by J. R. Ward
Rehvenge collapsed into the passion, riding the wave she called out of his body, letting her do exactly what she wanted to him. He tried to keep quiet, not wanting the others to know, and prayed that at least the two in the seats in front of them had passed out.
It didn’t take long for his balls to cinch up tight and for his hands to crank down on her hair. Gasping against her mouth, he gave one last great thrust and came hard, soaking her hand and his stomach and the blanket.
When her touch drifted down to his barb and she felt the extension, he froze, praying she wasn’t disgusted by the way he was built.
“I want to feel this inside me,” she groaned against his lips.
As her words sank in, Rehvenge’s body exploded in orgasm again.
Man…he couldn’t wait for them to get wherever they were going.
SEVENTY-TWO
The following morning, Ehlena woke up naked in the bed she’d slept in before they’d all gone up to the colony. Next to her, Rehvenge’s huge, warm body was as close to her as it could get, and he was awake.
At least in one sense of the word.
His erection was hot and hard against the back of her thigh, and he was rubbing it against her. She knew what was coming next, and she welcomed him as he rolled on top of her, mounted her, found his way between her legs. As he sank in deep and moved with sleepy instinct, her body echoed his rhythm and her arms went around his neck.
There were bite marks on his throat. A lot of them.
Bite marks on hers as well.
She closed her eyes, losing herself once again in Rehvenge…in them.
The day they had passed together in this guest room of the Brotherhood’s hadn’t just been about sex. There had been a lot of talking. She’d explained to him everything that had happened, including the inheritance and how she’d figured it all out, and how Xhex had not technically broken her vow to him when the female had headed for the colony.
God…Xhex.
No one had heard from her. And whatever joy and relief and triumph might have been felt at all of the Brothers and Rehvenge coming home without mortal injury was dimmed to the point of regret.
Rehvenge was going to go up to the colony at nightfall and search, but Ehlena could read in his face that he didn’t think that was where she was.
It was just too odd and scary. No one had seen her body, but they hadn’t seen her leave. Or caught sight of her outside of that chamber. It was as if she had just disappeared.
“Oh, God, Ehlena…I’m coming….”
As Rehv’s body jackhammered against her, she held on to her mate and let the sex take over, knowing that hard thoughts and sharp anxiety would be waiting for her on the other side of the orgasm. She heard her name being called out as Rehv released and then felt that exciting, rushing grab as he engaged deep within her.
All she had to do was think of it and her own orgasm erupted, carrying her over the edge.
When they were both satiated, Rehvenge rolled to the side, being careful not to try to separate them too soon. As his amethyst eyes focused properly, he brushed her hair back from her face.
“Perfect way to wake up,” he murmured.
“I agree.”
Their eyes met and held, and after a while, he said, “Can I ask you something? And it’s not a why, it’s a what.”
“Hit me.” She leaned up and kissed him quickly.
“What are you doing for the rest of your life?”
Ehlena’s breath caught. “I thought…you said you couldn’t stay in Caldwell.”
His massive shoulders, which were still bandaged, shrugged. “Thing is, I can’t leave you. Just isn’t going to happen. Every hour next to you just makes that reality all the more clear. I literally…can’t go unless you make me.”
“Which is isn’t going to happen.”
“It…isn’t?”
Ehlena framed his face with her palms, and the instant she did, he stilled. Which was something that happened every time she touched him. It was as if he were perpetually waiting for some kind of command from her…but then, that was what bonded male vampires were like, weren’t they. Yes, they were stronger and more physically powerful than their mates, but the shellans ran the show.
“Looks like I’m spending my future with you,” she said against his mouth.
He shuddered, as if he were letting his last doubts go. “I don’t deserve you.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I’m going to take care of you.”
“I know.”
“And like I said, I’m not going back to what I did before here in town.”
“Good.” He paused, as if he wanted to reassure her even more and was searching for words. “Stop talking and kiss me again. My heart’s made up and so is my mind, and there’s nothing more you need to tell me. I know who you are. You’re my hellren.”
As their mouths met, she was well aware that there was a lot to sort out. If they lived among the vampires, they were going to have to continue protecting his symphath identity. And she didn’t know what he was going to do about the colony up north—she had a feeling all that circling and worshiping business meant that he was in some kind of leadership role there.
But they were going to face all that and more together.
Which was the only thing that mattered.
Eventually, he pulled back. “I’m going to shower and go see Bella, okay?”
“Good, I’m glad.” He and his sister had had only a brief, awkward hug before everyone had gone to bed. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
“I will.”
Rehvenge left the bedroom a half hour later, dressed in a pair of sweats and a thick sweater that one of the Brothers had given him. With no clue where to go, he tagged a doggen who was vacuuming in the hall and asked for directions to Bella and Z’s bedroom.
It wasn’t far. Just a couple of doors down.
Rehv went to the end of the hallway full of Greco-Roman statuary and knocked where he’d been told to. When there was no answer, he tried the next door up, through which he could hear Nalla’s soft crying.
“Come in,” Bella called out.
Rehv opened the way into the nursery slowly, unsure of the welcome he was going to get.
Across a room that had bunnies stenciled on the walls, Bella was sitting in a rocking chair, her foot working against the carpet, her young cradled in her arms. In spite of the tender treatment, though, Nalla was not happy, her fussy, whimpering dissatisfaction at the world painfully apparent.
“Hi,” Rehv said before his sister looked over. “It’s me.”
Bella’s blue eyes rose to meet his, and he watched her face go through all kinds of emotions. “Hi.”
“Mind if I come in?”
“Please do.”
He closed the door behind himself and then wondered if she wouldn’t feel safe shut in with him. He went to reopen it, but she stopped him.
“It’s okay.”
He wasn’t so sure of that, so he stayed across the room from her, watching as Nalla registered his presence. And reached out for him.
A month ago, a lifetime ago, he would have gone over and taken the young into his arms. Not now. Probably not ever again.
“She’s so fussy today,” Bella said. “And once again my feet are tired. I can’t walk around with her in my arms for even a minute longer.”
“Yeah.”
There was a long silence as they both focused on the young.
“I never knew about you,” Bella said eventually. “I never would have guessed.”
“I didn’t want you to know. Neither did Mahmen.” As the words left his lips, he said a quick, silent prayer for their mother, hoping that she would forgive him for the fact that the dark, horrible secret was now known. The thing was, though, life had played out as it had, the revelation not his to control.
God knew he’d taken his best shot at keeping the veil of lies in place.
“Was she…How did it happen?” Bella a
sked in a small voice. “How did…you…happen?”
Rehvenge thought about how to phrase things, tried out some lines in his head, changed words and added new ones. The image of his mother’s face kept intruding, though, and in the end he just looked at his sister and slowly shook his head from side to side. As Bella paled, he knew she had guessed the gist of it all. Symphaths had been known to snatch females from the general population before. Particularly the beautiful, refined ones.
That was part of the reason the sin-eaters ended up in that colony.
“Oh, God…” Bella closed her eyes.
“I’m sorry.” He wanted so badly to go to her. So very badly.
When she opened her lids again, she brushed away tears and then straightened her shoulders as if she were gathering strength.
“My father…” She cleared her throat. “Did he mate her knowing the truth about you?”
“Yes.”
“She never loved him. At least, not that I saw.” When Rehv stayed silent, because he was not going to go into that mating if he could help it, she frowned. “If he knew about you…did he threaten to expose her and you unless she committed to him?”
Rehv’s silence seemed to be enough of an answer, because his sister nodded tightly. “That makes more sense to me. It makes me very angry…but I can see why she stayed with him now.” There was a hard pause. “What else aren’t you telling me, Rehvenge.”
“Listen, what happened in the past—”
“Is my life!” As the young squawked, Bella lowered her voice. “It’s my life, goddamn it. A life that everyone else around me knew more about than I did. So you’d better fucking tell me everything, Rehvenge. If you want us to have any relationship at all, you’d better tell me everything.”
Rehv exhaled hard. “What do you want to know first.”
His sister swallowed hard. “That night my father died…I took Mahmen to the clinic. I took her because she had fallen down.”
“I remember.”
“She didn’t fall down, did she.”
“No.”
“Not once.”
“No.”
Bella eyes shimmered, and as if to distract herself, she tried to capture one of Nalla’s falling fists. “Did you…that night, did you…”
He didn’t want to answer the unfinished question, but he was through with lying to his nearest and dearest. “Yes. Sooner or later he would have killed her. It was him or Mahmen.”
A tear trembled on Bella’s lashes and fell off, landing on Nalla’s cheek. “Oh…God…”
As he watched his sister’s shoulders huddle in, as if she were cold and in need of shelter, he wanted to point out that she still had him to turn to. That he would still be there for her if she wanted him to be. That he remained her Rooster, her brother, her protector. But he wasn’t the same to her and never would be again: Though he hadn’t changed, her perception of him had been completely altered, and that meant he was a different person.
A stranger with a shockingly familiar face.
Bella swiped under both her eyes. “I feel like I don’t know my own life.”
“Can I come a little closer. I won’t hurt you or the young.”
He waited forever.
And still longer.
Bella’s mouth compressed into a tight line, as if she were trying to keep soul-racking sobs in. Then she reached out to him, taking the hand that had wiped away her tears and extending it to him.
Rehv dematerialized across the room. Because running would have taken too long.
Crouching down next to her, he took that palm of hers between both his hands and brought those cold fingers to his cheek.
“I’m so sorry, Bella. I’m so sorry about you and Mahmen. I tried to apologize to her for my birth…I swear to you I did. It’s just…talking about it was too hard for her and me.”
Bella’s luminous blue eyes rose to his, the tears in them magnifying the beauty of her stare. “But why would you apologize? None of this was your fault. You were innocent…utterly innocent. This was not your fault, Rehvenge. Not. Your. Fault.”
His heart stopped as he realized…that was what he had needed to hear. All his life he had blamed himself for being born and wished he could make amends for the crime against his mother that had resulted in…him.
“It wasn’t your doing, Rehvenge. And she loved you. With everything she had, Mahmen loved you.”
He didn’t know how it happened, but suddenly his sister was in his arms, up tightly against his chest, she and her young in the haven of strength and love he offered.
The lullaby left his lips on nothing more than breath—there were no words to the gentle tune because his throat refused to let them through. The only thing that came out of him was the rhythm of the old ancient rhyme.
It was all they needed, though—that which couldn’t be heard was enough to pull the past into the present and unite brother and sister once again.
When Rehvenge could go on no longer, even with as little as he was doing, he rested his head on his sister’s shoulder and hummed to keep it going….
As all the while the next generation slept soundly, surrounded by her family.
SEVENTY-THREE
John Matthew lay in the bed that Xhex had used, his head on pillows and his body on sheets that carried not just her scent but that of the cold, soulless sex they’d had when he’d come to her. In the chaos of the night, the doggen had yet to clean the room, and when the maid finally arrived to do it, he was going to turn her away.
No one was touching this place. Period.
Stretched out where he was, he was fully armed and dressed in the clothes he’d gone up to the colony to fight in. He was cut in a number of places, one of which was still bleeding, judging by the fact that his sleeve was wet, and he had a headache that was either a hangover or another battle wound. Not that it mattered.
His eyes locked on the bureau across the way.
The vicious cilices Xhex had insisted on wearing around her thighs sat on top of the dresser very much in the same way he lay on the bed—they were out of place, having nothing to do with the silver brush set they were next to.
The fact that she’d left them behind gave him hope. He was assuming that she used the pain they caused to control her symphath urges, so if she didn’t have them on, that meant she had another weapon at her disposal to fight with.
And she would be fighting. Wherever she was, she would be in battle, because that was her nature.
Although, man, he wished he had fed from her. That way…maybe he could have sensed where she was. Or known for sure that she was still alive.
To keep himself from getting violent, he reviewed what he’d learned from the various field reports that had come in when everyone had gotten back to the mansion.
Zsadist and V had been with her and Ehlena in the chamber where Rehvenge had been found. The princess had shown up, and so had Lash. Xhex had shot the symphath bitch…right before the entire colony had decided to pull a worshipful routine around Rehv, their new king.
Princess had then made a Night of the Living Dead reappearance. Rehv had fucked her up. Dust had settled…and Lash and Xhex hadn’t been seen again.
That was all anyone knew.
Evidently Rehv planned on heading up to the colony at nightfall to look for her…but John knew the guy was going to come up with nothing. She wasn’t with the symphaths.
Lash had snatched her. It was the only possible explanation. After all, her body hadn’t been found on the way out, and there was no way in hell she would have taken off without making sure everybody else got to safety first. And the thing was, according to everyone who’d been in that chamber, Rehv had owned the will of all of those symphaths. So it wasn’t like any of them could have broken free and overpowered her mentally.
Lash had her.
Lash was back from the dead and aligned with the Omega somehow, and on his way out of the colony, he had taken her with him.
John was going to ki
ll that motherfucker. With his bare hands.
As anger rose in him until he was choking on all the pissed-off, he rolled away from what was on the bureau, unable to bear the idea that Xhex might be in pain.
At least lessers were impotent, though. If Lash was a lesser… he was impotent.
Thank God.
With a plaintive sigh, John rubbed his face in a spot that smelled particularly strong of Xhex’s gorgeous, dark scent.
If he could have, he would have gone back to the day before and…he still wouldn’t have walked past her door. No, he would have come in here again. But he would have been kinder to her than she had been to him that first time they’d been together.
And he also would have forgiven her when she had said she was sorry.
Lying in the dark with his regrets and his fury, he counted the hours until nightfall and made plans. He knew Qhuinn and Blay were going to go out with him—not because he asked them to, but because they weren’t going to listen to him when he told them to mind their own business.
But that was it. He wasn’t telling Wrath or the Brothers a thing. He didn’t need them putting all kinds of safety features on this runaway carnival ride. Nope, he and his buddies were going to find Lash where he slept and slaughter him once and for all. If this got John kicked out of the house? Fine. He was on his own anyway.
Here was the thing: Xhex was his female, whether she wanted to be or not. And he was not the kind of male who was going to sit on his ass when his mate was out there in a world of hurt.
He was going to do exactly what had been done for Rehvenge.
He was going to avenge her.
He was going to bring her home safe…and make sure that the one who had taken her ended up in Hell.
SEVENTY-FOUR
When Wrath heard the knock on the study door, he stood up from behind the desk. It had taken an hour for him and Beth to empty the dainty thing out, which had been a surprise. Fucker had held a lot in its tiny drawers.
“Is it here?” he asked his shellan. “Is it them?”
“Let’s hope so.” Beth’s footsteps sounded out as the door opened, like she was trying to get a good look. “Oh…it’s beautiful.”
