An Hour Later...
Eve Chambers...
It's official – Andrei is one of my fated-mates. I guess there is a part of me that hoped that my attraction to him would have been the one that was genuinely mine and not some chemical response to something that was predetermined.
That is what it feels like – that what I am feeling is nothing more than an inevitable surge of emotion that I have no control over.
"Sweetheart, if there is one thing that I can give you expert advice on – it's that love works best when you feel a little out of control." My dad had told me that one day when I was about eight years old and I had decided that boys were stupid and that when I was old enough, I would find a boy I could be friends with first and foremost because in my little mind, I believed that a friend would never hurt me, they would take care of me and my heart because the very idea of giving my heart to another human being was terrifying to me. Forget the fact that I had taken what my dad said literally about giving my heart to someone.
As I grew older, and the bullying continued, I clung to the notion that love wasn't worth it. I never imagined that I would find someone who could make me feel safe enough to trust fully. Not until Noah anyway.
It still hurt that he had trampled all over my heart the way he had, but at least it was real, it was actions of free-will. Not something that I felt like I had now.
Maybe it sounds like I am whining about it because I know that the men I am supposedly fated to seem like genuine men. It is clear that they put their faith into this fated-bond thing. That much is obvious with how easily and eagerly they have jumped into this mating-coven idea.
Will I ever get used to it?
Once we explained everything to Andrei and he left to pack up his things, I retreated to my room, which was easily noticeable as the master-suite and fully made up for me. Closing the double doors and flipping down on the bed, I stared at the curve of the ceiling with what looked like black shimmering glitter embedded in the stone. It was a beautiful contrast with the sand-stone. Carvings were etched into the stone in a beautiful swirling pattern. The place should have been cold if you think about all the stone and the slate flooring, but it was magically warm and comforting. It felt good to have a room to myself and given that it was now almost three-am, I was too exhausted to investigate my new domain, it would have to wait for morning, or afternoon depending on when I wake up because thank Heaven it is Saturday and there are no classes on Saturday.
Surprisingly, sleep envelopes me fairly easily as I succumb to the exhaustion from the past few hours, and I fall into a dream that feels more real than the waking world.
~~~~~~~~~~
Waking with a gasp and a jolt, I feel disorientated for a few moments until I feel a presence inside my room. Alert and focused I instantly found the midnight dark eyes of my professor as he gently tried to subdue me, "you were having a nightmare-" he offered by way of a reason as to why he was in my bedroom.
"I-I-"
"What did you see?" He asked me, his voice soft and understanding.
Out of all the guys I seem to be fated to, Kevin is the one who confuses me and excites me the most. I know that I shouldn't have favourites and I won't say that he is my favourite, I wouldn't do that to my other men but there is something about Kevin that speaks to my very essence in a way that I haven't ever experienced before.
"It was dark, everything felt like it was coated in a shadow that bled the light and colour from everything, almost like it had sucked the colour and vibrancy out of everything-" I started to explain and he just nodded, encouraging me to continue, "I was outside I think, somewhere I have never been before. There were mountains on every side of me, the land was barren, again like there was no life to it, no touches of colour which should have been there on the hard ground or even the sky-" I continued as the dream clung to the edges of my consciousness, making me feel off kilter. "I could hear the beating of wings and it was getting closer and closer – I felt the unmistakable warning of being hunted. I started to run but there was nowhere to hide, the woods offered no coverage, there were no buildings anywhere. I didn't even see another person. I could feel the way the thing that was hunting me was toying with me – they wanted me scared and I played right into their hands-" I groaned, dropping my head into my hands.
"It's ok, Eve. You are safe now!" He offered, as he carefully slipped his hands over mine and gently pulled them away from my face, "nothing can reach you in here!"
"It felt so real though-"
"Yes. It always does -"
"You know what that was?"
"I suspect you were in Hell-" he explained, it was maybe that reason that I felt so drawn to him – he never sugar-coated things, he just gave me the facts and let me do what I needed to with it. And he always seemed to supportive and comforting at the same time, which is a rare trait in my experience.
"Hell? I was in Hell, Hell?"
"I believe so, the fact that you said everything felt grey and touched by shadow is a dead give-away. Hell, is exactly like that, because there is no life there, everything feels bleak and lifeless -"
"You sound like you have some experience -"
"I do," he nodded, "considering I was held prisoner there for over a century-"
"What?"
"There are things about me that made Lucian believe that I was the key to freeing him from the prison that is Hell!" He told me. "Things that I will explain at a later date but for now, is there anything else about the dream that you remember?"
What was his story?
I couldn't even begin to imagine what it must have felt like being held prisoner in Hell. From what I had seen it was not the realm of happiness and rainbows. It was almost as if all the life had been drained from it. It made me shudder.
"Claws, I could see claws attached to whatever it was that was stalking me-" I remembered, this was the first time I had dreamt of bat wings and claws since the night that I came into these powers.
Had I ended up in Hell, on that night too?
"Anything else?" He asked but I knew he was being polite because I could feel the familiar prickling sensation in my head when he skimmed my memories himself.
"Just the same words that he mutters when he is in my head-" the words echoed through my mind like a Spector clinging to the edges of my mind.
"Come to me?"
"Yes-" I nodded, the heat slowly left my body and with it came the chills that came after sweating so profusely as the body tried to regulate. "What is it?" I asked when I caught the troubled look on his handsome face.
"We need to put up some wards around the bunker," he explained, "there is no way he should have been able to penetrate your mind like this, not with the obsidian scattered through the stone-"
"Is that what the black flecks of glitter I see are?"
"Yes!" He nodded, still looking troubled. "And I think that it would be best if someone remains in this room with you at night-"
"Like a fucking babysitter? No thanks-"
"No, not like a babysitter. More like a guard -"
"That's semantics, Kevin. You can't dress a turd up and pass it for Gold. You are talking about having someone sitting in here every night while I sleep to ensure that a boo-boo doesn't upset me!" I charged and I had to admit a touch of the irritation was pulled from me when he smirked, "what is so funny?"
"Well, you are, my little Goddess!" He actually chuckled and I could listen to that sound for the rest of my life and feel content, "look I know that you are independent and I know that is something that you have had no option but to become but here is the thing about dreams like that one – they can become real so quickly that you have no time to react, how else do you think that they got me into Hell?"
Ok so that thought sobered me up really quick. If someone as powerful as Kevin felt could be pulled into Hell, then what chance did I stand at avoiding it?
Would it save my friends to just give up willingly?
"No!" Kevin growled angrily. "Offering yourself up to Lucian on a fucking plate is the wrong move and besides do you really think that any of us would ever allow it?" He was right in my face now and in a snap of my fingers, it was as if the air was sucked right out of the room.
Fear and the sense of being out of my depth was sucked right away as lust and desire raced through me. I was lost to the connection that had ignited between me and this man the moment that my eyes landed on him.
Was it the fated-bond that made it almost impossible to ignore?
It was irrational and it was consuming as I sucked a much-needed lungful of air into my lungs as I felt my pulse thump erratically around my body. Heat licked at the edges of my consciousness, and it was instantly clear that he was reacting to me the same as I was reacting to him.
Claim.
Mate.
Bite.
Words swam around my mind as if they were entirely foreign to me. And that was when I realised those weren't my thoughts. They were my professor's thoughts projecting into my mind.
Holy Frosty's blue balls! I was actually reading his thoughts.
Alex Tepes...
Life was supposed to go back to normal after watching Eve that one night. I was supposed to be able to forget her and the way she looked so amazing as she stripped out of her clothes; I was supposed to forget the way her flesh seemed to hold an unearthly glow that I believed came from her power and the way it appeared so soft and smooth, completely enticing that my fangs had dropped without warning. I was supposed to be able to forget the sound of her sweet voice and the way it embedded itself in my soul. I was supposed to be able to wipe the sweet scent of her that wrapped around my heart without warning and pulled me under her spell.
That's what it is – I am under her spell. The little witch has cast a spell over me. Now I am being tortured with thoughts of her.
Everywhere I turn she is there, like some sort of ghost just hovering around the edges of my vision. The scent of her – wild cherries and sweet vanilla clung to the air even long after she had passed through a space. The sound of her laugh haunted my dreams and coaxed a smile to even stretch my own lips.
Irrational need to be around her was growing stronger and stronger every day she was here. As a Vampire my need to be the one and only lover for my partner was an ingrained part of my DNA. Seeing her surrounded by men who seemed enamoured and happy to share her was not in my wheel-house and gave me the perfect excuse I needed to keep my distance. There is just no way on earth that I could be ok with her being intimate with another man if she were mine.
She is mine! My fated-mate.
A Vampire and a witch are not a good combination. Hell, a Vampire with anyone other than another Vampire wasn't a good idea. It is why the Legion has set the laws they did. It was only ever permitted if a fated-bond was triggered. Even then it was beyond rare for it to actually happen. So why me?
Why us?
What is so special about us that we have ended up bonded to one another?
I caught the way she looked at me in class the other day – her pulse raced and thumped against her flesh in a way that made my mouth water with the need to taste. The scent of her blood was decidedly darker than the scent of her soul – and it messed with my head because that is not something that other supes, or even humans possess. Their blood is the same scent as their soul, maybe a little muskier but it was the same.
Eve was different.
I can almost feel the power pushing at her restraints. And let me be clear; the restraints are absolutely not something that she should have mastered yet. It was certainly impressive that she had mastered that part of her new life so quickly. But the magic she possessed was so strong it was like she had a living force-field framing her body, it rippled the air around her like that which you can see just above asphalt on a scorching summer's day. It was distracting in ways that I hadn't expected, nor had I ever experienced before.
Watching her from a distance as she settled into life at the academy was hard because the pull of the mated-bond was not one that I know will be ignored forever. Eventually it will drive me crazy if I don't make my claim on her. But I am not like the witch or the shifter who seem to happily fawn over her without even caring what other people think about it, I am not the type of man who goes in for PDA or having a bunch of people up in my business. So, I will hold out on this bonding for as long as I comfortably can. Or at least that is what I am telling myself, but I can freely admit to myself that her reaction to me in Magical History class was like being hit by my own Vampire lust – it charged through my system with all of the power of a cyclone. Laying waste to my restraint, or at least trying to lay waste to it. I had fought harder than I ever have not to approach her.
Sitting behind her was as close as I would let myself get. The sweet scent of her invading my senses until I spent half the class with fangs descended and my cock straining against the zipper of my school-appointed trousers.
I wanted to reach out and touch her, even just to feel how soft her hair was because it looked so soft and smooth, almost inviting in ways that hair has never called to me before. I know it's the power of the bond yanking at me, I may just be as powerless as the witch and the mutt, but I will be further damned if I give into it as quickly as they clearly did.
Last night I had been out skulking in the woods, as I like to do sometimes. I find the call of isolation speaks to my broody nature. I like to spend time at the Whitman-Cottage, no one else will go near the place, stating that they think it is haunted or that they get a weird vibe from the place. I have no such qualms. I have heard that there is a secret room, but I have yet to find the space, but I am not overly invested in finding it. Not when I have the space to myself. I had been on my way to that very cottage last night when I heard her.
Eve. With the witch that seemed to willingly follow her around like a puppy dog, Nathan I believe his name is, the other two witches with her were fated-mates but it looked like they either weren't aware of that fact, or they simply weren't acting on it.
I slipped into the shadows of the trees before scrambling up one until I had a bird's-eye view, to find the shifter trotting along behind them but also sticking to the shadows. I watched the four witches approach my destination and I felt a measure of irritation as Eve opened the door as if she owned the place and held it open for her three friends to enter before she stepped in behind them. "Turn the lock, Eve!" The sound of Professor. Stoker's voice took me by surprise. And was only further surprised when the click of the lock engaging seemed to end my ability to eavesdrop as the only thing that I could hear was the faint whining of the mutt that was pacing the perimeter of the small cottage.
I couldn't help but wonder why they would have sealed the building from others' hearing. I mean it's not like there was a lot of foot traffic out here, in-fact if I am honest, I have only ever seen the shifter that was there sniffing around and maybe a couple of horse-shifters in the past. When I first arrived at the school, the cottage was known as a hangout spot, but it was almost like there was some sort of repellent that began to drive the students away. I never found myself repelled from the place. I might go as far as stating that I felt almost as if I belonged there. More than I felt that I belonged in the Vampire-dorm-house.
I'm not sure how long the group was inside the cottage, but it felt like forever before the lock unlatched and the four witches stumbled out into the forest, the door closing behind them as I watched the professor watch them from the small window before he turned and disappeared further into the small dwelling. I didn't need to check to know that the house was once again locked up. By the time I dropped from my perch in the tree, the witches and the shifter had gotten a fairly decent head start but that was fine, I could easily catch up to them, but first I moved to the cottage and moved around all the windows trying to locate the professor. Now, if I hadn't known that there was a hidden room somewhere, I would have been suspicious because he was nowhere in sight inside of the dwelling.
There was no point in me hanging out here because I was not getting inside so I turned and raced through the forest until I caught up to the group, who were talking so intently about moving into the cottage that they were completely unaware of the fact that they had a shifter and a Vampire hot on their tail.
They didn't talk about why they were moving in there, but I had to figure that it was something to do with Eve and her unusual powers. Not for the first time since I laid eyes on her I found myself wondering what she is because she is not just a witch. And that fact alone would make her a target.
Now here I am, in the tunnels under the campus and I am supposed to be on my way to class, but I have come to a halt outside of a side door that has never held any interest for me before. Everyone sees that door; it has always been there but I think we all assumed that it was simply a storage cupboard, but I can feel Eve's essence all over the entry-way. The pull at my core was pulsing so hard that I literally cannot move from my spot. I am stuck, much like someone might be caught in quick-sand.
And they say being fated to someone makes you stronger! What a joke because I have never felt more, weak than I do right in this moment.
And it is all Eve's fault. Anger lancedthrough me so fast that I have to reach out to the wall to steady myself as Iremain locked in place by the door. Ihave never felt anything like this before, and if this is the new status-quo; Ican tell you I am not a fan. Not by along shot.