Captiva Craving

by Talyn Scott

  “I want to help you.”

  “You want to help me?”

  “Of course,” she said irritably, “you’re my flesh and blood.”

  “With?”

  She pressed her fingertips on her temples, rubbing slow circles. “We were visiting family in Russia, a holiday of sorts.” She stared up at him, placing her hand on his thigh. With a gentle squeeze, she said, “I felt your pain from over there. You’re becoming volatile again. The way you were in your youth. You need to regain yourself.”

  “Mothers and their sons,” he said wearily, standing back up to stare through the window. “Bonding at its finest, right?” He walked closer, pressing his forehead against the warm glass. A crowded corner led to Six Feet Under, the humans pushing to gain entrance. The broad beautiful atrium recently installed in front of his father’s building still could not compensate for the neighboring Goth bar displaying its faux-underground-chic dungeon.

  The buildings faced one another, and Sixten hated that particular bar with an unnatural passion, which included its owner Ryan. He sensed his Blythe inside INKS, her uneasiness running through him. A little pain from her inking was all. So he wouldn’t get excited. Though well protected by Oycher…and Bane, he could not relax until he touched her again. Blythe anchors my sanity, my very soul to my heart.

  “I’m not here to continue petty arguments.” His mother misted next to him, following his gaze.

  “Petty?” He stifled a rebellious hiss. “I think we’re way past the trivial.”

  “As you grow older, some things are trivial compared to the greater scheme of things.” She looked away from the scene, shaking her head. “With such short lifespans, humans still clamor for their illusions of death coupled with banging, while never realizing they’re putting themselves out as feeders for the dangerous in every way.”

  He gagged dramatically. “Moms should never use banging in a sentence.”

  “Back on topic then?” She spread her arms wide, waiting.

  “Fine by me.” Manipulations by mom, could it get any weirder?

  “I won’t pretend to know what you’re going through, fighting this Habaline calling on a daily basis, but I understand your situation.” Her smile was genuine, a fang peeking through.

  “What would be calling me?” What the hell was she blabbering about? Possibly, he didn’t inherit his shady quirkiness from dear-ole-biological dad, maybe his mom was truly nuts all along.

  “Your duties since Rave,” she stopped, clearing her throat, “died.”

  “I murdered him, prettying it up with softer words isn’t my style. Neither is it yours.”

  “Prettying it up or not, I know you did what you had to do.” She pressed her fingertips to her mouth a moment, thinking before she said, “I never could give you siblings. In a way, I loved Rave, too. If only because he was a part of you, a part of your father.”

  “Loved?” He shivered. “Monsters, such as Rave, should never play in this world, not around humans anyway. As the years passed, he changed…drastically. I wanted more for him – from him.”

  “Of course you hoped for more.” She smiled encouragingly, the same way she did when teaching him to mist for the first time. “Hope is power.”

  “I said I wanted more. Hope is never power,” he said aghast, cold fingers crawling under his skin at the thought. “Power is power.”

  “That’s not the way I raised you,” she groaned, going back to her insistent tapping fingernails.

  “Oh really?” Gently, he stilled her hand with his. “Hope is born of hopelessness. A silly belief any human adopts in order to live through the impossible. But how many times do they actually live through it, expecting miracles that never come?”

  “Silly belief?” Her pupils formed into pinpricks, a sign of her frustration. “Son, you always thought you could do anything.”

  “That’s before I developed a serious weakness.” His love for Blythe was knee buckling.

  “Ridiculous.” She shook her head, her caramel hair shimmering, and her mother’s intuition working at its best. “Love weakens a being who cannot grant it or receive it. Only in that circumstance would I agree. And you’ve proven you are not one of those grim beings. Now, haven’t you?”

  Grim beings such as his biological father?

  As if she had read his mind. “Even though it was so long ago, I loved your father. Time cannot take it away. I was distraught when he never returned to us.”

  Us? “I hope so,” he said sarcastically, eliciting a motherly hiss from her lips. He knew she wasn’t referring to the Undead who raised him, but refused to bite. “He’s down the hall listening.”

  “It’s possible for a woman to love two males, you know.”

  All thoughts went to Kash. His only real friend loved his mate passionately. Most vampires killed over territorial rights, he’d ignored them easily. Why?

  “I loved your biological father as much as Harold,” she droned on. By the dreamy look on her face, he figured she loved him more. “You look like him,” she added quietly.

  Great, he thought, a constant reminder for Harold to tolerate. “Must have been hell for Father.” A chair shifted three doors down, his father’s discomfort evident.

  “He wanted children as much as I did,” she said sadly. “Of course, you know the Undead aren’t capable of…”

  “All this talk of hope and love won’t fix what’s going on inside of me,” he tried explaining again. “I’m a churning beast on my good days. On my bad? Well, it’s no June picnic. You may have helped me through my teens, and I appreciate that more than you know. After that, I controlled the Species side pretty well. And,” he added reluctantly, “with Rave’s help I learned to shapeshift.” Sixten thrust his fingers through his hair. “I think we should cut to it, Mother. Our bond works both ways. Please, get to the real point of your visit.”

  “I thought they were all valid points, but very well,” she agreed and reached for her handbag. Inside, she located a textured box inlaid with ancient carvings. Habaline carvings. She handed it over, and the second it made contact with his skin, it jolted him. “He said to give this to you when our society claimed you were a man. I may have loved him, but I never wanted you to be any part of the Habaline world.” She lifted her hands in a helpless gesture. “So I kept it from you.”

  “Considering I’ve been a man for quite some time, I would think so.” He tightened his grip and it opened. Sixten swallowed roughly, wondering why this shook him up. He’d never met the man who sired him. Not once. Still, he had left him a little something besides an odd genetic makeup.

  Considering all the horrors Sixten had struggled through to better his race’s – the vampires’ - survival, followed by days filled with sadistic torture when captured behind enemy lines, or even the horror brought on by Blythe’s recent capture, he had never experienced such peculiar uneasiness such as this. A nameless sense of purpose laden by heavy dread covered him like a heavy, scratchy blanket.

  But nothing would stop him from looking in that damned box.

  He opened his mouth and closed it a few times. A glasslike object streaked with otherworldly colors sat nestled inside, twinkling back at him. Its surface shimmered the same way as a Habaline’s eyes – the same as Sixten’s eyes. “Could it be?”

  The scroll poison demanded.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Her First Tattoo

  “Even though a powerful and significant amount of Were blood rushes your veins, if you go through with it, you might never see the sun again.”

  Blythe smiled at Bane, appreciating his efforts though she didn’t want to hear anymore. They’d been going at it for ten minutes. “The sun? The moon? I don’t care if I go blind, never seeing any of it again.” And that wasn’t a blasé statement, she’d thought long and hard about everything. If what they were about to do didn’t work, she would insist on becoming an Undead. A vampire created from a pureblood Species. “I just want to be with Sixten for his eternity, ho
wever long that is. And I want to do so without being such a liability. I mean, Dru says I won’t survive without Gianni’s blood.” Tears blurred her vision, and she took an angry swipe at them.

  Instantly, the room heated, glowing red with anger. The Beta was surfacing. “You shouldn’t pay with your life for what a selfish and disgusting male did to you,” he growled. “You’re still here. Victims quit. Survivors survive. Becoming Undead is a step back, and I don’t see a quitter in front of me.” He placed his hand on her chest, his Beta’s power reverberating through her. “Your heart beats for a reason.”

  “So you’ll hate me for turning Undead before you ever get to know me.”

  “That’s not true,” he whispered in earnest, moving his hand to cup her chin. His eyes flashed an eerie cerulean, casting blue streaks in his midnight hair. “I don’t turn my back on family. We are blood.” He tilted his head, and by his fixed expression, she knew he was in communication with someone in the Beta’s way. At her questioning glance, he said, “Everything’s fine. My Pack members are sensitive to the Beta’s temperament. I have many males guarding you, though Sixten’s cronies aren’t too happy about sharing their real estate.” He glanced at Oycher accusingly. “When it comes to you, I’ll make any effort to…get along with the vampire you call yours.”

  “Especially, since I might end up one myself?”

  Bane opened his mouth for an obvious rebuttal, but Ryan spoke instead, rustling plastic and opening something that smelled like a musty basement, “Not if this works, Blythe. At the least, we think we can buy you some time, okay? I have the Druid, uh” - he cleared his throat - “supplies for your…markings. I’m thinking.” He pursed his lips, flashing a silver ring hooked on his lower lip. “Around the left ankle would be a sexy start. Then, we’ll see where we end up.” Ryan had closed INKS for an hour, losing some serious cash by turning away angry customers. She wished she could have gone with them. “I’ve never had a tattoo.” Blythe settled onto a leather chair similar to what a dentist has and just as frightening, maybe more.

  She groaned her request, “Pink lemonade shooters?”

  “Check.” He handed one of the club’s trays to Bane and she tossed two back in blurring succession. “They’re not going to help, are they?”

  Bane sucked in a breath through his teeth. “If you were an immortal, taking on these spells would still hurt.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m in for it.”

  “I could always bite you,” Ryan offered vampire endorphins, something she’d had too much of lately.

  “You will never bite her again,” Oycher said, sliding his phone in his coat. “If she needs a bite, one of the Vojaks will provide.” His shark’s smile said that would be him. “And only if Sixten is unavailable. Friend or not to her, it will never happen again. Let me know, civilian, if we understand one another.”

  “Of course, Vojak,” Ryan answered respectfully, though winking at Blythe on the sly. “But I’m telling you now, alcohol won’t dilute the pain.” He opened the first three bottles after pushing instruments around from what Blythe figured were the dark ages. The contents rusty, she realized his jars contained blood. And it wasn’t white in the way of Species. Werewolf?

  “Can I tell you about your family,” Bane asked, arching a dark brow, “before you sign on a permanent vampiric bottom line.”

  “I would love to hear about my family,” she whispered, wrapping her hand around his thick wrist. “I know one thing already.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That they’re brave.”

  “That, they are,” he said, his lips quirking in the corners.

  She’d met Jax. I have a brother who wants to help me, not sell me. Dru pulled him back into the medical facility, trying to mend his fractured spine. He should have been walking by now, and the doctor felt concerned. So did Blythe. “I already like Jax. I’m going back tomorrow and spend the day with him.”

  “Soon enough, you’ll love him like your own.”

  “Yeah, loving him will be easy. Dru healed from the venom and all those shattered bones, why not Jax?”

  “We don’t know, but we’ll stay positive. A sharp, burning sensation accompanied a strong grip to her ankle. She opened her hand and Oycher gave her another shooter. “Now, long ago, I had a female cousin.” Bane reached in his pocket and removed a battered picture creased by wear. “The humans would call it a first cousin. To werewolves, cousins are cousins, no matter how far removed. But Aoife was like a sister to me.”

  “Was?”

  “She was taken during the vampire wars.”

  Great, she thought. Just great. “Go on. If you can,” she qualified.

  His shoulders lifted, tensing. “Everything about her was beautiful.” He took a deep breath, turning away to stare at a mural, or he pretended to. “Much like you, males couldn’t keep their eyes off her…or their hands. I killed so many, well, never mind that.”

  Bearing in mind he was Beta, she knew Bane’s hands stayed covered in blood, but Blythe refused to put it between them. She fought not to jump as Ryan went over a thin piece of skin stretched on bone. “I’ve learned beauty is a curse, a prison of sorts.”

  He looked over his shoulder, curving his lip. “After I teach you to fight, no one will ever put you in a prison again. And by the Beta’s blood, you’ll kick some serious ass.”

  A bubble of laughter escaped her, young and hopeful. Something she hadn’t felt in a while. She shifted uncomfortably, almost crossing her ankles to stave off Ryan’s persistent needle, but she caught herself. “You’re on.” That sounded like fun, something promising.

  “So,” his voice dropped, turning raspy, “back to Aoife, vampires used her as a blooded concubine.”

  Blythe cringed at the words, ones so familiar. “Or a sex slave…a blood slave?”

  “Yeah. She was sold as one, again and again,” he said, stifling a growl. “When word of her beauty spread through the underskirts of the Scottish Vampire Coven, she eventually served the vampire monarchy, their Dynasty Vampyrs.”

  Blythe wrapped her hand around her throat, trying to rub away the bile.

  “And since we live an immortal life,” he continued. “You can imagine her long years of painful heartache and humiliation. Every time I got a bead on her, a door slammed in my face. Battle after battle, our relentless Pack never gave up for hundreds of years.”

  “Because she could bear a Beta one day,” she voiced her thoughts aloud.

  “No. She was ours, a werewolf. Unlike vampires,” he said without any respect for the two in the room, “bloodlines only matter for leadership purposes, for herding the Pack in the right way. Each soul… each Beast has a place in our society and especially our hearts. Aoife did and so do you.”

  Bane’s voice mesmerized with a melodic cadence she’d never heard him use. “I believe you.” She’d only had a taste of what this woman went through for years.

  “Seeing as how she was a werewolf, their inborn enemy, the monarchs who used her were the worst offenders.”

  “From what I remember, most of the Dynasty Vampyrs are spoiled, living an opulent lifestyle inside a metaphorical glass city that appears perfect from the inside.” Her skin heated, that prickling sweat breaking out, making her feel weird. The exact feeling she had when her anemia was kicking her around, but Dru said her blood was still normal.

  “We agree on that.” He sighed, rubbing the tattoos on one of his arms, weighing his words carefully. “When her sons finally found her in the coldest part of Russia,” he stopped, eyeing her through sooty lashes, “She had already given birth to a daughter, a halfling.”

  “W-with a monarch?”

  “Yes.”

  That one word answer told her so many things, not the syllables and corresponding vowel, but the tone in which he said it. “They took her daughter away from her,” she whispered in horror. A mother’s worst nightmare followed a nightmarish life.

  “They treated Chloe fairly, so Aoife said, ho
used her in another monarch’s court until she passed her youngling years and long after that she conceived a child,” he stopped again, gauging her reaction.

  The hairs all over her body prickled, knowing. “Me.”

  Again. “Yes.” He cleared his throat and eased a leg on her chair, wrapping those oversized arms around her trembling body. “After you were born, the vampires took you from your mom. But you were found within a year.” He fiddled with that picture again, this time, handing it over. “Jax brought this from Scotland.”

  And it was like staring into a mirror. “Oh, dear heavens,” she sobbed, cupping her hand over her mouth. “My mother?”

  “Werewolves brought her back to the Pack in Scotland. She had you, but wanted a true werewolf life. She asked to be presented for rights to mate. The Alpha happily obliged and she met her male – Jaxton Ross. He took you as his own, loved you unconditionally. Quickly, they conceived your brothers. And although your memory of that time is still…gone?”

  “It is.” The room took on a dreamlike state.

  “We…have no idea how it happened, how a vampire could break through…but.”

  “Chloe, my mother, was found dead,” Blythe whispered. Salk claimed he was her father. That he’d killed her mother. Yet this wasn’t the time to share the tidbit about creating Donors from the very Lovec who hunted them. No wandering ears would learn she was addictive or how to create even more of her kind. And God only knew what was wandering outside her perimeter listening in. Keep your mouth shut Oycher. His answering grunt sounded of pure disgust, she’d insulted him. “I was nowhere to be found, and they never located me.”

  “True,” Bane said, openly surprised at her knowledge. “Jaxton couldn’t take it…left us.”

  “He went Rogue?” Ryan asked, though he kept on task.

  “Paid a rogue to off him,” he answered, and then explained to Blythe. “It’s kind of hard for an immortal to kill himself. There’s slime out there that will do it for the green, you know?”