Page 50 of Taken By The Vampire King

In any normal fucking family, it wouldn’t have mattered. My brother. The safest person she should have been with. But not the royal vampire family of Baton Rouge. Not any vampire family.

I clenched my first and rested it on my knee. “Sebastian has…issues.”

“Then why was he there? Why did your uncle let me leave the room with him?”

I opened my mouth to reply, but Leia jumped back in.

“And don’t even try to make this my fault for leaving the room again. Don’t think I missed that the first time.” She paused, and she’d clearly left the you bastard unsaid on the end of that last sentence.

I sighed. “No. No, you’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Where were you? Where did you go? Why do you keep taking me places and leaving me? The roof. The restaurant. The party.” She listed my sins, and each one was like she scorched another mark on my heart.

I swallowed. “I was close by. Close enough to…help. I didn’t intend for you to leave the restaurant or to leave the ballroom. And certainly not with…” Fuck. My gums ached again and I’d just regained control. “With Sebastian.”

“But what the hell happened to your brother?” When she looked at me, barely contained fury shone in her eyes. “Did you see him? His eyes were cold and angry and kind of dead-looking, and his mouth was weird. Like he’d suddenly grown a bunch more teeth in there. I couldn’t work out if he wanted to kill me or eat me. He was strong, too. And fast.”

She shuddered, her fear and revulsion visible.

Fuck. She’d seen too much. She was skirting too close to the truth now. I sighed again, strategically this time, the sigh of a long-suffering sibling tired of his brother’s antics.

“I’m sorry.” I could keep apologizing and it would never be enough. “He really does have his problems.” That much was true. My parents had spoiled their made children, treating them as well as they treated me, and they’d made Sebastian entitled. “He will never come near you again.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “Never is a pretty big promise, Nicolas.”

Then she narrowed her eyes and angled her body toward me, and I got ready to sigh again. Or apologize. This could go either way. None of this conversation was turning out well, and I didn’t think I’d ever sighed as much in my life.

“Speaking of never seeing him again, weird question, but…have I ever seen him before?” She touched her temple and grimaced like something had hurt her.

“No.” I gripped the handle on the door, almost afraid to ask, and fucking hell, I was never afraid. Only this ridiculous human affected me like that. Ridiculous human… Who the hell was I kidding? Her power over me and my kind was immense. “Why?” I forced myself to ask.

“Because…” She looked uncertain, one corner of her mouth tugging on her cheek. “I mean, I had the weirdest sense of déjà-vu when he was up against me. Breathing on my neck, telling me I smelled nice… Shit.” She waved a hand. “That’s just any drunk guy looking to get some, right? But it felt… I don’t know. Familiar? Recent?”

I closed my eyes briefly. Dammit. My compulsion wouldn’t hold much longer, not if her memories were already struggling to resurface. I’d deliberately only used light compulsion—enough to relax her and push bad memories to the very back of her mind, not take them away completely—but this was a fast recovery.

She’d had that amethyst pendant on, so maybe it was that acting against my abilities, or perhaps it was her ancestry that had conflicted the results. She came from a long line of strong women. More than strong. Gifted, and Leia was the result of all that powerful Louisiana blood. A gift from the ages just for me.

That she was already asking questions meant only one thing—I’d have to tell her who I was. What I was. But I looked at her, taking in her pale face, her teeth nibbling her lower lip, the too-wide eyes with purple marks beneath, and shook my head slightly.

Not now.

She was too fragile now.

We arrived home, my hand still uselessly on the seat between us, and Jenkins opened her door first. She almost sprinted toward the open front door, stopping only briefly to greet Baldwin before barreling through, and I jogged to catch up to her.

“Leia.” I used her name again as I reached for her, but she flinched away.

“I think I just need to be alone.” She drew in on herself, becoming smaller even as I watched.

“But I can help,” I said, even though I called bullshit on myself. I had no right to tell her I could help when I didn’t know if I could do anything at all. But I wanted her near me. She kept wandering away, and that clearly wasn’t safe.

“No.” Her eyes blazed with sudden fire. “No, Nicolas, you can’t help. I don’t trust you to keep me safe. I don’t want you near me.”

She took a step towards the stairs like she was edging to safety, and the movement lit a spark of my own anger.

“Where are you going?” My words came out tight and controlled.

“To my room.” She was defiant, still edging away. “To be alone, like I said.”

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