The Vampire King’s Captive

BRAN

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He really shouldn’t be in here.

But he didn’t want her to die. She was still his only hope of getting to his sister-although with every day that passed, be was beginning to second guess that fact-and if she died, then he might as well kiss any hopes of reuniting with his sister goodbye.

And that just couldn’t happen. He wasn’t going to fail her as he had failed his parents.

So he told himself that he was just going to see her for himself and make sure that she was still breathing. Only then would he leave.

And that was exactly why he found himself sitting on the chair on the far end of her room. From his spot, he had a direct line of sight to her bed, so even if he didn’t really want to look at her, he had no choice but to.

Her small form lay curled on the bed under the sheets and he assumed that the maid had tucked her in. She was curled into herself in a defensive pose that he knew very well. It was one that men used when they were defending blows from an opponent, and the fact that she was sleeping in such a pose puzzled him.

She shifted just then and his eyes snapped to attention, tracking the movement.

Her eyes fluttered open lazily, and his heart beat faster in his chest when those sleepy greys landed on him. She was lying face down on the bed with her head turned to the side-the same side Bran sat-and that was exactly why she didn’t have to turn to look at him.

Before she could make him uncomfortable and hate himself even more for coming in here by questioning him, he decided to make her uncomfortable.

“Are you going to make it a habit of passing out whenever a situation becomes too much for you to handle?”

He was just being an ass. He knew that she wasn’t passing out on purpose-at least he was sure that she wasn’t.

The asshole physical back at the castle had told Bran that she needed a lot of rest. She’d had a day’s worth of it, then her father had attacked and they’d been thrown into the forest, journeying into his friend’s land. So, really, she hadn’t rested one bit. Add that to the hunger of the past few days, well, it was impossible for the stress to not get to her.

The sorceress blinked. Then blinked again and sat up on the bed, causing the sheets to pool on her thigh. Reluctantly, Bran’s eyes dropped down and he realised that she wasn’t wearing that tight gown anymore.

He didn’t know whether to be thankful or to be even more pissed.

That gown had threatened to drive him to madness. As if showing him the bare expanse of her smooth back and asking him to her her zip up the gown hadn’t been enough, everytime she shifted next to him on the car ride here, every single time she turned to look out the window, the already short gown jumped up on her thighs to the point of indecency and he’d fought the urge to haul her over and kiss the ever loving fuck out of her.

The fact that he now knew how she tasted didnt help matters at all. It made ignoring her all the harder.

And he wasn’t going to touch what the taste of her blood had done to him at all.

He wasn’t going to touch it with a teen foot pole.

“I passed out?” She asked, her eyes roving over the room, the surroundings probably strange to her. She shook her head. “I definitely didn’t do that on purpose.”

“Sure you didn’t.” Bran pushed off the chair, too restless to sit still. He always found it hard to sit whenever she was in the same room as him and that was solely because of her eyes.

Her grey eyes had a mysterious look about them and when she stared at him, they appeared almost seductive.

How could he sit still when she had him battling a hard-on?

“You’d better take something in.” He jerked his chin to the covered dish sitting on the bedside that had been brought in by a maid. “Eat all of it.”

She watched him with wary eyes, her shoulders hunched forward. Sighing, she ran her fingers through her hair and he found himself wanting to replace those dainty fingers with his much bigger ones and run them through that glorious dark mane.

It was an amazing feeling. He’d realized that last night.

She pushed the sheets off completely and swung her legs over the side of the bed as she shifted closer to the bed side table.

Instantly, Bran’s eyes fell on her bare legs and he almost groaned. He’d had those legs on top of his when he’d kissed her.

“Your friend hates me.”

It took great effort for Bran to wrench his eyes away from her legs and look up at her, then even greater effort for the words to penetrate the thick fog of lust that had clouded his brain.

“Shouldn’t he?”

She’d just been about to uncover the dish but the moment he spoke, she abandoned the food and turned to him with innocent, soulful eyes. “I don’t know what I did to him.”

Somehow, out of everything that had happened in the past few days, those words pissed Bran off more.

It wasn’t the fact that she said she didn’t know what she did to him, no, it was the fact that she actually didn’t know what she did to his best friend.

How easily did she take people’s lives without second thoughts? How easily did she take innocent people’s lives without care that they had families?

“You deserve no mercy, Maria Hatzi,” Bran seethed, a haze of red covering his vision so completely that he couldn’t see past it. “And you’re going to be treated with none.”

She gasped and he detected a slight tremor in her frame. Her hands shook and she shoved them under her thighs to hide them from him.

He hated the small squeeze he felt in his chest at the sight.

Her eyes darted to the window and she blinked quickly. Bran had a sinking suspicion that she was trying to fight back tears. When her eyes landed back on him-his chest, not his face-his suspicion was confirmed.

His jaws tightened.

“I-I’m sorry, vampire,” she said with tears shimmering in her eyes. “If I knew what I did to him, then maybe I’d be able to help-”

“There’s no help.” His words cut through the air like a whip and she flinched, her eyes falling away. “Theres no help for him. Not when you killed his mate.”

The words hung between, suspended in air like an axe that was about to swing down and take somebody’s head with it. Preferably hers, but for some reason, he didn’t want to think about that happening.

Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped as shock and regret seeped into her features.

An apt reaction.

When a creature lost its mate, the creatures usually followed it’s mate into death. It varied for creatures as some felt the mating bond stronger than some. But for demons, vampires, lykaes and valkyries, the bond was strongest and when one of these creatures lost their mate, they would kill themselves in a bid to end their suffering.

Corey was a vamon-demon and vampire-from the mating between his demon father and vampire mother, and therefore, the mating bond was twice as strong for him. When his mate had died, he’d slipped into depression, going deeper into the dark as the years passed, but he’d never attempted to take his life once.

Everyone thought it was strange, Bran included, and for that reason, because everyone expected Corey to have taken his own life long since, they believed something was wrong with him.

Again, Bran included. But then Bran had more pressing matters on his hands and asking himself why his friend was still alive was the last thing on his mind.

“Oh gods,” she whispered, her face paling. “I don’t…” She turned spooked eyes on Bran, “Oh gods, I don’t know how he would forgive me. Could you please help me tell him that I never meant to?”

Bran barely held himself back from scoffing. “You’ve killed a demon’s mate, sorceress, forgiveness is the last thing you should expect from him.”.

She was obviously sympathetic. But did that necessarily mean she regretted everything she’d done? No.

She was only sympathetic because she now realised just how her actions had affected people and how she was going to be forced to pay for them now.

After a very long time, she nodded slowly, more to herself than to him. “He wants to kill me, doesn’t he?”

Bran wasn’t going to sugarcoat anything for her. “Very much.”

She swallowed. “And you want to too.”

It wasn’t a question, but he took it as one anyway. Did he want to kill her?

When he’d first captured her, his intentions had been to torture her until she gave him the location of his sister, then leave her to be killed by his men because as cruel as Bran was, he hates hurting women.

Maria was a first.

But now, he wasn’t completely sure that he wanted her dead. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with her, in fact.

And it frustrated him to no end.

He gave her the full force of his angry eyes. “You have wronged a great number of people, sorceress, and some of us don’t forgive and don’t forget.”

“I’m really sorry about your parents, vampire,” she said all of a sudden, and his eyes narrowed at the abrupt change of topic. “I know that what’s done is done, but for what it’s worth, I never wanted to kill them. I was only acting under orders, and as for your sister, I agree that we took her, but I don’t know where.” She looked up at him with surprisingly vulnerable eyes. “Do you believe me?”

A sorceress with the kind of powers she had acting under orders?

Just how stupid did she think he was?

“No.”

He saw the hurt look in her eyes before she quickly masked it by one of indifference and shrugged, looking away from him and out through the window.

“What do you and your friend plan on doing to me?”

Adopting a smirk to hide his turmoil, Bran said, “You’ll just have to wait and see, don’t you, princess?”

With those ominous words hanging in the air, he turned and stalked out of the room.