Destructive Embrace (12 page)

I lost it then, sobs breaking free from
my chest.

Soft footfalls met my ears, growing
louder and faster the closer they got to me, until Zeke was there
beside me once more, clutching me by my shoulders.

Why was he
always
there?

“Elyssa, what is it?” he asked
urgently, shaking me gently.

“I can’t leave,” I got out between
sobs.

Zeke sighed, his arms dropping down to
his sides. “You have to though,” he murmured, his voice more tender
than I’d ever heard coming from him.

Shaking my head, I
clarified what I meant. “No. I
can’t
leave. I just tried. Something threw me back onto
the grounds,” I said, calming down slightly.

Not only was he always there, but he
presence always brought a sense of calm to me whenever I needed
it…

I looked up at the man before me. He
was looking around us furiously, hyper-aware of anything that might
have been amiss. “There’s no one on this end of the castle,” he
muttered. “What the hell is going –“

His abrupt silence alerted me to the
fact that his thoughts were going down a negative pathway. I tried
to think of whatever could possibly put such a look of dread on
Zeke’s face, but there were any number of things that he might have
known about that I didn’t.

“You might be trapped here,” Zeke
breathed. “I think the only thing that could keep you on these
grounds would be a spell…”

His pause made me wonder and semi-fear
where he was going with that. “But…?” I prompted.

He glanced down at me. “But… The only
one who knew a spell that could do that was –“

“Tywin,” I finished. “But he’s gone. So
how will we undo it?”

Zeke shook his head. “If he was gone,
the spell would have lifted…” My body went cold.

“Are… Are you trying to tell me that
you think that Tywin is still alive?” I demanded weakly. Zeke’s
silence spoke volumes.

The thought made my stomach churn and I
fought down a wave of nausea.

“This means that Reid died for
nothing,” I said suddenly. “We killed my Mate to get rid of Tywin
and it didn’t work!” I shrieked.

Zeke grabbed me and held on tight as I
broke down. He stroked my hair until my sobs subsided and rocked me
back and forth.

“He died as a way of stopping my
father,” he said slowly. “There was a reason behind it. Tywin was
just craftier than we thought.”

I didn’t reply. If I opened my mouth to
speak, I knew I would just start crying and screaming again, so I
kept myself still and silent in Zeke’s arms.

They’re both headstrong. Beautiful and
smart. One, pale as the moon, the other a gentle coffee color. Both
have green eyes that are heavenly to stare into…

“What is wrong with me?” I growled to
myself. How could I be comparing Ollie to Elyssa? One was my Mate;
she deserved more respect than I was giving her. “God, I’m all
fucked up in the head.” I grabbed my hair and gave it a solid tug
with both hands. It didn’t shake my thoughts from my head,
though.

One recurring thought that was
especially a problem in the equation was Elyssa. She kept popping
up even when I didn’t want to deal with her. To be honest, though,
those times where I didn’t want to deal with the woman weren’t very
often.

Elyssa was full of interesting
conversation, loved the time we spent sparring with one another,
and was quite fun to be around in general. She didn’t pressure me
to do things that I wasn’t up for, and we didn’t spend most of our
time fighting with one another.

“Come to think of it,” I
mumbled, “we never fight with one another.” Maybe it was because we
got along so well, or maybe it was just because she
wasn’t
my Mate. Either
way, we didn’t fight, which meant that time with her was pleasant
and worthwhile.

I was tired of avoiding the
problem I had. And yes, it was a problem. Two beautiful women being
stuck in my mind all the time. It was especially a problem because
I had a Mate already, one who wasn't really as bad as I always made
her out to be to Elyssa. The only real problem we had was that she
only wanted to have sex whenever we had time to spend with one
another.

As I thought more on
Ollie, thoughts of Elyssa tore through like a tornado, ripping
through my mind in the most reckless of ways. Where Ollie was
always a horndog and trying to get my pants off, Elyssa hadn't
expressed even the slightest interest in me. That wasn't to say
that she
couldn’t
feel the same about me of course.

"Whoa!" I muttered to
myself, shaking my head. "Feel the same way about me? Seriously?
Who's to say I even feel anything more than friendship for the
woman?" I challenged myself, growling when her smile popped into my
head and caused my heart to race.

"Okay, so maybe I don't
just think about Elyssa as my friend," I huffed. "But I have a Mate
already. Everyone knows this. And
she
certainly isn't interested
in
me
, that's for
sure. Otherwise she wouldn't have sought out Zeke's attention in
the first place. Though, maybe just maybe that was an accidental
occurrence?"

I shook her from my mind
again, and hauled myself off my bed. I needed to get out of my
room, away from the reminders of Ollie that only served to create
pathways for me to think about Reid’s Mate.

I ran down the stairs of my
tower quickly, careful to not trip over my own feet as I headed to
the main part of the castle. I needed time to myself but there was
nowhere I could go that wouldn't bring other people raining down on
me in only a matter of time. I supposed that I could always go to
my gardens, but what use was being out there when there was nothing
to tend to? I’d already fixed the parts of the garden that I’d
wrecked, and the parts that Reid had wrecked as well.

So where could I
go?

Should I attempt to leave
the castle, to go out and have a good time on the town away from
all of my problems? But that was a bit selfish, I knew, to go out
without my Mate when she was supposed to be my wife.

Once more, a sigh left my
mouth as I reached the main hallway.

Before I could exit through
the large double doors, though, a figure ran past me, holding her
hands over her mouth as she rushed to the guest bathrooms that were
just off the main hall. I followed, curious as to why Elyssa was
getting sick.

Vampires didn't really get
sick...

"Oh, my god," I breathed,
picking up my pace as I heard the telltale sounds of someone
vomiting into the toilet.

"Elyssa, are you okay?" I
asked as I stepped into the bathroom behind her. She nodded, and I
rushed over to catch her hair before any of it could fall into the
toilet. She groaned her thanks and I was torn between grimacing and
chuckling at her attempts to still thank me even though she was
clearly not feeling well enough to speak.

“Do you know why you’re
sick?” I asked her softly. I had a sinking suspicion that I knew,
but I wasn’t entirely sure. Also, the thought that was trapped in
my head left a sour taste in my mouth; if I was right, then I
really had no right to have any feelings other than friendship for
this woman…

“No, no idea at all,” she
rasped, reaching up blindly to flush the toilet. I helped her to
the sink so she could rinse out her mouth and held her hair back
for her there as well.

When she was comfortable
again, I braced myself for an attack, and reached out to grab onto
her breast gently.

“Hey—ow!” Elyssa whined,
cringing away from my touch. “What was that for,
Dmitri?!”

I frowned and shrugged. “Well, vampires
rarely get sick, unless someone has bad blood. Seeing as how you’ve
only been drinking our bottled blood, I know that you aren’t sick
from blood, so the only other option is for you to be pregnant,” I
told her.

I could hear the lack of enthusiasm in
my voice and hoped that Elyssa wouldn’t catch onto it. She didn’t.
In fact, her face froze in a mask of horror and she covered her
mouth with her hands.

“What? Do you think you’re going to be
sick again?” I asked, motioning to the toilet.

“Well,” she began, pausing to think. I
held my breath, hoping she wasn’t about to say the very thing that
was haunting my mind.

“Zeke and I had a very ugly
conversation earlier. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t leave a
queasy feeling in my stomach.”

For a moment, I allowed that. But to
have uncontrollable vomiting even when sickened mentally was still
wrong for one of us.

“This is horrible.”

I was confused. Shouldn’t she be happy
that she’s carrying the child of her dead Mate? After all, that way
she would always have a reminder of him in her life, and she could
be happy about their time together. Unless…

“Elyssa, this baby is Reid’s, right?” I
asked her quietly, accusingly. Her green eyes found mine and I
suddenly realized the truth.

Suddenly what Elyssa told me in the
days after Reid’s death really sunk in.

“I was in Zeke’s
dungeons…”

“Did you sleep with Zeke?” I asked.
This time there was some kind of emotion in my voice. But it most
certainly wasn’t pleasant, and Elyssa caught on.

She flinched and refused to meet my
eyes. I grabbed her chin harshly.

“Answer me!” I barked. Her eyes widened
and for a second I might have believed that she was afraid of
me.

“I did. It wasn’t anything we planned,
and we both agree that it was a horrible mistake, never to be
repeated…”

I shoved her away from me, unable to
stand being in contact with her then.

“You slept with the
worst
person possible,
mere days after you killed your Mate? What the fuck is wrong with
you?” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “And him… I can’t believe…
Never mind. That move was perfect representation of everything
awful about my brother.”

“Don’t you think we’re beating
ourselves up enough over it?!” Elyssa shouted. Her expression went
from defense mode to anger in mere seconds. I wasn’t intimidated,
though.

“Who the fuck cares how
much grief you’ve given yourselves? It should never have happened!”
I clutched her shoulders and shook her. “You deserve that guilt
and
so much more
!”

Before she could defend herself, I
continued. “You deserve even more if the baby you’re carrying isn’t
Reid’s.”

Leaving it at that, I made myself
invisible and walked away.

What were they thinking?
Grief or not, they both should have known better…

Hell, what was
I
thinking?
I thought.
Having
feelings for my dead brother’s Mate, who wasn’t
my
Mate, and on top of that, she was
a person who made bad decisions?

“It’s no wonder Zeke is in love with
her,” I said out loud.

Immediately I felt bad. I wasn’t the
type of friend that automatically jumped on the judgmental train. I
was the supportive one. The one who helped his friends through the
impossible times, even when they were brought upon by their own
stupidity.

I turned around to find Elyssa once
more. She was in the same place I’d left her at, which made it easy
on me.

Without making myself visible, I said,
“By the way, vampire pregnancies only last three
months.”

I then walked away.

Pregnant. I never would
have thought that it would happen to me, even
before
my transformation into a
vampire. That didn’t really decide anything though, since I knew
that vampires were able to have families in the same way humans
could.

But I’d never really given it much
thought before the change, either.

I rubbed my belly slowly, trying to
process it. Sitting in the quiet of the library I’d always visited
with Reid was better than dealing with Dmitri’s disgusted
glares.

“Reid,” I whispered, leaning back so
that I was lying on the sofa, my hands rested on my
abdomen.

I still felt queasy and weak from my
earlier bouts of sickness, but it was beginning to fade as I
relaxed more. It was hard to process that vampire pregnancies
lasted only three short months. Most women had trouble getting
their lives situated for a baby in a whole nine months, and I only
had three.

Well, approximately three months. This
baby was at least a few weeks into gestation.

Frowning, I clenched my fists against
my stomach. I had no idea if the baby I was carrying was Reid’s or
if it came from the hours I spent with Zeke… The encounter was only
a few days after my last time with Reid, so it was entirely
possible that it was his. But that would be the biggest insult to
Reid’s memory that we’d committed since his death.