by Aja James
Seth could almost hear her breathing.
But of course, he was imagining it. The walls were soundproof and no one breathed that loudly to begin with.
Still, his heart pounded as if she were sitting right there on his bed beside him, enveloping him with her subtle feminine scent, caressing him with her slumberous, ravenous sapphire eyes, a smile promising decadence and sin tilting her lips.
Instead, she was three rooms down the hall, and this was only an assumption on his part, since she hadn’t been in the throne room when he’d passed it on his way to the “guest” chamber he was directed to go to.
Perhaps he truly was a guest at the Cove this time. His chamber door was not locked from the outside, and he was not bound or tagged or otherwise collared like a prisoner would be. They didn’t even post a sentry outside his door.
But apparently, there was no way to lock it from the inside either, because Devlin burst into his room just then, sending the automatic sliding door crashing into its pocket.
“You must come at once.”
Seth looked up alertly.
“The queen. She is dying.”
Seth all but mowed the Hunter down in his haste to get out of his chamber.
He knew where Jade’s private quarters were and didn’t wait for the other male to provide directions or to catch up.
“It’s Katerina’s touch,” Devlin explained as he hustled beside Seth, all but jogging despite the speed at which their long strides ate up the ground.
“The frozen patch on Jade’s arm has spread. She doesn’t seem strong enough to combat it.”
“Blood?” Seth bit out.
“Human blood is too weak, and she is not bonded to any vampire male to take his Nourishment. It’s why I came to get you.”
And then they were at the vampire queen’s door and entering without formality.
The other Chosen were gathered around her bed as Jade lay on top of the covers, still and barely breathing, her skin where it was exposed turning a sickly gray.
A male Seth had not met before stared him down as he held Jade’s hand beside the bed, aggressiveness and territoriality rolling off of him in waves.
Seth stared right back, and even unconsciously curled his upper lip in a snarl.
The male needed to take his hand off of Jade before Seth tore it off with his teeth.
“Pure blood,” Anastasia motioned to Seth to hurry closer, not bothering to call him by name but by the substance flowing in his veins.
It was the medicine her queen desperately needed.
“Quickly. She grows fainter by the moment.”
The other male stepped back reluctantly as Seth took his place by Jade’s side. Ana handed him a dagger, and he efficiently slashed his wrist, opened Jade’s lips and placed his skin there as his blood dripped out of his vein and into her mouth.
After a few seconds, Jade clamped her mouth around his wrist, penetrated his vein directly with her fangs and drew upon it more forcefully, her own arms curling around his to hold him in place.
But long minutes later, her color didn’t return. Her skin stayed that deathly gray hue, and she grew feverish and delirious, biting his arm repeatedly, scoring his skin with her nails, as if she were desperate to get relief, desperate to heal, but it wasn’t enough.
His blood wasn’t enough.
“Leave,” Seth bit out as she continued to thrash and growl, cutting his arm into ribbons with her sharp canines, gnawing on him like a wild beast.
“We can’t do that,” Maximus objected. “She needs—”
“I will give her what she needs,” Seth interrupted.
He met the Commander’s eyes, and they exchanged a silent communication.
A ferocious growl emanated from the male in the background, the one Seth did not know but hated on sight.
He spared the stranger a don’t-fuck-with-me glare and jerked his head toward the door at the rest of the Chosen.
“Leave. Now,” he repeated.
With a curt nod, Maximus ushered his team outside, and the heavy doors closed behind them.
Seth immediately turned back to Jade, who was barely clinging to his arm now, her strength almost completely depleted, her mouth hanging slack, her eyes opened slightly but unfocused, rolling listlessly in her head.
He took his arm away just long enough to disrobe and remove her clothes. Within moments, he was on the bed with her, turning her into his naked body, so that they were skin to skin all along their torsos.
He pushed her mouth against his jugular vein with a hand cupping the back of her head and urged, “Feed, sweetheart. Take what you need from me.”
Weakly, she scraped his throat with the tips of her fangs, but couldn’t gain purchase.
She was fading fast.
Her skin had turned even darker, like limbs that suffered the last stages of frost bite before they needed to be amputated, and she’d grown icy cold. She was being frozen from the inside out.
He changed tactics and held her face in his palms, warming her mouth with his in moist, breathy kisses and brushes, trying to chase away the cold.
She lay lifeless in his arms, unresponsive, unfeeling.
“Please, Jade,” he rasped as he pressed desperate kisses all over her face and neck.
“Please, sweetheart. I’m here for you. All you have to do is take me. Use me. Take everything.”
And then, when he thought she’d lost all consciousness, he heard a roughly whispered yet powerful claim:
“Mine.”
He brought her hard, frozen hand over his heart and held it there.
“Yes,” he answered.
“Yours. Now wake up and claim me.”
On a hiss, she struck with the last of her strength, sinking her fangs into his throat.
As she gulped down his blood in voracious mouthfuls, he held her tightly to him, rubbing his hands up and down her back and shoulders, trying to warm her skin.
The hand that clawed like a hard knot over his heart gradually uncurled as the strength of his blood flowing through her veins chased the edges of the cold away.
She dragged it down his torso and lower abdomen to his sex and grasped him hard.
He shuddered at the pain of her icy, brutal touch, but he knew instinctively what she needed from him. He shifted her legs so that one thigh was hiked over his hip as he lay on his side.
She needed no further invitation, taking him directly to the entrance of her frozen core, and he took over from there, pumping powerfully once, twice, his buttocks clenching in time with the thrust of his hips, until he was embedded to the hilt inside of her.
Chapter Eight
Jade felt as if she were trapped beneath a frozen lake, fathoms deep.
She’d been here before.
She’d died here before.
Unintelligible whispers reached her like the echo of buzzing bees, streaming past her ears in swarms, moving too fast for her to perceive their meaning.
She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. Everything was dark and cold.
She was so alone, always alone.
Drowning in the barren wasteland of her memories…
180 AD, Henan Province, Han Dynasty, China. Palace of the Interior Minister Wang Yun.
Eleven-year-old Jade was viciously backhanded by one of the Master’s daughters the moment she came out of the Master’s chamber after completing her morning chores to make the bed, scrub the floors, dust every surface, and clear out the waste.
She’d graduated to housemaid from being caretaker of the officials’ hats when she’d turned ten, but her nickname, Diao Chan (Jade Cicada), had stayed.
She tried not to flinch, but Lady Violet was wearing her signet ring, a heavy gold band carved in the shape of a phoenix.
The scaled feathers on the phoenix’s head had dug a deep, bloody cut across Jade’s eye and cheek. She could feel the blood welling and leaking from the wound.
Absently, she wiped the blood from the corner of her eye before it
dripped inside to blur her vision.
The pain she barely noticed, having become inured to it long ago, but she needed to keep her tormentor in sight if she was to survive this encounter.
“You ungrateful little thief!” Lady Violet raged, raining blow after blow upon Jade’s bowed head with her meaty fists.
Jade thanked her stars Lady Violet had meaty fists—she was meaty everywhere, having consumed too many sugar dumplings and fatty goose liver. Her pudgy hands had a good bit of padding, though the blows were still quite heavy when she exerted herself.
“How dare you steal my lotus flower hairpin! Papa will hear about this!”
Jade never took her hairpin.
But Master Wang had given her a similar pin after he’d taken her maidenhead a few months ago.
She supposed he felt guilty for defiling a girl the same age as his youngest daughter, or perhaps he was simply rewarding her for lying obediently beneath him while he groped her body and shoved himself between her thighs.
She didn’t want the hairpin.
She thought that holding onto it somehow validated his actions, an exchange of services and payment, so she tossed it into the private well the moment she had the chance.
Lady Violet stuck a sharp, long pin decorated with a cluster of lotus flowers at its head, right in front of Jade’s face.
It was the same pin she’d thrown in the well.
Lady Violet’s pin had pink lotus blossoms at its head. The one the Master had given Jade was white with ruby centers, far more intricate and expensive.
Jade supposed the Master had really enjoyed the services he took from her.
She kept her head bowed and didn’t utter a sound, hoping Lady Violet wouldn’t start carving her face with that pin.
Not that Jade would mind the scars that would ruin her visage.
Her face had gotten her into endless trouble ever since she was old enough to understand the concept of jealousy.
Which was to say, she understood the concept before she learned to speak.
Another few blows to the head, thankfully, without any stabbing with the hairpin, and Lady Violet seemed to tire from the exertion.
“I will see you punished,” she spat out. “Three days without food and water in the box. Go there right now. I don’t want to see your ugly face.”
Jade kept her head bowed as she backed away, turning around only when Lady Violet’s slippers were out of slight.
She’d go directly to the “punishment box”; no point avoiding it.
Lady Violet was a stickler when she threw out orders. She’d have the guards drag Jade there by the hair if Jade didn’t do what she was told.
Jade swiped the backs of her hands at the blood streaking down her face from the earlier cut.
With any luck, the cut wouldn’t get infected during her three days in the small stone cell that was only large enough for a person to sit on the floor with their knees drawn to their chest. There wasn’t enough room to stand or lie down. Only a small hole cut into the ceiling that allowed any air inside.
Sometimes, if the punishment was particularly severe, water would be poured continuously down the hole instead of air.
Jade wondered if this would be one of those times.
The guard beside the stone cell pushed open the heavy door for her wordlessly, used to seeing her trudge this way.
She was punished more frequently than anyone else in the palace.
Once inside, Jade crouched in her usual position, drew her legs up to her chin and laid her head upon her knees.
She was used to the stench of human waste in the cell, used to the maggots that lined the corners and climbed the walls.
At least she wouldn’t be bothered here. She much preferred days of starvation in the box to the Master’s attentions in his chambers.
He’d started “playing” with her since she turned five, always praising her for being such a pretty girl.
At first, she thought he loved her the way a father loved his daughters, the way he must love his real daughters. But then, she realized that he “loved” her differently. He touched her differently. And she was always rewarded with a treat afterwards.
Sometimes, it was sugar plums that cost a fortune to acquire out of season. Sometimes, a juicy, golden tangerine. Other times it was little trinkets like ribbons and hairpins and bracelets that made her even prettier, he said.
She’d learned quickly, however, to hide these presents from everyone else in the palace, because they inspired venomous jealousy.
She used to pore over her little stash in private, giddy with happiness that the Master “loved her best,” as he told her often.
As she grew older, as her comprehension of the world around her grew, she realized that the Master’s love was a selfish thing.
He wanted things from her, but he gave her nothing in return, not in feelings at least, or loyalty or respect.
He never stood up for her when his three wives and six daughters berated and punished her for no reason at all. When his sons leered at her and chased her and cornered her like hunted game. When the other servants spat at her and muttered ugly things about how she was such a cunning little whore behind her back, and sometimes to her face.
She was on her own.
Had been, since the day the woman who birthed her left her in a basket at the Master’s doorstep.
If her looks were the only currency she had in life, then she’d use it to her own advantage.
She’d survive.
She’d survive to spite them all.
And one day, she’d be in a position so far above them, they wouldn’t be fit to lick her slippers.
She gingerly touched the cut across her cheek.
Even if her face was scarred after this, she determined she’d find other ways to grow her power.
She’d pay more attention the next time her Master dragged her into bed with him. She wondered what she could do to make him even more enamored of her. Perhaps she could eventually bargain for more than gorgeous trinkets and rich food.
One day, she might even earn her way to freedom.
Suddenly, Jade raised her head an inch, her ears picking up a faint, rumbling echo, like the rolling of thunder.
Would there be a rain storm?
That would save her tormentors the effort of pouring water down her air hole, at least.
“Come back to me, Jade…”
It was a man’s voice, deep and low, husky with emotion.
She stared hard into the darkness that surrounded her.
Was he outside her cell?
“I’m with you,” the voice murmured.
“I’m holding you. You’re not alone.”
And strangely, she thought she felt strong arms enfolding her, though she couldn’t see them.
She felt the warmth of a hard chest behind her back, though there was only stone wall.
Perhaps the blows to her head had made her delirious?
Jade closed her eyes and tried to sleep.
Imagining herself in a different place, comforted by the phantom arms and low, soothing voice.
*** *** *** ***
“Shit, I really wish she hadn’t killed the Countess,” Devlin muttered, throwing himself haphazardly into one of the leather swivel chairs in the command center.
“None of us could have stopped her,” Anastasia stated darkly. “She was dead set on avenging her male.”
“What is the Pure One to the queen?” Alend Ramses, now almost fully recovered from his wounds, growled ominously from the corner wall, where he stood against it with his arms crossed over his massive chest.
No one had a ready answer.
And no one met Ramses’ aggressively questioning gaze.
“Are you talking about the Pure Ones’ Consul?” Devlin’s Mate and the Chosen’s de facto head of cyber security, Grace Darling, asked.
“The one who stayed here for a few months years ago? I never got to meet him.”
Grace only knew th
e Chosen for as long as Ramses did. They were brought into the fold at about the same time.
Earlier, when the Chosen had accompanied their queen on a mission, Grace had stayed at the Cove putting her digital skills to good use, erasing traces of fight club footage on the Net that had been going viral.
“Her actions were rash and stupid,” Ramses spat out.
“What possessed her to take on Katerina directly? She could have brought the traitor in for questioning. She could have let the Countess take the Pure One and have them followed, so we can learn more of Katerina’s plots.”
“No she couldn’t have,” Maximus said. “Jade was beyond rational thought at that point.”
“So I ask again—what is this male to the queen?” Ramses demanded.
“He used to be her Blood Slave,” Ana reluctantly replied, then grimaced slightly.
“Not quite her Blood Slave. But he’s hers. And Jade never forgives anyone for taking what’s hers.”
A strange gleam entered Ramses’ eyes, but was gone before anyone saw it.
He kept his own counsel after that, as the other Chosen debated the best course of action.
“Katerina was well connected with the Great Lakes and Mid Atlantic Hives,” Devlin began, but was interrupted by the door opening to admit the Dark Ones’ Assassin, Ryu Takamura.
“The queen?” he inquired urgently.
“Seth is with her,” Maximus answered.
Ryu huffed out a breath.
If anyone could provide the Nourishment she needed to heal, it would be the Pure One she wanted the most.
There was nothing else any of them could do for her.
Ryu sat in one of the chairs and didn’t miss another beat, turning to Devlin.
“You were saying?”
“The Countess’s death will likely spur the competing Hives into action. They’d use it as an excuse to aggress upon our territories, especially when they learn what she was killed for—a Pure One.”
“But if the Consul was Jade’s Blood Slave, surely Katerina was in the wrong for taking the male belonging to the queen,” Grace argued logically.
She was a recently turned vampire and still learning the written and unwritten laws of her Kind. She knew that when vampires claimed their possessions, they would fight to the death to keep them from the trespass of others.