Chapter 12
LOVELORN
Rhyden stared at his Vesperin—his, but not.
She was different. Her hair was white, her eyes grey. He hadn’t noticed it on the monitors with the blue haze affecting the screens. But the curve of her cheekbones was the same, as was the shape of her eyes, the soft bow of her lip.
This was Vesperin.
And Rhyden was fucking pissed.
Miro and Daryk were guarding the door, their fucking masks on. Rhyden knew it made them feel important.
Rhyden’s eyes narrowed as he stared at Vesperin, tasting a drop of her blood in the air. Had she cut herself? Was she hurt? Oh, those goddamn idiots were going to pay for that misstep. He told them unharmed. She was his to punish.
"So, you do remember me, then," Rhyden drawled, the steel-tips of his black boots crunching over broken glass as he walked closer to her.
The action made the male standing beside her puff up.
Rhyden noted his purple eyes. An incubus?
Interesting. He grinned at her. "I see you hired help, wife.
Out of the way," he addressed the incubus.
Red glimmered in the air, and Rhyden felt the pull against him as the incubus tried to sip on his emotions. Oh, now that’s rich. He stared down the other male, letting his fangs flash.
The incubus’s eyes grew wide. "What?" he breathed, voice soft, wrapped in silken ribbons.
Rhyden knew what the male was picking up on.
His utter power.
"Do you think a little incubus could feed from me?
" Rhyden enunciated. "I’ve lived through the rise and fall of planets.
" His hand found the gun in his holster, the bullets imbued with Aether, siphoned from the Aetherborns—but not fucking illegally, not like what the goddamn reports shared in Solar City.
Tiny gasps fell from Vesperin’s parted lips as she stared at him. Her small hands clutched a sleek black Echogun, the muzzle shining as her grip trembled, sights fixed on him.
Rhyden tsked. "Lower your gun, wife. I’m not here to kill you."
She didn’t obey, her grey eyes darting around, searching for a way out of this. But he had her cornered. "Wife?" she whispered.
And the sound of her voice made his cock harden, even as his fists clenched with rage. That same fucking tone she had used on him when she uttered the last words he had ever heard from her:
Forgive me.
"Don’t play with me, Vesperin Vox," Rhyden snarled, walking closer until he was a mere breath away from her and the incubus. Pinpricks of frozen water lanced against Rhyden’s hand as he reached forward.
He flicked them away, barely feeling the sting of the cuts or the blood welling on the back of his hand and trailing down his forearm.
"Ice doesn’t work on me, incubus. You’ll have to up your game. "
The incubus hurled a new assault at Rhyden, and the vampire let his Stella warm his skin, the ice melting and sliding off before the frozen water even hit him.
The incubus wrapped an arm around Vesperin. "Don’t hurt her," he growled.
"I don’t want to hurt her—yet." Rhyden stared down at Vesperin, where she was bundled next to the incubus, her white hair breezing around her pale cheeks.
Her lips were red and swollen, a split at the corner with a bruise blooming along her jaw.
"We have unfinished business, wife." The tips of his boots brushed her bare feet.
"I have no business with the leader of Noctis," Vesperin said, voice hardening. "Let us go. And we’ll never tell a Soul about this."
Ah, there it was—the quiver in her words. He had missed it for the short time it had been gone.
Rhyden leaned down; he towered over her and the incubus.
They both stiffened, and Rhyden waited for the incubus to flee, deciding a good fuck wasn’t worth being sucked dry and wrapped in a ribbon made of his intestines.
The vampire was nothing if not theatrical…
But the incubus stayed his ground. Interesting. Perhaps this was more than a feed.
"You see, I can’t do that, wife. Because I’m fucking angry. Do you know why?" Rhyden drawled.
She shivered, head tipping back until all he could focus on was her eyes. So different. But still the eyes of a liar. A con.
A thief.
"I’ve done nothing to you. I’ve never even set foot in Lunar City before. Whatever you think I’ve done to make you angry"—she swallowed—"it’s not true."
Rhyden barked a laugh. "That’s rich coming from you.
At least you’re telling the truth in one part.
You have never set foot in my city. If you had, I would’ve known.
I had no idea you were alive out there." His red eyes scanned down her frame.
"Twenty years old? God, wife. You have so much to pay for. "
He was filled with rage just by looking at her. Fuck! He was going to kill something. Not her, though. Never her. He could make her pay in other ways.
"Why do you keep calling me that?" Vesperin asked.
Rhyden barely missed the strange look the incubus gave her as the vampire said, "Because we are wed. You’re my wife."
A cold muzzle pressed against his lower stomach, and he looked down, finding her pale hands pressing the gun into his gut.
"Go ahead. Shoot me, wife. It’ll be another fucking nail in your coffin.
" Rhyden waited. And waited. And still, she didn’t pull the trigger.
"I see you’re just as weak as you always have been.
Content to let others make the hard choices for you.
That’s where we differ. I’ve been planning our reunion for centuries. "
The vampire lifted a hand, and with the twitch of his fingers, Miro and Daryk sprang into action—just like Rhyden had told them to.
The masked vampires pulled out another mask—this one far less sleek, with a chunky gas filter fit over the mouth—and tossed it to Rhyden. He couldn’t very well have made a dramatic entrance with a clunky gas mask tucked in his holster, now could he?
Rhyden grabbed it midair, tugging it over his face as the band fit around the back of his skull. His breaths immediately turned thick and heavy as they whooshed through the filter of the gas mask.
Vesperin and her incubus toy scrambled away, but they couldn’t get far.
The incubus shielded her with his body as Rhyden unclipped the gas canister from his holster, pulling the pin as he tossed it on the nasty, germ-infested carpet, a piss yellow shade that made his lip curl.
He couldn’t believe his wife would stay in a hellhole like this.
But he supposed rats did find solace in company.
The canister rolled on the ground, and dark grey smoke fizzed as it wafted in thick plumes from within, shrouding the room in a curtain of darkness.
Through the smoke, Rhyden watched as Vesperin stumbled into the incubus—he held her against his chest as they both fell to their knees. Her lids fluttered as she stared up at him, and the pair toppled to the side, out cold.
Rhyden stared down at Vesperin as she lay on the seat of his car, her head pillowed in his lap.
Black silken ties wrapped around her wrists, keeping them pulled in front, immobilized.
Even angry at her, the vampire couldn’t stomach leaving the red marks of a harsh zip tie on her skin—the incubus wasn’t so fucking lucky.
Rhyden had hogtied him and thrown him in the trunk.
He didn’t know the incubus’s significance to his Soulbond—at the very least, he was a witness; at worst, her lover.
Miro took his motorcycle back to the base, while Daryk drove the car.
Through the black tinted windows, Rhyden watched as the immoral, corrupt nightlife raged on unchecked.
Humans and other creatures alike stumbled down the streets, hopping from club to club, utterly uncaring that a Rogue could pounce in an instant and turn the reveling rage into a goddamn bloodbath.
But that was part of the appeal, he supposed. The thrill of it all was knowing it could turn violent and deadly in a second—that everything could be ripped away, like a curtain yanked from its hooks, revealing the bloody truth of their world.
Rhyden sighed, long and deep. Vesperin’s small breaths warmed his thigh, from where her face was pressed close to his crotch, her nose nearly brushing against him. Well, fuck. That sure as hell didn’t help.
He couldn’t stop staring at her, thinking all of this was some dream he would wake up from.
Maybe he was still dreaming. Maybe he was still trapped behind those fucking bars made of blue light, flickering electricity that sparked and fizzled in the air, making his hair stand on end whenever he’d get too close, tempting fate.
Rhyden skimmed the tip of his finger over Vesperin’s forehead, teasing strands of her white hair. Her face was less soft than he remembered, yet with her resting against him, he could almost trick himself into thinking she was the same girl. The same stupid human he had given up everything for…
It started with a whisper of loneliness and a drink in a bar.
The red-dappled sun of the vampiric planet Sangreal flickered above, its fiery prominences stretching outward, burning thick and hot, drenching the entire planet in a perpetual summertime heat.
It was all Rhyden had ever known. As one of the lesser-known nobles on the planet, he wasn’t short of money, and two hundred years old, he’d had time to burn, and more still to let flicker away like the embers of a fire.
To an immortal, time started to lose importance after a while. It no longer became what you could do, but what could be done for you—how much you could accumulate. People, homes, money, jewels.
But all Rhyden wanted was someone. Hell, he would settle at this rate—he didn’t need his Soulbond, or so he told himself.
But when years passed and he was still alone, he grew desperate. Lovelorn for someone he had never met.