by T. S. Ryder
Chapter Thirteen
Over the next few months, Matheus put changes into place to weed out those who weren’t willing to bend to his rules. Several nobles were removed from their seats of power and replaced with those who would obey.
Relations with bordering nations were gradually starting to improve, and while Matheus agreed that they had a long way to go, the improvements were good enough for him to consider them a success.
At the same time, Alice had work of her own, transforming Matheus’ former harem into a school. She was teaching the girls how to read, write, and practice magic, creating a new form of guard to keep her family safe while also giving the girls she had come to adore a shot at being something more than servants.
“Remember, girls, love potions have different potencies and different reactions based on what sort of ingredients that you use,” Alice explained, balancing her baby daughter in the crook of her arm as she moved through the rows of desks between her students. “For example, Bachelor’s Buttons will help influence love and allow you to feel whether or not a relationship is meant to be, whereas cinnamon is an aphrodisiac. It will cause lust, but not love.”
Her daughter, Emma, squirmed and let out a whine of protest. At barely a month old, the girl had quickly become the light of her parents’ lives. Although she had her father’s strong features, her hair, eyes, and face were her mother’s. According to her father, she also had her mother’s voice.
“Alright, it looks like my little darling has decided that class should be dismissed for now,” Alice laughed as she shifted her daughter, who had started to fuss noisily in her arms. “Have a good night and remember to read that book on love potions by the end of the week! I won’t be held responsible if you wind up making your true loves turn purple.”
The class dispersed and Alice settled down behind her desk to feed her child, looking up when the door opened. Smiling as Matheus stepped into view, she leaned up and kissed him when he approached.
“How was class?” he asked, trailing his fingers through her hair and smiling when Emma looked up at him, making a soft noise between her eager gulps.
“Fine. The classes are coming along very well. Some of the girls are still having issues on remembering what does what, but for the most part, they haven’t made any major mistakes.” Alice beamed, proud of the girls that she had taken under her wing. “Lindsey especially is doing well. She’s learned how to cast basic fire spells already. Almost lit her hair on fire the first try, the poor thing.”
“Sounds like she has a good teacher,” Matheus said, helping Alice to her feet after Emma had finished feeding. Taking her arm, he led her into the hallway. “I was hoping that you would be free for dinner tonight, once our little one has gone to sleep,” he suggested, glancing down at Alice with a smile.
“I would love that. Maybe I’ll even ask your mother if she’ll watch Emma so that we can have a night to ourselves,” Alice sighed. Despite the fact that there was an ample supply of people to watch her child, Alice had insisted that she would be the primary caretaker. She didn’t want her daughter to remember being raised by a group of nannies.
“Great! We haven’t had a full night to ourselves since Emma was born.” Matheus kissed the back of Alice’s neck and smiled when she blushed.
“I suppose you figure that means we get to make love?” she mused, laughing when her husband shrugged and looked hopefully back at her. Kissing him slowly on the lips, she nodded. “I’ve missed you too, my love.”
Leaning against her lover’s chest and moving through the halls of the castle, it was hard to think that only a year prior she had been living alone in a cottage outside a small town. Though she missed the place dearly, she was happy where she was. She had a family and was able to spread her knowledge to new students who were eager to learn.
“Where’s Talon? I haven’t seen him in a while,” Matheus noted, wrapping his arm around Alice’s waist as they walked.
“Pursuing another lady cat, I’m sure. He’s been enjoying the surplus of cats around the castle a bit too much.” Alice laughed, leaning closer to her mate as Emma started to doze off against her chest.
“Should I be expecting kittens come spring then?” Matheus asked, laughing when his mate nodded with a soft giggle. Kissing the top of her head, he opened the doors to their private apartments and slipped inside.
Settling Emma into her crib, Alice turned around and wrapped her arms around her lover’s neck, kissing him on the lips and smiling happily.
“You know, I was thinking that we should probably work on giving Emma a sibling,” she mumbled against his lips, earning an excited noise from Matheus. “I never thought that I would enjoy having a child, but now that I have one, I want more.”
“Well, I won’t argue with you on that one,” Matheus grinned wickedly, sweeping Alice off of her feet and leaning down to slide their lips together happily. “My angel, my queen, I love you more than life itself,” he breathed against her lips.
Cradled in her lover’s arms, Alice felt her heart flutter in her chest. Out of all the titles in the world that she could be given, being Matheus’ mate was the most important one.
*****
THE END
The Vampire Prince's Harem
Description
A curvy witch ready for love PLUS a hot vampire prince with a bitter heart PLUS a Harem in the dungeons of the vampire Fort
Born to filthy rich, stuck-up, self-centered parents, Lola is a young witch who has been deprived of affection all her life. After a childhood spent seeking love and pandering to her preening mother, it never occurred to her that she could be special to someone.
When her mother shuns her completely after her father’s death, Lola returns to work to get busy and forget everything. A quick make-out session with a hot stranger is just what she needs.
Valnoir is a 300-year-old vampire prince who has lost his zest for life. When the King announces his concern over the blood supply at the Fort, Valnoir signs up for a simple task. But he’s in for a surprise.
When he executes the task, Lola catches him red-handed and Valnoir ends up kidnapping her, locking her into the Harem. But his attempt to break her fails. As does her determination not to fall for him.
Their chemistry can’t be denied, but they also annoy each other immensely. Both of them get way more than they bargained for, more than they can handle. And as if that isn’t enough, Lola has a gift that the vampires need desperately.
Will Lola accept the task the vampires want her to perform or try to escape? Does she even want to leave, especially when a little surprise announces itself? Can Lola and Valnoir overcome their differences and love each other?
Chapter One - Lola
Saturday
It is seven in the morning when I wake up, exhausted and famished. It is true what they say about grief making you hungry. I tiptoe down the stairs, my feet cold on the stainless steel. While making breakfast and coffee, I find the day’s mail on the kitchen counter, carefully sorted into stacks: condolence cards and letters, bills, personal mail and tabloids. On top of one stack is a copy of People magazine. A photo of my mother is on the front page under the headline Mayumi May bids farewell to husband. At the bottom is a subheading, highlighted in yellow: Exclusive pictures inside.
For a moment I pause and question whether it is my mom who makes everything about herself, or whether it is the media. The answer comes to me immediately: it is my mom. She’s always insisted that I call her ‘mother’. It’s funny how the death of my father and his funeral have turned into a media spectacle, just like everything else in my life, with the spotlight on my mother. The tabloid hasn’t even bothered mentioning the name of my father, as if it doesn’t really matter who my mother was married to. I turn to the exclusive photos inside and read the details about my mother’s elegant Giovanni mourning dress that had been custom designed for the event. I don’t feel any revulsion or disgust. Growing up in this family I have gotten used to it. Everythi
ng in my life was artificial, including my father, Richard Windsor: he was distantly related to the royal family through his mother, and for obvious reasons he’d taken up her last name.
After breakfast, I join my mother in the living room. She is sitting on the Ron Arid stainless steel sofa — the most expensive sofa in the world, although I don’t know how anyone can stand to sit on it — with her ankles and knees together, legs slanted to the side and her hands resting in her lap. Her face is impassive, but even without any expression her Japanese heritage lends it an impressive look. She looks stunning, as if she were posing for a photoshoot. I can’t tell whether she is grieving or not, because it’s not the first time I’ve seen this look on her face. This is her usual look, her equilibrium state. But given that my father got cremated yesterday, I decide to be sympathetic.
“It’s going to be okay, mother,” I say. “I’ll be here for as long as you need me.” I get up to join her on her metal sofa when she finally speaks, looking straight at me.
“Don’t get up, I’m fine. I told you the day before, there’s no need for you to stay. I mean it, and I would like to be alone,” she says in her heavily Japanese-accented English. She gets up, her Jimmy Choos clacking on the black marble floor, picks up a cigar from a box on the mantel, lights it and returns to her place. She takes a casual puff, then says, “Lola, I’d like you to leave when you’re done grieving.”
She makes it sound like she is doing me a favor by letting me stay. In a moment of grief, I’d mistaken my mother for a person — my mistake. I find it funny how she pronounces my name. She always says it like ‘Law-lah.’ Other than that, her English is perfect, a combination of a beautiful accent and elite haughtiness. Her chocolate-brown eyes are filled with the disdain that she really feels for everyone. She truly believes she is superior, and she never tries to hide her dislike for me.
Her dislike for me is a result of things beyond our control. We come from a long line of witches, and since the witchy genes (or whatever it is that allows us to do magic) skip one generation, I ended up a witch and she didn’t. That is something she holds against me, even though the non-witchy generation gets the ability to predict the future. It was partly how she’d become so successful, but she would never admit it. Being an actor, a former top model, a philanthropist, one of New York’s elite and a trophy wife to my business tycoon father had thrust us all into the limelight. She publicly maintained that she wanted to keep her personal life personal and her only child out of the spotlight, but in truth, she just didn’t want any attention focused on me. Her personal life is, and has always been, very public otherwise.
While I got the witchy gene, I didn’t get her size-zero genes. We look more like sisters than mother and daughter, and she is the beautiful one. Growing up in her shadow had been difficult, and she made it harder by always excluding me from things. Even when we had parties at our place, she made sure that I stayed in my room. It was awful having the people I had massive crushes on, singers and divas who topped the charts, actors and actresses who played superheroes, across the hall from me when the closest I could get to them was looking at the pictures that made it to the tabloids the next day.
My parents didn’t really raise me or play any part in my life growing up, aside from paying for the live-in nanny and my college. My mother made a point of donating her designer dresses and shoes, reminding me constantly, “You should lose weight if you want these. It would be a disgrace to the designer if you wore them the way you are.”
So, naturally, I turned out exactly how you’d expect me to, growing up in a fancy place among rich people who were always in a war to outdo each other. Unlike other kids of the same circle, I had zero confidence or belief in myself, and only began to have the semblance of a life once I moved out and got a job at a hospital.
“Fine,” I say. “There isn’t much for me to grieve, so I’ll leave and let you grieve alone.”
“O-negai shimasu, Lola, there’s no need to be so dramatic,” she says. I expect her to follow that by asking me to stay, to not leave so soon, or something like that, but she doesn’t. “I prefer my solitude. Unlike you, I have a very busy life. I prefer some quiet whenever I can get it.”
“Mother, had you ever been to visit father at the hospital, you’d see how busy hospitals are.” I run upstairs to gather my things.
“Arigatō,” she says, then calls after me. “Take the back entrance, there’s a camera crew gathered at the front one.”
I leave through the front door instead, passing my mother on the stairs as she dramatically broadcasts her grief to the cameras and microphones that are shoved into her face. None of the paparazzi bother about me, having no clue that I am the daughter. I don’t look the part.
When I get back to my apartment I immediately turn on the TV and switch to E! News in the hope of catching my mother’s press conference. I want to hear her speech to see if she’d mentioned me or anything about me. The only thing I catch is the sound of cameras clicking as her handsome agent places his arm behind her and guides her back into the brownstone house. She stops for a moment and looks at the camera, and it feels like she is glaring at me through the screen, although it is hard to see her eyes because she has black, diamond-studded Versace shades on. I go on my computer and find a clip of her speech on YouTube, complete with my supposedly dramatic exit. It doesn’t look as dramatic on the screen. She doesn’t mention me, doesn’t say anything about her ‘family’, just talks about herself, how she is coping, what she plans to do, etc.
It pains me to see that she literally doesn’t give a fuck about me, her only child, and that is the final straw for me. I decide to cut all ties with her, not that she’d notice. It is ludicrous, really, being the only daughter of two billionaires and having to work my ass off to get by. My parents had stopped supporting me financially as soon as I had turned 18 — or, at least, my mother had. My father had literally played no role in my life. All the money and businesses my father had left were in my mother’s name.
I want some sort of closure, but I know I won't get any, so there is no point in trying. For the first time in years, I ache to return to work on a Sunday. The hospital is completely different to my home, but I feel much more at home there. The walls are painted in subtle colors, and people only talk when they need something from you. They might not always be kind, but I have no expectations of them, and so I am never really disappointed by them. Back at home I had always expected affection or love, but the closest my parents had got to that was handing me my pocket money.
At times like this, I miss my grandmother. She’s the polar opposite of my mother, and she always made me feel better. I suddenly remember something that she often said to me, “Tonbi ga taka wo umu.” It was a Japanese quote that translated to ‘A kite breeding a hawk’. I remember asking her what that meant, and how she’d put her hand on my cheek and say, “It means that you are a splendid child born from common parents.” But I haven’t heard from my grandmother in years. We never really knew where she was at any particular time; she would just appear and disappear as she pleased.
Chapter Two - Valnoir
Sunday
After two hours of trying to sleep, I give up and get out of bed. The sun is burning outside, I can tell, although nothing comes in through the window. It isn’t really a window anyway. From the outside it looks like a window, but from the inside it has bricks stuffed in underneath a coat of plaster. On the surface is a thin plasma screen that broadcasts the view from the outside. So I guess it is a window, in a way. There is even a skylight like that in the foyer, although you would be hard pressed to notice it unless you looked up and spotted the oddity. It, too, has the same level of brightness as the rest of the windows in the mansion, dimmer than real sunlight. That’s how it is inside the Fort.
The Fort is where we live. It’s an 18th-century mansion, and has all the problems that come from that. That is, while everything inside is quaint and dainty, it also has the musty, stale stench. But people
like us can’t afford to move too easily, and they don’t build houses this large anymore. Unless they start selling school buildings, we are stuck here. Who are we, you ask! Well, we are vampires, but before you jump to any conclusions, let me make something very clear: we don’t sparkle in the sunlight, and we have nothing against the Cullens. We enjoy good fiction — or, not so good, in this case — just as much as you do. You want to know why? Because we are people, too, just like you. Except that, of course, just like a diabetic needs insulin or certain individuals have special dietary requirements, we need blood to survive, and we are photosensitive; exposure to the sun dries us up, and prolonged exposure to it will turn us to ashes, or dust.
Given our special needs, everyone at the Fort has jobs. We also have a president, head, master of the house. His name is Viktor and he is my father. Back in the 18th century, during the Great Plague, my father bit us all and turned us into vampires: me; my 25-year-old brother, Magnus; my 4-year-old sister, Charlotte; my 29-year old step-sister, Victoria; my mother, Lady Harriet; and my ex-step-mother, Lady Mary. I was 24 at the time. The Fort has over 500 rooms on about ten stories. Three of them are above ground, and the rest are underground. More continue to be dug as other vampires join us.
The perks of being my father’s son are limited to the exclusive use of the upper two stories for my family. Other than that we all are treated the same, get the same jobs that are passed out randomly and have to do important tasks and menial ones. But because we have over 300 people living in the Fort, there’s no rush to complete the tasks. We all get our assignments on Sunday evenings, and have to complete them before the next week.