Eternal Blood: The Mark of the Vampire by Laura Wright Read Free Book Online Page B

anyway.
    How long had Lucian Roman been watching her? How long had he been perched on her roof? Just today? Tonight? Or for many days? Lord, how many times had he seen her tears, her worry—her hands travel south to her core?
    Groaning, she turned and faced the wall as her parents had forced her to do many times as a balas when she was a disagreeable force in their home. The coolness of the plaster felt good against her cheek and yet it did nothing to cleanse her fear.
    Though the wound registered most unpleasantly, she didn’t want to look at it. She didn’t want to look down, at her hand—where that menacing vampire, that terrifying angel, had bit into her flesh.
    She shut her eyes and prayed, as if those two actions could will away the crisis before her. This was truly her nightmare come to life. Lucian’s fangs inside her skin, inside the mark of another.
    Tears pricked her eyes, but she dismissed them and pushed away from the wall. She went over to the bedside and lit her lamp. Slowly, she sank onto the mattress. Where moments ago she was writhing in a state of frustrated, hopeful pleasure, now there was only pain. Deep, aching pain running through her river-quick. What was Lucian trying to do? Bleed her? Drink from her?
    Punish her.
    With a deep breath, she dropped her gaze to her hand. Blinking, she studied the white skin, the dark mark. The animal brand on her thumb, the one that marked her as taken, as the property of her true mate appeared uninjured. Yes, Lucian’s fangs had ruptured the skin, but there seemed to be no permanent damage done to the brand itself.
    Her sigh of relief was so strident she nearly laughed.
    She hated the effect this paven had on her—hated that even after weeks away from him, she could still taste his blood—not on the tip of her tongue where she might get rid of it with rations, but at the back of her throat. The sweetest blood she’d ever had, and god help her, the only blood she wanted in her veins now. She hated that ever since she’d drunk from him in his bedroom in the house in Soho, she could never make it to orgasm. No matter how long and how hard she tried. It was deeply frustrating, not to mention humiliating. It was as if he’d granted her his blood, and had broken her in return.
    His words, his accusations—his declaration of hatred as he’d hovered menacingly above her minutes ago—echoed in her mind . . .
    Perhaps they’d broken each other.
    As the snow began to fall in the darkness outside her window, Bron prayed that her mating would kill this bond, this need, this ache between them. Because if it didn’t, she had an eternity of misery, regret and unclaimed passion to look forward to.
    She lifted her thumb to her lips and was just about to blow on her skin, use her powerful veana’s breath to heal her wound, when her hopes were utterly destroyed before her eyes. Was it an omen? she wondered, sickly. Or the beautiful Albino mocking her from wherever he was perched now? She didn’t know, and really, did it even matter? There, on her thumb, the ink that had been implanted under her skin to fool her parents and the Order was bubbling to the surface, inching toward the two pinprick holes, then slowly leaking out like oil from the ground.
    Panic swelled within her, ballooning in her chest. Forget Lucian Roman and her unending need for his blood. She had a far greater problem.
    She jumped up and scurried over to her desk, grabbed her cell phone and dialed. She had to get to Synjon before the next eve’s Veracou Ceremony—their ceremony. She needed to get beneath his needle once again, and let him carve his mark into her skin before anyone discovered the truth.
     
     
     
    Synjon Wise came out of hiding for no one. Nicknamed the ghost, the only vampire paven to ever serve as both an elite Special Forces officer in his native Britain and as an American Navy SEAL, regarded his current existence as a spy, an assassin and bounty hunter for the Eternal Order as