Chapter 23

Lucianus

I wanted to stay here forever, but all too soon, my wife’s figure faded. The warmth of the red and gold light faded, leaving me in the darkness for far too long. I left the room. And drifted through the castle hallways. I had been gone for hours, it seemed. I tried not to think of the woman any longer.

Every time I drifted down the hall, I saw her wandering aimlessly, looking for a way to escape. I could smell her. Every time I turned down the hallway, I swore that I saw her skirt whip around the hallway.

I wandered into a hallway and tried to get a grip on myself. The days were starting to blend together. Time was starting to become meaningless again. I felt the edges of that familiar, almost comforting madness start to creep into my mind. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to sink back into that misery again. That hopeless darkness where my only peace came from my memories.

It was better than fighting for the hope that was impossible. What was I supposed to do? Was this the Moon Goddess’s punishment? Could this be the consequence for marking her then tossing her away?

I scoffed. The thought infuriated me. My wife’s memory would not be tainted because I am a mess without her! I wanted my wife, not a copy, not a fake version of her. I wanted her sweetness, her kindness, and her love.

My eyes burned, and my hands trembled.

Was I hungry? Was I simply furious? I didn’t know. The grief was welling up in a great tide, and I couldn’t fight it back.

“… we’ll go tonight.”

I turned, listening. Henri was commanding a group of pack warriors.

“It should take, perhaps, an hour to grab enough Vampires to fill the dungeons. Be sure to subdue them properly. We don’t need any more escape attempts.”

I considered. Listening. I didn’t care. Henri was my beta and had always had more freedom to command the running of the castle than was probably normal. Especially after my wife died. I didn’t care, but the thought of them going to the human world made my blood warm, and my thoughts turned to the woman with my wife’s face. Would they be near her? Would they find her? If they did, should I tell them to bring her back?

I didn’t know, and I couldn’t trust myself to speak to Henri about it.

I left the castle as little more than a cloud and descended down the cliff through the portal that led to the human world. My feet landed with a soft, crunching sound in the snow. The air was cold with winter, and the sky was dark. My blood ran warm even in my human form.

It was the perfect time to hunt for humans to kill in an effort to free my pain, but I didn’t smell any nearby. I didn’t hear them. There was no town near enough to where I was to make hunting something possible.

She had long been gone from here. In her place were the signs of a variety of animal corpses. I could feel her. She was far, but not so far that I could not get to her before the sun rose if I chose.

I could find her.

The cold air carried on it the scent of burning, cooking flesh, and I was transported back to that battlefield, holding her in my arms as she lay staring into nothing, and the silver burned through her flesh. I felt the blood beneath my knees and smelled it, filling my senses and driving me over the edge of madness where everything was blood, cruelty, and heartache.

Then, I saw that woman pinned to the cross, looking up at me with defiant eyes that were closing slowly. I heard her voice and yanked myself free of the vision viciously. It felt like a bucket of cold water had been dumped on me. I flexed my fingers, trying to remind my mind that it was a memory, a vision, not the here and now.

My wife was dead.

The humans who killed her were dead, and several of their descendants had likely ended up in my dungeons at some time over the years.

I grit my teeth and returned to the castle in a rush of darkness and fury at myself.

How stupid could I be? I was only having these visions, these doubts, these wonderings, and hallucinations because I knew that woman was alive and she was my marked mate. I knew that somewhere I could have, at least, a replica of my wife to gaze upon, to hold hostage. A deep sense of betrayal churned through my gut. It had been the same sense of betrayal that had driven me to try and complete the ritual, yet it hadn’t been enough to make me go through it.

I should have just killed her from the moment I saw her! Quick and painless and spared myself this torture—if only I had just plunged that dagger through her chest!

I growled, imagining it and growing more furious as the sight of her on the cross seemed to bleed and mingle with the sight of my wife’s body in my arms.

That woman had been cunning and vicious to the end, whispering to me just before I killed her.

She’d plunged me into a different hell than I had ever been prepared for.

A warning rippled through the castle, through the Forest, through my realm. I felt the door burst open, and I rushed through the castle, taking flight on the gusts of wind until I reached the foyer where warriors dragged themselves in and the servants scurried around, trying to heal the wounded. They brought buckets of water and pried them out of their armor there on the floor.

The bandages were fresh.

Every warrior that had been sent out had returned by my count. Every single one except Henri.

I felt no one else was missing from the castle.

“Henri!” Klarina called as he fell out of the Forest’s darkness and landed just out of reach of its greedy branches.

He dragged his body farther away from the darkness just as the roots started to reach for him. I went to him, lifting him and bringing him inside as blood dripped from him, sliding between his armor and burning fumes of soft plumes of smoke.

“Alpha…”

“Save your strength,” I said, pulling the vial of elixir out of my robes. I poured some of it into the goblets the servants were bringing and waited as Klarina tipped the goblet into Henri’s mouth.

The pallor of his skin cleared, and he looked up at me.

“I was just… trying to find more Vampires.” Henri grit his teeth. “We’ve been tracking them, but stumbled into a pack of humans. They call themselves hunters. They’re stronger, more powerful than ordinary humans.”

I mulled that over. It had been centuries since the war. The humans of now were mostly sheep waiting to be slaughtered. These hunters had to be descendants of the Pope’s warriors or something similar.

“I set a trap for them, but I was injured,” he shook his head. “They overpowered us. One of them got me with silver.”

I grit my teeth. The elixir would do nothing if we didn’t get it out of him.

He lay down, and I demanded a pair of tongs to dig the piece of silver out of the wound. Klarina held Henri down as he screamed in pain, but I pulled it out, and the wound closed moments later. He lay panting as I watched his blood burn off the surface until it was a shiny piece of metal again.

We pulled several more pieces out of the other warriors. While no one died, their blood stained the black foyer. The scent of near-death and burning blood tainted the air of the castle.

No matter what I did, I would smell it. The call to battle, for revenge and fury, filled me.

I’d find these hunters and rend their heads from their shoulders. If they did survive, they would be the most miserable of pack slaves, drained until their last breath.

I waited for them all to be taken to their rooms and watched over them for a few hours. A few of them woke long enough to give me some details about whom they fought, how they fought, and how many, but the details weren’t concrete. After I checked on Henri one last time, I took off toward the forest and searched for the portal that had opened in the forest.

It shuddered as I jumped over the trees before opening the tree cover to reveal it. I dove into it, prepared to slaughter any and all who were there. Yet as I surfaced in the human world, my thoughts did not remain on the foolish humans who had nearly murdered Henri and the others.

I smelled their blood. I smelled the humans attempting to track their trail.

I wanted to murder them all, yet my eyes turned in the direction I felt the woman. The mate pull was strong and my wolf longed for her. She was nearer now than she had been before.

Then, the scent of burning wood filled my nose.