Blood Ties by Amelia Elias Read Free Book Online

flashed red. “I’m getting tired of
you interrupting me, fledgling.”
    “ And I’m
getting tired of listening to you dance around my questions, sire ,” she shot
back. “I died for you and trusted you enough to give up my humanity
for you. The least you can do in return is answer one fucking
question.”
    “Fine.” She could hear his teeth grinding as
he growled through them. “Gregori is my sire. He made me four
hundred years ago. It was nothing like your change, Kira -- I knew
what he was and I asked for it. I wanted the power of it. Yes, I
lived with the Nighthawks, and I participated in their blood
feasts. I spent two hundred and fifty years in utter depravity, no
different from them. I murdered, I fucked, I took what I wanted and
didn’t bother to ask permission or forgiveness. Does it please you
to hear me say it? Is that what you wanted to hear?”
    She held his tortured gaze steadily, this
time refusing to react to his anger. “And what changed you?”
    His fists clenched and she knew it cost him
an effort to answer her. “A human,” he ground out. “A human, a mere
mortal, showed me what I’d become.”
    Unexpected jealousy shivered through her
thoughts. Kira forced it aside. “Who was she?” There was no doubt
in her mind that the human had been a woman, that she’d been his
lover instead of his prey.
    She
hadn’t expected the knowledge that he’d loved another woman to hurt
like this, though. Get real, Kira ,
she told herself fiercely. She lived and died long before you were ever born,
and you have no claim on him now, either.
    His eyes were closed now, and if any of her
thoughts had shown on her face, he’d missed it. “I saw her first
and knew the others would want her. I’d shared often enough, but
something about her made me want her to myself. I hid her at my
lair, a place the Nighthawks didn’t know I had,” he said, his voice
softening with memory. “Rather than fearing me, feeding my
bloodlust with her terror, she spoke to me. Told me of her family
and her life. I couldn’t kill her, though I fed from her. I… I came
to care for her.”
    Then his
eyes opened and she flinched from the fury in their depths.
“Gregori took her from me,” he snarled. “Used one of his
bloodslaves to take her during the day when I couldn’t help her. By
the time I found her, she was already turned.” His voice hardened
with a hate so strong it made her shudder to hear it. “He’d turned
her and already forced her to make her first kill. She was his
creature, laughing when I offered to save her from him. One night,
Kira. One
night with him was all
it took to kill her soul and leave her addicted to the pleasures he
gave her.”
    She reached out and took one fisted hand in
hers. “How did she die?”
    He laughed bitterly. “What makes you think
she’s dead?”
    She just stared. There was no answer she
could give.
    Finally, he spoke again. “I couldn’t stay
with them after that,” he said, his voice low and harsh. “I
renounced my Clan, my sire, every tie I’d ever had to the vampire
world. That night I swore I would never again kill my prey. I vowed
that I wouldn’t forget what Ellyra taught me, even if she had.”
    Kira reached out and touched his shoulder.
The muscle was rock-hard beneath her hesitant hand. “I’m sorry,”
she whispered.
    “So am I.”
    This time she didn’t protest when he started
walking away, only hurried her steps to keep up with him. Her
thoughts spun so wildly she didn’t even pay attention to where he
led her. Wherever he took her, it was away from the Nighthawks, and
that was good enough for her.
    They hadn’t even gone a full block when a
woman fell smoothly into step beside them.
    Orion’s head snapped to the side. “Well,
well, well,” he drawled coldly. “You know what they say about
speaking of the devil.”
    Kira stared at the newcomer in shock. Tall
and graceful with fiery curls cascading down her back, she was the
kind of woman that made