Chapter 2 Tatyana #2
“Like I said. Very cozy.” He kissed the top of her head. “You do know I’m going to compensate all your drivers, don’t you?”
“It’s not the compensation I worry about, it’s the fact that this will back up our deliveries until I can get new trucks in and also that you stole my trucks without telling me.”
“I couldn’t tell you because we didn’t know Ivan was using Poshani transport. If we had, I’m sure Mika would have chosen a different raiding target.”
“We were only doing the job because Ivan didn’t tell us it was him.” She lifted her hand and let the water dance from her fingertips. “None of my drivers want to go into his territory anymore. I don’t know how he’s moving things. Human companies who don’t know any better maybe.”
“He has some of his own equipment, but it’s not enough.”
She lifted her head. “What are you doing, husband? What is this game you’re playing with your brother?”
“It is the game of… irrelevance.” Oleg lifted one dark eyebrow.
“If I simply eliminated him, his sons could revolt. I don’t want that.
The last thing I want is to kill every vampire in Ivan’s territory who is loyal to him because I go to war with my own brother.
Many of them are useful, and it’s not their fault their boss or their sire is an idiot. ”
“But how long—”
“Impatient.” He kissed her mouth. “You must learn to be patient, little wolf. Wear your prey down before you go in for the kill. Five years is nothing to me.”
She blinked. “What about a hundred?”
Oleg pursed his lips. “Hmm. A hundred is not nothing.”
A hundred years was what she had committed to the Poshani. A hundred years was the standard term of service for a terrin, and most served more than one term.
“I don’t like this,” Tatyana whispered. “I know you think I don’t miss you when we’re apart—”
“I don’t think that.” He stroked her hair. “When did I say that?”
“Your eyes say it. Your blood says it.”
“You’re imagining things.” He kissed her forehead. “I am happy we are married, volchitsa. Never doubt that.”
“You cannot be content with this arrangement.”
“This is the way it must be for now.” Oleg slid his hands down her body, cupping her breasts and teasing her nipples.
“I have lived in worse conditions than sneaking around with a sexy and powerful vampire regent.” He bent down and nibbled on the shell of her ear.
“Pretending to be enemies and rivals in public,” he whispered, “only to tear off each other’s clothes the moment we’re behind a closed door. The secrecy is delicious.”
“Oleg—”
“Do you want to go public?” He pulled away and met her eyes with his fierce stare.
“The moment you say yes, I will declare our alliance and make you my queen. Every warrior in my druzhina would bow to you. Every governor would swear their loyalty. You would be as my equal in all things, and the Poshani would be treated as my own people.”
His eyes were on fire, and Tatyana knew he uttered nothing but the truth. She opened her mouth, then closed it.
“Do you want to go public?” he asked again. “Tell me the truth; I will know if you are lying.”
She whispered, “It’s not that I don’t want to.”
He nodded. “You don’t want any in your new family to question your loyalty,” Oleg said. “Do you think I do not understand this?” He whispered, “Do you think I do not respect this? I know what must be for now, Tatyana Vorona. Never question that, my queen.”
Oleg left before daylight, and Tatyana stared at her terrace doors, watching the outline of his tall frame as he disappeared into the shadows that surrounded her house.
She hated this.
Watching Oleg walk away was like cutting away half her soul and locking it in a closet. She felt the loss physically, and the only comfort was the low burn of his blood that still flowed within her veins.
In that way, they were one.
To the outside world, they were antagonistic allies, the young vampire who had killed her own sire for changing her against her will and then rose within the Poshani because of her wit and skills in the modern world.
Oleg was the old and powerful lord of the Kievan Rus, who scoffed at his former bookkeeper pretending to be an authority.
But when they were alone, they were husband and wife. Blood mates. Lovers. Tatyana’s blood would recognize Oleg through fire or flood.
But as much as she wanted to claim Oleg publicly, she owed the Poshani everything.
In another clan, Tatyana would be a nobody. She didn’t have any outward markers of power. There was nothing particularly desirable about her connections or her elemental skills.
Daughter of no one.
Not a warrior. Not a sage.
But the Poshani had seen something in Tatyana that had made her popular, and it probably helped that she’d stolen a large amount of money that she could invest in their struggling businesses.
And the fact that she had no clan? That was a plus, not a minus, for them.
For her new family, loyalty to the clan came before anything else, and Tatyana was still proving hers on a night-by-night basis.
But mouths were being fed, and bills were easier to pay. The schools were better funded for the human families in the clan, and even the most troublesome cousin could find work.
Tatyana had lived in a place where work was scarce. She understood how the slow erosion of dignity could degrade the spirit, and that was what kept her from running after Oleg like a schoolgirl.
She had a purpose and a family now. She had to think of them before herself.
The rotary phone in the library rang, and Tatyana stood from her sad nest on the sofa to answer it. It was probably Rumi, checking to see if the house was still standing.
“Hello?”
“Tanya?” It was her mother. “Is he still there?”
Her mother knew that Oleg and Tatyana were married, and it was hard not to think that Anna preferred her new son-in-law to her daughter. “No, he just left. I’ll tell him to call you tomorrow night though.”
“That’s too bad.” Anna sighed. “But I’m glad you had a little time together. This isn’t healthy.”
“We’ve talked about this.”
“I really don’t think anyone would mind that much. Even those strange people—”
“Mama, absolutely not.” Her mother still had a hard time with the different cultural dynamics in the Poshani clan, but at least she’d finally been persuaded to move to the country house in Poland and away from their family farm in the Crimea.
Tatyana had traded another large and ostentatious mansion that Vano had built outside the city for a smaller country house in the spa town of Wilga forty minutes from Warsaw.
Oleg had discreetly transported Anna’s dog and her birds to Romania, and Radu had taken care of the animals’ move to Poland.
Now Anna tended a wood-shingled farmhouse with a large barn tucked away in a forest, along with a middle-aged Ukrainian couple who had also been displaced by the war, and Tatyana was able to visit most weekends.
Her mother had a large garden, coops for her chickens, a large dovecote for her beloved pigeons, and a few goats who seemed to wreak a different kind of havoc every time Tatyana called.
There was also a small, private airport in the town nearby, and Oleg could sometimes sneak away to visit them.
“It snowed last night,” Anna said. “The forest looks so beautiful.”
“Send pictures.” Tatyana closed her eyes and pictured her mother in her mind.
Anna was getting older. She had more lines around her eyes. The move was necessary, but it had been hard on her. Anna grieved the farm and the country that had been. She mourned her parents and the life she thought her daughter was going to have.
Tatyana could not give her grandchildren in her old age. She could not give her generations.
But she could give her safety.
“I’ll be back in Warsaw tomorrow night,” Tatyana said. “I’ll see you soon, Mama.”