by A C Warneke
“You couldn’t if you tried,” she said lightly even as her heart pounded in her chest. Was it a game or did he love her? She needed time to think and a search for her father was the perfect opportunity to have some space. “But if I stay here I’ll go mad.”
“Then come back to the compound with me,” he murmured for the thousandth time and she had to fight the instinct to cringe. She knew that he needed to return sooner rather than later and she knew that eventually she would return with him but for now…. For now, it was the last place she wanted to be. If she returned, then she wouldn’t even care if he was playing a game because she would be with him for however long he played. Eventually, she may no longer care that her father was missing.
She knew it was an irrational fear, that she would always keep looking, but it weighed her soul down. No, it wasn’t her fear of never finding Gus that prevented her from returning. It was her fear of losing herself in Feryn, of ceasing to exist because Feryn consumed so much of her. He was so overwhelming that it would be easy to be devoured by him. Her smile faltered as she shook her head no, “I’m not ready to go back there either. I need to find my father before I can even think about returning.”
“Then we’ll stay here for a few weeks and make a plan for finding Gus….”
“I’m pregnant,” she gently reminded him, brushing her thumb over his lower lip, watching the way his flesh clung to her fingers. She needed this to prove to herself that she could survive without him. For fuck’s sake, she had lived twenty-five years without him! “My window of opportunity is not unlimited.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw as he searched her face, seeing what she was afraid of admitting out loud. Maybe she was creating drama out of nothing and she just wanted one last adventure as a hunter before she went soft.
A low growl came from the back of his throat as he asked, “What about Toby?”
“I’m bringing him with me,” she told him, as if there was any other option.
“Let me go with you,” he murmured. Taking her hands in his, he held her eyes, “Your friends will never know I’m there.”
“I’ll know,” she said, the words slipping from her lips before she could stop them. Her eyes flew to his and she saw the flash of pain in the brilliant green depths.
As he stepped away from her, a cool mask froze his expression, “Are you so determined to leave me?”
She looked at him, frustrated that he thought she actually wanted to leave him. Didn’t he understand she just needed some space, not a separation? Didn’t he realize how easy it would be to simply give him everything and lose herself completely, and how much that terrified her?
“It’s just that I’ve been taking care of myself since before I can remember,” she tried to explain, knowing how weak her words sounded. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
“A babysitter.” His lips pressed together in a thin line as he glared at her.
“Feryn.”
With a snort of disgust, he turned away from her, scrubbing his fingers through his hair as his mark glimmered in the moonlight. “Gods, do you have any idea how hard this is for me? I almost lost you a week ago and now you’re pushing me away.”
Wrapping her arms around her middle, she watched as he paced in agitation, his muscles flexing with each lithe movement, his expression becoming grimmer. “Is your faith in me so weak that you still doubt me?”
“No,” she breathed, the one word filled with conviction. Why was he being so stubborn and obtuse? “Feryn, you must know how much I love you.”
He spun around and stared at her with a look of such disbelief she felt as if she had slapped him. “Do you Malorie? Do you really love me?”
“Of course I do,” she said, her heart hammering in her chest as the conversation spun out of control. Had she honestly expected Feryn to let her go off on her own without a fight? Well, no, probably not, but he had to see that she wasn’t a fragile porcelain doll and she could take care of herself, no matter how tempting it was to let him take care of everything. “More than anything. But I’m not used to being… god, to being suffocated.”
His eyes widened and then narrowed to two dangerous slits, “You think I’m suffocating you.”
“Yes… no.” She wished she could figure out how to explain it to him in a way that he would understand but wouldn’t hurt him. “You’ve been in my memories, Feryn. You know what my childhood was like.”
His eyes filled with sympathy as he nodded his head and she hated that he pitied her. Glaring at him, she growled, “I wasn’t unhappy, not ever. But it doesn’t change the fact that I spent a lot of time alone and now I can barely think because you are always there.”
He stumbled backwards a few steps, the pity quickly turning to wounded pride as he stared at her and she wished she could take the words back, at least the angry tone she said them in. “Feryn, I’m sorry.”
“Just go,” he whispered, taking another step away from her. Grabbing his clothes and avoiding her eyes, he dressed quickly as he rasped, “I’ll have Jiro take you and your son to New York in the morning and I’ll give you your space.”
“It’s not forever,” she said weakly, her words barely above a whisper as she watched him distance himself from her. Her stomach was in knots as she realized how badly she had hurt him with her need to stand on her own in this new reality before she fully committed to him. “If I’m lucky it will only take a few days, a week at most.”
Straightening his spine, squaring his shoulders, he stood in her doorway and looked at her with sardonic grace, “I’ll be here when you’re ready to let me in.”
“Feryn,” she choked out but he was already gone, disappearing from her life as abruptly as he had entered it. She didn’t think she was being unreasonable but then she wasn’t an ancient Aradian used to having his own way.
She shivered, as if Feryn had taken all of the heat with him when he left but then she realized she was naked. Wrapping her arms around her stomach, she crossed the bedroom to her closet and grabbed a robe to put on, feeling exposed and vulnerable in her nudity. Sitting down on the bed, she stared at the doorway and tried to figure out the best course of action in finding her father. Unfortunately, her mind was blank except for the image of the virgin Feryn had seduced who looked like her in her memories but hadn’t looked like her in real life.
It was a cruel twist that she was finally able to breathe but she wasn’t able to think.
Scrubbing her fingers through her hair, she looked down at her thigh peeking out from beneath the hem of her robe and exhaled in relief. The mark was still there. For one irrational moment she thought he would have removed it or it would have vanished when he left. A low, desolate laugh pushed past her lips, the sound alien and harsh in the quiet room.
Lying down on the bed, she brought her knees up to her chest and tried to find a spark of warmth in her frozen body but she couldn’t. There was so much to do tomorrow and she could only hope that Toby would be up to the journey. In her selfishness, she had forgotten how much her son loved it here. The little boy had blossomed in this slightly out of synch world. Toby genuinely adored Jiro, a man who was far more laidback than her father had ever been and she inexplicably trusted him with her son. The two of them could spend hours fishing in the small pond that Malorie was fairly certain contained no fish.
Toby had laughed more in the months since coming to the Aradian island than he had in the first five and a half years of his life. Why couldn’t she find the balance that would allow her to live in peace amongst Feryn and the other Aradians? He loved her, or they were mated at least, he offered her the opportunity to finally live a normal, peaceful life, and she loved him.
She should be living in perfect bliss whether he loved her or not so why couldn’t she shake the storm of worries and doubts that were hounding her day and night? Her dreams were bothering her because she couldn’t remember all of them and she knew there was something important there, something she had to remember. Unfortunately, the memorie
s she wanted to forget, those of Feryn seducing innocents and turning them into whores, drowned out everything else.
Letting her eyes drift shut as silent tears leaked from her eyes, Malorie wondered if her pregnancy hormones were the cause of all of this madness. She hadn’t been this emotional when she was pregnant with Toby but then they were two extremely different situations; she hadn’t had the time to be emotional with Toby. Whatever was plaguing her, she was going to have to figure it out soon because Feryn wasn’t going to be patient forever. Eventually he was going to grow bored or realize how screwed up she was and no mating mark was going to keep him by her side.
Drifting in and out of consciousness, she thought she heard the front door but when she didn't hear anything more, she figured she was probably dreaming. Jiro would have used the Netherworld corridors and simply appeared, much like how Feryn disappeared so quickly. There was no one else in the neighborhood and Feryn had placed anti-vamp wards everywhere so she and Toby were perfectly safe. Her thoughts trailed off as she sniffed and tried to go back to sleep.
“Don’t cry,” a soft, male voice whispered, his strong fingers brushing her tangled hair out of her face. His voice was achingly familiar so it took her a moment to realize it wasn’t Feryn. How did she know him? “It’ll be all right, Mal, I’m here now. It’ll be all right.”
Her eyes shot open as soon as she recognized the voice. Rolling over, she collided with the hard body of her dead husband who was gazing at her with affection. “Jack!”
Chapter 2
~Jack~
The week before….
The world swam in darkness and for the longest time he couldn’t remember who he was, where he was. Lying in the ditch, naked as the day he was born, he struggled to put the shattered pieces of his life back together, not able to comprehend the images that were coming together in his head. It was as if he was two different people, a man and a monster, and he wasn’t sure which one was really him.
But he remembered Malorie, the only girl he had ever loved, both as a man and as a monster, and guilt and desire burned in his belly.
He remembered the first time he ever saw her. It was after the monsters invaded his peaceful world and stole everything from him. The memories were hazy but he could still smell the blood and hear the screams as his family was slaughtered in front of him. He remembered how he had fought back in savage desperation.
Then she appeared, coming out of the mist like a miniature angel, her honey brown hair cropped close to her head, her lithe body clothed in black. At first he had thought she was another vampire come to finish the job and he had attacked her. But with grace and surprising strength, she had spun around and slammed him against one of the remaining walls and hissed in his ear, “I’m not a vampire, you fucking moron.”
Relief that was painful in its intensity grabbed ahold of him and so he had grabbed onto her, the only real thing in the world. As she comforted him, he realized that she was a girl and when he looked at her, he realized that she was a pretty girl. At least, she was pretty beneath the shorn hair and the dirty face. Her gray eyes were steady as she looked at him and in that moment he had fallen in love.
He remembered training with her father to hone the skills that had let him take out two vampires without any formal training. But in his heart he knew that he practiced diligently so he could impress Malorie, who at fifteen already possessed amazing grace and impressive talents. She was so serious all of the time and he lived for the moments that he could get her to smile, feeling like a freaking hero every time her lips curved upwards.
When she finally laughed he felt like a fucking god.
She was his world. He would have done anything for her, even as she dreamed about a fucking vampire. Hearing her moans as she slept had both infuriated him and made him hard as nails. For two years he endured the torment of listening to her nocturnal ecstasies until he finally made love to her on her eighteenth birthday, giving her his virginity as she gave him hers. After that, any time she started breathing heavily in her sleep he would nudge her awake and take her.
Those heated moments were always the best and he came to love her dreams as much as he hated them.
When her father approached with a grimmer than usual expression on his face, Jack knew he was in grave shit. But as Mr. Hunter yelled at him in that disturbingly quiet voice of his for getting his daughter pregnant, Jack couldn’t wipe the smile from his face. The baby bound them together and he gladly promised to honor her and cherish her and make her his wife.
He saw how the other men looked at her but it never bothered him because she was his, beautiful, brilliant, and his, and being married to her had been the happiest months of his life. But then it all went wrong.
Jack swallowed thickly as he squeezed his eyes shut to remember what had happened, how it had ended, because he knew he would never willingly leave Malorie.
His naked body shivered in the cool morning but he ignored it as he struggled to remember what happened next, how he became a monster.
His phone rang as he was sharpening his blade, but really he was watching Malorie as she went through the forms with her sword. Her back arched with such grace, even with the rounded belly that stuck so far out in front of her. She was all belly and limbs and he thought she was the most beautiful she had ever been. There was a glow about her, a peacefulness that radiated from her, and he realized that impending motherhood suited her. He could spend all day watching her.
Absently, he picked up the phone, “Hello?”
“Is this Jack?” a soft, feminine voice asked, startling him out of his favorite past time.
Tearing his eyes away from his wife, he stood up, “Who is this?”
“I believe we have something in common, Mr. Sinclair,” the voice murmured without answering his question. “I believe we can… trade.”
“I don’t even know who you are,” he said in a scathing tone.
A low, sensuous chuckle slithered through the phone, wrapping around him and making him hard. Embarrassed by his reaction, he shifted uneasily and turned his back on Malorie, afraid she would see his response to the disembodied voice on the other end of the phone. “Several of my… associates inform me that you are looking for a particular, um, vampire.”
Jack stilled as he thought about the vampire his wife had saved when she had been a foolish sixteen year old girl with more compassion than sense. The vampire that she dreamed about at night. Standing up, he walked further away from Malorie, not wanting her to hear any part of this conversation. “Go on.”
“Tomorrow night, he’ll be at the fraternity house where you first encountered him,” the voice purred. “There will be a brief window of opportunity for you to have your revenge but you must come alone.”
“How do I know this isn’t a trap?” he asked, his heartbeat galloping painfully in his chest as excitement boiled his blood. He was finally going to confront the bastard who had enchanted his beautiful bride and he wasn’t sure if he even cared that it was a trap.
“Because if I wanted you dead I wouldn’t be calling to offer you this gift,” the woman said, her voice compelling and rich. “Do you accept?”
Looking over his shoulder, he saw Malorie talking to one of the soldiers, her hand on her lower back as she spoke. Love and determination filled his chest. He could do this for her. “Yes.”
The woman gave him the time to be at the rendezvous point before hanging up and he knew that there wasn’t going to be a lot of wiggle room. Luckily, the old fraternity house was only a few hours away. He shouldn’t draw too much suspicion if he told the other soldiers that he had a tip about possible vamp activity and he was going to scope it out to see if there was anything to it.
Sliding the phone into his back pocket, he walked over and took Malorie’s hand in his, ignoring the other man as he pulled her away. If he was going to do this, he needed to feel her beneath him before he left, to give him incentive to come back in one piece.
Jack sucked in a deep br
eath as he slowly remembered the confrontation with his wife’s nocturnal dream lover, the exhilaration of looking into the bastard’s eyes as he sunk the stake into his chest, the heat of the vampire’s blood as it spilled over his hands. “She’s mine, you goddamn vamp.”
“Mine!” he hissed, holding the stake as the green-eyed vampire sank to the ground, the life draining from his eyes. Afterwards, with as much stealth as he had used when he entered the house, Jack left with no one the wiser. Once he was across the street, he finally looked back and thought he saw a woman standing in one of the window’s staring down at him, a sly smile on her blood-red lips that were visible even from that distance. Long, midnight black hair hung to the small of her back as she turned around, letting the curtain flutter back into place.
A shudder whispered through his body as he rushed to his car, the scepter of Death hanging over his head. That night, he had made love to Malorie with frantic lust. Well, with as much frantic lust as he could with her rounded belly. Over and over he had claimed her, speaking nonsense words of ownership, of passion, of love.
The next night, he and a few of the men were out hunting when they were ambushed. The vampires captured and bound Jack and made him watch as they killed his fellow soldiers, his friends. He struggled against the binds until his wrists were bleeding and he screamed until his throat was raw but the vamps didn’t spare him a passing glance as they devoured Stavros and Mercer.
Then she walked into the room, the woman with midnight black hair and blood red lips, and he knew he was fucked. Holding his eyes, she dismissed the vampires, making them leave the bodies. When she smiled, he felt fear like he had never before known tear into his guts. He tried to back away from her as she approached but there was nowhere for him to go because he was bound to a chair and couldn’t move.
“Welcome to my neck of the woods,” the woman said, her slender body undeniably gorgeous with her full tits and long legs. The silken gown fell to the ground where she stood, revealing her body in its entirety and Jack’s body responded in spite of his terror. She ran a red talon along his cheek and over his chest. “I wish to thank you for taking care of that little problem for me.”
