He would stand with her because he loved her. For some wonderful, unknown reason, he likewise understood.
“I don’t suppose,” Dexter continued a few minutes later. He heaved himself back to his feet and raised his sword to indicate that she should do the same, “that Nicholas has attempted to contact you since your birthday?”
Heat kissed her cheeks, and Raven glanced down. “Um…I must’ve skipped that part.”
The Guardian’s eyes widened. “He has attempted contact?”
“About three seconds after Paimon vanished, Nicholas was very much there.” Then he’d done things to her body that made her heart sing and inspired tears to her achingly tired eyes. For a man who didn’t remember her at all, he certainly knew how she liked to be touched. Granted, Nicolai remained the only other man who had ever gotten so close and he’d introduced Raven to what she liked. Since Nicholas was Nicolai sans the recollection, it made sense that he would do the exact same.
After all, she thought darkly, he’d had a buttload of time to practice on his girlfriend.
“Since you neglected to mention this upon arriving, I suspect the visit was not altogether a good one.”
She hadn’t mentioned meeting Nicholas in the cemetery because she didn’t want to provide her surrogate brother with any more X-rated images than she already had. The thought alone felt too awkward.
“Well, he showed up all grumpy, if that’s what you mean,” Raven said, still refusing to meet his eyes. “He was mad because Octavia had tossed him out, and he thought it was my fault. Or something. But the fight didn’t last long.”
Dexter was quiet.
“He doesn’t remember.”
“Right now?”
Raven shook her head. “I don’t think he will. Paimon said the claim was what kept our memories guarded. For me, at least…it was what—”
“You were claimed?” Dexter demanded, his normally-quiet voice quite possibly rocking the Richter-Scale. “You and Nicolai were mates?”
The suddenness of the outburst had her jumping. “I didn’t tell you?”
“I think this is something I would’ve been inclined to remember.”
“We were mated, yeah. We did the claimy thing.” Raven worried a lip between her teeth, her heart suddenly thundering hard against her chest. “He was all I had, Dexter.”
It seemed a thousand years passed before the tension in her Guardian’s body at last relaxed, before he offered a gentle nod, his mouth forming a resolved line. “I do not begrudge you—”
“Really? ‘Cause the yelling sounded like a helping of grudge with a side of be.”
“It’s just unprecedented, is all. Of course it makes perfect sense how your memories would become unlocked when you were at your most vulnerable. But it’s never done, Raven.”
“We’ve studied it,” she replied. “I remember it being something we talked about before going before the High Council.”
“Because it’s an incredibly potent bond, considered sacred. That’s very true. But it’s never done. ” He shook his head in amazement. “The practice of claiming mates is almost as ancient as the old paradigm of caveman bashing his choice of mate with a club before tossing her over his shoulder. I don’t believe there are any modern examples of vampires who have been mated, or even gave the ritual any sort of thought. A vampiric claim is the oldest sort of blood-bond in known history, more powerful than the deepest magicks and more respected than, God, anything I can think of.” He paused, and the air seemed to pause with him. “And unbreakable. Blood is binding, eternal, everlasting. Blood links you. To assume the blood of another is to assert that life as being your own. It places so much power into the hands of another. Since vampires are duplicitous in nature, many would utilize that power to an ugly personal advantage. If Nicolai wanted to mate with you like that…”
“It wasn’t to use me, Dexter,” Raven snapped. “It wasn’t. And I don’t care how wonderful you’re being, if you even suggest—”
“I wasn’t suggesting anything of the sort,” he replied calmly. “Rather, I was merely going to point out how very much he must have loved you. To place the entirety of his being into your hands, regardless of the fact that he got yours in turn…”
The gate of emotions she’d opened on her birthday kept growing wider. Raven found herself overwhelmed with another potent wave of tears, her body crippled with the weight of recollection. Memories of tender, loving smiles, of his hands framing her face as his lips explored hers or caressing her body when he thought she slept.
In essence, Dexter hadn’t told her anything she didn’t already know. But to hear it from someone else who hadn’t even known them then but understood what they had based on the simple disclosure that they’d been mated meant the world.
Especially since, even with as magical as her night with Nicholas had been, it had brought with it an ugly revelation.
Nicholas would never remember. Never. He knew her well enough because of the claim, but she hadn’t hope for them to pick up where they’d left off. His memories would remain buried in history. And while what she’d told him remained the truth, she loved him—Nicholas—because she knew him. He might not remember his life before, but he remained the same man. He remained exactly whom he had been before. Circumstances hadn’t molded them into different people, even if they had taken them down different paths. She knew Nicholas and she would eventually know the parts she didn’t know already.
It still ached that he didn’t remember her. He didn’t remember loving her as he had. Though she knew it didn’t mean he wouldn’t love her in the future, the thought of times she knew to be precious carrying no value for him whatsoever couldn’t help but hurt.
“A part of him will always remember, even if the rest of him does not,” Dexter told her, as if reading her thoughts. “The claim won’t allow him to forget. Not everything. And it likely explains the reasoning for his off-again-on-again violent tendencies.”
“Other than him being a vampire?” Raven offered wryly.
“Of course. He’s at battle with himself and he doesn’t know why. And chances are he has been for a long, long while. Perhaps since he was sired. Perhaps even before that.” Dexter sighed. “Blood never changes, ergo, claims cannot be eradicated. They are older than all magicks and ingrained in nature as well as sorcery.”
Raven’s mood darkened. “It didn’t stop him from getting all naked with another woman.”
Dexter flushed and cleared his throat but did not protest. “Uh, well,” he said, coughing into his hand. “It is possible that with death the claim went into remission. After all, you’ve only been alive in this world twenty-one years. Your blood remains connected, of course, but…”
“In remission,” she repeated skeptically. “Isn’t that what we usually call cancer when it goes away?”
“Raven, please. I’m not trying to downplay the significance—”
She held up a hand, nodding tiredly. “I know. I know. I’m sorry. It’s just, imagine dying, selling yourself, getting reborn, and going through the emotional rollercoaster I’ve been on in the past couple of days for a man—or, in your case woman—you loved more than anything in this or any other world, and he already has a girlfriend.”
Dexter shrugged. “Chances are the demon inside him was just waiting to be reunited with you and formed, in the meantime, a connection to the next strongest blood-link available.”
“I don’t want him forming blood-links with anyone but me.”
“And since the demon obviously recognizes you as his mate, it’s likely making Nicholas’s life rather difficult, which would explain his tendency to react to you with violence before his mood changes.” Her Guardian turned pink again. “Before he becomes, well, amorous. I suspect he’s been waiting for you for a long, long time, Raven. He just doesn’t know it.”
The thought ended with the clearing of a very familiar throat. Raven about jumped out of her skin, whirling around and immediately finding herself lost in the e
ndless blue of his ocean eyes. Nicholas was here. How? She hadn’t even heard the door open.
They eavesdrop.
Oh God, he’d heard everything.
Her nerves sung, and heat rushed through her body. She would never know how she hadn’t heard his approach. Only now he stood there. Very there.
He looked at her as though seeing her for the first time.
“You have no idea,” Nicholas said, his voice reverent, familiar eyes bathing her in awe. “We were mates?”
The pink in Dexter’s cheeks deepened into bright red, mortification plastered across his face. “Nice to see you again, Nicholas.” Then, under his breath, he murmured. “I knew I should have locked that door.”
The vampire nodded numbly, his gaze not moving from hers. “Raven…”
Death could not stop the way her name rolled off his lips.
It was an odd thought, but for the ringing in her ears, she could summon nothing more.
Chapter 17
Mated to One of the Few. Life sure seemed funny at times.
Strangely enough, Nicholas didn’t laugh. He appreciated good humor as much as the next guy, but he didn’t see anything particularly amusing about that revelation. He didn’t laugh and he didn’t scream. He merely felt at a loss, not to mention that he currently followed Raven Rayne, the warrior in question, down a hallway and across the threshold into what he assumed was her bedroom.
Mated to One of the Few. Not just any one: this one.
The girl who haunted his dreams.
His night angel.
Was it truly possible he’d gone through his entire life with the memory of a woman he’d apparently loved so deeply he’d united their lifelines for an eternity? Nicholas no longer felt certain of the answer. Sometime in the night, after parting with Raven and that delicious pussy of hers, he’d confessed himself more open to the gamble that this Nicolai she’d dreamt up might not be a pipe-dream after all. While he didn’t understand how, it was growing increasingly difficult to fight the wealth of affection blossoming within his chest for the girl—this little twig of a thing who stalked after him in dreams and whispered love for him that she couldn’t possibly feel.
Only if it were true—if she had lived as One of the Few from the pages of history, mated to an incarnation of himself he didn’t remember—he knew one thing beyond any shred of uncertainty.
She belonged to him. This girl belonged to him. Nicholas knew himself well enough to understand he would never have even dreamt of biting a girl he was sleeping with unless there was something beyond fleshly pleasures between them. Biting during sex, for vampires, was intimate on a level the simple union of bodies couldn’t accomplish. If a vampire’s emotions ran especially high, it could pave the way down a series of simple, however binding, rituals which decreed blood and words as necessity to make them permanent.
Claiming was the one. Claiming bound the demon eternally. He’d read about it. He’d thought once or twice about claiming Octavia, but never seriously. And while he’d always told himself that a claim between him and Octavia wouldn’t work because his attachment seemed greater than hers, it had less to do with that than the hysteric screaming in his head and the rampant waves of nausea seizing his insides. The demon rebelled violently every time he gave thought to biting anyone for sexual gratification, and while it hadn’t stopped him, he definitely hadn’t made habit out of it.
All because he’d claimed One of the Few? Because their blood was forever linked?
Because in the world of which Raven spoke, he’d lived entirely for her?
If that were the case, were the feelings he now had for her simply residual or were they real? Did he truly want Raven or did his demon just recognize her?
Then again, if he had claimed her, it had to have been out of the strongest love. Love stronger than anything he’d ever felt before—well, in this life, anyway. If he’d truly loved Octavia, he would have found a way around his hang-ups about biting and claiming her. He would have fought the disgust which diseased his bones at the very thought. He would have tried if she was the one he truly loved.
Nicholas knew himself, though apparently not as well as Raven did. Raven truly knew him better than he knew himself.
A cliché come to life.
What an odd sensation.
“We were mated?” he asked hoarsely, staring at her glorious backside. She stood facing her armoire, trembling hard and curiously surrounded with the thick scent of tears. “Funny enough, you seemed to leave that part out.”
She remained quiet for a long minute. “You didn’t believe any of the rest of it,” she said softly. “I didn’t think it was—”
“You didn’t think it was important?”
“I didn’t think it changed anything.”
Nicholas stared at her incredulously. For a beautiful warrior, she really seemed a bit thick. “How can you—”
“I’m sorry, okay?”
“Sorry doesn’t quite cover it.” He took a step forward, breath ragged, his nerves dancing dangerously near the end of anything resembling control. “Claims change everything.”
A pause, then, at last, she turned to face him. Christ, she moved like poetry. Warm. Vibrant. Alive. He felt her pulsing with energy, burning him up even with meters of space between them. Tears glistened in her emerald eyes, sending a sharp pang to his heart and making his demon howl with the need to comfort her. She truly did look like a girl who had lost everything and leapt through centuries only to find the light at the end of her tunnel in someone else’s possession. It was amazing. God, it nearly drove him to his knees in awe.
This girl loved him. She truly loved him.
He had never known love like this. For too long he’d felt isolated, imprisoned by his own emotions. He’d been completely alone even when in the company of others and he’d felt nothing of the love he tried to give.
Now he practically swam in love beyond love that transcended time and reason.
God.
“I can’t take it back, Nicholas,” Raven whispered, her voice making a particularly forced emphasis on his name. For one blindly insane moment, he wished he hadn’t made such a fuss about not calling him Nicolai. While he knew the distinction felt important, he found her lack of hope crippling.
She didn’t think he could love her if he didn’t remember her.
“I can’t take it back,” she repeated, wiping at her eyes. “And even if I could, I wouldn’t. And you wouldn’t want me to. Not if you remembered. God, if you knew…”
“I believe you.”
Nicholas froze and Raven froze with him. He hadn’t realized it was the truth until the words breathed air. It was out there, and he wouldn’t take it back. He believed her. There seemed little sense fighting the odds or trying to decode his confused feelings.
If he’d loved her enough to claim her in some former life, he knew he’d love her again and for the right reasons. His memories didn’t matter. Not that he didn’t fancy the idea of knowing how glorious they’d fit together, or the wealth of living he’d done before running into her the first time. It gnawed at him, but he didn’t mind so much. Apparently the only thing he’d found worth living for currently stood before him.
It looked as though his admission would inspire a new shower of tears.
“You do?” she whispered. Then her eyes narrowed with skepticism and she shook her head, stepping back. “No. No, you don’t.”
“Raven—”
“Last night—”
“Was an epiphany revelation. Not so much as the one I’m having now, but high up there as far as epiphanies go.”
“Nicholas, you don’t have to—”
“I don’t remember anything. I’m sorry, but I don’t.” He inhaled sharply and braved another step forward. “I wish there was something more tangible that I could give you. All I know is my life is about as crazy as it’s ever been, and that’s saying something. I look at you and I see the answer. I see the answer for everything, and I don�
��t even know the question.” A pause. “You’ve been with me for so long.”
Raven drew in a quick breath. “What?”
“Since I can remember, really. Always at night, little images fighting to get to me. A woman, well, she’s you. I know that now. The images got stronger as I got older. Then Octavia turned me and I thought she was it, but the dreams kept coming, and I knew Octavia wasn’t her.” Nicholas smiled gently. “My night angel was too pure. Light where there’s only darkness, you know? Warmth where there was cold. Gentle when it was harsh. And love. I felt that, too. All from my night angel.”
She swallowed hard. “N-night angel?”
Nicholas’s lips drew upward in a tender smile. “It’s what I called you. To myself, at least. My night angel.”
A breath trembled through her gorgeous mouth. She looked again as though tears might consume her. “Oh Nicolai…”
She caught her mistake immediately and flashed him an apologetic look, but all he could do was smile. Strangely enough, it didn’t seem to bother him so much today.
“I don’t remember anything.”
“I don’t think you ever will,” she replied.
“Never say never.”
“It was a mistake, my remembering, a random happenstance of my birthday plus the mystical number thing. The demon I bartered with admitted as much.” She hesitated. “He said so.”
Nicholas arched a brow. “When?”
“Last night. He was there right before you showed up in the cemetery.” Raven turned her eyes downward. “He showed up. Talked to me. Pretty much confirmed—”
“The bastard was there?” he demanded anxiously. “The demon you—”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She inhaled. “I didn’t think you’d believe me. Or you’d just think it was symptomatic of the Raven’s-lost-her-mind theory.”
“I don’t think you’ve lost—”
“Yeah, but you thought I’d fallen on something heavy,” she interrupted.
Nicholas released a breath and raised a hand. “Sweetheart, you know me, right?”
Ripples Through Time Page 18
