by Tessa Dawn
She nodded again, agreeing. “I know,” she whispered. “I screwed up, Braden. I really screwed up.”
He swallowed hard and looked off into the distance. The night was growing darker; the fog was growing thicker. The smell of pine permeated the valley, almost as if the trees and vegetation were paying attention.
“Being without you was hard,” Lily continued. “We wrote, we called, we reached out often, but as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into months, at some point, something just sort of happened. My guilt turned into shame, and I could no longer face you.”
“Mother,” Braden said solemnly.
“No,” she countered, “let me get this out. I’ve been waiting forever to say this.”
He bit his bottom lip and remained silent.
“You have to understand where I was at, emotionally. When I would speak with the Silivasis, inquire about your care—your health, your progress, your daily life—for the first time in as long as I could remember, I knew that I’d done right by you. I may have failed you as a mother, but someone else—a family of exceptional vampires—had picked up those scattered pieces and put them back together. You were coming into your own, and you were excelling in ways that were so unexpected. Amazing. Promising. I don’t know why—or exactly how it happened—but the more I heard about your progress, the more I convinced myself that you were better off without me. Yes, I could start over—and do better—with Conrad, but the greatest gift I could give to you was my absence: to let women like Deanna and Ciopori…like Jocelyn, and later, Arielle…finish raising you. To let males like Nachari and Marquis rebuild you. Make up for my infinite failures.”
Braden couldn’t take another word.
He released her hand and swiveled on his heel to face her. His dominant hand moved to her throat and grasped the underside of her jaw. It wasn’t an act of aggression or anger. Quite the contrary, it was a vampiric demonstration of bonding, something that came from an instinct so primordial, it would have been impossible to identify it. His thumb rubbed over her pulse, resting softly on her jugular. “Mamica…”
He chose the term he had called her as a child, and he spoke it with reverence—only this night, he said it in Romanian:
Mommy…
He let the term of endearment linger.
“Te iert.”
I forgive you.
“I always did.”
Lily melted into a pool of tears, and he caught her slumping form, enfolding her in his arms.
“That night,” she whispered sorrowfully into his shoulder, “that thing…what I said…the night when I was drinking; it was unforgiveable, Braden. You might have your father’s features, but you never had his soul. Son, I’m so sorry. I’m so—so—sorry.”
“Te iert.” He repeated the pardon with emphasis, rubbing her back in soft, gentle circles. “Mom,” he whispered in her ear, “as weak as you may have been, you had the courage to leave my biological father. You had the self-esteem to fall in love with Dario, and he gave me the gift of immortality. Together, you gave me the house of Jadon. And the house of Jadon gave me Kristina—or at least, it will, when I come of age. My life is good, Mother. It’s not too late to start over…with me. I need you in my life.”
Lily crushed him in her arms, squeezing the air right out of him. She stroked his chestnut hair, almost like she was petting a cat, and crooned into his ear: “Oh, my baby…my precious baby boy. I love you so much, Braden. I’ve always loved you.” She drew back to stare into his eyes and chuckled. “Dario will be so happy! He’s been lecturing me for these last two years, but he had no choice but to respect my wishes…” She waved her hand through the air, eager to dismiss the past. Then she kissed him on the cheeks, each one in turn, before planting another kiss on his forehead…and then his nose. “My darling baby boy,” she whispered.
Braden fought the urge to cry along with her, but he knew he was losing the battle. Choking back a sob, he murmured, “I love you, too, Mamica. With all my heart.”
Keitaro Silivasi shut the door to his ancient dwelling, the cabin he had once shared with Serena—the home he was slowly and painstakingly enlarging and remodeling—eager to keep out the fog.
The dark, smoky vapor had been gathering along the valley floor for several hours, and it was growing thicker, denser, and more serpentine in its motion as the hour grew nigh…
The hour when Saxson Olaru would deliver Kyla Sparrow to her final reckoning.
But that wasn’t Keitaro’s immediate concern.
Outside of keeping the unnerving fog out of his cabin, he had more pressing matters to attend to: namely, Zayda Patrone.
The feral female was wreaking havoc on his sanity, his good sense, and his half-remodeled home: When she wasn’t screaming at the top of her lungs, she was throwing construction materials at Keitaro and generally trying to destroy things. When she wasn’t in demolition mode, she was grasping at his groin, speaking words too X-rated to repeat, and trying to seduce him.
When she wasn’t being overtly sexual, she was weeping and trembling.
Only to turn feral, once again, and attempt more demolition.
The gods knew, Keitaro did not want to lock her in an empty closet or chain her to the floor. She had endured enough captivity. And besides, there was only one completely finished room in the reconstructed cottage, which would one day become a four-thousand-square-foot, ranch-level home: Keitaro’s master bedroom.
And blessed Sagittarius, god of his ruling moon, that just had wrong written all over it for a couple of reasons: one, the female had been born into sexual slavery, so bedrooms were just about all she’d ever known; and two, the wires in her brain were so crisscrossed that anything could act as a trigger—one look at Keitaro’s intricately carved four-poster, Valencia canopy bed, and she might start purring like a kitten, trying to undress him once more.
Hells minions, he had no idea why he had brought the female home.
What he’d hoped he could still get out of her…
Vengeance against a race of enemies she didn’t even know she belonged to?
Surely not.
He wasn’t that twisted.
Vital information about the lycans and Mhier?
She didn’t have any information, and besides, no one knew more about the lycans and their world beyond the portal than Keitaro Silivasi. If he never saw that godforsaken land again, it would be too soon.
So what was it then?
Pity, curiosity, or concern?
He already knew that she wasn’t a shifter—few female lykoi were—as only first-generation shifters could create another shifter, and the pairing of a human and a lycan had a fifty-fifty chance of creating another human, rather than a werewolf. Her phenotype could be just that: human in its entirety, with just a hint of lykos scent, enough to identify her species—and her paternity—when sniffed by an ancient vampire…
Or a gifted Master Wizard.
Furthermore—and in keeping with the plight of her genotype—she was probably infertile. It was the plague of the lykos’ kind, and why their numbers had been diminishing for centuries. Still, most male-lycans could mate with human women just fine, so Zayda’s fertility was still a mystery…as was her degree of immortality, if, in fact, she was immortal at all.
And just why the hell was Keitaro thinking about this feral female’s fertility and immortality—what difference did it make to him? She was a virtual child, as wild as a tiger, and a potential genetic enemy.
Still, those eyes…
Those strange, luminous, faery-princess eyes—they were like a cosmic fusion between the sun, the moon, and a silver-blue star.
A beam of silver moonlight, shining through a recently installed skylight, suddenly turned charcoal gray, like the moon itself was dimming.
So it was time.
Saxson—and Kyla—had arrived at Marquis and Ciopori’s farmhouse.
Keitaro shuddered inwardly and whispered a prayer for courage, strength, and finality—emo
tional protection and principled guidance for Ciopori.
After all, Nikolai was Keitaro’s grandson.
And what needed to be done, needed to be done.
But he didn’t want the princess to suffer, or to be harmed, spiritually, in the process.
He turned to regard Zayda, who was cowering in the corner and shaking like a leaf…
It was time to command her to sleep…
Yet again.
He could figure out his next move tomorrow, discern a clear plan, and decide what to do with her…in the morning.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The long, northern drive to Marquis and Ciopori’s remote homestead, deep in the Dark Moon Forest, had seemed to go on forever, the only sound being Saxson’s GMC Sierra making easy work of the rough terrain. The vampire had not even bothered to tie Kyla up: no chains, no handcuffs…no locked doors.
It was as if the pitiless warrior was daring her to jump from the cab and run—to try to make an escape. He wasn’t even worried that she might attack him—or try to fight—and cause the pickup to crash.
He knew.
And she knew…
That any such attempt would be futile.
He was faster. He was stronger. He was a superior creature in every way—and Kyla didn’t stand a chance.
What a difference a week had made.
If Kyla had ever wondered, even for a moment, why Saxson Olaru had been chosen to be a sentinel, one of the select, fearsome males trusted with the safety of the king—with keeping order in and outside the house of Jadon—she no longer had any question.
At his core, the male was ruthless.
His heart was as hard as stone when he wanted it to be.
The doting, romantic, sensual male who had claimed her, tried to love her—showed her infinite, unfailing patience—had all but vanished from her reality.
He was nothing but a distant memory…
Kyla had stared out the window, shivering at the swirling fog, which coated the ground like skeletal fingers, and she had gawked at the dark-gray moon, which had cast strange, haunting shadows upon the road before them, like dancing flames in a medieval torch.
The entire valley was electric with dread.
And so was she.
Breathing deeply didn’t work.
Meditation was out.
And trying to keep her mind empty of all thoughts—of morbid anticipation—had been futile, at best. She may as well have been trying to turn water into wine, to shimmy out of her skin, or to change places with her twin…yet again.
To put it bluntly, the drive had been a living hell.
Now, as Saxson brought the pickup to a slow, quiet halt on Marquis and Ciopori’s front lawn, Kyla wanted to jump out and run, at least to try to escape her looming fate; but there really was no use. She clenched her hands into fists instead, and tried to maintain her composure.
She was a vampire-hunter and a human warrior.
She would not go out like a quivering child.
When Saxson opened the door to the passenger side of the truck and reached for her arm, to haul her out of the cab, she yanked it away with violent defiance. “Don’t touch me!” she snarled. “I can walk on my own!”
Her dress was filthy and tattered. Her hair was oily and matted. And her bare feet felt tender against the uneven ground, her heels scraping on every rock, broken branch, or tree root, while tiny, scattered pine needles got caught between her toes.
Kyla didn’t care.
She simply followed Saxson Olaru, like a mindless drone, to the center of Marquis and Ciopori’s front lawn. And then the princess and her warrior-mate appeared—as if out of the fog—suddenly standing before her, and Kyla’s proud, defiant knees buckled beneath her.
Saxson caught her in an instant, drawing her back to her feet as the calm…cool…and collected raven-beauty approached.
Ciopori’s golden eyes, which had been dotted with amber sparkles before, were as vacant and empty as a shark’s, the amber sparkles now flickering red.
Kyla almost blurted, “I’m sorry!”
She almost sank to her knees in the wild grass and begged for the princess’s mercy…
But those vacant eyes told her all she needed to know—there would be no clemency coming.
“My son is doing well,” the princess said, as if carrying on a casual conversation. “He has healed from his injuries, and is slowly recovering…emotionally.”
Kyla gulped. She closed her eyes and waited.
There was nothing she could say, nothing that would make this terror any better.
She could only hope that the princess’s vengeance would be swift, efficient, and painless.
And then Ciopori reached out, extending her palm to Marquis, and the Ancient Master Warrior set a single spiked red heel in Ciopori’s elegant hand: the shoe Kyla had been wearing the night of Dario and Lily’s welcome-home party—the shoe with the sharpened heel—the one Kyla had tried to thrust into Nikolai’s heart.
Kyla’s teeth began to chatter and, for the first time, her eyes sought Saxson’s. “Saxson,” she whispered in terror. “Please don’t let them do this. You know me. The real me.”
Damn it all to hell, she had not wanted to show any weakness, but this barbaric display of supremacy—this taunting, drawn-out suspense—was unbearable. Rage and immediate condemnation would have been easier to take—and a lot less frightening. But this woman—this female vampire—she was so cold, clinical, and calculating…
Kyla took a few unwitting steps backward, shuffling against the hard ground, and Saxson pressed his iron chest against her back, halting the piteous flight.
There would be no retreat.
Ciopori shook her head in disgust. “Not quite as brave when you aren’t staking a child, are you?” She exchanged a momentary glance with Marquis, gestured toward a nearby lodgepole pine, and nodded.
What happened next was a blur.
The massive Ancient Master Warrior shot into the air like a rocket, landed in front of the tree, and wrenched it out of the ground like it was nothing more than a bothersome weed. He returned to the spot where they were standing and staked it into the ground, driving the base of the trunk at least five feet deep, then stripping the tree of branches with a ray of searing light from his eyes.
It all happened so fast, Kyla couldn’t quite make sense of it.
And then Marquis Silivasi sprang in her direction, grasped her by the throat, and hoisted her off the ground, slamming her partially exposed back against the rough bark of the tree.
Kyla cried out in shock and horror as the terrifying vampire held her in place with one brutish hand and pinned both arms above her head with the other.
Ciopori rose from the ground like a plume of smoke from a recently doused fire, floating upward to the top of the tree. She grasped Kyla’s pinned arms and placed one palm on top of the other, and then the agony hit a few seconds later as Ciopori drove the sharpened spike of the heel right through Kyla’s hands, staking her to the bare lodgepole pine like a barbaric sacrifice, leaving her to dangle in the air.
“Saxson!” Kyla screamed like a banshee, no longer caring if she sounded weak. “Please…please! Take it out! Get me down!” She squirmed like an electric eel, twisting this way and that, trying to wrench her hands free, trying to stop the searing, unbearable pain, if only momentarily.
Ciopori waved a dismissive hand through the air, trapping Kyla’s screams in her throat—she silenced the female with a gesture, then snorted in derision. “We welcomed you into our valley. We treated you with kindness and respect. I allowed you to go check on my precious son, unsupervised, as a show of honor and trust. And you repaid me—you repaid Saxson—you repaid all of us with treachery. I neither want to see you bleed, nor care to draw this out. I simply want you to know that I have searched my soul regarding this Blood Vengeance, and my conscience is clear. In the kingdom where I grew up, when my father was the king, before the horrid events that led to the Curse, he would as
k three questions at court when a condemned prisoner was brought before him: Is the criminal sorry for what he or she has done; if given a chance, would he or she do it again; and is the community, at large, safer without them—would their continued existence place others in peril? As I’ve said, I’ve searched my soul, and the answers are clear: No, you have not repented; yes, you would do it again; and yes, I believe the world as we know it is a better—and safer—place without you.” She held two fingers in the air as if to denote an exception. “Do not mistake me, Kyla Sparrow, it is not my place to judge your soul—your human deity will have that task shortly—as will my soul also be judged by the goddess Cygnus and Lord Draco, when I return to the Valley of Spirit and Light. We shall both be held accountable, and I welcome the scrutiny. But as for today, as for this night, I sentence you to death for the attempted murder of my son, and I sentence you to terror and agony, for the terror and agony you caused an innocent child.”
Kyla’s head was spinning from the tumultuous words. Like numerous ingredients in a blender, the words tossed around in her mind, violently assailing her conscience. She felt her throat relax—Ciopori must have released her voice—but there was nothing she could say to change the princess’s mind.
This was all happening much too fast.
For some reason—for some pitiful, unknown, inexplicable reason—Kyla Sparrow had continued to believe, or hope, that there would be a different outcome.
Somehow.
Someway.
Saxson would step in.
He had to.
He just had to.
The male had loved her…once.
The wind began to howl in the forest canopy, and the thick, viscous fog, swirling above the ground, began to inch up the base of the tree. Marquis Silivasi reached into the inner lining of his lightweight leather jacket and retrieved a white-and-red container—some sort of squeeze bottle—and Kyla strained to see what it was, even as she continued to gasp in pain…to kick and squirm, regardless of the sharp, unrelenting agony it caused her hands.
And then Ciopori soaked the trunk of the tree with the bottle’s contents and tossed the empty container to the ground.