Chapter 25
The time between my maker snatching me and us arriving wherever he took me was a single breath. The world had blurred into inky wisps of black and grey, pressure building behind my eyes. My stomach lurched when he made the sudden stop.
His voice. One word. Unleashed memories I’d fought long and hard to suppress.
I’d been browsing the town square for supplies, much to my shifter pack’s dismay.
They frequently scolded me for my nighttime excursions.
That night, they were right. His footsteps had been silent behind me, the sharp sting of his fangs sinking into my flesh not registering straight away.
A scorpion must have attacked me. That was absurd because what scorpions attacked your neck?
His bite wasn’t gentle. It was ferocious, predatory, and once the adrenaline wore off, my heartbeat thrashed in my ears.
My life, a life I thought was nearly impossible to end, drifted away with every bit he guzzled.
He had an arm wrapped around me, but it wasn’t anything friendly or romantic.
It was to keep me upright as I lost control of my limbs.
When death crept closer, only a flicker of my vision remaining, he’d let me fall to the cobblestones in a heap.
That was it. He was going to let me die alone in an alleyway after having his fill of me, letting me bleed out.
It might have been a better fate. Through a blurry fog, he sank his teeth into his own wrist. He knelt by my head, shoving the bleeding wound at my mouth, telling me to “drink.” The notion made my throat burn.
With what little strength I had left, I pinched my lips and eyes shut.
When I didn’t comply, he grabbed my face, forcing my mouth open.
Blood dripped onto my tongue, bitter and metallic.
I refused to swallow for as long as I could stand it, but soon, the natural reaction won over.
I appeared underwater. I plunged my head to the surface, sputtering and gasping. “Morcant, what the fuck?” I yelled, my hair hanging in soppy tendrils around my face. He’d put me in an enormous bathtub, and I sat up, chest heaving.
My maker sat in a wooden chair in the corner with his legs crossed.
He wore a billowy white shirt with a tuft underneath the neck, a red satin vest, and skinny black pants.
Chestnut hair hung in perfect waves to his collarbone.
His square, pale face pulled tight as he glared at me.
“I figured you needed to cool off.” Unlike mine, his accent hadn’t faded, still rich with a soft lilt and emphasis on “r’s. ”
With a grunt, I pulled myself up, cringing at the way my leather pants clung wetly to my legs. “I didn’t think it was possible to hate you more.”
Morcant rolled his eyes and dragged a thin finger down his slanted nose. “You’ve always hated me. Your words mean about as much as they always had, underling.”
I grimaced at “underling.” What an atrocious word for a person you forced into vampirism.
“What am I doing here?” I wrung out my hair, not caring that water collected on his wooden floor. Hopefully, it would ruin them.
Morcant dropped his gaze to the puddles surrounding my boots before drifting back to my face. “I’ve developed a brood.”
“You’re out of your undead mind if you think I want anything to do with your warped sense of family.” I moved toward the door. Morcant flicked his hand, and the locks clicked into place. Smirking, I turned to face him. “I’m surprised it wasn’t already locked.”
Morcant still hadn’t budged from his chair. His elbow rested on a side table with several lit candles and a bowl of dried flowers. Him and his fucking potpourri. His cheek rested in his palm. “I wanted to remind you how powerful I was.”
“I don’t need reminding. In fact, I don’t want it. Let me out of here. Now.”
Morcant let his fangs grow, and he clicked his tongue against one. “It started as my finding you to join the brood, which led into discovering what you’ve been up to.”
“You’ll have to be more specific. I’ve done plenty of things since I escaped your pasty hands.”
I hated that he still favored the same stucco walls and terracotta floor tiles.
“The wolf,” Morcant clipped, disdain in his tone.
A heat curled up my spine. My body became stiff. I took a threatening step toward my maker. “That is what this is about? Harkin? Still riding the wave of me shunning my shifter side, are you?”
Morcant uncrossed his legs and sat upright, propping an elbow on each chair arm. “You are still barking about that after nearly a hundred years?”
An inferno clawed at my stomach. “You were fully aware I never wanted to be a vampire. You took that from me.”
Morcant picked lint from his shirt. “Please. What kind of family discards one from their herd like yesterday’s trash?”
Black specks filtered my vision. “I couldn’t shift any more. I was a threat to them. A predator.”
“We’re getting off topic. I’ll not have my progeny mixing with the likes of wolves.” Morcant’s black eyes glowed red.
“That’s not your choice. Not anymore.”
In a swirl of black smoke, Morcant appeared in front of me, snatching my face in one hand. “You ungrateful little brat.” He pulled our faces closer. “Turning you into a vampire gave the chance at something new. I specifically chose you.”
“I don’t care,” I said, speaking one word at a time.
His grip tightened on my cheeks. “Here I thought I’d be forcing you to feed on humans again only to have you sink your fangs into a wolf.”
My maker had depleted the blood supply for so many vampires, so many humans.
“I had a feeling it was you, but had hoped like hells it wasn’t, you miserable dick.”
Morcant’s lip twitched, his pointed nails poking into my flesh. He dipped his nose to my neck, taking a long whiff. Growling, he shoved me away. “You positively reek of him. Not only do you drink from him, but you also fucked him? It’s bad enough you swore off feeding on humans, but now this?”
My fangs extracted, and I grinned at my shitty maker. “That’s right. And I plan to do it again, and again, and again, and don’t care what you have to say about it.”
Morcant slapped me across the face. “Aurora. Enough.”
A tinge of iron coated my tongue. I licked blood from my busted lip, laughing as I wiped it away with my finger. My gaze lifted to the vaulted ceiling with exposed wooden beams, before punching him square in his perfectly shaped, immortal-preserved nose.
Most feared Morcant and his unpredictable, maniacal ways of traipsing through life.
I used to be afraid too, but I was no longer.
I had the distinct protection of being his prized childe.
No matter what I did to him, he would never kill me.
Torture me maybe, but the look on his face as he held his temporarily broken and bleeding nose was well worth it.
Morcant vibrated with anger. He threw his arm out to his side, launching me into a burnt-orange velvet chair. I continued to laugh even when invisible rope plastered my wrists to the chair’s arms. “All these years, Morcant, and I can still piss you off so easily.”
“We’ll see how much you’ll be laughing when you don’t see your wolf ever again.” Morcant adjusted his nose as his much quicker healing mended it into place.
If I had a heart, it would have risen to my throat.
“You can’t do that.” I’d said it mostly to convince myself that such a feat wasn’t possible.
Morcant flashed a smug grin. He sauntered across the room, one foot over the other, before pressing his hands on the ends of the chair arms. “I’m your maker. I can coerce you to do anything I want.”
“Yeah? Then why did you never summon me back?”
“You really think I’m going to spill secrets of being a maker?” Morcant bopped a finger on my nose. “Not that you ever bothered to find out for yourself.”
“Please.” I wiggled in the chair, testing how strong his magic was. The only thing I could move from my elbows down was my fingers. Fuck. “I have zero desire to create more of us, especially with your germs.”
Morcant pushed away, scooping a pewter goblet into his palm from the side table and leaning on an arched doorway. “Tell me. Why the wolf?”
Despite his not saying Harkin’s name, every mention of wolf sent static raindrops down my neck and spine. “Is my answer going to get me slapped again, or worse?”
With a dismissive shrug, Morcant moved to a wooden bookcase with dozens of books of every color and size. “No promises.”
When I’d woken up this evening, having a conversation about why I was into Harkin with my maker was not something I thought I’d be doing. I could be honest, I could be vague, or I could positively drive him mad.
“He’s an alpha and not a vampire.”
Morcant smirked into his cup. “I’m an alpha.”
“No, you’re just an ancient, powerful prick.
There’s honor behind being a true alpha with responsibilities to a family who aren’t even blood.
” My sinuses stung as if there were impending blood tears.
Harkin really was remarkable. I realized that.
I’ve always known that, but damn did it feel good to tell someone else that.
Morcant glared before hurling his goblet across the room. It slammed into the wall above an iron-wrought bed with burgundy sheets before clanging to the floor. “Is that all it takes for you to spread your legs, Aurora? Find an alpha wolf? Take his knot?”
After years around Morcant’s behavior, I didn’t flinch when left over wine in the goblet had smeared the wall. With a slow, deep breath, I cut my eyes to his. “What did you hope to get out of creating me in the first place?”
Morcant had been furiously rubbing his chin but sobered at that. “I hoped for special abilities.”
I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing it worked.
“All you got out of it is a pissed-off vampire with a tan. Congratulations, shithead. I don’t believe for a second you only spent the energy to find me after all this time because of some brood. What’s in it for you, really, Morcant?”
A slow, devious smile slithered across Morcant’s lips. He drummed his fingers over one of the candles’ flames. “You always were intelligent, weren’t you?”
I’d spent long enough in his company to grasp the way he thought. Since my creation, Morcant had always centered everything he did on himself.
“You may be a failed experiment, but your blood is still hybrid.”
“I fucking knew it,” I scoffed, kicking the nearest chair. It broke easily, made of cedar, probably from his original coffin.
Morcant narrowed his eyes at the crack in his furniture. “With you leading my brood and the promise of blood samples, I would easily become a leader amongst the ancients.”
That could not happen. If I got anywhere near the ancients, they’d discover I had not only the blood of a hybrid, but I was one.
“Well, that sucks for you then, sire, because I’m not going anywhere with you.”
Morcant crossed the room, leaning into my face. He grabbed my chin, turning my head from left to right, inspecting me. “You’re hiding something. I can sense it on you like spoiled eggs.”
My stomach fluttered at the memory of Harkin’s scent enveloping me. Morcant would remain unaware of my abilities. It would drive him to make more like me. I had to give him something. “The wolf is my mate.”
Morcant didn’t let go. He gripped tighter, one of his pointy nails drawing blood. The darkness in my maker’s eyes filled until two onyx pools stared at me, fueled with rage. “Impossible. You’re a vampire.”
“Who used to be a shifter.” I all but spat that word at him.
“It is not possible.” Morcant’s hand shook, my jaw aching from his fingers turning into a vise. “Vampires do not have mates.”
“The celestials work in mysterious ways, sire.” I did spit in his face now.
Morcant quivered with absolute fury. He wiped my saliva from his cheek and lifted his hand. A closet door opened near the bed. “I don’t care even if it’s true. You are my childe. No progeny of mine will mate with wolves or drink from them, unless it is to kill them.”
Why did I get the sinking feeling that things were about to get very bad?
“Morcant, let me go. When Harkin comes for me, you have no idea what you’ll be up against.” A dryness overcame my mouth at the familiar look of insanity waltzing behind Morcant’s lifeless eyes.
“He won’t find you. Not here.” Morcant whipped his hand toward the open door.
My chair surged across the floor, flying into the dark closet, the door slamming shut in front of me. I wiggled and writhed, but could do nothing against my maker’s magic. “Morcant, don’t do this,” I yelled.
Morcant tapped a fingernail on the door. “You will forget about the wolf and come back to me, Aurora, as the head progeny of my brood.”
Like hells I would.
It wouldn’t happen. It couldn’t happen. Harkin’s and my meeting that day, from its start, wasn’t coincidental. It was about timing. We had an eternity to spend together. Right? The moon and stars wouldn’t bring us together only to tear us apart. Right?
Closing my eyes, I whispered, “You’re up, big guy.”