by Nora Ash
“Release. Her.” The anger in Warin’s voice was like nothing I’d ever heard before—cold and terrible, and so filled with sorrow I wanted to wrap my arms around him to comfort him. Tell him everything would be okay.
But it wouldn’t. I felt myself slipping away, and knew in the depths of my soul that it was too late.
“Don’t leave me. Please, my love, please. Stay. I can’t… I can’t go on without you.”
Warin’s voice followed me into the abyss. The very last thing I sensed was the echo of his despair as I disappeared into the nothingness.
Forgive me.
34
I was safe in the darkness. So completely and utterly at peace. Energy seemed to spark around and inside me, vibrating with the rhythm of life itself. But best of all… best of all was the warm, golden bond that seemed to run from the deepest part of my being to him. I felt his presence in that bond before I even noticed the solid form behind me, holding me so wonderfully tight. It hummed quietly, contentedly as I carefully prodded at it with my mind.
Warin.
A sense of love so pure it made me quiver ran toward me through the bond when I thought his name, and the arms holding me constricted tighter for a moment.
“Where are we?” I asked—but the second I opened my mouth, something gritty and unpleasant fell into my mouth. Dirt.
I hacked and spat, only to get more of it in my mouth. My hands hit more of it as I flailed to free myself from the unpleasant sensation of eating soil.
Warin chuckled behind me, sending a wave of amusement and fondness through the bond. Then he finally moved, reaching up above us to push at the darkness surrounding us. It broke apart and crumbled, and I shielded my eyes as dirt rained down over us.
“Come, my love. It’s time to rise.” Warin released his grip on me and jumped out of what turned out to be the hole we’d been laying in. He crouched down on the edge of it and reached a hand down toward me.
I blinked up at him, squinting through the soil that still clung to my eyelashes—and gasped in awe at the sight that met me. Behind Warin was a vast expanse of midnight blue night sky dotted with millions upon millions of stars. High above us, galaxies swirled in the distance.
A gust of wind hit my nostrils, setting my senses alive with the thousands of scents it carried. But strongest among them was Warin’s. Crisp, earthy, and powerful. Goddess, the power radiating off him made me dizzy with longing. I looked up at him then, truly looked… and gaped in wonder. He was even more beautiful than before. His skin glowed in the starlight, and those blue eyes… they were so filled with love and light.
I didn’t think—only reacted as need so urgent I couldn’t control it washed over me.
Warin laughed, but it was cut short when I leapt out of the hole and into him, knocking him to the ground. I straddled his sprawled-out form and pressed my mouth to his, kissing him with everything I was worth. He wasn’t cold to the touch anymore.
The golden bond inside me still hummed, but I was too focused on the velvety sensation of his lips and tongue against mine, and his arms around my body.
“Warin,” I breathed into his mouth.
“Hmm?”
“I’m hungry.”
“I know. I’ve brought you something to eat.” He sat up, gently moving me from his body to the ground. I looked around us as he got up. We were surrounded by a thick coverage of brambles and bushes.
“Where are we?” I asked with a frown.
“Michigan,” he said. He was reaching for something underneath a particularly thick cover of bushes.
Michigan?
“What… happened?”
Warin sighed softly. In the bond, I felt hesitance… and a wave of guilt. He returned to me and crouched down as he handed me a plastic bag filled with something dark and viscous. “How much do you remember?”
“I…” I forced my mind to go back. It was hazy… almost as if my memories were dulled in comparison to the present. Everything was so crisp and clear now, as if my senses had been fine-tuned after a lifetime of being too weak to properly grasp the full colors and contrasts of the world. “I remember Zeth bringing us to Indiana. Escaping the cage…”
“You were so clever, my love,” he whispered, but I could sense his sadness in the bond.
“I killed someone,” I said, rubbing at the place in my chest where the unhappy hum from the bond seemed to be tied. “I hid you—I didn’t know my magic could do that. They said… Oh, goddess, the skinwalkers! The captured me again, they—“
“They’re dead,” Warin said. “Aleric killed them when he came for you.”
Something in his voice… a hardness that hadn’t been there before mixed with the pang of sorrow and fury in the bond made my memories finally click into place.
Aleric. Aleric had tried to Embrace me. I’d been dying, and it was the only way… And I’d been slipping away, but I remembered what he’d said.
“I’m Thea?” I whispered. “I’m… I was… We met before? Eight hundred years ago? I died?”
“Yes,” he said. “You were my soulmate, and you died.”
Then something else dawned on me. I stared at the bag Warin had offered me.
It was filled with blood. Donor blood.
“I died,” I repeated, eyes wide in horror. “Oh my goddess, I’m a fucking vampire!”
“I am… so sorry.” It was a soft whisper, but in the bond I felt tenderness and shame. “I couldn’t… I couldn’t lose you, Liv. I—“
I put a hand on his arm, silencing him. “Warin—please, don’t. Don’t apologize for saving my life.”
He drew in a deep, shuddering breath. So unnecessary, yet I found myself mimicking it. “I passed my curse on to you. The one I wished to protect the most. I was too weak to let you go, and I doomed you to the eternal night by my side. How can I not apologi—“
This time, I clapped my hand over his mouth to stop him. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Warin. I felt you when I woke up. You were happy. And I… I am alive. Or… kind of alive, as it were. I’d be dead if you hadn’t Embraced me. Truly dead. Do you know what I felt when I woke up? Peace. I knew you were with me, I knew we were together, and I felt nothing but peace. This… this was always going to happen.” I moved my hand from his mouth and gave him a small smile. “You don’t fall in love with an immortal and then just kick it after a good sixty or so years. That’d be pretty dickish.”
“How are you so calm?” he asked, searching my eyes. He reached out and touched his fingers to my cheek, as if in wonder. “I took your humanity.”
I wrapped my hand around his, pressing my cheek to his palm. “You gave me so much more in return. This? This doesn’t feel like a curse to me. I can feel you, inside.” I pressed my free hand to my chest where the bond hummed contentedly.
“I feel you too,” he whispered.
I leaned in and kissed him again, and moaned when he parted his lips and took me in, clutching me to him.
“Liv,” he moaned in between passionate kisses. “My Liv. My soulmate.”
I pulled back at that word, eyes widening. “Warin, what… what happened? With Thea, I mean. Why did Aleric know about her when you didn’t?”
His gaze hardened even as he stroked my back soothingly. “Around the year 1200, he and I were traveling on the British Isles. Raiding remote villages. He told me… we came across her—across you—in one of these villages. And I recognized you. I took you with me. But we didn’t know what you were, so we sought out the nearest Ancient for guidance.”
“Zeth,” I whispered.
“Yes.” Warin’s eyes darkened for a moment. “Zeth. He knew what you were. And he and Aleric conspired to kill you.”
I gasped. “That prick! Why?”
“Aleric didn’t go into details for Zeth’s motivations, but when I woke with you this evening, I understood why. It’s the power… I have never felt stronger than this night, with you by my side. He must have known… and wanted to get rid of a potential rival before our bo
nd solidified. As for Aleric…” Warin closed his eyes for a moment, and I felt sadness and fiery anger flare in our bond. “He thought you were twisting me… changing me. He was afraid he’d lose me because of you. But when you died, he realized his mistake. He felt my pain in our bond, and knew I wouldn’t live long with a shattered soul… so he sought out a witch. Zeth’s witch. She placed a curse on our bloodline, to make me forget. To ensure I, if you ever came back, wouldn’t know you for what you are.”
“I am going to kill him,” I growled, running my tongue over my teeth when they ached in response to my anger.
“There’s no need.” Warin touched his finger top my lips, parting them to rub the pad of his thumb over my canines. It instantly eased the ache. “In playing Zeth’s games, Aleric has created what he sought so desperately to avoid. He has lost me. He is alone now. And he will be alone forevermore.”
Despite my anger, a small pang of pity bloomed in my gut. I’d seen how much Aleric loved his brother—how he would do anything to protect him. Losing Warin was the worst punishment the volatile vampire could endure.
But Aleric’s pain wasn’t my problem. He’d apparently killed me, after all.
I pushed the thread of pity away and focused on my lover. My Sire. “And Zeth? How do we stay safe from him?”
Warin snorted. “My love… Zeth isn’t going to come near us. Feel your power.”
I frowned in confusion, but did what he asked. The moment I focused inward, the energy inside of me rose like a tidal wave, sparking against my senses.
“Holy crap!”
“The completed soulmate connection,” Warin said softly. “Two halves of a whole are far stronger together than apart. Zeth will not be able to harm us ever again.”
“Especially not if we take the fight to him,” I said, glee flooding my system as images of tearing into the haughty Ancient played before my mind’s eye. My canines ached again, deeper this time, until something released in my gums. A soft snick startled me, but the flood of relief was so intense it took me a moment to realize the sound had come from my own mouth. Carefully, I prodded at my newly elongated fangs with the tip of my tongue. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
Warin rumbled a laugh. “You should feed, Liv. Some blood should quell any urges to run off and start a war with an Ancient on your first night.”
I eyeballed the bag of blood. It didn’t look super appetizing. “How about you take me hunting?”
He grasped my face lightly between his hands and pressed a kiss to my forehead before he peered into my eyes. “I will teach you everything there is to know about this life, my love. We have eternity together—and I want to show you every last corner of the world. But I’m not taking my newborn Daughter anywhere before you finish that blood bag—and the citizens of Michigan will thank me for it.”
“Fine, fine,” I huffed, reaching for the blood bag. “Making me eat damn donor blood for my first meal. You’re lucky I love you so much.”
“Yes,” he said softly, kissing my nose. “Yes, I am.”
Epilogue
Aleric
* * *
“Back to London so soon?” Aleric arched an eyebrow at the Egyptian as he leaned against the limousine’s passenger door.
Zeth leveled him with a cold glare. “If you think this breaks our agreement, youngling, you are sorely mistaken.”
“Really?” Aleric offered the Elder his most surprised expression. “Because I could have sworn your hold over me just vanished into thin air. Warin knows now.”
“Yes. He does,” Zeth said, tone as infuriatingly superior as always. As if he hadn’t just lost—and lost so spectacularly he was running away with his tail tucked between his legs. Not something that happened often to the Ancient being. In the eight hundred cursed years Aleric had known him, it was a first, for sure.
“Yet you and I are still bound by our word… if your remember. He may have bonded with his soulmate,” Zeth spat out the word as if it tasted foul on his tongue, “but you are still in my debt. Don’t ever forget that, Aleric Waldlitch. You won’t like it if I have to remind you. I promise you that.”
Aleric suppressed a grimace. He knew all too well what happened to the wretched souls who didn’t uphold their end of Zeth’s twisted bargains.
“Besides…” Zeth pulled on the limousine door, slamming it shut so Aleric had to jump back, though the tinted window was still rolled halfway down. “I’m all you have left now. I wonder, would your brother even care if something unfortunate should happen to you? Would he coming looking for you? Mayhap he would simply feel… relieved?”
Aleric gritted his teeth under Zeth’s defiant, golden gaze.
The black-haired vampire’s lips curved in a small smile. “I shall be in touch, Waldlitch. Do make sure you pick up the phone when I call.”
Aleric stared silently after the black limousine as it made its way down the driveway and out onto the road. He didn’t allow Zeth the satisfaction of seeing him press a hand to his chest where the torn bond with his brother jabbed painfully behind his ribs, saving the gesture for when the car had disappeared behind a hill.
Yes. He was alone now. All alone. The fury in Warin’s face had echoed through their bond so violently that Aleric could still feel the agony as his brother cut him off.
Through his eleven hundred years, he had never been alone before. Not truly. Warin had been there, through the death of their Sire, through every moment of every night. He’d been muted, since Thea’s death. Numb. But he’d been there.
Now there was nothing but pain. Pain, and a gaping hole threatening to swallow him up.
Aleric gritted his teeth and looked to the sky. Maybe… maybe if he could bring Zeth to his knees, Warin would find a way to forgive him.
One day.
It was only the faintest thread of hope, but it was all he needed. Zeth had to pay for what he’d done. The humiliation of running from a vampire several thousand years his juniors, and a newborn witchling, was not enough. It had to be… something more permanent.
Something that would render the ancient being incapable of extracting the debt he had manipulated from Aleric.
Aleric let the cool night air fill his senses and wash away the raw pain in his chest, suppressing it until it was only a dull, throbbing ache. There. Better.
And now… now it was time to locate a necromancer. Ideally so clueless they could be easily manipulated into doing his bidding… yet strong enough to make life miserable for a vampire as old as time.
Debt of Bones
Aleric’s Story
* * *
Aleric’s hunt for a necromancer he can manipulate to do his bidding doesn’t go quite to plan. Follow his unexpected—and highly unwelcome—run-in with Fate in:
DEBT OF BONES
Ancient Blood - Book Two
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Also by Nora Ash
ANCIENT BLOOD SERIES
Origin
Wicked Soul
Debt of Bones*
* * *
DARKNESS SERIES
Into the Darkness
Hidden in Darkness
Shades of Darkness
Fires in the Darkness
* * *
DEMON’S MARK SERIES
Demon’s Mark
* * *
FERAL SERIES
Obsession*
Despair*
* * *
ALPHA SERIES
Taken
Masquerade
Mated
* * *
MADE & BROKEN SERIES
Dangerous
Monster
Trouble
* * *
STANDALONES
Alpha’s Fate