Bound in Blood (Broken Bloodlines Book 3)
Bound in Blood: Chapter 4

My eyes open to warmth and familiarity. Ophelia’s soft body is curled against mine, her face nestled into my chest, with Malachi’s hard torso at my back and Axl’s face on the pillow next to me. The feeling of contentment lasts for all of half a second before my entire world comes crashing down around me and a fresh new agony engulfs me like a forest fire. He’s gone. Just like that. All his power and his knowledge and his … I choke down a sob. Everything he was—it’s gone. And soon, we will be too. It all hurts so fucking much I can’t breathe.

Ophelia’s fingertips skate over my chest before landing on the place directly above my heart, as though she’s still checking that I have one. I do, even if it feels broken beyond all repair.

“Xavier.” Her warm breath rushes over my skin, reminding me I’m alive, and soon her pain merges with my own, swirling into one raging torrent of grief.

Malachi and Axl must feel it because they stir awake. It takes but a few moments for the anguish to soak through the room like a sponge soaking up water.

I throw back the covers. “I need to get the fuck out of this room and do something. Or at least feel like we’re doing something.”

Axl and Malachi voice their agreement, but Ophelia remains silent. Her eyes are filled with tears, their tracks carved into her pink cheeks. She closes her eyes.

“Ophelia?” My concern for her fate is so much greater than for my own.

She screws her eyes closed.

Axl traces his fingertips across the palm of her outstretched hand. “Princess?”

“I’m … I’m …” She lets out a frustrated growl and angrily scrubs the tears from her reddened cheeks. “I was trying to use my powers, but they won’t work. Not even a little.”

“It’s the hallowed ground thing,” Axl says. “We never would have brought you here if we’d known.”

She shakes her head and pushes herself out of bed. “I should have realized. I knew about the holy ground. Kai and I read about it, but I had no idea Giorgios’s fortress would be built on an old temple.”

I pull her into my arms and rest my lips on top of her head. “None of us did, Cupcake.”

“I should have asked.”

Axl runs a hand through his hair. “Maybe we all should have asked, but the reality is that we were in shock, and Giorgios was there telling us we had to leave. We did what we thought was best. And now we have to make the best of it.”

“Make the best of it how?” Malachi asks.

“For a start, we can go ask Giorgios what the fuck is going on. Why did Lucian …” He shakes his head hard, unable to say the words aloud. “We can start with some answers.”

After we get dressed, we make our way downstairs to replace Giorgios sitting alone in what appears to be his study. The walls are lined with shelves upon shelves of books, a large wooden antique globe fills one corner, and a vast mahogany desk, piled high with more books, dominates the center of the room.

He looks up from the book he was poring over. “Good morning. Did you sleep well?”

I crack my neck. “I guess.”

Ophelia murmurs something, but we’re all too distracted to be making small talk.

“We want to do something,” Axl snaps, nervous energy radiating from him.

Giorgios closes his book and arches a dark eyebrow. “Such as?”

“Such as replaceing Lucian⁠—”

“And tearing his fucking head off,” I add with a vicious snarl.

With a low hum, Giorgios nods and indicates the small sofa off to the side of the room. “Please take a seat.”

The four of us squash onto it with Ophelia perched on Malachi’s lap. “I can assure you that searching for Lucian is my top priority, along with keeping you all safe.”

“And what can we do to help?” Axl asks.

Giorgios strokes his long fingers through his beard. “At this stage, nothing, I am afraid. Lucian is skilled and powerful. Skilled enough to have eluded his own father for over five hundred years. Skilled enough to have lured the most powerful vampire alive into a trap neither of us saw coming, and then to take his head before Alexandros could do a thing to stop him.”

Ophelia’s pain rips through all of us, and I gasp at the intensity, glaring at the man in front of us. Did he have to be so callous in the way he talked about his death?

Giorgios sighs. “I am sorry for my bluntness, Ophelia, but this is the awful truth we must face. Lucian Drakos must be hunted and killed, but in order to do that, we must replace him. You four must give me the time and space to do so using whatever means I have. It is safer and less conspicuous if I make my inquiries alone. There are people in the old country who must know of his whereabouts. I will replace the man who killed my brother, but none of you are equipped to face him right now.”

My anger threatens to boil over. I hate feeling this useless. This completely helpless. “And in the meantime, we do what? Sit around here and wait for him to replace Ophelia?”

“This is the safest place in the world for all of you. Lucian will not get past these walls, I assure you. My guards are all my sireds, some of them former Ruby Dragon members. They are highly skilled and trained.” I can’t help but wonder if he’s telling us this to warn us rather than make us feel safe, but I don’t challenge him on it and allow him to continue. “And when he finally reveals himself, then we will be ready for him.”

“But we don’t have the time to sit around and wait to fucking die!” Axl shouts, and Ophelia flinches so hard that he immediately pulls her onto his lap and wraps her in his arms, murmuring his apologies for frightening her.

“Then that is your task, at least until I can replace some more information about Lucian’s whereabouts. You must replace a cure for the deterioration. My library is at your disposal. The books on these shelves are yours to peruse. Please, do all the research you can.”

“Why did he kill him?” Ophelia’s voice is quiet and calm but loaded with a conviction that fills me with pride.

“Pardon?” Giorgios asks, but we all know he heard her.

“Why did he kill him after all this time? Why now?”

Giorgios swallows hard and glances between Malachi, Xavier, and me. When we don’t speak, he finally does. “Surely you know the reason why, Ophelia.”

“Because of me?” Her voice is a mere whisper.

“Yes, because of you,” he says with a solemn nod.

I wind my fingers in her hair, if only to stop myself from going for Giorgios’s throat. “No, not because of you, Cupcake,” I assure her. “Because he is a twisted fuck, that’s why.” Malachi offers her similar assurances while Axl kisses a lone tear from her cheek.

I hate every single fucking thing about this. Every single fucking thing.

“Of course he is responsible for his atrocious act.” Giorgios sighs. “But there is not a doubt in my mind that he did what he did to get to you. Lucian has been to Montridge. He knows who and what you are, Ophelia.”

I sit up straighter and pay closer attention.

Ophelia scrubs her cheeks with the sleeves of her sweater. “He’s been to Montridge? When?”

“When the young wolf girl was killed. That was Lucian.” Giorgios frowns. “Did Alexandros not tell you this?”

I refuse to believe him. Alexandros would never have kept such important information from us. “If he was actually there, close to Ophelia, Alexandros would have told us.”

He scoffs. “Of course, because he has never kept secrets from you before, has he?”

Rage explodes inside me, propelling me up from the sofa and halfway across the room until I have my hands planted flat on the mahogany desk and my teeth bared. “Do not dare to speak ill of him in front of me.”

He growls right back, rolling his neck. “I am simply pointing out that he has kept things from you before, Xavier, not that he was at fault for doing so. Now sit down!”

“Xavier, please.” Ophelia’s sweet voice soothes the feral beast inside of me enough that I return to my seat on the couch beside them.

“How do you know he was there at Montridge?” Malachi asks, keeping a lid on his temper much more effectively than I have, even as I feel his simmering beneath the surface. “The professor told us he thought he might be connected to the attack on the wolf girl, but not that he was there.”

“Alexandros told me so. That Lucian was responsible for warping the two vampires’ minds and causing the girl’s death. But Lucian was there. Watching. Waiting for his moment to strike. I wonder if he was at Montridge the night before last and he followed us, sensing his chance to attack his father whilst he was away from the protection of the university.” He purses his lips like he’s deep in thought, and I comb my memories of the day the wolf girl was killed, trying to remember what exactly Alexandros told us. But it doesn’t matter what he said—anything he did was to protect us. To protect Ophelia.

“What do you think he wants with me?” Ophelia laces her fingers through mine, and when I look up, I see she’s done the same with Malachi. With her in Axl’s lap, she’s touching all of us.

Giorgios looks puzzled, his expression almost amused. “He wants what all magical creatures want from you, Ophelia. Your power.”

“But my power is mine. Surely no one else can have it.”

He makes his way over to us and cups her chin in his hand. Tilting her head back, he forces her to look at him. Only Malachi using the bond to tell us we can’t afford to make a scene when Ophelia is vulnerable stops Axl and me from wrenching Giorgios’s arm from its socket. “You have much to learn, Ophelia. Your power is so raw, so new, that it can easily be manipulated.”

“But how?” she whispers.

His eyes narrow. “If Alexandros were here, would you not crumble this mountain to dust if he asked you to? If he told you it was necessary?”

Her slender throat works as she swallows. She doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t need to.

“A bond is a powerful thing, Ophelia. It tricks the brain into believing all manner of things that are not true. For instance, leading you to believe that the mere chemical reaction that comes with sharing a vampire’s blood is something deep and meaningful.”

“It fucking is,” I say, snarling, and Giorgios glares in my direction.

Xavier, he’s going to tear your fucking head off if you don’t stop. Now, for the love of fuck, calm down. Malachi growls the warning in my head.

But my heart is racing and blood is rushing in my ears. Do you really expect me to sit here and listen to this shit? Let him fill her head with this shit?

She doesn’t believe it, and you know it. Just let him say his piece and we can get out of here.

“Regardless, Xavier, it is what many of our kind hold to be true.” Giorgios redirects his attention to Ophelia. “That what you believe to be love or fate is merely vampire evolution at work in its purest form. Both vampire and elementai are slaves to the bond once it is in place, and blood is the drug which feeds the addiction. With Alexandros gone and your bond severed, there is space for a new bond. A new love for whom you would burn the world to ash if he asked you nicely enough.”

“The fuck she would,” Axl snaps, but Giorgios keeps his attention on Ophelia.

Her lip trembles, and she shakes her head. “No. It’s not only a vampire blood thing. It’s real. I love them. He loved me. They love me.”

Yes we fucking do. Who the fuck does he think he is trying to convince her otherwise?

Giorgios’s smug, patronizing smile makes me wants to punch his fangs down his throat. “I am sure that is also true, sweet Ophelia. Which is why you cannot trust anyone but the people in this room. Do you understand me?”

She nods, her lip still quivering.

He straightens his jacket. “Lunch will be served in the dining room at one. Fresh human blood is delivered here every day at noon.” Without a backward glance, he strides from the room, and as soon as he’s gone, Ophelia looks between the three of us, her eyes wet with tears.

I speak before she has a chance to. “He was fucking wrong, Cupcake. We all love you. We fucking adore you, and Alexandros did too. If you believe anything in your entire life, then please believe that.”

She nods, a shaky smile spreading over her lips. “I do believe that.”

Axl kisses her forehead. “Good girl,” he mumbles.

Malachi squeezes her tighter and taps her on the thigh. “I think we should check out this library. It will give us something to focus on.”

I look to Axl. Books have never really been our thing. “Maybe you and I should check this place out a little more? See what we’re dealing with?”

He nods his agreement, and we jump up, eager to be doing something productive. I kiss Ophelia and lick the salty residue from her lips. “No more tears today, okay, Cupcake? We’re gonna fix everything, all right?” I don’t believe it for a second, but it breaks my heart to see her cry.

She nods. “Promise.”

Axl and I leave the study and go in search of an exit. “Can you believe that shit?” he growls as soon as we’re out of earshot. “Trying to convince her we don’t love her. That Alexandros didn’t love her. What the fuck!”

“I know, but she doesn’t believe it,” I assure him.

He swallows hard and opens and closes his mouth a few times before he finally says, “Do you?” He speaks quietly, like he’s ashamed to say the words.

As he fucking should be. I stop in my tracks and glare at him. “What the fuck, Axl?”

He closes his eyes and blows out a breath. “Do you think this could be some weird ancient vampire mumbo jumbo? Because the way I feel about her, Xavier, it’s unnatural. I’m obsessed with her. And I’m more terrified by the thought of leaving her alone than I am of fucking dying. Is that fucking normal?”

I slap the back of his head. “No, it’s not fucking normal, dickface. It’s love. All-consuming, life-altering, soul-shattering love.”

He nods and looks away as his eyes glisten with tears. “I don’t want to lose her. I can’t even think about losing her without losing my ability to fucking breathe.”

Holy fucking shit, this hurts like a motherfucker. “We’re not gonna lose her,” I say, making a promise I have no idea how to keep.

I throw an arm around his shoulder, and we step outside into a courtyard. I look up to the sky. Not knowing who or what is up there, I make them an oath: Let me keep her and I will do anything you want. Anything. Because Ophelia Hart is ours, and we will not fucking lose her.