Page 65 of Bound in Blood

She rests her head on my shoulder, and her hot tears fall onto my bare skin.

Axl is staring at me, his brow furrowed with concentration. “So you never saw Lucian that day when our bond was severed? Even though Giorgios told us it was him that killed you?”

I shake my head. “I have not seen Lucian in over five hundred years.” I cup Ophelia’s chin in my hand and tilt her head up. “You are the only one of us in this room to have seen him recently, are you not, agápi mou?”

She chews on her lip and nods.

“Did he say anything else in the cave, baby?” Malachi asks.

Ophelia explains what happened in Peru and how Lucian helped her focus on her powers. As I expected, this is met with a confusing mix of incredulity, disdain, and gratitude.

“But what I don’t get is why didn’t Giorgios just kill you.” Xavier shakes his head. “Why keep you alive? If his goal was to sever your mate bond with Ophelia and—” He stops speaking and winces. “Hang on, you don’t know about that yet, huh?”

I brush Ophelia’s hair behind her ear and kiss her forehead. I have not yet had a chance to tell her that I read her mind whilst she slept, and I am not entirely sure how she will react. “I know almost everything that happened in Giorgios’s fortress. The pertinent points at least. How he poisoned you all, the lies he tried to make you believe about me, his deceitful offer to bite Ophelia to ensure you would not die. And the ritual too.” The rage I feel whenever I am forced to think about that particular plan is indescribable, burning through the muscles and sinew of my body until they feel like they will ignite. I roll my neck and grind my teeth.

Ophelia places a hand on my cheek, and it does more to calm me than my own efforts. “How do you know all of that?” she asks.

I stare into her bright-blue eyes and feel overcome with a desire to simply take her and the boys and run far away from all of this. “I needed to know what happened to you all. What Giorgios did. And I did not wish for you to have to comb your memories to pick out and regurgitate every piece of information you felt might be useful. It was quicker and easier this way.”

She blinks. “You read my mind? My memories?”

Regret and guilt cloud my thoughts now, mingling with the anger and making me feel like there is a dead weight on my chest. “I did, agápi mou.”

Her lip trembles and tears run freely down her face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t… It was only…”

“Ophelia.” I stop her nervous babbling and wipe the tears from her cheeks. I am confused and more than a little fearful at what it is she thinkssheneeds to be sorry for. Was there something I did not see? Something I missed? Something she hid from me? “What on earth are you sorry for, little one?”

“I only thought about him biting me to save them. I did speak to the guys about it too because he told us it was the only way to save them. We agreed that none of us wanted to be bonded to him, and I never would have if—” She sucks in a breath and chokes back a sob at the same time, and the torrent of words finally stops pouring from her mouth.

I hold her tighter and, cupping her face with one hand, swipe the pad of my thumb over her lips, brushing away the tears that have collected there. “I did see that memory of you all discussing Giorgios’s proposal, but the only thing it proved was your deep loyalty to me.” I glance up at the boys, who are watching us intently. “All of you. And I am honored to have that from each and every one of you. So please, agápi mou, do not torture yourself a second longer for considering something that would have saved you all. Can I be selfish enough to ask you to forgive me for reading your mind without your knowledge?”

She gazes at me with eyes full of love and strokes her hand over my cheek. “What is there to forgive? There’s nothing in my head I wouldn’t share with you, and you already know that. And I know you’d never read my mind unless you felt you had to.”

I dust my lips over hers. She is far too gracious of my darkness, but I am thankful for her light. “No matter what happens, nothing in this universe would ever sever our mate bond, Ophelia. You have been mine and I yours since time began, and we will remain so until the end of days.”

She sniffs, a soft smile playing on her lips.

“So, what do we do now? Find Lucian? Go after Giorgios?” Axl asks, reminding me there is still much to discuss. “Hide out here or go back to Montridge?”

“I believe finding Lucian can give us some of the answers we seek. He appears to know something of Giorgios’s plans given that he was able to find me in Peru. I do not believe it is safe to return to Montridge yet, neither for us nor any of our allies there.”

Xavier nods, running a hand through his thick dark hair. “I agree. It’s the first place Giorgios will think to look.”

I suck in a deep breath and pinch the bridge of my nose to try to stave off the throbbing ache directly between my eyes. “And as for Giorgios, whilst I would never have breached his trust by reading his mind, I believed he was as guileless as he seemed, but he was able to deceive me. That is of grave concern. I should have been able to pick up on some clue to his betrayal, yet I did not. Perhaps I was blinded by my loyalty to him, or perhaps his powers of the mind are much stronger than I ever knew.”

Ophelia shifts on my lap. “Enora thinks his powers of transportation might be stolen.”

I recall that from Ophelia’s memories. “That makes sense, at least in that it would have allowed him to mask his innate vampire powers by making us believe his was transporting. Butit does not make sense that he would be able to steal another’s powers. That requires powerful dark magic.” I screw my eyes closed and wish I could find at least some of the answers that elude me.

“Not much about anything makes sense right now,” Malachi reminds us all.

“Nothing except this,” Ophelia says with a smile as she looks around the room. “This makes perfect sense.”

Axl smiles at her. “If only we could hide out here forever and nobody would find us. I think I’d be pretty happy with this life.”

If only it were possible. She nestles her head against my chest and sighs. “Me too. And if Ani and Elpis wanted to stay, that would be even cooler.”

“Pet dragons.” Xavier snorts.

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