by Donya Lynne
Cordray lifted her head and looked at her. Two wet trails extended down Sam’s face, one on each cheek. A tear dripped off her chin.
“Why? Why me?” It was the self-pitying question she hadn’t allowed herself to ask for eight centuries, but she was asking it now. For once, she wanted an answer.
Sam shook her head, and two more fat tears dropped from her eyes. “I’m sorry, Cordray. I don’t know.”
They stared at each other like that for a long time. Just the two of them. On the floor. Crying and staring.
Then Sam dabbed the skin over her upper lip with her fingers. When she spoke, her voice was gentle and persuasive. “Did something happen between you and Trace?”
That was the question of the hour, wasn’t it?
“No. Yes.” She sighed, wiping the humiliating tears from her face. “I mean, no.”
But something had happened. Not just in her bedroom when she’d awakened to find him on top of her, but in the living room earlier in the evening, with Aiden and Null, when they’d looked like a family. When they’d talked to each other like two people who actually liked one another. And then something incredible had happened after they’d tucked the kids into bed. Something wondrous and fiery and all-absorbing.
“Cordray . . .?” Sam tugged on her arm again, goading her to sit up.
She did. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Sam.”
Sam’s wispy eyebrows crowded together as she slowly shook her head. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“Then you’re obviously not paying attention.”
Sam sighed and ass-parked on the couch. “Oh, I’m paying attention, Cordray. More than you know.” She spoke as if she held a crystal ball that revealed all.
“What do you mean?”
Sam let out a breathy huff then pushed herself off the couch. “Do you want some tea? Coffee?” She hesitated and glanced toward the mini-bar. “Something harder? I could use something harder myself.”
“Got any whiskey?”
Sam firmly nodded her head as if putting a period on a sentence. “Yep.”
As Sam poured their drinks, Cordray pulled herself off the floor and took a seat in one of the club chairs, drying the rest of the tears from her cheeks. She hated crying in front of people. Hell, she hated crying period. She hadn’t cried in forever, but just as with her sense of touch, Trace appeared to have awakened all sorts of long-forgotten emotions inside her.
Sam returned and handed her a double of Jack then set the bottle on the coffee table in front of her before taking the seat across from her, cradling her own glass.
“Smart woman.” She nodded toward the bottle.
“Yeah, well, it feels like it’s going to be that kind of conversation.”
She took a hardy gulp of the burning liquid. “What kind of conversation is that?”
“The kind where you finally admit you’re in love with Trace.”
She pulled in an abrupt breath. “I’m not in love with him.”
Sam rolled her eyes. “Like I said, it’s going to be that kind of conversation.” She sipped her drink. “Why don’t you just start from the beginning.”
The beginning. She scoffed. “You really want to know?”
Sam studied her for a long, pensive moment. “Yes.”
“Fine.” She sat back and gulped down the rest of the contents of her glass then held it out for more. If she was going to do this, she needed all the liquid fortification she could get.
Sam poured her another then set the bottle back down with a resounding thunk.
“Start talking, Cordray. I’m here as long as you need me.”
“What about Micah?”
“He’s working. And when he gets home, if you’re still here, he’ll just have to deal with it.”
“Why? Because the two of you are so close he’ll do anything for you?” She couldn’t keep the resentful bite out of her tone.
Seeing what Sam had with Micah left a bittersweet taste in her mouth. They were so in tune with one another. So in love. Then again, they were mates. Wasn’t that how mates were supposed to be? One mind, one heart, one body, more or less?
She wouldn’t know. She’d never been mated. But she’d heard enough vampires speak of the mating phenomenon to understand how things worked.
Sam’s green eyes softened, and she briefly glanced away before nodding. “Yes, Micah and I are close, but that doesn’t mean we always see eye to eye. We just find a way to make our differences of opinion work. We’re a lot alike, Micah and I.” She paused. “You and Trace are a lot alike, too.”
“No, we’re not.” But they were. They were both similar beasts. Both freaks.
Sam crossed her legs and sank more deeply into her chair. “Cordray, you and Trace are cut from the same cloth. You’re both tough as iron on the outside but vulnerable inside. You’re both extremely powerful and care more deeply than you let on. Don’t try to deny it, because I can see it. You wouldn’t have broken down the way you did just now if that weren’t true.”
“I didn’t break down.”
Sam held up her hand and bowed her head in surrender. “Okay, fine. Forget I said that, but it doesn’t mean you don’t care on a very deep level.”
“So what if I do?”
“Then stop fighting it. Let go. If you want him, take him.”
Cordray stared into her drink. She did want him. But taking him would mean she was allowing herself to be hurt again, maybe even killed this time around. Hadn’t she learned her lesson? What kind of idiot would purposely allow herself to be put in harm’s way when she knew the consequences.
“I was in love once,” she said quietly.
A pulse of startled energy beat from Sam’s body, but she didn’t say anything.
Cordray sighed. “His name was Gideon, and we were in love.” She lowered her voice to a wistful whisper. “So in love.” Then she pulled her gaze from her glass and met Sam’s eyes.
Sam’s mouth had fallen open, and her expression was one of surprised curiosity.
“Does that shock you? That I actually loved someone who loved me back? Me? Big, bad, scary Cordray?” She took a contemptuous gulp of whiskey.
“You’re not scary—”
Cordray lifted her hand, palm out. “No, it’s okay. I know what people say about me. I know what they think. I can see inside their heads, remember?” She tapped her temple then choked down another gulp. “I’m Cruella Deville. I steal puppies for their fur and drink the blood of babies. I’m Medusa incarnate, haven’t you heard?”
“Cordray . . .”
All this woe-is-me bullshit rankled her blood, but she couldn’t seem to pull her head out of the septic tank, thanks to the alcohol quickly pulling her into its grasp.
“Everyone avoids me.” She laughed mockingly, raising her glass as if in a toast. “They cross busy streets just so they don’t have to pass me on the sidewalk. They avert their gazes as if meeting mine will turn them to stone.” She laughed at herself then drained her second glass. “I’m the boogey man, the thing that goes bump in the night, the monster hiding under your bed. I’m the stranger your parents warned you not to talk to when you were a little girl.”
She glanced away, seeing the memories of her long-ago past as if only a few weeks had passed instead of eight hundred years. “But it wasn’t always that way.”
When she paused and said nothing for several seconds, Sam refilled her glass. God love her. Sam knew how to keep her talking.
She took a healthy swig of whiskey, her body growing warm and loose as she settled more comfortably into her chair.
“When I was young, I was innocent and sweet. Docile even, if you can believe that.” Those days had been a lifetime ago. A hundred lifetimes ago. “I was as obedient and well-mannered as a princess.”
And wasn’t she? A princess? After all, her father had been the king. King Bain the First.
His affair with her mother, who had worked as a servant in her father’s employ until he mated h
er, had been so scandalous, yet so perfect.
But Father already had a queen. She wasn’t his biological mate, but she conceived a child, anyway. Cordray’s half-brother and heir to the throne, Bain the Second.
Her brother’s birth was practically a miracle. Unmated pairs struggled to bear young. That was the main reason why the vampire race hadn’t proliferated much in the early times. Arranged pairings had been commonplace then, especially among the more affluent.
All that changed when her father mated her mother outside his union to the queen. That was when he began writing new laws protecting human mates. Until King Bain the First, for a vampire male to take a human mate was verboten. That didn’t mean it didn’t happen, but those vampires who did mate humans lived in secret. Others remained tied to their vampire spouses on paper but maintained their mated relationships on the down-low. Callings were horrific for a male mated to a human and sometimes resulted in death if he wasn’t able to spend his fertile time with his true mate.
This was one reason why Cordray’s father had changed the laws. He had refused to sit and watch their race die over archaic laws that had been written during a time before vampires had gained an understanding of how an existence shared with humans would pan out.
But his protection of mated males had also been about protecting his own mating. As the king, he couldn’t just up and flee with his human mate. He had a job to do. He couldn’t live a secret life with his mate and return home to his queen to make things look normal. He was, for all intents and purposes, a celebrity. Everything he did landed in the public eye. Legalizing vampire-human matings—as well as enforcing them—had been the only solution.
After his tragic death, her brother had continued their father’s legacy. Protecting mated males and biological unions had become a priority. One that her brother understood better than most after watching his father live in torment every day he couldn’t spend with Cordray’s mother.
Certain circles in the vampire community still clung to those old laws, though. Namely the purists, many of which were the well-to-do. They still believed in arranged unions and insisted on pairing their daughters with those they felt were best suited to create a strong match, despite the challenges those unions faced.
One of those challenges was that having children would be nearly impossible. Secondly, if the male of such an arranged pairing mated someone else, or another male mated the female, Bain was forced to step in and nullify the arrangement and honor the mated male’s rights.
This didn’t make him popular with the aristocratic families who’d coordinated arranged pairings, especially for those he had overturned. But as the king, popularity was the least of his concerns.
Cordray thought back on her parents’ mating. It had been hard on her mother not to be with her father when he was away being the king. And the way her father swept her mother into his arms every time he visited, holding her close for so long Cordray sometimes wondered if he would ever let her go, proved how hard it was for him not to be with her, too. She and her mother had treasured those few-and-far-between visits. So had her father.
His visits were how she ultimately met Gideon. Beautiful and passionate, Gideon had been a young warrior in her father’s court. A full-blood and fifteen years her senior, fully transitioned into an adult male. At the time, she had been a young, innocent, and impressionable nineteen-year-old, still in the early stages of her transition.
“I was a fair maiden,” she said scornfully. “A maiden who caught the eye of the most handsome male in the king’s guard.” She blinked heavily, meeting Sam’s gaze. “His name was Gideon.”
Sam seemed to sense what Cordray was about to reveal was the key to everything, because she didn’t say a word. She didn’t even move. This was the reason for all the scary tattoos, the piercings, the attitude. Her inability to sense touch.
She gulped down the last of her third glass and set it on the arm of the chair. “Gideon and I embarked on a passionate, whirlwind love affair,” she said, beginning the story.
Just as Leon and Riley vowed they would always be together, she and Gideon had vowed the same.
“We were so sure we’d be mates. So sure we were meant to be together forever. But week in and week out, year after year, his call to mate never fired. Despite how deeply we loved one another, Gideon never mated me.” She let out a brittle laugh. “I wanted his child so badly. My father had conceived with another who wasn’t his mate, and I thought the same thing could happen to me. That I would conceive a miracle child, too.” She lifted her glass to her lips only to remember it was empty. She lowered it again. “But it never happened. I never conceived.”
“How long were you together?” Sam asked quietly, as if she feared bursting the intimate bubble drawing them more tightly together.
“Six years. I met him as my transition to adulthood was just starting, and we were still together when it finished.” She smiled sourly. “We’d hoped that the reason he hadn’t mated me was because I wasn’t yet an adult. But even afterward, he didn’t mate me.”
Her intoxicated mind jumped ahead, no longer functioning linearly, as often happens when alcohol’s grip takes hold. Her thoughts fell to the night that changed everything. The night when she lost herself completely and life as she knew it shattered.
“He didn’t come to me that night.” Her body felt as flat and broken now as it had then. “He always came to me when the king visited, but that night, he didn’t. So I stole away to the stable. His horse was gone.” The memories were snap-shotting through her mind, the alcohol clouding the chronology. “I didn’t understand. Why would his horse be gone? There was only one place where he could be. The cottage in the woods. It was where we went to be together. Our hideaway. I assumed he was there waiting for me.”
The small one-room cottage in the woods, with its simple porch and small stone fireplace—paradise at the time—appeared in her mind.
“I darted into the woods, eager to see him. I couldn’t understand why he hadn’t come to tell me he’d be there, waiting for me. All I knew was that I had to see him. Feel his touch.” Her gaze fell to the floor. She closed her eyes, remembering his touch. That night was the last time she’d felt it. The last time she’d felt anything until she met Trace.
Her vision blurred with tears.
“As the cabin came into view, I saw the glow of the fire through the window. He was there. I was so happy. So unbelievably happy. We were going to be together again. He was going to make love to me, and everything would be all right.” She looked at Sam through a film of tears. Sam sat on the edge of her seat, eyes trained on her, her hands hugging her glass, which still had whiskey in it. “As I got closer, I heard muffled noises from inside. Gideon wasn’t alone.” Her heart ached all over again at the memory. “He was with a female. And they were making love.”
Sam let out a tiny gasp and covered her mouth. “Oh, Cordray, I’m so sorry.”
She held up her hand, already struggling to keep her shit together. She didn’t need Sam’s sympathy to send her totally over the edge. “Just wait, it gets better.” She blinked against the tears clouding her vision. “I stood on my tiptoes and peered through the window. It was covered with a film of dirt and pollen, but I could still see them. On the bed we’d shared so many nights, he had another female beneath him. He was holding her down the way he’d held me so many times, his body surging against hers the way it had surged against mine. And wave after wave of hormonal heat pulsed through the walls, assaulting me like a bad punchline.” She stilled and held her breath for a long moment. Then the air whooshed from her lungs. “He’d mated her. She was his mate, Sam. His goddamn mate.”
“Omigod.” The rushed exclamation breathed from Sam’s mouth like a whispery curse. “I’m so sorry.”
“What kind of cruel joke was that?” She slapped her palm on her chest. “He’d been mine for six years. I’d been his. I’d had a place in the world. With someone. An incredible, wonderful someone I’d given my heart t
o. But in the blink of an eye”—she snapped her fingers—“biology stole away the only male I’d ever loved. My first everything. He’d given me so much pleasure, made me feel desire, lifted me to rapturous heights with only the touch of his fingertips.” She swiped a tear from her cheek as she met Sam’s gaze. “Do you realize that I was so enthralled by him that he was able to send me into rapture with just a simple brush of his lips?”
Sam shook her head.
“It’s true. He touched me, and it was euphoria. He kissed me, and it was pure bliss.” Her gaze fell from Sam’s. “And now I can’t feel a thing.”
Silence stretched for several seconds. Then Sam asked the inevitable.
“Why? What happened?”
The memories flew through her mind once more.
“Seeing him come inside her—his mate—was beyond excruciating. Pain shot through me with such force that I screamed. Physical pain, Sam. It felt like my heart exploded. Like my lungs closed in on themselves then ruptured.
“Gideon’s head snapped around, and he saw me at the window. Guilt fell over his expression, but my heart was already shredding into pieces.
“I turned and ran. Just ran as fast as my legs could carry me. But he came after me. He was shouting my name. Telling me to stop. But I kept running. The only word I could say was no. Over and over, I just kept screaming no at him as branches sliced into my arms, my legs, my face.” She lifted her hand to her cheek, remembering the lashes and the feel of sticky blood cooling on her skin. “He was faster than I was and caught up to me. He grabbed my wrist and spun me around, and I screamed, because it burned. It physically burned being touched by him after I’d just seen him with another female. I loved him. Seeing him with another destroyed me.”
She sniffled, drawing in a trembling breath as the rest of the memory unfolded.
“He tried to calm me down. Tried to apologize. ‘I had no choice,’ he said. ‘My body chose another. I’m sorry, but I’ve mated someone else.’ I can still hear his voice as if he’s right here and just spoke those words to me.” She blinked heavily, and tears dropped from her eyes. “I fell to my knees, sobbing. Big tough Cordray, brought down by biology’s brutal slap in the face.” She uttered a bitter laugh. “But I was no match for life. It had played a cruel joke on me. It had given me a perfect male then ripped him away, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Nothing I could do to get him back. Nothing. It was agony knowing I’d lost him and had no control.” She shook her head. “Why couldn’t he have mated me? What was wrong with me?”