A Shadow of Light (A Shade of Vampire #4)(22)

I was trembling against her embrace and I began fighting back the tears when she kissed me on the cheek. When we broke our embrace, I realized why she had asked for it in the first place.

Aiden had just walked in the room—in time to see what appeared to be a poignant, affectionate moment between mother and daughter.

Feeling used, I looked from Aiden to Ingrid and was surprised to find her wiping away tears as she gave me a fond look, taking my hand in hers and squeezing tight. “I know how hard it is for you to believe, but I love you, Sofia.”

I smiled at her, knowing that no matter how much I wanted to believe her declaration, it was what it was: a bold-faced lie.

CHAPTER 13: AIDEN

“What game are you playing, Ingrid?”

She stopped her steady paces on the way back to her room and twisted around to face me. “What game? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t play coy with me, Ingrid. The last time we spoke, you made it perfectly clear that you hold no affection for our daughter. Now, I step into her suite and you’re all hugs and kisses with her? What’s your game?”

“I just had a heart-to-heart talk with my daughter, Aiden. Is it so impossible that I could have a change of heart toward her?”

“A change of heart? After you fed her to Borys Maslen? Did you see it happen? Did you watch as he bit into her? Did you like seeing him hurt her? Did you not feel any guilt at the sight?” I began stepping toward her, backing her up until her back hit one of the walls. “What is wrong with you? Sofia is your daughter. How could that not mean anything to you?”

She raised a brow and scoffed at my statement. “It meant nothing to my mother that I was her daughter.”

There it was again—another vague clue about a dark, mysterious past she refused to talk about. During the first several years of our marriage, I encouraged her to seek professional help to get the ghosts of her past out of her system. She never did appreciate nor even entertain my suggestion. I had to watch the woman I loved remain broken, with no hope of ever getting fixed.

I was so keenly aware of her closeness. Soon the longing I’d had for her—one I denied even existed—came rushing through me like a flood. No matter how much I hated to admit it, whether she was Ingrid or Camilla, she still had the same effect on me now as she had done when I had first laid eyes on her. She always managed to leave me breathless. She drew me in like no other woman had ever done before. With her standing so close, looking the exact same way she did ten years ago, no matter how much I hated to admit it, I knew that I would always love Camilla.

Before I could keep myself from doing it, I grabbed her by the shoulders and pressed my lips against hers. Warning signals immediately began flaring up inside me. She’s not Camilla. She’s Ingrid. She’s a vampire, a monster, a creature you’re sworn to rid this planet of. You’re in hawk headquarters. Think of what you stand to lose should you be seen doing this. None of it mattered. I pushed against her with all the strength in me, claiming for myself what I’d been deprived of since she left me—her touch, her kiss, her form uniquely contoured to fit mine.

She responded with abandon, making it easy for me to tell that she wanted this too. It wasn’t until her fangs cut my lower lip that I found myself jerking away from her. We were both stunned as I wiped the trace of blood from my lip.

“You still love me, don’t you?” she asked. She said it in a way that was devoid of any hint of triumph. She spoke wistfully.

“I think I always will,” I admitted, hating myself for the affection I still held toward her, for the sense of overprotectiveness I always felt for her. However, I knew who meant more to me than her. Sofia. “Don’t think for one moment, Ingrid, that my love for Camilla erases the fact that I think you’re using my daughter for whatever sick things you’ve got planned. If you ever hurt Sofia again, make no mistake about it, I will kill you myself.”

Her eyes began to brim with tears as she nodded. “I understand. I just…” she hesitated. “I don’t know how to be a good mother, Aiden. I want to be that for her, but I don’t know how. I want to change. I truly want to make amends with her if only to get back in your good graces, because I love you, Aiden. I will always love you.”

I couldn’t tell if it was genuine or if she was just putting on an amazing act. At that point, however, I really couldn’t think straight enough to care if it was true.

I was fully aware of the consequences when I took her to my suite and made love to her, but I really didn’t care. I held her in my arms and gave in to my desperate need for the woman I had loved, to fill the emptiness that she had left inside me when she had abandoned me and our daughter.

That night, like so many others before her disappearance, I found that I was once again putty in the hands of Camilla Claremont.

It wasn’t until the morning after, waking up with her lovely form cradled in my arms that it sank into me that Camilla was long gone and that it was Ingrid Maslen instead who now held my deepest affections in the palm of her hand.

Aiden, what have you done?

CHAPTER 14: GREGOR

Upon my return to The Shade, only one word could describe me: haunted. Every part of me wished that I had never left the island. I wished that I never went along with Lucas’ plan to take Sofia to The Oasis. I knew that I had made a mistake the moment I had stepped into the Maslens’ infamous Egyptian tombs. The Shade was my kingdom and I never should’ve left it. Now, after the destruction of The Oasis and the fall of the Maslens, I realized that things would never again be the same.