Born in Chains

Her heart rate picked up as new thoughts tripped through her mind, one sensual image after the other, of having Adrien chained and under her control the way Eve had suggested, what it could mean to him but uncertain what it would mean for her.

She stood up from the chair, her gaze still fixed on Adrien’s perfect back and the thin silver line that told the tale of his life. She owed Adrien a lot, even her life. She wanted to repay him, at least in a way that made sense to her. Yes, this she could do for him, especially since everything in her heart told her it was exactly what he needed.

Her chain vibrated heavily now and she left the room, closing the door behind her, grateful that Adrien’s double-chain gave her the extra distance. She withdrew her phone from the pocket of her jeans and called Eve and told her what she wanted to do.

To her surprise, Eve wasn’t flippant with her, nor did she make a sexy joke. Instead, she praised Lily for having the courage to do what needed to be done.

There would be plenty of time before the gala to explore a journey into the darker side of sexual experience. Eve made several suggestions on how to go about it.

After making the arrangements, Lily showered, slipped into a cotton nightgown, and stretched out beside Adrien. His body, tense until she pressed herself up close to him, relaxed into her.

“Lily?” he murmured, his voice thick with sleep.

“I’m here.”

“Good. You need your rest.”

A tear escaped her eye. Why did he have to say that, to be thinking about what she needed when he was still raw from his wounds and still purple from so many bruises?

The tenderness that she knew to be at the heart of Adrien’s soul confirmed that she was doing the right thing to take him to Eve’s apartment in Rome, to chain him down on the dominance table, and maybe lay some of his ghosts to rest.

The heat from his body covered her in a drowsy warmth, a very welcome sensation. She had so much to think about, but the night’s adventure had taken a toll. Before she knew it, she joined him in a dreamless abyss.

* * *

Adrien awoke to darkness, his back really warm, his chest cool.

Ah, Lily was curled up behind him.

He reached for her, found her arm then her hip. She snuggled tighter, murmuring something unintelligible against his shoulder.

In the dark, he took a deep breath. She knew the truth about him now, the terrible truth about his genetics and his parentage, something he could never undo. What would she think of him now? Probably the worst, and he wouldn’t blame her.

He released a heavy sigh, but despite his distress, he fell asleep again.

When he awoke later, he was alone, although he heard the shower running.

He recognized one of Rumy’s guest suites, this one very private, in the lowest level of the Como cave system, extremely secure. Rumy had given them shelter.

He could always rely on Rumy.

He stretched his hearing beyond the walls of the suite but could hear nothing. Of course, some of the guest suites were miles away from the club and it was probably still daytime, the hour when all good vampires slept.

He sat up wondering what the hell to do next. This whole thing had to be getting to Lily. That’s when he heard the softest muffled sounds through the noise of the shower. He extended his hearing and realized she was crying.

The last time she’d wept, he’d been making love to her and her grief had overwhelmed her. Was she thinking about her lost family? Probably. Or maybe just the hell his kind was still putting her through.

He flopped back down on the bed and clasped his hands behind his head. He hated to hear a woman cry, but he also knew that tears were a release. He wished he could help, make it better, make this whole damn infuriating, impossible situation just go away.

But he couldn’t. He was as stuck as Lily and no closer to getting back to his brothers, to releasing them from prison, than he was to finding the extinction weapon.

He reviewed all that had happened in the crystal cave with Silas and his enthralled killers. Those unfortunate men had probably thought they’d been hired to do some general cave maintenance, check for damp, remove stalagmites in living areas, relocate young colonies of bats to human-based caves.

Instead, Silas had used them as a weapon.

Here was one more prime example of the abuse that Ancestrals imposed on regular vampires, using basic enthrallment skills that had cost how many men their lives. Vampire law was basic and ineffective: If you held the knife, you were guilty. Never mind that an Ancestral could exert mind-control over lesser vampires and use them to commit murder.

One more reason he despised that he’d added the more powerful bonding chain and taken the first step toward joining the ranks of the Ancestrals. But at least his brush with Daniel had told him he’d made the right choice: Both he and Lily would be dead right now if he hadn’t added the double-chain.

He lifted his arm and flexed. The bruises, welts, and burns were gone, not even a twinge of pain, one more sign of his increased power, since even his self-healing abilities had improved.

His thoughts turned to the extinction weapon. One thing he knew for sure right now was that Daniel intended to get hold of that weapon any way he could. If he had to create other tracking pairs by making use of Lucian and Marius, then he would do that. If Adrien didn’t deliver or didn’t join him like Quill and Lev had, then Daniel would probably kill Adrien, as simple as that, which of course meant that Lily would perish as well.

He didn’t want her to. He wanted her to live.

He also wanted her to trust him, but she still kept her secret. Not that he blamed her. If he’d been in her shoes, having lost her family to a vampire attack, would he have trusted a vampire?

He snorted. Not even a little. In fact, if humans had killed his family, those he loved, he was pretty sure he would have gone on a killing rampage of his own and never looked back.

But here Lily was, bound to him, sleeping with him, donating her blood, saving his life repeatedly, and not just for the secret she kept. He’d come to know her in these past two, now three nights. He valued who she was, who the blood-chains told him she was, how much she’d loved the family she’d lost, how she’d slept close to him last night, stayed with him, comforted him. No one could fake that kind of character and if he didn’t know better, he’d almost say he loved her, which of course seemed impossible.

He wasn’t a vampire who could ever really love, not with Daniel as his sire. Always at the edge of his consciousness was the knowledge that he could become like Daniel, as vile, as self-focused, as cruel. He struggled against that darkness every day of his life.

But there was the other part of him, born of his mother who’d died. He had memories of her when he was young, of her singing and holding him, teaching him, and, yes, of weeping as Lily wept now.

His mother had been a good woman, a fine human woman, and Daniel had killed her.

Sometimes Adrien could barely breathe for the rage he felt against Daniel, for the deaths notched into his belt.

He closed his eyes and forced himself to take deep breaths, to press down all that rage, that hatred.

He left the bed, slid into his battle leathers, and moved into the expansive living room. He’d never been in this suite before, but Rumy did everything right; fine wood and leather furniture and blue crystals that formed a wave-like pattern above a stone fireplace. A smaller waterfall to the left, similar to Eve’s, filled the space with welcome humidity.

His thoughts turned once more to Lily and he wondered yet again what secret she kept from him.

* * *

Leaving the shower, Lily dried off and blew her nose. Mourning her husband and daughter from time to time was as necessary as breathing and had been for the past two years. Her separation from Josh and living with her fears about what might have happened to him over the last two years brought on a similar round of grieving.

Was he truly alive?

Had he been hurt?

Would he even know her or be able to forgive her for not protecting him?

And should all things work out, should she actually find the extinction weapon and get him back, would he blame her for not having found him sooner?

Two more tears rolled down her cheeks.

She swiped at them and forced herself to breathe deep, to take healing air into her lungs, to try to move on.

Kiernan had told her that he’d had a caregiver in charge of Josh all this time, a human woman. Lily had asked who she was and had even questioned Kiernan about her qualifications, but Kiernan just laughed at her and said, “Suffice it to say she’s in my employ permanently. I could even say she loves the kid.”

These were her only consolations, that Josh might have been well looked after.

She forced herself to rein in her emotions, at least for now. She focused instead on Adrien and the night ahead.

She’d heard him leave the bed and get dressed, the results of finely tuned vampire hearing, so it was time to get moving and to let Adrien know about the two big events soon to come.

But just as she would have risen from the floor, a very different kind of thought streaked to the surface of her mind. Can I communicate with Josh?

Leaning against the side of the white porcelain bathtub, she suddenly sat up straighter. She’d been siphoning power from Adrien from the time she’d put on her chain, and now her power was even stronger because Adrien had reached the first level of Ancestral status. Though it was a long shot, she closed her eyes and took in a slow deep breath. She relaxed her shoulders and let her mind go loose. She focused on only one thing: her son.

The strangest sensation intruded, like movement, like she wanted to float in what must be a northeasterly direction, maybe toward Russia, as once more her tracking ability surfaced. She stayed as relaxed as she could and sent her thoughts in that direction so that pretty soon she could feel a flow of thought moving at light-speed until it encountered … Josh.

Stunned, she held herself, her mind, her thoughts completely still. Was she imagining this or was it real?

She wanted to scream with excitement, but she needed other things first. She touched the object, which felt warm to her thoughts. Yes, she felt her son and he was very much alive.