Bound in Blood (Broken Bloodlines Book 3)
Bound in Blood: Chapter 34

Ophelia’s fingertips skate over my ribs, and she stares down at me, her chin resting on her hand as she holds herself up on her elbow. “I know he said he hates you, Alexandros, but it isn’t true.”

“Are you reading my mind, little one?” She came in here shortly after I did to check on me. The weight of all their concern emanated from the next room, and it is both touching and mildly claustrophobic.

“No. I don’t have to. I can feel your sadness and guilt eating away at you.” She presses a kiss to my chest. “And I would feel that even without our bond.”

I roll onto my side and stare at her, brushing my knuckles over her cheek. Her heart is so pure, she cannot comprehend a son hating his father. “How can you be so sure of what he feels, agápi mou?”

“Because he was there in the cave, Alexandros. Watching over you. He said you had many enemies and that he knew I’d come, but he was protecting you until I got there. Why would he do that if he hated you?”

I cup her face in my hand. “I know you see the best in everyone, Ophelia, and it is one of the many things I love about you. But it is more probable he was lying to mask his true intentions.”

“But why? Why say that at all? What was his intention if he left as soon as I freed you from the cage? He had a chance to attack when my guard was down and you were weak, and he didn’t take it.” Her cheeks darken with the strength of her indignation.

“Might I remind you that you were carrying Dragonfyre at the time, agápi mou. He would have been burned alive had he even tried.”

“So why bother waiting around to help me free you? He saw I had the Dragonfyre. Why not let me flail around trying to figure it out for myself? And why help us in Giorgios’s fortress?” She goes on, her skin growing more flushed with each second. “This may all be new to me, Alexandros, but I am not an idiot.” Anger creeps into her tone now.

Where the hell has this come from? My eyes narrow on her face, and my palm twitches, eager to address her defiance. “I have never once given any indication that I think you anything but intelligent, Ophelia. Do not use my justified concern to make such ludicrous accusations.”

“Then why do you not trust my judgment the way I trust yours? You are always telling me that an elementai’s power is rooted in emotion, so why is it you think I can’t detect emotions in others? Lucian may be confused and angry and a whole host of other things, but he does not hate you.”

Her pout is adorable and frustrating. Hauling her over my knee and spanking her for her insolence does not seem even mildly appropriate when we are faced with such imminent danger. But one day … I groan as my cock stiffens.

“Really? Right now?” She shakes her head, still annoyed with me but already softening.

“Always when you are near me, little one. Especially when I provoke such passion in you. Do not pretend that me wanting to fuck you when you are so full of fire surprises you.”

Her lips twitch, but she manages to keep a smile from spreading across her face. “Lucian?” she says, bringing us back to the conversation she initiated.

I let out a sigh of frustration. “I believe it is complicated, and whilst I am convinced he was not lying when he told me he despises me⁠—”

“He does not⁠—”

I press a finger to her lips. “That does not mean he does not feel all manner of other emotions where I am concerned, little one.”

Her expression softens. “So you’re willing to accept that some part of him still loves you?”

I am not sure I am prepared to make quite that bold an admission, no matter how much she craves it. And no matter how much I wish it were true.

“Just like you still love him, even after everything he did.”

Her words slice their way into my heart, burrowing into its deepest recesses where I keep my firstborn buried. “How do you do that to me, agápi mou?”

Her eyelashes flutter. “Do what?”

“Make me feel things I have spent the last five centuries conditioning myself not to feel?”

She shrugs. “Just another one of my superpowers, I guess.”

I press my lips to hers and roll on top of her, wanting to forget about everything that was dredged up by seeing Lucian again, if only for a short time. Axl, Xavier, and Malachi shout at the basketball game in the next room, and I once again replace myself longing for an ordinary life—at least as ordinary of one as four vampires in love with one elementai can have. The realization that we can never have such a thing, except in tiny snatched moments like this, only makes the despair inside me grow stronger.

I love you. Ophelia’s voice in my head anchors me back to her and this moment.

And I you, agápi mou. I deepen our kiss and focus only on her and the feel of her supple body underneath mine. Her taste. Her scent. Her velvety smooth skin. How she yields to me so easily, at least with her body, at the slightest pressure. Ophelia gives me everything I need whilst I give her everything I am.