Page 29 of Awakening the Dhampir

I let my hand fall back to his chest and laid my cheek where I expected his heart to be. It thumped loudly beneath me. I listened to its slow rhythm while my fingers drew circles on his pectoral. My eyelids grew heavy, and I yawned. I hadn’t felt tired before, but now I wasn’t sure I could fight off sleep.

A light touch along my spine startled me but only for a moment. Damon’s warm hand settled on my back. I raised my head until my lips reached Damon’s jaw. I placed a soft kiss against his skin, and my dhampir smiled.

I fell asleep feeling safe and protected and maybe even a little bit cherished.

Chapter 11

Nathan

Elliott and I arrived back at the fortress in New Orleans just as the sun started to rise. Exhaustion gripped me and not just from the sun. The last forty-eight hours sucked. Finding Lorna alive should have been a relief. Finding her dhampir awakened stole every bit of hope I’d squirreled away. She’d become the monster every vampire feared and desired.

A dhampir.

Until that moment, I’d convinced myself she could be part of my life. Now I wasn’t so sure. Seeing the devastation she’d wrought on Conrad and his kiss only solidified my need to stay away. The craving in her eyes when I walked into the lobby made it clear she wanted more blood. Not wanted. She coveted the life running through my veins. And I would have let her have it without a second thought. It only took a few seconds for her magic to wrap around me and take away my free will.

I was never more grateful for my team, whose willpower exceeded my own. Or maybe she just hadn’t targeted them. Either way, I was able to make a quick retreat before I lost my head or my life. Running like a coward made me see red, though. I’d never feared anything the way I feared Lorna at that moment.

And the way she transitioned from a rabid creature to a rational person … Could her dhampir really have independent thoughts? Sure seemed like it. Was her dhampir sincere about being a positive part of Lorna’s life? Lorna believed it was.

Was that just a manipulation on the dhampir’s part to earn Lorna’s trust? If the creature was smart enough to see the dangers to its own life, it was certainly smart enough to manipulate us all.

How long would it take for the dhampir to earn the trust of my team? When it did, would it try to control me and take over my clan? My mouth dropped open with a sudden realization. Had the fae planted Lorna in my path as we suspected all along? Did they embed a spell in Lorna’s dhampir that only they could trigger?

I needed to talk to Kenrid about my suspicions. Surely, he would know if it were even possible. Hopefully, I’d be wrong, and this line of thinking was purely a product of my paranoia.

To make matters worse, I still wanted her. Even after everything I’d witnessed and experienced, I needed her to give me the adoring gaze she gave to Kenrid. I needed to see the compassion she so easily bestowed on Damon. Even Elliott managed to secure her trust when he talked her off the ledge.

Was I jealous? Absolutely! But it was more than just jealousy. She was supposed to be my gift. My power source. My everything. And she wasn’t.

On top of the pain of rejection, I had regret. I’d completely ignored everything she’d endured at Conrad’s hands. I was jealous of the compassion she showed Damon, yet I’d given her none. I’d lashed out at her in the airport parking lot. It’d been obvious how deep my words had cut her when she refused to look at me. Mere inches separated us, but she may as well have been on the other side of the world.

I’d accused her of being a threat to my men—which was true—and also destroyed any chance of getting close to her. I drew my line in the sand, and she respected it.

Shaking my head, I pushed open the secure door leading from the parking garage straight to my wing of the fortress. The dull metal felt like a reflection of my current mood. I needed to get out of my own head before nightfall. My clan had never seen me as anything more than their flawless leader. I certainly wasn’t changing that today.

“Is there anything you need from me before you call it a day?” Elliott asked, following close behind.

“Search those boxes,” I said. “See if you can find a way into the laptop to retrieve the video we need.”

“You got it,” he said, but I heard the hesitation in his voice. He had something else on his mind. Reticence wasn’t Elliott’s thing, but I didn’t push him.

The smell of polished wood and earthy stone welcomed me as we entered my small foyer. I drew in a deep breath. My boots thumped against the stone floors, but the deep mahogany panels on the walls absorbed the sound in the narrow space. I walked directly to the elevator and pressed the button. It had one destination, my penthouse.

The sharp prick on my thumb barely registered as the security device evaluated my blood. It was a combination of technology and magic. Kenrid came up with it a few years ago. The only blood it recognized was mine, Damon’s, Elliott’s, and Kenrid’s. No one else was allowed in my private space.

The elevator door slid open a few seconds later, and we stepped inside. I half expected Elliott to say something sarcastic about not having elevator music. More times than not, he’d suggest different songs, bands, or radio stations. Not today. His silence worried me. He hadn’t been his normal, immature, practical joker self since Lorna dropped into our lives.

I glanced over at the man next to me. His furrowed brow shadowed his eyes. His facial hair didn’t conceal his deepening frown.

“What’s on your mind, Elliott?” I asked, breaking the tense silence.

He huffed, then scrubbed his beard with both hands. “I don’t even know where to start.”

I could understand where he was coming from. “Let’s have a drink before I call it a day,” I suggested. “We’ll talk about it.”

The elevator reached its destination, and I stepped out into a large anteroom. Unlike the dark stone and wood in the foyer below, light bamboo planking stretched out over the floor, and a subtle bone color covered the walls. There were no windows in the anteroom. There was only one in the entire wing. The south-facing wall of the living room held a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. The blackout curtains were never open, though. My vampirism stole the sun from me, but that didn’t mean I had to live in a cave. I’d purposefully selected light colors in shades of tan and blue to decorate my space.

None of that mattered right now.

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