A Hunger Like No Other

18

Throughout the day, Lachlain stayed by Emma's side, sunproofing any hint of a crack in the thick curtains and checking her wounds to make sure they were healing.

He took no chances, though, even lying beside her, cutting the side of his neck and coaxing her to drink from him.

The wee vampire had softly lapped at him, sighing in sleep. She must have bewitched him, because it had felt like the most natural thing in the world.

By afternoon, when he removed the bandages, he found the wounds still tender and raised, but fully closed.

The worst of his worry abated, he mused on what he'd learned.

Now that he knew the truth about everything, he looked at Emma differently, though he had to admit he didn't feel any differently. He'd already accepted her as his mate even when he'd thought she was part of the Horde. Now he knew that not only was she not part of the Horde, she wasn't even exactly a vampire.

Over the long years alone, he'd envisioned his mate in a thousand different lights. He'd prayed she would be intelligent and attractive, prayed that she would be caring. And now Emma, a half-vampire, half-Valkyrie, was shaming even his wildest fantasies.

But her family…He exhaled wearily. Lachlain had never fought against them, thinking them beneath him, and had only seen them from a distance. But he knew the Valkyrie were weird, fey little creatures, swift and strong with lightning firing all around them—firing somehow through them. Rumor had it that they derived nourishment from electricity. As he'd discovered in Emma, they were known to be extremely intelligent. Unlike Emma, they were almost as violent and warmongering as the vampires.

Though the Valkyrie had few known weaknesses, it was said they could be mesmerized by glittering objects—and that they were the only species in the Lore that could die of sorrow.

In a quick perusal of what the clan had compiled on them, he was able to find a tale of their origin. The Lore said that millennia ago, Wóden and Freya were awakened from a decade of sleep by a maiden warrior's scream as she died in battle. Freya had marveled at the maiden's courage and wanted to preserve it, so she and Wóden struck the human with their lightning. The maiden woke in their great hall, healed but untouched—still mortal—and pregnant with an immortal Valkyrie daughter.

In the years that came, their lightning would strike dying women warriors from all species of the Lore—Valkyrie like Furie were truly part Fury. Freya and Wóden gave the daughters Freya's fey beauty and his cunning. They combined these traits with the mother's valor and individual ancestry. This made the daughters all unique, but according to the Lore, one could recognize a Valkyrie if her eyes fired silver with strong emotion.

Emma's had turned when she'd drunk from him.

If this legend was true—and Lachlain believed it was—then that would mean Emma was the granddaughter of…gods.

And he'd thought her beneath him. A strong Lykae king saddled with a lacking mate.

He pinched his forehead, struggling with regret, but forced himself to read on. He found brief descriptions of the Valkyrie he knew were directly connected to her. Nïx was the oldest, and some said a soothsayer. Levelheaded Lucia was an expert archer, rumored to be cursed to feel indescribable pain whenever she missed a target.

Furie had been their queen, living under the same roof as gentle Emma when she'd been a child. Now, the Valkyrie suspected that Demestriu had trapped Furie at the bottom of the ocean for an eternity of torture. Based on Lachlain's experience, he could say without a doubt that she was choking saltwater into her lungs somewhere in the freezing dark right now.

But the entries on Regin and Annika troubled him the most. Regin's mother's entire race had been exterminated by the Horde. Annika, who was known as a brilliant strategist and a fearless fighter, had devoted her life to destroying vampires.

When Emma's family voiced their hatred of vampires, when they celebrated each kill, how could Emma not feel like an outsider? How could she not inwardly flinch? The Valkyrie were all centuries old to her mere decades, and she was what the Lore called "other"—or outside one's species. Emma was other from everything on the entire earth.

Was this the root of the pain he'd discovered within her? Did her family differentiate between what the Horde was and what Emma was? He would have to be careful with that himself. He could curse vampires to hell and not be thinking of Emma whatsoever.

The only positive thing he could find about the Valkyrie was that they'd always maintained an uneasy truce with the Lykae, reasoning that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Until the Accession. When all immortals were forced to fight for survival in the Lore.

This news was a thousand times better than if her family was of the Horde. But it still had its share of problems.

Almost all creatures of the Lore had a mate for life in some fashion. Vampires had Brides, demons had Lovers, phantoms had Kindred, and Lykae had their mates. Even a ghoul never left the troop that had first infected it.

Valkyrie formed no such bonds.

They drew strength from their coven but were completely independent when away from it. It was said that the thing they wanted above all else was freedom. You can never keep a Valkyrie when she wants to be free, his own father had told him. And Lachlain was going to try to do just that.

He would try to keep her though she "must be terrified" of him. And her family didn't even know he'd attacked her. They only suspected he'd touched her as she'd never been touched.

Yet he had. And he would do it again under the influence of the moon. Like all mated Lykae, his need would be so strong then, his control weak. Since earliest memory, when a king was in residence with his queen at Kinevane, all others left the castle on the night of the full moon and the ones preceding and following, so the pair could give themselves up to its pull and surrender to it with abandon.

If only she could feel the same need and aggression, he wouldn't frighten her so badly. He vowed he would lock her away, even as he knew nothing could stop him from getting to her…

It would've been so much easier if his mate had been of the clan.

But then he wouldn't have Emma…

Near sunset, two maids knocked to unpack and arrange her clothing. "Take care with her things," he told them as he rose from her bedside. "And doona touch her." Leaving them wide-eyed, he shrugged through the closed curtains to get to the balcony. He stared out at the setting sun, gazing at their home, the land and hills, the forest that he hoped she would grow to love.

When the sun set, he returned and frowned to find the maids a few feet from the bed, peering at Emma, whispering. But he knew they wouldn't dare touch her, and they were young Lykae who had probably never seen a vampire.

He was just about to tell them to leave when Emma opened her eyes in a flash and rose in that floating way. The maids screamed in terror; Emma hissed and scrambled to the headboard as the two fled.

Lachlain had known this wouldn't be smooth.

"Easy, Emma," he said, striding to her side. "You startled each other."

Emma watched the door for long moments, and then her gaze flickered over his face. Her skin paled and she turned away.

"Your wounds are mending well."

She said nothing, just brushed her fingertips over her chest.

"When you drink again, they should heal completely." He sat beside her, rolling up his sleeve, but she recoiled from him.

"Where am I?" Her gaze darted all around, finally resting on the foot of the mahogany bed. She focused on the intricately wrought carvings, then twisted around to view the headboard, scrutinizing the inlaid symbols there. The room was deepening into darkness, with only the fire lighting it, and the symbols seemed to move with shadow.

Craftsmen had begun constructing this bed on the day of Lachlain's birth, not only for him, but for her. He'd often lain just where she was, staring at the carvings with fascination, imagining what his mate would be like.

"You're at Kinevane. You're safe. Nothing can harm you here."

"Did you kill all of them?"

"Aye."

She nodded, clearly satisfied.

"Do you know why they would attack like that?"

"You're asking me?" She tried to rise.

"What do you think you're doing?" he demanded, pressing her back down.

"I need to call home."

"I called your home last night."

Her eyes went wide with apparent relief. "You swear? When are they coming to get me?"

He was disappointed by how happy the thought of leaving him made her—but he couldn't blame her. "I spoke to Annika, and now I know what they are. What you are."

Her face fell. "Did you tell her what you are?"

When he nodded, she turned away, flushing, he realized, with shame.

He tried to tamp down his anger. "It shames you for them to know you're with me?"

"Of course it does."

He grated, "Because you see me as an animal."

"Because you're the enemy."

"I've no quarrel with your family."

She raised her eyebrows. "The Lykae haven't fought against my aunts?"

"Only at the last Accession." Just five hundred years ago.

"Did you kill any of them then?"

"I've never killed a Valkyrie," he answered honestly. But he admitted to himself that this was probably because he'd never faced one.

She raised her chin. "And what about that thing inside you? What's it been up to?"