Page 67 of The Forsaken Vampire

He still didn’t look at me. “Sleep. I’ll stay on watch.”

“You haven’t slept in two days—”

“I appreciate your concern, but it’s misplaced.”

My eyes moved to the fire in front of me, treasuring the searing heat that filled the inside of the cloak and warmed my body. The stone beneath my ass was still cold, but soon, the fire would heat that too. I didn’t want a confrontation with a yeti, but I was so cold that I was willing to take the risk. “Why did you save me?”

“I told you I needed a ship.”

“You didn’t need one before?”

“Rancor promised me voyage as part of the deal. He lied.”

“But you took me. So you didn’t complete your end of the deal either.”

He turned to look at me. “I delivered you into their hands as promised. The task was completed. Now, my needs have changed, so our interests are no longer aligned. I owe them nothing.”

“So, if you didn’t need a ship, you would have left me there to die?”

He looked away.

“They wouldn’t have stripped me naked and tied me up like that if they intended to let me go—and we both know it.”

He remained focused on our surroundings despite the intensity of our conversation.

“So, if I couldn’t get you a ship, I would have been raped, tortured, and killed…” Heartless wasn’t the right word to describe him. He was barbaric, leaving me to a horrible fate without a burden on his conscience.

“Just be grateful that our interests are aligned.”

17

HUNTLEY

Delacroix was in sight from the sky, and I could already feel the heat before we landed. My knuckles thawed in their gloves, my skin felt less dry as the humidity struck my body. The windows of the castle reflected the sunlight in a prominent glare, making it look like it was on fire.

I flew to the clearing and landed Storm, Ian landing Pyre beside me. I dropped to the ground, gave Storm a pat on the snout, and then headed toward the gate of the castle, knowing my wife would be running down the hill from the castle any second now.

Ian came to my side, and silently, we moved past the guards at the gate.

That was when I spotted Ivory appear at the top, running at full speed down the path toward me.

I grinned when I saw her, running right to me, dressed in her uniform like the queen that she was. A part of me felt bad that Ian had to witness something that he’d lost, but I was too happy about seeing her to care.

But when she drew closer, I realized this wasn’t a happy moment.

Her face…it was contorted in a way I’d never seen before.

It made me stop in my tracks.

She made it to me, but instead of jumping into my arms and crushing her mouth against mine, she nearly broke down in sobs. “Someone took Harlow!” Out of breath because she had sprinted all the way from the castle to tell me, she gripped her side like there was a stitch in it.

A few seconds passed as my thoughts remained blank, my mind protecting me from the horror I couldn’t face. But the mercy was short-lived, and the ugly truth hit me like a sledgehammer right against my chest.

I digested that news as a victim, not as a king who would burn the world to the ground in the name of treason. I stared at my wife as my body became immobile, the agony so unspeakable.

Ian stood beside us and said nothing, equally horrified.

The only reason I snapped out of it was because of the tears in my wife’s eyes, the way she was barely holding on, sick from the toxicity of this information. She was too weak to handle this, too broken to be the fierce soldier she was.