Chapter Eleven
Alexandra
“Let your hopes, not your hurts, shape your future.”
- Robert H. Schuller
Well shit! Shit! Shit! I have well and truly screwed the pooch.
“What the fuck was that?” Xander demanded mere seconds after we were teleported.
I had no idea where we were, but I knew that it would be safe. God, I could still feel my powers pulsing through me, simmering to be released. I wanted to blast that bitch, Sophia. I might not have her astonishing power to blow shit up, but I could make her wish for death.
“What was what?” Yeah, I knew that playing dumb wasn’t going to get me anywhere except stalling for time.
Xander narrowed his eyes. “Don’t play games, Alexandra. Tell me what I need to know.”
“My, my Xander. I never knew that you could be so masterful.” Honestly, I was trying to sound teasing. Instead, it came out sounding more mocking than anything else.
Xander growled. An honest-to-God growl rippled from deep in his chest. He looked fiercer than I’d ever seen him, and I didn’t know why that had my nipples tightening and my sex dripping wet. With the number of immortals in the room, I didn’t have a chance in hell of hiding my state.
Owen, Boggs, and the other three wolves stood around us as though they were anticipating another attack. We were all still in the foyer of the Petrovs’ New York mansion. Alexi had shown me enough pictures of the place that it was easily recognizable. Certainly, the original Picasso that Alexi had commissioned from the artist himself of Times Square in New York during the 1950s would have landmarked where we were.
Xander stilled, and his expression shifted as the potent scent of my arousal hit the air around us. His jeweled gaze darkened with undeniable lust, and awareness sizzled between us. And just as before, I felt his desire pulsing through him, hot and basic. His scent, so very male, rose thick and heavy in the air along with mine.
“I thought I told you to get dressed,” he muttered in that gravelly voice as he ripped his jacket from his shoulders and impatiently draped it over me.
“Jesu…” I hissed as his scent and heat, so heavily infused in his jacket, overwhelmed me and almost sent me to my knees. Despite the other men surrounding us, my mind and body were clouded with memories of his nightly visits in my dreams. I was consumed with need for only Xander, nothing else but him existed for me.
The hard band of Xander’s arm wrapped around my waist. That sudden feel of him against my sensitive skin had me melting against him with the consistency of pudding. The insubstantial material of my sleepwear was a woefully inadequate barrier to his virile masculinity. God, he felt amazing. His hard contours, complete with broad chest, chiseled flat stomach, narrow hips, and trunked thighs were hot and enticing along the soft curves of my body.
The presence of the other immortals melted away from my consciousness. My world narrowed to only Xander.
Unable to look away from his penetrating gaze, a gaze that seemed to sear me from within, I locked my arms around his neck and stood on the tips of my toes, helplessly, eagerly trying to get closer to him. He splayed his large palms along my back and the swell of my ass to imprison me against him.
A deep, long moan escaped me even as Xander groaned. His entire frame was pulsing and heating against me with raw masculine need.
He bent his head, and I eagerly reached up as an all-consuming need to taste filled us. I didn’t know why I knew how he felt without penetrating his mind. This had never happened to me before, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. I was having enough trouble dealing with my own desire, so I was woefully ill-equipped to deal with Xander’s.
His lips met mine, and the first taste of him was devastatingly pure nirvana. It felt as though millions of stinging insects had taken flight in my belly and pelvis. Raw desire pulsed through me. We kissed softly then hard, probing and deep in a ravenous craving that could not seem to be assuaged. Long moments later, endless moments, we couldn’t resist the utter bliss we had found. Our kiss only became more passionate.
With my long legs wrapped around his waist, my fingers buried in the blond strands of his hair, and our lips sliding and fusing, over and over again, I was only vaguely aware of being lifted and carried. The feel of a cool wall at my back momentarily jolted me but not enough to pull me away from my mate’s lips.
God, I loved the thought of that. My mate. Not that I would admit that to Xander yet.
When Alexi explained to me what a mate was, I completely dismissed it as pure fallacy. Seriously, out of the billions of people in the world and the millions of immortals, why would fate be so cruel as to choose only one person for you? Given our different cultures, different races, different backgrounds and socioeconomic status, we still managed to find each other. It would be like trying to find a very small needle in a ginormous haystack. Too damn cruel and improbable.
Somehow, some way, Xander and I found each other. Or at least Alexi had found me for him.
And now Xander is mine.
That thought kept ruminating again and again in my mind. I kissed him with a righteous possessiveness. This man is mine. Pivoting my head at yet another angle, I curled my tongue around his. Sensually. Passionately.
Xander’s grip tightened with one palm on my ass and the other on the aching globe of my left breast, his fingers digging into my flesh in an unyielding hold as his kiss became even more carnal.
I knew he was thinking the same as me.
Mine.
His voice in my mind was forceful and emphatic. Mine.
He stroked the rough pad of his thumb over my impossibly taut nipple and caressed the round flesh of my ass. I felt his touch everywhere, in every pore, in every nerve ending. The pleasure reached down to my bones.
I moaned loudly as he lustily deepened our kiss.
His voice in my mind was gruff and brooked no argument. Mine.
I writhed against him and stilled as his steely hard length ground against me. I was pulsing like mad at my apex.
Whoa! I didn’t even know what to do with that. No way was I ready to surrender so much to a man who didn’t want me in his life.
I tried to pull away from our kiss, but Xander was still lost in a dark passion that was starting to alarm me. Only now had I realized that he was intent on having me right here and now. Against a wall in the foyer of their New York mansion. I could sense that, while the other men who had accompanied us had discreetly left the room, they were hovering close by.
This was so not happening.
I tried pushing against Xander’s shoulders, but despite my gifted strength, he was as immovable as Mount Everest.
“Xander! Stop!”I exclaimed into his mind.
He instantly stilled, lifted his lips from mine, and looked down at me with passion-filled, feverish eyes. “What?” he muttered. He flexed his fingers into the soft skin of my breast and ass again in blatant ownership.
“Let go.” My voice came out as a mere whisper, and I couldn’t even pretend a convincing conviction in my request.
“You agreed that you are mine.” He said each word with an edge of frustration.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Owen said softly, “but we have company.”
“Again?” Xander asked. He released me enough to let my legs find purchase on the gleaming wood floor of the foyer. However, he anchored me with one arm around my waist along his front. His hold was firm and had all the hallmarks of remaining there for the indefinite future. Given the hard tips of my breasts, my quivering belly, and throbbing pelvic nestled against his hard frame, I wasn’t interested in being anywhere else.
“Good company or bad company?” Xander asked coolly. His calm words were in complete contrast to the sexual awareness still sizzling between us.
“An immortal, not sure what he is, vampire maybe, but he has at least fifty vampires with him,” Owen relayed just as coolly.
Even before Owen finished speaking, Alexi, Luka, and Drako teleported into the room. They looked as though they were ready to model for the cover of GQ magazine. Exuding an aura of innate sophistication and danger, they wore their usual custom-made Tom Ford suits. Alexi was in a dove-gray suit and a calf-length trench coat of the same color, while Luka and Drako wore their suits in dark charcoal. They were devastatingly elegant, suave, and gorgeous.
“What are you doing here?” Xander bit out.
The bitterness in his voice had me looking up at him in surprise. I had heard Xander’s voice cool, calm, and husky with passion, but I had never seen him angry or even close to being bitter. And it was only now that I realized that he wasn’t wearing the usual custom suit that his brothers wore. I had been more interested in the body beneath the dark designer jeans and fitted black designer short-sleeved shirt that showed his massive, tatted biceps. The man was just plain gorgeous.
“I called them,” Owen admitted. “We’re going to need the help.”
“Why—” Xander started to ask but was interrupted by a booming voice.
“Alexi!” the male voice demanded. “I know that you’re in there. I can smell your stinking, rotting carcass.”
At the sound of that voice, Xander stiffened tensely against me, while Alexi and the others seemed confused but held themselves with calm confidence. The voice was coming from outside the mansion, but clear to our sensitive hearing. Owen led the way as we walked toward the massive dark oak double doors.
Xander held me close as he followed the other men. He seemed more resigned than reluctant. It was the strangest thing. I could feel this big ball of emotion in him, but it was as if he was holding it contained, which made him seem on edge. On the edge of what, I couldn’t tell.
The doors opened by Drako’s telekinetic powers, even as Owen continued to walk calmly through, stepping out onto a huge, elevated stone terrace that overlooked a well-manicured lawn and structured colorful garden. On the lawn was an assembly of men and women in dark hooded robes.
They looked ominous.
I looked over to Alexi and tried getting closer to Xander at the same time. I was worried for both men, even though I knew I shouldn’t be. They were both powerful men, but both meant so much to me I now realized.
The leader was the only one who had his hood discarded. He looked up at us, well, looked at me really. His eyes were bright with anticipation. He was tall and regal looking. He had a pale, paper-white pallor as if he hadn’t been in the sun in years, and his hair was shoulder length and dark. Even as he looked at me, he caressed his long, dark beard absently. He wasn’t quite standing on the ground. It was as if he was levitating, but that wasn’t quite it either. It was more like he was bobbing and weaving around, with mist for his feet. What made him even more frightening to look at was his eyes. They were completely black with no white.
Damn creepy.
Xander stiffened beside me even more, and his arm tightened around me as he shifted me slightly behind him.
“Ahh,” the leader said with some satisfaction as he swung his eyes onto Alexi. He muttered a few words in Slovak, smiled darkly, and then translated in English. “So, you’re not the coward that you’ve always been.”
“Malachi?” It was clear that the leader had stunned Alexi. “What…? How…?” Alexi stammered and started to move toward the leader, but Luka stopped him with a softly worded, “Papa?”
The leader chuckled menacingly. He loved the shocked look on Alexi’s face. “Yes, Alexi. It is I. It is I, who you betrayed. It is I, who you let die. It is I who you left to be tortured and tormented for years, for centuries! Do you have any idea what those bastards did to me? Do you know what I became?”
“Malachi, my friend…”
“No! I…am…not…your…friend!” Malachi said through clenched teeth. “You betrayed us! You betrayed the Brotherhood!”
“I did no such thing!” Alexi denied, horrified at the very thought.
“There were only three of us left.” Each word from Malachi was said with chilling bitterness. “You had already left to visit your secret family. Three sons, Alexi! Two of whom were already adults and deadly weapons. You could have let them help us. Let them help to protect us.”
Malachi started pacing in agitation. His version of pacing was bobbing and weaving around even more frequently. He was like a wounded bear who wanted to hurt as he had been hurt. “Theophilus and Serig died during the initial attack. There were just too many of them. Those fucking witches, demons, and vampires butchered them. I didn’t fare much better. They took me to a fucking dark hole in a fortress I couldn’t escape and tortured me for centuries, until I was something that they could no longer contain.”
“I had no idea, Malachi. Our servants swore that you were all dead,” Alexi explained softly.
“I don’t want to hear your fucking excuses!” Malachi growled. “Leaving us to die was not your worst crime! You were the cause of my son’s death!”
“How the fuck did you come to that conclusion?” Luka drawled. He and Drako were standing on either side of their father in a relaxed pose. However, you only had to look in their eyes to see that they were apex predators and would make deadly enemies. There was no doubt that they were ready for whatever attack, no matter how creepy the attacker was.
“Unlike your sons, my son, Rupert, had no one to guide him,” Malachi continued, intent on ignoring Luka. “He drifted around for centuries until he pissed off the wrong immortals and they killed him. But not before he had a son.”
Malachi swung his eyes on me briefly before turning back to Alexi. “I didn’t come to kill you tonight.”
“We appreciate that,” Luka drawled, seeming slightly amused.
“Don’t thank me. I will kill your father, but not tonight because I have other more important business to attend to. I came for my great-granddaughter.” Again, Malachi looked at me.
I glared at him. Yeah, that bullshit story wasn’t working for me, and there was no way in hell I was going anywhere with some ancient, bearded dude.
Xander’s growl reverberated through his body and mine.
“Alexi, hand her over and I will leave you and your little runts to live another day.”
Alexi frowned. “Am I supposed to know who your great-granddaughter is?” Alexi still seemed stunned by the appearance of Malachi. He was looking at him as if seeing a ghost.
“Feigning ignorance isn’t going to work, you bastard. You have been guarding over her for too many years to have not known who she is.” Malachi then turned to me. “Come, my dear. These people will not protect you like your real family.”
“Please,” I muttered. “I don’t know you from Adam.”
“I am your family. I am better equipped to protect you than any other being.”
”Protect her?” Xander sneered. “You and your friends are why she is in danger.”
“That is precisely why I can protect her better,” Malachi insisted.
“Psst!” I hissed. “You mean like my maternal grandmother, who used my abilities to hassle people on the streets of Cite Soleil?” I let the contempt I felt leak into every word that I spoke. “Or perhaps like my mother, who sold me when I was three years old to my father? Oh, no, let’s talk about your precious grandson, who sold me to slavers after injecting me with some shit that incapacitated me for transport.” I felt Xander’s eyes on me and also felt his shock. Hell, all of them seemed to be stunned. Yeah, I really hadn’t expected to tell them like this. I had never told anyone. It was too personal. Too shameful. “Are those the people I am supposed to run back to for love and support? Family?”
“Your father, my grandson, is dead. So, there is no need to fear him, my dear,” Malachi promised soothingly.
“Yes, I know the bastard is dead. I killed him when he came to visit me a few years ago,” I told him coolly. “I’m not a fan of people sneaking up on me. Sorry, not sorry.”
“You?!” Malachi screeched. “You killed my grandson?!”
“Isn’t that what I said?” I frowned to let him know that I was also not a fan of repeating myself.
Malachi gaped at me as though he couldn’t quite grasp what I was telling him.
I might look sweet and harmless, but now he knew differently. My father was a powerful dhampir, more than three centuries old. He had the usual dhampir powers of acute senses of sight and hearing, regenerating abilities, near immortality, and the powers and strength of a vampire with the ability to walk in sunlight as a human. However, he also had my powers of teleportation and the sick ability to suck the blood from a person’s body by simply kissing them. Something he did to my mother the day she sold me to him. Her darkened, withered, and wrinkled body had collapsed where she stood only moments before. She had been a twenty-five-year-old woman, whose corpse had looked like the body of a woman more than a hundred years old.
I almost smiled at the stunned thought in Malachi’s mind, “But Cecile was powerful.”
Yup. And now he knew that I was powerful too.
Malachi cleared his throat. “Still, I will not leave you with them.” He sounded menacingly determined. “You are the only family I have left. You are my legacy.”
Xander laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Alexandra is my mate. Not your fucking anything.”
“Are you forgetting your time with me and my friends, little man?” Malachi smirked darkly.
“I forgot nothing,” Xander told him coldly. “You are on private property. Leave before I make you.”
“Make me?” Malachi laughed, his black gaze fixed on Xander. “I see you have forgotten. I’m disappointed. We had such fun times. I especially liked the last, all-encompassing hot-lava boil. Don’t you remember, little man? Your screams were pure music.” Malachi laughed with belly-shaking mirth.
“Why don’t you try that shit again?” Xander’s voice was pure steel. If Malachi had hoped to intimidate Xander or cower him in some way, he was failing spectacularly.
“Make no mistake, Malachi, my son has backup this time,” Alexi said in a hard voice. “For every ounce of pain you caused my son, we will inflict it back on you one hundred times over.”
“You barely survived an attack from a minor demon, Alexi.”
Malachi seemed unconcerned about facing the four Petrov males. I guess he didn’t think that I would fight for them. Not a very smart assumption.
“The point is he survived,” I said sweetly. “If you keep up this foolish vigil, you most definitely won’t.”
“You would go against your own blood for them?” Malachi asked scornfully.
“When Cecile drugged and caged me to be sold like cattle on an auction block, what good was my blood relative then? Or when he came again a few years later to try to kill me for no other reason than I shared his blood, was it good to have a blood relative then?” I held up my palm when he attempted to speak. “But hey, I forgave him. I never forgot what he did, but I forgave his ass.”
“You killed him! How is that forgiveness?” Malachi looked at me as if I was the one who had mental issues.
“Don’t judge me. God forgives people all the time, and you don’t complain when He kills them!” I shrugged when Malachi’s frown only deepened. “Besides, I never said I was fucking perfect. I am working on my homicidal tendencies.” Yup, I was content that I had given him the appropriate insight into his future.
Malachi shook his head and again tried to interrupt me.
“No, I don’t need to hear it,” I dismissed. “Alexi has taken care of me. Taken care of me when no blood relative has ever cared for me. So, yeah, you try to hurt him, you’re going to have to go through me too.”
“You don’t want to make an enemy of me, great-granddaughter,” Malachi sneered.
I couldn’t help the short snort of amusement I let slip. “Dude, I just met you five seconds ago. Perhaps you should have the same concern.”
“So be it,” Malachi bit out.
I knew the exact moment he decided to blow out his deadly mist. I almost smiled at his cunning because it was so like Cecile’s sadistic inclinations. Cecile always went for a sneak attack.
“Freeze time,” I telepathically urged Xander.
Having witnessed him do it once before, I was impressed when my mate immediately complied. And was even more impressed when his powers froze everyone, including his father and brothers.
With my hyper-sensitive vision, and now that it was frozen, I could see the deadly mist, which looked like a thick line of smoke and smelled like pungent sulfur, stretched inches from us. “Do you see it?” I asked Xander.
“Yeah,” Xander said in a gravelly, dead voice. “That was how he paralyzed and captured me before.”
“Bastard,” I hissed and moved the line of mist back on Malachi’s vampires.
Xander gave me a stunned look. “Telekinesis?”
“My grandmother was a witch. They called her an Obeah priestess. I don’t practice spells, even though I know some. That just seemed too dark for me. The telekinesis has gotten stronger the older I get.”
Xander, without any prompting from me, unfroze time, but he was having difficulty processing what I was.
Multi-species.
It was clear by Malachi’s smirk as he stared at Alexi that Malachi had no clue that time had been frozen. He was expecting the frozen corpses that were currently behind him to be us.
I couldn’t help my own gleeful smirk when Malachi frowned in confusion as we continued to stand there, completely unaffected by his poisonous mist. I watched as his gaze swung among us, and he fought hard to hide his confusion and agitation.
My smirk turned into a full-on toothy grin.
Malachi narrowed his eyes at me. “What did you do?” he growled.
“Who? Me?” I almost laughed at his even louder growl. “Were you trying to show us how powerful you are?” I asked sweetly as I made this little twirly motion with my pointy finger, instructing him to turn around.
As soon as he complied, I would have given anything to witness his expression on seeing at least twenty of the vampires he had brought with him laid out on the cold lawn as frozen corpses that were rapidly turning to ash, dusting, and they would soon be vaporized.
“Yup, I agree. You are very impressive,” I deadpanned.
“You little bitch!” Malachi raged.
I twisted my lips and shook my head. “Damn! I was so looking forward to bonding with my great-grandpa,” I told Xander conversationally.
His lips curved into a rare smile, and his turquoise eyes sparkled in amusement. “Yeah, you must be brokenhearted,” he whispered and looked down at me with such admiration I felt myself glowing from the inside out.
“God, I want to kiss you right now.”
“Unfortunately, we don’t have time for that,” Alexi murmured with an indulgent smile.
I felt my face flush with embarrassment. I couldn’t believe I had voiced my desire out loud.
“Malachi, stop this insanity. I never betrayed you or the Brotherhood,” Alexi said softly.
Of course, with our enhanced immortal senses, he didn’t need to speak loudly to be heard by all.
“I never agreed with your and the others’ determination to alter our state again to gain more power,” Alexi continued. “Our relentless pursuit for more powers only made us more of a target. You should have been safe in our compound. If you hadn’t left to approach the witches again to get them to agree to give you more power, even though they despised us for the power we did have, you would have been safe.”
“Are you blaming us for what happened?” Malachi snarled. “Is that what you’re doing, Alexi? Because if you are, fuck you! Fuck you! We did what we had to, but you kept our most powerful weapons secret!”
“Yes, I kept my sons a secret, not because I was trying to betray you but to protect them from other immortals. Our kind was not strong enough to even save ourselves, if the other immortals knew of my sons, and especially how young they were, they would have been slaughtered and no use to the Brotherhood. Yes, they had adult bodies, but they hadn’t gained the full use of their powers. They were not strong enough. You all were long dead, I thought, when they gained their powerful gifts.”
“You lie, Alexi,” Malachi said derisively. “How is it that they were strong enough to protect you from so many and not us?! I will tell you why. It is because you lie!”
“Malachi, that is the truth. You know that I am incapable of such dishonesty.”
“Is that what you call it, Alexi?” Malachi glared. “It was betrayal, Alexi. Plain and simple. Betrayal.
“Freeze him!” I telepathically whispered urgently to Xander.
Again, Xander’s response was instantaneous.
This time, I made sure Malachi’s tainted mist covered as many of his remaining vampires as it could.
Xander shocked me when he pulled me back to nestle against his large frame. He was a broad, hard, warm male at my back. I couldn’t help my body’s instant reaction to him. I knew that he meant it more as a protective gesture than anything else.
“I want you out of here,” Xander murmured, confirming my interpretation of his actions.
He further stunned me when he was able to unfreeze his brothers and Alexi. Given how everyone talked about my mate, I never expected him to be so powerful. Hell, I thought since he carried around an ancient sword that he had no special powers at all.
“You can keep doing this”—Luka swept his hand toward a still-frozen Malachi— “or I can just kill him now,” Luka muttered as he glared at the frozen figure of Malachi.
“No, son,” Alexi admonished. “Malachi and I were at one time as close as brothers. He is simply misguided.”
“So what?!” Drako frowned at his father. “You and Adam used to be as close as father and son many centuries ago. And that bastard has been trying to kill you for centuries.”
“Malachi used to be a good man,” Alexi said quietly. “He was a man of God.”
“Papa, letting him live is a mistake,” Luka argued. “It’s either kill him or wait for him to kill you and us.”
Alexi looked at the frozen figure of Malachi with an affection I didn’t expect. “We must give him a chance to repent and find the good again. He has let resentment, disappointment, and jealousy consume him. He will come around now that he knows the truth.”
“Let’s hope we don’t pay a hefty price for your delusional thinking,” Luka muttered.
We all watched as Xander released time and Malachi looked at our assembled group expectantly. He knew nothing of the time frozen and was still expecting his stealthy, deadly mist to reach its targets.
We waited him out, and eventually he turned to note the ashes still dissipating from the other half of his vampires who’d been unfortunate enough to inhale the mist.
Malachi’s roar of outrage echoed around us. Loud. Tortured. Demented.
“Malachi, stop this,” Alexi implored in a booming voice, trying to be heard above the unrelenting roar.
“How did you do this?” Malachi asked wildly. His face was contorted, his eyes wide and completely black, his nose flaring with his harsh breaths, his razor-sharp fangs elongated, and his lips wet with angry spittle. It was clear that he had no idea that Xander had frozen time. And then his gaze swung wildly between Luka, Drako, and Xander.
“One of you can freeze time,” Malachi muttered with both awe and scorn. When no one answered him, he snarled, “Adam is right. Your family shouldn’t exist! You are a threat to the immortal world!”
“You came after us,” Xander told him coldly. “Were you expecting us to lie down and let you kill us? Did you expect to capture one of us and torture us again to get back at Papa?”
“And we all know how much you enjoyed my hospitality,” Malachi sneered with a laugh that held nothing but pure hate.
In seconds, Xander hurled his sword. The blade sliced through Malachi’s knees.
Malachi fell backward in a jarring thud, screaming in pain as his blood pooled on the ground around him.
“Heal him,” Alexi growled.
I had seen my mentor happy. I had seen him thoughtful, sad, and slightly disappointed, but I had never seen him angry. And he was pissed.
“He deserves to die, Papa,” Xander said dispassionately, making no attempt to comply with his father’s wishes.
“This is not who we are. Heal him.” Each word was said slowly, precisely, and from between clenched teeth.
Xander muttered nonsensically below his breath as though he was a toddler shuffling his feet and annoyed with his parents.
With a slight wave of his fingers, the severed-knee injuries were transferred to one of Malachi’s vampires. Malachi was restored to perfect health.
Malachi stared at Xander with reluctant astonishment.
“Malachi,” Alexi began soothingly, “you and I were once as close as brothers.”
Malachi glared at Alexi. He curled his lips into an angry sneer. “Your lies of omission and selfishness cost the rest of us everything! You are no brother of mine!” He turned to his remaining vampires, who immediately left at vampiric speed, while Malachi misted into thin air.
“Well, that was illuminating,” I muttered.
Xander snorted in amusement.