Vengeance (The Captive #6)(11)
“Yes,” he replied as Daniel finished with the last book and handed it to Timber.
Aria stood within the doorway and waited until Max had read the last page also. Closing the book, he lifted his head and looked at her and Braith, before the others. “So that could happen to you?” he asked of Braith.
“No!” Aria blurted. She stepped forward and wrapped her hand firmly around Braith’s arm. Beneath her touch, his muscles rippled, and his body remained rigid. She knew his biggest fear was becoming his father; no matter what she said, he believed it to be a possibility. “No, they are two completely different men. That could never happen to Braith.”
Max’s gaze darted between the two of them. She knew he didn’t completely believe her, but he bowed his head in acceptance anyway. Stepping forward, he rested the book on the table and lifted it to look around the room again. “Where is William?” he demanded.
Aria’s shoulders slumped; she’d known it would only be a matter of time before they noticed he was missing. “He’d said he was going hunting again today,” Daniel answered.
Aria forced a smile when they all looked at her. “He is hunting,” she replied far more cheerfully than she believed possible. “Just not for animals.”
They all stared at her for a minute before realization settled in. “He shouldn’t have gone alone,” Daniel hissed.
“I know, but it was his choice to make.”
“Stubborn, twin fools,” Max muttered. “Always determined to get yourselves killed.”
Aria scowled at him, but this time she couldn’t argue.
CHAPTER 5
Tempest stood at the window with Abbott and the children gathered by her side. Gazing out at the street, she felt as if she were looking at a completely different town. She recognized only a few of the vampires prowling up and down the road. Her mind spun as she tried to figure out why a handful of vampires had been locked into the stocks overnight, while others had been imprisoned inside the jail. She didn’t see any humans amongst the vampires on the street and suspected they’d all been rounded up and placed inside the blood bank.
Confusion swirled through her, she didn’t understand why the king had been fighting to make everything so equal between humans and vampires, yet his wife, who had once been a human, was tearing it all apart. None of it made any sense. The more she tried to figure it out, the more it made her head pound, and the colder she felt.
The men must have been lying to her last night. They must have been telling everyone they were here for the queen so there would be less of a fight, but then her gaze drifted to the heavily guarded hotel at the end of the street. The woman she’d seen last night had yet to reemerge from inside the building, and they were protecting her as if she were the actual queen. All of it made her want to bang her head against the window in frustration.
She looked back at the five vampires locked into the stocks. Four of them were men, but one was a woman. She knew them all; she hadn’t grown up in a town this small without getting to know everyone. She may not know them well, but her heart still ached for their position and the unnecessary humiliation they were enduring. Almost two inches of snow coated their hair and clothes. The woman’s brown hair dangled into the snow building up on the ground.
She glanced at the children surrounding her. Pressed close against her side, a small tremor rocked Agnes’s delicate frame. Her brown eyes were troubled as she slid her hand into Tempest’s. Nora stood with her shoulders thrown back and her blue eyes on the street. Claude, who was only eight, stood beside Nora, and nine-year-old Dane stood beside him.
“What are they doing?” Abbott inquired.
“I don’t know,” Tempest replied.
Her gaze returned to the road as more of the vampires dressed in the white cloaks, patrolled back and forth. They all looked as if they were on a mission or in the middle of a war zone, but even before the old king was ousted from his throne their town had always been one of relative peace. The humans hadn’t been treated as well as they were now, but they hadn’t been as abused and mishandled here as they had in other areas.
As an orphan she’d never had a blood slave, never could have afforded one, but she’d relied on the blood of the humans sentenced to death. It wasn’t something she was ashamed of, or proud of, it was simply a fact. She’d had to survive, all the orphans had, and they’d been lucky enough to get the scraps offered to them before the fairer laws of the new king had been set forth.
Before the most recent war, it had never been one established vampire caring for them for long, but many who came and went as they pleased. None of the caretakers had given much attention to the forgotten children, and why should they? Their own parents had given them little consideration when they’d abandoned them. The caretakers back then had simply wanted their pay.
When she’d gotten old enough to do so, she’d gone into the surrounding mountains to supplement the little blood they received from humans with that of animals. She’d always brought it back to share with the younger children. Before she’d been able to go into the mountains on her own, the older children of the home had done the same for her and the others who had lived here. It had always been the older children, taking care of the younger, that had made it possible for them to survive. As the older kids aged and moved on, a new set rose up to take their place.