The night before the ceremony the King requested her presence in his library. A fire blazed in the stone fireplace, and her father stood with his back to her as she entered.
“You asked to see me, Father?” she said.
He turned to face her. The man wore the face of Vincent, only his face was much older and his black hair was peppered with gray. He wore a full beard covering his face. It wasn’t Vincent anymore, it was King Desislav Siminov, and he was her father. The love showed in his eyes as he motioned to a chair. “Yes, my dear. Please.”
She nodded as she took her seat. Her loving eyes met his. He was the first love of her life, and it was a sharp blade through his heart the way he would have to hurt her now. But it was for her own good, for their own good. He had an entire family, and country, to protect.
“Tomorrow is the ceremony where I present you to your betrothed,” he stated. She couldn’t help but smile. Finally she and Nicholai would be one. She had longed for it for years now, but the civil unrest in their country made their joy forbidden. Finally her father consented that they could wed at last. Her heart overflowed with happiness.
“Yes, Father,” she said, bowing her head slightly. When her eyes met his again she saw something there that made her stomach lurch a bit. He did not seem happy. Had he changed his mind again? Had the murders in town made him cautious? “What is wrong?”
He could only smile. His daughter knew him well. Not even his wife could understand him so well. Desislav approached his oldest child, perching on a desk by the chair where she sat. She looked lovely in a cobalt blue satin dress with ivory lace. She was every inch the queen, and he knew that’s what he had to protect for her.
“My darling, I have distressing news but I hope that you will listen with an open mind, as you always have done.” Natasha didn’t like the sound of that.
“You wish that I do not marry,” she concluded, then hopped up and began to pace. “Father, you promised. You gave your word. Never before have you broken such a bond.”
He watched her pace. She grew so angry a red flush crept up her ivory skin. “I do wish you to marry, Natasha,” he said softly.
She whirled around to face him. “But what?”
“But who,” he corrected. She stared at him in confusion. “I have decided that our country requires a stronger union for you. Nicholai is a fine man, but he cannot help us overcome these hardships we are facing. I have chosen another man to be your husband.”
Natasha’s mouth gaped open. “Are you mad?” she breathed. Normally she would never have disrespected her father, but she knew exactly the man he meant. It was that horrible count whose stare caused her very flesh to crawl. She had danced with him out of politeness and he held her much too close to his hard, cold body. He smelled of death and she knew that’s she would face if she had to marry him.
Desislav stood up. “Natasha. The Count offers our country stability through his influence with northern territories. This would bring peace to our people. You must want that.”
“I want Nicholai,” she insisted, curbing the urge to stomp her foot for emphasis.
“That is out of the question,” the King stated simply, then turned back to his desk. “You will marry the Count.”
“I will not. I would rather die first.”
He leveled his gaze on her and something in his eyes stopped her cold. “If you do not, then we all die, Natasha.”
Tears flowed down her ivory face as she spun from him and ran from the room. He fought tears of his own as he slumped back into his chair, and prayed his daughter would forgive him for being so weak.
Natasha ran all the way to the castle that Nicholai had built for her within the fortress of the dense forest. It was deep in the night by then and as she crept into his darkened room she could see his sleeping form on the big four poster bed upon which they would have made love when they married. The only hope of that now was for them to run away. Surely he would love her enough to do just that.
She let the silk gown fall away from her young, pure and voluptuous body as she padded quietly to the bed in bare feet. She was totally naked by the time she lifted the covers and slipped underneath.
As she snuggled closer to Nicholai, the warmth of his body washed over her. She tingled all over, needing him more this night than ever before. She wrapped her arms around him, kissing his musky skin.
He moaned a bit in his sleep, turning more into her embrace. Hovering somewhere in between sleep and consciousness he responded to her passionate kisses, drawing her closer against his hard, young body. She straddled him as he turned onto his back, feeling his body reach to fill her in a place that had ached for him for years. She moved against him, urging him to grow stronger and harder so that they could at last become one. Natasha was so overcome by her passion she did not notice the shadows move across the window, where Thaddeus hovered in a growing rage.
With a vicious scream Nicholai and Natasha were too enraptured to hear, he turned toward the King’s castle and exploded into an inky mist that shot in the direction Natasha had come.
Inside the bedroom Nicholai awoke with a start, his hands on Natasha’s bare body, her kisses raining along his neck and chest, her hands going where they had never gone before as she opened her body to receive him.
“Natasha!” he admonished at once.
“Please, Nicholai,” she pleaded in between kisses. “Love me tonight.”
“We are not married,” he argued, trying to disentangle himself before he slipped inside her. He knew the moment he took her as his own, he would have never let her go. And that was precisely what he needed to do to save her entire family and all the people they knew and loved from the wrath of a madman.
“In my heart we are,” she insisted, wrapping herself tighter around him. “In my heart we always will be.”
“Natasha, no!” he exclaimed, pulling himself with great effort from the soft recesses of her body where he wanted to disappear inside and never come out again.
She blinked at him in shock. He had never raised his voice to her before. “Don’t you love me, Nicholai?”
His heart broke at her soft voice. Did she even have to question? He was willing to go into battle for her. That was yet another reason he could not love her like she wanted him to. He would not dishonor her. If he died she would eventually marry another, and that man would deserve the first fruits of her love. He grabbed a robe from the edge of the bed and wrapped himself up tight before walking away from her.
“Father wants me to marry Count Thaddeus!” she cried after him. That stopped his departure. His shoulders physically drooped. He had suspected it, but nothing could prepare him for the words. Or the reality. The thought of that man touching his precious Natasha made him sick with rage. It was just the incentive he needed to kill Thaddeus and his entire army.
Nicholai turned back to her. “Then you must marry him,” he said softly.
Thunder could have clapped in the room and it wouldn’t have startled her any more. “What?”
“You must do as the King says,” Nicholas informed her in a dull, flat voice. “We all must.”
She got out of bed, unashamed of her nakedness. He had to turn away before she could see what the sight of her body, something that once had only filled his dreams, was doing to him. “But we could run away, Nicholai. We could go somewhere else, we could marry, we could be happy!”
He swung back around with an angry growl. “How could you be happy with the blood of your family on your hands? Who are you, Natasha?”
She cried then. Openly, without shame. “I am a woman who loves you.” She rushed toward him. “And you love me too. You know it.”
He pushed her away so violently she fell backward on the floor. “I do not know you.” His heart broke as he said it. She would not leave him and do what the King asked unless Nicholai made the ultimate sacrifice. He had to convince her there was no hope for their love so that she could fulfill her duty.
Nicholai had to tru
st the King that they would deal with Thaddeus in due time. Once she was widowed and the country was free again, she’d understand why he had done what he did. Until then, their heartbreak would be a small price to pay.
All he could do was pray he’d live through the battle to come so he could show her one day how much he would always love her. Thaddeus Dragomir could not kill that.
Nicholai could not watch her as she dressed. He wanted her so badly he ached, and he knew she would see his blatant lie if he stayed in the room. So he left her, knowing she would think it was disgust that drove him away.
Natasha dressed and left the castle more slowly than she had arrived. Her bare feet carried her across the slick, wet grass of the forest that separated the two castles. He had built it close enough she could be near her beloved father. Now everything seemed to be a lie. Both men she loved had betrayed her.
She would return to her father and take her place as the wife of Thaddeus. She might as well die, she thought. Without Nicholai there was no point to live. There was no happiness, no joy. No love.
When she arrived at the castle, she knew instantly there was something amiss. The guards who normally greeted her at the gate were gone. Natasha broke into a run as she caught sight of flames licking out of an upstairs window. All selfish thoughts were banished as she exploded through the heavy doors and gasped when she discovered a group of townsmen had overtaken the guards and were running rampant through her home. They were breaking expensive heirlooms, turning over furniture, burning curtains on the walls. She could hear screaming from upstairs, the screams of her sisters and her mother.
Full of rage she bolted up the stairs and burst into a room where men had their way with her younger sisters, who were but mere children. Natasha grabbed anything and everything she could get her hands on and proceeded to smash the heads of the attackers to knock them away from her family.
With one punch, the hunter from her other dream sent her flying back against the wall. She fell down but she got back up again and rushed him with nothing but her bare fists and blind fury. Her dress she had not properly fastened began to fall away from her full curves, and his faced curved into a sickening smile.
“I’m happy to see you too, Princess,” he growled as he dragged her by the hair from that room and into another room, locking the door behind him. He grabbed her then, kissing her savagely as he tore her bodice from her chest. She wrenched away from him, covering herself and looking around desperately for an avenue to escape.
She kicked the table that held a lantern, cloaking the room in darkness. She backed up against the wall and barely breathed so that he could not find her easily unless he opened the door. The room she could easily maneuver to even in pitch dark. She had the advantage of familiarity, he did not.
She was preparing herself to escape when she heard a fluttering, like wings, suddenly fill the room. The stench of decay assaulted her nose and she crouched on the ground with her hands clasped over her ears to drown out the thundering noise. The hunter screamed, taking Natasha totally by surprise. When the door flew open and the man stumbled out, she was rooted to the spot. She knew she was not alone in the room although it had been empty before.
Barely breathing now she inched herself toward the door. She could feel him close, as though he were standing right in front of her. Her breath stopped and her heartbeat seemed to fill the room.
“Who are you?” she breathlessly demanded.
“Your husband,” he purred, his hand reaching out to run down her bared arm. Her skin instantly crawled at his cold touch.
He lit another lantern, revealing her to him, her skin glowing in the warm light. Thaddeus’s hungry, unusual eyes devoured her and she covered herself with both arms.
“You are not my husband,” she said, her chin tipped in defiance.
“Not yet,” he conceded.
“Not ever!”
He chuckled. “You are a passionate one, Natasha. But your father gave his word.”
She raised her head regally, not allowing her embarrassing state of undress to intimidate her. “Perhaps. But I do not give mine.”
The man drew closer, his hand slithering across her face. “Would you deny your father? It was his dying wish.”
Her eyes flew wide. She reared back and hit Thaddeus with all of her strength. He did not move. In fact, it was like hitting cold, hard stone. He laughed as she rubbed her aching hand. “Who are you?” she whispered again.
He laughed deep in his throat.
“Who are you?” she repeated.
“Your last hope,” he replied, pulling her closer. “I am your gateway to immortality, my love. Everything they stole from you, I can give back to you. You will feast on the flesh of your enemies and no one will defy you again. You will be feared. You will be Queen. You will be mine.” He bared his fangs then, two milky white, sharpened fangs that jutted out of his mouth like two razor sharp blades. She wanted to move away but she got lost in those eyes, one brown and one blue. Her feet were rooted to the floor unable to stop his hand from tipping her head and baring her perfect ivory neck.
With a hungry growl he bent forward, his eyes closed like sweet sexual release as he pierced her young, sweet flesh. The pain was sharp and yet surreal as she melted against him. The warmth of her blood rushed from her body, passing her life into his. She was instantly paralyzed, quite literally frozen to the spot. She couldn’t even scream. He sucked the very breath from her lungs.
Color faded to black and white as the chaos around her home muted to a low hum in her ears. She felt death overtake her from the tips of her fingers and toes and creep up her body until her steady heartbeat slowed to a stop. By then the sharp fangs in her neck didn’t even hurt. She felt nothing at all. She was hollow. Her body was nothing more than a shell her soul no longer inhabited.
Her last thought was of Nicholas, of being wrapped naked in his arms. Sweet black nothingness spared her from his final betrayal. That would be Nicholai’s curse alone, to remember long, long afterward.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Michael knocked on Dani’s door, and she was quick to stash the black book under her blankets. She had a ready smile for him as he entered her room. The setting sun cast a bright orange glow against the stark white walls of the room.
“Hey kiddo,” Michael greeted with a peck on her forehead before perching himself on the edge of her bed.
“Hi, Father Mike.”
He couldn’t bring himself to correct the way she addressed her. He was a Father no more. All he could do was return her sunny happy smile. It was how every child should look. And by God, this one was going to stay that way. However Dani was a perceptive child and could tell at once something was wrong. “Where’s Adele?” she asked with a sinking feeling at the bottom of her stomach.
“You know our Adele.” Even Michael didn’t want to think about where she was. Or worse. Who she was with. The child did not look convinced so Michael added, “She’s fine.”
“But?” Dani asked.
He plastered a phony smile on his face. “But nothing.”
She wasn’t convinced. Neither was he. He sighed. “All right. You caught me. I’m busted. Adele is okay, but she does need us to be strong for her right now. So you have to say your prayers and send her all your love.”
Dani nodded. “The monster is going after her, isn’t he?”
Michael didn’t know what to say. How could he dispel the myth of monsters now when she’d very nearly been killed by one? He just put his hand on top of her small one and assured her, “I’m not going to let anything happen to her. I promise.”
“People can’t always keep their promises,” she reminded him.
“I’ll keep this. But you gotta promise me something too.”
She nodded. Anything.
He pulled something from his jacket and handed it to her. It was a package, tied up tight. “This is for Adele, in case you see her before I do. Tell her it’s a present from Vincent.”
�
��Who’s Vincent?” Dani asked as she handled the package carefully.
“Family,” he said cryptically. “Can you do this for me, Dani?”
She nodded. He kissed her again on her forehead. “I love you, little one,” he whispered against her skin. He started to leave and Dani called out for him, thrusting back her covers, hopping off the bed and throwing herself into his arms. They both fought back tears from the unspoken goodbye. When finally Michael wrenched himself away he could not even bear to look back at the child he feared he’d never see again.
Across town in Adele’s tiny living room Nicholas faced the setting sun just outside her window. Only it wasn’t an angry red sunset he was seeing. Just like Adele who dozed fitfully, cradled in his arms, he had turned back the pages of time to remember.
He remembered that day when he’d ridden up to the castle after a torturous night of regret sending her away. He planned to march right up to King Desislav and tell him that their love was non-negotiable. They would marry, and if that meant Nicholai would have to kill Thaddeus, then that was acceptable to him. He couldn’t stand those long moments that ticked by, silence mocking him from the other side of the bed. It was a place Natasha never should have left. They needed no papers to marry, in his heart he’d been bonded to her since the very first moment they met.
Her violet eyes reminded him of another time he couldn’t quite remember. A past that couldn’t have possibly belonged to him danced just outside of his memory. The minute they touched he couldn’t tell where she ended and he began. They were two parts of one whole from even before they were born.
A tear slipped down Nicholas’s face as he remembered the scene that awaited him as he rounded the final turn to the castle. The bewildered servants that had survived the bloody revolt the night before wandered about, lost and disconcerted. The fires in the castle had been put out, but it was obvious the majority of it had been gutted as the countrymen, aided by forces from outside their borders, violently overthrew King Desislav.
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