by E. M. Moore
I smiled and offered him my neck, but he hesitated. “What?”
“If this is working, then I should feel both Connor and Nic’s pull over you when I kiss you. Otherwise, the shift may have just went to Connor if he overpowered Nic’s mark. If that’s all this is doing, I’m not sure it’s a cure.”
“Kiss me first then.”
Christian lowered his head to mine, his lips whispering over my own briefly before he pulled away. He pulled back, then grunted before positioning my neck for him. He groaned before his fangs slid into me, careful not to go any further than the previous puncture wounds. I sighed, feelings of bliss overtaking me until I was on a high. When he was done, he kissed up my neck to my lips where he took control, kissing the life back into me. A week may not sound like a long time, but when you loved these princes as much as I did, a week was a week too long to not be able to express these simple emotions with them.
“Okay, okay,” Connor said, jokingly.
Christian pulled away, the glint in his gray-blue eyes back again. “We’re never going to be able to get anything done again.”
Stephan moved into view. His emerald eyes were scared almost as he regarded me. “You’re sure?” he asked. It wasn’t a question just for me, it was for his brothers too. We all nodded and he leaned over. His sharp fangs teased my skin until he found the holes his brothers had left. I clung to him, the anticipation of his fangs sinking into my body was too much. He did so, nice and slow, entering me on a high that I wanted to last forever. I held on to him, my hips coming off the bed on instinct. They said biting was a sexual thing, but I didn’t realize they’d meant it in this sense too. He wasn’t even touching me between my legs, but it was flooding with heat, and that tell-tale feeling of needing just that much more stimulation before slipping off the edge and dropping into the undulations of pleasure lapped at me.
Hands pried mine out from around him and then Stephan stepped back, his hands in mine and a smear of blood on his lips. He wiped it quickly away, his eyes determined as he swooped in for his kiss. As detail oriented as Stephan was, he hit all my right buttons, leaving me breathless and gasping before he pulled away.
Connor laughed. “Damn Stephan. I didn’t think you had it in you.”
I lay on the bed, still trying to regain my composure when a phone slipped into my hand. Christian looked down on me. “Call Nic.”
I did so, my hands shaking as I clicked on his name and held the phone to my ear. It rang, twice, three, four times when the voicemail clicked over. I blinked, waiting for the beep, but when I started to talk, my voice came out slurred.
Christian pulled it from my grasp. “Ariana wants to tell you that everything’s okay here. We all bit her and she’s no longer marked just for you. She’s all of ours again. Oh, and we probably won’t be biting her ever again because she kind of can’t talk right now. You don’t have to do this, Nicolai. We’re good here.”
He hung up the phone and I smiled at him. “Thank you. Now text him that same thing. Please. In case he won’t check his voicemail, but he’ll read a text.”
As Christian did as I asked, Connor said, “He’s probably already there. That’s what he said, right? He said he was almost there. He might not get it, Princess.”
The haze started to fade away, and panic once again took over. Christian handed me my cell back and I dropped it on the bed next to me, my hands coming up to rest on my head.
“At least we settled one problem,” Christian said.
“But we have another, bigger problem,” Stephan countered. “Nicolai’s off by himself and there’s not much we can do. Connor couldn’t get the GPS to locate his phone.”
“At least we can all deal with it as a whole again,” Connor said. “I missed my Princess, and I’m not afraid to admit it.”
I listened as they discussed everything around me, but there was just one thing weighing on my mind. “Your mom knows.”
“What?” Christian barked.
“Your mom knows where Nic went. I’m almost one-hundred percent sure.”
He shook his head. “That’s not possible. She wouldn’t let him do this.”
“She did,” I told him, sitting up now. “And I think what she was trying to tell me was that we should just let this play out. She said everything would work out in the end. Maybe this wasn’t about the marking thing at all for Nic. I don’t know. Isabelle and I talked about a lot of things.”
“You’re sure she knew?” Stephan asked.
I nodded. “Christian was there. He saw her reaction when he told us. She wasn’t surprised at all.”
“She’s always giving in to us,” Connor said, sighing heavily. “Kind of like you, Princess.”
“If by giving in you mean I know you’re all separate people with your own wishes and desires and interests, then yes, I guess I always do. I just wish he’d told me how badly his not being involved was affecting him. I didn’t think he would pull anything like this.”
“None of us did.”
“Except your mom,” I corrected.
“Yeah, but she’s a mom. She knows everything.”
Despite myself, I smiled. If she knew everything, which I was starting to think was very true, then she was probably right about all this working out in the end. No matter how much I hated to wait and see, that was what we needed to do. Nicolai wasn’t stupid. He was brash, sure, but he wouldn’t have put himself in so much danger if he knew he couldn’t get out of it. I just had to learn to trust him, and in some ways, I guess I hadn’t been trusting him all along. I’d been taking charge in this guardian thing, agreeing with Nic that he should be allowed to do what he wanted, but not actively pursuing it with him. I should’ve been behind him. Strike that, I should’ve been right there next to him confronting Gregor with him. If that was the case, he might’ve confided in me on what he planned to do, and then I would be beside him right now. When he really needed it. Instead, I was sitting at home, worrying my hands over when my phone would ring.
It better ring.
And it better be Nic’s voice on the other side, telling me at the very least that he was uninjured, or at the very best, that he was uninjured and he also had Dumont.
I breathed out a heavy breath and pulled my princes down next to me. I was never very good at waiting, but I’d have to get used to it. I didn’t know when Nic would be calling us back, and what information he’d have to share.
“He’ll be okay,” Christian promised. “He’s Nic.”
I smirked. Sounded about right. It would be just like him to go rogue and then come out of it unscathed No doubt he’d be walking up to the Ravana Estate with a huge smile on his face with an easy, breezy air, like ‘What? You were worried? I had it under control the whole time.’
One could only hope… And hope was infinitely more powerful than fear.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I laid my head against the pillow and brought my phone to my ear, briefly catching the name I’d been dialing over and over again for the past two days. My calls had gone from ringing then voicemail, to going directly to voicemail. I didn’t know why I expected Nic to just waltz right in there, do what he was going to do, and then hear from him again after a few hours. A few hours? I wanted to slap my past self for even putting that thought into my head.
Two days. The longest two days of my life.
The door to my room creaked open and Stephan peered in. The princes had responded to all this with sending Connor in to cheer me up so seeing Stephan’s face peek around the door was a bit of a shock. Nic’s voice punched through the short silence, his brief ‘Leave me a message’ monotone bounced through my head, pulling my attention away from the brown-haired prince across the room. I ended the call and threw the phone down next to me on the bed. Stephan frowned. “Nothing yet?”
I shook my head and pulled the pillow toward me, getting into another comfortable position before I called him again in fifteen minutes.
“Do you know how many missed calls he�
�s going to have when he finally turns his phone back on? He’s going to think you’re stalking him…”
He tried for the light, airy tone, but it was too late. Connor had already tried to pull that one on me and even though I smiled for Connor, humor wasn’t Stephan’s forte. I frowned at him, and looked away, once again wondering why no one else seemed to be taking this as seriously as I was. Nicolai was gone. He left. He basically walked right into our number one enemy’s lair and hasn’t come out since.
The bed depressed next to me and Stephan put his hand on my hip. “I’m sorry. You know we’re all worried.”
I clenched my jaw tight together to keep from spouting anything that would hurt him. It wasn’t his fault. I was just in a mood. Stephan was just too sweet and always put up with my crap.
He laid down facing me, keeping his hand on my hip. His emerald eyes were like two shining spheres, drawing me in. “I know you’re mad at…everyone.”
“That’s an understatement.”
Just the thought of it made me want to throw something. A few hours after Nic left, Isabelle told us where he was going. She gave us all the information we needed to go there, and sure, I tried to be understanding and let Nic do what he was going to do, but when we had his location, and the people, to ensure his safety, what was the problem? We could’ve been in Georgia by now just keeping an eye on things. But no.
“Lex says she’d like to get your opinion on a call they got today. It’s some information from an old friend of Dumont’s.”
“We have all the information on Dumont we need. We have his location. We know who he has. We know what’s happening…”
Stephan propped his head up on his elbow. “We don’t know what’s happening. Maybe Nic’s plan is working and our barging in will just tip Dumont off.”
“Nicolai waltzing in there by himself should be reason enough. What excuse did he give him? How would he have found him if he didn’t have any help—our help?”
It was amazing the realizations you had after someone else made such an important decision for you. After Nic hung up on me and I’d decided to make the best out of a bad situation, reality smacked me in the face. There were so many factors. What did Nic tell him about how he’d found him there? What excuse could he have given him that would’ve possibly worked? The longer time went on, the stupider Nicolai’s decision turned out to be. When—if—he got back, he wasn’t allowed to decide anything again. He’d revoked those privileges with this senseless stunt.
“I’m sure Nic thought of all that. He wouldn’t just walk in there without a plan.”
I looked at Stephan doubtfully. Didn’t we always call him brash? Didn’t all his brothers just call him selfish and uncaring when he’d ‘marked’ me? But no, all of a sudden, he put his own life at risk and they were all on his side. Even Gregor agreed with Lex’s decision not to send anyone after him. I’d been in the minority.
It all just made me want to scream. For as long as my breath would hold, I tried to let all the fear and all the worry out again. Hope had become a commodity I wasn’t privy to. Fear and uncertainty had done all they could to take over, to make me feel like I had for the last several years before I was brought here and shown what living life was truly like. I was once again a bystander with nothing to do but wait and see how the world played out around me. I had no control over what happened to Nicolai. I had no insight on what fate was befalling him at this very moment. He could be on his way back to the estate with Dumont right now, or he could be dead.
Dead.
My throat constricted, and I closed my eyes to fight back the burn on the other side. This was why I couldn’t be left to do nothing. My thoughts wandered into territory that was hard to come back from.
Stephan sighed. “I know where your mind just went. It’s not happening. We would feel it.”
“So now you’re a mind-reader like your mother? Did you help him leave too?”
“Don’t be mad at her.”
“Don’t be mad at her?” I growled, the warring emotions in my head not knowing what to say or do. Rationally, I knew I’d do what Isabelle had done if I could, though I would’ve preferred to be right there with him. Irrationally, a very significant part of my brain was so mad she’d sent him on his own to take Dumont that I couldn’t reconcile the other fact. No matter how many times she said it would work out, I didn’t believe her. That hadn’t always been my truth. In my world, things just didn’t work out. Sometimes they went to shit and you had to crawl on your hands and knees to pull yourself up. And even worse, sometimes even when you did all the dirty work, even when your knees were scraped and bruised and you were tired and weary from working too much, even then, things didn’t work out the way they should. Sometimes this world could be cruel. Things didn’t happen to work out just because you willed them to. Fate had a mind of its own, and let’s face it, sometimes fate was a bitch with combat boots that would squish you just for falling off the beaten path.
Stephan pulled me toward him, his hands sifting through my hair, his breath barely a whisper on my skin. “You’re doing all the things you tell us not to do, Ariana. I know you can’t help it. I know there’s nothing out there that can take away your worry, or anyone else’s, but we all have to be strong right now. For Nicolai’s sake. We have to trust that what he did was the right thing. Isabelle does, and even being as factually inclined like I am, I never bet against her. I like science and cold, hard realities, but with Isabelle, you just have to go with it.”
“This coming from one of the persons who were so pissed when she agreed to take you guys away from me after the vamp-guard ruling.”
Stephan’s muscles tightened. He drew me closer to him, his leg curling around mine. He stayed silent. He didn’t utter a word because he knew I was right. I guessed that’s what the difference was. When your loved ones were involved, you weren’t rational. That’s why you’d risk your life and die for them—even if you were a vampire and had the self-preservation instinct of a chameleon, it was a whole different ball game when one started talking about love and loss.
I clutched Stephan’s shirt and brought him closer. “I’m sorry.” He started to shake his head, but I pulled him that much closer. It wasn’t his fault—or Isabelle’s—for my terrible mood. They didn’t deserve any of my sarcasm or my harsh judgments. We were all just doing what we thought was right. For me? I guessed that was wallowing in my bedroom and calling Nicolai’s cell every quarter of an hour. For Stephan, he was still looking up his medical books in the library trying to learn anything he could about saving Matthews who still lay in the infirmary back at The Fort. Christian hadn’t left the Council room, the hub of activity where decisions were being made. Connor? Well, he was more like me. He still worked down in the Council room from time-to-time, but after not getting a lock on Nic’s cell phone when we needed it, he shortened his duty hours. And honestly, we’d pretty much secured all the techy information we needed from him, and there was nothing left to do but wait. “I guess I get irrationally angry when something happens to one of you. You’re my Achilles heel. All of you. All I want is for you all to be around me all the time, or at the very least, for me to know that you’re okay all the time. That your lives aren’t in danger, and that you’re still breathing.”
“That would help, wouldn’t it?” Stephan asked.
Just the fact that he took my tirade at face value pleased me. “Yes, it would.” I’d meant all that, and I was glad he didn’t just push it under the rug. What I’d learned from these past two days was that I just needed a few bare necessities to live life and carry on. One of those things was knowing that my princes were still alive. It seemed like so basic of a wish, and on some level, I knew that not everyone in this world had to worry about something that should be a given, but this was the life I’d chosen. The life I wanted more than anything. But that life involved having four princes surrounding me.
Doubt. Fear. A never-ending spiral of grief I wasn’t sure was even warranted. I’
d left all rational thought behind and ended up in the crazy house imprisonment of my brain.
Stephan chuckled, bringing me out of my reverie. “Well, I can see I’ve done nothing to help. This is why we left this up to Connor.”
I smiled, my lips moving against the softness of his shirt. “You’re helping,” I told him, even though I wasn’t sure I was being honest or not. “You’re here.” That was true, and was a definite comfort.
“Do you think you’re up to heading to The Council chambers to talk to Lex about Dumont’s old friend who called?”
I snuggled into him closer. “Do I have to?”
“Of course not.”
Even as he answered I knew I hadn’t been fair. Out of all of them, Stephan would let me get away with murder. Well, maybe not murder. His medical instincts might just kick in then, but he would let me lay here and call Nicolai every two minutes if I wanted to. He was too sweet to tell me to do something else. Too sweet to give me a kick in the ass and tell me I was being childish. Gregor and Lex had to make decisions based on the good of everyone who followed the Ravana Clan. They didn’t make decisions based on what was good for them, for their families, and least of all, me. I was just being selfish…and bratty. I could own up to it, but that didn’t mean I had to do anything to change it.
“Soren’s been asking for you too.”
I shrugged. “Nothing I can do about that. We’re here and he’s at The Fort.”
“We’re actually thinking about transferring him. If something is going to happen, we might want him close.”
“So transfer him.”
Stephan tipped my chin up. “Just like that? You don’t want to think about it? What if he escaped?”
I shook my head, barely noticing Stephan’s confusion. “He’s not going to escape. He doesn’t follow Dumont anymore.”
“I agree with you on that, but who would rather be a captive than be free?”
My shoulders slumped. I peered up at Stephan’s big, green eyes and sighed. He was tricky that one. He knew what he was doing, and I kind of hated him right now for it. I’d just made that decision based on not caring, which was so unlike me. My mind was too preoccupied with Nic right now. I groaned. “You’re right…” Things needed to be thought through, rationally. I needed to pull myself together.