Destructive Embrace (25 page)

"Are you truly doubting my sexuality
now, love?" I asked, growling lightly at her. She shrugged. "After
the many, many times that we have experienced one another, one
would think that you would know by now that my equipment works best
for you."

As I spoke, she looked like the cat
that swallowed the canary, until I got to the part where I said it
worked best for her. Then she hesitated. "Best?" she asked timidly.
"As in, works decently for others?"

She hopped off of me and I berated
myself silently. What an idiot I was!

"No, that isn't what I meant at all. I
just meant it is only for you. You elicit more of a response from
it than any woman I've ever slept with, and it has never been
aroused by a man."

I sighed. "I'm sorry. I know I worded
that awkwardly... Can we keep going, or do you want to stop?" I
held her hand, hoping that she knew I was here for her, even if she
didn't want to have a quick romp with me.

Olivia looked torn for a moment before
nodding once. "Let's keep going... I've missed you as well,
Dmitri," she said, pulling me back in for another of her
kisses.

This one was mind-blowing as she gently
bit at my lips and teased me by tracing her tongue along the edge
of my lower lip.

How could I ever have doubted my
feelings for her?

“You slept with my brother. I don’t
want anything to do with you after such an act.” The voice was
cruel and the words made me stop in my tracks.

I was coming up to the main part of the
castle from my dungeons, needing more supplies after starting the
cleanup process after the day’s horrible events when I heard the
voice. Reid. After the long weeks where we all believed him to be
dead, having him back was weird.

But it was a dream come true at the
same time.

“Reid, I – ”

“I don’t want to hear it, Elyssa,” Reid
said, cutting her off. I heard Elyssa choke back a sob and frowned.
Peering around the corner, I saw my baby brother and his Mate
standing at the foot of the main stairway. Even from my poor visual
point at the mouth of my hallway, I could see the tears shimmering
in the woman’s eyes.

“You slept with my brother after
driving a silver blade into my heart. I’m not sure which hurt
more,” Reid chuckled, running his fingers through his dark shaggy
hair.

He’d cleaned up already, I noticed.
There was nothing to indicate that only a few hours ago he’d been
‘dead’ and covered in his own blood. I changed my train of thought
as a painful image of Roxann – her heart ripped out exactly as my
mother’s had been – popped into my head.

Elyssa opened her mouth to speak, but
Reid cut her off again with a wave of his hand. “Look, I don’t care
anymore, okay? Just hold still,” he muttered. I watched as he
brought his finger to his mouth. I couldn’t tell what he was doing
until he drew his finger away from his mouth, the tip covered in
blood.

Reid pushed Elyssa’s hair away from her
neck and pressed the now-bleeding tip of his finger to her Mate
Mark.

“Now, you do the same to mine,” he
instructed, tilting his head to the side for her to
access.

Elyssa hesitated slightly before
repeating the action. Tears fell down her face and dribbled down
her chin as she completed the final step required to annul their
Mating. Her expression made my heart ache.

Reid pulled a handkerchief
out of his pocket and began dabbing her blood off of his neck. Then
he leaned over her and cleaned
her
neck as well. “There,” he whispered, making me
strain my ears to hear him. “It’s done now.”

Before I could reveal
myself, Elyssa ran out of the castle. I worried that she wouldn’t
return – therefore taking the Lanistter baby with her – but
realized that all of her things were at the castle. She
had
to come
back.

“Reid, you really are a fool,” I said
drily, stepping out of my hallway and toward my brother. “What is
your problem?”

"You have some nerve
stepping up to me like this, Ezekiel," Reid told me, not bothering
to look at me. "Let alone calling me a fool like you just did.
Whatever happened to your manners, brother?" he asked snidely,
sneering as he finally turned his gaze down to glare at
me.

"First you fuck my Mate,
now you're insulting me for annulling the Mating with her? One
would think that you'd be glad that she's free for you to have fun
with now."

I sighed, shaking my head.
"Reid Donovan Lanistter. I thought you were more intelligent than
this. I happen to have an issue with everything that you just said.
Firstly, it wasn't just a fuck. I was grieving, and so was she.
Neither of us was doing well since your demise –"

"– you mean the demise that
you both brought upon me, right?" Reid asked
sarcastically.

Out of my peripherals, I
noticed his hands ball into fists, but didn't back away. He
deserved to hit me. I deserved to be hit for all that I'd done to
him.

"Neither of us was coping
well. And she was trying to bring me your journal, but I was... I
wasn't acting very much like myself. She snapped me out of it and
wound up on my wall again," I admitted.

Reid held up one hand,
grimacing. "First off, I don't need to hear about your little
sexcapades with my former Mate, Zeke. Secondly, did you say she
tried to bring you my journal? How the hell did she get her hands
on that? I kept it hidden very..." He trailed off, eyes glazing
over as he fell deep into thought. "Shit. I forgot to put it away
after my last entry," he sighed. "Oh well, that doesn't matter. Did
you read it?" he demanded, glaring down his nose at me.

I scoffed. "I didn't take
the damn book. What, you think I needed yet another reminder of how
I failed to save my younger brother from our father? As
if!"

"So where the hell is
it?"

I arched an eyebrow up at
Reid and shook my head with a shrug. "Hell if I know. Maybe Elyssa
still has it. Not that she is now required to give it back to you.
Since you're no longer Mates, she has no obligation to you." I was
technically lying, but it didn't seem like Reid knew anything about
Elyssa being pregnant, so I wasn't going to be the one to mention
it to him. I didn't need him to assume that it was mine. "Not to
mention, you probably scared her off permanently." Another
lie.

Reid scoffed this time. "As
if. She's stubborn... She'll be back in a few hours, I've no doubt
about that, brother..."

I couldn't tell if he was
angry at that fact, or if he just didn't care, but I didn't press
it. "Anyway. She immediately felt like shit after what we did, I'll
have you know. Plus, I found a woman that I fell for..." My
youngest brother looked shocked and I smirked. "Yes. The heartless
Zeke fell in love."

"Again," Reid interjected,
coughing into his fist. I furrowed my brow and scowled at
him.

"What do you mean, again?"
I asked snarkily, crossing my arms over my chest.

He shrugged. "You loved
Elyssa. I could tell. Tywin could tell. Everyone could fucking
tell," he muttered darkly, his hands clenching into fists once
more. I looked away.

"I don't know what you're
talking about," I lied. He saw right through it, I could tell – not
that I was convincing at all – but didn't press it. "I'm not glad
that she's free for me to 'have fun with,' Reid," I told him after
a few moments of uncomfortable silence. "She deserves happiness,
and so do you. Good luck finding another woman who will tolerate
you," I said cheerfully, patting him on the shoulder – he snarled
at me and shoved me away from him – before walking away.

"Zeke!" Reid called after
me. I ignored him, heading up the stairs to my study. "Zeke
Lanistter!" he roared. I stopped.

"What?" I asked, not
looking back at him.

"You may be my brother, but
if you ever again decide to wrong me like you have in the past
weeks, I will not hesitate to murder you in your sleep. And I will
take your body to Uncle Alberon all on my own, gladly pleading
guilty to the crime," he told me.

I chuckled. "Like I will
ever make the mistake of trying to play with Elyssa again? You're a
funny one, baby brother," I said. I wasn't sure if the words were
true or not, but they needed to be said.

Just wait until the kid's
born, Reid,
I thought, fighting down my
laughter as I headed to the study.
Will you
want to kill me then?

I woke up from my deep
slumber to find that Reid was lying beside me on my bed.
What…?

My face felt rough from scrubbing tears
away, but other than that, I was comfortable.

Reid had his arm around me protectively
as he slept, and I couldn’t help but smile at his expression. He
looked so peaceful and relaxed while he slept. It was the most
precious thing in the world to me.

He began to stir and I felt my face
heat as his eyes opened so that he was staring at me. “Hey,” he
whispered, a hint of a smile ghosting across his lips.

“Hi,” I murmured back, taking his hand
in mine and squeezing it gently. “Did you sleep well?” I asked him,
rubbing the back of his hand with the pad of my thumb. He nodded
and I smiled. “Good.”

“Did you?” he asked me, leaning forward
to touch his forehead to mine.

Suddenly it felt like absolutely
nothing had gone wrong, like Tywin hadn’t ever dared to interfere
with our lives, like we were back in his room the day he died, the
day I’d agreed to become his wife…

He pushed my hair out of my face. I
nodded, leaning into his hand.

He sat up then, pulling me up with him
so that I leaned against his side and his arm was slung around my
shoulders.

Briefly I wondered what he was doing
there. Were we back on speaking terms? Let alone friendly, cuddling
terms? And then I remembered.

I was standing in the main
hallway, staring up at the family tree. It seemed to be where
everything started and everything came to an end.

The pain had faded, and I
was left sniffling at the realization at hand.

I’d lost my
baby.

I didn’t know how it
happened, but all of a sudden, about an hour or so prior to me
finding solace in the main hall, I’d begun to cramp, shortly
followed by uncontrollable bleeding.

Confused and worried, I
began to clean myself up only to notice various clumps and clots in
the mess.

I couldn’t hold the
startled cries back as I realized that what I was seeing were bits
of my child, my baby Lanistter, and soon I was screaming at the top
of my lungs, crying loudly as I rocked myself back and forth on the
ground.

Soon, someone burst into
the bathroom, only to come to a screeching halt at the mess before
them. “Elyssa?!” Dmitri cried, kneeling beside me. As he set his
hands on my shoulder, I couldn’t help but focus on the trembling of
his hands against my shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”

I barely heard his murmured
words as he stood and ran off.

Before long, he was back,
Zeke in tow.

“I’m sorry,” I croaked,
turning my head to look up at Zeke. “I’ve lost your
Lanistter…”

He was leaning against the
doorframe, pale as a ghost. The terror on his face was easy to
read, and only grew as I curled in on myself more when another wave
of pain hit me. Soon he was kneeling behind me, his arms wound
around my shoulder.

“We’re here, Elyssa,” he
murmured soothingly into my ear. “We’re here.”

Just as he began to stroke
my hair, another figure strode into the room. “What is going on
here?” Reid asked. Once glance up at him showed me his startled
horror.

“Were you… Pregnant?” he
asked slowly. Looking back up at him, I nodded once.

Zeke and Reid exchanged a
glance and soon, Reid’s arms had replaced Zeke’s hold on
me.

With one final stroke of my
hair, Zeke whispered, “I’ll be around if you ever need to talk,”
and left the bathroom, taking a distraught Dmitri with
him.

“Why didn’t you tell me
before?” Reid asked. He had resumed Zeke’s stroking of my hair and
I sighed shakily, leaning back into him.

“You hated me enough
already. This would have only made it worse…”

I felt him stiffen behind
me and a growl began to build up in his chest. “Was it… His, then?”
he demanded.

I swallowed the knot in my
throat and took a few deep breaths before answering. “I don’t know.
For all we knew, it could have been yours, Reid,” I told him
honestly. There was no point in lying, especially if it would just
make things worse.

“That’s a part of why we
were all so attached to the little fiend,” I continued, a
hysterical giggle escaping my lips. Reid relaxed a little more,
continuing the little things he had been doing in an attempt to
relax me again.

“Why were you all so
attached to it?” he asked. He sounded genuinely curious.