Stigmata

by L M Adams

  “Come,” I hiss at him under my breath… because he’s right – I owe him this, I owe myself this.

  I lead Matthias out the back of the conservatory and a few yards away from the building and the pavilion; there are a lot of supernaturals here and I’d rather this… discussion, happen in private.

  When we’re far away enough, near a large oak tree, I turn to face him, “Say what you need to say and go,” I say impassively.

  He huffs, “Just like you – always the cold bastard when you need to be.”

  “Watch it,” I warn gently.

  He just stands there, seeming lost on where to begin.

  I sigh, “I will not keep my wife and husband waiting, if you…”

  “I loved you!” He rages at me… an explosion of emotion I do not believe I’ve ever seen from Matthias before. “That was supposed to be us Cap – You, Ari and me…” he gestures towards the conservatory.

  “How could it be? You betrayed…”

  “Yes Cap, I fucking betrayed you to Valentine, I made you into the tainted blood – because… I loved you,” he ends in a whisper, his eyes pleading for me to understand even if I cannot forgive. He runs a hand through his hair frustrated, we both have that habit.

  “What do you want here Matthias?”

  “For you to take some of the fucking responsibility.”

  “Me?” I raise an eyebrow.

  “Yes! I begged you to run away, countless fucking times I pleaded with you. Just us – me, you, and Ari – I begged on my knees for you to leave.”

  “And because I didn’t, you betrayed me?!”

  “You were turning into everything you hated, we hated – everything we swore we’d never become. You were turning into your father!”

  “He’s not my father…”

  “He was supposed to be, and he wasn’t, in more ways than one. But you chose to stay when you did not have to. Why?” He begs me for the answer to a question I may not have myself.

  I blow out a breath and look back towards the conservatory, “I just couldn’t leave,” I shake my head, “I wasn’t strong enough.”

  “And now you hate me because I was? Because I was strong enough to risk it all to get you out? It was only supposed to be for twenty years and after that… we could have gone anywhere, been anything…we would have had forever. We waited for the day of your freedom – then we find out you’d gone and attempted to kill Valentine because of some sort of allegiance to your father still?”

  “I…”

  “And you swore yourself to an eternity as the tainted blood as compensation? Yet still we waited and helped you in whatever way you wished… twenty years Cap, that’s all you had to give for our freedom, and you couldn’t give us that when would have given you an eternity in exchange?”

  Perhaps, in the heart of a vampire this just makes sense – our freedom in exchange for my brutal torture for twenty years… fair exchange has never been a robbery to the children of the Blood King. But that wasn’t the deal… my sentence had always been for life… my life for the life of my mother, my sister, the man I thought to be my father – for Matthias and Ariella. I have always been willing to sacrifice all for them… but who are they to make the decision on exactly how and to whom that sacrifice would be made?

  I shake my head in disbelief, “You don’t know what they did to me…”

  “What was the other choice, Cap? What was the better solution?”

  “I don’t know! But I cannot stand here and look at you and see anything other than the man I once loved who betrayed me and gave me to the worst torturer any pureblood or crow has ever known.”

  “Yet here she is! That torturer you hate so fucking much, a part of your new clutch?! Loved and cared for… while we are nothing to you?”

  “It’s complicated…”

  “No it’s not, you just pick and choose who you’ll forgive when you damn well please.”

  “It’s my forgiveness to give as I damn well please!”

  “You owe me more than this!”

  “I don’t owe you a fucking thing,” I hiss at him feeling the heat of Vayrá boil through.

  “Fine, then what will it cost me?” He steps closer, “I can get to my knees for you, you like that, you’ve always liked me on my knees… I can do it with your cock in my mouth as I beg for your forgiveness. Give me to your new j’ira, have her torture me to within an inch of my life. I want you to fuck me again, like you did at Calloway before you threw me away.”

  His hand grazes mine, I feel frozen in place, “Let me, Cap. Let me beg the right way, the vampire way, let me earn a place at your feet.”

  Goddess help me I whimper with longing as he reaches for my pants… it makes me snap out of it.

  “No Matt,” I grit out between clenched teeth, but I’d be a fucking liar if I didn’t admit to myself that I’d love him on his knees and that I want him.

  Not because I’m sexually attracted, not to love or to have – but to punish, to hate, to hurt. Yet I won’t do this, I cannot do this… because I know I would hurt Lucien’s feelings if I did. Somewhere Lucien’s feelings became more important than my sadistic desire for revenge, which is perhaps a testament to what Lucien means to me now.

  I take a step back, putting some distance between Matthias and I. “No,” I say firmly again.

  He smiles, “What’s the problem can’t get your cock sucked by a desperate man? You used to love that.”

  “I won’t betray Lucien… I won’t cheat on him.”

  He looks shocked for a moment, “You… you mean that? You can’t fuck who you want?”

  “I’m in a monogamous relationship with him…”

  “And you’re happy with that?” He asks, voice filled with shock.

  “Yes,” I nod, “I love him… I’m in love with him,” I add in a whisper.

  “It’s not just about the power?” He asks, still not believing me.

  “No…” I realize, “no, I love him, not his power.”

  “He’s,” Matthias gestures towards the pavilion, “he’s not even your type.”

  I shake my head no, smiling, “Not even remotely – but he’s the man I want and love.”

  “Cap,” he whispers closing the distance between us, but not with a bid to suck my cock… with pure terror, “Cap please tell me it’s not over.”

  “It’s been over for some time…”

  “You didn’t mean it! We’ve had falling outs before, been angry with one another – but it's never been over, not really… we always find our way back to one another.”

  “This time we won’t, I’m not coming back to you and Ari – I’m not going back to that life.”

  “You can’t do this,” he whispers low.

  “I should get back,” I whisper realizing he’ll never accept that I’m moving on.

  I turn away, “Please!” he screams, and the sound is so perfectly heartbreaking that I turn back around… he’s down on his knees, head bowed, spirit broken. All of his bravado gone – he’s truly desperate and I feel my heartstrings pull like the first sweet notes of a violin.

  “Cap please,” he shakes his head crying, “please, I’m on my knees begging, please. I’m sorry, you know that I’m sorry… I’ll do anything… just please don’t send us back to Evzen, please Cap. We cannot stand it, I cannot keep her safe, I cannot make it better, I cannot live like this without you.”

  Fuck.

  “Come on, get up,” I go back to him and pull him up to his feet, “it will be okay.” I bring him into a hug because we’ve shared too many horrors to mean absolutely nothing to one another anymore.

  “I’m sorry,” he cries into me, his body racked with deep gouging sobs. I hold him and I let him cry and I feel whatever anger I had towards him, and even Ari, melt away.

  I do owe them that… we were under the rule of my stepfather, we all did what we had to do to survive and in some ways what Matt did actually ended up saving me.

  Somewhere inside of me, I wish it coul
d be different, I wish that we could have lived and loved, that we could have raised our daughter together… because she would have been all of ours – my, Matthias’s and Ari’s daughter – but we couldn’t, we didn’t, and our daughter died… I cannot change the past.

  He begins to calm down, “I can forgive you Matty, I can give you that… but I cannot give you my heart, it’s not mine to give anymore.” I whisper into him before pulling back.

  I hate that he’s so broken. Matt has always been a jokester, the fun lover, the knave. Hot tempered – quick to fight, even quicker to love. Now he stands here in a setting sun and his profile is haggard, his aura dim, his heart breaking… and I hate seeing him this way.

  “I cannot survive without you…” he whispers, voice breaking with the sound of a thousand heartaches.

  “Of course you can,” I smile, “you’ve been doing just fine.”

  “Only because I believed someday, we would have another chance – what’s the point of suffering if that shall never be?”

  “You have to find something else to live for,” I whisper.

  “How?”

  I sigh, “Be patient with yourself, grieve what you thought your life would be and don’t be afraid to let the light in when the time comes,” I give him a sad smile. “Leaving you and Ari behind wasn’t easy for me… you two will always mean something to me.”

  “Mean what?”

  “I don’t know, but… if you want to get away from Evzen, we could talk about you coming down to Baltimore. There’s no reason for you to live under that kind of terror – I can give you two some sort of home.”

  He gives me a half smile, “We’re going to finally start that clutch of our own?”

  “I would do that, for the two of you, offer you what safety I could – with the understanding that you will always respect Jaevia and Lucien as your queen and king as well.”

  “That is a lot of stipulation.”

  “That’s the offer on the table, it’s up to you if you think it’s worth it.” I shrug, “Talk to Ari about it… make sure she understands this would not be a way to become lovers again – that is over… but we could honor other promises to one another. We used to have such grand ideas about how to help the vampiric kind, we could take up the work again.”

  I watch a spark fill Matt’s eyes, “Okay, I’ll talk to her about it.”

  “We can discuss it more when I come back from my honeymoon.”

  He nods, seeming calmer and clears his throat gently, “One more question please.”

  I nod.

  “What happened? When we were younger… teenagers… before you married Ari, we were so close, I thought we’d be together. That you wanted me to… make love to you… and then something happened. Was it something I did? Or?...”

  “Evzen was abusing me,” I just confess the truth I’ve never wanted to admit.

  “I know… and I know I helped him hurt you – but you know I had no choice.”

  “No,” I look back at the man I once thought to love, “no you don’t know.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Evzen… sexually molested me.”

  “What?” He asks, a lost look covering his features – loss or disbelief.

  I nod, “It only lasted a few years… but I’d… he’d turned my desires for male attention into a sickness and… and that’s why I never could give myself to you, no matter how badly I wanted to.” I take in a shallow breath, trying to manage my emotions, “But I did want you, Matty. I wanted to know you in that way, and I did love you – that wasn’t a lie.”

  “Are you saying… I lost what I never had … because of him?”

  “Sometimes you lose before you even begin,” I whisper and turn away… because looking at him starts to hurt, not because I once loved him, but because I never had a chance with him… and once upon a time – I wanted that chance.

  43

  Jaevia

  “Walk with me then, Wench?”

  “Okay,” I smile up at my fearsome beast and get up from my seat. I was chatting with Ernie and one of the Camp Haven girls – Melissa… she wants to come down to Baltimore and go to university.

  I’ve done everything I could to let the young women know they can do as they will, but they still wish to clear everything with me. I’m not sure if it’s because they need a person to take charge in their lives or because they really see me as their queen and they my ladies-in-waiting… I just can’t tell. So, I do what I can to be gracious about it, I’ll never do a thing to harm those girls... physically or emotionally.

  Lucien and I are able to slip away from the reception without much fuss and he leads me away from the pavilion. I slip off my heels so I can enjoy the bountiful energy here, I’ve never known the park to feel like this. The pixies must have worked around the clock to heal the lands and I want nothing between the energy of Gaia and my feet. Goddess, maybe I’m picking up some of Kitty’s habits – minus the taste for toe-nuggets, I hope.

  Yet still, even with Kitty’s crazy, I can’t help but think, “Today was absolutely perfect.”

  “Oh, aye?” He asks and holds out his arm for me to take.

  I loop my arm in his and lean into his warmth, “Mmm hmm, the most perfect of days.”

  “Good, you deserve perfect days,” he grumbles low in that sweet way he has. “I’m sorry about Kitty.”

  “It’s okay, Luey,” I murmur feeling like nothing in the world could upset me. “I didn’t think we’d make it through the day without someone meeting their untimely end, so I’ll call it an overall win even with a few cannibalized toes.” I laugh.

  He huffs, “There is still time – where is the bloodsucker and his ex-lovers?”

  “You know that’s going to be a sensitive subject for him, Luey, you have to be patient.”

  “Oh I do, do I?”

  “Yes,” I whisper, “he’s going to be hurting, you can’t make it worse by being angry over his feelings.”

  “I do not know why he would have feelings over these people that are not worthy of him.”

  “I’m not worthy of you – yet here we are,” I say jokingly.

  He stops walking and turns to look down at me, “Never say that again, Jaevia,” his whisper is so intense it makes my heart skip a beat, “not even in jest.”

  “I’ll work on it,” I whisper wanting his lips upon mine.

  “Good girl,” he whispers and leans down to press those dark warm lips to me.

  I don’t want an innocent kiss, I want the toe curling, tongue battling, make me moan and get me wet, kind of kiss – and my Beast delivers. His need spills out of him like a raging volcano. Every synapse in my body fires with delight and then… his lips are gone.

  He growls low pulling back and I open my eyes slowly, “If you continue with your teasing, I’ll be fucking you against one of these trees.”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” I whisper, still feeling a little out of it.

  “I do not believe you would, but we will be having our perfect day all day and I’ll be fucking you in a proper bed on our wedding night.”

  I sigh, “Luey…”

  “This is a hard limit.”

  “That can’t be a hard limit,” I say getting frustrated with my cock tease of a husband.

  “A limit is whatever I wish it to be when it pertains to my body.”

  My jaw drops with disbelief, “You can’t be serious.”

  “Deadly,” he takes my arm again and nudges me into moving.

  Since when does Luey turn down sex? I ponder this as he leads us on our walk up a gentle slope. The sun is beginning to set, and the park seems even more beautiful. The green grass and trees, the purple sky above with a hint of the stars to come. Even the energy in the park is tranquil… how did this happen?

  “Where are the people that used to live here?” I ask still confused about how they pulled this off.

  Luey shrugs gently, “I bought them houses when I purchased the land – didn’t seem right
to kick them out and give them nowhere to go.”

  I stop walking again and he turns to look at me, “You did what?”

  He shrugs, “I needed the land to build you a castle Wench, you’re a queen, you need a castle.”

  “What?” I ask, now even more confused.

  He sighs, “I know you do not like the pretty things from me, but please do not be cross with me… I wish to give you and Capaneus a home – a home that I have built. Strong enough to defend you, large enough for our today and our tomorrows,” he gets down on one knee, “please let me, Jae.”

  “You…” I swallow, “you bought the park so that you could build me a castle?”

  “Aye,” he looks up at me, his golden red eyes filled with worry.

  I feel my anger rise, goddess help me I feel it. How could he make such a decision without my input?! A castle means I’m here; it means I’m queen; it means I rule, and I don’t want any of those things!

  Yet how can I deny his gift of heart? It’s not about money to him, money is only a tool – he wants to see me safe and loved and cared for and he’s trying to do that in the ways he knows how.

  I close my eyes and exhale slowly, “Thank you.”

  “Do you mean this, Jaevia?”

  I open my eyes slowly and nod, “I would be proud to live in any house you built – even a shack with no windows.” I smile down at him.

  He gets up slowly, “And you’re not cross with me?”

  “How could I be?” I smile and wrap my arms around his neck, “although, you could have asked.”

  “‘Tis better to ask for forgiveness than permission with some things,” he growls low wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me closer.

  I tuck my head under his chin, trying to be careful of my horns, “And who in the world taught you that?”

  He huffs, “You.”

  “But you really didn’t have to, Luey.”

  “I wanted to, let me do the things for happiness too.”

  “Okay,” I whisper and pull back smiling, “but I wish for you to know, your love is all I’ll ever need from you for happiness.”

  “And a bit of cock,” he grumbles low with a hint of a smile.