Bloodright

by Karin Tabke

  Her eyes fluttered open. Haloed by the sun, she could not see the face above her, but by his scent she knew it was Rafael. She pushed to sit up. She was naked and dripping wet. Rafael was naked and just as wet above her. Angor and the rest of the Berserkers were dripping wet and strapped down with leather packs and sheathed swords. Scores of Vulkasin wolf stood behind them.

  Emotion exploded in her chest.

  Rafael’s eyes shone brightly with emotion but his words were serious. “I am here because I love you, Falon. When I choose a mate and mark her by the next full moon, she will have no place in my heart. There is no room for her or any woman, because you occupy every part of it.”

  Tears stung her eyes. She reached up to touch his cheek. He grabbed her hand, preventing it. He swallowed tightly. “You belong to Lucien, Falon. I gave my word and it is my vow; I would not encourage you in any way. So that I don’t break that vow, let’s just go.”

  He may have made such a vow, but she did not. She threw her arms around Rafael’s neck and hugged him to her. She cried when his strong arms wrapped around her, holding her tightly against him. “Thank you,” she choked between her tears. “Thank you.”

  Moments later, Falon shifted as did Rafael. With Vulkasin behind them, they went after Lucien.

  LUCIEN SLOWLY BECAME aware that he was in human form, on his back, shackled at the hands, waist, and knees, in pain, but alive. Hellish heat burned the back of his heels. His blood scent was strong. He hissed in a long breath and groaned painfully when he flexed his feet. Both his Achilles tendons had been severed. He could not walk as a man nor run as a wolf. He was literally grounded. Was Falon?

  Had she made it to Rafe?

  Falon!

  Sweat beaded his forehead and his blood pressure shot sky high when she did not respond.

  Falon, answer me. Are you safe?

  The fear knotting his gut tightened when she still did not answer. There was only one of two reasons she did not respond: because she was with Rafe and did not want to, or she was incapacitated.

  Neither scenario eased his taut nerves. He didn’t want to think Falon had skipped back to Rafe, leaving him to die at the hands of the Slayers. But worse, he could not bear the thought that she may lay hurt and vulnerable somewhere. He needed to get out of there and find her. Wherever the hell here was!

  Familiarizing himself with the scents and sounds around him, Lucien lay still, barely drawing a breath. Hanging like a toxic pall around him, Slayer stink permeated his nostrils. It combined with the fumes of gasoline and the cloying scent of oil, creating a polluted stench. He opened his eyes to dim light outside filtering through dented metal blinds. It was just around twilight. He was chained inside of a large metal cage, securely locked by a cereal bowl–sized cast-iron lock hanging on the outside of the door, tall enough for an average human to walk through. Lucien looked up at the pitched wood ceiling then around what he guessed was some type of storage shed. Gardening type tools hung haphazardly on three walls. Several bales of hay were stacked up across from the wood slat door with a wheelbarrow and several shovels casually propped against it.

  Past the shed, the distinct sound of revelry filtered back to him. No doubt Slayers celebrating the fact they finally had him. Lucien sneered. It wasn’t over until the fat Slayer screamed.

  He shifted. The shackles magically readjusted to wolf size.

  Fucking Slayer magic.

  Shifting back into his human form Lucien mentally mapped out what he needed to do. First, heal himself. He would need to be in wolf mode to lick his wounds, but the way the shackles were wrapped and locked around his hands, ankles, and body, he could not bend far enough down to do so. So Plan B: get out of the shackles so he could heal himself and get out of there.

  He searched the wall for a tool that he could pick the locks with. A long-handled aerator hung next to a long-handled shovel. As he moved to the nearest spot in the cage toward the tools, footsteps hesitantly approached the shed. Not heavy like a man, lighter, like a woman.

  He stiffened. Intimately familiar with the scent.

  His heart thumped against his chest as the person fumbled with the outside lock. Slowly the door opened.

  A small, bare foot followed by a curvaceous body, followed by long red hair he used to wrap around his fists when she—Shocked, his eyes widened as he looked into two familiar cat-shaped, green eyes.

  He was dreaming. It couldn’t be. Pain, joy, and confusion collided in his chest.

  “Mara—”

  Her full red lips slid back into a happy smile. She brushed her hair from her eyes.

  “Lucien! I had to come when I heard they’d captured you!” she said, flying to her knees outside of his cage. She grabbed the bars, pressing her face to them. Sixteen years separated her death from her resurrection, and she looked as young and beautiful now as she had all those years ago.

  “How—”

  His heart thudded against his rib cage. Mara was alive? He raised a hand to touch her, to feel her flesh and bone, but he hesitated.

  She reached through the bars and touched her warm hand to his cheek. She was living, breathing—warm. “I am alive, Lucien.”

  His brain exploded with the realization that her resurrection, regardless of whether she was a Slayer or a superhuman who had survived a catastrophic injury, changed everything! Not that he wished Mara dead, but alive, Lucien had no right to Falon. His gut fisted.

  “How are you here? Alive?”

  Her emerald-colored eyes glistened with tears. “I have so much to tell you, Lucien. So much! But first, I need to get you away from those bastard Slayers before they come back for you. What they want to do to you is inhuman.” She slipped her hand into her skirt pocket and withdrew several keys.

  Too stunned by this crazy turn of events, Lucien lie still on the dirt floor and waited for Mara to unlock the big iron lock. She was having trouble.

  “How did you survive Rafael’s attack? And what are you doing here with Slayers?” Was she in truth a Slayer? He would know it! But as before, whenever Mara was near, he saw only her. Except this time, when he looked into her green eyes, he saw Falon’s sapphire blue ones.

  A slight frown tweaked her brows, but she quickly hid it. “I thought when we were reunited you would be over-the-moon excited to see me. Instead you ask why I’m not dead.”

  Guilt pricked him, but not enough to set aside pleasantries before facts. “For sixteen years, I thought you were dead. You were dead! How did you survive? Why didn’t you return to me?”

  The lock popped open. She smiled triumphantly and lifted it off. When she swept her hand down her chest to wipe a smear of dirt from her finger, Lucien’s body stirred. She used to do the same thing with his fingers, except naked. The snug translucent top hugged her ripe curves. Her stiff nipples pointed straight at him. She was not wearing a bra. She never needed one. His gaze traveled down her narrow waist to the short black skirt that barely covered her creamy thighs. He raised his gaze back to hers for explanation.

  “After your brother nearly killed me, I thought I would die there in your bed, Lucien. I was terrified, but somehow, I managed to drag myself from that room as you and your brother lie dying on the floor. That’s all I remember. But I have been told a Slayer found me just outside of the compound gate. I woke up weeks later, chained to that bastard’s bed. He saved my life, but every time he raped me I wished I was dead.”

  It made no sense at all. “I’m sorry, Mara. But you died in my arms—”

  “A miracle saved me.” She opened the cage door, dropped to her knees, and crawled toward him. Her floral perfume was familiar. Belladonna. Talia used the deadly plant to put wounded animals she could not save out of their misery. It was the same perfume Mara wore sixteen years ago.

  She sat back on her heels and pouted when he made no move toward her. “I have planned and plotted for this day for sixteen years, Lucien! Aren’t you happy to see me?”

  “Keep your voice down,” he warned.


  Despite his tone and lack of affection, she beamed at him. “I may have been enslaved for sixteen years, Lucien, but I did not cry myself to sleep each night. I paid attention to their black arts. I learned how to create spells and elixirs.”

  She leaned toward him. “When I heard they had you, I insisted I come along for the entertainment. Then I created a little spell to keep them preoccupied until I had you safely back home.” She pressed her lips to his. His cool indifference surprised him. He should be sorry for what she had to endure all these years, and thankful that she came to his rescue, but something else niggled at him.

  She pulled away from his lips and raked his body with her gaze. She brushed her fingertips across one of his nipples. “I love the tat.” Then trailed them down his chest to his belly to his sleeping dragon. She stroked the cock ring. His cock stirred. “Only sinful Lucien would indulge himself in such a way.”

  “Mara,” he hoarsely said, thickening beneath her roaming hand. “I’m stunned to see you. More like in shock.” He turned away from her hand, and groaned, rubbing his forehead against his cuffed hands. “For sixteen years I have hated my brother for killing you.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, you can hate him for the next sixteen years for almost succeeding! When he sees us together again he is going to be more jealous of our love and power than last time.” She chuckled. “But this time I can protect myself against him. He will not hurt me again.”

  Lucien groaned, suddenly feeling suffocated.

  “Get me out of these shackles so we can get the hell out of here.”

  She slipped another smaller key from her skirt waistband and began to unlock each of the shackles. When she came to the ones around his ankles, she touched his foot. “Lucien, I about died when they did that.”

  “I’ll live.”

  As she bent over him to unlock it, she said, “I know where Balor is.”

  Excitement sparked him. “Where?”

  “I’ll tell you when we get home.”

  Shit.

  “We need to hurry, the spell only works for so long.”

  He grabbed her wrist as she turned to move out of the cage. “Why didn’t you come to me before now?”

  “I told you, I was a sex slave.”

  “But you could cast spells and sneak away.”

  “I was afraid Balor would come after me! He’s more powerful than all of them combined. What if I came back to you, and you rejected me or, God forbid, had another woman? What would I have done then?”

  Falon.

  His heart quickened when she did not respond to his call. Was she dead? Or had she reunited with Rafael? He shook his head refusing to believe either option. She was alive and would find him.

  Mara sensed his increasing distance. He could not help it. His heart belonged to another now.

  Grabbing his arms, Mara pleaded with him to understand. “Lucien, I know this is crazy and impossible to understand, but please trust me. I am alive and well, and once I get us out of here, you can take me home with you where I belong. Not even Rafael can stand between us now.”

  Lucien shook his head. “I cannot take you to Mondragon.”

  She dropped to her knees and grabbed his hands. “How can you not? I’ve bided my time for sixteen years waiting for this day to be reunited with you!”

  He shook his head. “I cannot.”

  When she moved in to kiss him, Lucien pulled back. Despite the love he once had for her and what she sacrificed for him now, he could no more pretend to love her than he could pretend to hate Falon. Tears tracked down her creamy cheeks. “We love each other!”

  She pulled off her shirt. Her full breasts glowed in the low light of the room, she grasped them offering them to him. “Don’t you remember, Lucien, how it was between us?” Her voice lowered several octaves. “How you could not keep your hands off me?”

  Lucien was not a dead man. His cock stirred. She smiled seductively. “You do remember…” She purred and moved closer to him. Her hard nipples speared his chest as her hands slid down his belly to his cock. He hissed in a breath as she slowly began to manipulate him. “How your body craved mine.”

  Her belladonna scent clamped around his head, his chest, his dick, immobilizing him. Lucien closed his eyes as her siren’s call beckoned him. Just like old times… he was helpless under her spell.

  She is a Slayer, Lucien! He heard his brother’s voice all those years ago. I can smell her black magic.

  “You have no scars on your chest from Rafe’s attack,” he hissed when she flicked the metal bar just under the blunt head of his cock.

  “I erased them with a spell,” she breathed.

  She had a pat answer for every one of his questions. None of them rang true.

  Lucien dug his fingers into her thick hair and yanked her head back. Her scent snaked around his head like a deadly sleeping gas. He set his jaw, fighting her seductive pull. “I loved you a long time ago, Mara. I love another now.” Saying it made it real. It felt right. Because it was right, and the rightness of it empowered him. He had loved Falon from the moment he laid eyes on her at Vulkasin. He just didn’t know it until now.

  Mara’s deep green eyes clouded. “But you were promised to me!”

  He shook his head. The air cleared, dissipating whatever spell she had cast to seduce him. “We never exchanged marks. There are no bloodrights.”

  Her eyes darkened. “Am I to pay because of what your brother did to me?” She moved into him. “Lucien, we loved each other!” she pleaded. “I gave you everything. Is this how you repay that love?”

  “I have howled at the moon for sixteen years mourning your loss. I know how you feel. But I have marked another and she has returned the mark. It cannot be undone.”

  “I can cast a spell and make her quietly disappear.”

  The vision of Falon’s death played out in his brain. The pain of losing her so unimaginable his heart, body, and soul shuddered. Fury flared at Mara’s proposal. And he suddenly understood why it was so difficult to resist her body now as it had been all those years ago. She had not just learned black magic, she had perfected it long ago. He grasped her shoulders and shook her. “Go near her, and I will kill you myself.”

  Mara’s eyes narrowed to slits. When she fully opened them, he saw it. Granite-hard, onyx eyes. The true mark of a Slayer.

  Ten

  RAFAEL HAD BEEN just when he’d tried to kill Mara. The realization made Lucien sick to his stomach. Sicker still because part of him—some small, hidden, ignored part of him—had always suspected he’d been right. Part of him had known Rafael could not have done what he had if he had not been sure…

  But Lucien’s pride, resentment, and anger had pushed the truth aside.

  “I loved you. I thought you loved me—” Lucien said, not understanding why she had given herself to him if she did not love him.

  No longer trying to hide what she was, Mara’s eyes glittered polished onyx. Her red hair turned blond and her full, voluptuous body morphed into the svelte athletic one reminiscent of many Slayers. But what defined her for what she truly was, was the Slayer stink that permeated the air around her. His grip tightened.

  “You fooled me with your black magic. You fooled everyone except Rafael,” Lucien accused. “But why?”

  She shoved him onto his back and pinned him to the floor. “I am a Corbet! I watched you kill half of my family the night we met! My mother and my two sisters! I followed you into that bar and beguiled you with black magic. You were so easy. So damn arrogant. I wanted to kill you every time you touched me! I almost had you. I would have bred Slayers into your precious Vulkasin pack and destroyed you all from the inside out.”

  He flung her from him. She hit the metal bars of the cage so hard, she bent them. When she screamed, he flung his hand across her mouth and grabbed the shackle chain she had just freed him from. Unable to get leverage with his feet, Lucien rose on his knees and shoved Mara harder against the cage bars, pinning her by the neck with the cha
in as he wound the end of it around her neck. “You nearly destroyed me and everyone I loved with your lies!” He twisted the metal around her neck. She grabbed his arms, dug her nails into his skin, and slammed her feet against his severed heels. He grunted in pain when she slammed him again. She was strong, but Lucien’s hatred fueled him to greater strength.

  She opened her mouth to scream again but only a hoarse plea emerged. Lucien yanked her down to the floor, pinning her with one knee to her chest, moving all of his body weight on top of her. His hatred was so intense her features blurred. He twisted the chain so tight it dug deep into her skin. He twisted until her body went limp beneath him. Breathing heavily, Lucien kept the tension tight until he felt her life force wane. But it would take more than strangulation to kill a Slayer. Keeping one hand on the metal noose, he crawled out of the cage, dragging her behind him. He reached over to the shovel standing up against the wall by the door, grabbed it by the handle, and then straddled her. Keeping her immobile with the one hand, he grabbed the shovel handle just above the metal scoop and in a vicious blow severed her head from her body. Her black eyes flashed her hatred for the last time. And as Slayers do when they die a true death, her body smoldered to ash. Lucien flung the shovel and shackles from him and rolled over onto his back.

  Breathing heavily, he clamped his hands over his eyes, hating what he had done. Not the taking of Mara’s life—he would do the same thing one hundred times over. He may have loved her once, but the fact that she was a Slayer erased every vestige of that emotion and replaced it with hatred. He hated Slayers with every fiber of his being. Nothing would change that. Nothing.

  It stung that she never loved him, that she used him, that he was so damn blind to her wiles.

  Though deep regret filled him, he could not change the past. What was done, was done. It was the present and the future that mattered now and both looked dark to him. By Blood Law, he was condemned to death for lying with a Slayer. Because he had no claim to Falon now, death would be welcome.

  She would return to Rafael, just as he had always feared. How could he make peace with his brother when he possessed the woman Lucien wanted above all others?