“Careful,” Clara cautioned as we entered the tower. The floor was missing a few bits of stone, exposing the room underneath. I watched Clara’s steps and made sure to copy every movement she made. We eventually made it to the window, and there was a person sitting next to it, staring out the window at the vast countryside below. Her hair was black and in tangles. She wore a black dress that looked ancient, both because of the style and the fact that it was dirty and torn in several places. Her bare feet were caked with mud.
“Ana,” Clara whispered to the woman sitting at the window, but she didn’t respond, with words or her body. She was comatose, just staring out into space.
I realized then that a small part of me had somehow formed preconceptions about this moment, and this filthy, lethargic creature was not what I had expected or wished for. Was I disappointed? No. But I felt something fade away inside me, something I hadn’t known was there. If I could have put a name to it, I would’ve called it a girlish hope.
“Ana, I’ve brought someone to see you,” Clara tried again, so gentle and tender as if she was used to the other woman lashing out at her. But she loved her. That much was evident.
Clara took stock of the other woman’s state like I had, and her face drooped wearily. “I apologize for her appearance,” Clara said to me. “This is what happens when she runs away.” She bent down in front of the other woman and carefully took her hands. “Ana, there’s someone here for you.” Clara helped the other woman turn towards me. Her purple eyes were blank. They saw nothing in front of her, though there was nothing wrong with her sight. Clara looked up at me and smiled warmly.
“Lisbeth, this is your mother, Anastasia Bathory.”
1. An irrefutable truth
Life is full of irrefutable truths. Truths that you can’t ignore. Truths that you can’t escape. And the truth is the greatest weapon life has to offer.
There were many truths in my life up to that point, and many that would follow thereafter, but none were as painful as the truth I now knew.
Knight was alive.
I’d gone for an entire year believing that the Lycans executed him, but not knowing for sure if they had. I’d moved on as much as a vampire possibly could from losing their mate. The evidence of me trying to forget him was currently cuddled in her father’s arms.
My newborn vampire-Incubus hybrid.
She looked like a vampire in every way possible, and if it hadn’t already spread around the entire Order what she was, they could’ve easily been convinced she was an ordinary Born vampire baby. Except that she wasn’t. Unlike regular vampire babies, my daughter drank vampire blood.
Fresh from giving birth not even an hour before, I don’t know how I got through that summit with the Lycan Alphas.
Balthazar held the tiny bundle our newborn daughter was wrapped in, and I had to resist turning towards her when she made even the smallest sound. They were standing on my right from my seat at the Council half circle desk. In front of me stood the Alphas from all the North American packs. Knight stood on the left of their ranks. I was making painstaking efforts to not look in his direction, but I could feel his eyes on me.
I knew Knight hated me. How could he not? I betrayed him. Since he was torn from my arms, I’d been intimate with two other men, one that resulted in the conception of my daughter.
It wasn’t Balthazar I was worried about as I felt Knight’s presence like a beacon, it was Arthur. He told me if Knight was alive that all we had shared would be as if it never happened. Could Arthur and I go back to the way it was before? I wouldn’t have said yes until I saw Knight’s face in the crowd, stopping my heart in its tracks.
My brief glimpse of the werewolf when I entered the room had been sufficient to at least see how he was doing. His hair was longer, starting to curl past his neck, and he was wearing the exact outfit I’d conjured for him in my delusions several weeks before: a faded brown and white plaid shirt with blue jeans, though he wasn’t barefoot like he had been in my fantasy, he had a pair of black boots on. I tried not to think about how accurate I’d been in his appearance. It was probably just a coincidence.
“The summit will come to order,” Castilla said suddenly, making me jump in my seat. Shit. How long had I been sitting there staring at the desk in front of me? I almost looked at Knight in my confusion but stopped myself at the last second.
One of the council members, Estinien, if I remembered correctly, and of course I did, stood up. He looked older, like Othello had, with thin, aged skin and wrinkles to emphasize his frown. He was also one of the three Council members that hadn’t voted in favor of this meeting. Prick. “I want it known that I do not condone this meeting. Lycans are our enemies.”
“The vote to bring them here passed, Estinien,” Castilla pointed out smoothly in a look that clearly meant, ‘shut your bitch mouth.’
“That’s because she,” he pointed his long, gnarled finger in my direction, “said we would die without their help. Bullshit.”
Defending myself would have gotten me nowhere. It was clear that some of them would gladly turn on me in my inexperience. However, the desire to flip him off and tell him he was a loser was very powerful.
One of the other old dudes, Thaddeus, spoke up. “Have you forgotten what happened at Gennadi?” His accented voice was shaky, his appearance older than anyone else there. Knowing what I knew about what Anastasia had done, however, he couldn’t have been much older than the rest of the Council, he just looked it.
Everyone sobered under Thaddeus’s gaze as they remembered the slaughter our brethren had endured at the hands of our enemies. No one else objected after that, so Thaddeus nodded in my direction for me to begin.
Wait, me leading? Since when was I spearheading this thing? I’d just had a baby, for fuck’s sake. I glanced at Castilla and she confirmed it with a nod and a smile. Fucking perfect. Of all the meetings I had to oversee, it had to be the one with my ex-boyfriend in the room. Ex. Was he my ex? We were never officially a couple. Could he still be my ex if we hadn’t been official?
God damn it.
I stood up and buttoned the button on my jacket in an official manner meant to make me look cooler and more business-like. I felt like old Lisbeth, the one who had never met Knight and only cared about objects and looking pretty. Maybe it was the fact that I was dressing like her again, in designer dresses and kitten heels.
“Welcome, our esteemed guests,” I started in a bright, clear voice that made me feel like an absolute fraud. “We appreciate you honoring our truce and taking the time to come here to discuss terms of an alliance between our two species.”
Don’t look at Knight. Don’t look at Knight.
A short gangly Alpha wearing an unbuttoned black vest spoke first, his scowl proof that both sides had reluctant participants. “We wouldn’t have come if Alexander and Jesse hadn’t spoken for you.” He glanced to the side of the group I wasn’t going to look at. “And that one too.”
Meaning Knight.
I brushed off his attitude, and the reference to my ex. “This circumstance goes beyond personal feelings, and I’m glad that everyone understands that.” Mr. Black Vest didn’t look quite as agreeable as I was making him out to be, but he stopped complaining at least. “I trust you were all briefed on the situation?”
“We have some questions,” Jesse said with a respectful nod to me that I met with a smile.
“Of course. Feel free to ask anything you need to know.”
Please ask something easy, like how many vampires were left, did the kitchen have a Keurig, or what our strategy was. We had a strategy, right?
“How did this happen?”
Well, shit.
I rolled it around in my head, all the diplomatic answers that I would be expected to say so the situation didn’t seem as bad as it actually was, except the Lycans were, or had been, our enemies. If we lied to them, they wouldn’t trust us, and the alliance would be over before it began.
Sighing, I just barely c
aught Arthur’s gaze, making me turn my eyes down to the floor as my stomach fluttered so hard I felt nauseous. No place in the room was safe for me to look at. “I’ll be honest. This happened because turned vampires felt like they were being treated as inferiors to Born vampires.” The whispers that followed indicated my fellow Council members were not pleased I was being so candid.
“What sparked the dissension?” Jesse probed. This was the Spanish Inquisition all over again.
“We held an execution for some turned vampires who killed one of our companions. Our laws about killing humans are slightly lax, so naturally, they were outraged. And to answer your next question, it’s because I broke a different law that I wasn’t executed for, and that law is vastly more specific than the one about killing humans.”
“This war started because of what you did for Simon,” Alexander said, his face falling. “Your people were slaughtered.” Though I expected some comments from others at the desk around me, blaming me for it all, they were silent. “Do you blame us?” Alexander asked the rest of the Council. “Or her?”
“No,” Castilla spoke up for me. “This was never about her. From what we’ve learned, the turned have been planning this for a very long time. Lisbeth was simply in the line of fire.”
“And now, you want to align yourselves with your enemies, to save yourself from an army that you created,” said the vest Lycan, sneering at me.
I took a deep, measured breath, and tried not to scowl at those we were trying to convince to be our allies. “The turned will destroy us. They have thousands in their ranks, and they hate Lycans as much as they hate Born vampires. When they’re finished with us, they might turn on you too.”
“Might,” the vest Lycan pointed out. My jaw clenched and I felt myself losing my patience with everything. Would no one ever listen to me?
“Are you willing to take that chance?” Alexander asked him quickly, with a small nod in my direction.
“Even if we weren’t facing annihilation at their hands, the turned have no respect for humans,” Castilla continued. “They took our companions as their slaves, and I promise you those humans will beg for death before their new masters are finished with them.” From the reactions around the table, I could tell she’d kept this a secret, as even I hadn’t known. “We couldn’t protect them.” She was on the verge of weeping and took a drink of water to hide it. “The turned are not interested in staying secret from humans or treating them with respect and civility. They will raze the human world to the ground if they have no one to stop them, and we are all that stands in their way.”
“You said they had thousands,” Knight said, finally speaking, his clear, deep voice sparking a shiver up my spine and sprouted tears in my eyes. Don’t look, don’t look. “The packs in North America don’t have nearly enough wolves for that.”
“There are packs all over the world. If we align with as many as we can, we will have the numbers,” Castilla answered confidently.
My daughter squealed and I couldn’t stop myself from looking to make sure she was okay, only Balthazar had moved, and when I turned in the direction the noise had come from, I was staring straight into Knight’s deep, unending brown eyes.
Balthazar, I hate you.
2. Icy rejection
The summit was over, but we were far from finished with the alliance talks. It was nice to see Lycans and vampires banding together. I was surprised the wolves hadn’t been more difficult about joining their enemies. I suspected the three Alphas I had a connection to had argued our case for us, and we owed this complicity to them. Or maybe I was just super convincing.
As soon as the summit ended, I grabbed my daughter from Balthazar and ran out of the bigger drawing-room. I almost brushed Knight’s sleeve, I think. It smelled like him. That made me run faster, down the hallway and up the stairs, until I was safe inside my suite. Slamming the door startled my birds, and they fluttered around in their cage, trying to calm down.
I placed my baby inside her crib in her perfect little nursery, where she instantly fell asleep. Then I found the nearest corner in my living room and stood in it with my nose pressed to the wall.
Knight wasn’t dead. He was still alive and breathing, and being the perfection that was him. He wasn’t cold and pale inside the ground, forever a scar in my heart, one that would never be healed. Yes, even with him alive we’d never be together, but knowing he wasn’t dead would be worth the pain. I could burn a candle for him forever providing he was still alive and happy.
I was wet and boogery when Arthur came into the room, and I sobbed a few more times before I turned around. My eyes were so wet with tears that I couldn’t see who it was, but his scent gave him away. He walked closer and handed me a box of tissues, which I used liberally on my face.
“He’s in the hallway,” Arthur told me gently, setting off a fresh stream of tears. “Stop crying, I won’t let him in unless you tell me to.”
My fingers ached to reach out for Arthur’s blurry form. He’d been my rock through all of the shit I’d endured since Knight and I parted, and now I couldn’t look him in the face. Every time I closed my eyes, I could see Arthur’s hands on me, feel the way he’d brought me to orgasm under his tongue.
“Stop,” Arthur said firm and clear. I opened my eyes and looked up at him towering over me through a curtain of tears, much closer than he’d been before, so close my skin prickled with life. “That’s over. I will remain by your side, only as your right hand, as I promised. Now stop blubbering or I’m going to let him inside here.” He turned to leave, and I scowled at his back.
“Why are you being such an asshole?”
Arthur whirled on me, his icy blues aflame with wrath, his chest heaving with short, angry breaths. “Because you belong with him. I saw you when you lost him, you were broken. You think you’d ever feel that way if you lost me? You wouldn’t. Love like that shouldn’t be tossed away like it doesn’t matter. If you leave him for me, I will never speak to you again.”
That silenced me, like a lace tied around my tongue. When I found my voice again, I let out an ironic laugh and sniffed. “He won’t want me again.”
Arthur’s hand clenched into a fist and he lifted his chin with a look in his eye I recognized well, the look he’d given me just before our first kiss. “He’d be a fool not to.”
“I wouldn’t forgive me.”
The fist he made slowly raised towards me, and then lowered quickly. “You’re not him.”
Twenty-one hours after I gave birth to my daughter, I was standing under a tree in the woods behind our castle with Olivier.
“Ready?” Olivier asked me. She had rushed back home after hearing I’d gone into labor, and just barely managed to miss the summit, which I knew was on purpose. She still had her reservations about the ordeal.
On my orders, all but one of the Alphas had gone to stay with Alexander’s pack and would return as needed. The one still there was, of course, Knight. I’d been avoiding him as much as possible, but I knew it wouldn’t last. I’d have to talk to him eventually, and I wasn’t looking forward to it.
‘Oh, you said you loved me and then you got knocked up before making out with your bodyguard? Laters, fang lady.’
Knight would totally say fang lady. Or something offensive, if he was feeling cranky. When he finally cornered me, I had no doubt he would throw every swear word in the book at my face.
Balthazar was already gone again, leaving me to care for our daughter by myself. I couldn’t say that I was surprised, but I was more than a little disappointed. I hoped one day he would stop leaving me and stay nearby forever, mostly because I could use some friendship right about now, what with my not-dead ex-boyfriend here.
Now wasn’t the time to think about either of them. Bundled in my arms, dressed in a long white dress, was my daughter. Her wispy black curls waved playfully, and she twisted in my arms as she slept. She was exactly twenty-one hours old, and it was time for her vampire christening, where I would promise t
o raise her to uphold vampiric law and announce to everyone what her name would be.
I’d already delayed leaving our secluded spot for as long as possible, changing my daughter’s diaper twice when she wasn’t dirty, and then feeding her, burping her, trying to make her fall asleep again. After ten minutes, Olivier stopped pretending to check her phone and slipped it into her pocket.
“You have to face him sometime,” she said quietly.
No, I didn’t have to, and even if Knight was using the alliance meetings as an excuse to stay here, eventually this thing with the turned would end and he would have to leave, and then my life would continue. He’ll go off and become a fruit picker and marry… the thought of him marrying someone else left a bad taste in my mouth. Okay, fine. He’ll marry some chick who loves his jokes and would never cheat on him, like his loser ex-girlfriend. He’ll lie awake at night thinking about how much he hates me while his arm is wrapped around a curvy girl who drinks kale shakes. Nah. He’d never marry someone who couldn’t appreciate a good cheeseburger.
The important part is he’ll move on and find someone better than me. I jest, there’s no one better than me, so he’ll find the second-best girl for him. And he’ll be happy. Just like I’ll be happy, raising my daughter alone. Even without Knight in my life, Arthur would never touch me again, so I didn’t even have that to look forward to.
Huffing out a sigh, Olivier checked her wristwatch for the third time in the past minute. “We can’t be late. The ceremony is very time specific.”
I adjusted my daughter’s blanket, kissed her pale little head, and set her diaper bag underneath the tree. “Let’s go.”
Vampire christenings used to be incredibly superstitious. Every part of the ceremony involved exposing the baby vampire to everything that supposedly hurt or killed vampires, in an attempt to appease whatever forces gave us immunity to all of them, so we could continue to see our reflections in mirrors and use wooden furniture. We liked to change with the times while still honoring past traditions, so the christenings we practiced now were more symbolic.
The Born Vampire series: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (The Complete Series, NSFW Edition) Page 35
