by Sylvia Frost
Bloodbound
Sylvia Frost
Darkmance Publishing
Contents
Copyright
Also by Sylvia Frost
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Afterword
Copyright © 2015 by Sylvia Frost
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover by Sylvia Frost of Sfrostcovers.com Edited by Carol Davis
Acknowledgments:
Thank go to my patient readers and superb author friends. I can only hope that I’ve written a book worth your praise and support.
Also by Sylvia Frost
The Moonfate Serial:
Moonbound
Huntbound
Bloodbound
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* * *
The BBW and the Prince
A FULL-LENGTH shifter retelling of Cinderella.
Cynthia Cinders gives her wolf the slip, only to realize she's also given him the slipper. Can he use it to capture her and stake his claim on the curvy beauty?
The BBW and the Beast
A shifter retelling of Beauty and the Beast.
When Bel's father ruins a million dollar rose, she makes a bargain with a werewolf who wants her for his own.
1
Everything changed for werebeasts with the dawn of Christianity and the fall of the Roman Empire. Many blamed Rome’s overexpansion and brutality on the rule of the shifters. But if we look at the levels of violence and discord in the years that followed, it’s absolutely clear that history is always bloodier when humans hold their fates in their own hands.
Beasts, Blood & Bonds: A History of Werebeasts and Their Mates
By Dr. Nina M. Strike
This is what being shot must feel like, I think. A brief, numbing pain penetrates my abdomen and time seems to slow. I sense everything around me all at once. The wind through the leaves, my warm breath tickling my lips, the faded screaming of cars on the distant freeway, and below that, echoing through my brain, the last words Orion spoke to me.
“Artemis Williams has been dead for five years.”
But that’s impossible.
I am Artemis Williams. I’ve been Artemis Williams since I was born and stayed Artemis Williams even as my life went to pieces around me. Even when I would’ve given anything to be somebody else.
Like when my parents were murdered by werebeasts and my name became synonymous with “America’s orphan girl.” Or when, a month later, a crescent of white fur grew on my wrist and marked me as a werewolf’s mate. Or, finally, when I ran away after the FBSI had stolen every piece of my life, every memento, every memory. They claimed it was evidence. I was sure if I stayed they were going to steal me, too, secret me away in some “safe house” and question me until I told them what they wanted to hear.
But in the end it isn’t the FBSI or my mate I have to fear. Just yesterday my roommate and only friend Lawrence was kidnapped by a werecoyote, and a werepufferfish was murdered in my living room. My mate, Orion, and I followed the trail of the kidnappers, but all I got was a car chase and a knife held to my throat for my trouble.
And now this.
I’ve just told Orion the truth about my parents, about who I am.
And he doesn’t fucking believe me.
“Artemis Williams has been dead for five years?”
The syllables slip through my throat as I repeat them subvocally and then aloud.
I watch Orion for some reaction, any reaction to my words. But twilight has given way to darkness, and in the moonlight, the stunted trees and their patchy canopies are casting thick shadows over his face. All I can see are the proud lines of his pale, warrior-like body and the glimmer of his aurora-colored eyes.
He straightens his spine and takes a small step back, the weak silver moonlight illuminating his face.
Immediately, I wish he was still in darkness.
His normally sensuous lips are thin and set into a hard line of disbelief. No, more than that. Suspicion. He’s not just looking at me like I’m not Artemis Williams. He’s looking at me like I might be the one who killed her.
“Yes,” he says. “Artemis Williams is dead.”
The ache in my chest blossoms into a throb intense enough to make me cry. But I don’t.
“What?” I ask instead, my voice small.
“You heard me. I don’t know how you lied under my werecall, but you can’t be Artemis Williams.”
“Lied?” From my chest all the way to my fingertips, my body burns with an instant, welcome anger. “Lied!?” The word rips from my lips. “I think you don’t want to believe me, because you wish Artemis Williams was dead. You probably think she deserves it for everything her parents’ death did to your kind.”
His composure breaks, and he shifts forward, snarling, “I would like nothing more than for Artemis Williams to be alive.” He takes another step and a large branch snaps as the force of his footfall breaks it in two. “Do you think I enjoy shouldering the burden of not only her family’s murder but hers on my kind? Do you think I relish the fact that the FBSI has to cover up her death lest the information leak and cause more violence between werebeasts and humans?”
His anger is contagious. It gives me the courage to bridge the rest of the distance between us and ignore the fact that he is completely naked and probably only one step away from shifting into a werewolf. A werewolf strong enough to kill me.
“You want to talk burdens?” I lean in, wishing that my breath could brand each syllable onto his cheek. “Your kind stole everything from me,” I hiss. “And when they were done, the FBSI took the rest.”
He stops, lowers his gaze to the ground, and flutes his lips as he lets out a long, low breath. Trying to calm down, I realize.
“Very well. Let’s say you are Artemis Williams.” He raises his eyes to meet mine. “I’ll need proof.”
“This.” I display my wrist, thrusting the crescent of white fur toward his face. “This is my proof. Seven years ago my parents were murdered in Letchworth State Park, and a month later this appeared.”
He regards the mark, wistful longing furrowing his brow. “All you have to do is wander into a werebeast’s territory to get the mark, Artemis. My father and I migrated throughout New York State when I was young. You could have gotten that anywhere.”
A tangle of emotions knots in my chest, squeezing the air out of my lungs. “I don’t know what else to give you, then. My driver’s license? An envelope with my address on it?”
“Both of those can be faked.”
Desperation claws at my heart. “What, then? I have nothing left of them, Orion. The FBSI took everything as evidence.”
He cocks his head, considering for a moment, and then says slowly, carefully, “Tell me what the FBSI took from you.”
I bristle. “How would that help?”
“I helped catalogued Artemis Williams’ evidence fo
lder before we sent it off to national headquarters in Washington. There are things in there that only she would know about.”
“You, cataloging something?” A ghost of a laugh passes through me.
“It was the only paperwork I ever volunteered to file.” He offers me a wisp of a smile in return. “I thought of it as penance for all that my kind had done to yours.”
“Oh.” I hug the mark to my chest, and it thrums against me with warmth from his confession. But my gut is still ice.
“Artemis, just tell me.”
I sigh through my nose. I’m really going to do this; I’m going to lay bare my most intimate of memories in front of him. I wait, hoping that if I’m silent long enough, he’ll break, apologize for doubting me, and tell me what the hell is going on.
He doesn’t.
After what feels like five or six minutes, I cross my arms and say abruptly, “My dad liked to collect quarters. He had a bunch of them. The FBSI took them. There.” I tighten my hands around my elbows. “Convinced?”
“What kind of quarters?” Orion coaxes.
“Those stupid specialty ones they sell on TV. Why does it matter to you?”
“Why did he keep them?”
“He thought they would appreciate in value. I don’t know.” I find myself laughing, surprised by the lack of bitterness in the sound, by the way it fills my chest like it used to when I was little. “They never did.”
Orion’s face is as blank as ever.
This time, however, instead of its being infuriating, I find my difficulty reading him comforting. There’s no judgment in his gaze. Although there’s no belief either. Maybe the quarters weren’t in the evidence locker he sorted.
“If you didn’t see the quarters, I can tell you about something else,” I say. “My mom had this giant record collection, and I had this Harry Potter t-shirt I wore everywhere.”
“Where did he keep the quarters?”
“I don’t remember.” But even as I say that, a memory rises within me, the force of it so potent I can almost smell the scent of dust, paper and book-repair glue. “Actually, I do. He kept them in these mahogany and glass cases next to the bookshelves in his shop.”
Orion nods silently, but he doesn’t prompt me further. He doesn’t have to.
My knotted memories are all unraveling now. The words tumble out. “When I was little I would make him take the cases down for me and we’d identify every coin as we listened to music.”
Now I’d even swear I can hear the scratchy vintage records of German opera that Dad used to play, muffled by the thick, stained oriental carpets. My trembling lips smile as I lose myself in a moment I thought I had already lost long ago.
“Sometimes I’d even bring him quarters I found,” I say. “Normal ones I spotted in sidewalk cracks and underneath couches.”
I stop breathing, searching for the phantom sensation of my dad’s stout arms wrapping around me, keeping me safe as he whispered, “Did you bring me another quarter today, Arta?”
Tears clog the base of my throat, but I push through them as I let out a shaky exhalation. “A-after they died, I went to his collection and found that he’d kept every quarter I gave him. He even had these little Post-it notes detailing why they mattered. Why he didn’t want to forget them.”
The memory fades now. The touch of my dad’s hands on my back. His crooked smile. I can’t hold on to it. I press my shaking hands to my lips as if I can feel the echo of his smile on my own face. The warmth from the memory lingers for a moment.
And then it’s gone.
I break.
Sobs tear through me, leaving nothing but pure emptiness in their wake. They’re never coming back. Dad’s never coming back. I’ll never hear his voice again. How can it feel just as fresh now as the day it happened? My knees buckle, and I wait for them to hit the ground, but the ground never comes.
Orion is holding me, I realize numbly.
He has shepherded me into his embrace. Weakly, I thrash against him, but with every contact between my soft form and his hard body, I become more aware of how easily he keeps me contained.
“Shhh.” He cradles me further in to his body, until my curves give way to his muscles and every inch of me is held by every inch of him, like Velcro.
“I believe you,” he says.
His belief seems so unimportant now, as I confront the gaping hole of pain growing inside me.
“Please,” I cry. “They’re gone. They’re gone.” I grasp onto his biceps, not fighting now, just needing something to hold on to. Anything. “I just stayed in the tent. I did nothing, Orion.”
“There was nothing you could do, Artemis.” His thumb makes a gentle circle on the small of my back. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“You believe me?” I scrub away some of the tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand. “B-but you said it’s impossible for me to be—”
“I do. And it is.” He laughs a long, half-delirious laugh and imprints a kiss onto my forehead. “But by astrum and terrum I believe you. I shouldn’t, I know. But I don’t care. To be truthful, I—” His body tenses and he falls silent. “You’ve always seemed like a miracle to me. What’s one more?” he finishes softly, the words full of naked wonder.
I bury myself in his embrace, not wanting to look up into his icy eyes and find out that his comforting touch is a lie. “Why did you think I was dead?”
“I saw your body,” he whispers.
“What?” Shock crystallizes outward from my stomach, but the horror is muted by his closeness.
Orion’s lips withdraw from my forehead. “I wasn’t there, but there are photos. They showed them to us at a briefing.”
“H-how did I… How did you think I died?”
In the distance I hear the raspy, long call of a train, and after that, true silence, and finally, he responds. “They claimed you were murdered in retribution by one of my kind. A werebear son. Theodorus.”
The stench of loamy earth wafting up through my nostrils suddenly tastes rotten. “I wasn’t, Orion.”
“I know.” He brushes away a strand of hair from my cheek. His hands almost tremble. “Someone must have falsified the crime scene. They got the color of your eyes right, and your hair.” His hands skate down my body, stopping at my waist, then moving around to feel the heft of my stomach. “But the rest of the details were… off.”
“Why would someone fake my death? And who? And wouldn’t the FBSI run a DNA test, or—”
“They did.”
I shake my head, as if that could somehow reorder my thoughts. “I don’t understand.”
“No one outside of the FBSI believes you are deceased. We were given strict orders to keep your death classified, commanded to ship your entire file to Washington, and after our initial briefing, we were unable to access any information related to your death.” He gives a tight smile that is more bared teeth then anything else. “And believe me, Little Mate. I tried.”
“Whoever faked my death wasn’t hiding me from the world,” I say slowly. “They were hiding me from you.”
2
While werebeasts can shift at any time, it is through the moon that their power waxes and wanes.
Beasts, Blood & Bonds: A History of Werebeasts and Their Mates
By Dr. Nina M. Strike
Orion gives me a wan smile, his canines receding slightly. “Not just me, Little Mate. The entire New York branch at the very least. Possibly LA and Chicago as well.”
“But why bother? Why not actually kill me?” I surprise myself with how calmly I’m discussing my own death. Maybe it’s because the whole thing seems so unreal. This can’t actually be my life.
“Despite their corruption, the FBSI believes very strongly in the sanctity of human life.”
I’m not sure I buy that the FBSI values anything, but it’s the only explanation that makes sense, so I latch onto it anyway. Although it still doesn’t cover everything. “Okay, then, why not capture me themselves?”
“If I had to guess, I would venture that they banked that they didn’t have to. You had been doing a good enough job keeping yourself hidden on your own.”
I press my thumbs to my temples, trying to stem the ballooning headache there. In the past twenty-four hours my world has been turned upside down so many times, I’m beginning to forget which direction “up” is anymore. “I-I don’t.”
His hands tense around my waist. “None of this is important right now.”
“How isn’t this important? I can’t think of anything that matters more. Except maybe finding Lawrence.”
“Your safety. That matters more to me than any possible breach of intelligence within the FBSI. And now that I know who you are, I can keep you safe.” He grips me tighter to him, but this time I welcome the strength in his grasp.
“I have you, Artemis Williams. I have you.” He whispers the words like a prayer.
And I let myself fall against him. I don’t care about anything now, because somehow, despite everything, I believe him.
“I can’t let it happen again,” I confess to his chest, still unable to look him in the eyes. “I can’t let anyone else get hurt because of me. That’s why I ran outside. That’s why I fired the gun. You have to understand.”
“I understand, but I won’t allow you to put yourself in harm’s way. Not even for your friend.” His chest rises as he sighs, but underneath his weariness is a firmness I’m starting to find just as comforting as it is infuriating.
“But Lawrence—”
“We’ll find him.”
“How? We don’t have any leads. And if you can’t trust the FBSI—”
“I trust my people. It’s Washington I don’t trust.”
A coyote yowls in the distance.
“And there, Little Mate,” says Orion, “is our lead.”
The coyote howls three times, each cry more anguished than the last. I flinch.