MILITARY ROMANCE: The War Within Himself (Alpha Bad Boy Marine Army Seal) (Contemporary Military Suspense & Thriller Romance)

by Claire Branson

  “Quite so, Kiryla.” Her teacher nods.

  Kiryla looks down then, immediately regretful.

  “Thank you, teacher.”

  Alena only nods.

  They are quiet a while, and then Kiryla rises.

  “I must leave. Let me take those jars and collect more celandine.”

  “Thank you, dear.” Her teacher inclines her head, her flawless skin pale in the dying light. She has forgiven the earlier outburst, and is serene as ever.

  “Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye, Kiryla.” Her teacher nods farewell. Kiryla nods back, and walks, stiff, from the hut.

  Life is truly endless, beyond form.

  The words play through Kiryla's mind, again and again, as she walks. The basket of bottles hits against her leg with each step. She uses the anger of that sudden bruising pain to spur her on.

  Yes, she thinks angrily. I know that! Life is truly endless, beyond form. Truly endless...

  She stops. Almost walks into a tree. Oh, heavens!

  She almost screams it. She feels euphoria rush through her, lift her up so that her soul sings with the stars.

  “I have it!”

  I must tell Aurelius. Aurelius is at the monastery. Her feet find themselves running up the path towards the church in the woods.

  “Aurelius. Aurelius!”

  Just shouting his name is a joy.

  After ten minutes of breathless running, she stops to catch her breath. As she starts forward, she runs straight into a man in gray robes.

  “Aurelius?”

  He stares at each other. His gray eyes are filled with horror. She is laughing, not noticing the graveness of his expression.

  “Aurelius! Are you alright? I have something to tell you! Something wonderful.”

  “And I have something to tell you.” His voice is low.

  “Very well.” She says. Her smile teases him, her eyes warm and entirely unreadable. “You go first.”

  ***

  I say my farewell. I remind her why I have to go, now. I cannot look up at her face. I feel her thoughts creeping towards me, her memories in our time since passed. The life she has lived without me all these days begs for my attention and I steel myself against what I know she has been thinking.

  “I leave this for you Kiryla. It is a poor tale, my life, but you have filled it with light.” My voice chokes back on the words, and I pause, then continue. My hands, holding the book, are shaking. “Care for it, will you? It is all of me there is. My life is good as ended, knowing I am without you.” I place the book beside her, gather my things, turn to leave.

  I am about to leave the clearing, when her voice rings out behind me. It is light as spring air.

  “Aurelius! Wait! You have not heard my words.” And she is laughing. Laughing.

  I am afraid my words have touched her sanity. I turn back, gentle.

  “Kiryla, dear...”

  “Aurelius!” She is laughing, still. And sobbing. “Aurelius. Listen to me.”

  “I know what you will say.” I shy away from her reaching thoughts. “Even when I am not with you, I am always with you now.” If my words appeared cryptic, her smile did not reveal so. “Kiryla, I know you think we can stay together.”

  “But I can stay with you. Forever.” Her eyes shine as she steps forward. “If you already know my account, you know that truly I am always with you. Listen, Aurelius. Feel my heart.”

  I think about what she has said and what she has thought. As water from a stream, I allow in her account, unhampered in its flow. It sounds almost too wonderful, too fantastic for belief. But I am dubious.

  “That sounds very... dangerous, Kiryla,” I caution.

  “No, it's not!” Her eyes flash, voice sharp. “And even if it was, I would do it. What is my life without you?”

  “And mine?” I ask. “I would not see you harmed. I would rather never see you again, than see you perish for my sake.”

  “Perish.” She is smiling. “My dear, I love you. But I have never before heard you sound ridiculously dramatic.”

  “I'm not dramatic.” I say, wounded. “I love you, too.”

  We smile. We have never said it before. Then we laugh.

  “I love you!” I say it louder. It feels so wonderful to say that. My arms are around her, and my lips on hers.

  We spend hours in the woods, together. Our love is as it ever was, and deeper. For now we can be truly free to love.

  ***

  It is the first day of Winter. We are in my cave.

  I am about to change form. I know the feeling now: it feels as if my skin were transparent, the other form a hand's breadth from me. It heralds my transformation.

  The sun slants through the cave-entrance while we make our preparations. It is a pale, ghostly light, threaded with mist off the water of the neighboring stream.

  We are ready now and the day is drawing to a close.

  All the things Kiryla needs for ritual are laid out on the floor. In the center is the book I gave to her. The love with which I made that makes it a bridge between worlds, she says. It is a powerful object, imbued with care. She says it forms what she needs to complete the magic.

  It is garlanded with flowers. Other things mark out a circle on the floor. A feather, clear water in a carved stone bowl, a bright, reflective stone.

  Then she is ready. She stands in the circle, before the entrance of the cave. The last light, blue-edged, slants through the opening behind her.

  She starts to sing.

  Near the end of her song, she raises her arms. I feel the air change around her, grow cold. She is a picture of impossible loveliness. She glows. Bright light fills the cave.

  In the midst of that burning halo, I see a face. It is her face, yet not her face. This image is truly her, the beloved my heart has known down all the ages.

  My soul knows her. I see in her eyes the moment when that soul sees mine. She smiles.

  Then, she changes. There is a blinding glow of light. It pulses, stronger and stronger. It fills the cave with its radiance, explodes into a splendor so fierce I almost recoil from it, as if the interior of a star had touched the earth burns us away with its brightness.

  Then she is gone. But she is everywhere. The air is her sweetness, the river is her voice. The tree below the waterfall has golden flowers.

  Goodbye, Aurelius. I hear her voice, the faintest echo. I will see you next year.

  And with that, and the faint scent of honeysuckle—her scent—I find myself drifting into sleep.

  ***

  Springtime. I feel the light lancing into the cave. My head aches.

  I close my eyes again and listen. Outside, I can hear the singing of the water as it cascades free of ice down the rocks.

  With the song comes memory. My heart sinks. Where is she?

  I need not have asked. With the song of the river comes also the sound of her voice.

  Aurelius? It thrums from the air around me, as soft as a moth's flight, permeating the air of the cave.

  It is not in my memory, but present now. It is truly her voice.

  Kiryla.

  My eyes open.

  There is a haze in the air, a soft diffuseness, like light reflecting off the mist. Except there is no mist inside the cave. This glowing light is something else, not of this world.

  It shimmers and hovers. It gathers. And then, suddenly, just as I am expecting that nothing else will happen, it condenses.

  “Aurelius!”

  It is her. At least, it is her form. It pulses and glows, as insubstantial as the mist. I strain to reach it. My heart aches.

  Then, the sparks of light pull together and are gone, and the warm, soft form of a girl stands before me, as natural as if she had just walked in through the door.

  “Aurelius? My love?”

  “Kiryla!” My heart feels as if it will burst.

  My arms find her waist and wrap around it. Her body is against mine. And, suddenly, the flesh knows its urgency and its desire.


  I am still so weak. I find myself laughing, if a little hysterically, as my wasted body teeters backward, far too weak for anything at all.

  I notice suddenly in that moment that my form has changed. I am in human form again. No wonder I feel so weak! I have never shifted so soon. Have never had the motivation, I suppose. I have it now.

  “Shall we go outside?” She smiles at me. “The sunshine will help us to get stronger.”

  I nod, fervently agreeing.

  “Come, then.”

  We walk out of the cave together, into the light of the spring morning.

  We spend each day together, and each night we sleep, sated, in each other’s arms.

  Each winter and each spring we change and transform back. And with all you know, we may be here forever. Life is cyclic, after all. And hearts eternal.

  THE END

  Addicted to the Vampire Billionaire

  Vampire Billionaire Romance

  Addicted to the Vampire Billionaire

  Chapter One

  The old Arbor house sat at the top of a hill overlooking the little town nestled in the valley, a gabled Victorian mansion of grey stone. Once home to a wealthy and illustrious family, it had sat empty since World War I. No one had dared touch it. The property was owned by some distant descendant, but he had never set foot beyond the wrought iron fence, nor even, so far as they knew, inside the county line. The locals whispered that it was haunted, and even reckless teenagers searching for a place to hide their goings on from the prying eyes of adults didn't risk its shadowed interiors.

  Hank Mead, on the other hand, didn't appear to care. Which was why he and his niece were currently bumping down the pitted road that led through the pass in the hills the little town sat on the other side of, his ghost-hunting partner in the passenger seat. Hank Mead was determined to see the ghosts that haunted the old Arbor home for himself. And to make certain that he caught them—and his claim to fame—on film, he had recruited Lily, who'd been laid off from her job and had been staying with him for three months, unable to make rent on her apartment. She'd picked up a job at one of the local cafés in their own city, for the moment, but it wasn't exactly paying the big bills. So when Hank had insisted she come to film his escapades, she hadn't felt like it was right to refuse.

  She wasn't particularly pleased to be sitting in the back of the rattly old van, cradling her expensive camera carefully to her chest, making certain it wasn't jostled onto the floor. It was the only thing of much value that she owned, and no way was she sacrificing it for her uncle Hank's crazy ghost-hunting expedition, even if she did feel obliged to help him since he was letting her stay in his guest room.

  They rolled into town just before sunset, and drove through the quiet streets, people occasionally looking up to follow the van with their eyes, not particularly curious about its appearance, though Lily knew they must be aware that it carried strangers into their midst. Maybe they just didn't care.

  When they drew closer to the mansion on the hill, she saw the glances cast at them change. The locals did care, then. They were shaking their heads as they watched the van roll on its way, and Lily wondered how many others had come here before her and her uncle and Fred. Maybe they were only the latest in a long line, and that was why the locals didn't seem to find the sight of an unfamiliar van carrying unfamiliar people through their town out of the ordinary.

  "You don't want to go up there!" Outside, someone shouted the words in the direction of the van.

  Lily could hear the voice only dimly through the partly open window, but the words were clear enough. She saw her uncle shake his head.

  "We really do, mate. Don't you worry about us."

  No one else spoke to them. There was only the head shaking as they passed, mothers guiding their children into the safety of doorways and closing the sturdy wooden doors behind them. She thought she saw one or two people make the sign of the cross.

  They could not, of course, drive right up to the house. There was a barred gate across the road at the base of the hill, and they had to pull the van off onto the grassy verge and scramble out of it, Lily still carefully holding her camera, already wrapped up in a jacket against the chill of early winter. Her long white-blonde hair was tied back in a tail to keep it out of the way. She saw Fred shiver as he pulled his coat on. Her uncle, who shared Lily's slim build and hazel green eyes, was already headed for the perimeter fence, examining the lock on the gate. It wasn't an especially sophisticated one, and in a moment he had a pair of heavy bolt cutters out of the truck and snapped through the rusting chain that held the padlock currently wrapped around the gate. Lily hoped no one had seen that particular feat of ingenuity, though she knew they would probably find out. Her cheeks were hot as she followed her uncle and Fred through the gate and up the easy slope of the road toward the mansion at the top of the low hill. She held the camera in both hands, filming the approach. It might make for a good opening shot, layered over the narration introducing the house and its history.

  As they drew closer to the mansion, she thought a little uneasily that it seemed to loom over the road, over them, glowering through its dark windows. She thought maybe she was beginning to understand why the locals thought it was haunted. It certainly looked anything but inviting, there in the gathering dark of evening. The last sunlight glinted from glass and metal on is façade, outlining the sharp corners. For a place that had not been touched in decades, it looked oddly well cared for, none of its siding peeling. That would disappoint her uncle. He'd been expecting shots of a dilapidated old house to set the tone of the piece. They walked up the stairs onto the pillared porch, and her uncle tried the door, which swung slowly open under his hand.

  Inside it was dark, lit only by the dim last light coming in through the windows. The white shapes of sheet-covered furniture, edges blurred in the grey, were huddled together in corners, set up along walls. The air smelled of dust and old wood. Faintly, Lily thought she could smell lemon, as though someone had polished the furniture some time not too long ago, and she wondered if a maid was sent in occasionally to keep the place clean in case the man who owned it decided to visit.

  Lily kept the camera on her uncle, who was already speaking into his microphone, narrating the history of the old house as he crept forward with the air of someone expecting to see a monster around every turn. Because his back was to her, Lily felt entirely safe rolling her eyes. What a waste of a day. With an inaudible sigh, she followed him through the foyer and into a narrow hall which led deeper into the house, though she wasn't sure what he was expecting to find on the first floor. Wasn't it basements and attics that were supposed to be haunted? Fred was right on her uncle's heels, occasionally ranging ahead with the flashlight, turning it on dim corners that proved to be empty of anything except the occasional cobweb.

  "No one has set foot in the place since the last member of the direct family line was killed in World War I," her uncle was saying to his mic in a husky whisper meant to fit with the atmosphere or something. "They say that his ghost never made it home, but the ghosts of his family, buried in the graveyard out back, didn't have the same problem."

  Clearly, someone else should have written the script.

  Over their heads, there was a crash. Lily jumped so sharply that she almost fumbled the camera. Three pairs of startled eyes turned upward.

  "If you can hear that," her uncle whispered urgently, "there appears to have been some sound upstairs. We'll go that way."

  He turned around, gesturing Lily to follow, and started back out into the main room where there was a set of stairs along the wall with a curving banister of black wood, leading up to the second floor. Lily supposed she was at least grateful that the stairs were in decent shape and she didn't have to worry about falling through any weak spots. She was following her uncle and Fred up toward the second floor landing when something tapped her on the shoulder.

  Startled, she spun around, staring into the dim grey room, but there was nothing
behind her. Her heart hammered against her ribs in a way that made her wish she hadn't come on this expedition. What if she had been wrong? What if there really was something in the old house? She turned again to hurry after her uncle and Fred, but they were already nearly at the top of the stairs, and as she raised her foot to follow again, there was another tap, this time against the small of her back.

  Lily was sure she made some kind of noise, a high-pitched little gasp, as she turned. She didn't carry a flashlight, not with the camera. She had been using night vision at her uncle's request, and she looked down at the display, but there was nothing out of the ordinary, only the room below with its neatly covered furniture.

  When she looked back up the stairs, her uncle and Fred were gone, and she took a deep breath to try and calm the way her hands were trembling. How had they not noticed she was left behind? She took the stairs two at a time, hoping the sound of her feet on the wood would alert them that she was following, that they needed to wait for her. But when she reached the top of the stairs, she couldn't see them down either hall, couldn't even hear her uncle's constant narrating murmur. She turned to the left, walking slowly down the narrow passage. All of the doors were closed. It looked as though the hall ran the length of the house, and at the end there was a window and another turn. Maybe it ran all around the top floor.

  Lily followed the hall as it curved, and she found herself looking down the length of it toward a large door of unpainted oak.

  The sound of feet suddenly running behind her made her spin around, but there was nothing to see, even when—breathing fast and trying to keep it silent so that if there was anything there it couldn't hear her—she looked carefully around the corner. She saw light jump against one of the walls, and moved to follow, certain the sound of running feet had been her uncle and Fred, but, abruptly, found her way blocked.

  Chapter Two

  "What are you doing here?"

  Lily took a step back, fumbling for the light on the top of her camera and never mind the night vision. She had almost thought for an instant that she would find a security guard, but when she turned the light toward the floor just enough to keep from blinding him, she found herself looking up at a tall, dark-haired man with the bluest eyes she had ever seen, dressed in a button up rolled to his elbows, and a pair of black slacks.