundred thousand credits to run this operation. You paid a bounty for each human brought to you. You imprisoned these humans. You beat the men. You raped the women.” Rage licks the corners of his eyes. “You hurt the children. Anything was allowed, as long as they didn’t die.” His voice dips lower. “The one thing you didn’t do was drink from them.”

  I watch from an adjacent room, bile rising in my throat. I know what’s going to happen next, and I don’t want to be here for it. “Leave,” Zeke murmurs. “This won’t be easy to watch.”

  His entire family was murdered, and he’s here. “I’m staying.”

  “Nobody doubts how strong you are,” Nero says, his eyes flashing with an emotion I can’t quite decipher. “You have nothing to prove to us or anyone else.”

  “I know.” I’m staying because the deadline is painfully close. I’m staying because the same darkness that cloaks Ragnar laps at all of us. I’m staying because if we’re going to fall, we’re going to fall together.

  If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Ragnar, it’s that he doesn’t like hurting people. Torture turns his stomach. Yet he’s in the room, a syringe in his hand, because there’s nothing that Ragnar will ask his people to do that he’s not prepared to do himself.

  “Tell me why.
”

  Nobody speaks. The ten vampires stare back at the prince.

  Ragnar lifts his shoulders in a shrug. “I guess we’re doing this the hard way.” He turns to Dr. Karling. “What do you have for me, doctor?”

  Ivar Karling swallows visibly. “We might have a vaccine, Prince Ragnar,” he says, his face white. “We need test subjects.”

  The prince bares his teeth in a feral smile. “What a happy coincidence. We have ten volunteers.” He points to a hard-eyed woman. “Sylvia Bethune. One of your prisoners was dying of thirst. I heard you drank a bottle of water in front of him, laughed, and walked away. Come forward. Let’s find out if Dr. Karling’s vaccine works.”

  The room blurs. I’m back in Glacis. Josef Sand lines us up, and his cold eyes sweep over us. “The new girl,” he says, pointing to me. The tip of his cigarette glows red, and none of the other children can take their eyes off it. Their knees tremble, but they’re silent. So silent. Nobody even whimpers, and a very bad feeling fills me about what’s going to happen next. “Come forward.”

  “Raven.” Saber’s voice yanks me away from the past. There’s no give in his tone, none at all. He looks at Shadow, who’s appeared at my side. “Get her out of here.”

  Shadow takes me to a garden. We sit on the bench next to a pond and watch the fat fish glide lazily through the water. “Why don’t you tell them?” she asks finally.

  “They probably already know.” Zeke’s seen my file. I can’t imagine he wouldn’t have shared what he found with Nero and Saber. They haven’t mentioned it to me, and I’m grateful for that. I don’t want to remember. “The camps happened. I can’t change that.”