Awakening (26 page)

“It’s so nice being with you; you make me feel… safe,” she murmured, snuggling further into his arms and closing her eyes, a content smile on her lovely lips. Before Auberon could swell with pleasure, she continued, “
You are my family now.”

Laughing it off, he faced her,
aching to be her lover as well. However, being newly introduced to the pathetic side of himself, he would take any crumb she gave him. “You should rest.”

“I can’t sleep,” she confessed, now drawing fi
gure eights on his chest with her fingers. “I can barely move but I am wide awake. Talk to me, Auberon; tell me everything will be okay."

“
If you survive.” At her gasp, he realized he had said his thoughts out loud and clenched his jaw. Why couldn’t he control his tongue around her? She asks a damn question and he freaking answers; it was ridiculous! Tightening his hold on her, he kissed the top of her head, “It will be okay, Celeste. You have me and Adam on your side and I think we might be able to count on a third
Apocritum
.”

“A third
Apocritum
?” she asked. “Out of all the
Apocritae
, we have three on our side?”

“Maybe more,” he offered. “I
do have a vague sense of discontent among the Hive but they cannot afford to have overtly treasonous feelings because Mother would destroy the traitor who held such thoughts.”

“Then who is the third
Apocritum
that we might have on our side?” she asked.

He ground his teeth together to prevent the answer from spewing forth but it was too much. Through
a clenched jaw, he mumbled, “Adam and I have a brother who broke free nearly two millennia ago. He remains hidden in plain sight, or he did before he went underground with Rebecca Lewis.”

“Beck,” Celeste breathed. “I remembered the truth about her. I thought she
had died but Ge… a friend told me she was still alive. She’s with your brother?”

His jaw hurt from the battle of keeping quiet and
failing. “Yes.”

“If they are in hiding, how will he be of any use
to us?” she frowned.

He gave up trying to fight his desire to answer her and sighed in surrender. “I have a way
to get in touch with him if necessary; I simply haven’t used it before because I did not want Mother to learn he was still alive.”

Her sharp intake of breath indicated her shock, “She thinks he’s dead? Are you and
Adam going to have to fake your deaths to be free as well?”

“We’re already free
; well, very nearly so,” he told her, his brow furrowing as he heard his speech patterns; they were different somehow; less priggish. “You should get some rest now.”

“I told you, I’m not tired,” she said, though she still couldn’t move. “I want to know more; I want to know everything. How were you created? I
mean, you said you were sterile so where did you come from?”

“Mother created us,” he answered
bitterly, remembering his time in the gestation tanks, the darkness, the coldness, all those many millennia ago, the lessons they had suffered at her hand; the pain and humiliation of becoming perfect
Apocritum
. How he and Adam grieved when their brother Shaw left, how they mourned his “death” to save him.

“How?” she asked softly, the awe apparent in her voice.

“It was a long time ago,” he mused. “The method was more advanced back then but they are similar to how she creates
Apocritae
today, though she creates so few; perhaps one or two every couple of years or so.”

“But how?”
Celeste repeated, trying to comprehend what he was telling her and not dwell too much on everything else. He talked about time as if… as if he had been around a lot longer than she presumed; longer than anyone presumed.

He was quiet for a long moment and she was afraid he wasn’t going to tell her anything more. But then he took a
shuddering breath and said, “Gestational tanks and subliminal training. Adam, Shaw and I were created in a time that was far more advanced than this one….”

“Oh, God,” Celeste breathed, clutching her stomach as nerves started revolting at his words. It had to have been ages ago; as far as she knew, there had been no discoveries of such an advanced civilization.

He chuckled at her obvious misgivings. “Most of the civilization and all of the technology were destroyed in the process of creating the three of us. Mother was pissed but she used the ensuing years teaching us, training us. My brothers and I learned everything we could from the… other beings that were around, forming uneasy alliances that have held throughout the ages, through everything.

“I think my brothers and I are
too… independent for her taste but there is nothing she can do to fix that since the technology is long gone,” he said thoughtfully, almost to himself. “Still, it took eons for Adam and me to finally break free.”

“Humans were around through all of this?” she asked softly, her eyes wide as she watched Auberon’s chest rise and fall with each breath he took; it was oddly comforting.

“Of course,” he chuckled, squeezing her in a half hug. “Plus a host of other supernatural creatures who always keep things interesting.”

Her brows pulled together at what he had said previously, “Why did it take you so long to … free yourselves?”

“Mother did too good of a job creating us,” he explained softly, drawing circles on her upper arm as he talked, enjoying it more than he should. “She filled our heads with misinformation and half-truths to keep us in line. It took years for the perfect veneer to crack and expose the rotten core beneath; Shaw was the first of us to break free, but then again, he was always the most rebellious of us.”

“I find that hard to believe,” she laughed slightly, holding her hand in front of her mouth to hold in her amusement as she looked at Auberon, picturing him in his leather pants and
untamed hair, looking every inch the rebel.

His lips curled up into an authentic smile, “Sad, I know, but true. It took another fifteen hundred years for me to desire my freedom and only recently has
Adam admitted to being stifled. Of course, once Adam commits to something, he commits completely. He is the one who has gotten us this far.”

“I see,” she nodded her head, though she wasn’t sure she saw at all.

“Even though he is set on this course it has been difficult for him at times because he was always Mother’s favorite,” Auberon continued, wondering why in the name of all that was Holy and good and pure he was telling these things to this girl. She was Adam’s; Adam should be the one informing her of their origins. But then he wouldn’t get to talk to her now and he really wanted to impress her; maybe gain her favor. What the hell? Was he back in the Middle Ages all of a sudden? ‘Gain her favor?’ Whatever. “He still struggles with guilt on occasion. But now that he has you, I think that will change; finally.”

“So that’s a good thing?”

“
You
are a good thing,” he smiled at her, running his hands gently over her slender back, comforting her and torturing himself. He scowled up at the ceiling, both at his memories and his unrequited lust. “Mother is a malicious, controlling bitch; she would destroy us if she even had a hint of our rebellion.”

There was no mistaking the hostile tone of his voice. “Why did you risk so much?”

“Freedom,” he said softly, passionately, as calmness settled over them, blanketing them together, both lost in their own thoughts.

Her body relaxed against his and after a moment she asked, “But you guys have escaped, right?”

“We have,” he assured her, tightening his arms for emphasis, letting her know silently that she was safe in his arms. Er, with him and Adam. "Mostly."

“How is that possible?” she asked. “How does the Queen not realize?”

“Like I said, Mother did too good of a job creating us,” he repeated wryly. “I don’t think even she knows the extent of our powers otherwise she would have kept a tighter leash on us. Luckily, she thinks that we are still part of the Hive, since we can manipulate the communications and give the impression that we are still there.”

“Huh,” Celeste muttered, the words and implications crashing together haphazardly in her head. Tilting her head to the side, realizing how little she
actually knew of the
Apocritae
, she murmured, “I don’t understand.”

“It’s complicated,” he said as a mild understatement, seeing more and more of Gloria in her actions now that he knew the truth of her origin. Forcing
himself to concentrate on the subject at hand, he shrugged his broad shoulders, “Adam and I do a lot of traveling for the Hive and our various interests. We also represent the
Apocritae
in the Council, so we are allotted quite a bit of leeway. As long as we send in the appropriate signals, Mother will never grow suspicious.”

“Appropriate signals?” Celeste
asked curiously.

“
Communication between the
Apocritae
,” he explained. “Adam and I are able to send it out without thought, allowing us to retain our freedom permanently. And hopefully someday it will no longer be necessary to do that anymore.”

“Auberon?” she whispered in a voice barely louder than the exhalation of a breath.

“Yeah?” he lifted his head and looked down at her, seeing her lids dropping as she stared at nothing in particular. He watched as her brows pinched together and he wanted to kiss her worries away; to tuck her into his heart and keep her safe.

“
The baby is not human, is she?” she asked, tilting her head back and looking at him with glistening eyes.

He saw her struggling to stay awake, felt her breasts press against his side as she yawned. Drawing his hand along her jaw,
needing to touch her, he shook his head, “No, I don’t think so.”

Her eyes closed and she swallowed once, twice. “
What is she?”

“My Queen,” he whispered, kissing her forehead and closing his eyes in reverence. With his lips against her skin, he said, “Sleep.”

But she was already asleep, her even breaths puffing against his chest tightening the area around his heart. Pressing his lips to the top of her head, he wanted to cry out, howl at the unfairness of it all. His brother was a lucky man, a very lucky man. Damn the Fates and their fickle ways. But for tonight, she was his and in the morning when it was time for her to return to Adam, he would pretend this night never happened; that he never tasted her blood and wanted so much more

Auberon held her in his arms as he stared up at the ceiling, the pleasure of being near her outweighing the agony of having her so close. Inhaling deeply, he froze as the hint of a sleeping Guardian Angel as well as the more pungent odor of a fully awake Guardian Demon tickled his nose. Groaning, he squeezed his eyes shut; of course the Fates would assign a protector to a potential Queen. A Guardian would explain Adam's inability to scent Celeste from across the pond. It also explained why the Queen remained oblivious to the true extent of the threat against her. Had his Mother known how significant the "wrinkle" was she would have torn the world apart in her zealousness to find Celeste and destroy her before the baby Queen could take her first breath

His mind raced through the possibili
ties, trying to figure out which one was the Guardian and what sort of complication she was going to be. Not that it mattered; both Guardian Angels and Guardian Demons were loyal to a fault, though the demons were far more belligerent, quick to act and slow to think. He hoped Celeste's Guardian was the demon but he feared it was most likely the sleeping Angel simply because the Fates liked to fuck with them. It would have been too convenient to have an armed and fully operational Guardian protecting the infant Queen. Hell, the fucking Guardian probably wasn't going to awaken until the Queen was born. It would have been nice to have back up in case things went wrong. And Auberon had lived long enough to know that things invariably went wrong.

Again, all he had to say was damn the
Fates and their fickle ways.