Ambrosia (Nectar Trilogy, Book 2)

by Prince, DD

  He gave her a nod.

  “That was Jackson? In that doorway?”

  Sam blew out a slow breath, “You should talk to Tris about that.”

  “He knows about that?”

  He nodded, “He does now.”

  “Okay, um… he hasn’t been exactly approachable for conversation, so what if you tell me?”

  “Yeah, not exactly approachable,” Sam scoffed, “Understatement.”

  “But you don’t wanna tell me about Jackson.”

  “It’s not my place.” Sam glanced over her shoulder and his eyes changed. She could feel Tristan’s presence behind her.

  “Okay. See ya later.”

  He saluted her.

  She turned around. Tristan was standing there, arms folded, looking past her to Sam.

  She froze.

  His eyes darted down and met hers. His jaw was twitching, teeth clenched, “Don’t approach a vamp for conversation. Ever. Any vamp,” he said.

  She gave a little nod, eyes darting away, and put her coffee mug on the counter and then moved to get by him so she could go back upstairs. He caught her wrist. She stared at her feet.

  They stood still, quiet, for a long time. She flinched, wanting him to let go but not quite struggling, just sort of tense. He kept hold of her.

  “Why won’t you look at me?” he finally asked.

  “Because right now it hurts too much,” she whispered, not looking up.

  Suddenly he pulled her tight into his arms. She resisted about half a second but then melted into his chest and put her arms around his waist, her cheek against his peck.

  Sensation crested again, and she could feel him as if he were feeding from her. She could feel immense frustration and anger coming from inside of him. She could feel something else, too, but she didn’t know quite what it was. Grieving, maybe?

  “I can feel you and you’re not feeding…” she sobbed into his shirt and his grip on her tightened almost to the point of pain.

  There was a knock at the door. He looked her in the eye for a second before moving away to answer the door and for a millisecond she could also see everything she felt inside of him. Pain, anger, grief, fear.

  He came back to the counter removing a lid from a tray and examining the two meals of pancakes, bacon, and fruit. He smelled and then tasted them and then moved them to the table, seeming satisfied. “You should eat.”

  “Not hungry.”

  “I need to feed. Please eat.”

  She let out a huff and nabbed her half empty coffee mug and rinsed topped it up from the coffee maker.

  “Coffee?” she mumbled.

  “No thanks.” He started to eat.

  She prepped her coffee and stirred it and then reached to grab her plate and made to leave with it when his hand hooked around her and caught her hip. “Sit with me?”

  She shook her head, “No, I…” she shook it again and didn’t finish. She went back upstairs. Feeling his emotions on top of her own? It was just too too much.

  She sat on the edge of the bed and wheeled over the hospital style cart that Nurse Ingrid had used with her and Kyla started eating the food. She got through only about half. She finished her coffee and pushed the wheeled cart back with her feet and then laid down in the bed staring at the ceiling, still feeling things so intensely and now not knowing if the feelings were her own, his, or both.

  The door opened. It was him. He approached her cautiously.

  He sat on the side of the bed and reached out and brushed her hair away, tucking it behind her ear with his fingertips,

  “Hey,” he said.

  “If you need to feed, you can go ahead.” She turned her head sideways so that her neck was exposed and stared off in the opposite direction.

  He took her cheek and moved her face back so that her gaze was back on him.

  “Please don’t,” he said.

  Pain burned in her chest, radiating to her shoulders.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m hurting you. I don’t want to hurt you. It’s the last thing I want…”

  She swallowed and closed her eyes.

  “Kyla. I don’t know how to do this.”

  “How to do what?” she asked angrily, feeling totally pissed.

  “How to feel all of this. It’s my job to protect you and I keep fucking failing. And now I’m hurting you because I don’t know how to make it better.”

  Her anger crested and she sighed. He looked so sad, so lost.

  “How can I be the one destined to lead? I can’t protect the most important thing in the world to me and yet I’m supposed to be some protector and leader of my race?”

  “Maybe all this is what’ll help you learn to lead.”

  “But what if I lose you in the process? I’m scared to death, Kyla. So goddamn scared.” He flopped on the bed beside her and stared at the ceiling, covering his eyes with his palms.

  She leaned over and lifted one of his hands and kissed his eyelid. He let out a heavy sigh and grabbed her and pulled her on top of him and squeezed and then flipped so he was on top. He held her head and buried his face into her hair, kissing behind her earlobe and squeezing.

  “I’m not scared anymore,” she told him, feeling new emotion well up inside of her. She ran her palms up the length of his back.

  “No?” He went up on an elbow and looked her in the eye and it was as if a cloud lifted and hope floated high up above them.

  “Nope.”

  “Then you really are crazy, baby, because you’re right, my track record fucking sucks. Dog cages, elephant tranquilizers, scaring you thousands of miles away, fucked up road trips where I almost drain you, leaving you alone and you get attacked by the Toronto Mangler. Then bringing you to Adrian’s compound of fucked up medical experiments...”

  “But it’s gonna be okay,” she touched his chin cleft.

  “Okay?” he looked at her like she’d grown another head.

  “We’re gonna be okay,”

  “How do you know that? Because I wanna believe that but…”

  “‘Cuz you’re what I’ve been waiting my whole life for. My prince who’ll swim through the molten lava moat and slay the dragons and free me. I know this in my soul. In. My. Soul. I keep having all these dreams that sort of come true and when I was a little girl I dreamt about a prince with blue eyes rescuing me so I know that’s what you’ll do. You’ll rescue me and you’ll cook me beautiful breakfasts and chocolate brownies and we’ll go skinny dipping and you’ll give me beautiful blue-eyed babies some day and we will raise them together. Both of us.”

  “I’m the luckiest kidnapping, bloodsucking monster on the planet, you know that?” He put his arms around her.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that all this happened. That they took something so precious from us. I’m just fucked right now. You need me and I’m lost. What they took… I didn’t know how much it meant until I felt it. I sensed it almost right away and…”

  “Shhh. Don’t. I can’t go there.”

  He swallowed.

  “I felt your pain, Kyla. I was in a pit. They had to put me in a concrete pit in the ground because I kept breaking the locks they tried to use to contain me and in that pit your pain almost killed me. While I was daggered I wasn’t out, I was paralyzed but feeling everything. Every. Fucking. Thing. God!”

  “Oh baby,” she said but then there was a frantic-sounding knock on the bedroom door.

  “Come,” Tristan answered.

  The door burst open and it was Sam, he was breathless, “Liam, Tris. He’s been spotted. Just outside the perimeter of the property.”

  “Be down in a minute.”

  Sam nodded and backed out, shutting the door.

  “I want this dagger so you’ve got it to keep you safe from me whenever you bleed or when you’re fertile you can use it against anyone else who’s a threat and I want to get us outta here and home, but if he’s close I’m thinking maybe we wait and I eliminate tha
t threat. But that leaves Adrian, too, and I want you away from that maniac. What do you think we should do?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, “I wish I knew.”

  “I’m gonna go talk to Sam. Stay here. I’ll be back,” he kissed her.

  She put her fingers into his hair and sank into the kiss.

  He caressed her face, moved off the bed, and then left the room.

  ~~~

  It was the following day. He hadn’t come to bed the night before but had slipped in around dawn and pulled her close and passed out for just a few hours. In the late afternoon, Tristan and Kyla were in bed together, again. He’d come in, interrupting her from her boredom, put a small laptop-sized box on the dresser, said “Hey,” and then moved in and his teeth were on her throat, piercing. Her eyes rolled back and her hands were in his soft hair.

  She’d been craving this. She’d been staring out the window, tired of being in this room. She’d spent so much time waiting behind closed doors for him. She wanted that part of her life to be over with. She wanted them to have a life together.

  Who knew, at this point, what it’d look like but she couldn’t wait to move forward.

  “I have the dagger,” he whispered against her chin, kissing her after his fangs had retracted, and his chin jerked to the box on the dresser. He lifted her up and got into bed with her, then spooned her.

  “Yeah?” she asked.

  “Adrian just dropped it off. He’s offering to make a second one if we stay for a month. That’d mean you carry one and I’d have one, too.” He kissed behind her ear and ran his fingers through her hair.

  Kyla both sighed and winced. She sighed at his touch but winced at the idea of another month.

  Another ovulation? Another period?

  “He wants to talk to me about options for your next cycles. He wants to run tests. I don’t trust him, baby, but I think we need him while we get this figured out. If he hadn’t been here when you bled…”

  “I hate him, Tristan. I hate what he did.”

  “I know, princess. But if he hadn’t been here maybe I wouldn’t have stopped. Maybe I’d have drained you.”

  “Or maybe you would’ve stopped.”

  “Historically speaking, the woman typically gets drained. Anyway, here’s what I’m thinkin’…”

  “Maybe I wouldn’t have been bleeding. Maybe our baby would’ve been growing inside me like it was supposed to do.”

  His expression dropped.

  They stared at one another for a beat.

  She folded her arms across her chest, “Anyway, you were thinking?”

  He sighed, rolled onto his back, and pulled her close, her head rested on his shoulder.

  “You carry the dagger…”

  “Does it work? He didn’t give us a dud, did he?”

  Tristan smirked, “No. It works. I tested it on him. He’s flat out downstairs.”

  “Good,” Kyla snapped. “Asshole.”

  He gave her a squeeze, “He’ll be up and about any time now. Anyway, we’re thinking we should stage a vulnerability so Liam gets in. But we’ll be ready.”

  “Okay…”

  “So, you need to stay in here, stay armed with that dagger. They think I should carry it but I want you to hold it. We’ll have the building guarded by programmed vamps who will be medicated, too. They shouldn’t have a reaction to you even if you start bleeding.”

  “Right.”

  “We’re allowing vulnerabilities with a delivery later tonight and then again first thing in the morning. If he gets in during either of those two times he’ll be apprehended and then daggered.”

  “How many daggers are there?”

  “Two. Yours and Adrian’s. He’s promised to make more. He’s low on the metal he needs but he’s getting more.”

  “Okay. Who programmed the guards?”

  “My mother’s back and working on them right now. Celia isn’t on site and we don’t want her in the know, either.”

  She nodded, “Your mother is something…”

  Tristan looked at her funny.

  “I met her. While they had you.”

  His face contorted, “What?”

  “She came to see me.”

  He jumped out of the bed to his feet, “And Adrian allowed it?”

  “No. Well, he tried to stop her but apparently when his back was turned she killed the six people he had here, some nurses, some guards. She killed one of Adrian’s horses, too, I guess to punish him…”

  “I need to know what happened in that conversation.”

  Kyla snickered, “She’s something…”

  Tristan rolled his eyes, “I hate that she was anywhere near you. What happened?”

  “We took a walk. We walked to that meadow with the tree swing and I recognized it. I’ve dreamt about that place. About my ex being there. What’s up with that, anyway? He’s here. The ex, Jackson, that I thought was dead.”

  “First things first. Taryn? Tell me.”

  “Moonflowers were blooming and she was trying to program me to work on you for the ‘the cause’, convince you to make lots of babies and drink a lot of… you know… and she told me you shouldn’t trust Claudio but we should let Adrian help us ‘cuz we need him. I let her think she was getting her way.”

  “She tried to program you?”

  “She failed. And then she bit me, and…”

  “She bit you? She bit you?” His face was scary.

  “Yeah, but she told me to forget it happened. She---”

  “SHE BIT YOU?!” He bolted out of the room.

  Kyla’s mouth was still open in shock but he was long gone.

  She got up and went into the hallway. She glanced over the railing and didn’t see him but Adrian was there. She went down the stairs and Adrian was sitting on the sofa with his head in his hands.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Recovering. Tristan daggered me. He just ordered me to keep you safe and then left.”

  “Is his mother on the property still?”

  “She’s in the main house. Did you tell him that she toyed with you?”

  “Yeah, when I said she bit me he…”

  “Fuck!” Adrian snapped. It was rare, so far, to see him lose his composure but both times had been to do with Taryn.

  He got up, about to head to the door, but the door flew open and standing there was Liam Donavan who was instantly twisting Adrian’s throat with both hands. Adrian went down, looking like he’d suffered a broken neck.

  Oh my good God.

  Kyla’s thoughts immediately went to the dagger that was upstairs in the box on the dresser and she made a run for it.

  She slammed the door to the bedroom, locked it, and fumbled, getting to the box but before she got it opened, she heard a crash. Liam had broken the door down and then he had her.

  He spun her around and had her by the shoulders, “Long time no taste…” He had a big smile.

  “No!” Kyla screamed and scrambled for the dagger but the box went flying in the struggle and landed on the floor. Kyla landed on the floor. Liam flipped her and was hovering over her on his knees. He had her pinned, her wrists over her head.

  “I spent years craving her taste but after tasting you I can’t even remember what she tasted like. But you… I’m going to fucking feast on you!”

  Where was the cold? Where was that power she needed to throw him off?

  “Tristan is---” she started.

  “Busy. He’s arguing with Mommie Dearest.”

  He gave her that wide toothpaste commercial smile. And then his fangs were out. And then finally, FINALLY, that cold feeling burst out of her with a huge amount of force, so much that she feared she was about to explode and she flung him and he crashed into the wall.

  Thank GOD Tristan had just fed.

  She scrambled to get to her feet but he was coming back at her. She shoved at his gut and he went flying back and glass smashed as he went right through the bedroom window.

 
Kyla crawled quickly over to the box on the floor and pulled the dagger out. It was the same as the other one but this one was a little bit smaller, a bit lighter in weight.

  Liam was back, through the bedroom door, and he looked very surprised.

  “That was fun. Joseph was right. You are a feisty little thing.”

  She pointed the dagger at him and he stopped in his tracks.

  “What is that? Jasper had one too.” He jerked his chin up.

  “Come here so I can show you,” she sneered, “I’ll show you and then Tristan will fucking END YOU!”

  She lunged for him but he backed up into the hall saying, “I’ll be back. I’ll be back and I’ll feast on you and then I’ll crush Walker into dust.” He zoomed down the stairs and out the door.

  She rushed down the stairs. Adrian was sitting up, his head bowed,

  “Adrian!” she yelled.

  He looked up, looking dazed, oblivious to what’d just happened and then he saw the dagger in her hand and his eyes went wide.

  “Liam was here!” she shouted, “He’s here!”

  Adrian rushed to his feet and said, “Come with me.”

  “He’s outside somewhere; I threw him out the window. He was back and now he’s gone---” She ended that sentence with a squeak because without warning Adrian grabbed her and zoomed away with her in his arms and a moment later Kyla found herself in Adrian’s office. He wasn’t as fast as Tristan but was faster than Sam.

  She could instantly feel Tristan; he must be close by. She could feel his fury. Arctic chill. It was cold and angry and scary. She shivered in response.

  Adrian set her down on a chair and went right to the phone on his desk and pressed a button.

  “Lock down,” she heard him say, both from right in front of her and she also heard it through an intercom, “Code black. Lock down. Code black.”

  An alarm sounded and it was so loud that her hands automatically covered her ears. She still had the dagger in her right hand. She examined it. Adrian’s eyes were on her. He reached into a drawer in his desk and his body went solid.

  The alarm sound halted in time to hear him say “No.”

  He yanked the desk drawer out all the way and threw it, “Fuck!”

  “What?” Kyla breathed.

  “My dagger. My dagger is gone.”