Page 40 of Vampire Savage

I’d seen love between people, even met a few women in my days as a young soldier that I had considered pursuing.

Since that night, when I shot a barrel of gunpowder in a ransacked house in the middle of snow-covered trees, that future had been dead to me. I’d become a cruel monster, my own self stolen and twisted, my friends dead around me—all for the greed of a man who wished to live forever, like Ambrose. Like the rest of the Nightshades.

Now, though, Wren Foster stands before me, an ethereal vision that makes me feel almost human. It should be impossible, but I shouldn’t have been able to feel her fear the night of her attack. The first night I took her. She makes me feel things, things that aren’t my own emotions, and the only possible answer is that my mother is right.

I pride myself on being logical. Detached. Separate from the situations around me. It’s what makes me so good at collecting the information Ambrose needs to have such iron control over the Barrows.

Logic agrees that Wren is my mate.

Now what the hell I’m going to do about it is another thing.

Wren must sense my presence as she turns at the waist, hugging herself, a wary expression on her face. She makes my large bedroom look complete, being here with me. I want to pin her hands to the French doors behind her before burying my face in her cunt.

“I’ve never lied to you,” I say, moving towards her slowly, as if she is the small bird she’s named for and I don’t want to spook her into flight. “You are in no danger from me. Only your father.”

“But, why?” Wren asks, her voice hoarse with pain and confusion. The same pain and confusion that echoes in my gut and stirs up a hatred in me that I’m the cause. “What has he ever done to you? Was any of this even real?”

I tilt my head, studying her. I wonder how much I should tell her, how detailed I should be. Will my Little Bird even believe me? The latter question is a whisper, and she looks away as if ashamed to have asked. It’s her hunched shoulders and her bowed head that have me moving the rest of the way to her.

I do not offer comfort, not even in most of my scenes with submissives. Yes, I tend to their abrasions, but it’s clinical for me, and often many of them have other doms there to soothe their emotional needs. But for Wren, I try.

Tucking her back against my front, I ignore how she stiffens as I wrap my arms around her possessively. Resting my temple against the side of her head, I breathe in her grounding, addicting scent. It soothes the self-hatred in me and in a few moments, she relaxes into my hold.

“I was born in 1606,” I begin, and she’s preternaturally still, hanging onto every word. I stare out the French doors into as I speak, looking over the Nightshade vampires’ territory as the sun sets. Soon the streets will be lit with bright neon lights, enticing those who live in the shadows to come whet their dark appetites. “As many other young men, I enlisted to become a soldier. The details of my life matter little, only that my mother, Joséphine, worked for Ambrose and considered him her father. The true nature of Ambrose drove my father to abuse and eventually he left my mother. I blamed Ambrose for everything my mother suffered.”

Wren’s small hand comes up to rest over one of mine, squeezing with silent support. Other than my mother, who had ever offered me such comfort? Who had ever been willing to listen? Hell, who had I ever allowed close enough to grant such an opportunity?

“I was in the military for seven years and was on my final campaign. I wasn’t always like this,” I say, needing her to understand suddenly. “I once laughed easily and sought joy in life. I didn’t crave pain or violence like my next breath. I could find pleasure in things other than blood and strife.”

Wren shifts her head closer towards me, her soft hair caressing my cheek. “What happened?” she breathes out.

“My regiment was under the command of General Jurgis Demencius.” My voice is devoid of all emotion, and her fingertips stroke the back of mine. “He was obsessed with the occult. He had tracked an obscure, nearly wiped-out pagan sect to the remote forests at the border of Russia. As a foot soldier, I didn’t know much and only learned most of this afterwards. He sought a chalice that those worshipers claimed was gifted to a mortal man whom the goddess loved. She was jealous of his mortal wife, and he wanted to live for eternity. The sect claimed the chalice would maintain the youth and life to any who drank from it—so long as it was filled with another’s blood. More, that if the blood came from a loved one, immortality would be granted.”

She shudders and I press my lips to her head, needing to comfort her.

“The entire team who went in were killed or gravely injured. I was trapped under a heavy shelf, certain I’d die soon from the blow to my head. When General Demencius walked in, I knew I’d die because he ordered his two men to kill all of us. He found the chalice. I decided then I wouldn’t let him get away with our deaths and managed to use my pistol to blow up a keg of gunpowder. I thought I was the only survivor, pulled out by a passing caravan of traders. They said the rest were dead. That was until I saw your father in Topside three years ago. Except, instead of going by Jurgis Demencius, he was going by the name Oberon Benoit.”

I wait, the silence thick in the room as I feel her mind at work. Wren is brilliant, and no doubt she’s turning over every detail I’ve revealed so far to come to her own conclusion. I have more evidence, tangible records I can show her. Once I recognized him, I hunted him down through history, and he’s more of a monster than even I can be.

Should I tell her that he sacrificed her mother to continue his stolen life?

I wait, centuries teaching me patience, the tattoo of Wren’s heartbeat soothing me better than any prescription of alchemist’s elixir.

She shakes her head, and I bite back a sigh. I knew the likelihood of her believing me without argument was nil.

“That just doesn’t make sense,” Wren says, disbelief in her voice. “My father is too well-known. If he was prolonging his life through—through blood magic,” she says the term with enough exasperation to make me smirk, “then he’s stupid to show his face. The one thing my father certainly is not is stupid.”

She twists in my arms, and I let her, a hollow emotion familiar to gratitude hitting me when she puts her hands flat on my chest and stares into my eyes. She is the one making me feel again. Not just her own emotions but helping me experience emotions I thought forever lost to me. I need to push her away. It’s not safe for her, myself, or the rest of the Nightshades. If I begin to care again, if I begin to feel again, I cannot be the monster Ambrose requires.

Worse: I will not know who I am. I’ve spent centuries like this, and not even two proper decades as a human with access to the full spectrum of emotions. Claiming Wren as my mate will leave me with nothing.

“Are you certain it’s my father?” Her green eyes look between mine, pleading with me to be wrong. “Could your memory from that time be wrong? You did get a traumatic brain injury.”

“Oh, Little Bird,” I sigh out my name for her and stroke my hand over her hair, deftly unpinning it and stroking the strands. Another emotion I’d grown accustomed to doing without slides along my throat. Regret. “As much as I enjoy your tears, revealing the truth of your father brings me no pleasure. If I was wrong, I would never have sought you out in the first place.”

Her kissable lips flatten with displeasure and her eyes burn with the same anger she’d had at the coffee shop. She presses against my chest, trying to get space between us but I don’t let her go. I can’t let her go. I won’t.

“You’re just like every other man who I’ve let into my bed,” she accuses, her voice raised in defiance. Holding her trapped in my arms, caging her when she wants to be free, and hearing that tone from her has my cock stiffening. Fuck. Any time I’m in her presence, I’m half hard. I have been since the first time I was close enough to catch her scent.

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