by L. L. Ash
All of a sudden Calix turned, his head and his eyes narrowed.
“Holy fuck...it’s true.”
“What? What is?” I asked, trying to see what he was seeing.
“The woman? The one who asked for my help,” he said quietly. “She just walked in with her female companion. I could smell her across the room. She’s human. It’s impossible.”
I looked around and spotted two women entering the large room.
That was her? She was beautiful. The other was just as striking, though obviously vampire with her pale skin and wise eyes.
“Stand here a moment, Lily. Don’t talk to anyone,” Calix told me, squeezing my upper arm before approaching the women from behind.
He spoke and the girls turned in surprise. The vampire woman looked stoic when she caught sight of Calix but her hand on the other woman’s arm squeezed. The human girl just looked annoyed to see him.
Calix and her exchanged words, his head tilting as if curious before the vampire woman grimaced, baring her fangs.
Calix just answered with a smile. He tilted his head toward the vampire before taking the human girl’s hand and kissing it. He straightened and turned away, striding with purpose back to me. His smile melted into a frown when his back turned to them and deepened as he approached. The expression scared me a moment as he got closer but I took a breath and remembered that the look wasn’t directed at me.
“My apologies for leaving you, Lily. I had to be sure.”
“It’s ok,” I told him.
His arm slipped around my waist as he started to lead me back to our table.
I looked over my shoulder to catch one last glimpse of the woman and she was watching us.
“She’s beautiful,” I commented.
“She is. She looks a lot like you,” he said absently.
“Why are you so interested in her again?” I asked, hoping for clarity on what he wanted her for.
“Because she is an abnormality. She is an impossibility and I can’t have wild cards hanging about.”
We sat at our table and I was facing the girl, still standing there. They must have been waiting for their table.
I smiled hesitantly at her and she returned it just as reluctantly.
“Should I be jealous to have lost your attention?” Calix asked deadpan and I grinned.
“No,” I told him. “Just watching your girl over there.”
“She’s not my girl. Not yet, anyway.”
My grin melted.
“Not yet?”
“She will have to come to the castle. She’s too much of a risk out there. Too many people know of her, of what she can do.”
“You’re...”
I had to take a moment to pick my words.
“Will you take her as a mate?”
His eyes shot up to me.
“No. Of course not. She will become a slave.”
“So you’ll kidnap her and enslave her?”
He shrugged.
“People will miss her,” I told him.
“And her boyfriend will be furious. But they are day walkers. They’re of no threat to me”
“But it’s wrong, Calix.”
“Right and wrong is relative, Lily. I am the prince. I have no rules or laws to abide by when it comes to them. I own her already.”
“She’s a person. Please, Calix. Leave her alone.”
He looked me in the eye.
“For me, Calix,” I told him, hoping that meant something to him.
His lips pressed together in irritation before he sighed.
“So be it, Agápi Mou.”
“Thank you,” I whispered and he nodded, taking another sip.
“But something must be done,” he said, twisting his glass between his fingers.
“Maybe you should just help her?” I lifted a brow.
He did the same back and we had a standoff of sorts.
“Trade your help for making her disappear. I’m pretty sure I’d agree to it if I were her.”
He grunted, sipping again.
“Oh my, how caveman of you,” I teased.
He smiled.
“What? I’m not allowed to grunt at you?” he asked back, teasing.
“I’d prefer words, but hey, nobody ever said caveman was a bad thing. Especially in private.”
His dark eyebrow was raising again.
“How is it that you were so innocent before, Lily?”
I shrugged.
“To be honest, I don’t think I ever really was all that innocent.”
“It’s a possibility.” He gave me a half smile.
“Besides, I’m sure you’re over innocence at this point. With how many girls you went through before finding me.”
He frowned.
“Innocence is nothing to be ashamed of, and definitely not something to be scoffed at. I treated them as best I could. And those who resisted I...lured them, so they felt pleasure.”
“Lured?” My heart started beating harder.
“It’s nothing to be upset about, Lily. It’s a little trick all vampires can do. It makes humans more pliable.”
“Oh my God… that’s detestable! You do that?”
He shrugged.
“Have you ever done it to me?” I demanded.
He was quiet.
“Oh God… you have… That’s why I’m so fucking confused, isn’t it?”
“No, Lily...”
I threw my napkin down and stomped toward the entrance.
He didn’t call after me, he didn’t run to stop me. I got to the glass doors of the restaurant and tapped my foot, waiting.
“Hello, beautiful,” a silky voice approached me from my right. “A pretty little thing like you shouldn’t frown.”
The man was beautiful. The perfect expression of feminine beauty on a masculine face. But no matter how attractive he was, the lecherous grin on his face made him slimy.
He touched my cheek and his crystal eyes began to swirl.
Nothing existed beyond his eyes.
But suddenly his eyes were gone and my head cleared.
Calix had the man by the throat as he slammed him against the wall.
“You dare lure a queen, you daywalking scum?” he growled into the man’s face.
Intense and unabashed fear filled his face as he recognized Calix.
“B-but… I didn’t… I didn’t—”
“Penalty for such is death,” Calix snarled before snapping the vampire’s neck and tearing the entire head from his body.
The gore froze my body in horror before I started to dry heave.
The restaurant was in shambles, humans running for cover from this monster who just decapitated a man with his bare hands.
Blood dripped off his hands as he turned to me, his face impassive as he put out the crimson hand for me to take.
I recoiled and his jaw clenched.
“Lily,” he growled but I took a step back, tears building up in my eyes and blurring his face.
He took one step forward and his hand clamped around my arm, staining my sleeve as he pulled me out of the door.
“Bill me,” Calix growled to the shocked maitre d as he dragged me out the door, sobbing.
Chapter Eleven
We started down the street toward the parking lot where our limo was and though I pulled, he held his iron grip around my arm until the limo stopped.
He yanked the door open and shoved me in. I scrambled into a bench, rubbing at the crimson stains on my dress futility.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I shrieked at him, my stomach still churning and threatening to empty what little wine I’d drank.
“What’s wrong with me?” he growled at me, his hands folding into fists. “I told you to stay at my side, Lily.”
“You killed somebody!”
“I didn’t kill him, Lily, you did.”
His jaw clenched.
“How could I have killed him?”
I clasped my hands together to calm thei
r trembling.
“If you’d have listened to me, if you’d have stayed beside me, he would still be alive and we could have avoided that entire scene.”
I choked.
Oh God... He was right.
“You didn’t have to kill him!”
“Yes I did! There is a penalty for luring a royal’s mate! You are untouchable, Lily. And he touched you because he didn’t know you were mine. And that? That is on you.”
I pressed my hand to my mouth and sat back in my chair as the horror washed over me again. The rest of the ride was silent as tears continued to fall from my eyes.
Once we arrived back to the cemetery, Calix didn’t grab my arm but he made me walk in front of him as we went through the crypt door. Petrick followed closely behind us and Calix shoved me toward him.
“Take her to the bedroom. Help her get cleaned up.”
That quickly, Calix was done with me. He strode off, uncuffing his shirt from his wrists as he went.
“This way, Mistress,” Petrick said gently and touched me between my shoulder blades, leading me forwards.
I let him, following his soft movements on my back for me to turn this way and that until I was back in the bedroom.
He maneuvered me to the shower, turned the water on hot before zipping down the back of my dress.
“Petrick,” I breathed, turning to him while holding the dress up to my chest so it wouldn’t fall. “Will it always be like this?”
His expression changed from surprise to confusion to sadness.
“Master Calix is… not a volatile man. But he is a passionate man, and a man of action. He will not stand for the laws to be broken, and he will not stand for you to get hurt.”
I looked down at my feet, seeing blood splatters on my beige heels.
“He killed a man… In cold blood, right in front of me… in front of everyone.”
“And he will deal with the fallout.”
“He’s a murderer, Petrick… How could you follow someone like that?”
“Because he is fair, Mistress. He is fair and he is honest. If I obey the laws I have nothing to fear from him. You should feel the same.”
I stared at the bloody handprint on my sleeve.
“Sometimes I think that maybe I could love him… and other times I remember that he’s a monster...”
Evidently I was so desperate for someone to talk to I was confiding in Calix’s man.
“It is easy to fall in love,” Petrick smiled. “But to keep loving is the hard part.”
“I don’t want to love him.”
He shrugged.
I lifted my hand and tested the temperature of the water.
Hot.
Petrick started toward the bedroom and out of the bathroom when he stopped abruptly and turned back.
“Mistress,” he said quietly. “May I be truthful with you?”
I shrugged.
“When you first arrived here… I thought you were like all the others. I realize I was wrong. You are a complex individual.”
His eyebrows drew together in thought, as if he was searching for the right words.
“I wouldn’t be presumptuous and assume what Master Calix would be considering, but I imagine he feels much the same. If you would, give him some space to understand you. Everyone needs a second chance.”
I nodded.
“And if it means anything to you,” he told me, meeting my eyes with his light ones, “I am glad that you are who Master Calix got. You are good for him, and he hates it.”
“Oh good, so the murderer hates me?”
“No. the ruler hates that you mean something to him. His heart was ripped out of his chest when he lost his mate and his baby to his enemies. He blames himself and he likes it that way. You bring life back into him and it makes him uncomfortable to feel. Yet feel is what he must do if he is to be a good ruler and leader.”
His wide, square face was serious but his voice was soft and gentle.
“I will be just outside the door if you need me, Mistress,” he said quickly before leaving me alone.
I let the dress fall before removing my panties and stepping into the shower. The hot water mixed with my salty tears as I cried off the horror of the evening. I took responsibility for what had happened. Calix was partially right that if I’d have obeyed it wouldn’t have happened. Although his were the hands that harmed, I was the reason.
When I got out of my shower I had renewed strength and I wanted to confront Calix. I needed to know what had happened, and I needed to know about the luring thing that had sent me running off in the first place.
Wrapping a silk robe around my body, I went to the bedroom where Petrick sat in the settee Calix and I had shared special moments just earlier in the evening.
“Will you take me to see him?” I asked him and he stood, nodding.
He insisted I put my slippers on before leaving so I did, heading to see my mate in just a robe and slippers.
Petrick stopped in front of the door I recognized as Calix’s office and I put out a hand to him, wanting privacy as I confronted Calix.
I opened the door without knocking and stopped dead in my tracks.
Calix sat in the lounge couch in the corner, shirtless with a skimpily clad woman on his lap, running a cloth over his chest and hands. This woman was in black. A vampire.
When the door opened, Calix’s eyes shot over to it and found mine. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, what he was trying to come up with to explain why there was a mostly naked woman in his lap when he promised he was only mine.
I heard a gentle curse behind me in the slightly Slavic accent Petrick carried with him before the girl turned.
She was astoundingly beautiful. Her skin, snow-fair and a perfect, curvy figure with large breasts straining at the corset that was at least one size too small.
“A moment,” Calix said quietly to her and she scooted off his lap, giving everyone a nice glimpse of her round, perky ass as she moved.
She glared at me on her way out and it sent tears filling my eyes again.
“I told you to bring her back to the bedroom,” Calix told Petrick in an even voice.
Petrick growled.
“That was before I knew you were going to entertain a woman in your office.”
He sounded angry.
“I was entertaining no one. Tatiana came to help me clean up. That is all.”
“Bullshit,” Petrick called, slamming the door behind him. “You end a man for daring to touch your mate, and yet here she is, crying again because of you. Mates used to be treated as the most loved and protected humans on earth. You protect her from others, but who is going to protect her from you?”
“You, obviously. As you’ve suddenly decided to call yourself her champion. Shall we duel then? Maybe you’d like to kill me too, take her for yourself along with my brother?”
“The Calix Spiro Drakos I agreed to serve would never treat his mate thusly. You should be ashamed of yourself. I am.”
At that Petrick turned, moving me with him back down the hallways to the bedroom.
“I’m sorry, Mistress,” he sighed when I dropped onto the mattress. “You deserve better.”
“I know,” I agreed before he turned and left the room again.
I stewed in that bed, waiting. Waiting for Calix to come so I could ream him.
But he never came.
After the evening rolled around and still not hide nor hair of my ‘mate’, I went on the prowl.
Dressing in simple and comfortable leggings, tank top and sweater to match the comfort of my slippers, I made my way slowly to Calix’s office.
On the walk, I wondered what I would find. Would the woman still be there? Would he be entangled with her like I had wanted to be for so long? How long had he been with her while he was with me?
When I reached the intricately carved door, I just went in.
Calix was there, arm thrown over his eyes as he laid on the couch he’d shared with that woma
n last night.
He didn’t move at my entrance, just laid there still, his chest moving up and down so I knew he was awake.
I took a few steps further in before finally noticing what he was wearing. Instead of his typical suit, he wore lounge pants and a t-shirt. He looked a lot more like the man who had saved me from the vampire the night we met than the Drakos prince.
“So are you ready to grovel and beg my forgiveness?” I asked him, arms crossing over my chest.
His chest spasmed once as he laid there, otherwise unmoving.
He barked a single laugh at me.
My blood burned instantly.
“You hypocritical son of a bitch! Look at me!”
“Hypocritical?” he murmured, smiling as he moved his arm off his eyes to behind his head. “What could possibly make me hypocritical?”
“You gave me hell for weeks for sleeping with your brother. And I didn’t even know the rules! You’ve been fucking this other chick for who knows how long! You’re disgusting! Who knows what kind of diseases you’ve given to me!”
“God… the dramatics.” He rolled his eyes and sat up.
“Dramatics?” I growled.
I was so mad my body was shaking with it.
“Now, would you like to listen or do you have a little more ranting and raving to do?”
I waved my hand at him.
“Oh, do go on. I can’t wait to hear how you’re going to try to justify this one. And don’t use the ‘prince’ card with me. I’m your mate, I am almost just as important as you are.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“I see you’re beginning to understand your place, Antheia Mou.”
“Don’t you dare call me your flower or whatever the hell else you call me. You’ve lost the privilege.”
“Oh have I?” He still looked amused.
“Now please, continue with the justifications,” I told him.
“There are no justifications. Only facts. And the fact is, nothing happened with Tatiana. Nothing has happened since I found you, and nothing will happen in the future. I’ve explained this already.”
“I saw her, Calix. She was hardly wearing anything, sitting in your lap, stroking you all over with her boobs all in your face.” I shuddered.
“She was,” he agreed, “But she was only helping to get the blood off. It was a subject caring for her prince. Nothing untoward.”
