Bound to Blackwood (29 page)

The room was filled with unfamiliar voices. They were talking about her. She knew this, even though none of them used her name or addressed her directly. Mama had always told her not to speak to her elders unless they spoke to her first, so she stayed quiet. Well, as quiet as she could anyway. She looked down at her hands as they twisted and turned around the belt to her house coat and swallowed hard, trying not to cry.

The strange men who had taken her from her bedroom were thankfully gone, but somehow she knew she wasn't going home. She wanted to ask someone to send for her Papa — he was very wise and he would know what to do — but she didn't dare. She felt her bottom lip starting to tremble and told herself that she needed to put her Papa out of her mind. Crying would do her no good and she knew her Mama would want her to be brave.

She tried to listen in on the conversation but sometimes they spoke in a language she didn't understand. After a while she grasped most of the debate; a lot of it had to do with her. She could tell by the quick glances in her direction. The seriousness of the looks told her that although those horrid men were gone, the danger wasn't.

Suddenly the voices were silent. She felt her eyes widen as she looked around the skirts and found seven sets of eyes looking at her. She watched, terrified as the largest of the men took a few steps towards her. As she scurried back to her hiding place, he stopped.

In slow, careful movements, he held up his hands and went down on bended knee. "Don't worry, child. I'm not going to hurt you." He reached for her. "You need to come with me now. You're going to stay with some friends of mine until it's safe for you to return home."

She just stared.
She didn't want to go anywhere
.
 

"You want to be safe, don't you, child?" the man asked.
 

Yes, she did
. Swallowing back her tears, she reached out her hand.
 

Lena's head was foggy as she woke from the deepest of sleeps. She stretched her limbs like a cat and sighed with relief that for the first time in forever she felt rested. She lay sprawled on the bed whilst she waited for her brain to catch up with her body's new awakened state. The bliss she felt seeped away as the haze around her brain started to lift and the memories came back.

At first they were incoherent. Mismatched histories whirled around her mind until she begged them to slow down. Thoughts of Thorn crashed into a strange room in an unknown house where Soraya stood with her doctor's case in her hand and a gentle, understanding look on her face.

But that wasn't what happened. Was it? No, of course it wasn't.

She hadn't spoken to Thorn in, well she wasn't sure, but it had been a while. Gods, she hadn't even seen him in days.

Which had come next? Soraya, or that strange room?

The memories got clearer. Soraya had been here, in this room, in Lena's bedroom. She hadn't been in an unfamiliar room surrounded by strangers. Lena hadn't wanted her to come but in the end, Lena was glad she had. She'd been kind and gentle and she'd given Lena peace. And Lena would be eternally grateful, even if the drug induced calm didn't last.

That room. What was that all about? She tried to place it. It was a grand, old-fashioned place, with oil paintings and a stone fireplace and expensive rugs and dark wood floors. That didn't help. Most Houses owned by the upper echelons of Vampire society looked like that.

She stared into space trying to recollect who else had been there. Males, seven of them, though she didn't know the faces. And why had everyone been so much taller than her? The males in that room had been gargantuan.

Fear crept up her spine, though she didn't understand where it was coming from. She couldn't tell whether she was remembering a dream or a real event, but she felt real fear and desolation when she thought back to that room. A painful sense of loss bore down on her like white horses leading a tidal wave.

Grief wrapped itself around her, cold, and dark, and raw. Lena gasped at the strength of it. Her heart constricted and she felt the tears well and then spill down her cheeks.

Bewildered, she wiped them away and willed her hitched breathing to return to normal. She was so flustered, it seemed to take forever before she could draw a breath, and when she did, she realised the sense of loss was still lurking below the surface. She had felt loss before, but this was something else. It felt deeper and older.

Yet, how could that be?

Confused, Lena leaned back on the feather pillows, suddenly exhausted. Her eyes felt heavy and her lids began to droop. She let her eyes close and sank back into fitful oblivion.

Thorn must have re-read the same page a hundred times. He studied the Chronicles as a youngling, but what he just discovered was extraordinary. The words formed comprehensible sentences yet his brain refused to accept them.

The Chronicles detailed the oldest of Vampire lore, most of which, with the gates of Faerie now closed, had passed into myth and legend. Surely, that's what this was; a fable. Words like
ahmran
,
miris
and
eldur
had disappeared from the modern lexicon, so much so, that Thorn had resorted to looking them up in a dictionary.
 

And then he wished he hadn't.

If what he had read was true then the blood lust he was suffering from wasn't going away any time soon, because it wasn't just hunger that ailed him. According to the Chronicles, he fevered for his
ahmran
, the blood song of his true mate. Lena's
miris
, her bonding scent, would continue to torment him and ward off other potential suitors until their bonding was complete.
 

He pinched the bridge of his nose and cursed out loud, not for the first time, when he thought about the second passage. If Lena was his true mate, his
Amocinta
, then... Holy Mother of Faerie...
 

Eldur
would torment her. She would suffer pain unlike any male would feel in his lifetime. And there was no cure, except the seed of her mate and the complete surrender to her
Amocin
. Until that time, the touch of any other male would be utter agony.
 

Thorn knew true matings happened. His parents were true mates; Heath and Cassandra were true mates; Gods, even Larissa and Blaine Bowman had been true mates. Thorn squeezed his eyes shut as he thought of his parents and cursed himself for not thinking to ask them what it meant to be truly mated.

Bitter sadness wrapped itself around his heart as he thought of his mother. Thorn understood that his father felt an unbearable pain when she passed, far greater than anyone else who loved the beautiful Deanna, but he couldn't bring himself to ask any questions. Men didn't talk about their feelings at the best of times.

He felt his brow furrow again. How did Soraya know all this? Did their mother warn her of what was in store for her? Another thought soon followed the first; Christ, what would Thorn do if Soraya was mated? There wasn't a Vampire on earth good enough for her.

He swallowed hard. Bloody hell, he felt like he'd just opened the proverbial can of worms and wanted desperately to slam the lid shut.

Pushing Soraya out of his mind, he thought about the general populous. All matings were documented, and from memory, there had been no new ones in over half a millennium. In fact, Gideon wasn't sure there were any true pairs left at all. The fight against the Fallen had taken its toll.

Shit.

As a warrior, mating had always been far from his mind. As King, the thought had disappeared entirely. And he never really considered the mechanics of it all. Hell's gates, this was a nightmare.

He wasn't sure he was ready for this. He knew Lena wasn't. All he'd read suggested that she needed to yield, to surrender herself to him completely. Acquiescence was not Lena's strong point. She refused to give in to the smallest of matters so there was no way in the Mother's Faerie that she would wave the white flag for him. The body may know what the heart needs but he had a feeling it wasn't going to be that easy.

He couldn't imagine his history lesson getting any worse, but a feeling of dread spread through his veins as he reached for the second of Soraya's place markers. He heaved the yellowed pages over to the next section and froze.
Strength of Blood, Power of Succession.
 

He read the words and willed them to be false. His heart and mind had been battling with each other over taking Lena for a mate, but as he read the laws that governed royal matings, his heart won out. Words like superior bloodlines, warrior-class, and nobility leapt off the page in defiance, shouting loud and clear that, according to the chronicles, Lena was not a suitable mate by virtue of her birth.

Anger welled in the pit of his stomach. The chronicles had given him the answers he sought in one breath and then sent a thundering bolt of reality though him in the next. The ancient book gave a loud bang as Thorn tossed it across the desk.

Seething, he pushed himself out of his chair, not bothering to right the thing as it clattered to the floor.

Kaden heard the racket from Thorn's office from down the hallway. His senses on red-alert, he flew over the flag-stoned floor, his feet barely touching the ground as he raced for the door. He burst through the huge oak door, gun drawn, ready for anything.

Thorn leant against the huge, stone mantel piece, his head resting on his arm, his back to the door. Thorn's head snapped up as Kaden came crashing through the doors, but he didn't turn to face his Keeper. Kaden's keen eyes took in the fallen chair, some sort of encyclopedia on the floor and caught the fury rolling of Thorn. He surveyed the rest of the room, before allowing his hands to drop.

Kaden stared at Thorn. He had the distinct impression he was sharing a room with the Vampire equivalent of a caged lion. Ordinarily, that would make Kaden wary, but not nervous. This caged lion, however, was the most powerful Vampire in existence.

When Thorn finally turned to face him, Kaden winced. The boiling fury Kaden sensed was etched in every line of the King's face. His broad forehead knitted tightly over his narrowed, white-hot eyes. His cheekbones razored the usually soft lines of his face, his mouth set halfway between a grimace and a snarl.

His molten stare made Kaden want to take a step back. He splayed his hands by his side, and bowed his head, making sure Thorn knew he wasn't a threat. Whatever this was, it couldn't be good.

"Have you read the chronicles?" Thorn asked, his voice hoarse, almost a whisper.

Where on earth was this leading?
"Of course I have," Kaden replied.
 

"Have you read
that
volume?" Thorn spat the words as he pointed to the leather-bound tome now discarded on the floor, his eyes never leaving Kaden's face.
 

Kaden didn't have a clue whether he had or not. He collected the book from its resting place on the floor and thudded it onto Thorn's desk. Spinning it around so he could read the title, he felt his brow pull down further.
The Ties That Bind Us.