Having sex with her…
Mind-numbing.
The pleasure had been deeper than anything he’d experienced before, and even now, he wanted her again.
If the stories were true, he wasn’t the first man to feel this way for her.
“Which stories do you mean?” Her head tilted back, in what looked like an effort to better see the stars.
He sighed and eased down beside her. They were at a house Sean had found for him, a little place in the woods, and though Jamie had tried to get her inside the cabin, Iona had insisted on sitting outside. Sitting outside and gazing up at the stars.
He followed her stare for a moment, then glanced back at her profile. He much preferred that view. “Are you truly the oldest pureblood?” He asked after a moment of just watching her.
Pureblood…the term for vampires who were born, not made. Most of the vamps populating the world had been made or turned. They were humans who’d been bit, who’d taken vampire blood when they were near death, and who’d been reborn as something more.
But Iona wasn’t like those other vampires. He caught her left hand. Opened the palm. His enhanced vision easily let him see the small mark in the middle of her palm. Those who were born to the blood often had that mark.
That mark…and a circle of gold in their eyes.
Since her eyes were pure gold, the lady more than met that part of the pureblood requirement.
Her slender shoulders rolled in a little circle. “There could be others out there, probably are. I just haven’t met them.”
“When were you born?” Jamie pressed.
Her gaze was still on the stars. “Long before men ever thought they’d travel up there.”
“Iona…”
Another little shrug. “Around 600 A.D., give or take a few years.”
He tried not to let his surprise show.
“I know, I look good for my age, right?” Her lips had curled into a faint smile.
Very good.
He found that he was curious about her. Maybe too curious. “How did you know…what you were?” He’d always known he was a werewolf. When puberty hit, there’d been no surprise when he grew fangs and claws and had the urge to howl at the moon. Surrounded by others of his kind, it had been an easy transition for him.
“I got the first clue when one of my father’s warriors stabbed me in the heart, tossed my body in a shallow grave, and left me to die.” Her gaze drifted to him. The smile was gone from her face. “Yes, that was my first big clue. He left me to die, only…I didn’t.”
His hands clenched into fists. “Why did he do that?”
Her gaze turned back to the stars. “Have they traveled up there? While I was…under…did they travel more to the moon? Maybe to another planet? I’ve seen so much in the years I walked the earth, but I’ve always wanted to go beyond the sky…”
He caught her hand. Twined his fingers with hers in order to catch Iona’s attention—and just because he wanted to hold her hand. “They’ve sent out robots. Rovers. They captured images of planets and stars. Searched and explored.” Hell, he’d take the woman on a little NASA field trip if she wanted…after they were done with Latham. He’d make sure she learned every advance that had been made in space exploration.
“It hasn’t changed,” she said, and with her free hand, she pointed to the sky. “Venus waits. Jupiter shines. The constellations are just as they were. Clothes are different. Music. Technology. But up there…it all looks the same to me.”
He squeezed her fingers. “Why did he stab you?”
“Because my hair wasn’t gray. Because my skin hadn’t wrinkled. Because I wasn’t bearing children for my husband.”
Her husband?
“Did I mention…” Iona murmured, “that my husband was the warrior who stabbed me?”
Sonofabitch. “No,” Jamie bit out the words, “you didn’t.”
“Purebloods usually stop aging around twenty-five. Their bodies just…they freeze. I didn’t realize that had happened to me, of course. I learned later that my father and my husband—they thought I was bewitched.” Her lips tightened. “Or that maybe I’d even made a deal with the devil.”
Blood Queen.
“When I got out of that grave, I made the mistake of running back to my people for help. You see, I still didn’t get it. I thought my father would help me. I was sure he couldn’t have known what Tylar had done. I was so scared and…” Her stare dipped to Jamie’s throat. “Hungry.”
Because her vampire side would have kicked in with all of the blood loss she’d suffered.
“But my father knew. The attack had been his plan. As soon as he saw me, he ordered his guards to prepare the fire.”
The fire. Jamie found that he couldn’t speak. His hold tightened on her.
“The guards bound my hands. Tied me to an old, rotting tree…put brush around me, and it was my father…he was the one to bring the first torch to start the blaze.”
The Blood Queen slaughtered a whole village. That was the tale he knew of Iona’s birth. Whispers had told of a Born Queen who’d been so stricken by bloodlust that she’d turned and attacked every person near her.
Only the story that Iona told was much different from what he’d heard. Jamie found that he didn’t doubt her account, not for an instant. There was too much pain humming beneath her words.
“I begged for help,” she said quietly. Her lips trembled. “So many were gathered around the fire, but no one would step forward to save me. No one.”
Now her fingers were squeezing his.
“I’d never known my mother. My father…he’d said that she was attacked by our enemies shortly after my birth. But there were rumors about her. Stories that said my mother could do magic.” Her long hair slid over her shoulders as she turned her head and gazed at him. “That day, I used magic, too. The fire should have consumed me.”
He knew vampires were particularly susceptible to the flames. Their bodies burned so quickly.
“But I managed to control the fire. I don’t know if it was my fear or my fury, but…something broke in me and I felt a sure of power.” Her breath sighed out. “I got away. I ran and I ran and then I realized…he’d always hunt me. My father wouldn’t stop searching for me because, to him, I was some kind of—of punishment.”
“Punishment? For what?” He didn’t understand, but he sure would have enjoyed doling out some justice to her sadistic father.
“For killing my mother,” Iona said in a soft, sad voice. “Our enemies didn’t kill her. I found out that truth too late. She died by my father’s hand.”
She’d had one sick bastard of a father. Family. Sometimes, you couldn’t live with them…
And sometimes you needed to kill them.
Iona kept talking, and she didn’t try to pull her hand from his.
Good. He liked holding her palm against his. “My father always wanted immortality. Wanted to rule all the land he could find. He thought my mother could help him, and when she didn’t, he made sure she could never use her magic to help anyone again.”
He couldn’t believe how dark her origins were. A heavy ache had grown in his chest as he listened to her tale.
“It was him or me,” she said, and, sure enough, that stubborn chin of hers kicked up. “I knew it, so I went back to my father’s land. I slipped inside and made my way up to kill him.”
And she had. He knew that, at least, this part of her legend was true.
“I had my knife at his throat, but I couldn’t do it.” Her head sagged a bit, as if she were shamed by the memory.
Well, hell. So that part wasn’t true, either?
He’d suspected from the moment her golden eyes first opened that she wasn’t the evil bitch that rumor and legend had made her out to be. Now he knew for certain.
And that knowledge made him feel…lost.
What have I done to her?
“He laughed at my weakness and stabbed me with his sword.” Her left hand went to her side, as if touching a wound that had to be over fourteen hundred years old. “He was coming to cut off my head. H-he said that would be the way to end me.”
Her father had been right. Even a pureblood vampire wouldn’t be able to rise from a beheading.
“He’d killed my mother by taking her head. He told me that…”
Had her mother been a pureblood, too? It was possible. Maybe Iona’s father hadn’t killed her mother because the woman was a witch. Maybe he’d killed her because she was a pureblood and she’d refused to turn him into a vampire? Then the hate had eaten at him, until he’d unleashed his rage on his own child.
“As his blade came for my throat, as I felt my own blood pouring from me, and saw death coming…” Her breath whispered out. “The woman I’d been, she died. The vampire inside of me—she lived. She killed. I took that sword. Snatched it from him. Then shoved it right back into his heart.”
Jamie wanted to put his arms around her, so—screw it—he did. Jamie wrapped his arms around Iona and pulled her against his chest. She stiffened but didn’t fight his hold. Good. He couldn’t have fought her then. Her pain was too fresh. Too strong.
He didn’t want to ever cause her anymore pain.
Too late for that. You’ve stolen her life, and she doesn’t even realize it.
His jaw locked.
“When his men came and attacked, I fought back. They died. My husband was the first to fall before me.” Said flatly, as if she were yanking back on her emotions. “Then I walked away from that land, with their blood covering me.”
And the legend of the Blood Queen had been born.
“I learned an important lesson that day,” she whispered.
That her father had been better off dead? That her husband had deserved a long, brutal death?
“Even those closest to you will betray you and kill you, if they have the chance.” Her head turned, and she glanced up at him. They were close enough to kiss. “Just so you know, I won’t give you that chance.”
Jamie blinked. “I have no plans to kill you.” Keeping her alive was imperative to him. Without her, he would be dead.
Her smile was sad, and it called him a liar. “You’ve been so careful about what you revealed to me. But I know more than you think, and when I sleep, I’ll know all.”
Because powerful vampires could literally steal people’s memories with the act of blood-drinking. Their prey’s blood memories appeared to the vampires when they dreamed. Jamie knew that and he also knew that he had to stop Iona from dreaming, at least until their war with Latham was over. But, lucky for him and—I’m so sorry, Iona—unfortunately for her, he knew the lovely vampire’s weakness. So he had to use that weakness as he asked, “And you’re so eager to sleep again, are you? To close your eyes and wake to see that years have passed?”
She flinched. Jamie had hit his target, and shame burned inside of him.
“Eventually,” she said, still staring back at him with the eyes that Jamie swore could see into his soul, “I’ll have to sleep. There won’t be a choice.”
He bent forward and pressed a kiss to her cheek. “Eventually, there won’t be a need for secrets.” They both knew he had them. “My war with Latham will be over.” But the end for him and Iona wouldn’t come any time soon.
As he pulled in her scent and felt her slender body against his, he had to ask, “Why did you kill the others?” Not the warriors on that long ago night. He would have gladly killed them himself. No, he meant the vampires that she’d brought in to her coven. “Did they turn on you, too?”
A faint furrow appeared between her brows. “What are you talking about?”
“The coven you had in LA. Why did you kill them?”
Stark pain—no, anguish—flashed in her eyes. “They’re dead?”
Oh, shit.
But then she twisted in his arms, shoved him back, and Jamie suddenly found himself on the ground with one very, very enraged pureblood vampire above him. “They’re dead?”
“Yes.” Okay, so she hadn’t killed them. Big miscalculation his part. If she hadn’t done it—
Latham.
“I wondered why they never came for me.” The words were spoken with sadness, but fury crackled in her gaze. “I waited for them. Thought they’d betrayed me, too.”
Maybe some of them had, he didn’t know. All Jamie knew for sure was that, “The compound burned to the ground on the same day that you…disappeared.” The flames had lit up the sky. He’d been in LA at the time, young, barely twenty, still too reckless, and he raced toward those flames.
But there had been nothing he could do. The vampire compound had been too far from the main city streets. The fire had been too strong.
Too out of control. For him. And certainly for the human fire fighters who’d tried to battle the blaze.
A tear slid down Iona’s cheek.
It felt like someone had just clawed his chest open. He hated the sight of that tear. “I’m sorry. I-I didn’t—”
She lunged away from him. Raced away in a flash and disappeared into the woods as she used that super vamp speed of hers.
No. “Iona!”
But she wasn’t stopping for him.
Swearing, he transformed into the wolf, letting the savage shift sweep over him. Then he was running, following her sweet scent. Rushing through the woods as fast as could.
Can’t let her get away. Can’t.