by Aja James
She nodded in answer to the question his mind couldn’t quite grasp enough to ask.
“My period was supposed to come around the time we came back from Japan. It never did.”
He grasped at straws, at reasonable explanations. “But that could just be the stress and perhaps the serum—”
“My Clear Blue Easy read a big fat positive at the first few drops of pee and I went to my OBGYN a week ago, confirming the results.”
So that was why she went to the hospital, Ryu thought. He’d been worried sick to his stomach that day when he’d followed her.
She could barely contain her joy, grinning so wide at him her face hurt.
“I’m pregnant! That’s why I also wanted to visit the Shield and have Rain run some more tests. I want to make sure in my new state, whatever this state is, there are no complications for the baby.”
He still hadn’t said a word, staring at her as if he’d never seen her before.
“Ryu, are you happy? You’re making me worried…”
He suddenly crushed her in his arms, holding her desperately tight.
“Thank you,” he choked out, his voice shaking with emotion. “Thank you.”
Dark Goddess! To be a father! He felt human. It was the best gift he could have ever been given, aside from Ava herself.
Ava squeezed him back for all she was worth.
“Another first,” she murmured, effervescent with joy.
He huffed.
“This one will be hard to beat,” he whispered. Never had he felt so full of hope and light.
She kissed him soulfully, getting lusty again.
“I’ll take that challenge and raise it, my love.”
And with that, she proceeded to add a few more firsts to their growing repertoire of firsts well into the early dawn.
Epilogue
Another Spring
I have lived with Inanna and Alad’s friends and comrades at a place called the Shield for almost a year.
Gabriel. I must remember to call Alad Gabriel, the human form in which he was reincarnated before Inanna claimed him as her Blooded Mate.
And Benjamin. I have had the greatest pleasure in making the acquaintance of their adopted son. It seems as if I have always loved him.
I am thankful to have my daughter and the son of my heart with me here, something familiar and comforting amidst all the strange magic that exists in this present time—so many machines, i-things, rain that pours from the ceiling to facilitate washing, hot and cold water at the turn of a knob…
And toilets. Whoever invented toilets is a genius. Inanna teases me that there are even more amazing devices called the bidet, that not only flushes a person’s waste into the sewers but also cleanses the area with water sprays.
She says the seat even warms up at the push of a button.
I do not really believe her, because she always has a smile in her voice when she says such things. Perhaps she is just “pulling my leg.”
Such strange American expressions.
This is where I am. America. North, to be exact. In a city called Boston. I never dreamed that there would be such a place, so far away from my ancient home of Akkad. So many things have changed. So many things to learn and absorb.
Yet I have no sight to guide me.
For the first couple of months, I stayed mostly within an enclosure in a secluded part of the Shield, attached to machines. The resident healer, Rain, spent many hours with me each day, trying to help my body heal with her zhen as well as continuous nutrients injected directly into my bloodstream.
After a few weeks, I was able to take food directly through the mouth. My stomach could hold it down if I ate tender, digestible victuals.
I cannot see myself in the mirror to track my body’s progress, but I feel much stronger, though not nearly as strong as I used to be many millennia ago.
I am not complaining. I can move freely by my own power. I am clean, and I am never hungry or thirsty.
A bone-deep pain remains, pulsing beneath my skin, burning like acid in my veins. But I am so used to it that I barely notice it any more.
The healer tells me that my condition is similar to the Decline experienced by Pure Ones whose love is not returned by the one to whom they have given their heart and soul. But the Decline only lasts thirty days before death releases the tormented one. My “condition” has lasted for many millennia.
Rain says that if she cannot find a solution, whatever I have may at any moment cause my body to stop functioning at it should. I could go into shock or become paralyzed.
I could die without warning.
I obtained the promise from the healer not to tell my family. Why burden my daughter with facts she cannot change? She would try to save me if she knew, but it would be a waste of time and effort.
Only she can heal me. With a love that no longer exists.
I want to spend as much of what time I have left with my daughter focusing on the good things in life. Her love for her Mate. Her love for her son. These are the most important things. The very best things.
I have known such joy as well, however brief, however bittersweet.
There is a saying I have learned, listening to the audio books Inanna and Gabriel bring me as a way to learn about the world as well as to pass the time:
It is better to have love and lost than to not have loved at all.
It is true. I have lived the momentary bliss and the eternal anguish that follows. I cannot forget her, no matter how I try. It is for her that I must get stronger. For those I love, my daughter, her mate, her son—
My love.
I must become a warrior again.
I have been training with the Elite warriors for several months now after the initial half-year of physical therapy.
While I am still far behind where I used to be as the General that led our race into the Great War with the Dark Ones, with my sight gone and my body damaged, I am still a force to be reckoned with. I am learning new fighting techniques, relying on sharper senses beyond vision. The magic “technology” of this time will aid me further.
They do not know what they’re up against. They do not know Medusa’s cunning and the depth of her evil. She will come for them one by one.
I must protect them to the end.
My beloved Dark Ones.
Excerpt from Book #4 Dark Pleasures
Chapter One
How did a two-hundred-thirty-year-old vampire find himself on a blind date with a human female cyber genius?
A remote part of Devlin Sinclair’s mind pondered this question with immense curiosity and astonishment while the rest of him focused on the task at hand.
“That seat is taken.”
The Hunter of the Dark Ones flashed his most engaging and disarming of grins, nearly blinding the occupants of the nearby tables at Raoul’s with its brilliance.
At the very least mesmerizing guests of the female variety.
“Mith, am I right?” he called the woman seated before him by her encrypted chat room handle, knowing full well that her name was actually Grace Elizabeth Darling. Twenty-nine years old, single, and wanted by several government agencies for her cyber hacking skills since the age of twelve.
She tipped her head slightly to one side and gave him a slow, meticulous, dispassionate appraisal from head to toe.
As if he were the restaurant’s special menu for the evening, and she found every item on the list less than appetizing.
“You’re not Azor Ahai,” she stated with absolute certainty.
Devlin mentally rolled his eyes and stifled a sigh.
No, he was not the Prince Who Was Promised, according to George R.R. Martin’s magnum opus A Song of Ice and Fire.
He wasn’t even the man who used the name as his online handle in the chat room where he occasionally traded conversational volleys with Grace.
No, Devlin Sinclair, Marquess of Hartington in his human life, was the royal henchman to the New England vampire queen Jade Cicad
a.
Devlin had in the past few months painstakingly insinuated himself into the role of Grace Darling’s chat room flirtation so that he could track the elusive cyber genius down in the flesh.
“I am,” Devlin said presently, blinking his eyes with innocence and injecting a slightly wounded look into his countenance for her immediate rejection of his identity.
She stared unblinkingly back at him, her expression unsmiling and devoid of any emotion.
“I expected you to be balding and pudgy, and maybe a foot shorter,” she said.
“There are no pictures of me anywhere, I made sure of that,” Devlin pointed out, though he knew that the real man was in fact as she described.
He’d chosen to get closer to her through this particular identity precisely because the man suffered from extreme paranoia and took care never to leave traces of himself. Who better to impersonate than a ghost on the Net and an invisible man in real life?
That, and the fact that he engaged in far more conversations and commanded more minutes of Grace’s time than anyone else in cyber space, where she lived for fourteen out of her sixteen waking hours each day, ostensibly as the work-from-home Enterprise Architect at the hottest new tech startup Zenn.
It was a stroke of pure luck that Grace herself initiated this face-to-face meeting just as Devlin almost gave up on tracing her, though his own digital abilities were substantial.
But not as good as hers.
“I hacked some satellite images and filtered the distortion. I got one of you walking through Central Park while eating a Big Mac a couple of weeks ago.”
There was no accusation or apology in her voice. She simply stated a fact and waited for him to refute or confirm.
Huh. Devlin had to admire her resourcefulness, but he was not surprised. He would have expected no less given her skills.
“I must have had some sun glinting off my hair that day, which you mistook for the bald spot, and I was bundled in a heavy coat, which probably made me look a bit…fluffier,” he suggested smoothly.
“It was nighttime.”
“How forgetful of me,” he corrected with another flash of teeth, but she didn’t seem the least bit distracted by their brilliant whiteness.
“It was the light from the street lamps, not the sun.”
She made no reply. Instead, she unhurriedly took her napkin from her lap, put it back on the table, pushed her chair back, slung a small backpack onto one shoulder and got up to leave.
Devlin thought fast.
“How is Miu-Miu?”
She paused and looked up at him, her expression still a neutral mask.
“And Antony and Cleopatra?”
Devlin quickly glanced at his watch, quickly because he didn’t trust her not to disappear in a puff of smoke if he took his eyes off her for even a millisecond.
“You don’t need to go home to feed them for another few hours. Let’s sit down and have our dinner, shall we? I, for one, am famished.”
She stood there regarding him with that fathomless dark stare, and Devlin would have given half his considerable fortune to know what she was thinking. He read people very easily; it was one of his many natural gifts. But this woman was a Sphinx as far as he was concerned.
Perhaps because in order for a human book to be read, there had to be emotional signatures, but in Grace’s case, there was only cold logic. Encrypted cold logic.
Seeing that she was hesitant enough to at least remain stationary rather than dash out the door and disappear without a trace, Devlin pushed his luck further by walking around her and pulling out her chair again.
“Please do take a seat. This is your favorite restaurant, isn’t it? It took some doing to get a reservation. I would hate to waste it.”
He held his position for several seconds, one hand on the arm of her chair, one hand ever so lightly settling on her shoulder to guide her into the chair, while she considered her options.
But really, any choice she thought she had was an illusion. Now that Devlin had seen her in the flesh, she would only escape him if he allowed it.
The Hunter never lost his prey.
*** *** *** ***
Check out Book 1, Pure Healing.
Book 2, Dark Longing.
Dear reader:
Thank you for reading Dark Desires. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!
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Aja James
