Claimed (Bound Mates #2)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

A lexei

“I’m dying, Alexei.”

There are some battles even the strongest of us are destined to lose. My best friend is calling to say goodbye. An ocean separates us, and thousands of miles besides, but I feel her presence as keenly as if she were right here with me. Her voice brings with it more than sound. It brings back the scent of youth, of freedom, of good times spent with a good friend.

Lilly has always been the strongest woman I know. She still is, but the sickness has sapped her strength. It will take all of her soon. She is fading in spite of all the fight that has always been in her.

“I can send money for treatments,” I say.

“There are no more treatments. The doctors have done everything they could. It’s over for me, Alexei. I’m not worried about myself anymore. It’s Anya I worry for.”

“Why? Is she not by your side?”

Lilly coughs, and gasps for breath. It takes painfully long moments for her to respond.

“I did not tell her I was sick. I wanted her to live. She needs to go to college. She needs to live the life I could not. But I cannot… I don’t know where she is.”

“Don’t worry,” I tell her. “I’m going to fix this.”

She chuckles. “You can’t fix this, Alexei.”

The hell I can’t.

My plane is fueled within the hour. There are nine hours between us, an extra hour for driving because the plane can’t land close enough to the hospice where my oldest friend is languishing. Every minute feels like an hour as a sense of urgency descends on me and becomes more pressing with time. I should have checked in on Lilly more often, and sooner. I should have ensured she had access to proper medicine. I should have come to see her, instead of just sending letters and having phone calls.

On paper, she and I should not be friends. A man in my position has very few social ties with females. The only woman I should ever fraternize with is my mate—who has yet to materialize. Lilly is an exception to every rule I have.

She befriended me when I was but a boy, the oldest son of a tyrannical father who regularly beat me because he believed it would make me a better, stronger leader. She was a stray, taken in by my mother and put to work in the kitchens.

Our friendship was an unlikely alliance, a secret we had to keep because if we were caught speaking or playing, there would be hell to pay for both of us.

Lilly was always there for me without question. She hid me in potato sacks when my father’s rages would become too intense, and she would distract me with funny stories and sweet antics on the occasions I was too slow to avoid being caught.

I owe Lilly my life. If not my actual survival, I owe her my sanity and my character. She is the only reason I continued to believe in good things and good people. It has been far too long since I saw her. Over twenty years.

How did time pass that fast? We left childhood behind, our paths diverged. She married and moved to America, I continued in the family business. We lived the lives we were supposed to live—and now hers is ending.

I should have come to see her earlier, but life in Russia is harsh, and does not stop for sickness or friends. It demands the worst of me.

The hospice is a white-washed, low-slung building with flowers on the outside. A weather-worn sign declares the name: St. Michael’s Hospice. The path to the door is cracked in places, and the door itself is covered in cobwebs in the corners. It is not dilapidated so much as it is unkempt. I am glad that it is oriented toward the sun. Several sliding doors face a garden with an overgrown lawn where butterflies dance across weedy flowers. They are happy with their lot, and for a very brief moment, as the warmth of the sun bathes the back of my neck, so am I. It is the happiness that can only be sensed in the midst of deep sadness, that very peculiar feeling that surges forth in the middle of despair.

I enter Lilly’s room with a fistful of her namesake flowers. The sliding door is open into the garden, and a bumblebee floats in through the door, crawls onto my flowers for a brief moment, then goes on its way. There is plenty of time for the little creature to work because my oldest friend appears to be fast asleep in bed. She was a larger-than-life creature once, but now her silhouette is frail beneath blankets that conform too well to the shape of her perishing form. The smell of the lilies and the fresh air in the room are not quite enough to mask the scent of a dying person.

I stand in this moment, watching her chest, willing it to rise or fall. It seems to take an eternity for her to breathe. When she does, there is a slight rattle that makes my stomach clench.

She becomes aware of me. I do not know how. She opens her eyes and her head turns toward me. She is not old, but disease has taken her and made her sunken and sallow.

“Alexei?” Her voice is frail.

“Lilly.” I rumble her name, hoping that my relief is not too clear.

“You came,” she says, waving me to the chair at the side of the bed. I put the flowers down. Who cares about the flowers. I go to her bedside and I take her hand in mine.

“Of course I came.”

She smiles faintly. She is holding on, willing her body to stay breathing because she cannot leave this planet without knowing that the most precious thing to her in all this world is safe.

“Find Anya,” she says. “Please.”

“I’m going to find her, and I am going to take care of her. Do not worry. She’s going to be safe. I already have men on her trail. If they find her, they will bring her here.”

Lilly shakes her head faintly. “I don’t want her to see me like this.” She smiles at me again. “Thank you for coming, Alexei. Thank you. Thank you.”

“I would always have come. I wish I had come sooner.”

“Anya…” Her eyes close as she says her only daughter’s name.

“How old is she now, Lilly?”

“Nineteen.” She barely breathes the word.

Anya is old enough to make her way in the world, but Lilly is going to worry about her regardless, because that is what good mothers do, and Lilly is the best mother I know. Even now, fighting the clutches of death with every single breath, her daughter is all she cares about.

“Find her,” she rasps.

“I will. I promise I will.”

“You will.”

She smiles as she utters what are to be her last two words. My friend has held onto life long enough for me to be by her side, and now that she knows her daughter will be safe, I sense something in her relaxing. She is letting go.

I want to save her, but there is nothing that can be done. This is how life is. This is what will come for us all. Lilly is dying in comfort, with a friend, and knowing that her business in this world is as concluded as anybody’s can ever be. There is tragedy and there is peace, there is horror and there is grace.

I hold her hand until her fluttering pulse fades, and the quiet of the room becomes somehow even more solemn, rich, and deep. Something hallowed is happening. I can feel her with me one last time, a brush of a feminine hand on my shoulder.

The next moment she is gone. It is just a room again.