by Izzy Shows
"But--"
"Do you challenge me, your rightful King?" I asked, not afraid to pull rank on them. "There has been enough of that already. You will respect me as your King, you will obey the orders I give you, and you will cease with this foolishness."
Isaiah had the decency to look appropriately mollified. None of the others had dared to question me before, and they certainly didn't now.
"Of course, darling," my mother said. "Go on and take care of your business. I will see you later, though, of course? I'll need your help with some of these preparations."
I would sooner walk across a bed of coals than participate in something as dull at this, but I knew I had pushed things as far as I could.
"Yes, Mother. I will see you soon," I said.
And with that, I left the room. I didn't storm out, didn't stalk, but carried myself with the calm and regal presence of a true King.
It was imperative that they remember who and what I was. I had allowed them too much freedom of late.
They would remember. I would make certain of it.
4
Grayson
Her trepidation was floating in the air in front of her door, wafting out as a scent I couldn't have ignored if I had wanted to.
When had I become so attuned to her emotions? I had to wonder.
It doesn't matter. She can be afraid of this, as well she should be. It won't be pleasant for either of us, I thought. No, this wasn't going to go well. I already knew that.
Or will it go too well? You've craved the taste of her blood long enough. Will you be able to control yourself? That same needling voice snuck into my mind, taunting me with the truth of what I had felt only a few days ago.
But that was different. That was before I'd learned what she was.
You longed for her blood even when you thought she was another, when you found her as the hunter on the rooftop, and again when she stood above her kill. You wanted to taste her even when the scent of death was on her.
A rumbling growl shook my chest, so strongly did I dislike the thoughts that haunted me.
Enough.
Only then did I think to look up and down the hall. It was empty, thank the Gods. There was likely a guard at the far end, where the hall opened up to a set of stairs that led to the rest of the castle, but the hall itself was deserted of any vampires or thralls.
As it should be. This was referred to as the royal corridor. It housed both my mother and myself, as well as a few of my cousins, and one or two of the highest-ranking vampires--dukes and duchesses, generally speaking.
The Council members weren't housed in this hall. They were on the next level, which allowed us a certain amount of privacy, for which I was thankful. None of them could see the way I hesitated before knocking on her door, or the apprehension on my face as I tried to think of what I would say to her, what I would do once I was alone with her.
Not a word had passed between us since she had woken in my bed in the early hours of the night, before I had taken her to the Council for her hearing. Against my better judgment, I had comforted her when she wakened in a panic, terrified for the life of my mother, desperate to get out the warning necessary to save my mother's life.
How could I not be touched by something like that? She had been careless for her own life, thinking only to save the most important person in my life--something that had angered me to my deepest core. That moment when I had seen that monstrous creature rending its claws into her gut, savaging her as she threw herself between it and my mother, had been the worst moment of my life. I had never known such fear, such panic, or such a desperate urge to protect...
No, I couldn't go down that path, couldn't remember what I had felt, or what had possessed me to protect Nina from the Council when she was lying on the ground and they had thought to finish her off, or what in the name of all the Gods had caused me to bring her back to my bed, of all places, and stand over her body for two days while I waited for her to recover.
Better not to think about that at all, I told myself as I again raised my hand and knocked on her door.
What was taking her so long? Why had she not answered?
At last the door opened, just a crack at first, allowing me to see only a sliver of Nina's form. Her brown hair was flowing past her shoulders to curl about her breasts, which that were almost decadently on display in the low-cut thrall gown she had changed into out of the dirty and tattered one she had worn while fighting for the lives of my people.
Think about that. Think about what she did for you, for all of your people, when all you had done to her was throw her in a dungeon like a monster that could not be trusted. Even after that, she couldn't stand idly by while your people were killed--just like she couldn't stand by when your life was in danger. She not only saved your mother, but you as well. Is that not enough to give you pause?
What was wrong with me? It seemed my mind was at war with itself, not knowing whether to condemn her or forgive her.
I knew I wasn't ready for the latter, though I couldn't bring myself to do the former, either.
I was in quite the pickle.
"Will you allow me entrance?" I asked at last, glad to hear that my voice was well under control.
"What are you doing here?" she asked instead. Her fingers of her hand were curled around the edge of the door, tightening until they almost turned white beneath the natural tawny color of her skin. Her brown eyes, flecked with what seemed like islands of a variety of colors that always threatened to pull me in until I could do nothing but gaze at them for hours, were filled with a mixture of defiant determination and anxious apprehension.
I let out a heavy sigh and grimaced. "You know why I'm here, Nina. It's time."
Her eyebrows knit together, the corners of her full lips were tugged down, and her hold on the door tightened.
"Please...don't..." she whispered, dropping her gaze to the floor.
"Open the door, Nina. I don't want to have this conversation in the open like this."
Her eyes flitted up to mine again, widening slightly, as if she had only just remembered where we were, and the danger that came from speaking out in the open where anyone could hear you. Nina had never really understood the politics of my world, but some things were rather impossible to ignore once you'd been exposed to them.
At last, she opened the door all the way and took a step back and to the side, her head bowed so that she didn't meet my eyes.
Did she feel shame for what she'd done? I wanted to know, but I didn't have the strength to ask, not yet. I stepped inside, and she quickly closed the door behind me.
"Lock it," I said as I walked more fully into the room.
"Why?"
"Because the Council wanted to observe, and though I refused them, I wouldn't put it past Isaiah to make the attempt anyway. He is...reckless."
Why had I told her that? She didn't need to know. She didn't deserve an explanation, not for anything.
And yet, I wanted to give her more. I wanted to apologize for the necessity of what we were about to do, and explain why there could be no other way.
She brought this on herself. It's all her own doing. You hate her. She's nothing to you. She deserves no explanation, no apologies.
Then why was it that all I wanted to do was shield her from the humiliation of what was going to happen, from the subjugation required of her to submit to me in such a way? Why was it that I wanted to protect her?
"So, you're just going to...to enthrall me?" she asked, her voice soft, cautious, almost meek.
She was afraid.
"Yes," I said stiffly. I didn't know how else to go about this other than keeping it as businesslike as possible.
"What does that entail?"
"Must we really converse?"
She flinched as if I'd struck her. "Do you hate me so much that you can't even try to allow me to find some sort of balm for my nerves by telling me what I'm about to endure?"
Endure. The word hit me like a blow. She w
ould endure this intimacy that was being thrust upon her. She didn't want it, didn't want my fangs in her throat, my hands on her body, or to taste my blood.
Your hands won't be on her body, remember? This is strictly business.
But how could it be, when I had always refused to take a thrall because of how intimate the process was? To share blood was a highly erotic act, something mates did on a frequent basis, intimate to a degree that I had not been willing to force on her before.
It was the entire reason I hadn't enthralled her in the first place, which might have allowed us to avoid all of this. I hadn't wanted to force her to do something she wasn't ready and willing to do--and now here I was, forced as well and truly as she was to carry out this act.
With a sigh, I ran my fingers through my hair and sat down on the couch, from which I took a quick survey of her chambers. We were in the antechamber, something I believed the humans called a 'living room'.
It had a couch and two armchairs, some potted plants, artwork on the walls, a fully stocked bookshelf, a fireplace, and a window on the outer wall. I knew she had specifically been given a room with a window so she could come and go from the castle to see the wolves without alerting the other citizens of her clandestine activities.
I gestured for her to join me on the couch. She hesitated, then walked over as slowly as possible, as if she feared being near me.
And why wouldn't she? You threw her in the deepest, darkest pit in the dungeon.
But she'd deserved it, hadn't she? She'd betrayed me in the worst way, worse than anything I could have ever imagined. She had deserved that, and more. She didn't deserve my pity.
"You wish to know what an enthralling entails?" I asked, shifting slightly so that I was facing her.
She nodded, looking down at her lap, where her fingers were entangled with one another. I saw that she was trembling, and the sight tugged at my heartstrings.
I was suddenly overcome with a desire to take her in my arms, press her close to my chest, and stroke her arms until she calmed, until she relaxed against my body and welcomed what would come.
But that would never happen. Nina would never willingly submit to thralldom. I knew that, now that what she was had been revealed.
I opened my mouth to begin telling her what the process would be, intending to keep everything as clinical as it could possibly be. "You're shaking" was what came out instead, somehow.
She frowned. Her gaze darted up to my face and then back down to her lap.
"I'm not."
"You are. You're trembling. This isn't going to work if you're so tense."
"How can I be anything else?" She laughed bitterly. "You're about to chain me to you forever. I'll never be free again, not truly. You might as well be throwing me back in the dungeon."
She shivered at the mention of the dungeon.
"That's not how it's supposed to be."
"Oh?" Now, she did look at me, holding my gaze with a fierce determination, one eyebrow arched high. "How is it supposed to be? Because the way I see it, the vampire has all the control in this situation. You dominate the humans, tie them to you so that you can track where they are, how they're feeling, what they're thinking. So they don't have a single moment of peace."
When she put it that way, it did sound something like an invisible jail inside you, one that you could never escape.
"Do you know the origin of the thrall spell?"
She shook her head.
"It actually came about as an accident," I said, forcing myself to relax back into the couch. I knew that if I could distract her with conversation, if I pretended to relax, she would follow suit soon enough. "A long time ago, a man went...a little soft in the head. He had lost his mate, you see, and to lose a mate is a fate worse than death for us. It would help if you knew more about mates, but... I don't know quite how to describe that, seeing as I don't have one myself. I'm told that the bond formed with a mating is like tying one soul to another, forming almost an entirely new being. You can speak to one another in your minds, you can feel the emotions of the other, you know when they hurt and when they're in danger. You can share the good as well as the bad, share the pleasure one receives with the other. It's supposed to be a beautiful thing, from what I hear."
She frowned. "And what does that have to do with thralling?"
"Well, as I said, the man had lost his mate. Imagine being tied at the very soul like that to another person, and then having that tie severed forever by death. It's so much worse than just loving someone and losing them. The grief drives you mad. You'll never be the same again, never be the person you were even before you were mated. So, this man was very near insane, if not completely mad. He wanted something, anything, to ease the pain. So, he took a human woman, and he shared blood with her--something that is a part of the mating process, but not all of it. I won't get into that with you, because it's not relevant. The point is, he drank of her blood and she drank of his, and the thrall bond was born. It was a pale imitation of a mating bond; he could feel her emotions, an echo of some of her thoughts, and that was it. But it was enough, in his crazed and broken state, to act as something of a bandage for the wound in his soul. He was able to carry on living."
"What happened to the woman?"
I frowned, surprised. No one had ever asked about the woman before.
"From what the stories say, they were together to the end of her natural life. Very little is recorded about her, though."
"Of course not." She smirked. "Why would you think to write down the thoughts and feelings of the very first thrall? You see us humans as little more than cattle to use and feed on as you want."
"That's not true."
"Oh? Then, why were you so surprised when I talked to you the way I did? Why was Alex so surprised to find out that I knew how to read, that I was capable of carrying on a conversation? Why did Lady Lilliana react with so much astonishment when she asked me for my opinion, and I gave her a succinct argument? You don't expect us to think, to feel; you just expect us to follow you around like docile animals."
I stared at her, dumbfounded. I had no words to answer her, no way to refute her point, because it was such a good one. All she had spoken was the truth, but I didn't want to admit that.
"I've told you how the thralling works. Is there anything else you want to know?" I asked, changing the subject swiftly. I wasn't sure why I had told her the history of the thralling, why I had been so concerned with putting her at ease.
Which I had not actually done. She seemed to have forgotten her nervousness about being enthralled, but she was riled up for an entirely different reason now.
Apparently, it was good enough.
She thrust her hair away from her throat. "Fine. Do it."
The sight of her bared neck and those words of welcoming did something to me. Like an electric charge, I felt the need to take her, to make her mine.
She rearranged herself so she was kneeling on the couch, facing me, which brought her up to eye level with me. She was such a small thing, so fragile-looking, betraying no sign of her strength.
Without thinking any further, I surged forward and wrapped a hand around the back of her neck and sank my fangs into her flesh without ceremony.
Dimly, I heard her soft cry of pain, and the throaty moan that followed. Her body curved against mine, her hands found a home on my shoulders, and she clung to me as I drank from her.
I had been right. Gods, her blood was so good. It tasted better than any drug possibly could.
My body hardened immediately, painfully, urging me to take her, to breed with her, to make her mine in every possible way. I fought the beast inside, fought to remain in control.
With one hand still curled around her neck, I placed my free arm around her waist and held her tight to me. I relaxed back into the couch once more, carrying her with me so that she was straddling me.
I thought vaguely that she might fight me, that she might not like to be held like this, but she surprised
me by giving in. She melted against me completely, settling herself on my lap--and a muffled groan escaped me.
Her new position had pushed up her dress to bunch at her thighs, and I could feel the heat from that hidden female place between her legs pressing against my hard length.
Rubbing against me. Tempting me. Teasing me.
"Yes, please, God, yes. Bite me, feed on me," she moaned, writhing against me wantonly.
The beast inside me was encouraged by her movements. I growled and held her more tightly against me, drinking in her blood like a starving man. I wanted never to stop, wanted never to give her up, wanted this moment never to end. Gods, if I could stay here like this forever, if I could die like this, I would in a heartbeat.
My hands roamed her body, abandoning her back and neck to caress the skin that was exposed on her arms and thighs and then coming up to cup her breasts. She thrust them toward me, into my waiting hands, begging for more.
I could deny her nothing.
I traced the outlines of her nipples with my thumbs, then closed my fingers around them in a teasing pinch. She gasped and moaned, pressing more firmly against me, her hips rocking against my own, riding me.
"More, please..."
Yes.
At last, I withdrew from her neck, pulling back to look her in the eye, my hands not leaving her, my hips thrusting up to grind against hers. Her eyes were heavy-lidded with desire, and the little whimpers escaping her throat, mixed with the light trickle of blood that curved down her neck to her breasts, were the best aphrodisiac that could possibly exist.
"I'll give you more," I said, my voice nothing more than a husky growl.
Beyond words, she could only whimper as she tilted her head up and looked at me with pleading eyes.
I abandoned one breast--a dismayed cry answered the movement--and raised that hand to my own neck, where I drew a sharp claw across the side of my throat.