His Slave Her Master

Part 35 Lies

I shook Elba's slim hand.

The shake was gentle, yet firm. The exact way I would describe the woman before me. From where I stood, I could smell the tanginess of her perfume with an underline of something sweet.

"You're just as beautiful as the enchantress said you would be." Elba said sweetly. "Well, before she died."

I cleared my throat. "Nice to meet you?"

I had no idea Val had a sister. Why didn't he tell me? They didn't even look alike!

"Stop your lies, Elba." Valentino said from behind me and I tensed. "She's not my sister."

Elba rolled her eyes. "Technically, I'm not your sister. Technically."

"I don't follow." I admitted, finally giving in and turning to Valentino. He was stood so closely to me that I could kiss him if I wanted. "Who is she?"

"She's not my sister," Val said, giving Elba a cold look, "because neither of us have parents. The Ox's were created, not birthed. At least, the first were."

A memory, so faded it it was hard to recall flashed in my mind.

"Valentino was once an Ox like us. He was one of the first to be created, whilst my sister and I were born into our heritage."

If only I had been paying more attention to Marla's words, that way I would have understood straight away. Elba, like Valentino, is one of the first Ox's created who banished the ancient ones long ago.

"How many are there?" I asked, curios to know.

Elba grinned. "Just us."

I swallowed. If it had only taken the two of them to banish the ancient ones, then how powerful were they?

"We had help." Valentino said coolly, sending daggers at Elba. "The enchantresses and their kind acted also."

"Samira and Kadence's mother?"

Valentino nodded. "She was the one who created us out of the earth. It took everything she had. She became magic-less afterwards and went to have children, leaving the role to Emir."

No wonder Samira was so dedicated on me helping Valentino. Her mother had given everything to make him who he is. It must have been heartbreaking to watch him be changed into a monster.

Valentino glanced at me, as if he could hear my thoughts.

"And since then?" I said, going to sit on the sofa. Valentino watched my every step intently but I ignored him.

Elba's face dropped slightly, her grey eyes darkening the way Valentino's sometimes did. "Once the ancient ones were banished, I married." I could practically hear the heartbreak in her voice. "She was something very special indeed. I loved her more than anything, but...she was chosen for much greater things.

By this point, the two of us had moved out here, built this place ourselves. Then she told me."

Elba eyes darkened to obsidian. "When I had met her, I knew what she was. I kept her secret, knowing that my people would question her. That he," she throws a look at Val who was silently listening, "would question how she came to this land. I loved her enough that I let it be, thinking that perhaps she was a gift for banishing the ancient ones." She laughs bitterly. "Oh, how I was wrong.

I don't think she was planning on telling me, but felt she had to after I walked in on her speaking to the moon." She shakes her head. "I had been confused, upset, as one would react. I wanted to leave, go and find Val and tell him everything that had happened. How I had married a human."

It was impossible to conceal the shock from my face.

"Yes, a human. Her name had been Gina, the original vampire kings wife."

This time I gasped, looking straight to Valentino to see that he was staring at the ground, lost in memory.

"When she told me she had been brought to this world by the vampire King and had escaped, I was shocked. I asked her why she had married me, or at least pretended, to marry me, when she was already betrothed to the King. She said that she didn't love him, that she had been taken against her will. She had managed to escape, how, I will never know. And by some miracle we crossed paths."

Elba took a deep breath. "I forgave her for not telling me. I knew that she was just scared and wanted to forget about everything that had happened. So, we agreed to go on as normal, only she started acting even more strange. When I approached her about taking to the moon, she had blabbed on about the voices that spoke to her at night. I thought she was going crazy, that because she was human, being brought to this world had turned her mad.

Then, she became violent, almost erratic. I knew that she was no longer the girl I had fallen in love with. And when she fled that night, I looked the other way and pretended that my love for her had never existed."

Elba licked her dry lips, her bottom lip wobbling slightly, the only sign that she was upset. "It was only a few months later when I discovered that she and the vampire King had married. I was hurt and in a rage and refused to go back to my people. I stayed here to live and die in my misery.

Years past, so many I lost count. We were only young when we met, her and I. Barley over fifteen. I thought that she would be my first love, and that I would find another as I grew older. But living in the middle of nowhere with no contact to the outside world can prove to make things difficult.

By this point it had now been twenty years. I had been alone for so long that when I got an urgent knock on my door one night, I was certain it was death coming for me.

But no, it was a brother I was near to forgetting and a young Ox woman who had been barley a teenager when I left." Again, she looked up at Val, but instead of in scorn, she looked up at him with affection. "He told me everything that had happened. About Gina and her plans. How the ancient ones promised to kill our tribe if he did not cooperate. I felt I was to blame, that if I had just helped Gina, she would never have left and Val wouldn't never have been in the situation.

But that was before I caught Valentino talking to the moon the way she once had. He then had to explain to me how the ancient ones had control over both him and Gina. How, no matter what, there was nothing to be done, there was no way in saving either of them.

That night, they left. And here I have stayed, waiting for his return." Elba cracked a smile and I was almost relieved. "Only, now he has a beautiful wife and child on the way."

My mind struggled to comprehend all that I had been told. "Do you still love her?"

Elba shrugged. "It's hard to say. So many years have gone by now, and she has done so many things that I don't really see the girl I once loved anymore."

"But," Elba continued, "I think the real question you should be asking, is why are you here?"

She looked up at Valentino expectantly. I looked towards him also, surprised to find anger in his golden eyes.

"We had come for a place to take shelter," he said in a mocking tone that had my heart rate picking up in alarm, "but then I came across these." From his back pocket, he pulled out a hand full of yellow papers and slammed them onto the table with so much force I thought the wood would give. "Where is she, Elba?"

My stomach dropped at his words. By the look of pure fury on my husbands face, and the shocked slightly frightened look on Elba's, they could only be talking about one person.

Gina. She was here.