Blood Reign (#4): Alpha Warriors of the Blood (The Blood Series)

by Tamara Rose Blodgett

  She nodded. Soft platinum hair curled around her shoulders, and pale blue eyes stared back into his without guile. She was telling the truth. He would have staked his immortal life on it.

  “All right.”

  Tharell tried not to let Domi's intense gaze that followed Jacqueline disturb him. “Domiatri,” he called out.

  Domi hiked his eyebrows, moving his hand away from the hilt of his sword and knotting it with the other behind his back.

  “Brother?” he answered so automatically that Tharell held his smile in check, keeping the resolute and austere expression glued to his face like the mask it was.

  “Let us convene outside.”

  Domi inclined his head, and they walked out together under the watchful gaze of the Singers.

  They moved down the broad steps without looking around them. Faerie's absence had not yet hindered their energy. However, Jacqueline was near.

  “What troubles you, Tharell?”

  Their strides matched as they strolled, as did their height. Domi blended perfectly with the surrounding landscape. The green pastures stretched out before them. If not for the deep shock of long blue hair that carved a pathway of vibrant, deep oceanic blue between his shoulder blades, Domi would look as one with the rolling hills upon which they trod.

  “You're becoming attached to the Singer, Domi,” Tharell said.

  He sighed, swiping a dexterous hand through his hair and smoothly banding it at his nape. He gave a frustrated exhale. “Yes.”

  At least he conceded the problem.

  “You know that she bears children. She will have to be shared.”

  Domi was silent. They had come to a small lake, little more than a pond, where swans revolved in lazy, floating figure eights on the surface, paying them no mind.

  “I do not wish to.”

  Domi gazed at him with eyes that rivaled liquid mercury. “You are the lucky one, Tharell.”

  Tharell held his tongue, Goddess knew he'd done it plenty of times before.

  “You do not breed. You never will take a woman as mate.”

  Tharell had been with many females yet never to mate. A male had needs, a biological imperative that spared no species. Yet physicality was a manifestation of the body. His soul longed for edification as well. Tharell kept his own council.

  “True,” he said as the chasm of his loneliness grew with Domi's words. Not ill meant but accurate.

  Only pure Sidhe could breed with the sanctioned Singers. It was a very good sign Jacqueline had gotten with child, though her mind was sick from the time away from Faerie.

  “I ask you let me self-delude for this journey, Tharell. Soon enough, we will return to the sithen, the debauchery of the court and Jacqueline will become a brood mare for all that would have her.” His eyes stayed on the lake while his heart bled silently between them.

  “I will. Of course, you understand the importance of the Singers being cloudy on our motivations at present.”

  Domi gave a solemn nod.

  The day ended before them in a gasping loss of daylight, as though night had held its breath until that moment. And on its exhale, Domi's bright green skin deepening to emerald, his cobalt hair shedding its color and falling to night's influence.

  The two fey stood shoulder to shoulder, two colored shadows, lost in their thoughts of choiceless deceit.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Jacqueline stretched, her stomach uncomfortably stuffed with food, and did everything she could to keep the food where it belonged.

  She loathed leaving Faerie, where for the first time in her wretched existence, she felt free.

  Free in peace, centered—right in her skin.

  The shame had been acute. And Tony’s brutality. When Jacqueline first accepted his idea of mating, she'd been inside the sithen for just hours.

  Not long enough to realize fully the affect it had on her.

  With the passing of days into weeks, a change had come over her. She no longer sought violence for its own sake. She remembered her actions of the last century in a state of stunned and horrified recounting.

  Jacqueline had been a self-serving narcissist. She had ruined her son and daughter with her indifferent neglect.

  Watching Scott come to her aid, despite her attempt on his former soul-meld's life, was salt in the wound.

  Jacqueline did not deserve any pity.

  She covered her flat belly with her hand. Her eyes fluttered shut while she leaned against the porch post. Domiatri at her elbow caused her to start. His aloof face looked down at her.

  He had told her how it would be between them, and she had accepted what he offered the first night he'd come to her. Jacqueline remembered his words with startling clarity.

  “If you do not wish to lie with me, it will matter not. But know this. The former sickness of your mind and the wellness of it now are due to your proximity to Faerie. Nothing more and nothing less. If you agree to bear a child of a pureblood Sidhe, then your reward will be to return here and suffer no longer.”

  Jacqueline had looked at Tony, her abuser, as he slumbered artificially but mere paces away.

  Her gaze found Domi's unerring silver eyes shining at her not in tenderness but want. Jacqueline understood what she was. She'd spent most of her life in machinations of manipulation. She was adept at recognizing it in others.

  She'd borne two children, and this third would be with a man not really human but a parody of humanity. Her gaze roamed his bright green skin, his lips the color of pigeon's blood rubies, hair like midnight kissed by sky.

  Jacqueline gave a single nod in answer.

  Faerie was a mixed blessing. It lifted the veil of her poisoned life outside of Faerie but cast a glaring light on the misdeeds of her past. In the time of this bittersweet revelation, she accepted Domiatri's offer.

  He leaned near her, attempting to touch the side of her head, and Jacqueline flinched, though he didn’t frighten her.

  “Why do you cringe?” Domi asked. “I mean you no harm. I would never hurt a female.”

  Jacqueline knew this, but she didn't respond. Instead, her gaze sought the floor.

  Domi lifted her chin with his finger. “Tell me.”

  Jacqueline sat up on her knees, chancing a furtive glance behind her. Tony still slept.

  She placed her palms on the muscular planes of his chest and whispered the reason.

  And sometime within the telling, his hands gripped her upper arms.

  When she watched his anger overcame his good reason, he found her mouth, tenderly lifting her to his lap and kissing her as her words of abuse settled in the shadows of his mind.

  “I shall not use you ill, Jacqueline.”

  She nodded and he took her out of the fey prison.

  It was the first of many nights.

  When Tony began to abuse her, she but thought of Domi, and Tony would fall asleep, his lecherous assault broken before it began.

  Domi hadn't taken away what they'd been unaware of, but he disallowed its continuance.

  “Do you remember what we spoke of?” Domi asked and Jacqueline cast her eyes to the ground, shutting the memories away.

  “Yes.” Their tender interchanges would be no more once they returned to Faerie. She would carry his child then bear it.

  Then she would be open to breed with other Sidhe.

  Jacqueline did not speak her fear. She had never loved another being in her life. Not her Singer son, Scott.

  Certainly not her vampire daughter, Delilah.

  She had loved only herself.

  But no more. Jacqueline had fallen victim to love.

  She loved the green Sidhe warrior.

  As he looked down at her, she could clearly see it was one-sided.

  Jacqueline straightened. She had much to atone for. It wouldn't be easy, but she wished to apologize for the wrongs she'd committed. Starting with the new Queen, Julia.

  *

  They were half a day into the journey when Jacqueline noticed Scott's gaze
not constantly on her. Only when she was too weak to go on did they stray back.

  Tharell's impatience was evident. Jacqueline would have done anything to keep the robust pace they wished, but she was still in a state of recovery from Tony's constant abuse.

  She'd found eating repugnant.

  Then Domi had come to her two weeks before, and after their discussion and tacit agreement, she had immediately gotten with child. An unexpected development in its immediacy.

  But the damage to her body, surviving Tony’s constant tender care for nearly a month, had about done her in.

  Jacqueline was on the mend, but she understood enough about herself to realize she would be emotionally scarred. Her first encounter with Domi had been so wrought with her fear at lying with a male that she'd witnessed his comprehension as it thinned his face into angry lines.

  Not at her. Tony had made her so afraid to be with another male.

  Domi had been exceedingly tender. Not using himself like a weapon insider her but as a tool for pleasure.

  Jacqueline missed it. Him.

  She showed none of her feelings. If Jacqueline was talented at one thing, it was keeping her expression blank.

  Yet she watched Domi search her face quite thoroughly. Though he'd heard her response, he leaned in close to her, grasping her icy hands and frowning at their temperature.

  “No harm will come to you while I take breath, Jacqueline. You know this.”

  He pulled away, and she nodded. She did know it. He had proven it when he'd arrived barely in time to stop Tony from raping her again.

  Tharell had pulled Domi off Tony. No spot on his body had been free of blood and bruises.

  But it was Jacqueline whom Tony's eyes sought with hate.

  They separated the two of them after that, fashioning a wall from the sithen itself. It was sentient; the sithen could have refused the invoking of a barrier.

  But it seemed the sithen had grown tired as silent witness to Tony's violence.

  The Were had resigned himself to glaring at her through the clear but impenetrable wall.

  Jacqueline had cried when Domi saved her from the attack.

  She had cried into his hands, and he had caught her tears like diamonds as they fell.

  Pieces of her soul had broken apart that day, and all Jacqueline could hope for was reclaiming them in the future. Whatever her future ended up being.

  Domi still waited for her response.

  “I know,” she said.

  He smiled, his scarlet lips breaking over pure white teeth. “Good.”

  Domi put his large palm on her back, and they moved to the horses. He easily lifted her up and began a forward walk. It would be a long sojourn on horseback, and Jacqueline tired thinking about resuming. However, they needed to travel that way to avoid airplanes and cars.

  The baby she carried only afforded so much temperance this far from Faerie. Metal, was still an issue. It was as the human's fabled kryptonite, a poison to the fey.

  Horses were organic. And obedient.

  The one Singer female who came was Angela, and she made Jacqueline uncomfortable. Of course, Jacqueline was hyper-aware in a way she'd never been before. She girded her loins.

  She did not deserve an answer to her question. “Why do you stare at me?”

  Angela rode beside her, the powerful horse rolling beneath her hips. Her face flushed slightly, her fair skin hiding nothing. “Your aura.”

  “What of it?” It had been the color of bruised eggplant before her fey imprisonment.

  “It is no longer violet tinged with black,” the Feeler admitted with hesitation.

  Jacqueline was now desperate to know: was her change in Faerie certain?

  Domi said nothing as he rode to her right and slightly ahead.

  Jacqueline knew he listened.

  “It is a pale pink, with white at the edges.”

  Jacqueline sat atop the horse in stunned silence, her fingers going lax on the reins.

  She knew what that meant. And she couldn't believe Angela would ascribe it to her.

  Purity.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Washington state border loomed in the distance, guarded by Canadian Mounties. The horses pitched around nervously, causing the men on their backs to tighten their grip on the reins. The horses were not dumb. An alert as ancient as any had tweaked their internal alarms.

  Julia watched her husband and the other two females move forward. All half-wolfen. That was what the horses sensed.

  In a perfect world, they'd all be on horseback, and the horses' scent would mask the Were.

  The world was not perfect. Upwards of fifteen Were trailed them by their fragrance. Eau de Body Odor, Julia thought with a thinly concealed snort. She figured they kept getting worse as they traveled. No baths, food where they could get it, sleep a luxury. It was a combo for smelly, grumpy, and beat.

  Jason glanced at her, and she gave a tired smile back. When Julia had been taken, she'd been wearing cute but useless tennis shoes. The kind you buy for nearly free and walk to the mailbox in.

  They were in tatters. Blisters covered every place she looked. They had been especially bad at the back of her ankle and alongside her toes.

  Cyn had healed her from most of it, along with the broken ribs and dislocated shoulder, but the injuries kept returning. The Were changed, in their element out there in the forest, and suddenly there were no problems—for them. Julia was a regular person who'd just walked fifteen miles on no sleep and inadequate footwear.

  Jason lumbered back to her position. She looked up into his face, almost seven feet of half-Were and sighed.

  “I smell your wounds,” he said and she nodded.

  “Likely—they're driving me crazy.”

  She laughed when he put his big paws on his hips, thinking about a solution to her shredded feet.

  His red downy fur covered his body as spinning green eyes regarded her. “What?” It came out as a growl instead of a word. Julia was feeling the lack of sleep, and it translated into giddiness. She so didn't need that, but the more she tried to stop laughing, the worse it became.

  She was now the interpreter of wolf-speak.

  “What? Stop the noise please,” Slash said with more than a little irritation.

  “I think she's tired.” Jason restated the obvious with a grin that looked like a grimace on features far from human.

  She collapsed on her butt and rolled around on the forest floor, holding still achy ribs, and laughed at their dilemma of being sandwiched between the foreign police and their Red Were pursuers. Not a bright spot in the entire scenario. She turned it over and over again in her mind and caught the laughter before it turned to tears.

  “Jules, geez, snap out of it.” Cyn jerked her up by the arm that hadn't been dislocated. “Quiet.”

  Julia made a supreme effort, clamping her lips together. She hiccuped.

  Jason put his arm around her and gave her shoulder a squeeze. With his strength it almost hurt.

  “We'll have to wait until a shift change. During the confusion of the change out, we'll slide through,” Slash said aloud.

  Their superior sight caught the flies that pestered the horses' tails. Julia could only make out that there were tails.

  “We make the horses nervous,” Truman commented.

  Julia hiccuped again.

  The group looked at the horses that traveled the length of a tall fence with razor wire across the top. They flicked their tails, eyes with too much white showing as they glanced nervously around.

  “Yes,” Slash replied, unperturbed.

  Adi gave the first shy look Julia had ever seen on her face. Slash returned the glance with a tender expression.

  “Let's take the wolves down a notch and wait. What time do you think they'll switch out?” Jason asked Slash.

  Slash shook his head. “Doesn't matter, it's now or never.”

  Julia’s former reckless laughter completely faded. “Why?” It didn't make sense. Di
dn’t they just determine we'd be breaking through when one shift of Mounties relieves the next?

  Jason lifted his snout. His eyes snapped to Slash then to Truman.

  “They're here.”

  Slash gave a snort of assent. He took in Adi, a foot shorter but with beautiful golden fur covering her.

  “We have to protect the females.”

  “Love the ratio,” Truman said. Then, “Let's get outta here, I can smell them a mile away.”

  “What—okay, that's going to be a problem. We've kept our existence under wraps...” Julia began.

  Slash grinned, and his scar rippled like a wave. “Not entirely. Someone has seen something, or Hollywood wouldn't be making movies.”

  “Julia,” Truman said.

  “Yes.” Her gaze plunged into the deep forest. She couldn't see, and the effects of Paul fuzzing everyone's mental deliberations were fading this far away from Region One. However, if she concentrated, she could make it be white noise. Julia kept gaining finesse, and it was a great thing.

  Right now, she wanted to find out where the Reds were.

  “We need you to be the distraction.”

  Julia turned away from the forest and looked at Slash. “What?” Maybe she heard him wrong.

  Jason frowned. “No way, man... they might hurt her.”

  Slash shook her head. “Not if she acts lost, hurt.”

  Nope.

  “We don't have much time but let's talk about Tony.”

  “Not a good idea,” Cyn chimed.

  Slash went on quickly, ignoring her for the moment, “It's as good a comparison as any.” He had their attention. “Tony's wiring is all crossed. Most males of all species, wish to protect females. Tony wants to do harm.”

  Nobody disputed it. But Julia wasn't sure how it fit, or—better yet, why they were discussing it with the Reds nearly on top of them.

  “The Canadian police will not go against primal instincts and hurt an unprotected, lost, and injured girl. It'll be okay and effective.”

  There was a moment of silence while everyone thought it over.

  “True,” Truman barked. “You've made your point. Now she needs to go out there.”