by C. D. Gorri
Opening the book, she turns it to an astonishing, painted plate.
“This is very ancient. It predates human books. Back in the early dawning of time, we vampire had much more advanced arts and sciences than them. Then, they of course caught us up, and in this they have surpassed us. However, this book is one of the earliest in vampire history. It’s like our bible. There were five made, all identical, all painstakingly recreated from the original, which still resides in the Romanian mountains, our sacred homeland. The book tells of the future, and it has to be said, much of it has come true. The founders of our nations told how we would face a future where our numbers of natural born would recede precariously. Yes, we can keep our overall numbers high because we can turn humans, but you and I both know, a full-blood has twenty times the power of a turned vampire. A half-blood is also very powerful. You, Dragan, you have the blood of kings and queens coursing through your veins. You were turned by a great ruler. But a turned vampire, sired by one themselves only made twenty years ago…” She shrugs and sighs. “This vampire cannot have much power.”
“So, this prophecy says a latent and a half-blood will create a new wave of born vampires?”
“Yes. Let us be honest. There are not many true-bloods walking the earth. We all mate for life, and we live for thousands of years. This does not give the nations a chance to re-stock with powerful blood. You, and your latent, might be the key to a new dawn.”
I take in all she’s said as she turns the thick parchment pages.
Finally, she stops turning, and points to the elegant script in the old language. “This is where it tells of the new dawn for our kind. A wolf latent will be found by a powerful half-blood, and she will be his one true fated mate. I knew it was the prophecy when I heard the clocks stopped around the fortress, as that is the foretold sign. He’ll take her as his, and she’ll become heavy with his child. The child will be a powerful new breed, with the strength of a vampire, the powers of a latent wolf to know the things they know, and the senses of a shifter. This child will also help bridge the terrible gap between the vampires and shifters, as they will see her as one of them.”
“Her?” The Queen saying her makes the child suddenly seem real. A rush of feeling overwhelms me as I imagine holding a daughter of my own in my arms, an heir to the vampire throne who could unite us with the wolves we’ve come to loathe.
“Aren’t wolf shifters looked down upon? Won’t the child always be seen as second best?” I ask the Queen.
“No. Because her father will be a half-blood and her protector and guardian will be me. She’ll be raised by you and your mate, if the prophecy proves true, but I will give her my blessing and my protection, as will all the other nations. She’d be revered. There may be some who would hate her, as is always the way, but it would be because of jealousy. She’d have more protection than even I myself have, as is her right as the beginning of a new dawn for the vampire peoples.”
I can’t take it all in. How do I begin to tell Lisbeth? Hell, I might have all sorts of deep, basic biological feelings and urges for her, but I don’t know her. I’m not sure how to start a conversation with her.
“This must be a shock for you, as it will be for her, but you have biology on your side. If she is or isn’t our savior, she’s most certainly your mate, and that will carry you both through.”
She stands, holds out her hand and smiles at me. “Go, Dragan, and claim your mate. You may be about to change the future course of vampire society.”
Chapter Seven
Lisbeth
There’s a child in my arms, and all around me are boxes wrapped in thick, luxurious paper with satin bows. Presents, nothing but presents, cover the entirety of the bed I am laid in. What is this? My people rarely celebrate my birthday because I am latent. It’s left to my family to give me some basic, ill-thought-out gifts. Then I realize they aren’t for me…or not all for me. Many are for the baby in my arms. Whose child is this? I can’t have children. She can’t be mine. I look around for her mother.
“A new royal line has been born,” a striking woman with regal bearing says. “Now your children will become kings and queens of the future.”
“Lisbeth, are you okay? Open your eyes.”
Dragan.
I’d recognize his voice anywhere. I might not have known him for any time at all, but he’s already imprinted on me his scent. His handsome, severe face. His deep, rough voice.
The presents are wondrous, but the greatest gift of all is this precious child in my arms. I realize she is mine. She must be, because when I look at her, I feel nothing but intense love.
“Lisbeth, wake up.”
I am awake, and this is all so lovely. Why is he distracting me?
“Lisbeth?”
The bed shakes, and the presents start to fall from it. Oh, no. I grab my baby tight.
“Gods above, Lisbeth.”
I jolt awake with a gasped cry. I look down at my empty arms, and my heart hurts.
“What the hell?” Dragan is towering over me, staring down at the bed, where I’m lying, fully clothed in a long silk dress, having fallen into what must have been a truly deep sleep after my shower.
“I thought you were sick. Why didn’t you wake up?”
I shake my head, trying to dislodge the sticky residue of the dream. “I dreamed. I had a child. There were presents. I know it’s impossible, but it was wonderful. My people say latents can divine parts of the future, but I know that cannot be such a vision as I cannot have children. I felt such a connection to her though.”
“Dear gods, maybe the Queen is correct.” His face draws tight. “Lisbeth, we need to talk. I don’t know how to tell you the things I have learned, but I cannot take your blood fully, nor give you mine, and complete our bond until you know everything. It’s wondrous, but terrifying, and so surreal.”
“Complete our bond?”
“Lisbeth, you have to know you’re my mate?”
I laugh. “Dragan, you have to know that is crazy. I’m a barren latent.”
“You’re much more than that. Even if it were so though, you’d still be my mate, and I’d still want you.”
I want him, too, but I know I need to hear what he has to tell me first. This is so crazy. Super intense, insanely fast, and frankly, I should be locked up for even thinking of letting him make me his. But I don’t want to be away from him. I crave him, like a drug.
Is it real though? If I feel this way so fast, surely it’s not real. I might wake up in a year’s time hating him.
“Do fated matings ever go wrong?” I ask him.
“Rarely. They can, but it is very unusual. We believe the gods wouldn’t put two people together unless perfect, particularly because it takes hundreds of years often for us to meet our match. I’ve been alone through many lifetimes, Lisbeth. I have to believe this will work between us, and I’ll do everything in my power to make you happy and keep you safe.”
It’s so tempting - leave behind the abuse and the names, the torment and the constant denigration and humiliation. But first, I need to hear what he has learned.
Thirty minutes later, and I’m speechless. Apparently, I’m his long-lost mate, and not only that, but the conduit to a whole new sub-breed of vampires.
I’m nibbling at a piece of fruit brought to us by more gorgeous women, along with wine, bread and cheese. They placed it all on the table in Dragan’s massive living room, and we settled in there to have our conversation.
I hated the way those women talked to him, so familiar. It made me fume. It made me hot under my skin. As we ate and drank the wine, the heat only built. It’s burning me up inside and out, and I need a release for it before I combust. This man can put the fire out or at least tamper it down. I want to claim him as mine. Rake my nails on him and make him bleed the way he did me. Only my marks won’t be neat and tidy. My inner wolf is het up, and she wants to mate. I might not be able to change, but that doesn’t alter the fact I have an animal inside me.
I kno
w if I make this final move, there’s no coming back from it. Dragan wants me, I can sense it, but he’s holding back. He has already alluded to me being innocent, untouched, but I know how this works. I’ve seen the films the humans make. My brother’s friend showed pictures to me and tried to touch me that way. I pushed him away, but I saw what happened and then looked at some myself, curious, during my stays in the hotels, using the Wi-Fi there to get onto the internet, which is banned on our lands. I’ve read books too, sneaked out of human libraries, and in the depths of night, touched myself under the covers and imagined a lover taking me. He didn’t look all that different from Dragan, my dream lover.
The wine, the scent of Dragan, the soft music playing and the low lamps all around the room combine to have me not caring that I’m about to be wanton.
For the first time in my life, I’m about to be reckless.
I stand and walk to Dragan, hitching the long dress up to my waist and straddling his lap. His hands come up to hold my waist, automatically, and his brows shoot up high. I smile down at him, lick my lips, tangle my fingers in his thick, slightly wavy hair, and bend down to kiss him.
For one moment, he stills, mouth half parted and fingers holding me as if to push me off. Then he quickly gets with the program. His tongue licks along the seam of my mouth as he groans into the kiss, the deep rumble of his chest melodic and enticing.
I let him in and taste brandy, and him. He’s heady, strong and more than I ever could have hoped for myself. I thought I’d spend my life alone and die a spinster, hated and tormented by the pack meant to protect me. Now, I’ve found a man who wants me for his own and will protect me with his last dying breath. I know as much bone deep. I also trust him for what is coming next, to take my virginity and make me his.
I tell him as much. “Make me yours, Dragan.” I plead. “In every way.”
The world tilts as he stands, carrying me with him, marching into the bedroom. “I’ll try to be gentle, my little one, but first, allow me to remove this dress in the way I see fit.”
I nod, swallowing down nerves. His large hands grab hold of my dress, and the thick fabric rips as if only paper as he tears it, literally, from my body. I gasp and my hands automatically go to cover myself. Melissa only dressed me in a slip of a thong, and a lacy, barely there bralette. Poor Melissa’s sister, I think. All that work for this beast to simply rip it from my body.
“Don’t cover yourself. You are beautiful, my imparateasa.”
“What does that mean?” I pant.
“My queen. My empress.”
Wow, okay. I like his bedroom talk. He kisses me along my collar bone to my shoulder, and then back to my neck. “Hey, stop a moment. You said tasting my blood would tell you all you needed to know. Did it?”
He gives a solemn dip of his head. “Yes, it did. It showed me some of your life. I saw this because you were made to be mine. The only other time we see someone’s life that way is if we drain them. With you, one sip was all it took. We have a connection. We were meant to be. The gods of old made you for me and I for you. It is written.”
Oh, to be so sure. I am not sure, and in fact, I am terrified. I’m also excited, turned on beyond belief and living the kind of wild adventure I never thought would be possible.
As his kisses continue down the column of my throat, down farther towards my breasts, my pulse quickens. He sucks in one hard nipple through the material of the bra covering it. The rough material with the wet soft of his tongue is exquisite, like nothing I’ve ever felt before.
“Dragan,” I gasp, as I arch my back. I feed him more of my breast, hungry for more of the rasping sucking. He scrapes his teeth along the nipple, and I wonder if he can feed from there, if he ever would. Drinking my blood from my breast seems highly erotic, but all kinds of wrong.
“One day, I’ll feed here,” he says, answering my unspoken question. “And then from between your legs.”
I’m not sure I like the sound of that. I’m about to tell him when I lose the ability to speak as a finger brushes right over my clit, through my satin thong, feather light. It’s like a jolt of electricity everywhere he touches me. Heady. Intense. Addicting.
His lips move back up my body, and he claims my mouth in a deep, warm kiss. My arms wrap around his neck and pull him to me. Our bodies press together as our mouths make love. I want to drown in this man. And then do it all over again.
I don’t know how it will work. Will he feed from me, and then make love to me?
As his mouth tears from mine, he moves down my body again, pulling my bralette down and plumping my breasts together. He feasts on them, licking and sucking at me until I’m almost mindless. I’ve come before, from my own fingers, but this is so much more. Almost too much to bear.
He leaves my breasts exposed, spilling over the material of the bra, and kisses down my stomach, stopping to nip at my hip with his teeth. I know that vampires’ fangs only descend when they’re going to bite, and all I feel is normal teeth on my skin. I relax into his kisses and feather-light touches. Then he’s where I need him the most. He pulls my panties down my legs, roughly enough to give my skin a slight burn. And then in exquisite juxtaposition, kisses my thighs softly, reverentially almost.
“Open for me, beautiful,” he orders, spreading my legs wide.
I’m embarrassed, but I do as he says, wanting him to kiss me there, in my most intimate and private place. The first butterfly-light touch of his lips to mine has me sucking my breath in. He uses his fingers and parts my folds.
“Beautiful,” he growls, his voice guttural and rough.
Then he licks me right there, right at my center, and I close my eyes as I give in to the sensation, letting it wash over me as every bit of my focus homes in on the wonderful feelings at my core. I thrash my head from side to side as he keeps working me; it is all getting almost too much.
I feel it threatening, an orgasm like no other, and I try to push his head away, but he grabs my hand and holds it still as he thrashes me with his tongue, and I come hard against his wicked mouth.
I don’t get a moment to catch my breath before he’s standing and stripping himself bare. I stare at his revealed body in awe. My gods, he’s so big. Alpha male wolf shifters are muscular and fit, but Dragan is massive. He’s all muscles on broad shoulders and powerful limbs. His skin is lustrous with a hint of an olive tan, which I didn’t think vampires could have. When he takes off the final piece of clothing, I gulp.
He’s big everywhere. I don’t think that will fit.
I’m about to tell him when he covers me, and the sensation of skin-on-skin short circuits my mind and my worries.
“I’m going to feed from you. It will be like before, only a little, but it will make this easier. Better.”
I nod, my anxiety spiking again. Before I get the chance to spiral into a panic, he kisses my throat and neck, and I sigh into the touch, deciding that my neck most definitely is an erogenous zone. Then he pulls back for a moment, and I brace for the pain. It’s swift and sharp but replaced immediately as the time before with a rush of feel-good hormones. I cling to him, crying out as my pussy floods with wet need.
He uses his thigh to push my legs apart again, and then his thick cock breaches me. He is slow at first, but I need more. I don’t feel pain because all I can feel is mindless, delirious pleasure as he sucks my blood. I try to hitch my hips, but he holds me still and takes his inexorable time pushing his way slowly into me.
When he’s finally seated fully inside me, I come. I come so hard it hurts. A mix of pleasure and pain has my womb contracting as my entire body shudders at the intensity of what I’m feeling.
He is still taking my blood, tiny draws with pauses in between, and he begins to move, hitching his hips and hitting me deep inside. This is a whole new sensation. Deep. Raw. Powerful. I’m exposed to this man, and he’s taking everything from me.
Then, I cry out because suddenly, I’m seeing things. Him in battle armor fighting. Dragan mourning his
mother, his father, his sister, his younger brother. They all die. Then there’s some awful disease and bodies littering the night-time streets. I see him looking at the night sky and feel his wish to see the sun again.
What is happening?
Fearing I am going mad, I begin to panic, but then the images stop, and something else replaces them. A sense of calm. It’s him. His power is calming me. In taking my blood, he’s somehow calming me, and making it good for me.
I can feel another release building and try to hold it off because I’m not sure I can take anymore. It sweeps over me though, and I contract around him, screaming out my ecstasy. He lets go of my throat and licks it as he grunts, and his massive cock kicks inside me, filling me with all he has to offer.
When I come down from it all, I realize he’s not above me anymore. He returns from the bathroom with a warm, damp cloth and wipes my forehead, my neck, and then between my legs. When he puts the cloth to one side, I notice blood on it.
“You must have left a scar this time,” I slur, touching my throat.
“That’s not from your throat, little one. Why do you think I went so slowly, even when you wanted to hurry me? Your first time I had to be slow, or I could have torn you apart.”
It might have been slow, but it was intense and amazing, and I kind of want to do it all over again, except I feel as weak as a kitten.
He bites his wrist, and blood blooms. He offers me it, and I automatically jerk away. Hurt crosses his face, and I regret my instinctive action.
“I’ve never taken blood,” I tell him.
“Just a little, a sip, or two. It will give you strength.”
I do as he says and take the proffered wrist. When he drank from me, I felt him, his calm strength, but now I really feel him. A rush of power so intense I could rule the damn world races through me, filling me with awe inspiring ferocity. I gasp and drink more, wanting to fill myself up with him, but he pulls away.
“No, little one, that’s enough.”
He kisses me, and his lips might as well be drugged because a somnolence washes over me, rendering me replete and happily exhausted. Now, there is only a sense of peace, of rightness, of belonging. Like warm, thick honey, his blood gives me sustenance and my eyes droop closed.