The Vampire's Bond: A Vampire Romance For Adults (The Bonded Series Book 1)

by Samantha Snow

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE VAMPIRE'S BOND

  A VAMPIRE ROMANCE FOR ADULTS

  SAMANTHA SNOW

  Copyright ©2018 by Samantha Snow

  All rights reserved.

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  About This Book

  When young Siobhan MacLeod fell to her death she figured that was the end of her very short life.

  However, shortly after dying she found herself alive again.

  Handsome vampire Jack Blackwell had came across her lifeless body and saved her in the only way he knew possible.

  By turning her into a vampire.

  Now Siobhan is set to be bonded to this mysterious vampire for the rest of her existence.

  And in more ways than one...

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  From the time she was a little girl, Siobhan MacLeod had always been fascinated by the sky. It was impossible, as far as she was concerned, not to be in awe of something so much bigger than the rest of them. It was why she’d left the city as soon as she’d turned eighteen and why, eight years later, she lived in the middle of nowhere. Just her, her dog, and her cabin. And the sky. What else could she ask for?

  Her house was small. While she would have liked to say she had built the log cabin herself, it would have been a bald-faced lie. Still, she had made it her own, and she liked the rustic look of the bare logs and the red trim. Besides, she’d had sworn from the time she was little that she was going to have a house with a window seat and actual shutters, and she had pulled through on that promise.

  The woods she had claimed as her own were quiet, and little happened there of any note. That was why, as a light shot through the sky over the house one night, Siobhan hardly even paused to think before she began to follow it. It was far too low in the sky to be a comet or a meteor, and the ground trembled slightly beneath her feet as it crashed somewhere over the hill, followed by the sound of cracking trees. Siobhan put on a burst of speed, her dog bounding at her side.

  It didn’t take long to find the crater. It wasn’t particularly big around, but it was surprisingly deep. Stranger still, it was an eerily perfect circle, and Siobhan stood at the edge and stared downward cautiously, her green eyes wide in amazement. Whatever it was at the center of the crater, it glowed with golden light, bright enough that she had to lift a pale, freckled hand to shield her eyes.

  There was a sound like rustling feathers and then a gust of wind as it rose upward from the crater, causing her bright red hair to whip around Siobhan’s face. The light dimmed, and she lowered her hand, staring straight in front of her at the being hovering over the crater.

  It—he—looked like a person, albeit a very tall one, save for the six massive wings of golden feathers spreading from his back. His skin was tan, and his hair was so blond it was nearly white. He was wearing armor, though Siobhan couldn’t tell what it was made of. And he watched Siobhan with impassive blue eyes that glowed in the darkness.

  His wings flapped, and he advanced toward her. Siobhan backed away slowly, and as the being landed on the lip of the crater, Siobhan lifted her hands, her fingers spread and her palms facing him to show that she was unarmed.

  “I come in peace.” She knew the words sounded stupid as soon as they got past her lips, but it was all she could think of to say. “I’m just going to turn around and go home. Please.”

  Slowly, he tipped his head to one side, though his expression remained just as stoic as ever. He gave no indication that he had heard her or understood her. He never said a word.

  He advanced on her so quickly it was almost like he teleported, one hand closing around her throat with thoughtless ease. Siobhan’s last gasp of air wheezed past her lips, and she curled her hands around his wrist, tugging at it fruitlessly. His grip was as unyielding as steel.

  Slowly, he began to rise from the ground, Siobhan dangling from his hold like a helpless kitten. Higher and higher he rose, unbothered by Siobhan’s gradually weakening struggles or by Barton’s barking from the ground below.

  Eventually, his ascent stopped, and he glanced between Siobhan and the ground below contemplatively, as if he was gauging the distance. Siobhan had one crystal clear, horrible moment of realization, just before he opened his hand and dropped her, letting her plummet to the ground below.

  The fall lasted only for a second, and she hardly even felt the impact when she hit the ground. Leaves, grass, and dirt rushed up around her, displaced by her arrival, and the ground seemed to creak. There was half a second of stabbing pain in her head, and then it faded. She tasted blood in her mouth, air wheezed from her lungs in fitful gasps, and she couldn’t get any of her limbs to cooperate.

  She could hear leaves crunching as if from very far away, and everything sounded as if it was coming through a tunnel. Barton’s face was hazy as he looked down at her, pointed ears flattened against his head. He whined in distress, and the noise was tinny and distant. When he began to lick her face, it felt more like someone was running an electric current beneath her skin.

  Above her, she could still see the winged being hovering in the air, watching her with something like curious boredom. Finally, though, his wings spread, and he turned and disappeared.

  Barton curled up at Siobhan’s side, resting his snout on her chest. He whined each time the rise and fall of her chest stuttered.

  For how long she lay there, she wasn’t sure. She couldn’t see the moon from her position. Was it minutes? Hours, even? She supposed it couldn’t have been too long, as it never got bright enough to indicate that the sun was coming up.

  She thought of her little cabin with the telescope on the balcony and the wood stove that kept the house warm in the winter. She thought of the gas stove that had cost her a small fortune. And her boss and coworkers and the small bar where they all worked.

  Would any of them notice when she didn’t head in to work tomorrow? Would they report her missing? How long would her body lay in the dirt before someone found it? And wh
at about Barton? What would happen to him? Would he be put to sleep for what he was, or would someone have compassion for the wolf-dog and take him in?

  Her thoughts were getting hazier, like her mind had been submerged in honey. She tried to stay awake, but her thoughts flitted away from her, likes leaves on the wind, always just out of reach.

  She could hear the sound of leaves crunching beneath a pair of boots, and Barton leaped to his feet to stand over her. His hackles rose, and he bared his teeth as he growled, but it was as if all of it was happening at a distance. Like Siobhan was watching it through a television screen, rather than right in front of herself.

  She heard a man’s voice say, “Well, that’s not good,” and Barton’s growling ratcheted up a few decibels. The mutt surged forward a step, jaws snapping, only to retreat back to Siobhan’s side almost instantly. “Hey!” the voice protested. A moment later, Barton yelped and was gone from her side, but she could still hear him barking. She took comfort in that fact.

  Dimly, she noted that it was unusual for someone to be so unaffected by Barton. A full fifty percent wolf, the hybrid was not a small creature, and from his close-set golden eyes to the shallow dip in his skull to his pointed ears, low-hung head, too-long legs, and straight back, he far more resembled a brown and black wolf than a German shepherd. And whoever the man was, he was evidently entirely unaffected by the sight.

  The man leaned over her, peering down at her. Her vision was tunneling, though, and any details about him flitted away as she tried to fit them together. There was a pair of quiet thumps as he dropped to his knees beside her.

  “Sadistic bastards,” he grumbled, mostly to himself, before he turned his attention back to her. “This isn’t going to be fun,” he cautioned, before he sat her up, most of her weight supported against his shoulder, as she still couldn’t get any of her limbs to work to actually hold herself up. Her back made an ominous cracking noise as he shifted her, and her skull throbbed anew as her head fell back against his shoulder.

  He tipped her head aside, baring the curve of her shoulder where it met her neck. She couldn’t see what he was doing after that, but she felt something like a series of needle pricks, all of them landing at the same time. There was pressure after that, like someone pressing too hard against her neck. She tried to squirm away, but she was like a puppet whose strings had been snapped.

  She heard him grunt, and then something warm and wet began to steadily drip onto her shoulder.

  She could hardly feel it, at first. And then it just burned a bit. Very quickly, “burned a bit” escalated to “burned like hellfire,” and the feeling began to spread from her shoulder, down to her arm, up her neck, and down her other arm. It spread down her back, through her ribs, and down her legs until even her toes burned like she was being dipped in acid.

  “It will be over soon enough,” he soothed, though Siobhan didn’t feel particularly reassured. She could still hear Barton barking, and she just wished he would shut up, that the man would take his hands off her, and that she could go to sleep.

  The burning feeling only got worse from there, until she was sure her skin was going to start peeling off. When her eyes rolled back into her head and she lost any semblance of consciousness, it was a relief.

  *

  Even in her dreams, Siobhan felt like she was burning, but at least in her sleep it didn’t hurt. Rather, it felt like a renewal. Like something new was coming into the world, and she was at its core. Her fleshed burned away until she was nothing but golden ash, and even she wasn’t sure what would rise from the ashes.

  Whatever it was, hopefully it would burn less than reality. Hopefully, it would be less dismal. Less painful. Hopefully she could still return to her cabin and her forest and her telescope. She didn’t ask for much in life. Was there any fairness in stealing the little she wanted from her? Did life even care about fairness at all? (She suspected the answer to that question was no, or else she never would have found that crater and she would be counting constellations on her balcony.)

  She dreamed she was a phoenix, with golden feathers and a nest of ash, though it blew away as she flapped her wings, lost and left behind like so many other things were bound to be. Though what was going to be left behind and whether or not she could ever reclaim it, she wasn’t sure. She could only guess, and even then, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Did anyone ever want to speculate on what they might lose?

  She took to the air, ash and fire fading beneath her as she rose higher and higher into the sky, as if she was born to be there. Whatever she was leaving behind, it seemed less pressing as she got farther and farther away from it.

  *

  Eventually, perhaps surprisingly, Siobhan woke. Wherever she was, the lights were off, but it still felt like everything was too bright, so the darkness looked less like true darkness, and more like a nighttime filter laid over a film.

  She was on a bed, and she could already tell that it was softer than the bed in her cabin, but the sheets smelled dusty and the pillowcase scratched against her skin. Her clothing smelled of blood and dirt and leaves, and her hair was matted to the back of her head. She smelled disgusting.

  Slowly, slowly, she sat up, with no small amount of surprise when her limbs actually obeyed her commands and dragged her upright. She swung her legs to the side to let her feet land on the area rug with a quiet thump that still seemed too loud. It was as if the world had been replaced with a television set, with the volume and brightness set too high.

  She found herself in some sort of bedroom. A guestroom, she assumed, just based on how scarce the furnishings were and how plain the existing furniture was. There was a bed, a side table, a mostly empty bookshelf, a rug, a window, and a door. The curtains were drawn over the window, blocking any light from getting in. She leaned over, pulling one corner of the curtain away to peer through the glass. Moonlight greeted her.

  So either she hadn’t been asleep for very long at all, or she had been asleep for the better part of a day. She supposed she wasn’t going to find out anything, though, by just sitting there like a bump on a log.

  Cautiously, she tried to stand, only to sit back down heavily before she even managed to straighten halfway up. She sank into the mattress.

  The door opened with a quiet, dwindling squeak, and a familiar voice observed, “Ah, I thought I heard you moving around.” The man from the woods, whoever he was.

  He looked like he was only a few inches taller than her, with short black hair that was mostly swept to one side. His eyes were a rather peculiar shade of bronzed green, and his skin was so pale that he made Siobhan look tan in comparison. He was built like a swimmer, with broad shoulders and a trim waist, and most of his height seemed to come from his legs.

  Siobhan eyed him warily, her hands closing into fists against the edge of the mattress, only to immediately relax when she felt the fabric begin to tear beneath her grip. She blinked down at it, suspicion temporarily replaced with confusion.

  “You’ll adjust in time,” he assured her as he stepped fully into the room, letting the door thump closed behind him as he did. “It just takes a bit of getting used to and some self-control.”

  “What takes a bit of getting used to?” she asked sharply, and her voice sounded too loud to her own ears.

  “My name is Jonathan Blackwell,” he replied, as if that answered any of her questions at all. “Jack, mostly. I’m a vampire.”

  Siobhan stared at him like he had sprouted an extra head and a new pair of arms. “I’m sorry,” she began faintly, “but could you repeat that?”

  He smiled slightly. “You heard me right.”

  “A…vampire,” Siobhan repeated, still staring at him. In fact, she planned to continue to stare at him until he started making some sort of sense, or at least something approximating sense. Even just something in the same neighborhood as sense would be enough for her.

  She reached up to run a hand through her hair, only to pause when she realized just how disgusting her ha
ir was just then, stilled caked in dried, matted blood. From where she had cracked her skull open. All things considered, she seemed to be doing remarkably well after that tap on the head.

  She looked down at herself. True, her clothing was still covered in blood and filthy with the debris of the forest, but both of her arms and both of her legs were cooperating, she could feel her hands and feet, and she could take a full breath. Even though she was pretty sure she had snapped her spine on impact.

  Slowly, she looked at Jack again, and he was giving her a knowing smile.

  “How about this?” he offered pleasantly, planting his hands on his hips. “I show you to the bathroom so you can get cleaned up, and then afterward, I’ll explain what’s going on. Sound good? Because you smell like an abandoned slaughter house.”

  She glared at him weakly in return, but she couldn’t really argue. So, she nodded slowly and got up, carefully pushing herself to her feet. She wobbled for a moment once she was upright, then she steadied herself with one hand on the bedpost until she felt like her legs were actually going to hold her steady.