TWISTED DESTINY: The Complete Saga

by Leia King

  Josh bounded into the room. The huge, light-brown wolf approached her, sitting at her feet and looking up at her expectantly.

  “Ryan’s no longer here.”

  He growled and clawed at the hardwood floor ferociously.

  “He’s safe!” she called out. “He’s no longer in pain. I’ll explain once we get the hell out of here.”

  The wolf calmed at her words and he followed her out of the room.

  She led Ryan’s pack out of the vampire mansion with David bringing up the rear.

  As they passed through the gates, she fought to bite back her emotion. She couldn’t break down. She had to protect the pack and lead them back to the safety of Shaye’s barrier of protection.

  But Ryan was gone. Taken by Nathanial, of all people. Despite Ryan’s awful history with him, she’d believed his assurances. Her instincts told her that he’d been telling the truth. He wouldn’t harm Ryan.

  But that didn’t lessen the ache of being away from him.

  I will let you see soon enough. Nathanial’s promise to her.

  He’d better, or she would move hell and earth to get to Ryan. She would rip all the realms apart to find him. No one could stop her now. Her power was beyond them all. And when it came to Ryan, all bets were off. She would destroy anyone who stood in her path.

  “Stop,” she murmured to herself, shaking her head to cast out her rage and the evil thoughts that seemed to be trying to take her over.

  What was happening to her?

  12

  “Ryan, wake up! Wake up. Now!”

  A commanding, insistent voice kept resonating through his subconscious.

  He wanted to respond, but he couldn’t. He was too weak. He had to sleep. He had to heal. He pushed it away, giving into the serenity of his painless and carefree unconscious state.

  All of that was shot to hell when a surge of dark energy ripped through him, blasting him back forcibly to reality.

  His eyes snapped open and he sucked in an anxious breath.

  But it wasn’t enough. He wheezed and gagged, finding he couldn’t catch his breath.

  His body was shaking.

  He was cold, yet sweating all over, soaking through his clothes.

  “You are suffering from shock.”

  He turned his head slowly to see Nathanial leaning against a doorway.

  A doorway? It looked familiar.

  “This is your lodge,” Nathanial told him, obviously seeing his confusion.

  Ryan glanced around tiredly. He was sprawled out on his stomach across the floor of the living room of his secluded lodge. His head was by the front door. It took him a moment to realize it’d been ripped off its hinges. Nathanial must’ve kicked it in. He looked up at him to find him staring back at him, expectantly. What did he want?

  His long, black hair blew wildly against the harsh wind outside. His piercing eyes of red fire glowed in the moonlight, giving the impression that they were actually alight. His black, leather pants clung to his legs and his matching silk shirt flapped wildly in the wind.

  “Invite me in.”

  “What?”

  “I am a vampire,” Nathanial reminded him in a condescending tone. “You need to invite me in, wolf.”

  “No,” Ryan said, feeling his eyes growing heavy again and his body willing him to sleep.

  “I pushed you inside the house to protect you, in case Michael and Luca came after you. But you need to let me in now, or you will die.”

  “No… go. Hate… you.”

  “Luca drained you dry. You will die without my help. You body is already in shock. The only thing pulling you back from the brink is your healing ability, but it will not hold much longer.”

  Ryan hesitated.

  “You are really so stubborn that you would let yourself die, rather than allow me to help you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then, let me remind you of your duty to your wolves. Here and in the Dark Realm. You do not have the luxury of entertaining your personal preferences here, Ryan. And, what about your wife? Your son? Cora may be strong, but she is not wolf. She cannot raise a wolf child without you.”

  Manipulative bastard. Ryan held out his hand weakly. “Come… in.”

  As soon as the words left his mouth, Nathanial stepped over the threshold. He fixed the door back into place.

  Then, Ryan felt his arms around him, hauling him to his feet. He dragged him across the living room to the nearest armchair and heaved him into it. Turning away, Ryan heard him muttering some incomprehensible words, as he extended the fingers of his right hand. Moments later, dozens of blood bags littered the living room floor.

  “What’s… happening?”

  Ryan watched him snatch up a couple of the bags and place them on the end table beside the armchair. And then he dropped his fangs and ripped through the veins of his wrist. He held it to Ryan’s mouth.

  Ryan jerked his head away. “No.”

  “I drained Luca of the blood he took from you. I will explain why later. For now, all you need to know is that this is Cora’s blood you will be drinking from me. You must drink, or you will die. The blood bags are for me. I will need to feed, once I allow you to drain me.”

  Ryan took his words in. Damn the vampire, everything he was saying made sense. Or, maybe he was just delirious.

  “Why… helping me?”

  “Just drink.”

  Nathanial grasped the back of his head, forcing him to his wrist. His other gripped his jaw, forcing his mouth open. Drops of blood hit his tongue.

  Instantly, Ryan knew it was Cora’s. It was the sweetest, most addictive taste. Before he knew it, he was drawing more of it into his mouth. Its power coursed through him. It overwhelmed him, making him suck harder. He grabbed Nathanial’s wrist, jerking it closer, feeding from him frantically. He moaned aloud at the delicious warmth rushing through his veins.

  “Good. All of it,” Nathanial urged.

  Ryan looked up at him and saw him gripping a blood bag tightly. But he wasn’t drinking from it. It took him a moment to realize why. He had to let Ryan drain him of all of Cora’s blood in his system first. If he drank the human blood in the bags while Ryan was feeding it would course through his veins quickly and Ryan would be ingesting it as well. A wolf couldn’t ingest significant volumes of human blood. It would make him violently ill. They weren’t vampires. They weren’t made to drink from humans. Their blood just didn’t mix well. A wolf ingesting supernatural blood was fine. It was just the way it always had been.

  After several minutes, Nathanial spoke again. “That is all of it.”

  Ryan heard the change in his voice. Weakness.

  He felt Nathanial trying to pull his wrist away, but he was too weak. The bloodlust enveloping Ryan was so powerful that he had to use every ounce of will at his disposal to push Nathanial’s wrist away.

  Ryan breathed a sigh of relief. He felt invigorated, powerful once again. His full strength had returned.

  He looked at Nathanial and saw him struggling to lift the blood bag to his lips.

  Ryan shot to his feet and snatched it from his grip. He slashed his claws across the top and then held it to Nathanial’s mouth. He watched him drink quickly, incredibly quickly. He tossed the empty bag aside after mere seconds and Ryan helped him with the next. By the time Nathanial had devoured that one, he had regained enough of his strength to manage alone. He crossed to the other bags littering the floor and devoured every single one of them.

  When he was done, Ryan watched him wipe away the blood from his mouth and chin with the back of his hand. Then, he spun to face him.

  “Much better.”

  “Where did you get those blood bags?”

  “I called them forth from the closest human hospital.”

  Ryan shook his head with disapproval at him depleting a good portion of the hospital’s blood supply.

  “Would you rather I had summoned several humans here and drained them dry instead?”

  “No,” Ryan
muttered. “Fine.”

  They stared at one another for several minutes, neither saying a word. There was so much history between them. So much bad blood. Such pain and tragedy. Nathanial clearly felt the weight of it, as much as he did.

  Knowing that, after everything, Nathanial had just saved his life, was a lot to swallow for Ryan.

  Ryan watched Nathanial studying his ring. “You are fortunate that you were wearing Cornelius’s ring tonight. They would have broken you without it.”

  “Don’t say his name,” Ryan seethed.

  “I do not condone such methods of torture,” Nathanial told him. “I am ashamed that my son does.”

  “Why did you drain him? Your own son?” Ryan demanded, ignoring his niceties.

  “He was planning to use the blood he took from you to gain access into the White Realm. Because of who he is, the son of the Vampire King, the very act of entering without an invitation would have been an instant declaration of war between the Dark Realm and the White.”

  Ryan brushed past him. He needed to put a damned shirt on. He made no apologies as he unceremoniously walked away from Nathanial in the middle of their conversation. He made his way upstairs, then pushed open his bedroom door. He started in surprise when he saw Nathanial standing there. Jesus! Damned royals and their teleportation abilities. He blew out a breath, then crossed to his chest of drawers. He pulled out a gray, ribbed t-shirt and pulled it on quickly. And then he reached into his closet and snapped up a leather jacket.

  He shrugged it on, then walked back to Nathanial. “You expect me to believe that you didn’t want Luca to breach the White Realm gates?”

  “I do not want war with the White Realm.”

  Ryan heard the conviction in his voice. Fine. He was telling the truth. That didn’t make him a good guy. “I can’t believe I invited my father’s killer into my home.”

  “Ryan—”

  “You took away my father and my mother.”

  “What happened was regrettable.”

  “Regrettable?” Ryan fumed. “You killed my father for fucking your wife, his rightful mate!”

  Nathanial snarled at his phrasing and pushed off the wall, approaching him. His gaze heated, he said, “For the record, I did not have a problem with my wife fucking anyone. Vampires are known for sharing. I had my whores, so I had no intention of denying her the same, if she so chose. But she did not.”

  “Until she realized my father was her true mate. Not you.”

  “She was never anywhere near your father for the first few centuries of our marriage. Then, one day, a volatile situation broke out among two vampire factions in the human realm. I was forced to leave for an extended period of time and I left her under his protection, the protection of my most trusted friend. Unbeknownst to me, she gave herself to him that first night. She bonded with him. They conceived a child.” His eyes strayed to Ryan. “You.” He sighed, pain in his eyes, then went on, “The power of her magic allowed her to erect a veil, preventing me from seeing the truth. For many years. For one hundred years, I had no idea that you were her child. I knew you were Cornelius’s heir, but I had believed your mother to be one of the many wolf whores that he kept. But then, one day, your mother fell sick. It weakened her enough to cause the veil she had cast to dissipate. Then, I was able to see everything.”

  “But she was pregnant,” Ryan said, not believing him.

  “She hid it from me with more of her magic. Only she and your father could see the truth.”

  Ryan shook his head vehemently. “No. No. You compelled her to marry you. She only ever loved my father. It’s impossible for mates to love anyone else.”

  “Compelled her?” Nathanial scoffed. “Do you have any idea how much power your mother held? I just told you that she was able to keep the truth from me for an entire century. It would have been impossible for me to compel her. But, I never tried to, Ryan. You are only partly correct about the love between mates. She did love me. But, as I was not her true mate, she could never love me as deeply as she loved your father. Though, she was capable of showing me love. I can assure you.”

  Ryan felt sick from Nathanial’s revelations. He stormed out of the room. But, as he reached the bottom of the stairs, Nathanial stood there blocking his path.

  “Step aside.”

  “You know I am speaking the truth. That is why you are so upset,” Nathanial told him calmly.

  “You murdered my father!” Ryan roared.

  To Ryan’s surprise, emotion flickered in Nathanial’s eyes. He lowered his head sadly. “I am sorry.”

  “What?”

  “I let my rage over their betrayal control me. I allowed it to bring forth the monster within.”

  Ryan sank onto the steps, looking up at Nathanial leaning dejectedly against the wall. “You have remorse for what you did? You’re a vampire.”

  “I learned years ago, before I became king, to control the monster, Ryan. I regret that I lost that control with Cornelius. He was my brother in arms. I have regretted it for the last two hundred years. I banished you from the Dark Realm to protect you. I had lost control. Sending you away was the only way I could spare you my wrath.”

  “And Luca?”

  A look of distaste passed over Nathanial’s face. “I had been considering banishing him for some time. The volatility of his temperament had become a grave concern to me. Despite my teachings, he would not learn how to control himself, to keep his compulsions at bay. A great problem for a future king. I sent him to the human realm in the hope that being around humanity would soften him somewhat and open his eyes to the necessity of controlling his monster. But, sadly, it has not. He cannot become king. A vampire with his temperament would be dangerous in a position of such power.”

  “You must’ve been aware of Luca’s recent activities. Why didn’t you get involved sooner?”

  “I was not aware. Michael had cast a veil between the Dark Realm and the human realm, preventing me from seeing what was happening here. Tonight, it shattered and I was assaulted with a rush of visions. That is when I saw Luca draining you.”

  “The veil shattered?”

  Nathanial nodded. “It was destroyed by a powerful wave of white magic. Cora’s magic. She must have achieved a direct hit, the power behind it weakening Michael enough to impact his spell.”

  Ryan shot to his feet. Cora! In all the craziness, the fact that he’d heard her at the mansion had completely slipped his mind. Coming back from the brink of death could do that to a man.

  “She is fine,” Nathanial said, sensing his distress. “She knows that you are safe.”

  “How?”

  “I had to access her mind.”

  “You did what?”

  “It was necessary to prevent her from killing Luca.”

  “Why? He deserves to die.”

  “He is my son, my responsibility.”

  A look passed between them and Ryan knew what Nathanial was really telling him. He would kill Luca himself.

  “I need to go to her and my pack,” Ryan murmured, stalking through the living room towards the front door. The awful revelations about his father, his mother, and Nathanial were affecting him more than he would have liked. He could feel emotion taking him over and he fought to get a grip.

  “Not yet,” Nathanial said, suddenly in front of him again. He blocked the path to the front door.

  Ryan growled low in his throat. The warning was a mercy that he couldn’t believe he was showing Nathanial. The man who’d murdered his father and destroyed his life. Ryan could barely admit it, but he knew why he was holding back with Nathanial. He felt sympathy for his plight, for what he’d told him about his mother and father. He hated that he felt anything other than hate and rage towards the guy. And he would never admit it to Nathanial or anyone else, but, he couldn’t bring himself to exact the revenge he’d always promised himself he would.

  “I vowed to let the princess know where you were. After we talk.”

  “Talk? That’s al
l we’ve been doing.”

  Nathanial shook his head. “We must discuss what I sense you have been trying to avoid.”

  “And what the hell is that?”

  “The Dark Realm.”

  13

  Cora stood before the full-length mirror in the bathroom, caressing her pregnant belly.

  She’d thought she’d been imagining things at first. But, as she stared at herself in the mirror, she realized she hadn’t. It was very real. Her belly had grown substantially. She looked about four months pregnant, yet, it had only been a few weeks since the conception. Oh my God. How quickly was the baby going to come to term? How long were wolf pregnancies? She needed to ask Josh right away.

  Sighing sadly, she lowered her tank top, knowing who she really needed to ask, who she really needed beside her, comforting her.

  “I miss you, Ryan,” she whispered to herself.

  It had taken her hours to settle the wolves after they’d failed to bring Ryan back with them. Between her and Shaye, they’d managed to convince them that Ryan was no longer in danger. Trying to explain how she knew that had been difficult, to say the least. A whole day had passed, though, and Ryan still hadn’t returned. She hadn’t heard a word from Nathanial. She was growing anxious, because she just wanted him back with her.

  She walked back into the bedroom inside the wolf compound.

  The sight of David perched on the edge of her and Ryan’s bed had her stopping short in surprise.

  “What are you doing in here?” she demanded.

  “I brought you a tea,” he said, holding a cup out to her.

  Her eyes narrowed with suspicion as she approached him. “Why?”

  “Your father asked me to protect you, in every sense. This will help you to relax. It will be good for the baby.”

  “I thought it helped to restore strength.”

  “It has many purposes, princess.”

  “Okay.” She sat down at the foot of the bed beside him, taking the cup.

  “That was some power you unleashed the other night,” he commented, watching her drink the tea. “Everyone was shocked when you blew through the mansion doors, like they were nothing more than paper.”