Chapter Sixteen
Xander
“I saw that you were perfect, and so I loved you. Then I saw that you were not perfect and I loved you even more.”
- Angelita Lim
St. Petersburg, Russia…
“You’re mated?”
The incredulous, but obviously approving quality in Papa’s voice made me immediately defensive.
“It was the only way I could save her.” However, as soon as the words left my mouth, I felt my mate stiffen within my arms. While I appreciated how cold that sounded, it was the absolute truth. I didn’t want this life for her, and I wasn’t about to apologize for that.
Alexandra pulled away from me for the first time since Drako teleported us to the castle almost an hour ago. Despite the presence of my entire family, Alexandra hadn’t left my side. At first, she stood beside me while leaning into my side.
My family, especially the children, wanted to know everything about the Chamber. By some miracle, no one else in my family had ever heard of the Chamber. It really boggled my mind how my brothers refused to acknowledge the workings in the immortal world. They liked to act as though that world didn’t really exist. Instead, they remained fully entrenched in the human world, while hoping that the immortal world sorted itself out.
Eventually, we were all seated in the dining room with a spread worthy of a king, and Alexandra, although she was eating as though she hadn’t eaten in days, was almost sitting in my lap while she did it.
I didn’t expect to like her closeness so much.
However, as soon as I opened my big mouth to Papa’s question about us mating, she stopped eating and sat up stiffly in her chair, refusing to let any part of her touch me.
Everyone around us fell silent.
I ignored them and fixed my gaze on my silent, unmoving mate. “Our mates retain our impenetrable energy shield,” I explained.
“I didn’t even know you had such a thing,” she mumbled distractedly. And then she turned in her seat and gave me an expressionless stare. “So, you’re saying that you only allowed our mate’s bond to form so that we could make it out of that place, correct?”
I tried tapping into our link and reading her mind, but she blocked me. I didn’t like it. Hell, I didn’t even know that she could do that. I was her fated-mate. She shouldn’t be able to block me or our link. I now knew how my family felt when I did the same thing to them. For the first time since I became this cold shell, I had to consider how my response, or lack thereof, had impacted someone important to me. And despite my fighting it, Alexandra was very important to me.
“With the impenetrable shield, those bullets coming at us couldn’t hurt you.” I decided to give her information instead of answering that controversial question.
“Dang, Uncle Xander, that’s cold.” Zora hissed in disapproval.
“Good to know,” my mate muttered before standing and walking from the room.
Luna and Danika, both heavily pregnant, stood and chased after her with surprising agility.
“Should she be able to block my access to our link?” I asked Papa. I tilted my head, trying to see where they were going. She wasn’t even out of my sight, and already I was missing her. We had just spent more than six hours in each other’s company. When did I get so attached to her?
“Shouldn’t you be more worried that you just devastated your mate?” Luka wanted to know.
They were all looking at me as though I had grown an extra head.
“It is one of her abilities,” Papa finally answered me. He stared at me with a bit of stunned incomprehension as though he didn’t understand how my brain worked.
“Aunt Xandra has awesome powers.” Zora sounded awed. “I wish that I could have seen her in action. She healed Grandpa’s soul, which was way cool. She can alter minds like Papa and can compel people to do as she wants. And now she can mentally block her mate’s link, the most powerful psychic power we will ever have with our mates. Yup, Aunt Xandra is the GOAT!”
“Her blocking me is probably temporary,” I mumbled, a bit shocked that I was starting to feel things that I’d never felt before. Uncertain. Exposed. Abandoned. Afraid. I understood and anticipated my desire for her, but to need her? To need her presence beside me in order to feel whole? What the hell was that?
“That’s how Alexandra was able to stay hidden from her father for years. Be careful, moy syn, that she doesn’t try to hide from you.”
I hadn’t expected Papa to respond to my musing. However, his confirmation of Alexandra’s ability only made me even more desperate to follow her. “But she can’t because we can’t survive without the other.” I hoped like hell that he didn’t hear the fear in my voice.
“Does your mate know that?” Papa was incensed. I had no problem interpreting the disappointment of my father. “Did you bother explaining any of what being a Petrov fated-mate would mean to her? Her increased powers, her dependency on you for feeding, and the myriad of other complications that comes with being a Petrov mate?”
“I’ve been a bit busy trying to escape hell.” I was defensive and a lot worried that my mate might never speak to me again. “She doesn’t deserve being drawn into our legacy of continuous danger, incessant hate, and constant violence. She doesn’t know what the life as my mate would entail. What right did I have to force that existence on her? I wanted her to find another man, human, dhampir, another immortal, I don’t care. As long as she was away from this lethal world!”
“You were not too busy to tell your mate that you don’t want to claim her,” Drako drawled, “and then when you did claim her, you told her that you only did so under duress.”
“Fuck you!” I growled. “She would have died, asshole! I didn’t put her in that situation. Alexandra put herself in that situation by going back to that hospital when I told her not to.”
“I think you’re the asshole,” Alexandra gritted out as she came back into the room.
I sucked in a harsh breath at being caught by Alexandra saying insensitive shit that hurt her again.
“Yes, what happened to me was my own fault. I shouldn’t have gone to that hospital, but I would have never forgiven myself if someone had died because of me. But you know what? I didn’t ask you to save me. I didn’t ask you to fall into my great-grandfather’s trap.”
“Leaving you there was not an option,” I snapped, annoyed at the unceasing fire from everyone. When did I become the bad guy around here?
“Thank you for that. I needed reminding that I am now only your mate because you were forced into it. I’m glad you’ve said what you really think,” she said sardonically. “Because now I don’t feel bad leaving you. You don’t want a mate? Well, guess what, you no longer have a mate!”
This was hardly the time or place for me to be turned on by her fury. But my body didn’t give two shits about that. An intense jolt of awareness coiled through me. I took a deep breath in, trying to regain control, but I could only scent my mate. She still wore my scent. It was an erotic combination of me and her. I ached with need.
“Did you hear me?! I give you your freedom. I will stay in the castle because we are at war. But I’ll be sure to sleep in the farthest wing away from you!”
Her defiance was intoxicating. My body tingled and throbbed with molten desire. I wanted…
“You are my mate,” I told her hoarsely. I was barely able to get the words past my suddenly dry throat. I was pulsing and trembling with want. I moved closer to her. I didn’t stop until there was barely an inch between us. I held her gaze, letting her see and feel what she was doing to me.
“Don’t you dare,” she snarled, but she wasn’t able to look away from me.
“You are my mate,” I told her again, since everything else I said seemed to either piss her off or hurt her. And for some reason, I couldn’t seem to get anything else out of my mouth right now.
“You don’t want a mate. So, no, I am not your damn mate!”
“You are my mate,” I repeated stubbornly. I wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her closer, where I most wanted her. Her front plastered to mine.
She shivered violently against me.
I smiled sardonically. “Yeah, welcome to my world,” I told her telepathically.
She tried to pull away from me, but her efforts were glaringly halfhearted. “Let go of me,” she muttered, but she didn’t pull away from me, even though I was holding her loosely.
“Krasivaia,” I said huskily. Her mental shield came crashing down, and my body pulsed harder as her desire flooded my senses. I brushed my lips over hers. “Moiai,” I said softly.
She curled her fingers in my shirt and trembled. She loved it when I called her beautiful, and she always melted when I told her that she was mine. So, I said it again.
I kissed her cheek. “Moiai.”
Her grip tightened, and she pressed harder into me.
God, her need was coming at me in waves and waves of sizzling intensity. I reached for her with every intention of sweeping her off her feet and taking her to my wing of the castle.
“Luna. Danika. Help,” Alexandra gasped out.
Luna and Danika immediately came to stand beside her and glared at me. Their combined glares and big pregnant bellies would have intimidated a lesser man. But I was made of sterner stuff.
“Luka, Drako, come collect your mates, please.”
I almost grinned when my brothers immediately wrapped their arms around their respective wives.
“Don’t you dare!” Luna slapped Luka’s arm, trying to get free.
“Stop! You’re a dead man walking, Drako Petrov!” Danika stomped on Drako’s foot in frustration.
My brothers, being the best brothers a man could ask for, held on to their mates as I lifted mine, threw her over my shoulder, and took her to my wing at vampiric speed.
“This is not a game, Xander! You’ve said what you feel for me. There is nothing else that needs to be said! Put me down!”
“I will always try to give you what you want.” I kept my voice soothing. I kissed her forehead before taking her into my ensuite bathroom. “Let me take care of you.”
“Are you deaf? Xander!” she screeched.
My definition of what taking care of her meant was clear as I swiftly and efficiently stripped her. I justified my plan with the thought that, despite her being a virgin mere hours ago, any discomfort she might have felt on losing her virginity had long since healed. As a dhampir, Alexandra would have healed almost instantly from any ailments once we cleared the entrance of the Chamber to the surface level.
“I said no!”
I ignored her because I wasn’t even touching her anymore. Instead, I was quickly stripping my clothes from my body as she stood before me. I held back a grin as she stared transfixed at my naked body, looking as though she wanted to eat me whole.
After turning the water on in the shower, I lifted her against me and stepped into the warm cascading jets.
“What are you going to do?” Her voice was not only breathless, but it was also needy.
I covered her lips and kissed her with the hunger that we both felt down to our bones. No matter what happened before, in this, we were of one accord. I craved her, and she craved me. I was obsessed with her, and she was obsessed with me. It was a compulsion that neither of us could escape. I know because I tried. I had been trying to fight this for months. And now that she was fully and finally mine, there wasn’t a reason on this earth that would compel me to not indulge our needs.
She made a soft sigh of surrender before wrapping her arms around my neck and her long legs around my waist. Our tongues sought each other with an urgent, ravenous frenzy that had me hard as granite and wanting her even more desperately. I was feral with need and barely conscious of anything other than getting in her sweet honeypot as soon as possible.
I released her lips only when I had to as I untangled her arms and legs from my body and turned her to press her front up against the wall. I felt through our link the impact of the cool wall acting as a stimulant on her beaded nipples and heated skin.
Fuck!
I trembled along with her.
I groaned deeply.
She cried out.
I gripped her waist, cocked her hips to receive me, and powered into her in fevered need.
“Oh my God!” she shrieked.
Her walls closed around me snuggly, and I closed my eyes, savoring the perfection of our fit.
I was spiraling out of control, and I didn’t give a damn as feelings I had suppressed for too long overwhelmed me again. I had felt this when we made love in the Chamber and had been shocked by the strength of the pleasure between us. But now it was even more intense than before. I had thought that it was impossible to feel more, to be so wrecked with sensations that nothing else mattered, but I was wrong. The ecstasy I felt with her was bone deep and shook me to my core.
It was only in this moment that I could acknowledge how much I wanted her as my mate. Forget my bullshit words of before. I wanted this woman with every fiber of my being. I wanted to tell her, but that was too many words, and the only word that I could get out was mine. And I told her so as I sank my length even deeper into her.
“Moiai,” I whispered in a rough voice close to her ear. I kept praising her in words I had never used before because she was unlike any other woman I had known before. I palmed her breasts and rolled my hips in a circular motion as I tunneled into her.
“Xander,” she moaned huskily, and every lusty sound had me drilling into her harder. Faster. She arched her spine at an impossible angle and drove me even deeper into her tight channel.
“Oh God! Xander,” she moaned long and loud, loving the sweet ache of my hard thrusts and the excruciating pleasure zinging through her.
I felt hot all over, incredibly hot, and my insides seemed on the precipice of erupting, and then Alexandra splintered around me. Her euphoric ecstasy flooded our link. My world exploded as blistering pleasure electrified every cell in my body.
“Bastard,” she murmured without heat, even as she stood docilly leaning against me and letting me wash her however I wanted.
I had barely finished soaping her when I was hooking her knees with my elbows and pushing her back up against the wall. I sank deep inside her within seconds. I curled my tongue around hers as I mindlessly thrust, hard and deep, into her. She spasmed and convulsed around me in such sensual bliss that it triggered my own release within seconds.
It took almost two hours before we made it to our bed because, even as I toweled the moisture from our bodies, I wanted in her again. I placed her on the cool granite countertop, wedged my hips between her thighs, and pulled her legs around my waist as I sank deep inside her again.
It didn’t matter how many times I satiated myself in her; I wanted more. For hours I kept her in a sexual haze of blistering passion, a passion I couldn’t seem to get enough of. Every time we reached completion, I wanted her again with even more ferocity. It didn’t help our situation that Alexandra wanted me with the same desperate insatiability. I lost count of the times we fed from each other, which only added to our sensual frenzy.
Although as dhampirs we rarely got tired, after being without sleep for almost seventy-two hours, the rescue attempt, and marathon sex, I fell into a sated-induced sleep.
When I woke, almost eight hours later, I was feeling a peace I hadn’t felt in centuries. For the first time, the sounds of my family moving around the castle made me smile in contentment.
The kids in the playroom, their laughter ringing frequently and loud above the repeated snaps of the pinballs on the pool table. My brothers, their low baritone voices were relaxed and confident as they discussed a business deal with Tristan. I was wearing an involuntary grin as Tristan asked Luka yet another irreverent question about Luna in hopes of getting Luka riled. And predictably, Luka lost his cool and took a swing at Tristan. Even with a broken jaw, Tristan was laughing like a loon. Drako was muttering in annoyance, while Luka was threatening to turn Tristan into a eunuch next time, which only made Tristan laugh harder.
Papa was in another wing of the castle with Meredith, going over the accounts of the vast number of real estate properties in the Petrov portfolio. Although Papa made all of us give up most of our personal wealth every century, the properties within the original Petrov portfolio remained intact. We held properties in various parts of Europe, Africa, the Americas, and some of our largest holdings in Russia. In recent years, Papa had put Meredith in charge of the Petrov properties.
Meredith loved it, the constant travel, the negotiating with contractors, staff, and other vendors who serviced the properties. Her responsibilities allowed her to do something meaningful with her college degree in interior design. And from all accounts, she was doing a bang-up job with it.
Ever since Tristan’s turn, she had become one of his longtime lovers. Neither Tristan nor Meredith considered their relationship exclusive. As far as I could tell, Papa fully approved of their association, as there was no awkwardness between them. Papa had always felt that he was too old for Meredith anyway and at one time seemed to encourage the relationship between the new vampires.
Still lying in my oversized-king bed with a big shit-faced smile and closed eyes, I reveled in the feeling of profound peace coursing through me. I was feeling not only peaceful but I was also feeling joy. Inexplicable joy. I was feeling thankful. And I was feeling love. So much love that I seemed to be bursting with it. My smile grew bigger.
I smiled because I knew that my ability for such amazingly, pure feelings was because of my very special mate. She freed me. She unfroze me. She gave me life. As sure as she had breathed life into my father’s soul, she had breathed life back into mine. I felt alive! Daughtry’s song, “Alive,” filled my head and had me humming the lyrics as I swung my legs from the bed. I went into the shower humming, and by the time I was lathered up, I was singing with gusto.
As I towel dried my skin, I reached my senses out for my mate because I only realized belatedly that she was the only family member I hadn’t sensed in the castle. I felt our link. It was strong, but it was as if there was nothing at the end of that link. I couldn’t sense her anywhere.
Within seconds, I was dressed. And within ten minutes, every occupant in the castle had scoured the entire castle and the over one hundred acres of castle grounds. At the end of it, one fact was crystal clear.
My mate was gone.