I’m in the kitchen the next day when I feel it. A sense of…not exactly wrongness, but an intrusion. I nearly drop the bowl I’m holding. “What is that?”
Instantly, Malachi is on alert. “What is what?”
“There’s this…” I frown. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like an itch I can’t scratch.”
He narrows his eyes. “Where?”
Without looking, I point nearly behind me. “There. I can’t tell how far.”
He doesn’t hesitate. “Rylan.” Before the sound of the other vampire’s name is finishing echoing through the house, Malachi has me in his arms and he’s moving in that nearly-too-fast speed, flying through the rooms and out the front door—on the opposite side of the house from where I felt the intrusion.
Rylan lands beside us, and I get the impression that he jumped from the second or third story. His dark hair is a little ruffled, but he’s back to wearing a suit and looks freshly pressed. “What’s going on?”
“She felt something. Coming from the opposite direction.”
I expect Rylan to laugh it off. Why should he take this seriously when he barely bothers to listen to a single word that comes out of my mouth? But his gaze narrows the same way Malachi’s did. “Get to the safe house we agreed on. I’ll take a look and call Wolf to update him.” He pulls off his jacket, quickly followed by his shirt.
I tense. “Wait. I like this house. There’s no reason to run if—”
“Rylan will take a look. If he gives the signal, we’ll come back.” Malachi is already moving, rushing through the trees that surround the house at a pace I could never dream of matching. I have no choice but to cling to him. At this point, I’m just grateful that, for once, I was actually wearing clothing. My shorts and oversized T-shirt are hardly appropriate for the briskness of the weather, but it’s better than being naked.
The cry of a giant bird reaches us, and I only need to see Malachi’s face to know that it’s not good news. “They found us again?”
“Looks like it.” He picks up his pace, nearly flying across the uneven ground. “We’ll know more after we meet up with Rylan and Wolf.”
It took them less than a week to track us down this time. They’re closing the gap, and no one can figure out how. Hell, if seraphim and demons exist, maybe witches do, too. Maybe they have some sort of scrying spell. I’ll ask Malachi about it after we get out of danger. I don’t think any of my father’s people can match him in size, speed, and strength, but I wouldn’t have wagered on my father trapping Malachi behind a blood ward for decades on end.
I could keep peppering him with questions, but the truth is that until we regroup with the others, the only priority is to put as much distance between us and the other vampires as possible. We can’t fight, not without risking one of us getting hurt. There’s no reasoning with them. They’re following orders, and only a direct order from my father will change their course.
This is a race, but I still don’t know the parameters. I know our goals, but we have no idea what my father knows.
I lift my head and tug on Malachi’s shirt. “We need one of them alive.”
He glances at me without breaking stride. “That’s risky.”
“I’m aware. But we need to know if he’s pursuing us because he wants you back or if he knows what happened when we broke the blood ward.” If he knows I have seraph blood, that I awoke that power, that I’m bonded with not one, but three Bloodline vampires…
That changes everything.
If he can get his hands on me, he’ll hold the leash for three of the seven Bloodlines. I know all too well the lengths he’ll go to get what he wants once we’re under his control. The men might be able to hold out indefinitely, but if I have to choose between keeping them alive or doing something really unforgivable, I already know what I’ll choose.
My father knows that, too.
“We need to know,” I repeat.
Malachi nods. He doesn’t turn back, but that’s fine. Getting to a secondary location is the primary goal. We know where they’re headed, and they’ll stay at the house for at least a short period of time to plumb it for any information they can. We just have to pick one of them off when they leave. It sounds easy, but I know better.
I lay my head against Malachi’s chest and let him carry me away.
Judging by the position of the sun in the sky, several hours have passed by the time he slows and sets me on my feet. I study the little farmhouse in the distance. It’s surrounded by rolling fields and looks like something out of a painting. “Is that where we’re headed?”
“Yes.” He rolls his shoulders. He doesn’t look like he’s been sprinting at full speed while carrying another person, but he does look tired. “Rylan will have gotten word to Wolf by now. They’ll meet us here.”
“We have to—”
“I know, little dhampir. But no one is going back there until you’re secured.”
As much as I want to argue, he’s right. We fall into an easy jog that eats up the distance at a pace slightly faster than an athletic human could maintain. My knee barely twinges. A month ago, I wouldn’t be able to do this. Not after my father shattered my knee in punishment for an escape attempt. He wanted to make sure I’d never be able to run again, and it was a reality I’d made a tumultuous peace with. Until Malachi gave me his blood.
Bloodline vampires really are something special.
My father always set himself above the rest at the compound, and up until I met Malachi, I thought that was just narcissistic bullshit because my father has some magic. Now I realize how deeply the difference between normal vampires and Bloodline vampires go.
Malachi is the last of his line, those who carry the power to control fire. If he doesn’t have children, his Bloodline will die with him. I glance in his direction. “Do Wolf and Rylan have family?”
He doesn’t take his gaze from the farmhouse. “You mean others that are part of their Bloodline? Yes. Not many, but yes.”
Not many.
Guilt claws at my throat. “Shouldn’t they be out procreating or something to ensure their Bloodlines keeps going? I understand why you didn’t, but they weren’t trapped behind a blood ward.”
“We live very long lives, Mina. There’s no rush.” The words are right, but there’s something off in his tone.
Once again, Wolf’s words, Malachi’s words come back to me. He wants me pregnant with his babies. It’s still a little mind-blowing. A few months ago, pregnancy wasn’t even on my radar, and now it’s my highest priority. Even that hardly seems real, though. My future is measured in goals right now.
Survive. Get pregnant. Become heir. Kill my father.
Every time I try to think of after, my brain bounces off the concept. Pregnancy is one thing. Children is something entirely different. But if I get pregnant, the goal is children.
“I’m going to be a terrible mother.”
Malachi stops. I don’t notice for two steps, not until he reaches out and snags my wrist. “Don’t say that.”
“It’s the truth.” I don’t look back at him. “I don’t know what your childhood was like. Maybe it’s been so long that you don’t really remember. I’m only twenty-four, Malachi. Those memories are still fresh and bloody in my head.” My violent, manipulative father. My ghost of a mother. How does someone come from such trauma without perpetuating the cycle?
“Mina.” He tugs on my wrist. When I don’t turn, he tugs again, harder this time. I know I could tell him to stop and he would, but I let him haul me back to stand before him. “Look at me.”
Reluctantly, I obey, lifting my gaze to his. He catches my chin, holding me in place. “Do you want children?”
The question makes me laugh. The sound comes out almost like a sob. “What does that matter? The path is set.”
“It matters.”
No, it really doesn’t. Not to me. I try to pull back, but he keeps me easily in place. “Malachi, please.”
“Answer the question.”
It’s a simple question. A vital one, even. Why does it make me want to cry? I close my eyes, hiding from him as much as I’m trying to keep the burning internal. “I don’t know. It was never a possibility, until it was a decision thrust upon me, first by my father and then by this situation.” All true, but not the full truth. My lower lip quivers despite my best efforts. If anyone else asked me this… But it’s not anyone else. It’s Malachi. “Maybe part of me has always wanted kids, but it was never in the cards. And now that it is—”
“This situation is hardly ideal in that respect.”
His understatement makes me open my eyes. “You want kids.”
“Of course I want kids.” He shrugs as if this is a given. “I always have. Not simply to continue my line. I…” Malachi glances away and clenches his jaw. “I want a family.”
The way he says it. Like it’s a sin to be ashamed of. Maybe it is in our world, where marriages and children are political right down to their very core. There are no love matches in my father’s compound, no matter what some there would like to believe. “I see.”
“Maybe it’s foolish to want something that so few of our people have, but I want it all the same.”
I know what he means even without him explicitly saying it. “There does seem to be a dearth of happy childhoods among vampires.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way.”
I try to picture what he’s saying. A happy childhood. I’ve seen it represented fictionally, but a part of me always believed it to be exactly that—fiction. Even the humans manage to fuck up their kids in astronomical numbers, and most of them are attempting to marry and procreate because of love, rather than politics. The odds are not in our favor.
They’re especially not in our favor with this current situation.
I don’t want to ask the question, but I need to know the answer. “What happens if I get pregnant and you’re not the father?” Even with Rylan attempting to stay out of the race to impregnate me, Wolf and I have sex nearly as often as Malachi and I do.
He shrugs. “It doesn’t matter to me. I’ve made my choice.”
As if it’s just that simple. “If we broke the bond and one of them got me pregnant instead… Malachi, you’d be free. Free for the first time in decades. You should be focusing on that instead of tying yourself to a sinking ship.”
“Mina.”
Gods, the way he says my name. It makes me shiver. “Yes?”
“I respect your ability to make decisions for yourself enough to stand by while Wolf courts a demon, even though I don’t agree with it. Give me the courtesy of returning the favor.”
I open my mouth to continue arguing, but I don’t have a leg to stand on. He’s right. No matter what I think, he’s more than capable of making his own choices. I swallow hard. “Okay. Sorry. I just don’t want you to end up regretting…”
“Regretting you.” Malachi gives me a small sliver of a smile. “Impossible. You’ve crashed into my life with all the subtlety of a bomb detonating, but it’s been refreshing.” He turns us toward the farmhouse. “Now, let’s get inside and discuss next steps.”
And that’s that.
I’m completely unsurprised to step through the door and find that Wolf and Rylan both beat us here. Neither of them were weighed down with carrying me, or having that conversation out in the field before entering. That said… I glance at Wolf. “How did you know we moved?”
“Rylan caught me on the way back.” He hops onto the faded counter and rubs his hands together. “I should have news on the demon front within a day or two. Those bastards like to play hard to get.”
Malachi appears in the doorway. “Everything is secure.”
“I told you it was.” Rylan is staring out the window as if he’d rather be anywhere but here. I can’t exactly blame him, but I won’t pretend that his attitude isn’t grating on me. Obviously things aren’t going to magically change between us just because of what happened last night, but would it kill the asshole to look at me?
Malachi moves to lean against the counter next to Wolf. “We can’t keep operating like this. The demon deal is a long shot, but even if we remove the bond, it won’t remove the threat Cornelius represents. We need to know what he knows.”
Finally, Rylan turns from the window. “You want to take one of his men.”
“Yes.”
“It won’t be easy. We’ll have to kill the rest of the scouting party.”
“I’m aware.”
I look between them. “If it’s too dangerous—”
“It’s not.” Rylan cuts a hand through the air. “Malachi and I are more than capable of dealing with a handful of Cornelius’s dogs. It will incite him to send more next time, but Malachi’s right. We need the information.”
Malachi crosses his arms over his large chest. “It was Mina’s idea.”
“I see.” Rylan clenches his jaw and seems to make himself look at me. He might have an expression like he’s chewing on rocks, but even he can’t mask the heat in his dark eyes.
An answering heat licks through me, but I shove down the sensation. Now isn’t the time, and he won’t thank me for it. “The sooner we do this, the better.”
