Destructive Embrace (16 page)

Roxann.

Of course he meant her.
That was fine and all, because Zeke was really no fun soft, and
even though I didn't have to deal with him on a regular basis –
like lovers had to deal with one another – it was wrong that he had
to change for her acceptance and I would hate to take the blame for
that anyway.

I would have taken him,
whips and all,
I found myself thinking. A
deep blush crawled up my body and settled on my face, and I began
to fan my face in an attempt to cool off from the heat. Zeke
noticed my motion from the corner of his eye and turned toward
me.

"Are you alright? You’re
red and fanning yourself. Are you having a hot flash? Do you need
anything?"

I suppressed a giggle,
knowing that this wasn't soft Zeke talking to me this way; Zeke
would be attentive to a woman who was pregnant with a Lanistter
child no matter if he was sadist Zeke, or pink fluffy
Zeke.

Zeke noticed my change in
attitude and narrowed his eyes at me. He knew me well enough – too
well almost – to know that I was trying very hard to not laugh.
"What is so funny, Elyssa?" he asked, crossing his arms over his
chest.

I shook my head, waving him
off, and tried to step around him. "Nothing, nothing," I
chuckled.

He blocked my way, however,
and grinned at me, making butterflies assault my stomach. I tried
to not think about the way his smile got to me, so I blamed it on
the baby.

Stop giving me butterflies,
please, baby Lanistter,
I thought,
settling one hand over my abdomen as I shook my head at Zeke.
"Really, it's nothing," I murmured.

He noticed my hand's
migration and moved to the side to let me through. He really seemed
worried that there was something wrong with me, with the baby... An
ache in my chest made me uncomfortable, and I sighed
silently.

Suddenly his words hit me.
"Wait, Annibel? You think he's in her now?" I had a sinking feeling
as I recalled the first official day of my training with Dmitri.
Her odd behavior, the contradiction to what she'd told me directly
before...

“Yes,” he said solemnly.
“Based on a few encounters with Annibel, I think it’s safe to
assume that Tywin now inhabits her body.” His expression was
grim.

"I think you might be
right," I whispered. I could feel the blood drain from my face, and
I grew dizzy. Zeke caught me before I could hit the floor and began
to alternate between patting my face gently and fanning
me.

"Elyssa?" he asked. He
sounded scared. "Are you okay? Is there something
wrong?"

I shook my head no.
Thinking about it for a second, though, I changed my mind and
nodded instead.

We sank down to the floor
and I began speaking.

“It’s like I said before,”
I began quietly. “We killed Reid to get rid of Tywin. To have such
strong hints toward him being alive still… Truly makes it feel as
though we failed when we killed Reid.”

Zeke sighed. “Elyssa, we
failed even if we’d gotten rid of my old man along with Reid. After
all, we killed a member of our family…”

Sighing as well, I nodded.
“That’s true. It’s just rather depressing, that’s all,” I admitted.
Zeke chuckled.

“I know. It bothers me,
too. But now we have no choice but to kill the bastard. To avenge
Reid as well as to protect –” he paused.

Our eyes met and we both
looked down to my stomach. He reached out to touch my
barely-swollen belly.

“To protect
this
family,” he finished
breathlessly.

Once again, our eyes met,
and time stood still. Our faces drew closer together until we were
separated by a mere breath.

We lingered there for a
minute, just breathing each other in, until Zeke sighed, pulling
away.

“Elyssa,” he whispered.
“You should know something… I’m… Engaged to Roxann now.”

Something inside me began
to ache, but I hoped that I hid it well. “I see,” I murmured. “So
why were you about to kiss
me
?”

“Damnit, Elyssa!” Zeke
exploded. “You know why!”

Frowning, I began to shake
my head. He growled at me and grabbed me by the shoulders to stop
that, though.

“No!” he hissed. “You know
why! I’ve said it before!”

My breath hitched in my
throat as Zeke pulled me in and crashed his lips against mine in a
violent kiss.

He pressed me back against
the wall as soon as I began to respond to his kisses. They weren’t
lust-driven, but a mixture of hard and soft closed-mouth kisses.
His hands moved up to cradle my neck.

After a few moments of
that, Zeke began to whisper unintelligible things in between
kisses. It wasn’t until the third time he spoke that I understood
him.

“You know it,” he breathed
against my mouth. “You know that I love you…”

Startled, I pulled away
from him, eyes wide. He met my gaze with half-lidded eyes, his
hands still at my throat.

“Don’t act so surprised,”
he said, a ghost of a smirk on his lips. “And don’t act like you
don’t feel the same…”

As he leaned in to kiss me
again, I turned my head. “Stop,” I said quietly. “You can’t do
this. You have someone now.”

Zeke snorted softly. “What
does she matter if I have you?”

I frowned, but he went on.
“No, let’s be honest: you are my equal. You are one of my own, a
vampire. You match my wit and intelligence…

“What is some human
compared to–”

“Stop!” I cried out. “I was
just a human! And you love her, or feel enough for her to be
engaged to her. So stop…”

As he pulled away from me
finally, I drew in a shaky breath. “Back to Annibel and Tywin,” I
said weakly. Zeke nodded slowly, refusing to meet my
eyes.

“Does she stand no chance
at all of fighting him?” I asked. It was a morbid question, but one
that needed to be asked.

After all, Reid was unable
to fight Tywin off, and that weakness was paid for with his
life.

The thought brought back my
negative feelings from before, effectively driving out all that
just occurred between Zeke and myself.

I finally understood what a
pregnancy-amplified mood swing felt like.

It was thoroughly
irritating to have so little control over what I was feeling. I
realized that I’d experienced many mood swings in the past handful
of weeks.

Between my transformation
and Reid’s death, however, there were many factors that assisted in
my jump from temperament to temperament at fast rates.
Those
things effectively
hid my pregnancy, I was starting to believe.

“Too much has happened
here… I wish I’d let you run me out of here in the beginning,” I
whispered to Zeke before running off.

We were in my study that day. I sat at
my desk pretending to focus on research that I should have been
doing, but I couldn’t really keep my mind on the subject at
hand.

Hell, I didn’t even know what my topic
was at that point.

All I knew was that I felt
intensely guilty sitting with Roxann when I had just been with
Elyssa hours earlier, telling her that I wanted her over Roxann.
Over 
some human
woman
.

The looks she sent my way told me she
couldn’t tell that my mind was miles away, which partly added to my
uncomfortable feelings that day.

Wasn’t my fiancée supposed to be able
to read me?

Elyssa knows how to read
you
. That damned voice. If I weren’t
completely sure that it wasn’t Tywin, I might have been worried
more. As it was, I could recognize my own voice
perfectly.

It only served to bother me
more.

“
Is something wrong?”
Roxann’s voice broke up my internal torture.

I realized that I’d been
staring at her, a dark frown on my mouth. So it probably looked as
though I was glaring at her.
Fantastic
.

“
I… I’m not sure,” I
murmured, settling for a half-truth. I knew something was wrong,
but I also knew that I couldn’t tell Roxann everything. I couldn’t
tell her about Tywin, or she would stand up on her own two feet to
defend herself. On the other hand, how was I to protect her if she
didn’t know the truth?

Roxann closed her book slowly,
standing up to walk over to my desk. When she got to my side, she
knelt down. “What is it?” she asked gently, touching my
arm.

I flinched away from her, which placed
a startled look on her face. I stood and she mimicked my
action.

“
You should leave the
castle,” I said. “Go back to your insignificant little paper and
tell the horror story of the Lanistter Castle.” I sneered down at
her.

“
Have I done something to
upset you?” she asked. There was a very thin layer of tears lining
her eyes, but the woman was too stubborn to let them
fall.

“
I’ve just been thinking a
lot,” I replied with a shrug. “You’re a human. You have no
intention of becoming one of us. What kind of future do we really
have?”

She appeared startled at the sudden
turn in my attitude toward her. As she frowned at me, I could
practically see the wheels turning in her head as she tried to
figure out where this change of heart came from.

“
You didn’t care about me
being a human the other day,” she began slowly. “When you
proposed.”

I sighed. “Roxann, I
have
always
cared
about your status as a human. I just thought for one moment that I
might be able to get over it.”

I knew that I was probably hurting her
more than necessary, but I also knew that she wouldn’t leave this
place, leave to safety, if I didn’t hurt her enough to make her
leave.

Suddenly, it clicked. There was one
thing that would hurt her enough to make her leave. The problem
was, it was true, and I was vehemently against telling her the
entire truth… But this was a part of it.

“
Roxann, I’m… Still in love
with Elyssa.”

Her sharp gasp and slight stagger
backward told me she was blindsided.

"You... I thought," Roxann stammered.
I looked away guiltily. "I thought you figured out that you and she
don't mesh well together," she finished, barely audible.

I shrugged one shoulder. "I ran into
her in the hallway the other day to talk about T- something that
doesn't involve you, and we had a moment..." As I spoke, I made
sure to look Roxann in the eyes so that she could see my careless
features.

The sad thing was that for once, I did
care. I didn't want to have to do this, but I knew that in the end
she would be safer this way, and would be better off leaving this
place.

Better to hurt her than to
have her stick around to die,
I
thought.

The sounds of Roxann swallowing
heavily every few seconds were deafening, and I wished that my
hearing wasn't so adept at catching little annoying sounds like
that. After a few moments where she was able to compose herself,
she nodded.

"Sure. Fine, whatever," she breathed.
Bringing her hands together, she pried my mother's ring off her
finger and dropped it on my desk. "I'll just go get my things
together and be on my way, then. Goodbye. I'm sorry to have
intruded on your life for this long." By the end of her sentence,
she was sniffling and turning away to leave my study.

There was an ugly ache in my chest at
what I'd just done. How could anyone ever do something like this
and ever feel alright again? Even if it was for the other person's
benefit and well-being, how was that awful feeling ever going to go
away?

A few moments later, someone walked
into my study. I knew who it was before she announced herself, and
I prayed that she wasn't here to torment me.

"Why did you just do that?" Elyssa
breathed. When I looked up at her, her eyes were wide, confusion
written all across that pretty face.

"I had to do something to make her
leave," I rasped out, chuckling. "She isn't safe here anymore, you
know that. Tywin will do anything to get back at the two of us, and
well... Who better to target than the woman I'm involved
with?"

Elyssa remained silent, for which I
was grateful. I wouldn't have been able to handle her questioning
every little thing I was doing. It was hard enough to deal with the
things going on inside my own head, let alone if she were to begin
talking about them as well.

"You still didn't have to play on her
hatred and insecurity," she murmured, sitting down opposite from
me. I lowered myself into the chair behind my desk with a
sigh.

"Do you think that she would have left
if I had used any other method?" I asked.

She gave a half shrug. "I don't know.
I don't know her very well. Hell," she chuckled. "I don't know her
at all. But she was crying when she ran past me. Didn't even notice
who I was as she left to the dungeon area. Was that really what you
wanted?"