Bloodlust Denied (17 page)
“Yes.” Her voice was husky with unshed tears. For more than two thousand years, she had unknowingly mourned his loss, yet survived. She wasn’t sure she would survive his ultimate rejection.
Alexius clung onto his icy façade by sheer willpower alone. He didn’t give a damn what Morana really was. In truth, the fact she had been a fabled Maiden of Death fascinated him, as did the notion he’d escaped destruction by her hand only because he’d refrained from slaking his bloodlust that night in the alley.
For the first time in forever, he’d met a woman who could share his existence, a woman who didn’t need his vampiric gift or curse to survive endless centuries. A woman whose past he wanted to inhale, in whose future he wanted to be irreplaceable.
And she, through an indecipherable turn of Fate entwined with the contract forged with Death, had discovered her soul mate still lived in the mortal world.
But he would never allow her to leave. Immortal or not, his preternatural talents exceeded hers and she would remain with him because
why the fuck shouldn’t she
?
He shot her a glance. She was staring at the portrait of Thea and he could see the tears glittering in her eyes.
He gritted his teeth and glared at the likeness of his beautiful wife. Thea, with her mischievous smile and the captivating way she would dance and clasp her hands around her hair and hold the curls high off her neck. Thea, whom he had loved, still loved, and would always love, but who had been dead these last two thousand years.
“How did you manage to commission the masters?” She was still staring at the portrait, deliberately avoiding his gaze. He glanced at Thea, then back at Morana. She looked as if her heart was breaking, the way his heart was breaking except he didn’t have a heart.
The fuck he didn’t.
“I had an original miniature.” He growled the words, pushing the thought that threatened to implode his world to the back of his mind. He would not utter such insanity. “I commissioned various masters over the centuries to capture her likeness. They could change the color of her gown, but never the style.”
She made an inarticulate sound of agreement and
the thought
pounded through his brain.
He would not allow her to leave. He didn’t want her to leave.
She couldn’t leave him
. How could he face the rest of eternity without her in his life?
How could he force her to stay when she had suffered as much as he for her cursed immortality?
The words seared his throat. Tangled on his tongue. Feebly fought the barrier of his teeth.
“What really happened to Theron?”
And the words vaporized. He stared at her, wondering if he had misunderstood. “What?”
She flicked him a brittle glance.
“I saw the—carnage.” She swallowed and the tip of her tongue dampened her lips. “Until tonight I always believed he’d been brutally mutilated by vampires but now I know that’s a lie. How could they?
Theron
was a vampire. He killed me.”
A strange echo whirled inside his skull and for one horrifying moment he lost feeling in his legs and his arms. It was as if his essence had been lifted from his body and left to float in an insubstantial void where reality and madness merged.
He tried to speak, but his voice had vanished. And then feeling returned and he stumbled inelegantly against the wall, against Thea’s frame, and he remained there, immobile, his gaze fixed on Morana’s uncertain frown.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” Her voice was soft. No trace of condemnation. Still he couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, as this insane impossibility pounded through his brain.
She reached out to him, hesitated, and her hand dropped back to her side. “We heard of the attack on your hunting party. How you’d all been slaughtered by the barbarous Spartans.”
Morana was Thea
. He dragged his hypnotized gaze from her and looked at the portrait of his golden-haired wife, then turned back to the black-haired, dark-eyed seductress who had stolen his dead heart and reminded him there was joy to be had in this world.
“I was mad with grief.” Her voice trembled and he wanted to comfort her but instead he remained slumped against the wall, unable to tear his eyes from her.
She glanced at him, as if unsure she still had his attention. “I vowed vengeance against those who’d taken you from me, Alexius. And then Theron returned.”
Finally he heaved himself from the wall as the memories he’d tried so hard to suppress flooded through his mind.
“They killed all in our party save Theron and me. When I realized the truth…” He stopped, muscles tensed. When he’d realized what had been done to him, what he was, bloodlust had consumed him. He’d decimated the vampire colony where he’d been taken, had witnessed the madness of Theron and thundered after him, knowing he would return to his beloved sister but not wanting Thea to see her brother in such horrific circumstances.
Never had he thought Theron’s madness would extend to murdering his own kin.
“I was too late.” Self-loathing engulfed him. “I pulverized his brain across the wall, scattered his entrails across the courtyard. But still you were dead, Morana.”
This time when her hand tentatively reached for him, he met her halfway, twined his fingers through hers and gently tugged her toward him.
“Death came to me with a proposition. He knew of my vow to avenge your death, and as Theron attacked me, I realized what he’d become.” She shivered, and he draped his arm around her shoulders and held her securely against his body.
Thea. Morana. His beloved.
“My body was ruined. So he gave me this one, and then tampered with my mind so I forgot who it was I loved, forgot it was you I wanted to avenge. All I could recall was my hatred of vampires because they had taken Theron.”
“He knew if you remembered me, you’d one day discover I’d survived that night.”
“All these years I’ve been hunting your kind, Alexius. Destroying them because Death’s so twisted with fury he can’t take them.”
Heated possessiveness roiled. His arm tightened around her. “If they had dared to touch you, dared to presume they could taste your blood, then they deserved everything you gave them.”
She looked up at him. Blue eyes or dark, they were the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen, because they were hers.
“Will you ever be able to love this body as much as you loved my other?”
His forehead touched hers and although his heart had died and his soul had been wrenched from him millennia ago, warmth filled his chest, heating the organ that pumped blood through his body and deep inside where no physician could ever discover, a flame burst into existence.
“I’ve always loved you, Morana. Even when I didn’t recognize this body, I knew, somehow, you were my beloved.”
She smiled, and it was Morana’s smile yet it was also Thea’s. “I’ll love you forever, Alexius.”
The lingering remnants of guilt fluttered into ash.
“For eternity, my love.”
The End
Christina Phillips is an ex-pat Brit who now lives in sunny Western Australia. She has always loved writing, and while her efforts in eighth grade usually involved space ships, time travel and unfortunate endings, as soon as she discovered romance novels a whole new world opened up.
She writes hot ancient historical romances about tough Roman warriors, sexy Highland warriors and deliciously bad vampires who, no matter how torturous their journey, are always guaranteed their happily-ever-after.
Christina welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email addresses on her
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Christina Phillips
Ellora’s Cave Publishing
Bloodlust Denied
ISBN 9781419940200
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Bloodlust Denied Copyright © 2013 Christina Phillips
Edited by Victoria Reese
Cover design by Dar Albert
Cover photography by Fotolia.com, Razzdazzstock.com, Kostyantyn Ivanyshen, Mayer George Vladimorovich/Shutterstock.com
Electronic book publication June 2013
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