by J. R. Ward
He waited until she was good and worked up.
Then he slammed her with one single message: Ehlena is my revered queen.
The five words shattered her. Broke her down more surely than if he had taken out a gun and shot another compass into her chest.
He was what she wanted to be.
He was what she wanted to have.
And she was getting the shaft.
The princess put her hands to her ears, like she was trying to stop the buzzing in her head, but he just spun her mind faster and faster and faster.
With a raw scream, she took the knife in her hand and thrust it into her gut all the way to the hilt. Unwilling to let her stop there, Rehv made her turn the weapon with a quick jerk to the right.
And then he called on a little help from his friends.
In a black tide, from out of small fissures in the walls, the multitude of spiders and scorpions returned. Once controlled by his uncle, the hordes were now under Rehvenge’s dominion, and they swelled forward, encompassing her.
He told them to bite and they did.
The princess screamed and clawed at them and succumbed, falling over onto a mattress of what would destroy her.
The symphaths watched it all.
While Ehlena turned her head into Zsadist’s shoulder, Rehv closed his eyes and sat still as a statue in the center of the room, promising each and every one of the citizens before him something worse if they did not obey him. Which, in the twisted value system of symphaths, only confirmed their choice of ruler.
When the princess ceased her sobs and fell still, Rehv lifted his lids and called off the insect guard. In their recession, they revealed her swollen, pitted body, and it was clear she wasn’t getting up again—the venom in her veins had stopped her heart and clogged her lungs and shut down her central nervous system.
No matter how great her desire, there was no reanimating that corpse.
Rehv calmly told his robed and masked subjects to retreat to their quarters and meditate on the display. In response, he got back the symphath version of love: They feared him totally and therefore respected him.
At least, for the time being.
As one, the symphaths stood and filed out, and Rehv shook his head at Ehlena and Z, praying they did what he needed them to—which was stay right where they were.
With any luck, his brethren in the masks would assume he’d kill the interlopers at his leisure.
Rehv waited until the last sin-eater was gone not just from the chamber, but the halls beyond. And then he released the hold on his spine.
As his body slammed into the floor, Ehlena rushed over to him, her mouth working like she was speaking to him. He couldn’t hear her, though, and her toffee-colored eyes seemed all wrong viewed through the rose lenses of his symphath eyes.
I’m sorry, he mouthed. I’m sorry.
Something fucked-up happened to his vision at that point, and Ehlena was suddenly rifling through a backpack brought over by…Christ, was Vishous here, too?
Rehv faded in and out as things were done to him and shots given. A little later, the whirring sound started up again.
Where was Xhex? he wondered dimly. Probably gone to clear the way out after she killed the princess. She was like that, always with the exit strategy. God knew the practice had defined her life.
As he thought about his head of security…his comrade…his friend…he was pissed off that she’d broken her vow to him, but not all that surprised. The real question was how she’d managed to get up here without the Moors. Unless they’d come as well?
The whirring sound stopped, and Zsadist sat back on his heels, shaking his head.
In slow motion, Rehv looked down at himself.
Ah, he was still tethered by his shoulders, and they weren’t having any luck cutting through the chains. Knowing his uncle, those links were made of something stronger than any saw could get through.
“Leave me…” he mumbled. “Just leave me. Go…”
Ehlena’s face came back in front of his, and her lips moved with deliberation, as if she were trying to explain things to him—
Abruptly, having her so close triggered the bonded male in his blood and caused some of his depth perception to return—and he was relieved as her face started to assume its normal contours…and colors.
Rehv lifted a shaking hand up, wondering if she would let him touch her.
She did more than that. She clasped his palm hard and brought it to her lips for a kiss. She was still talking to him, not that he heard what she was saying, and he tried to concentrate. Stay with me. That was what it looked as if she were trying to communicate to him. Or perhaps he was picking up on that through the way she held on to his hand.
Ehlena reached out and stroked his hair back, and he got the impression she mouthed, Breathe deep for me.
Rehv inhaled to make her happy, and as he did, she glanced at something or someone behind him. She gave a quick nod to whoever it was.
At then pain exploded in his right shoulder, his whole body torquing, his mouth cracking wide to let out the scream.
He didn’t hear himself yell. Didn’t see anything else. Agony knocked him out cold.
SEVENTY-ONE
Ehlena rode home in the back of a black Escalade with Rehv curled up in her lap. The two of them were mashed into the rear section, but she didn’t care that there was barely enough room for his huge body alone. She wanted him this close.
Needed to put her hands on him and keep them there.
As soon as they’d torn the hooks out of his shoulders, she’d done the best she could with the horrible wounds left behind, quickly packing them with sterile gauze that she taped in place. The second she was done, Zsadist had picked him up and carried him out of that godforsaken chamber, with her and Vishous providing guard.
Xhex had been nowhere to be found on the trip out.
Ehlena tried to reassure herself that the female had gone to join the aboveground fight with the slayers, but the rationalization didn’t stick. Xhex never would have left Rehvenge until he was safely free from the colony.
As fear flickered through Ehlena’s chest, she tried to calm herself by stroking the stripe of thick dark hair that ran down Rehvenge’s head. In response, he turned his face into her, as if needing the comfort.
God, he might have symphath in him, but he had proven where his heart was: He had destroyed the princess and protected them all against those terrifying creatures in the masks and robes. Which said everything about whose side he was on, didn’t it? Without him somehow taking control of the colony, there was no way any of them, including the Brothers who’d been fighting lessers on the lawn, would have gotten out of there safely.
She glanced up at the others in the SUV. Rhage was wrapped in leather jackets, naked and shivering, the color of congealed oatmeal. They’d had to pull over twice so he could throw up, and given the way he was swallowing with such force, they were going to have to do that again soon. Vishous was next to him and didn’t look much better. The guy’s heavy legs were draped over Rhage’s lap—and with his head turned to the side and his eyes squeezed shut, it was pretty obvious that he had a concussion from where the princess had struck him. And way up front, Butch was in the passenger seat, reeking of a sickly sweetness that was no doubt making Rhage’s stomach worse.
Tohrment was behind the wheel, driving steadily and smoothly.
At least she didn’t worry about how they were getting home.
Rehvenge stirred and she immediately focused on him. As his amethyst eyes struggled to open, she shook her head.
“Shh…just lie there.” She stroked his face. “Shh…”
He shifted his shoulders and abruptly winced so hard his neck cracked. Wishing there were more that she could do for him, she retucked the blanket that had been wrapped around him. She’d given him as many painkillers as she dared, as well as antibiotics for the shoulder wounds, but she’d held back on antivenin, as he didn’t appear to have been bitten.
Given the way the princess had been carnaged, apparently those spiders and scorpions stung only on command, and Rehv had been spared that for some reason.
Abruptly, he grunted and strained, his hands pushing into the floor beneath him.
“No, don’t try to sit up.” She gently held his chest down. “Just lie with me here.”
Rehvenge collapsed back against her lap and brought one of his hands forward. As he found her palm, he mumbled, “Why…?”
She had to smile. “You ask that a lot, you know.”
“Why did you come?”
After a moment, she said quietly, “I followed my heart.”
Evidently, that didn’t make him happy. On the contrary, he grimaced as if in pain. “Don’t…deserve…your…”
Ehlena stiffened in alarm as he started bleeding from his eyes. “Rehvenge, stay still for me.” Trying not to panic, she reached for her backpack full of supplies, wondering what kind of medical crisis he was having.
Rehvenge caught her hands. “Just…tears.”
She stared at what appeared to be blood on his cheeks. “Are you sure?” When he nodded, she took a Kleenex out of her parka and dabbed his face carefully. “Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.”
“You shouldn’t…have come for me. You should have…left me there.”
“I told you,” she whispered, wiping away more. “Everyone deserves to be saved. It’s the way I look at the world.” As she met his beautiful, iridescent eyes, they seemed even more magical as they shimmered with their wash of red tears. “It’s the way I look at you.”
His lids squeezed shut, as if he couldn’t bear her compassion.
“You tried to protect me from all this, didn’t you,” she said. “That was what the showdown at ZeroSum was about.” When he nodded, she shrugged. “So why don’t you understand my need to save you, if you did the same for me?”
“Different…I’m a…symphath….”
“You’re not all symphath, though.” She thought of his marking scent. “Are you.”
Rehvenge shook his head reluctantly. “But not enough…vampire…for you.”
The sadness in him welled up, a rain cloud condensing over them both, and as she struggled for words, she touched his face again—and found that his skin was too cold for her liking. Shit…she was losing him in her arms. With every mile that took them closer to safety, his body was giving out on them both, his respiration growing logy, his heart rate slowing.
“Can you do something for me?” she said.
“Please…yes,” he replied roughly, even though his eyes fluttered shut and he started to shiver. As he curled into a tighter ball, she could see his spine jutting through the skin of his back even through the blanket.
“Rehvenge? Wake up.” When he looked at her, the purple in his eyes was that of a bruise, opaque and pained. “Rehvenge, would you please take my vein?”
In a rush, his lids peeled wide as though along with, We’re going to Disneyland!, and, How about some drive-thru for dinner?, what she’d said was the last thing he’d expected to come out of her mouth.
As his lips parted, she stopped him before he spoke. “If you ask me why, I’m going to be forced to give you a time-out.”
A small smile quirked the edge of his mouth, but then was lost. And even though his fangs had dropped down, their sharp tips suddenly revealed, he shook his head.
“Not like you,” he murmured, touching his tattooed chest with a weak hand. “Not good enough…for your blood.”
She shrugged out of one half of her parka and yanked up the sleeve of her turtleneck. “I’ll be the judge of that, thank you very much.”
As she put her wrist over his mouth, he licked his lips, his hunger rising so much, so fast, that color returned to his pale cheeks. And yet still he hesitated. “Are you…sure?”
She had an odd memory of the two of them in the clinic forever ago, jousting, circling each other, wanting and not taking. She smiled. “Absolutely. Positive.”
She dropped her vein onto his lips and knew he wouldn’t be able to resist her—sure enough, he tried to fight it…and lost. Rehvenge bit clean and sucked deep, a moan bubbling up as his eyes rolled back in bliss.
Ehlena stroked the hair that had grown out on either side of his mohawk and rejoiced quietly as he fed.
This was going to save him.
She was going to save him.
Not her blood, but her heart was going to save him.
As Rehvenge fed from his love’s wrist, he was overwhelmed and overwrought, at the mercy of emotions more powerful than his mind. She had come for him. She had gotten him out. And even knowing all she did about him, she was letting him feed and staring down at him with kindness.
But wasn’t that more a measure of who she was as a person than what she felt for him as a male? Wasn’t this duty and compassion instead of love?
He was too weak to read her grid. At least at first.
As his body revived though, so did his mind, and what she felt became known to him…
Duty. Compassion.
And love.
A complex joy flared in his chest. Part of him felt like he’d won the lottery against crippling odds. But the core of him knew that what he was would drive them apart even if the rest of the vampire population never found out about his mixed blood: He was supposedly the head of that colony.
Which was no place for Ehlena.
He released her vein and licked his lips. God…she tasted good.
“Do you want more?” she asked.
Yes. “No. I’ve had enough.”
She resumed stroking his hair, her nails rasping against his scalp. Closing his eyes, he felt his muscles and bones strengthen as what she had so graciously given him revived his body.
Yeah, it wasn’t just his arms and legs coming to life. His cock swelled and his hips surged forward, even though he was half-dead and his shoulders were on fire. But hard-ons were what happened to male vampires when they’d taken the vein of their mate.
Biology. He couldn’t help it.
As his body temperature stabilized, he uncurled from the heat-conserving crouch he’d been in, and in the process kicked off part of the blanket that was around him. Worried that he was flashing his cock, he reached down to pull the thing back into place.
Ehlena got there first.
And her eyes flared in the darkness as she tugged the cover back where it had been.
Rehv swallowed a couple of times, her taste still on his tongue and down the back of his throat. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t be.” She smiled and stared into his eyes. “You can’t help it. Besides, it means you’re probably out of the danger zone.”
And into the erotic one. Great. Nothing like extremes to spice life up.
“Ehlena…” He released a long, slow breath. “I can’t go back to the way things were.”
“If you mean being a drug lord and a pimp, somehow I’m not crushed.”
“Oh, that shit would be over with anyway. But no, I can’t return to Caldwell.”
“Why not?” When he didn’t respond right away, she said, “I hope you do. I want you to.”
The bonded male vampire in him was all, Yeehaw, sign us up. But he had to be practical.
“I’m different from you,” he said again, like it was his theme song.
“No, you’re not.”
Because she needed convincing and he could think of no better way of proving the point, he took her hand and moved it under the blanket, putting it on his cock. The contact made him shudder from pleasure, his hips bucking, but he reminded his libido that he was doing this to show her exactly how different he was.
He guided her to his barb, to the place at his base that was slightly uneven. “Do you feel that?”
She seemed to work for control for a moment, as if she were struggling against the same erotic current he was. “Yes…”
The husky way she drew out the word made his spine lift and recede, making his aro
usal slide in her palm. As his breath got short and his heart pounded, his voice grew deeper. “It locks in place when I…when I come. I’m not like what you’ve had before.”
As she explored him, Rehv tried to remain still, but the power in his body from the feeding, coupled with where her hand was, proved to be too enticing. He moved against her hold, arching in her lap, feeling strangely at her mercy.
Which was just another huge turn-on.
“Is that why you pulled out of me?” she said.
Rehv licked his lips again, remembering the feel of her core surrounding his—
The Escalade went over a bump in the road and he was abruptly reminded that the dark haven of the far back of the SUV was only semiprivate: They were not, in fact, alone.
But Ehlena didn’t remove her hand. “Is that why?”
“I didn’t want you to know about any of this. I wanted to…be normal for you. I wanted you to feel safe around me…and I wanted to be with you. That’s the why of the lying. I didn’t mean to fall in love with you. I didn’t want that for you—”
“What did you say?”
“I…I’m in love with you. I’m sorry, but that’s the way I feel.”
Ehlena grew so quiet, he worried that in his delirium he had seriously misread everything between them. Had he merely projected onto her grid that which the weak part of him had needed to find?
Except then she dropped her mouth to his and whispered, “Don’t hide from me ever again. I love you the way you are.”
A rush of gratitude and holy shit and OMG and thank you, manna from heaven overrode everything logical, and Rehv reached up for her, holding her head with care as he kissed her. At that moment, he didn’t give a fuck that there were complications way above and beyond their control, things that would drive them apart again as sure as the burning sun would rise at the end of the night.
To be accepted, though…to be accepted and loved for exactly who he was by the one he loved in return was too great a joy to be capsized by cold reality.
As they kissed, Ehlena started moving her hand under the blanket, her palm going up and down his hard shaft.
When he tried to pull back, she recaptured his mouth with hers. “Shh…trust me.”
