Destructive Embrace (10 page)

I sighed, lifting one hand
to trail my fingertips along the bite marks. "Or maybe he was able
to because Reid is dead now," I whispered. My voice caught in my
throat and I cleared my throat, tears blurring my vision. "It's
hard to handle at times, still. It doesn't feel fair, that he isn't
here anymore, all because your father had an obsession with living
forever."

Dmitri scoffed. "I would
rather you not call him my father, thank you," he said stiffly. I
pursed my lips. "Regardless of the fact that he is part of the
reason I exist right now, he was never a real father to us. Even to
Reid, his supposed favorite, he wasn't very kind. It's no wonder
Mother was going to leave him and take us with her."

I started. "You knew that
she was going to leave?" I asked. He looked at me like it was the
most obvious thing in the world.

"Why else do you think I
was around in order to kill Tywin after he brutally murdered our
mother?" he asked. His voice was quiet, a faraway look in his eyes.
I imagined that he was recalling the memory of the day the brothers
lost both of their parents.

"How old were you?" I
asked. They had to have been minors still, to have their mother
threatening their father with taking them away, but yet old enough
to where Dmitri knew how to fight – and kill – his
father.

"I was nearly of age," he
murmured. "Zeke and Wyatt were old enough to come with us of their
own free will, although neither wanted to leave this place, for
obvious reasons," he said, referring to Zeke's obsession with the
dungeons, and Wyatt's need for an environment full of
history.

"Wow," was all I could say.
I hadn't ever heard the full story, and I supposed that I didn't
even have all of it then, but I had enough to where I could imagine
how hard things were for them all.

I didn’t see Elyssa at all for the next
week, but that was fine by me. She’d left without even trying to
talk to me about what we’d done.

Plus, I was spending tons of time with
someone else.

Somehow, Roxann made the decision to
stay at the castle. In our spare time, she liked to try to persuade
me that I wasn’t a monster.

I even managed to open up to her about
sleeping with Elyssa.

The shame was evident in my voice as I
told her, but not once did she show signs of judging me.

“The way I see it,” Roxann said as I
finished telling her, “is that Elyssa,” she flinched at the mention
of the vampiress, “was trying to help you. But in the process, she
brought out the worst in you, as she tends to do.”

I blinked. Something about what she
said bothered me, but at the same time, I knew it to be true:
Elyssa did bring out the worst in me. So why did it bother me to
hear Roxann say it?

Are we forgetting that a sick little
part of you loves her? A nagging voice teased inside my
head.

For the briefest of moments, I worried
that Tywin had dared to possess me. No, he never exactly loved you,
I reminded myself.

The next time we spent time together,
it was in my study. I glanced over at Roxann as she plucked books
from the shelves. We were just enjoying each other’s company. She
was reading through books that randomly caught her eye, and I was
researching.

Or, I was trying to research. It was
hard for me to concentrate with Roxann around that day.

That was the first time we hadn’t been
deep in conversation with one another about whatever tickled our
fancy. The range of topics we’d covered was vast. We’d thoroughly
gotten to know one another in the days we spent together.
Everything from favorite things to our talents; we’d touched on
what felt like everything. Even though I was a vampire - one who
had beaten her, even - she seemed fairly comfortable with
me.

We’d gone over the family situations of
one another. She had been orphaned at a young age, her parents
murdered gruesomely. She had no siblings, but had been raised by
her grandparents, who knew about and hated vampires. It was a
wonder that Roxann Thorne hadn’t been to our castle sooner in an
attempt to figure out what was happening there.

That was why I was making an attempt to
research with her around. There was something about her name that
seemed familiar to me. Perusing the name index Tywin had made
before his first death, I didn’t come across the name.

However, the name Hawthorne stood out
to me. It wasn’t a direct variation of the name, but if something
had happened, it was easy enough to change one’s last name from
Hawthorne to Thorne…

I found the tome that my father’s index
directed me to and froze. A family of hunters. Of course, I thought
grimly, looking up at Roxann. I wondered if she’d been lying this
whole time, if she was a trained hunter.

The Hawthorne family was rumored to
have been taken out by a rogue bunch of vampires a handful of years
ago. It was hard to believe at the time, but now that I knew they’d
had a daughter, they probably were easily distracted. Why did they
leave the child alive, though? I wondered. Wait, it isn’t even
certain that this girl is the youngest member of that
clan.

“So tell me more about your family,” I
said. Apparently I’d startled the girl, because she jumped and her
face flooded with color. “I’m far more interested in hearing about
your family than I am in conducting this research.” You have no
idea.

She seemed hesitant to part with the
book in her lap but quickly complied and patted the cushion beside
her. I moved to sit next to her and waited patiently for her to
begin telling me her story.

“Well, I don’t remember much about my
parents… But I do remember growing up and being the kid everyone
made fun of because my grandmother was ‘that crazy lady who
believed in vampires,’” she began, shrugging one
shoulder.

“I never really believed in them, until
shortly after I began my work at the newspaper. I mean, what
evidence did I truly have before then, you know?" she asked softly,
tucking a stray curl behind her ear. "My Gran never did seem to be
the sanest of people, and while it was amusing as a young child, it
made my life hard as I grew up. So, naturally, I did everything I
could to keep out her words, and to make sure everyone knew that I
didn't believe her lies."

Sighing, she started chewing on her
lower lip. "But when I got my job, I noticed just how many women
tended to go missing from the mainland, and they almost always
happened shortly after an ad was placed by someone on this island,"
she whispered.

I tensed. Did I really want to listen
to her berating me for all that I had done in the past? But Roxann
seemed to be thinking carefully before letting her next words
out.

When she finally opened her mouth and
began speaking once more, I was surprised. She went back to talking
about her family history. “Anyway, I never believed in any of it,
nor did I pay any attention to her rants about our family history,”
she said, smiling.

I tuned her out as she spoke more on
her family. It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested in her family
history, of course. I just had all the information I needed right
at that moment: she didn’t know that she was a descendant of great
vampire hunters, and even if she’d heard of it, she never would
have believed it.

But I had the information finally. She
was a descendant of the greatest vampire hunting family there was.
That wasn’t necessarily a good thing. On the other hand, since she
never believed in vampires until she was an adult, there was a
chance that even if she knew, she wouldn’t care and wouldn’t be
interested in learning how to do what her family did in the
past.

The good news was that she was
untrained, and rather scared of everyone in the castle.

Almost on cue, Roxann regained my
attention when a name slipped from her mouth.

“…
Elyssa.”

Snapping my eyes to hers, I stumbled
for a response. I needed to know what she said in order for me to
reply. But then I would have to admit that I wasn’t listening in
the first place.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I got
lost in my own thoughts for a moment. What did you say about
darling Elyssa?”

Roxann opened her mouth to speak in the
middle of my sentence, but as soon as the adjective ‘darling’
slipped from my lips, she scowled and looked away, becoming silent
once more.

I smirked. “What is with this reaction,
dear? Are we jealous, perhaps?” My tone was purposefully teasing,
but I was genuinely curious. Was Roxann jealous of a simple word
that was, for just a moment, aimed toward Elyssa?

“O-of course I’m not jealous,” Roxann
stammered. The jump in her heartrate told me she was
lying.

I moved to sit beside her, slipping one
arm around her shoulders smoothly. “Sure you’re not, dear,” I
placated, whispering into her ear. “Now, what were you saying about
Elyssa?” I asked again, neglecting to include the word that seemed
to have ticked Roxann off the first time around.

Roxann eyed me for a moment before
repeating herself slowly. “I was just saying that she is a rather
odd girl. Kind of broken, and yet intimidating,” she
murmured.

I frowned. “Has she been treating you
badly?” I asked, the barest hint of a growl creeping into my words
from my throat.

Roxann flinched away from me at the low
snarl, and shrugged her shoulders. “Mostly she just sends me glares
and then walks away. Ever since that time,” she flinched again,
probably from recalling the dungeon encounter we had, “and I ran
away from her and - and your brother, she just doesn’t seem to like
me very much.”

I frowned again. This was a situation
I’d hoped would never happen. Both of them were inhabitants of my
castle, and I wished for them to get along.

But if Elyssa couldn’t be nicer to my
own personal guest, I would have to take action.

“I’ll talk to her,” I murmured to
Roxann, leaning my head down so it was lying on her shoulder. I
sighed. “This is your home now, too. You should be comfortable
here, and the likes of Elyssa should never make you feel
unsafe.”

As unresolved as my feelings for Elyssa
were, Roxann was truly my priority, as she was directly under my
care.

That and, as scary as it might seem, I
knew I was starting to develop very strong feelings for the woman
before me.

…Elyssa was just a complication in all
of our lives. We might even be better off without her around
entirely, I told myself.

Somehow even a semi-positive outlook
from giving Elyssa the boot didn’t stamp down the twinge of guilt
that I felt at the thought of sending Reid’s Mate
packing.

Or the little flicker of pain that came
at the thought of banishing the newest member of the
family.

“I’ll handle her,” I said quietly. “She
can’t mistreat you. She of all people…”

Roxann paled. “Don’t, you don’t have
to, I mean. She isn’t outright mean to me. We avoid each other
mainly. I would hate for anything you say to cause her to seek me
out,” she added quickly.

The part of me that still distrusted
what most people said made me think that Roxann was just trying to
use reverse psychology on me. Telling me to not speak to Elyssa,
but using her own fear as a reason to goad me on.

I brushed off my paranoia. I’d been
looking for a way to get rid of Elyssa since the day she set foot
in my castle. I wasn’t about to pass up such a lovely opportunity
now that it had presented itself to me to do so.

My ears began ringing the more I
thought of it. Could I truly treat Elyssa that way, if it came down
to it?

Roxann appeared worried and I offered
her a weak smile. “Don’t worry. She won’t know that we talked about
her,” I assured her. “And anyway, I don’t think she’ll be coming
after you.” She won’t even be a resident at this castle when I’m
done talking to her.

A few hours later, Roxann was in her
room, safe and sound, and I was off to find Elyssa.

At every turn I had to stop and hold
myself up with a wall. Somehow the thought of it was making me
sick, and I wasn’t sure that I would, in the end, have the stomach
to actually go through with kicking Elyssa out of my
castle.

She belongs here, one half of me
argued. She was Reid’s Mate. Lanistter blood made her a
vampire.

The other half of me retorted, she’s a
bitter little witch, and one who doesn’t know how to treat guests
who are more important than her.

…She’s Reid’s Mate…

Roxann is in your life now.

But I still l–

I cut myself off before my insanity
made me go off and kill myself.

Here I was, in the middle of trying to
rid our lives of the worst thing to ever happen to us, and I was
arguing with myself about it.

And losing, might I add.

Sighing, I started moving forward
again. I needed to get it over and done with and then maybe I could
deal with the aftermath of my feelings – as well as the feelings of
the rest of the castle inhabitants – when it was all
over.