The Shifter’s Hostage (Shades of Shifters Book 5)

by T. S. Ryder

  It was torture to be in the same room as this beautiful woman with her supple golden-olive skin, long, luscious black hair, and body made for love. But he had to get used to being close to her without being able to touch her, let alone worship her body or feed on her. It would be too easy to lose control.

  "May I ask you a question?" Maribel's gaze never left his face.

  He squeezed her hand gently. "Of course. We're married, so you can ask me anything."

  Married. As soon as she said that was what she wanted, he had known he would give it to her. Since then his mind had been reeling–was that really the wisest choice? He hadn't even taken the time to check how his subjects would react. Well, if any of them objected they would have to deal with it. He was the king.

  But still. It had been an impulsive decision.

  After Sofia left him two hundred years ago, he never thought he would marry again. Certainly not somebody he just met. For all he knew, she could be after the divorce settlement that she'd get should they separate.

  But no matter. He had had the foresight to have a prenuptial drawn in the twenty-four hours before their wedding. He would get the child if she left him. That's all he cared about. He wanted a child, and if he had to marry someone he didn't know to get it… well, it couldn't be any more loveless than his marriage to Sofia had been.

  "When are you going to drink from me?"

  "Drinking from you will change your body's chemistry and hormone production," he said, not looking at her. "It may discourage you becoming pregnant."

  "Oh."

  It wasn't likely to discourage pregnancy, but it might and so it wasn't technically a lie.

  "And when will we… consummate our marriage?"

  "If I slept with you, I would want to drink from you. We will have to give it some time and slowly get closer." For some reason, he had the urge to apologize to her for making her wait. "Why did you decide to come be a blood donor?"

  Maribel turned her face away. He could feel her pulse increase in her fingers and frowned. Why would a simple question put her in such a state?

  "I don't want to answer that right now. You'll have to wait until we're closer."

  The echoing of his words made him frown. "Why is that? Are you holding out your story until I sleep with you?"

  "No. I'm not telling you my story until I know whether I want you to know. How did you become a vampire?" She gave him a pointed look.

  Sheridan shrugged. "I suppose I see your point."

  There was a rapid knock on the door before it opened. Sheridan's frown increased when he saw his PA, a sweet little vampire named Billie. Her face was pinched, and there was clear anger in the way she held her shoulders. That couldn't be good.

  "Sir, Romanoff is demanding an audience."

  Romanoff. He was an old general who still thought humans mobbed vampires with torches and pitchforks.

  Sheridan repressed a sigh. If he didn't go see Romanoff, the vampire would likely burst in here and frighten the human with his outdated opinions. And then the king would have to imprison him, which would only infuriate the old general even more. No, best to try to placate him.

  He squeezed his wife's hand. "I'll be right back."

  Billie led him out of the hospital wing, to the large parlor where he often had tea with human government officials. Romanoff, taller than most vampires with the build of a Viking warrior, paced the expensive Persian carpet.

  "What is it?" Sheridan snapped at the other vampire.

  "My lord." Romanoff bowed at his waist. "It's the human that you have… married."

  "My wife, you mean? Your queen?" Sheridan kept his voice neutral.

  "No human is my queen!" Romanoff's eyes blazed. His hands clenched at his sides. "You insult me by marrying one of them. How many vampire lives have been lost to the senseless hatred that humans harbor in their hearts? Using one for a child I can perhaps understand, but marrying one? Naming her our queen? You insult us all!"

  Sheridan stepped towards Romanoff, not blinking. "I am your king and it is not your place to challenge my decisions."

  Romanoff opened his mouth, but Sheridan held up his hand. The other vampire fell silent at once.

  The general had been against bringing humans into the city walls to feed the inhabitants of the palace, insisting that they should instead hunt like they had in the years before the advent of guns and bombs. And whenever low-born vampires tried to scale the walls and mingle with humans–which would no doubt end in human death and renew vampire persecution–he had the audacity to claim that it was madness driven by the dead blood that Sheridan bought for his subjects.

  As if Sheridan hadn't been drinking that same dead blood.

  The king was getting tired of it. It was his job to keep his people safe, and vampires like Romanoff could get them all destroyed with their actions.

  "Maribel is mine. She belongs to me. No one, not you nor anyone else, will challenge my right to marry her. Do you understand?"

  A muscle twitched in Romanoff's jaw.

  "I asked you a question."

  "Yes, my lord."

  "Good. Now leave."

  The vampire bowed and swept out of the room.

  Sheridan glared at him as he went. "He'll continue to cause problems, won't he?"

  "Probably," Billie agreed. "And he's not the only one. There is plenty of outrage in the lower ranks about their king marrying a human. Especially when the marriage happened so quickly."

  "Is that a note of reproach I hear in your voice, Billie?"

  "My lord, I would never reproach my king," Billie said, her voice just light enough to be teasing. "But as your personal assistant, I would have thought that I would be made aware of such things more than twenty-four hours in advance."

  "And if I had known earlier, I would have told you. I need to get back to my wife now."

  Billie hurried after him. "There is something else."

  Sheridan sighed. There always was. "Vampire or human?"

  "Human. The group of protesters at our gates is growing. They are angry that we won't let their human news crews come into the palace, and they are calling for their government to intervene in, I quote, 'the vampire prostitution of human women'. There are even a few that are claiming we have underage girls within the walls and are demanding that the identities of all our donors be released."

  "And if their identities were released, our donors would never be given a moment's peace when they return to the human side of the walls. It's funny how these humans claim they want to protect our donors when the confidentiality was put in place to protect the donors from other humans after leaving."

  Billie shrugged. "They also seem overly concerned with the women who come to us, but think nothing of the men."

  Sheridan grunted. He tapped his foot for a moment, then shook his head. "Release a statement refuting those claims, along with a copy of the agreement that the donors sign. Ask a few of the women if they'd be willing to join a few social media sites to document their lives here. Instagram, Twitter, etc. Reinforce the privacy policies we have."

  His PA jotted down notes on her smartphone and nodded. "That should help."

  "Anything else?"

  "No.

  Sheridan turned on his heel and headed back towards the hospital wing. He hoped he wasn't too late to hold Maribel's hand while the procedure was carried out.

  Chapter Three – Maribel

  Maribel threw the latest pregnancy test away, resisting the urge to kick the garbage bin. Not pregnant. Again.

  She didn't know why she was so disappointed. Sheridan had told her he'd be able to smell it when she was pregnant, far earlier than when the pregnancy tests would be able to indicate that she was. He had told her when she sent for the tests that she wasn't pregnant, but she wanted to be sure, hoping he was wrong.

  Shaking her head, Maribel washed her hands and stepped back into the common room of the chambers she shared with Sheridan. He was at the window, phone to his ear. Just how busy the
vampire king was surprised her the most of everything in the vampire city. It seemed like they rarely had a moment to themselves that wasn't interrupted by one minor emergency or another.

  She sat down at the chess game that they had been in the middle of playing when he had gotten the call. His voice was low and he spoke rapidly, so she couldn’t hear what he was saying. She admired the cut of his white dress while she waited. He really was very good looking, her husband.

  And she was his wife. Hopefully, she would get pregnant soon. She was starting to go crazy with desire for him.

  "Whose turn is it?" Maribel asked after Sheridan hung up his phone.

  "Yours."

  She moved a pawn, not really thinking about the game. "I'm sorry."

  Sheridan's brow furrowed. "Sorry? For what?"

  "I know that you're frustrated that I'm not pregnant yet."

  Subtle changes had been happening over the past few weeks since she moved into the palace. Rosewater was spritzed everywhere, she was given raspberry tea to drink. Both were supposed to help a woman conceive. She was certain there were other folk remedies at play that she wasn't aware of.

  "It'll take time," Sheridan said, moving a rook. "We have to be patient, Maribel. I'm sorry if I've been putting undue pressure on you."

  "You haven’t, not really. I have never lived as well as the past few weeks."

  It was a little unnerving, if she was honest with herself, to have so many servants at her beck and call. Everything she wanted was at her fingertips. Sheridan had already paid off all her debts and hadn't even asked how she incurred them. And she hadn’t told him.

  "I'm glad." Sheridan frowned, looking at the chessboard. His phone dinged and he looked at it. His frown deepened. "I have to go, Maribel. The protestors outside the wall have attempted to accost the guards and I have to deal with it."

  "Of course." Maribel pushed her chair away from the table. "We can finish this game another time. I'm going to lose, anyway."

  Sheridan smiled and quickly kissed her cheek before he left. Her skin tingled where he had kissed her. She had to repress the urge to grab him and drag him to one of their rooms.

  He had made it very clear that he wasn't going to drink from her or sleep with her until she was pregnant. Maribel wasn't sure how it would discourage pregnancy, but if a vampire was willing to forgo sex and blood, then it had to be important.

  With a sigh, she grabbed a book and curled up on the couch. There was a human-only luncheon happening in the courtyard that day, but Maribel found she wanted to be alone most of the time. The other humans couldn’t stop openly asking her whether or not she was pregnant yet, which was getting on her nerves, bad.

  Some time later she tossed the book aside, unable to immerse herself in it, and decided to go swimming instead. There was a large lap pool on the ground level, but Maribel preferred the smaller, cozier pool on the fifth floor. It was made from marble, and built up off the floor, with two statues of women pouring water at either end. It was just big enough to paddle around in and also usually empty.

  Maribel had never felt comfortable wearing a swimsuit in public. Add to it the insanely gorgeous vampire women that always seemed to be in skimpy bikinis, and she suffered some serious body-image issues at the ground-level pool.

  Soon she was relaxing in the waist-deep water of the small pool, idly paddling from one end to the other. The water smelled slightly of cucumber.

  Everything about the vampire world was rich and lush. When Sheridan took her out around the vampire town, she hadn't seen one building in need of repair. Vampires, it seemed, took care of each other better than humans did. And they all seemed to be quite happy to see her, although Sheridan had told her there were some who weren't happy that he married a human.

  "Hello."

  Maribel jumped at the sound of the voice. She looked up to see a vampire peering over the lip of the pool, smiling down at her. He was as gorgeous as any other vampire she had seen, although not as good looking as Sheridan. Unlike any of the others she had seen, he was blond, although his eyes were black like the rest of them.

  "Hello," Maribel replied uncertainly. She hadn't met this vampire before, and she usually didn't see anybody in the pool unless Sheridan was with her.

  "Mind if I join you?"

  "Um…" She didn't like the way he was looking at her. Even though her one-piece swimsuit was as modest as they come, the gleam in his eye as he stared at her made her feel like she might as well be naked. "Actually, I was just leaving."

  She climbed out at the other side of the pool, but the vampire had circled it and was standing at the stairs with her towel outstretched before she made it to the top. His grin increased.

  "I don't think we've met," she said, her heart starting to pound. "I'm—"

  "I know who you are. The human the king married. But he hasn't marked you yet."

  Maribel quickly made it to the floor, putting some distance between her and the vampire. "Marked me?"

  "I don't see any scars from where he's drunken from you, or smell him on you." The vampire smiled as her eyes widened with horror.

  "Don't look at me like that. He hasn't claimed you, which means you're free to give to whoever you want. And you smell so good. I don't usually go for your blood type, but you've got a special fragrance… What harm can one taste do?"

  The roar from the other end of the room was the only warning they got that Sheridan had just entered the room.

  Before Maribel could even process it, her king was there, standing between her and the other vampire. The muscles of his back strained as he picked up the blond by his throat. He threw the other vampire across the room. The wall cracked from the impact.

  "She is mine!"

  Sheridan wrapped his arms around Maribel's waist. She yelped as he picked her up, and then they were off. Her arms tightened around his neck, her heart hammering as the corridors rushed by. They were moving so quickly that it made her sick. When Sheridan finally put her down, she swayed on the spot and had to cling to him to keep herself upright.

  "Did he touch you?" Sheridan's hands cupped her face. "Did he bite you?"

  Maribel's stomach stopped spinning and she stepped away, glaring at the vampire king. "What was that all about? He was being a creep, yeah, but you didn't have to throw him across the room and then carry me away like I was a damsel in distress and you were my white knight!"

  Surprise flickered across Sheridan's face. "I had to get you away from him."

  "A simple, 'she's my wife, stay away from her, we're leaving, honey' would have worked." Maribel put her hands on her hips. "You didn't have to act like he was trying to kill me!"

  "He was challenging my authority, trying to drink from you."

  "I wouldn't have let him. Do you really think I would let him drink from me?"

  Sheridan held up his hands and shook his head. "No. No, of course not. I didn't think that, Maribel. I'm sorry if I scared you."

  Maribel put a hand to her chest, where her heart was still pounding wildly. "Well, you did."

  "I'm sorry. And you're right, I overreacted." He turned away and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I have jealousy issues. I thought I'd gotten over them, but apparently not."

  "Jealousy." Maribel stared. A smile twitched her lips, no matter how hard she fought it. If she was honest, even though she was still mildly freaked out by his display of violence, knowing that he was jealous made a bubble of happiness rise up in her. "Well, okay. You're forgiven this time."

  Sheridan wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into a gentle embrace. "That vampire's actions do raise another point, though. I haven't claimed you in any official capacity except marriage, and many won't accept that as binding. We'll have to make a video to release on the internet stating that we are together and that you are mine."

  "Wait. You want to release a video on the internet?"

  "Yes. That way the whole world will know that you’re mine."

  The dominant way he said it had heat swi
rling inside of her. Maribel clung to his warmth, breathing in his heady scent. A giggle burst from her lips. Funny how her irritation at him could vanish just like that.

  "Will a video really work?"

  "Yes. Of course it will."

  "Good. I don't want to be anybody's but yours."

  Maribel pressed herself to her toes and threw her arms around Sheridan's neck, kissing him passionately.

  Chapter Four – Sheridan

  The smell was what woke him up.

  Earthy yet sweet, like a cinnamon bun with just a little too much cinnamon in it. Maybe with a hint of nutmeg as well. Sheridan's arms tightened around Maribel as the scent of her pregnancy roused him. It was the middle of the night, but there was a full moon outside, and the vampire king could see as well as if it had been daylight.

  His human was cuddled in against his arm, her arm over his chest. The black silky nightdress she was wearing barely contained her breasts, and she had kicked off the blankets sometime during the night, revealing that it had twisted up around her waist. She was wearing white 'granny panties' that looked adorable on her. Sleeping in the same bed was difficult, although the closer he was the easier controlling himself seemed to be. He wanted to take this in steps, and sex would have to wait.

  Pregnant. Sheridan smiled, resisting the urge to wake her and tell her. Happiness bubbled up in him, making him feel warm and cozy from the inside out. His human was pregnant. After all these weeks of waiting, the treatments had finally taken.

  His smile faded.

  She was pregnant. That was good news. But he still hadn't figured out what to tell her now. He sighed, staring at the ceiling. Perhaps it would be best to tell her the truth of why he was holding back, why he couldn't drink from her or make love to her. He longed to taste her blood, longed to be joined in body.

  But he was afraid.

  When vampires had sex with humans or tasted their blood, it was far too easy to lose control. Far too easy to snap fragile bones or drink them dry. If he did that to Maribel…