J.R. Ward - Lover At Last

“I took care of him,” Connors said, nodding to the scorch mark on the floor.

“I know,” the Omega replied, that voice warping through the fetid, chilly air.

Outside, a gust of wind blew snow against the windows, the gap on one sill letting some snowflakes in. As they entered the space, they fell to the floor in a shimmer, the temperature cold enough to sustain them, thanks to the master’s presence.

“He is back home now.” The Omega came forward like a draft, with no evidence that any kind of legs were moving him. “And I am very pleased.”

Conners told his feet to stay put. There was nowhere to run to, nothing to escape—he just had to get through what was going to happen next.

At least he had prepared for this.

“I got some new recruits for you.”

The Omega stopped. “Indeed?”

“A tribute, as it were.” Or more like a defined endpoint to this shit: He had to head out soon, and he’d carefully planned these two events close together. The Omega, after all, was into his playthings, but liked his Society and its purpose of eliminating vampires even more.

“You please me to no end,” the Omega whispered as he closed in. “I do believe we are going to get along just fine…Mr. C.”

The Chosen Layla had existed in her own body without any physical compromise for the entirety of her existence. Born in the Scribe Virgin’s Sanctuary, and trained in the rarefied, preternatural peacefulness there, she had never known hunger, or fever, or pain of any note. Not heat nor cold, nor contusion, concussion, or contraction. Her body had been, as with all things in the mother of the race’s most sacred space, always the placid same, a perfect specimen functioning at the highest level—

“Oh, God,” she gulped as she shot out of bed and lurched into the bathroom.

Her bare feet skidded on the marble as she threw herself to her knees, popped the toilet seat, and leaned over to go face-to-face with the bowl’s epiglottal hole.

“Just…do it….” she gasped as the rolling nausea polluted her body until even her toes curled under and grabbed at the floor. “Please…for the Scribe Virgin’s sake…”

If she could just empty the contents of her stomach, surely the torture would relent—

Taking her fore- and middle fingers into her throat, she shoved them in so hard she choked. But that was the extent of it. There was no coordination of her diaphragm, no release of the greasy spoiled meat in her stomach…not that she’d actually eaten that—or anything else—for…how long had it been? Days.

Mayhap that was the problem.

Snaking her arm around her hips, she put her sweaty forehead on the hard, cool lip of the toilet and tried to breathe shallowly—because the sensation of air moving up and down the back of her throat made the impotent urge to throw up worse.

Mere days ago, when she had been in her needing, her body had taken control, the urge to mate strong enough to wipe out all thought and emotion. That supremacy had quickly passed, however, and likewise had the aches and pains from the relentless mating, her skin and bones once again resuming their backseat to her brain.

The balance was tipping back once more.

Giving up, she carefully repositioned herself, placing her shoulders against the blessedly chilly marble wall.

Considering how sickly she felt, her only extrapolation was that she was losing the pregnancy. She’d never seen anyone in the Sanctuary go through this—was this illness what was normal here on earth?

Closing her eyes, she wished she could talk to someone about it all. But very few knew her condition—and for the time being, she needed to keep things that way: Most were completely unaware that she had gone through her needing or been serviced. Autumn’s fertile period had hit first, and in response, the Brotherhood had scattered far and wide as there was no taking chances with exposure to those hormones—for good reason, as she had learned firsthand. By the time people had returned to their normal rooms in the mansion? Her own had passed, and any residual hormonal fluxes in the air had been chalked up by all and sundry to Autumn’s fading time.

The privacy in these two rooms of hers was not going to last if the pregnancy continued, however. For one, her status would be sensed by the others, especially males, who were particularly attuned to that sort of thing.

And two, after a while, she would begin to show.

Except if she felt this bad, how ever could the young survive?

As a vague sensation of tightness settled into her lower belly, like her pelvis was being compressed by an invisible vise, she tried to train her mind on something, anything other than her physical sensations.

Eyes the color of the night sky came to her.

Penetrating eyes, eyes that stared up from a face that was bloodied and distorted…and beautiful even in its ugliness.

Okay. This was not an improvement.

Xcor, leader of the Band of Bastards. A traitor against the king, a hunted male who was enemy to the Brotherhood and lawful vampires everywhere. The fierce warrior who had been born of a noble mother who did not want him because of his visage, and an unknown father who had never claimed parentage. An unwanted burden shuffled from home to orphanage until he’d entered the Bloodletter’s training camp back in the Old Country. A remorseless fighter trained therein to great effect; then, in his maturity, a master of death who toured the land with a band of elite fighters first aligned to the Bloodletter himself, and thereafter, to Xcor—and no one else.

The information trail at the Sanctuary’s library ended there because none of the Chosen were updating anything anymore. The rest, however, she could fill in herself: The Brotherhood believed the attempt on Wrath’s life back in the fall had been made by Xcor, and she had further heard there were insurrectionists within the glymera working with the fighter.

Xcor. A traitorous, brutal male with no conscience, no loyalty, no principle save to serve himself.

Yet when she had looked into his eyes, when she had been in his presence, when she had unknowingly fed this new enemy…she had felt like a full female for the first time in her life.

Because he had looked upon her not with aggression, but with—

“Arrest that,” she said aloud. “Stop that right now.”

As if she were a young getting into a cupboard or some such thing.

Forcing herself to her feet, she drew her robe around her and resolved to leave her room and make her way down to the kitchen. A change of scenery was needed, and so was food—if only to give her churning stomach something to expel.

On her way out, she did not check her hair or her face in the mirror. Did not fuss over the way her robe fell. Didn’t waste even a moment worrying which of her identical sandals to wear.

So much time she had wasted in the past over the minute details of her appearance.

She would have been much better served studying or training herself for a vocation. But that had not been permitted within the allowed prescription of activity for a Chosen.

As she stepped into the corridor, she took a deep breath, steadied herself, and started to walk in the direction of the king’s study—

Up ahead, Blaylock, son of Rocke, burst out into the hall of statues, his brows down tight, his body clad in leather from the tops of his shoulders to the soles of his tremendous boots. As he strode forward, he was checking his weapons one by one, taking them out of holsters, replacing them, buckling them in.

Layla stopped dead.

And when the male finally looked upon her, he did the same, his eyes growing remote.

Deep red of hair, and lovely sapphire blue of eye, the fully blooded aristocrat was a fighter for the Brotherhood, but he was not a brute. No matter how he spent his nights out in the field, he remained at the compound a mannered, intelligent gentlemale of fine comportment and schooling.