Chapter 36
Book 2 Synopsis:
Fate and destiny might be two sides of the same coin, but for me, they’d always be polar opposites.
Fate brought me to Lucas. Fate gave my life a new direction. But my destiny will always be tied to the one man I can never forget and the one man I cannot have, Damien Vandolff. Once again, life has brought me to a crossroads which can make or break the fragility of this new world. The dynamics are changing as new enemies’ surface and old friendships are put to test. A war awaits and there is no way to avoid it.
It’s time to come out of the shadows and decide yet again, if I want to become Fate’s consort…or Destiny’s bride.
Prologue:
200 years ago…
Vandal Rudolf didn’t like being indebted to anyone, but desperate times had led to desperate measures.
It had taken him nearly seven hundred years to find out the truth and when he had…he hadn’t stayed quiet. He couldn’t stay quiet. There were only a few things that he had loved in his lifetime and Queen Maya had been one of them.
He hadn’t wanted to fall in love with a woman who had already been taken, but the moment his eyes had connected with hers, everything around him had disappeared. Her dark red hair and beautiful emerald eyes could entrance anyone and yet, her eyes had been filled with tears that day, and he had become the knight in shining armor for her. He had held her as the King shared his bed with another.
And when she had turned to him…he hadn’t been able to refuse.
Had she ever loved him? He didn’t know for sure, but when he had heard about her pregnancy two months later, he had known the child was his. After all, the King had been married to her for two centuries before he had met Maya and there had been no child. There were also reports that the King had lost interest in her and was looking elsewhere to produce an offspring, so he hadn’t touched her in years. How any man could ever turn away from the beautiful and kind Maya had been beyond him.
But those were matters of the past. His son was King now and he was on his side and soon, they would rule the world.
A bright light filled the skyline in the horizon and a loud noise followed. Fire and smoke and screams.
At a safe distance from the explosions, Vandal smiled to himself. It had started, the Wipeout; their ploy to rule the world. Let the humans destroy themselves in the process; he didn’t care about their meaningless lives. All he cared about was ruling the world and he would do it through his beloved son.
Vandal had struggled all his life to get where he was now. He had fallen, he had crawled and he had been forced to lick the feet of those in power. Now, he was the one with power and his son was King.
And if Damien started to rebel? Well…he would get rid of him as well.
Present day…
Damien Vandolff, the Vampire King, woke up to the sound of hushed footsteps entering his bedchamber.
They were good. They were damn good if he hadn’t sensed them approaching from miles away. But getting to his room was no easy task; he’d make damn sure to choose his bedchamber wisely, the only place that he could be in any way vulnerable. But Damien was never vulnerable, not even in his sleep; especially not in his sleep. In order to get to his room, they had to jump up to the balcony through the palace gardens that sprawled for miles and had many hidden traps in it, and was in an open space with many a guard on watch. Or they had to get in through the underground tunnel which was connected to his room and made a loud noise when opened, even with the gentlest hands. They’d chosen to climb up instead and had managed to avoid all the guards.
They were here.
Damien jumped up in the air and landed on the foot of his bed just a bare second before the sword tore through the pillows and landed where he’d been sleeping. He stood perfectly still, listening to the sound of eight steady heartbeats synchronized as one. Yes, they were indeed damn good, they had accurate aim and they hadn’t even shown their faces yet, managing to hide in plain sight. And despite him being powerful enough to hear their heartbeats, he didn’t have the power to see through their glamour; their ability to cloak themselves with the darkness around them.
Damien looked at the darkest corners of his room, but he failed to notice any movements. Suddenly, all the candles in the room roared to blazing life, the fire burning hot and bright enough to blind his opponents temporarily. Damien turned to locate his assailants…and found nothing. Not a trace of someone having been in his room or even near it. But it was a sham because he could still hear heartbeats, all eight of them…yet there was nowhere for them to hide.
The attack came from behind him, striking merely a fraction of a second before he moved out of the way. But Damien did not escape unscratched. He fisted his hands together as he felt his skin tear down his spine and his right calf. The injuries weren’t deep but they had been aimed to disable him, if they had been an inch deeper, then they might have succeeded.
Damien spun out of the way of another attacker, avoiding another deadly blow. He moved his eyes around the room in search of any weapon, but they were all too far away for him to reach. And on top of that, he couldn’t use his flames on targets he couldn’t see. His castle had nearly been burned down to the ground about a year ago and he couldn’t risk starting another fire. His only hope of survival was to teleport out of his room.
So he did exactly that.
And three swords shredded him to an inch of his life.
Damien fell to the ground in agony. His back was in shreds and a sword had gone straight through his torso to come out through his back, missing his heart by an eighth of an inch. And although his skin had started to heal, the rest of the eight assassins had just joined the three who had waited outside for him, knowing he would teleport.
But as eleven of them raised their swords together to strike the final blow, he teleported. Damien wasn’t ready to go down yet, so he teleported to the only place he knew was safe enough for him. The only place he hadn’t visited in the past year.
