6. The Warrior

The evening wears on, and the house stirs. Charlee is already tending to Wren. I am glad that one of my sisters is staying locally with us. I can’t imagine how it would have been if she had woken to a bunch of vampire men lurking about. It likely would have been more unsettling, at least.

Charlee herself is enthralled with having someone to dote on. In her one hundred and fifty years as a vampire, she has clung more to fashion than anything else. She designs clothes and runs shops in various cities. Now she has a living doll three rooms away. Her kindness and attention to detail make her the perfect stylist. She always listens to what the person she is helping wants.

When she first said makeup, I was a bit nervous. Charlee is beautiful, true, but her beauty includes high drama everything. Wren doesn’t seem to be that kind of woman, if her tastes still match what they were when she was alive, then I am correct. Tonight she looks much the same as the day before. Even in its simplicity, it is enough to take my breath away.

So to speak.

Alex, Ray, and Derek are already outside building a bonfire. I am in the kitchen fixing everyone up a snack for the evening. Chandra and Zach are helping Rolando in the study. My thoughts drift to Leland, our coven leader, and my maker. He is traveling at the moment, meeting with some other high-level vampires, going over things like territory lines, and reporting the number of vampires in the area. He is responsible for most of the area, and his responsibilities are numerous. He has to help keep a lid on our existence and punish those unwilling to comply.

Getting permission from the coven leader before creating a new vampire isn”t strictly required, especially when finding one’s mate, but I am still nervous about his return. Nervous for him to meet her.

To meet Wren.

My beloved.

Shaking my head, I stuff my feelings down again and look up as Zach and Chandra go outside. Charlee and Wren are already out there, and I can hear Charlee’s loud voice as she directs and supervises the bonfire building. I smile at the tray holding everyone’s blood supply for the evening, and Rolando stops beside me.

“Answer me a question, Oz,” He says, leaning against the counter.

His tone is almost accusatory. I look up. Being the first vampire I ever made, Rolando probably knows me better than I know myself. We’ve been together for over three hundred years. Always the inquisitive and scholarly type, he has a quiet disposition about him. Studying people and things, not unlike myself, so it makes sense that he could read me better than others. Though it doesn’t mean I have to like it.

“What’s that?” I pull my eyes away from his deep brown ones. I think I know where this is going.

“Wren.” Just her name, a statement.

It is enough to make my jaw tense.

I can tell what he is getting at, but I”m not going to help him. I eye the door, and it is shut now. Chandra closed it as he joined the group outside. We are talking softly enough that no one should overhear us, at least not over the commotion going on outside.

“You come home with her bruised and bloody, a vampire in the making, and you tell me you heard her thoughts in your head.” All true. “We both know that makes her your mate, so why are you keeping your distance? What gives?”

Two nights since she’s woken, and he knows I have stayed out of my room, far away from the temptation to give in to physical wants and cravings.

“I’d like to know the answer to that myself,” I jump, freaking Charlee managed to sneak up on me. Rolando laughs at me silently, and I flash him a withering look. What if Wren had overheard? The door is still shut. She is probably too distracted with the rest of the guys.

“Look, I don’t want to pressure her into anything. She just woke up, found out she’s a vampire, and can’t remember a thing about her past. If we’re going to be together, I want her to choose me because she wants me, not just because of something like fate or whatever decided for us.” It is as simple as that. “If she gets her memory back, I’ll tell her.”

Charlee narrowed her eyes. “And if she doesn’t?”

I run a hand through my hair. I dislike the thought that she might never recover the memories of her past. “I suppose then I’ll woo her.”

Rolando claps me on the shoulder. “Woo her, be her knight in shining armor?” he teases.

“Shut up,” I mumble, grabbing the completed tray and heading for the door. “Not a word, either of you,” I warn, stepping outside and joining the group at the fire pit.

The fire itself is something to behold. Wood piled high, and while this may not be considered “safe” by forest ranger standards, we are private enough that they won’t notice it out here. We have the added benefit of being vampires and can stop a fire from spreading if anything happens.

Wren is sandwiched between Charlee and me, and I can feel the warmth pouring off of her. When she looks at me, her eyes take my breath away. Their color looks so much like the storm clouds I love watching. A light breeze wafts the scent of lemongrass to me from her hair. She has been using my things in the bathroom, and having her smell like me is intoxicating and arousing. I shift my legs like a pubescent boy.

“I have to know,” she said, grinning at the antics of the triplets. “How did all three of you come to be vampires?”

Charlee whistles and waves her arms getting Zach and Chandra to quit muttering off to the side by themselves and join the group.

Rolando even grows more attentive. He loves when we tell our origins, and it gives him more things to add to the archives. Granted, he knows precisely why the three were turned together. Hearing them recount the tale with more drama and flair than the last time is entertaining. The long and short of it is Tuberculosis. Leland and I had been passing through when we found the brothers. Each at death’s door. Their parents were already taken by it, dead, and buried in the yard of their small farm. It seemed like they’d only had hours left. The decision had been easy for Leland, he hated to see people suffer.

It makes me think of what his reaction will be to meeting Wren. Will he praise me for saving her or condemn me for taking her choice away? Not that she had been in a position to make a decision. Attributing the nerves to being something more akin to introducing your partner to your parents, I try to push the doubt from my mind. There is no reason Leland won’t love Wren as a daughter. Especially since he knows she is my mate.

I still want to hold off on directly revealing that tidbit of information to her. It seems unfair to hold her to fate when she doesn’t know who she is.

Wren’s stormy gray eyes look up at me, and the conversations of now come rushing back to the forefront of my mind. It must be my turn to divulge how I became a vampire. A tale I am well practiced in telling. I take a long stick about as thick as two fingers and place the tip barely in the fire. Letting the wood smoke and embers set into it, but not allowing it to fully blaze in flame. “In 1291, I was born the third son of a nobleman in England. Being third in line for my father’s title, I did what most “spares” did and set my sights on knighthood.”

Taking the stick, I sketch a winding path, a cart, and a few stick figures in the dirt. I describe my training in detail. How grueling it had been, and how I received no special treatment. When I joined, I was in the same rank as the peasant boy beside me. My life was valued just as much.

I loved it.

I relive how I was kicked, punched, sliced with swords, bashed with shields, and earned my fair share of concussions. My armor was dinged and dirty more often than not, and by the time I was twenty-six, I’d made a small name for myself. I was proud, too proud, certainly. Being a knight ensured I had enough food, even as famine crept across the lands. People began turning on each other for whatever meager supplies they had.

“The day I died, I did so in a noble pursuit. I died with honor.” Charlee is watching me with her head on her knees. She always loves this story. Rolando is scribbling away in his notebook. The triplets stare into the flames. Zach and Chandra close their eyes, possibly imagining the scene themselves.

Wren, however, is listening with rapt attention. Eying my crude drawing as I continue my story.

“I was riding down a road between towns and happened across a merchant being raided by thieves. He was an older man, and the four easily overcame him. I raced to aid him but was nowhere near fast enough.” I draw an X over the merchant’s stick figure.

“That’s when I, and the thieves, noticed his daughter. Leaping from my horse, I quickly impaled the man who’d reached the girl first. He pinned her to the ground, and we all know his intentions.…” I mark out the figure closest to the representation of me.

“I faced the other three men, each bearing a weapon, and the girl kept herself behind me. I wouldn’t let them pass. I couldn’t. I was furious with these despicable excuses for men and let them know it. Antagonizing them into making a mistake.” I place an X on each one slowly. “The fight itself is a blur now. Most of my fights relied heavily on muscle memory from training. I made quick work of the attackers and was happy to have cut them down.”

Yet I had been careless. I slowly place an X on myself.

“One of them had managed to jam a blade through a weak point in my chain mail. The girl fled, insisting she would go for help, and as the sun set on the road, I knew I would die. I’d accepted it. Staring up at the night sky, I held my blood in as best as possible, but I felt my limbs growing cold. Leland came when it was almost too late. And he asked me the same question he asks everyone he’s ever turned.”

I do my best imitation of my maker. “He said to me, ‘Sir, would you like to live?’ I was hanging on by a thread, and trying to talk sent me spiraling into a coughing fit.” I can see Charlee and Rolando share a look between them. Charlee looks like she is fighting off the giggles. They knew precisely what Leland had said, and I’d left out of my story. I was well known in the area, and he had used my full name to address me. I never liked my name and see no point in bringing it up.

“I sputtered up blood, but he asked me again if I wanted to live. I finally croaked out a ‘yes,’ thinking I was making a deal with the Devil himself. He turned me right there on the road and carried me away. I never did find out if the girl came back for me….” I place an X over her figure now. She is long since dead.

Leland always laughs when I tell the part of the story where I thought he was the Devil. Because I was wrong, so damn wrong. He is filled with kindness, respect, and empathy. I am the first human he ever turned, and I”ve stuck by his side all of these centuries because his values mirror mine.

Looking back at Wren now, it is like the rest of the world has faded away. I try to stay out of her head, I do. But her thoughts are so loud when she thinks about me. About my lips, about what it would feel like to twist her hands up in my hair and press herself against me. She wonders what my hands would feel like on her skin and if I am a generous lover as she pictures.

I blink and force myself to look away, my body reacting to her attraction. I want so badly to tell her. It isn’t honorable to do so. I can’t justify taking advantage of our bond until we know each other better or she had her memories. Until then, I will gladly suffer in silence.

Wishing everyone a peaceful sleep, I leave to go inside. Part of me notices that Wren gets up and follows me in. I want to turn around and pin her to the wall so badly. I know she wants me to, it is the way of the bond, but I underestimated how difficult it would be to fight it. That is with me knowing what is happening. She is stuck under its thrall with no idea what is causing it.

“Oz,” her soft voice comes, grasping my hand and stopping me dead in my tracks.

Face controlled, I turn to look at her. Her hair is now piled high in a messy bun. The sweater she picked out clings to her subtle curves. “Yes?”

“I wanted to ask you about the figurines in your room.”

I can’t help but grin. “Ah, yes, my sculptures?”

Returning the smile, Wren gives me the most curious look. “You made those?”

Bobbing my head, unable to look the least bit sheepish, “I did. I’ve been smithing for a few centuries now and found I have a knack for making little trinkets.”

She seems to like that.

“Do you think you could show me the process? They’re beautiful, and I’d love to see how it’s done.”

“Of course, little bird.” When she throws her arms around me this time, I am entirely unprepared but thoroughly satisfied. Her warmth, her tenderness, her kindness. I could soak up every last drop that she has. I place a gentle kiss on her hair, reveling in the fact that she still smells like me.

It is getting harder and harder to resist the call of the bond, and I worry I will give in sooner rather than later.