Cover
Title Page
Blood Reunited
...
Amber Belldene
...
Omnific Publishing
Los Angeles
Copyright Information
Blood Reunited, Copyright © 2014 by Amber Belldene
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.
...
Omnific Publishing
1901 Avenue of the Stars, 2nd Floor
Los Angeles, California 90067
www.omnificpublishing.com
...
First Omnific eBook edition, January 2014
First Omnific trade paperback edition, January 2014
...
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
...
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
...
Belldene, Amber.
Blood Reunited / Amber Belldene – 1st ed
ISBN: 978-1-623420-96-3
1. Romance—Fiction. 2. Paranormal—Romance. 3. Vampires—Romance. 4. Vampire Hunter—Romance. I. Title
...
Cover Design by Micha Stone and Amy Brokaw
Interior Book Design by Coreen Montagna
Dedication
For Emily,
our weekly chats and your constant encouragement
give me the courage to face the challenges in all my vocations.
I truly could not have become a novelist without you.
Chapter 1
BEL JERKED AWAKE when his plane touched down. Home sweet home.
He snorted at his own sarcasm. Did he even have a home? London, maybe. But it sure wasn’t his father’s house.
He’d slept through the entire flight from LA, a much needed refresher after his thirty-hour stint in the lab. But the work had been well worth it. Inside his jacket pocket, his fingers curved around a vial of victory—a protein called hemoaurum, which would cure all the vampires.
Bel Maras: Mercenary, Vampire Biologist, Hero.
He didn’t mind the sound of that. He chuckled to himself as his private plane taxied down the single runway of the Sonoma County airport. With the vampire wasting disease cured, he could return to his real research, to the question that had driven him into science in the first place: how had he come to exist? He was the only known offspring of a human woman and a male vampire—a halfling, though he loathed the term.
The jet came to a complete stop, jarring him out of his thoughts. He phoned Andre, but his father didn’t answer. Neither did Kos. So Bel tried option C.
“This is Pedro.”
“Hiya. It’s Bel. Just landed. How’s the big guy?”
“You mean since his life’s work just burned to the ground? He could be worse.”
Andre had devoted himself to his vineyards the way Bel did to his research. Bel stared out at the grassy fields beyond the airport as a sympathetic tremor tightened his haunches and curled his toes. He didn’t always see eye to eye with his father, but losing centuries of work straight-up sucked.
“Where is he now?”
“Holed up in the dining room with Kos and Lena.”
“She’s all right, then?”
“Yeah. Shaken, but all right.”
Good thing. His brother had it bad for the human, and losing her might have wrecked poor Kos, which was surely why Andre had traded his vines for her safety.
“And Kos?”
“Wigged out and treating her like she’s made of glass.”
Bel laughed. “Sounds about right. I’ll rent a car. Be there inside an hour. Cheers.”
“Cheerio and tootle-loo, motherfucker.”
Bel sighed. His new brother did love to provoke him. “Pedro. Make fun of my accent again, and I’ll have Omar rip your tongue out, let it regrow, and do it again until you swear to stop your terrible impressions. Comprende?”
“Righty-ho.”
The line went dead before Bel could utter more idle threats.
When he turned into the drive of the estate, the acrid odor of concentrated petrol and burned vegetation seeped in through the air conditioner vents. Hunters and their blasted napalm. The blackened hills rose up behind the house, their century-old vines incinerated.
He parked right next to the line of still-green shrubbery demarcating the invisible shield, powerful enough to deflect fire and major artillery, yet it didn’t even glimmer in the sunlight. If he ever succeeded in unlocking the mysteries of his existence, he would make time to study the powerful magic generating the force field.
The estate’s devastation was a scene right out of the apocalypse and he could almost feel sorry for his dear old dad. But as he left the car and slammed the door behind him, the clench of pity gave way to an entirely foreign sensation—his gut lit up with a warm buzz. He looked up, unsettled by the bizarre feeling. The house shone bright white against the ash-covered hillsides. Things had been tense between Bel and his father since his mother’s suicide nearly two centuries ago. He’d never been comfortable at the Kaštel Estate, but this weird feeling was way more than his usual low-grade irritation with Andre.
His body thrummed with energy and a wave of unspecified desire washed over him, making him hungry and stirring his cock. Had he skipped breakfast? He couldn’t remember.
The other, lower hunger…well, it was constant. He’d skipped satisfying that appetite for years, ever since Lexi had left.
With his hand on the brass handle of the front door, a sharp pain shot from his jawbone to the crown of his skull. He massaged his gums through his scratchy upper lip. Son of a bitch, that hurt. A toothache? Vampires didn’t need to go to the dentist, not even a halfling. He’d survived nearly two hundred years without feeling this particularly excruciating pain and that was nowhere near long enough. What the hell was going on?
Inside, a murmur of voices came from the dining room. Kos spoke, and then Andre. Lena said something quietly, and then a woman’s voice rang out, loud and grating, in stilted English.
“There is cost.”
Like the sound of nails on a chalkboard, hearing her voice tightened all the skin on his body. He shuddered. She sounded like a mail-order bride right off the boat from some Eastern Bloc country—possibly even their Croatian homeland. But all the vampires they knew had left Croatia long ago and were in hiding, lost to one another. Why would a human woman from the old country be at Andre’s house?
He crossed the threshold into the room and caught a glimpse of her.
Oh, fuck. Her. After one hundred and fifty years.
Uta.
His throat dried out, and some deep instinct told him only her blood would quench the thirst.
Only, he didn’t drink blood. As a halfling, he had the perk of a potentially unending life, with none of the downsides. He got to walk in the sun, drink bourbon, and eat steak, which he liked rare—but not hot, wet-blood-down-the-throat rare. Yet now, staring at Uta, he could have swallowed mouthfuls of the stuff.
She held her fine oval face high—long, narrow nose and a firm mouth. Had she always looked so captivating? He didn’t recall this regal, sublime beauty.
He hadn’t forgotten his hate, though, not for one day in the century and a half since he’d seen her last. His godmother, his best friend. The way she’d abandoned him when he’d most needed her—it was unforgettable, and unforgivable. His wrath burned in the back of his too-dry throat, as bitter as the ash and napalm in the air.
Yet some powerful force fastened his gaze firmly onto her.
Her gaze pierced him, her pupils filling her irises, making them black and glassy; her breathing was shallow, her fangs long. The strange force affecting him appeared to have control of her too.
What the hell was happening to them? No. There was no them. Never. Only a her and a him.
Her pink tongue darted out to rest on her lower lip and his cock twitched again.
She gritted her teeth, and all the tendons in her neck flexed. Very slowly, as if she were straining against invisible chains, she turned her head away from him. Their stare broke with a snap, and he regained some control. He had nowhere to look but around the room.
His family circled the huge dining table, which had been cracked down the middle and bound up with thick jute rope like a big, angry vampire had pounded on it—which was entirely likely, but the story would have to wait. Both his brother, Kos, and Andre stared at him, their jaws dangling. Could they see the sensations roiling through him?
“That is price,” Uta rasped.
Price of what? He’d clearly walked in on some important conversation, and he was completely lost. But his mouth was too dry to speak, and his knees wobbled. He took a chair, not one at the table but a closer one, pushed against the wall near the door.
Andre came to kneel beside him, resignation weighing down his features.
“Son, I am sorry. I did not know. But still, Mila wanted another child, and I have been thankful for you every day, even for all those years when we did not speak.”
Shite. Andre had hardly ever said Bel’s mother’s name since her suicide. What did she have to do with any of this?
“I don’t understand.” He barely managed to croak out the phrase.
Uta’s brown eyes glittered with a fiery intensity. He stared into them, and a strange sensation slithered through his intestines, echoing the emotion in her gaze.
Kos cleared his throat and straightened his spine. “Auntie Uta was explaining to us how Lena and I could have a baby.”
Oh, just that. A baby.
The word crashed into Bel’s head like a hammer. His brain began to throb, pressing against his skull, a painful warning that his head might soon explode.
A baby with a vampire father and a human mother. A baby like him.
Just his luck. At the precise moment his life-long question might finally be answered, his body decided to undergo an atomic freak-out over seeing Uta again. What was wrong with him? He’d never wanted to fuck his anger out on someone before.
And he sure wasn’t going to now—not when answers were in reach.
He gripped the seat and firmed up his backbone.
Kos stood up and raked his hands through his hair. “Krist, Bel, you look like a wrung-out rag.”
“Nice to see you too,” Bel bit out, trying to keep hold of his confused fury.
“This isn’t good.” Kos spoke directly to Andre.
Bel’s throat seized up, causing a fit of coughs before he could ask. What, damn it! What isn’t good?
“No. It is in fact quite bad.” Andre examined Bel, peering into his eyes and then trying to part Bel’s lips with his fingers. Bel swatted him away.
Andre shook his head ominously. “He is not going to like it one bit.”
“What?” Bel tried to shout, but it was the barest whisper. No one paid him any mind.
Zoey leaned over the table, all polished businesswoman. “Are you bonded?”
Bloody hell. Bonded? He shot up out of his chair. “No way. Not possible!”
“Yes,” Uta said, her voice ravaged by whatever was happening to them. She had locked him in her gaze again and it did not waver, holding him prisoner, preventing him from lunging at her to silence her nonsense.
“Bel too?” Zoey asked.
“Yes.”
“No,” he growled, even as he wondered. Bonded? Could that possibly be the sense of homecoming that had lured him inside?
“But he’s human.” Kos pushed his chair back from the broken table and stood.
“Half.” Uta sat up straighter, crossing one infinitely long leg over the other and glaring at Bel. “So, whatever he feel, only half as bad as what I feel.”
He snorted. She wanted to throw down the gauntlet? He stood and all the years of his anger surfaced in a hot wave, searing his face.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” He clutched the edge of the table to resist lunging at her.
She rose to her full height, and damn, she was tall. He hadn’t met a woman who stood eye to eye with him since he’d stopped growing, and he hadn’t seen her since long before that. She hissed like a trapped cat, lithe and fierce, but afraid. In his own gut, a sharp stab of fight-or-flight reflex left him paralyzed in that third option—freeze.
“Sit, now,” Andre boomed from beside him. “I know it is an effort for both of you, but at least pretend you are adults.”
The order grated against Bel like steel wool, but he tried to comply. Rage would get him nowhere. He breathed calm into his veins and lowered himself into his chair. She mirrored the action.
“Start from the beginning.” Bel barked the command, but Uta didn’t respond.
Andre rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “When your mother wanted a child with me, she asked Uta to be your godmother, and to help her conceive.” He glanced at Uta, the muscles in his jaw contracting. “Uta resisted Mila for a long time and she warned her there might be unforeseen consequences. But Mila had a way of wearing a person down, and eventually Uta gave in. I told them I did not want to know their secret magic, but I would do my part.”
“It wasn’t really magic, though,” Kos said. “It might even make sense, scientifically speaking, if we knew more about vampire blood.”
Uta blew out a dismissive breath. “Science! It just one more foolish human religion.”
“What the fuck did they do?” Bel spat out the words, curiosity and fury tearing at him.
“Mila drank a regimen of Uta’s blood.” Zoey covered Lena’s hand with her own. “To help her body get ready for conception. It made her eggs stronger.”
The scientist part of Bel’s brain clicked into gear. Yeah. A woman’s immune system might attack a half-vampire embryo as something foreign unless it was acclimated to vampire blood the way some pregnant women had to suppress their over-active immune systems with interferon.
“And then, her vampire-charged ovum was fertilized with Andre’s blood,” Kos said.
Like a ton of bricks in the face, the word hit Bel hard. “Blood?” he whispered.
“Some things are mystery,” Uta said. “You young ones think you can know everything.” She crossed her arms and huffed.
Bel angled his head, glaring at Andre. “Half of my DNA comes from your blood and not sperm?”
His father nodded.
“Damn it. That makes me your clone.”
“Half a clone,” Andre qualified.
Kos snorted. “No wonder you are so much alike.”
The motion of Uta’s tongue grabbed Bel’s attention as she licked her lips. “Because Mila drank my blood, connection is forming between you and me before you are born.”
“Why are you talking like that? Your English is appalling.”
She flicked her hand. “Why bother? It just one more language is coming and going. Too many to remember.”
“Because you sound like an idiot.”
“Fuck you.”
Of course, she would be able to swear fluently, even if she couldn’t conjugate a verb. Problem was, images of fucking her sprang fully formed into his mind, of stripping her bare and pulling her onto his lap. Chances were her feet would touch the floor—good leverage.
A deep crimson blush bloomed on her alabaster skin as if she knew what he’d been thinking. Impossible. The red clashed with her mane of auburn hair, turning her altogether too ruddy.
“How do we break the bond?” he asked.
Andre whistled ominously, and Bel�
��s stomach sank.
“We do not.” Uta crossed her arms and her legs again, her blush now faded. “To break, one of us must die.”
“I vote you,” he said. No one laughed. Bel interlaced his fingers and leaned back, resting his head in his hands. For a long time, silence filled the room.
He stared at the ceiling, struggling to control his breath as he remembered her unforgivable betrayal. Memories of a boyhood spent traipsing behind her around the island of Šolta came back in splotches.
“How long have you known?”
“Since you are born.”
“What?” Andre bellowed. “Did you know it would happen? What the hell were you thinking?”
She laughed bitterly. “I am not knowing. Only after Bel is born, am I realizing the godmother must be having mate. If I am bonding with mate already, when Mila drank my blood, Bel is free.”
“Really?” Lena’s hopeful tone pawed at Bel’s chest like a kitten batting a toy.
“So, if Lena drank my blood—” Zoey leaned closer to Uta “—the baby would not ever feel the way you and Bel feel right now?”
Uta nodded, blinking her pink-rimmed eyes.
“You would be insane to consider it.” Andre closed his mouth to grind his molars.
Instinctively, Bel mimicked the motion, alleviating some of the ache in his gums.
Kos sighed at his mate like a lovesick puppy at a kitten. “Lena?”
She nodded. “I want to.”
“No. It is too risky. I do not want—” Andre’s thick black brows drew together and he took hold of Bel’s hand, prying his fingers open and holding up the narrow glass tube. “Is this…?”
Bel nodded absently.
“The hemoaurum? Davo, son, I am so proud of you. A replacement for Blood Vine! Now the fire doesn’t matter.” He stood, holding the vial up to the light of the window.
For a moment, Andre’s unfamiliar pride short-circuited every other thought in Bel’s mind.
Then Uta stood and brushed at her clothes—if the shredded and bloody tatters of a suit could be considered clothes. “It not work.”
Bel leaned forward, fists clenching. “Why not?”
“Some things are mystery.” She shrugged.
Blood Reunited Page 1
