Caris Roane: Born in Chains

But as she stared up at him the chains hummed, and she knew a deeper truth about the vampire: He was trying to figure out not how to escape, but how to murder someone. She felt his determination as though it released in his sweat.

Adrien returned to consciousness, but he didn’t know why. He was only partially healed, and his body throbbed with pain. Usually he’d sleep for hours to complete his healing process as quickly as possible.

Yet something had awakened him, but what?

Above the usual filth of the cavern, he smelled a scent different from the vampires who usually took shifts—a human smell, one that filled him with rage.

He despised the world of humans, always taking what they wanted no matter who got hurt, or robbed, or dispossessed; the way they traded, for a few miserable dollars, the flesh of their kind into the forbidden sex-slave rings of his world, never to be seen again. And the way they illegally purchased the mineral rights of the caves Daniel Briggs stole from his fellow vampires.

And now a human was here, a woman, in the Himalayan prison.

Small sparks flew through his mind, as though part of him registered what was happening though the other part stayed sunk in denial. The muscles of his arms reacted, flexing in deep pulls then relaxing as if displaying his biceps. His abs knotted up in the same way.

With his eyes still closed, he lifted his head, leaning forward, straining against his manacles, pulling at the chains that bound him. Strength flowed into his arms, and a profound need swept through him to get out of his restraints. He needed to be free to protect his brothers from the enemy, from the human.

He groaned.

“What’s brewing, Adrien?” Lucian called to him.

“The enemy is here.” His voice sounded raspy again. He opened his eyes, but he couldn’t see very well. He’d taken a lot of blows to the head and face this time.

“You mean the human? We can smell her, too.”

He blinked several times and there she was, staring at him from a pair of large hazel eyes.

He breathed in and yes, she was very human, a stench more heinous to him than the putrid smells of the cavern. She had a lantern near her feet but he could see her easily as he adjusted his vampire vision.

The moment she came fully into view, however, he stalled out. His rage left him, flowing backward, and something else rushed toward the woman, something he didn’t want to feel. It was her, the woman in his vision.

A strange combination of desire and need boiled within him. He felt as though he knew her on some level he couldn’t explain.

Then the anger returned, at her kind, for their greed.

“What do you want?” he called out.

“Adrien, what the hell is going on?” Lucian’s voice, louder this time, more urgent, bounced off the jagged stone ceiling.

Adrien couldn’t respond, partly because he didn’t know what the hell was happening and partly because time had just drawn to a hard standstill.

His brothers called to him, but he couldn’t quite hear them. He watched the woman’s lips move, so she must have been speaking as well, but his ears had shut down.

He saw her as though sunshine cascaded over her long, light brown hair. What would her hair look like pulled up high on her head? Did she own a burgundy gown dotted with gold crystals? He wanted her. He needed her. But he couldn’t be feeling this way, not about a human.

His thigh muscles contracted and his knees bent. He tilted his head back and shouted into the heights of the cave, a sound that roared in his ears. His brothers shouted as well, joining him.

When he looked back at the woman, she’d covered her ears with her hands, her face twisted in pain, which caused him a certain amount of pleasure. She should hurt, this short-lived mortal, a representative of a race he abhorred.

He struggled harder against the chains and manacles, bruising and cutting his wrists and ankles as he tried to get to the woman, wanting her to pay.

She moved toward him, tears now running down her cheeks. Why was she weeping? His arms flailed and the chains clanked as he reached toward her. Her expression looked windblown, and he knew he needed to stop all the shouting, but he couldn’t quiet his voice, not until her hands landed on his chest.

His back arched and he cried out one last time. He took short puffs of air into his lungs, but he began to calm down.

Only then, with the touch of her hands easing him, did he realize he was in a full state of arousal.

What the hell was this human doing to him?

Lily’s heart pounded so hard that she’d grown deaf from the sound of the rhythmic rush through her ears. Her fingers felt the split of skin beneath her hands and even wetness from Adrien’s open wounds, but it just didn’t matter. All that mattered was quieting the vampire so that her ears would stop feeling like knives were slicing them up.

He thrashed in his chains, hurting himself even more. His wrists and ankles now bled in long red rivulets. His eyes had a red hue and he’d bared his fangs. She could feel his hatred of her as much from the chain around her neck as the power emanating from his body.

He looked like a madman, his body gyrating, his muscles from stem to stern flexing and rippling as he tried to pull away from the wall to get to her.

And yet he was aroused, which told her the other part of the story, that he had a powerful drive toward her he didn’t want to have. This had all the makings of a nightmare.

She ignored that his erection pressed against her stomach. He didn’t even seem to notice his sexual state. Instead, his eyes bored into hers, and as she kept her hands flat against his chest, he finally grew still, though his nostrils moved like bellows with each breath.

The other vampires in the cavern grew quiet as well, as though sensing Adrien’s growing calm. The three men were half-brothers, though she knew little else about them except that they served as a type of policing force for their kind.

As she stared up at him, chills raced over her shoulders and down her arms. Her chest tightened as a strange sensation gripped her deep in her stomach, something that emanated from the chain around her neck. Kiernan had told her it would recognize Adrien since the specialist—something called an Ancestral in the vampire world—had used Adrien’s blood to create the chain.

She opened her mouth to tell him about her current mission and what she needed him to do, but all she could seem to focus on was the shade of his eyes, an exquisite shade somewhere between blue and green, almost a teal but quieter, softened with faint brown flecks.

She realized that she could see really well in the dark, another result of the blood-chain. Essentially, once connected, she’d be siphoning more and more power from the chain and from Adrien himself after she’d bound him with the matching chain. In the meantime, she could already feel the chain at work on her. The vision alone had told her that much.

She looked at his lips, full and sensual. He strained toward her, leaning into her. “You’re my enemy,” he hissed.

“And yet you desire me.”

“I want you on your back, human, then I’ll make you feel just how weak you are compared with my kind.”

“You speak of my weakness, but I’m not the one hanging from massive chains in a prison. You are. How did you get here, vampire? What brought you to this cavern?”

“Treachery,” he muttered.

“Of course. Your kind always has an excuse. But at least we seem to understand each other, I hate your kind and you despise mine. We ought to at least be on an equal footing when I take charge of you.”

“What does that mean?”

She backed away slowly, and as her hands left his chest his gaze fell to the chain at her neck. His eyes narrowed.