Chapter 38

Chapter 2:

Lucas’s P.O.V:

As soon as the sunrays hit the sky, Damien had teleported us back to his castle where a bunch of vampires were already sweeping blood off the floor.

I blinked back the dark spots in my vision a few times to clear my sight and fought back the bile rising up my throat. Why the fuck did teleportation feel like shit? But I shook it off as best as I could. I couldn’t be found disoriented inside enemy lands.

We seemed to be on the outskirts of some kind of a garden that, to be honest, looked really beautiful. The lawns were all manicured and trimmed, not like the wild of the forest where nature could grow at its own pace and it did agitate my wolf a bit, but it’s not like I’m going to be living here forever. Trim and proper were for vampires; wolves preferred untamed nature.

The vampires that had gathered around the spot of blood on the ground all froze and turned to look at us in unison, their gazes going from me to Damien and then back to me again. No one spoke but it was clear that they thought Damien had gone completely nuts by bringing an enemy inside Castle grounds. Either that or they were thinking up recipes to make out of me. Well, at least I was edible.

“Your Highness!” An older vampire rushed out of crowd and straight towards Damien.

I’d given him a change of clothes yesterday, because the one that he’d showed up in had baseball sized holes in them and was completely covered in blood. The stench of blood still clung to him as his wounds still hadn’t closed up yet, but on the surface, no one would be able to tell that the King of all Vamps just had a close run in with death the previous night.

“Jonathan,” Damien greeted the man as he placed his hands on the elder vampire’s shoulders and I instantly recognized him as Trisha’s vampire father. “Has my room been cleaned?”

“Yes.” Jonathan looked back at the other vampires and they nodded in unison before going back to scrubbing dried blood off of the Italian marbled floor. “What happened, Damien? This morning when I went to check up on you, there was blood everywhere and you had just… disappeared. And now you come back with the Werewolf Alpha, smelling like blood and…wolf.” Jonathan lowered his voice enough so that only the two of them could hear. Too bad I had super-hearing as well.

“I’ll explain, but first, order my men to hold court within the hour and then meet me in my room.” Damien ordered before he grabbed hold of my hand and then the world went blank once again as we arrived inside a huge room that looked like a replica of some 70’s period drama. This time, my vision was only a bit blurry and I didn’t feel like throwing up anymore.

“Have a seat while I take a shower.” Damien said before walking into the bathroom and shutting the door.

“Geez, thanks.” I muttered under my breath as I walked over to a chair and plopped down on it.

If someone had told me a year ago that I’d be sitting in the Vampire King’s bedroom inside the castle, I’d have laughed and called them insane. But a year later, here I was, sitting in this very room, waiting for His Highness to get his Royal ass out of the shower so we can both go in search of the one woman who had managed to steal the hearts of both the Vampire King and the Supreme Alpha and then vanished into the night without a single trace.

But it didn’t take long for me to get bored of just sitting and waiting, so I got up from the chair and decided to explore the room. It’s not like Damien can accuse me of trespassing, he was the one who got me here in the first place.

Everything about this room screamed wealth and power. Now I know where all the revenue money went. There was everything a man needed to survive and more; the room had all the luxuries in the world. Oh, how I’d die to stay in a room like this. Damien had been born with a silver spoon while I had to climb my way to the top, earn my place in my pack. But what I’d come to realize in this past year was that we both had our own struggles, our own demons.

Vandal Rudolf had been a bastard who had gotten away with a lot of things, including the assassination of the previous King, Damien’s father. But for some reason Damien had let it pass, probably for the lack of evidence. Trisha had fought with everything she had to gather up evidence and had finally been able to convince Damien of Vandal’s sins. But in the end, it turned out the reason Damien had stayed quiet was because Vandal was his biological father…and the puppet master pulling his strings.

The resulting battle had been devastating and Trisha had almost died. If it hadn’t been for Neema, then neither Trisha nor Damien would still be alive and the Vampire Kingdom would’ve fallen into the hands of a madman. Damien had managed to keep him under a tight leash while giving him a false feeling of power. But with Damien gone…even I had to admit, there would’ve been utter chaos.

But that had been a year ago, and now we were about to embark on a journey together, in search of the very woman who had started it all-

“Son of a!” I came to a halt in front of the vanity and took a good whiff of the scents that were coming from the things laid out in front of the mirror.

Trisha! They undoubtedly belonged to Trisha.

I picked up a small pearl necklace and took a whiff. Yes, the scent was faded but I’d recognize her scent anywhere. Another chain with a blue diamond pendant that was shaped like a tear drop, an old daylight bracelet and a small diamond ring that was all rusted and dirty, but somehow I knew it belonged to Trisha, even though there was no scent on it.

“It’s her wedding ring.”

I turned to look at Damien as he exited through another door to the side than the one he’d gone into, which I’m guessing was the closet. Now he looked every inch as the King of Vampires, in a dark green suit and a red cape hanging from his shoulders and secured with heavy jeweled pins. Normally, I wouldn’t approve of jewelry on a man, but Damien carried himself well, managing to not look feminine despite all the rings and necklaces. All Royal protocol stuff, I guess.

“What do you mean ‘wedding ring’?” I asked skeptically. When exactly did Damien marry Trisha?

“It’s from when she was human. She was married before she turned.” Damien said as he brushed his hands through his wet hair. I noticed his hand glow with a faint orangish light and soon, his hair was all dried up.

“Nice trick.” I commented before moving on to Trisha’s topic. “What happened to the hubby?”

“Died.” Daniel turned to face me. “Along with her child. The reason she’s so attached to Neema is because he looks exactly like her son.”

Thinking about Neema had my chest tightening. I missed that little boy. Us werewolves were all about family, about pack. Our young ones were our most precious and I’d come to love Neema like I loved the pups in my pack. A part of me still longed for the little pup, just like it still longed for Trisha, but she’d given her heart to the cold blooded bastard standing next to me, instead. And what exactly had come out of it? She was gone and Damien had a pile of her old stuff just lying around carelessly in his vanity.

“You really are an pathetic son of a bitch, you know that?” I shook my head at him. “You’re keeping her things scattered all over your room and yet, when Trisha was standing in front of you, begging you to let her in, you pushed her away so hard that she just up and left. And here you are, getting ready to chase after her once again so you can make her life miserable.”

To my surprise, Damien didn’t get angry, but a humorless smile spread across his face. “You seem to have forgotten the state I was in last night, Alpha Lucas. If I had barely managed to escape the Death Squad, you think Trisha would’ve survived it? And what about Neema? The men and women of that squad don’t care about women or children. They would’ve slaughtered them within seconds. And the reason I’m searching for them isn’t because I want to ruin her life; it’s because I need her safe just as much as you do. And I need her help in finding something.”

“Really?” I raised my eyebrows at him. “And what could that be? What’s so important that you have to endanger their lives just so you can search for some…some thing?”

“It’s not something I want to discuss with you at this instant, Alpha Lucas.” Damien grabbed my hand again and I braced myself for another teleportation. “Come, we have matters to take care of.”

This time, I found that we were in a hallway somewhere in the castle with a set of ornate double doors in front of us.

Before I could ask, Damien spoke again, just as the vampires standing in front of the doors pushed it open.

“It’s time for another Session of Court to commence.”