Chapter 25

Another day passed, and Adam still wasn’t allowed to see his brother. He was nervous, worried, on edge. To the point where he had practically worn a hole into the wood from his amount of feeble pacing, and he had read at least ten books from his small library to pass the time.

Willow had started taking Zachariah on hunts the night before, making sure he fed every few hours. He tried not to think of what they were hunting, but she continually assured him they weren’t innocents. He had to trust her, no matter how hard it was. And it was hard. For most of his life, Zachariah had been his responsibility. And now he hardly knew what was going on. It was killing him.

In his weakened state, he wasn’t able to get far. He stayed at the table she had moved next to the window, allowing him to look outside. He craned his neck to look out, but nightfall filled the entirety of his vision. They hadn’t returned from their recent hunting trip. Was everything all right? How was Zachariah doing? How much longer did they need to do this before he could go longer than a day without feeding?

He took out Zachariah’s knife and turned it between his fingers. He missed the days when they would play games in the forest like the innocent children they were. Those days were gone. Both of them had grown up, their paths going in different directions. The question was…what was he going to do about it?

He pushed the knife away and sighed, rubbing the ache from his temples.

He had been agonizing over this particular conundrum. Zachariah would be a vampire for the rest of his life. Willow had to leave eventually. And Adam… Well, he was a blood hunter. He killed things for a living. However, he’d had no luck killing lately. His conscience had suddenly taken a swing at him. There had to be a middle ground somewhere.

An eerie chill swept up outside, raising goosebumps on his arms. He shivered and pulled his blanket tighter over his shoulders. Winter was on its way. And with it, the cold.

Another chill snuck in, slipping through the cracks in the window. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, but he ascribed it to being weak and alone, worrying about Willow’s and Zachariah’s safety.

He lit another candle to chase away the ghostly shadows splayed across the wall, but the flickering flames seemed to make it worse.

He shuddered again and decided there was no use waiting for the two vampires to return. They could be gone all night, and he needed to get some sleep.

With weak legs, he stood from his chair and turned around. Immediately, his eyes shot open, shock jolting through his body as if he had been thrown into a deep, icy lake and he couldn’t escape.

Dracula.

The ominous figure clad in black lashed out before he could utter a cry. Dracula’s powerful attack threw him effortlessly across the room, smashing him hard into the wall. The air whooshed from his lungs as he fell into a heap on the ground, and despite his best efforts to crawl toward escape with his feeble limbs, the creature was on him faster than he’d ever seen anyone move. The vampire shah grabbed a fistful of his shirt and slammed his head against the wood floor until black spots swirled at the corners of his vision. Dracula was going to kill him. He had to fight back. He had no choice.

He struggled to roll onto his feet, his blood gem glowing a bright red to give him the strength he needed. He aimed a solid, direct punch to Dracula’s throat, but the vampire caught his fist mid-air and squeezed, little effort on his part. Pain coursed through his arm, forcing him to draw upon more magic from the blood gem until red tendrils of light weaved around his arm as it escaped the gem, increasing his strength. He pushed back against the vampire, giving all he had. However, Dracula overpowered him, putting his own strength into pushing back. Eventually, he lost the pushing match, and the vampire threw him backward into the adjacent wall, the wood giving beneath the blow and cracking enough to create a hole. If it weren’t for the blood gem, he would have been unconscious long ago.

“Where’s my daughter, blood hunter?” Dracula hissed, striking with his long, blade-like fingernails.

The fingernails tore through his shirt and cut his arm. He cried in pain and didn’t get the chance to answer when rage appeared to wash over Dracula once again. He screeched loud enough that Adam had to cover his ears. There was no fighting this thousand-year-old vampire. He had no chance of surviving.

The vampire shah grabbed him roughly by the throat, choking him with his strong fingers before throwing him upward into the ceiling. This time, the structure of the cabin gave way, and when he landed back on the floor, a heap of wood caved on top of him, effectively trapping him.

He stared back at Dracula with terror in his eyes as he tried to free himself from the wood that pinned him down. His opponent took slow, deliberate steps toward him, no trace of compassion in his eyes. He was too terrified to speak. His words could save him, but they wouldn’t come. He felt frozen on the inside out.

Dracula lifted his hand, his long fingers poised at the ready for another attack and he squeezed his eyes shut, his breaths coming quick as he tried to ready himself for death.

Nothing could ready him for death.

****

“Papa, no!” Willow screamed, throwing herself between Adam and her father as she burst through the cabin. She’d heard her father’s cry from the forest and feared the worst. Her eyes widened at Adam’s bruised, bloodied form buried in a pile of wood, her father standing over him, preparing himself for a killing strike. Her father’s sharp fingers stopped mid-air, his eyes a dangerous shade of red.

“Move, Willow,” he warned in an eerily calm, deep voice. It was a voice that showed he was in complete control of his every action. A thousand years of life did that to a vampire. “I’ve tolerated his kind for too long. I will make him an example.”

With an incredibly steady hand, Dracula pushed her behind him and raised his arm to strike with a killing blow. Adam looked helpless, and the look in his eyes told her he knew no amount of skill would be able to save him. Without her, he would die.

“Stop!” she cried, latching onto her father’s black cloak as warm, watery-red tears trailed down her cheeks. “I have chosen him. If you kill him, I will mourn as you have mourned.”

She watched as her father stood speechless, staring at Adam’s bleeding form and slowly turned his head to meet her pleading stare. Inch by inch, he lowered his hand until a disbelieving expression took residence on the white pallor of his skin. “You have chosen him?” he asked, his voice thick with emotion as he gestured to Adam with his hand. “A blood hunter? His kind kills our kind. They killed your mother.”

“I know,” she said huskily. “I am painfully aware.”

It hurt to be having this conversation like this. Adam didn’t know he was her mate. And telling her father in front of him… She had no other choice. Her father would kill him otherwise, and this was the only thing that would ensure his safety.

Still, her father looked taken aback, as if he thought she might be jesting—a quip without a punch line. He turned to her, Adam forgotten. “Hundreds of years, Willow. Hundreds of years have passed, and you have refused to take a mate. Why now? Why him?”

Despite being bruised and bloodied in a pile of splintered wood, Adam’s eyebrows rose in surprise, his eyes looking questioningly at her. She had to lower her gaze as a deep blush overcame her. She hadn’t intended to tell him. And she especially never planned on telling him like this, in front of her father.

Finally, she answered, “Perhaps because of similar reasons you chose Mother.”

As swift as a loosed arrow, Dracula lashed out at a tankard resting on the table and she winced as it flew across the room, smashing against the wall and clattering to the floor, incredibly loud to her overly sensitive ears.

“A blood hunter!” he howled, clutching his head in distress. “How could you do this to me, cel mic?” His usual term of endearment was like poison darting from his mouth.

He paced back and forth, scratching the walls with his agitation as he went. His sharp fingernails dug into the wood as if his fingers were small blades extending from his hand and the wall was sand. “I send you into the world, and you bring home a vampire killer?”

“It’s not like that—”

Her father moaned agonizingly, dragging his fingers along the wall once more while he paced. Those were the same dagger-like nails that could have cut Adam’s throat open several moments before.

“I’m going to have a blood hunter for kin.” It wouldn’t be surprising if his howl could be heard from a league away. “You disgrace me, cel mic. Disgrace!”

A flurry of black enveloped him as he broke into tiny bits of black flakes, and then he was gone. He left behind the faintest trace of a chill wind to signify he’d been there at all.

Her father’s words hung in the air like a guillotine, threatening to seal her fate in a blink of an eye. She couldn’t breathe. She could hardly see past the tears clouding her vision. His words hit her at full force like a knife to the gut, wrenching inside her in the most painful way imaginable.

Her hand flew to her mouth as she attempted to stifle the sobs wanting to escape. Defending Adam’s life came at a steep price she wasn’t sure she was ready to pay. But she knew one thing for sure—she couldn’t stay here. Not right now. Her verbal wounds were too fresh, too intense. She did the one thing she knew how to do well—she ran.

One foot followed the other as she burst outside, and quickly, her hands and feet turned into paws, her skin into fur. She didn’t know where she was going; all she knew was she couldn’t stay here.

“Willow!” Adam called after her, and with her enhanced feline senses, she could hear him sluggishly picking himself out of the wooden rubble that buried him. “Willow, wait!”

Of course, she didn’t wait. She couldn’t. She needed time to hurt, to grieve, to swallow the verbal backlash she received from her father. She did what she had to do, and now she had to face the consequences.