Brex walked low to the ground, ears back and tail down. I shooed him under a bush, where he crouched flat. He watched me warily, ears back. I covered him as best as I could with the branches of the bush, then returned to Athan’s side. He stood strong and tall gazing up into the tree canopy, before inhaling deeply and turning to me. “You have your knife?”
I patted my side, tamping down my panic, replaying all the training my mother taught me. It was for this moment. This one right here.
Athan pulled me toward him, pressing our foreheads together. “I don’t know how this is going to turn out. But don’t worry about me, understand? Worry about yourself.”
“I’ll worry about myself,” I shot back. “But don’t say dumb shit. Of course I’m going to worry about you.”
He sighed heavily, dropped a kiss on my forehead, then turned around. He pulled out two of his own knives and rolled his wrists as the first wave of Quellen descended from the trees.
I brandished my knife, standing with my back to Athan’s, because no way was one of these fucks going to creep up on me from behind again. I was confident in my fighting skills, but these Quellen were not drunken bar bros. They were trained assassins.
With hissed calls, they converged on us, sending way more manpower at Athan, which surprised me. I was the target, wasn’t I? But I didn’t have time to dwell, because they weren’t leaving me alone, either, and if I went down, Athan’s back was vulnerable. So I twirled my knife and dispatched as many as I could.
When I glanced over my shoulder, Athan was a blur, his jacket swirling around his massive form, blades catching the light of the moon. I was at a disadvantage without daylight, but my eyes had mostly adjusted. The powder-pale skin of the Quellen was easy to spot, the dark center of their eyes like black holes in their white faces.
They weren’t trying to hurt me, at least not yet. It was clear they wanted to take me. And I was not about to be taken, at least not while I was still able to fight.
But they were coming fast now, and while a pile of Quellen lay at Athan’s feet, and a couple more at mine, more were advancing, hitting the ground running as they leaped down from the trees, a white murderous shroud.
And then the Valarians came.
They were much taller than the Quellen, striding out of the darkness of the woods like demons, their red eyes glowing, lips curled back to reveal sharp fangs.
That was when I began to actually panic. My blade was slick with Quellen blood, and I stumbled over bodies below me. My muscles ached as the adrenaline ceased to fuel me. I blinked back tears as more Quellen entered the fray.
Athan kept fighting, but his tired grunts worried me, his heavy pants clanging alarm bells in my head. My blade felt like a fifty-pound weight in my hand as I swung it at three advancing Quellen. One got too close and knocked it out of my hand, and a sick shot of fear pierced my gut.
This was it, this was where I died, with a vampire who was the love of my life at my back, and no hope for the human race. All of this, and we’d failed. One vampire, no matter how powerful, and a lone human weren’t a match for an army of assassins and enemy vampires.
The Quellen grabbed my hair first, which only enraged me. Why did they always have to go for the hair? I fought and kicked, screaming, and Athan whirled around. The stench of Quellen filled my nose, making it hard to breathe. What if they made me pass out? What if I had to watch Athan die? What if—?
A low sound began, shaking the ground below us, and the air vibrated as the noise grew to a dull roar of rushing wind. The Quellen holding me froze, and I blinked to focus on the source of the noise.
Where Athan had stood was now a funnel of tornado-force gales. The winds sucked up scattered leaves and branches, catching them in the cyclone. There was something in the middle but the debris kicked up prevented me from seeing what it was. Was Athan in there? How the fuck was he alive? Amid the sound of rushing wind, I detected a voice, a scream.
The Quellen held on to me, but they didn’t move, and their arms shook. Hell, I shook. Maybe the whole earth shook. The top of the tornado was rising, expanding, gaining speed, until my hair whipped around my face. The Quellen holding me stumbled and we tripped to the ground. He tried to hold on to me, but I kicked him in the face and crawled away. Toward the tornado. It might be a death sentence, but two dots of glowing red amid the swirling winds called to me. To my blood. I’d find safety there.
Just as I reached the outer edge of the cyclone and feared I was going to end up like Dorothy, the winds abruptly stopped. I covered my head as the debris crashed to the ground.
The scream was now a penetrative roar, which rattled my bones. I peeked out from between my arms and my heart skipped a beat. Athan crouched on the ground, shirtless. Slowly he lifted his head and rose to his feet. His eyes were completely red, the veins in his face, neck, and chest pulsing red and purple. He bared his teeth, and then from his shoulders emerged two wings.
Wings.
They were bat-like—black, leathery skin stretched over bones. The entire clearing, from me to the Quellen to the Valarian, went deadly silent. Athan flapped his wings once, twice, and then erupted.
In a streak of flesh and wings, he flew over me. With inhuman speed, his form raced around the clearing, cries sounding from where he claimed victim after victim, leaving bloody bodies in his wake. There were claws at the tips of his wings, deadly sheaths that left no enemy untouched. Death rattles sounded from all around me, and I spun in a circle from where I knelt on the ground as Brex emerged from his hiding spot and perched on a pile of dead bodies near me.
Several Quellen tried to climb trees to escape him, but that was a shitty plan because Athan could fly now. Fucking fly. He soared through the air, taking out the last of the filth sent to take me. And when there was no more movement but the three of us—Athan, me, and Brex—my winged blood guard then dropped to the ground in front of me. He landed on a crouch, and his wings shrunk, retreating into his skin, until his back was once again smooth.
He didn’t move, his back heaving with deep breaths, the nearly white skin streaked with blood and dirt. I crawled toward him slowly and reached out, trailed my hand over his shoulder blades where moments ago his wings had been. His skin was smooth and unblemished.
When I withdrew my hand, Athan rose. His eyes returned once again to those dark orbs, and his chest heaved. I stood in front of him and placed a hand over his heart, the beat of it comforting beneath my palm. “Wh-what just happened?”
His nostrils flared, and he ran his tongue over his teeth, catching on a fang. “The prophecy.”
This was freaking me out. “What about it? Athan, you had fucking wings!”
“It came true.” His voice betrayed his disbelief. His eyes unwavering as they locked on mine. “But this wasn’t supposed to happen to me.”
I curled my fingers until my fist rested on his chest. “Wait, are you saying…” My brain was running in a million different directions. “What are you saying exactly?”
“This was supposed to happen to Idris. Your blood wasn’t supposed to affect me.” His eyes were wide and a little feral. He looked on the verge of losing it.
I stepped closer, brushing along his arm. He was trembling. “What does this mean?”
He reached over his shoulder, feeling the places where he’d had wings a minute ago with a shaky hand. “I don’t fucking know, Ten. I don’t—” His voice gave out and he dropped to his knees. I jumped back as he fell forward onto his hands. His head rolled, like he could barely keep it up.
I kneeled in front of him, lifting his head so I could see his face. Tears leaked out of his eyes, tracking through the dirt on his face. He was in shock, with dilated pupils, and a slack mouth. The sight of him so confused, so broken, unfurled caring instincts I hadn’t even known I’d possessed. I pulled my shirt up to wipe his face as he blinked his wet hair out of his eyes.
He heaved a breath. “I’ve lived my whole life believing one thing and my role in it, and now I do
n’t know anything.”
I cupped his face and spoke as firmly as I could. “I know you believe in the blood that courses through my veins and yours. I know you think it makes us special. But it doesn’t, Athan. It might be changing the course of our lives, but it’s not all we are. My blood hasn’t kept me alive all this time, or saved me from the Quellen. I did that—and you. We are more than the prophecy. This is your chance to take the hand you’ve been dealt and make a choice about your life.”
His throat clicked, like he was trying to speak, but he gave up when no words came.
“And I’ll be there with you. Because that’s my choice.”
He grabbed me and hugged me to his chest. I held him until he stopped shaking, until his heartbeat didn’t sound like it would burst out of his chest.
I must have fallen asleep, cradling him to me, because when I opened my eyes again, the sun was rising over the horizon. The golden rays reached out to us from gaps in the trees, and I smiled at its warmth.
That lasted for a split second before I remembered I was with a fucking vampire. I scrambled to my knees, looking around for Athan and prepared to somehow cover him with my body. I opened my mouth to scream his name when I caught movement in the center of the clearing.
A shirtless Athan stood with his arm extended, rotating his hand back and forth while a single beam of sunlight fell onto his skin. I held my breath, but there was no smoke. No ash.
Just Athan feeling the sunlight for the very first time in his life.
I crept toward him, not wanting to ruin this moment. One of my favorite things in life was letting the sun warm my face, wash over my body. There was something renewing about a new day, another rotation of the Earth.
Athan’s eyes were wide, his mouth open. His chest heaved as he continued to stick various parts of his body in the sunlight. He hesitated a moment before plunging his face into the beam, his eyes squeezed shut. I clapped my hand over my mouth, not wanting to laugh, but he was like a kid.
My foot nudged a pile of leaves, and the rustling caused Athan’s head to jerk up. When he saw me, a smile spread across his handsome face. A smile I’d never seen him make. “Tendra.” His face held pure wonder as he stepped into the beam and held his arms out at his sides. “Look! I can…I can touch the sun.”
It crested over the distant grove of trees and spread across the ground. The bodies all around us began to burst into flames. I had to jump back from a pile of dead Quellen as they ignited. Within minutes all that was left of the massacre from the night before was scattered clumps of ash.
Athan hadn’t moved. His head was back, the sun shining on his face. When he lowered his head and grinned at me, I was sure it was the best sight I’d ever seen. I knew no matter what the future held at the Gregorie compound, I was looking at my king.
Chapter 16
Athan
I refused to leave my patch of sunlight. The warmth was unlike anything I’d experienced in my life. It wasn’t like a fire, or a heater, or a warm body.
The sun on my face was like life.
I’d spent all of my life looking at the sun as my killer, and now I saw it as my savior. Even as a child before I’d been turned to a full vampire, I couldn’t be in the sun. Some hybrids could stand it, but I could not, probably because of the strong blood of my family line. I didn’t understand why this was happening to me. My blood shouldn’t have been affected by Tendra’s, but there was no denying that I was stronger, that I had fucking wings and that I was right now letting the sun warm my face.
Fucking incredible.
Tendra walked toward me, and I lowered my arms as she drew close. The only thing that made sense in my life anymore was her. I’d expected her life to change. I hadn’t known mine would.
As she drew close, she splayed her fingers across my stomach. The heat of her palms was even better than the sun. She tilted her head to the side, exposing her neck, and looked up at me from beneath her lashes.
Even though her veins pulsing beneath her skin were tempting, I didn’t need to feed. I licked a stripe up the side of her neck, then back down. I placed little nibbles along her vein, but didn’t break the skin. With one last kiss to the place where her shoulder met her neck, I pulled back. Her eyes were closed, lips parted, and it took her some time to open her eyes and focus on me. “I thought you were going to feed.”
I kissed her. Never in my life did I care about a human or vampire reciprocating anything but physical pleasure. But with Ten, I wanted to know she wanted me, craved me, without feeding involved.
She kissed me back, surging against my lips. She ground her hips against mine, and it wasn’t long before I was painfully hard.
“Athan,” she gasped into my mouth, her hand slipping up into my hair. “I need you.”
“Do you?” I searched her eyes, the heat from her body like the sun on my face. “Forget vampires and humans, fangs and blood. Without all of that, do you still want me?”
Her face softened, and her hand stroked my cheek, my lips, my forehead. “Yes. My soul wants you.” She held her hand over my heart. “Don’t you feel it, too?”
That was all the answer I needed. I placed her on the ground on her back. I made quick work of my pants as she shucked hers off. And then I settled my hips between her legs as she wrapped them around my waist. I felt between her thighs, and groaned when her wetness coated my fingers. “Your body wants me, too.”
“Always,” she moaned, arching her back.
I nuzzled her neck, not bothering to resist anymore. As I aimed my dick at her entrance and plunged inside, I pierced her skin with my fangs.
She screamed, her body bowing beneath me as I thrust in and out of her. She was speaking, saying words like yes and more and please. The vibrations of her vocal cords numbed my lips as I sucked and sucked.
She clung to me with every limb, her hand tangled in my hair to the point of pain, her legs squeezing my waist as she rolled her hips in time with my thrusts.
We were made for this, she and I.
I sealed the wound on her neck with a lap of my tongue, then reached between us to focus on her clit. She was soaked, and I rolled the hard bud with my thumb as her moans reached fever pitch. My balls were tightening, getting ready to unload as the orgasm barreled down my spine.
When she came, her mouth dropped open on a silent scream, and the pulsing of her walls around my cock had me coming, too.
We lay locked together for some time, breathing in time with each other, unable or maybe unwilling to separate. Finally, she stirred beneath me, and I let myself slip from her body as she gazed up at me with warm brown eyes. Her smile was tentative as she brushed my hair off my forehead.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey back,” she answered.
I ran the backs of my knuckles along the smooth skin of her cheek. Her legs trapped me against her, and her ankles were crossed at the small of my back. As I gazed down into her face, I knew I’d never be able to hand her over to someone else, brother or not. I pulled at the corner of her mouth with my thumb, and she licked it with a grin. “I can’t let you go,” I said.
She froze beneath me with wide eyes. “What?”
“If I’m what you want, if you feel about me the way I feel about you, then I’ll fight for you, Tendra.”
She blinked at me, then squirmed until I was forced back onto my heels. She sat up, pulling her knees to her chest. “Of course I want to be with you. But I know how you feel about your family and your duty. I don’t want to ask you to give that up.”
“You’re my duty, and I can’t see a future without you.”
“Well, what do you think is going to happen? Will your father be okay with this?”
No, not even a little bit. Idris was to be king. “This will not be easy.”
Her face fell. “Fuck. Hey, maybe we can just leave, right? Why do we even have to go back? Let them think we died.”
I shook my head. “I can’t do that. Despite the rift it will cause with my f
ather and Idris, I can’t vanish and leave the Gregorie clan vulnerable.”
“Oh, yeah,” she muttered. She rested her chin on her knees. “I’m scared, Athan. What if they overpower you? What if they take me anyway—”
“Hey.” I reached out and gripped her face. “Wings, remember? They can’t deny what your blood has done to me, that the prophecy was not what we were told. But it still came true. Just to a different vampire. I’ll fight for you. And no one at that house will be a match for me.”
“But they are your family, Athan. Your father. Your brother. You’re telling me that you’ll harm them just to have me?”
Breaking family ties went against everything I’d been raised to be. But Tendra wasn’t some human. She was Sanguivita. She was mine. And Para’s words hadn’t left me. Was there something going on I wasn’t aware of? For the first time I questioned the motives of those I was supposed to obey—namely my father. I swallowed. “I’ll fight for you, Tendra.”
She smiled, but it was a little sad. “I think that you believe you will, Athan. But I think there are a lot of things that can happen between now and then.” She rose to her feet and began to dress, her movements slow. I didn’t move for a long time, lost in my head over her words.
Finally, I dressed, too, and while Ten ate the last of our food, and fed bits to Brex, we left the clearing. I texted Idris that we’d be home by nightfall.
I clenched my jaw and forged ahead, Ten’s hand warm in mine. I couldn’t let Tendra down. Idris was supposed to be king, but I held the abilities that would save our clan. I had the love of the Sanguivita. That had to be enough.
I’d never abandon her, and if my father forced my hand, he’d see just how strong his youngest son had become.
Tendra
As we walked, I caught Athan staring at the sun a lot, like he still couldn’t believe his abilities. I clutched his hand, working to quell the panic rising in my chest. Before, I’d been nervous about what would happen when we reached the Gregorie compound. But now? I was scared out of my mind.
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