Book Cover created in acrylic by the extremely talented @therealpaul
If you have not read the first book of the series, "Reborn", it is advisable you do so before reading "Renewal" or you will be lost. This link will provide you with a series summary as well as all sixty-eight chapters of Reborn
Chapter Nine
Anna bit her lip and looked away.
“If Jenna said it’s necessary….
“I know. Okay. But I’m not sure how much of this you want to hear.”
“None of it,” he said immediately and she flinched.
“No, I’m okay. It’s okay, I can deal.”
She composed her runaway thoughts and spoke quietly.
“His real name is LeJarienDe’dachielle and he’s oh about seven or eight hundred years old.”
Austin looked taken aback, then whistled low. “Talk about robbing the cradle.”
Anna snorted. “He doesn’t know my age. In fact, he doesn’t know much of anything about me. Including the fact that I was human.”
He arched a brow.
“It’s a mess. A complicated mess.” She sat back, took a deep breath and told him about her bright idea to steal the weapons, glossing over the sexual aspect of the first night. She stopped when she got to the part about him shaking the ground with his anger.
Austin stared at her incredulously. “The ground shook?”
“And the house. He was a little pissed.”
Austin barked a laugh. “Okay, so you tricked him, stole his weapons, left him in agonizing pain and then…?”
“And then I was under house arrest. Since everyone thought he was condemned obviously they were concerned about my welfare. Then the next night the males ended up in a battle on the rooftop of a warehouse with a horde of demons. And they weren’t the normal variety, some of them were enormous. I had taken blood from Michael earlier in the day so when he was hurt I felt it, and I didn’t think, I just blurred to the scene and jumped into the fray. I was about to be throttled by a monstrous shadow when I was yanked off the roof and down to the ground by Jared, who had apparently followed me.” This part was tricky, she wasn’t sure quite how to continue.
Austin was staring at her in wide-eyed amazement.
“He wanted to know why I was helping them, what was in it for me. After all I was a female vampire, they’re all condemned, and I had looked and played the part. Then I think he noticed my eyes, since I wasn’t wearing the purple contacts. I had definitely succeeded in confusing him. But at this point I was so afraid of my friend’s potential deaths I didn’t have time to dwell on anything else. So I gave him a vow.” She’d explained the vow thing to him earlier when she’d told him the rest of the story, and he raised his eyebrow.
She nibbled on her lip. “I vowed to give myself to him,” she emphasized the word give, “if he would help my friends. Honestly I don’t know why I thought it would work, it would’ve been nothing for him to just take me back to his house and torture a vow from me. But he jumped onto the roof and tore the demons apart. Literally. After a few minutes of his ass-crushing he shouted something to them in what apparently is the old language of the vampires and the rest of them fled. I tried to go to my friends and heal them but he was having none of that. He grabbed me and took me back to his house. And I fulfilled my vow.” At this her eyes watered a little.
She took a deep breath and haltingly explained about vampire bonding. How it was normally a conscious decision and once made only the female could break it by being with another male. She told him about all the instincts attached to it as well as the tie of life.
“But in rare cases a male is compelled to do it without any forethought. Basically it just happens. It’s supposed to indicate…..” she paused knowing this would be a definite blow for Austin. It was also one for her in a way, she hadn’t thought about that aspect of it in a while. “It’s supposed to mean a pure soul mate.”
She looked at Austin carefully, watching him absorb it.
“That happened?” His voice was strained.
She nodded. “Yes, but…he wasn’t happy about it. In fact he looked like someone just slaughtered his baby.” She laughed darkly and her breath hitched. “Then he left me there. I went back to Michael’s and after I healed him and Coderin, well that’s when I found out what happened. They could smell his scent on me and it’s much different when it’s a bonding scent. Unique, unmistakable. That’s also when I found out who he was. Mathias had recognized him as the warrior who had saved him and his aunt from being burned alive when he was a kid. Apparently the girl Jared had intended to bond with was in the fire and didn’t make it. A fire that was set by a mob of humans, the race he’d dedicated his life to protecting. And then not so many years later his mother was killed, also by humans, which in turn caused his father’s death. After which he pretty much disappeared. And needless to say he’s not overly fond of homo-sapiens. I saw him once after that night but I was drunk, worse than earlier tonight, and Jess told him I intended to break the bond with Michael. To this day I don’t know why she thought that.”
Austin leaned back against the door of the SUV, his eyes a bit glazed. “So that’s it, you haven’t heard from him since?”
“That’s it.”
He was quiet for a minute, dragging a hand through his hair as he processed it all. “Have you considered breaking it?” he asked finally.
“In a moment of idiotic drunkenness it crossed my mind.”
He stared at her in shock. “Not with Leo!”
She looked away from him and he laughed derisively.
“That’s…I don’t even know what to say to that. Do you actually still have the hots for that loser?”
“I never had the hots for him!”
“No?”
“Austin, you know I thought he was an idiot!”
“Then why in the hell would you consider that with him? I don’t care if you were drunk, you have to find someone attractive to think about fucking them.”
“I didn’t think about…well not really, I mean I thought of it only in terms of breaking the bond, I didn’t actually think about the deed.” she shivered. “In fact I’m certain I couldn’t have gone through with it.”
“God I hope not.”
She snorted in exasperation. “I shouldn’t have told you.”
“What? About Jared or Leo?”
“Any of it!”
He sighed. “Okay look, you needed to tell me about Jared. Leo…well, you’re right you wouldn’t have gone through with it. I know you. You’re better than that.” He put a hand on her leg. “I’m sorry, you don’t need to hear any shit from me.”
She nodded, her anger draining away, and took in a shaky breath. “I’m exhausted.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Are you gonna stay?”
“Do you want me to?”
She nodded.
They went inside and stopped at the entrance to the living room. He turned to her and put his warm hand on her cheek. “It’s been a long time since I cuddled with someone,” he said quietly.
She wrapped her arms around him. “I would love to cuddle with you,” she smiled against the soft fabric of his shirt, breathing in his scent as she did earlier.
He grabbed her hand and pulled her over to the couch, tucking her into his side and pulling the blanket down on top of them. She laid her head on his familiar chest and was asleep in seconds.
**
Jared stood on the white sandy beach of Monterey, California breathing in the salty air as he considered the merit of learning to captain his own ship. It had been a couple of hundred years since he’d been on a boat of any kind but he had once loved being out on the open ocean.
He rubbed the back of his head and grimaced. She was somewhere in this country, though not on this coast since he only sensed her presence faintly. Oddly it wasn’t as bad for him here as it had been in South America where he hadn’t been able to sense her at all, which likely meant that the nature of the bond was happy to know she was well.
He had begun to think of the bond as being its own entity, like a piece of himself that had split off from the rest of him. It cared about her wellbeing, but he did not. It wanted to go to her while he wanted to jump on a ship and sail far away. And It was a serious cock blocker. He’d picked up that phrase from television and learned firsthand what it was the night he’d arrived in the Golden state. He’d gone to several clubs and women of every age had all but thrown themselves at him, but his body was having none of it. Even though his balls were so full a small touch should have made him explode he couldn’t bring himself to take them up on their blatant offers, and no amount of self-gratification seemed to be enough. It wanted her and there seemed to be no substitutes.
That was the only thing that had kept him from jumping on a ship the moment he’d first sensed her. He figured if he learned to navigate the water himself at least he would be in control of where he went and that might meet with less opposition from It.
Sexual frustration be damned, It could go to hell because he was not going to seek her out. He had cursed her a thousand times for not breaking their tie and it would seem that despite her little human friend’s statement to the contrary, she didn’t intend to.
He had rehashed his experiences with her in his mind, from the time she’d tricked him until he’d found her drunk in the bar, and decided that A: she was a manipulative little cunt and B: there was a good chance she had learned who he really was and wanted to use him for something.
Over the past few years he had heard rumors that there was a sect of vampires who believed a new age was coming, one where they would rule the earth by enslaving the human population. He would be a great asset and ally for them to have and perhaps that was her game. Maybe she was like the half-turned assholes, serving someone but keeping herself from taking the final damning step. He had smelled human blood on her so he knew she drank from them even if the males she’d been with in London did not.
That explanation made the most sense. He thought it was likely that her current companions were pawns of hers as well. Perhaps whoever it was she was actually aligned with had sent her to them as a spy, and considering she was an unturned female, the only one left as he knew, and a healer she would make an excellent one.
At this point his only recourse was to continue denying her, eventually she would have to give up on him and break it. And if she died before that happened…well he’d lived long enough, death would be a welcome respite.
He glanced down at his feet as the water came up to touch the toe of his shoe. He absently followed its direction as it receded then lifted his head to stare out to sea once more.
Generously created for me by @son-of-satire