Page 46 of Inked & Bloodbound
He studies my face in the soft glow of the diner’s light. “You never told me the whole story. About how you ended up half-dead in that alley.”
The memory is a shameful one. The first time I was ever bested by another vampire in a duel, and Beau fucking Fontaine was the one who saved me. My many years have made me stronger than most, sharpened my senses, and dulled my waning empathy, so a loss of that magnitude was never supposed to be on the cards.
But when Beau found me, I was at my most vulnerable—poisoned, beaten, and left to meet the sun. It should never have happened.
I had been running for decades, moving from town to city and back again as the assassins my father commanded hunted me. Everyone—from the inexperienced newbloods eager to make a name to his most experienced capos—would come in wave after wave in search of my blood. Months or even years could pass without a hitman arriving, but when they did, I turned each and every one of them to ashes.
Until Valerius.
With the exception of his own sons, he was Father’s most loyal soldier. An awful, vicious brute decades older than I and twice as savage. I never believed he would send his personal bodyguard afterme, preferring instead to keep him close. My father had many enemies, and a protector as lethal as Valerius was essential.
So when he tracked me down, spiked me with tainted blood, and chained me with silver, it came as quite a surprise.
“My father wanted me dead,” I say aloud, and Beau snorts into his coffee.
He retrieves a battered metal flask from his jacket pocket, tips the bourbon into the cup, and swirls it. “Oh yeah?” he sneers. “What made you so special that Daddy wanted you dead?”
The sutures of the old wound tear open and bring me right back to the place I started. “I refused an arranged marriage with a powerful ally. Chose to be with a human girl instead.” My voice drops to barely above a whisper. “So he slaughtered her in front of me.”
Beau’s hand freezes in midair, the booze laced coffee hovering inches from his lips. “Well, shit.”
I continue, though telling it is painful. “My father cut her throat and forced me to watch.”
Beau’s eyes widen while mine sting. The grief is still as raw today as it was then.
“Afterwards, he dismissed me with a promise—every woman I dared to love would meet the same fate until I agreed to marry his choice.” I meet his eyes. “For two centuries, he kept that promise. Every single one. Human, vampire. It didn’t matter. That was the price for defying him. One day, I had enough, so I ran. When you found me, one of his men had finally gotten me.”
Beau takes a sip of his spiked coffee and shakes his head. “And I thought my dad was a piece of work.”
He idly scratches at his forearm, the memory of me likely tingling under his skin. When he stumbled upon my bloodied body all those months ago, he had no idea what he had found: a vampire, yes, but a powerful one. A descendant of one of the most influential undead families in existence, but one that was without his clan and far from his homeland. The crimson that courses through my veins belongs to a bloodline spanning millennia.
If my tyrant father could have seen me that day—near death in the alley of Sixth Street—he’d be disgusted by what I did next. I had begged a human for my life and offered a favor in return, bound with blood. Whatever Beau wanted, within my power, I would give him. In exchange, he would help me stage my death, feed me blood, and take me somewhere safe, somewhere I could regain my strength and bide my time.
“How do I know you’ll help me?” Beau had asked as he considered loosening the silver chains from my neck and wrists. “You could skip town or turn on me and kill me. Fuck that.”
I’d pleaded, but Beau was a tough son of a bitch. Nothing I said could convince him, so with the early morning sun kissing the horizon and my options rapidly diminishing, I did something I vowed I’d never do.
I offered him a bloodbinding. An ancient rite spoken only in hushed tones among my people, a supernatural promise rarely used unless in exceptional circumstances. Each day the pact goes unfulfilled the vampire grows weaker and weaker.
Foolish is the vampire that breaks it, for he will find himself dead.
I knew the stakes were high, but I was certain I could deliver, and I would have done anything, promised anything to Beau that night. My desperation to survive and destroy my father burned like a fire in my bones, the betrayal so raw it broke me. Luckily for me, Beau was desperate, too.
“I’ll give you much more than my word,” I’d told him, fumbling in the alley looking for a jagged tool to seal my fate. I remember how my fingers curled around a shard of broken glass, shaking as I lifted my sleeve to carve the bloodrite symbol into my arm. Beau watched in horror, then offered his own.
The wound flowed with magic, healing slowly as I pressed it against his skin and promised myself to him. We stayed there for a moment, choosing to trust each other despite the risks. When the rite was complete, I licked my venom onto my thumb and swiped it across his cut, healing him in an instant.
He’d dragged me across the dirty ground, thrown me into thetrunk of his car, and taken me to a boarded-up house on the outskirts of town, returning every few days with a carton or two of pig blood to feed me. It was rancid, but it kept me alive. At home in Italy, I had dined on the finest humans, kept at the palace and fed on a diet of luxurious food and wine, but here in America, I was a lowly parasite reduced to drinking from shit-soaked farm animals.
My homeland and the life I once lived call to me every day, but I know that nothing will ever be the same again, so I have no choice but to be strong again and take it back by force.
“You were in real bad shape,” Beau says, interrupting my thoughts. “I didn’t think you’d make it.”
“Lucky for you, I did.”
He huffs. “I’m not so sure about that.”
I push my untouched coffee aside and lean forward, my hands flat on the table between us. “If my family finds out that I’m still alive before I can get to them, they’ll come for me first, and they’ll come for everyone I care about.” Beau’s eyebrow rises, but he doesn’t interrupt. “There’s a girl… She’s special. She’s going to help bring Megan home, but when she does, she’ll be in danger. I need you to promise me that you’ll protect her if I’m gone.”