THE CHAMPION
Book 7 of the
Bryn and Sinjin Series
by
H.P. Mallory
Copyright ©2020 by HP Mallory
Published by HP Mallory at Smashwords
Smashwords Edition License Notes
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Acknowledgements:
To my son, Finn: Thank you for always making me smile. I love you so much.
To my editor, Teri, at EditingFairy.com: thank you for an excellent job, as always.
About The Champion:
When Bryn finds out she’s pregnant, she’ll have to deal with the fact that Sinjin doesn’t believe the baby is his—how could it be? He’s a vampire, after all, and incapable of reproducing. At least that’s what everyone thought…
As if dealing with Sinjin isn’t enough, Bryn and Dureau have decided to move forward with their plan to contact Luce’s tribespeople through their dreams. Bryn and Dureau both hope to enlighten Luce’s people that they’ve been fed nothing but lies and that a better future awaits them if they agree to join Jolie’s court. But, that plan doesn’t exactly go as Bryn and Dureau hoped it would…
How will Dureau respond when he finds out Bryn’s pregnant? And what happens when Bryn and Dureau are forced to accept the help of Monsieur D? And will Sinjin ever believe he’s the father of Bryn’s child?
Find out in The Champion, the seventh book in the Bryn and Sinjin series!
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty- Four
Chapter Twenty- Five
Chapter Twenty- Six
Chapter Twenty- Seven
Chapter Twenty- Eight
Chapter Twenty- Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
CHAPTER ONE
Bryn
I drew back from Sinjin as if I’d been stung, hardly comprehending the words that had just come out of his mouth.
“What do you mean I’m with child ?”
I didn’t know how it was possible.
Pregnant? Me?
“It’s impossible,” I said as I shook my head and faced Sinjin. Somehow, he was mistaken. He had to be.
“The notes in your blood are as clear as words on a page,” he answered staunchly. His voice was deathly quiet. Measured. With something indefinable lurking underneath.
I stared into my lover’s eyes—azure, penetrating, containing so much that I couldn’t begin to imagine—countless scenes from his past six centuries as a vampire.
“What does that mean?” I demanded.
The forest around us suddenly seemed darker somehow. I’d stumbled across Sinjin here as he searched for the ingredients necessary for Mathilda’s potions—elder grass and lavender. And, on seeing him, I’d had the sudden incredible urge for him to drink from me.
Sinjin swore up and down that no one’s blood could rival mine, and I’d wanted to share myself with him, to give him the sustenance he desired. In the process, he’d picked up a different note in my blood and made the startling announcement that I was “with child,” as he’d termed it.
“It means, my dear,” he answered, clearing his throat in a way that said he was uncomfortable, “That you grow within your belly a sprog.”
“A sprog?”
“A child.”
I shook my head again. “It’s not possible. You must have gotten it wrong. Maybe you detected extra hormones in my blood or something because I’m getting close to having my period?” I wasn’t even sure if I was getting close to my period, but it seemed like a good possibility, so I ran with it.
It was Sinjin’s turn to shake his head. “You are most certainly with child.”
I didn’t know what to think. He had to be wrong! That’s all there was to it. “It’s not possible, Sinjin,” I repeated. “You’re fully aware of the fact that I’m barren.”
“I believed you to be barren, such that you believed yourself to be barren, but clearly you have proven us both incorrect.”
I chewed on my lower lip. “Sinjin, when I was a prisoner in Luce’s camp, he sent numerous tribesmen to me for weeks at a time, every day,” I started.
At my words, I was transported back to the worst time of my life, when I’d been captured and brought back to Luce’s camp and forced to join my former leader’s vile breeding program. I was raped countless times over a three-week period. Regardless, I hadn’t gotten pregnant, a fact I’d taken as proof of my inability to do so.
I was infertile. I was convinced of it.
Yet, Sinjin was convinced of the exact opposite. And when was Sinjin wrong? Or, more pointedly, when were Sinjin’s taste buds wrong?
Could it possibly be true? And if it were true, that meant that I … that we … something new ignited inside me. Was it hope mingled with excitement?
“I am fully aware of your time in Luce’s camp,” Sinjin answered, his jaw growing tight. His expression blanched into one of anger, and as I watched, he focused on the rolling green hills in the distance and his eyes took on a whitish, glowing hue.
“And try as hard as Luce did, I never became pregnant,” I continued, realizing this was a difficult subject for Sinjin to discuss, mainly because he felt as though he’d failed me. In his mind, he hadn’t rescued me soon enough. Yes, Sinjin had returned to Luce’s camp in order to exact his revenge, but he hadn’t been able to kill each one of my attackers, and that was another point that left him riddled with regret.
“I admit this discovery is quite… surprising,” he started as he faced me again and the anger leaked out of his expression. “And I cannot comment on why or how your body was unprepared to enter this state in the past.” He paused, seemingly to weigh his words. “But, regardless of the reason, the truth remains that a babe grows within you.”
“I just don’t…”
“Perhaps you should play devil’s advocate for a moment,” he interrupted.
“Okay, why?”
He was quiet for a few seconds, and his attention shifted towards the forest in the distance, only to move to the creek that ran between the trees. A soft wind whistled through the trees and moved Sinjin’s pitch-black hair, and I was suddenly struck by how impossibly handsome he was. With his ice-blue eyes, black eyebrows and hair, high cheekbones and defined jaw, he was easily the most handsome man I’d ever seen.
Maybe Dureau Chevalier, the French Fae who rivalled Sinjin for my affections, was just as handsome. Dureau, with his dark brown hair and eyes and a smile that always managed to bring a smile to my own face. Dureau… the man I could have loved if not for Sinjin.
As I glanced over at Sinjin now,
I realized he’d won my heart from the moment I first saw him. Granted, he’d been my enemy at that time, but even then, I couldn’t deny the fact that there was something between us—something magnetic.
“If we both accepted as true that you were with child,” he began as he looked over at me with searching eyes, “Who would be the father?”
The full impact of his words didn’t hit me at first, but then I felt my heart drop down to my toes. I couldn’t believe he’d just asked me this question! How could he even wonder who the father could be?
“What?” My tone was scathing, biting, and revealed my shock. “What are you talking about?”
“I am asking who the father is.”
“I heard you the first time.” I spat the words back at him.
“Clearly, I did not play a part in your… fertilization,” he continued, and I suddenly wanted to punch him right across the face.
“Of course you played a part in it! It’s hardly the second immaculate conception!”
“That is not what I was implying.” His tone was harder now, his voice louder, and I fully grasped the meaning behind his words.
“You think I’ve been sleeping with someone else!”
“It is the only possible explanation to this scenario.”
He stood at a distance from me, regarding me coolly. While he might have been detached and cold, I felt the heat of outrage building inside me.
“How dare you?!” I shouted.
“I might well enquire the same of you. Trying to hint to the fact that the child is mine.”
“If there is a child, it would have to be yours!” I yelled at him.
He smiled without mirth as he shook his head. “My dear, I am a vampire. It is therefore quite impossible for me to father a child.”
The way he spat out the words “my dear” made it abundantly clear that I was anything but dear to him at the moment. I echoed his sentiment.
“Well, it must be possible, because you’re the only one I’ve had sex with.”
He shook his head sadly.
Rage began to blossom within me, and at the feel of that all-too-familiar heat, I made a supreme effort to calm myself. I couldn’t let the Flame overtake me now. How on earth would it affect … the baby?
The baby.
Oh my God.
The full ramifications of my possible condition began to hit me. I was a warrior. A fighter. How on earth was I supposed to defend my people of the Underworld, especially on the brink of war as we were, with a tiny person growing in my belly?
“It is not possible for me to father children, Bryn,” Sinjin repeated, pulling my attention back to him and the fact that, if I’d never wanted to murder him before, I did now.
“Just like it’s not possible for me to mother children,” I barked back at him.
“We are playing devil’s advocate, let me please remind you,” he returned, his tone sharp.
“Then let’s expand this fun devil’s advocate game to also include you,” I spat back at him. Then I realized my comment didn’t make much sense, so I further explained, “Let’s assume, for a minute, that you were capable of fathering children.”
“I am not.”
“Sinjin,” I started as something occurred to me and the dawning realization spread through my mind.
“I am going to ask you a question, Bryn,” he started, and for the first time since I’d known him, he appeared… nervous. “And I wish for you to answer it honestly… please.”
“I’ve never been anything other than honest with you.”
He was quiet for another few seconds. “Have you ever… had relations with Chevalier?”
I felt ill. “You think the baby is his?” I asked, and then doubled back on myself. “Err, I mean, if there is a baby?”
“There most assuredly is a baby,” he answered with a clipped nod. “And it would not be out of the realm of logic for me to ask you whether the father is Chevalier, owing to the dreaded love triangle in which the three of us have been involved for far too long.”
I felt heat in my cheeks as I faced him, and my eyes narrowed of their own doing. “I have never been… physical with Dureau,” I answered.
Well, there had been that kiss we’d shared… Okay, so my comment wasn’t exactly true, but Dureau and I had never had sex, so there was no way this baby was his.
If there was a baby.
Yes, it was true that Dureau and I were close. How could it be otherwise? The powerful Fae man had been visiting me in my dreams my whole life, and if it hadn’t been for him, my childhood and adolescence would have been completely unbearable. How could I not love him, in a sense? But I had made the ultimate decision that Sinjin was the only man for me, although I was beginning to rapidly change my mind about that.
“I have never been more insulted.” Or hurt , I added silently.
“My dearest tempest, not even you are capable of defying logic.”
“Well, you must be wrong about the pregnancy, then,” I spat back at him. “Because there hasn’t been anyone else.” Only you, Sinjin.
“One of us is lying,” he responded archly. “Was it Odran?”
“Odran?!”
I didn’t even want to dignify his question with a response. Odran was the King of the Fae, an ape-like man who carried his brain around in his dick.
“You have not responded,” Sinjin announced as he speared me with his angry expression.
“Because that question doesn’t even deserve a response,” I said, and glared at him. “Odran, Sinjin? Really?”
Sinjin continued to observe me closely, as if searching my face for evidence. He didn’t say anything for a few moments, but just stared at me, and I returned his stare. Finally, he nodded, as though to say he believed me. Then he turned his attention back to the glistening water of the creek, and his expression was full.
“After what happened to me in Luce’s camp,” I continued, feeling the need to drive this point home, “I never had sex again until… you and I did.”
He turned his eyes back to me and we studied one another imploringly, as though we sought to exact the truth from one another’s eyes.
“I believe we are at an impasse,” he said as his lips grew tight.
“If you aren’t willing to believe me,” I started.
“What you ask me to believe is an impossibility,” he interrupted, and brought his hand to his forehead, closing his eyes and rubbing his head as though he were in the midst of a migraine. When he faced me, he sighed.
“Given your condition, you’ll have to stop fighting. And training.”
“You don’t tell me what I can and can’t do!” I was fully yelling at him now.
“Regardless of the nature of the situation between us,” he began, his tone as cold as steel, “I am, first and foremost, your protector—that is to say, I am the protector of the queen and her own.”
“I don’t want your protection and I don’t need it,” I shouted at him. “You disgust me, and I want you out of my sight!”
And with that, he was gone, dematerializing in an instant and leaving me all alone with my raging torrent of emotions. How dare he say the things he did, insinuate the things he had! I could barely take it all in. The tears I’d been holding back began finding their way down my cheeks, as though making up for lost time.
Sinjin couldn’t be right about my being pregnant, could he?
I placed my hand on my belly again, in that gesture as old as time. Sinjin was a lot of things, but misled wasn’t one of them. It was time to face the impossible yet probable fact: I was going to have his baby.
CHAPTER TWO
Sinjin
I went to the only place where I was guaranteed absolute solitude—save for a few bats, who ignored me fully, as I ignored them.
This place was a cave on an island in the middle of the ocean bordering Kinloch Kirk, where—ironically—I had assisted in the birth of my queen’s baby girl, Princess Emma. The memory of said event only served to add to my des
pair, and I cried out in my anger and pain.
The bats awoke in alarm and exited the cave en masse, in a flurry of black, beating wings. I sincerely hoped they were the only ones who had witnessed my distress. As a rule, Sinjin Sinclair did not do vulnerability. No. It would not be wise for me, the Lord Protector, to reveal a chink in my emotional armor.
It turned out that vocalizing my rage was not enough. I commenced kicking, then punching the walls of the cave, which loosed a few rocks that scattered on the ground. One of these rocks was quite a large mass, and I reached over, picking it up. Then I punched it right in the center, thus smashing it to smithereens. I punched the cave wall again and again until I felt my anger beginning to dissipate, after which time I collapsed into a crumpled heap on the ground. Now only sadness remained. I believe that was even worse.
How could she betray me?
The woman I had chosen above all others. The woman who had haunted me day and night. The woman whose body and blood transported me to a state of absolute bliss. A woman who had made a heaven for me upon this Earth.
She is not the woman you believed her to be!
All along, she had been lying with another man! And I was more than convinced this other man was that French fop, Chevalier. It was the only viable explanation. It had to be! Although I could scarce believe it, even as the truth in the subject revealed itself plainly.
But how could she play me so wrong? How could she treat me so terribly? Did I mean nothing to her?
We had been through so much, Bryn and I, from the moment she first arrived as a prisoner at Kinloch Kirk and I had been assigned as her guardian. Once upon a time, she had even tried to kill me. But since then, we had fought valiantly alongside each other on the battlefield and overcome so many trials and tribulations. Our bitter rivalry had yielded to an awkward friendship which had, in turn, blossomed into a mutual love and physical desire.
I had truly believed this was it— she was it. I had believed, however foolishly so, that I had finally found my mate.
If a vampire could have cried tears, I would surely have shed them then. But I was no more capable of producing saltwater from my eyes than I was of producing sperm. Would that I could. To be the one capable of filling Bryn’s belly … to produce a child with that most remarkable and beautiful of women. But it appeared that even Bryn possessed a traitor’s heart.
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