Alex grumbled petulantly. “Aurora will heal like a Vampire, she is not going to bleed out or anything.”
Ryan’s eyes flew wide. “And, what about the baby? Do you know if she will heal too? You would risk the baby’s life?”
Aurora grasped Ryan’s face in her hands, turning his head to look in her eyes. “Stop,” she said quietly, but firmly. She looked up at Alex and repeated herself. “Stop.” She stood, disengaging herself from Ryan and went to Alex. She put a hand on his cheek and said, “this baby is important to me and I would feel safer in Lily’s experienced hands. I promise that the minute I feel as if the time is coming, Ryan will send Tyler or come himself to bring you to me.”
“You know I will.” Ryan said. “I swear it.”
Sara approached and placed a gentle reassuring hand on Alex’s arm. “Please,” was all she said.
Alex looked from Sara to Aurora and pulled them both into a tight embrace. “I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to you.” He was speaking to Aurora, but somewhere deep inside, he was beginning to feel as if he meant it about both of them.
In the morning, Aurora insisted that she wanted to walk for a little while, at least, and she used the snowshoes to follow along after the sled. Earlier, Ryan had gone out to hunt something to leave for Sara. Aurora took the opportunity to say her goodbyes to Sara and Alex.
“I wish you were coming with me, but I will see you soon. I’m sure of it.” They had stripped naked so that they could lie together in the bed touching bare skin to bare skin. They weren’t getting sexual, but they placed soft kisses on each other and exchanged assurances. “Take care of each other,” Aurora said, brushing strands of hair back from Sara’s face, but looked at Alex as she said it.
He ran his fingertips lightly down the length of her arm until he gripped her hand in his. “I love you,” he said looking back at her.
Sara felt her stomach clench and her eyes began to swim with un-shed tears. At this moment, she felt like an intruder and her heart ached with it.
“I love you too,” Aurora said, reaching out to stroke his face. She looked down at Sara, lying between them and placed soft kisses on her wet lashes. “And, I love you, little dove.”
Sara’s breath hitched, and the tears slid down her cheeks. She couldn’t talk, but she buried her tear streaked face in Aurora’s silky hair.
Aurora was still thinking about the lovers in her bed as she walked steadily in the snow behind Ryan’s huge wolf form, harnessed to the sled. After a while, the snow started again, and the surface she was walking on, grew soft, making it more difficult to step with the shoes. She called a halt to Ryan, who shifted back and helped her get settled on the sled while bare-ass naked. She marveled at his pure, innocent lack of any shame with regard to his nude body. She watched him appreciatively, admiring his tight, muscular backside when he stepped in front of the sled, just before shifting and slipping back into the harness. She remembered thinking that he might amuse her in bed when she first met him, and she wondered that neither of them had ever tried. She put it down to her feelings for Sara and his fascination with her baby. She watched his manhood stirring when she and Sara bathed each other or when she bathed him, but he had never tried to do anything about it. She still suspected that Ryan was the father of Lily’s babies, but they were so odd around each other that she was confused about the dynamic involved. She resolved to watch them more closely over the next couple of weeks. These thoughts occupied her mind on the swift ride to the settlement. Before she knew it, they had arrived, and Lily was bundling her into her warm house.
“Rest a while,” she said, “and then I should examine you again since it’s been a few weeks.” She sat Aurora in a chair, in the kitchen, and made herself a cup of tea. Ryan had pulled on his clothes on the back porch and entered the kitchen with his pack in his hand. He set it on the floor against the wall, and Lily eyed it as he set it down.
“Are you staying with Kate and Elvis as usual?” she asked, trying to sound casual.
Ryan shifted from foot to foot and opened his mouth to try and come up with an answer when Aurora interjected.
“Lily, I know it is terribly rude of me to ask, but without Alex and Sara, I am wondering if you would allow Ryan to stay here with us? I am really feeling that I need him close.”
Lily cleared her throat nervously, but swiftly responded with, “Certainly, Ryan is welcome to stay. There is room.” She didn’t look at Ryan, but stood and turned her back to busy herself refilling her tea cup.
“Thank you,” Aurora said quietly to Lily when Ryan slipped out to check in with Elvis.
Aurora knew that it was not really her business, but she was determined to get to the bottom of the situation between Ryan and Lily, and later when Lily was finished examining her, she tried to think of a polite way to ask Lily about the babies’s father. She watched as Lily made notes on a clipboard and realized how much training Lily truly had and how much the settlement relied on her as a healer and midwife. She respected the young woman and found herself liking her independent spirit.
“Lily, is it really okay with you that I invited Ryan to stay?” she started. “Because, I got to thinking that maybe you might be expecting other company.” She inclined her chin at Lily’s enormous belly when Lily looked up from her notes. “The father, maybe?”
Lily snorted, “Huh. It’s funny you should say that.” But she didn’t expound.
Aurora decided to spit it out all at once. “It’s Ryan, isn’t it? Ryan is the father of your babies.”
Lily put her notes on a desk and leaned back in her chair. “Yes. Ryan is the father, but Aurora you don’t understand the circumstances.”
“You’re right, I don’t. Ryan is so attentive to my baby, I don’t know how he can be indifferent to his own.” Aurora shook her head.
Lily took Aurora’s hand and led her out of the exam room and back into the living room. “Aurora you don’t understand pack life. Ryan doesn’t even quite get it. He was raised with Sara, not as a pack member.” They sat on an overstuffed sofa, with one knee up, facing each other and reaching out to brush each other’s fingers as they talked. “Ryan wants to be a father to the babies, but that is not the pack way and I’ve asked him not to interfere. When the babies are weaned, I will give them over to be raised by the pack. No one single individual will be their mother or father.”
Aurora looked saddened. “It’s more than that, isn’t it? You don’t love him, and he doesn’t love you. Knowing how he feels about babies, why would you want to bear his children of all people?”
Lily screamed in her own head, I don’t want to bear his children. I want to bear Stephan’s children. I love someone else! Aloud she just said. “It’s complicated, but it wasn’t really our choice. As close as you all are, I’m a little surprised that he hasn’t talked to you about it.”
Aurora shook her head. “I think he is worried that we will think less of him. But, Lily, he is a beautiful man, inside and out. You could do a lot worse.”
Lily smiled a little wistfully. “I know, Aurora, but our hearts want what our hearts want.”
Aurora was nodding in agreement when Ryan came back in the house and went straight to Aurora’s belly, laying hands on and asking Lily, “How was the exam. Is everything good with the baby?”
Aurora and Lily smiled at each other knowingly. “Everything looks great,” Lily said.
Lily didn’t comment later when Ryan made it clear that he planned on sleeping next to Aurora. She realized, just as Aurora and the others did, that Ryan only wanted to be near the baby. Lily wondered if she should be concerned about his obvious obsession. He was so loving and protective that she found it hard to be too alarmed. On that first evening, she watched him humming to Aurora’s belly and then heard him murmuring to her in a Cherokee dialect. She didn’t speak well enough to know exactly what he said to the baby, but she saw the baby pushing and moving as if in response to him. She knew that some of the pack had Native American blood and
not just Cherokee– even she did – but the only words she knew were the ones used to describe some of her medicinal plants and the spirits that moved them to heal and protect. She believed in the spirits and in the right state, she was able to see the auras of others and the life force within them as could many of the healers and herb women. The witches called it the Life Spark, the Cherokee called it Adanata, roughly translated as soul. She tried to concentrate on Ryan, and for a moment, she was sure she could see the flow of energy passing between him and the unborn child. As fast as she thought she had seen it, it was gone, and she started to doubt what she had seen because she knew of nothing that would explain it.
Over the next couple of weeks, two more women in the pack delivered and a scout broke his leg running in the deep snow and tripping on a shallowly buried tree branch. Lily was busy, and she was growing tired as her body tried to reserve energy for her own twins. Aurora wanted to help Lily, but she made some of the pack nervous, until the afternoon that the scout injured himself. He hit the buried branch while running full speed in wolf form. He tumbled thirty feet, head over heels, before coming to rest with a bone jutting through his pelt in the upper part of his back leg. He shifted back and was brought to Lily, naked and in extreme pain with the bone sticking out just above his knee. Aurora helped to hold him down while Lily had to cut into his leg to return the bone to its proper place. His healing abilities were trying to knit the bone, but he continued to bleed profusely from the original wound.
“It’s too much blood,” Lily said. He’s not healing fast enough, and I can’t see the artery that must be bleeding inside.
“Let me help,” Aurora said, already biting into the fleshy part of her hand and holding the wound open to allow it to bleed.
Lily watched fascinated as Aurora poured the blood from her open wound into his. His bleeding stopped almost immediately, and his wound began to close slowly. “That’s amazing,” she said. “How did you even know that Vampire blood would work on a Were?”
“Alex had to heal Ryan once when it looked as if Ryan might die. Until then we didn’t know if it would work either. All these years and no one ever thought to try before, or if they did, they never told anyone about it.” Aurora shook her head sadly as she brushed the sweaty hair from the forehead of the young scout, who was starting to come around again. “A few months ago, if I gave him my blood like this, his wounds would have closed, and the bones knitted almost instantly, but things are different now.”
Lily watched Aurora’s bite mark slowly closing. “You really aren’t immortal anymore, are you?”
Aurora knew that Alex didn’t want to talk about it, but she looked at Lily and said, “I don’t think so.”
The scout sang Aurora’s praises to anyone who would listen for the next few days, and Weres came and went, wanting to meet the Vampire and see if it was true that she was pregnant. The already exhausted Lily was dragging after entertaining nearly the entire settlement, one after the other. By the time Aurora’s due date was only two days away, Lily had to stay in bed for an entire day. She was having mild contractions that she said were just practice, but she needed rest to try and carry the babies as close to term as she could.
Aurora made tea for Lily and tried to make soup for her. She didn’t really know how to cook, though, and Ryan had to take over and save her. He was actually pretty adept at it, or at least he looked competent, chopping vegetables, meat and herbs and adding a pinch of this or that. Since, Aurora didn’t eat, she had to rely on Lily’s word that the soup was good.
On the day before Aurora was due, her contractions started. Lily got up out of bed and made preparations, even though she said it would probably take a quite a while. Ryan sent Tyler to the lodge for Alex and Sara. It was his turn to laugh as Tyler tried out the sled in case Sara needed help getting back.
He hovered around Aurora until she finally asked him to give her just a little space. It wasn’t until the early morning hours, when the baby still hadn’t come that Lily began to worry.
Thirty-three
Sara and Alex watched as Ryan and Aurora made their way into the snowy woods around the Lodge. It didn’t take long to lose sight of them and Alex’s mood plummeted when that happened.
Sara couldn’t get him to talk, and she decided to reread a paperback mystery that she found in the apartment when they first arrived. This would be the fourth time reading it, but there was little else to do. For several days, she entertained herself while Alex sulked. On the eighth day, when Alex was looking almost haggard, which was hard to do for a Vampire, she went to him and stood in front of him until he finally paid attention to her.
“You need to feed. You don’t look so good,” she said.
“I’m not hungry,” he shot back. “Please, Sara, leave me be.”
Aurora once told Sara about older Vampires and their tendency toward depression and sadness. She called it melancholia and said that Vampires were known to kill themselves when they were overwhelmed by it.
Sara was getting scared for Alex. Finally, she appealed to his love for Aurora. “What happens if Tyler or Ryan comes today, and Aurora needs us and you are too weak to make the trip?”
Alex scowled at her. He knew what she was doing but, it didn’t make what she said any less true. He took her arm and bit her wrist, drinking the blood in the way that they did when they didn’t have enough time for something more pleasant. He could feel her disappointment, but his mood was dark and he was punishing her for being right about his need for blood.
As he fed, he felt the heat rising in him. He knew his eyes were glowing red, and his disposition turned from sulky to lustful in a matter of moments. He watched Sara with her eyes closed, feeling the mild euphoria, and he immediately felt guilty for his rude behavior. She was so sweet, but she was also a little vixen in bed. He hadn’t really been able to play Vampire games with her since they first left the estate months ago. Now they were alone with nothing to do, but wait for a summons to attend Aurora. As he watched Sara, now, he felt himself hardening and he released her arm. She opened her eyes in confusion as he had only begun to feed, and she saw the way he was looking at her. She smiled, and he lunged for her, grabbing her around the waist with one arm and ripping her shirt and bra down the front in one vicious tear. Her breasts bounced free, and she gasped as he dipped his head to one and sank his fangs into the curved swell of her breast above the rosy tip. Electricity raced through her core, puckering her nipples and heating her loins. He squeezed the breast he was feeding on, hard enough to leave finger marks in her flesh. She cried out, but the pain still made her wet and she wasn’t even thinking about asking him to stop. He could feel her erect nipple against his hand as he squeezed, and he let go of her breast and grabbed the little pebble, pinching it hard and rolling it between his thumb and finger. She hissed through her teeth and moistened her panties at the same time. He retracted his fangs from her breast, plenty of time to finish feeding later. He had extensive plans for her in mind. He dropped to his knees in front of her petite frame and took her other nipple in his mouth. He bit her without the fangs and sucked her hard. He had both hard little bullets now, one in his teeth and one pinched in his vice-like fingers.
Her breasts were on fire, but she didn’t think she had ever been so wet and ready. She knew that he was not going to satisfy her quickly though. She saw the way he’d looked at her, and she knew he had an agenda when he stopped feeding so soon. She prepared herself for a long session of pain and ecstasy. He moved his arm from around her waist to down under her bottom. He held her tight against him and lifted her with just the one arm and he didn’t let go of her nipples as he stood with her pressed tight against him. He walked with her toward the corridor, letting go of her swelling knob just long enough to reach down and scoop up a sheet from the makeshift bed.
He carried her into the kitchen and he set her on the high island counter and let go of her throbbing nipples. He took the sheet and ripped it into pieces that he twisted into rope.
He tied her wrists together and looped a longer piece of the cord he made around the binding between her wrists. He threw the other end up and over a heavy pipe that ran across the ceiling. Now she knew why he brought her to the kitchen. He put a little step stool under her feet and stood her on it to bring her height closer to his, then he pulled the rope taut, making her stand on her tiptoes on the stool while he tied off the end. He left her dangling like that as he stripped slowly. She watched him pull his tight t-shirt over his head, exposing his sculpted abs and chest, which was baby smooth. The only hair on his front, above the pants he was wearing, was the faint line of soft hair that ran from his navel down to his groin making a perfect arrow of the v muscles of his abdomen, disappearing into the top of his jeans that hung just a little loose around his narrow hips. She could see that the front of his jeans bulged with the rising erection he sported and, as if to remove any doubt of its existence, Alex opened his pants and let them fall to his ankles, showing her the enormous swollen staff. He wore no underwear and he stepped easily out of the jeans around his ankles, kicking them aside and standing before her in all his masculine glory.
Oh my God, he is the most beautiful man I have ever seen. Her mouth literally began to water and he was just standing there looking at her. This is torture, she thought, waiting in anticipation of what he would do next. His mouth turned up at the corners, looking just a little like an evil smile.
He started walking around her in a tight circle, close enough to her that he could let his steely shaft rub against her if he wanted. He unfastened her jeans that Reginald had done such an admirable job of sizing. They were snug and cupped her ass perfectly, making his dick hard whenever he watched her walk around in them, swaying her hips. He pulled them off of her, kneeling as he pushed them off of her ankles, placing her round bottom directly in front of his face. He nipped a smooth, creamy cheek as he stood back up. He took a small piece of sheet that he saved for the purpose and tied it around her eyes, leaving her blind and anxiously trying to anticipate him. He walked around her slowly looking at her delicious flesh. A small trickle of blood was running from the bite on her breast down to gather and drip from the tip of her swollen, red nipple. He couldn’t help himself, he clamped on to the tit with his mouth, lapping at the blood and sucking every drop from the throbbing nubbin that was nearly twice its normal size. As she sucked in her breath, he could feel her pushing her damp mound against him in her lust. He continued to circle her slowly sometimes just letting his breath touch her skin. She trembled with desire. He stopped behind her again and let his straining rod rest in the crack of her beautiful ass while he reached around and cupped her wet mound. He let a finger slide between her folds and found the pulsing bud, hard and waiting. He rubbed and played with it until she was panting and arching against his hand.
Cherishing Destiny (A Dangerous Destiny) Page 22