Noah. Jacquelyn Frank

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ was raging with trapped light and sizzling energy. There was one and only one condition capable of moving such a violent emotional reaction through a body with no apparent cause or reason.

      The Imprinting.

      It meant that she was destined to be exactly what he wanted her to be. His mate. His partner throughout all the centuries of her life.

      And there was nothing she could ever do to change it.

      Except one thing. She could not deny him her body, nor the need she would have ever after to live close to him, but she did have the power within her to reject him in her heart. She could choose to refuse him even the smallest amount of love. If she denied him that, he would not truly conquer her.

      Sarah’s heart began to pound at the possibilities of defying one so powerful and deadly. That was when she decided that she should at least try to run away. Hiding could not hurt. So what if he was the best tracker amongst them, the ability the divine right of all Enforcers? She was a Demon of the Body. She had quite a few tricks at her disposal as well.

      She would trick him first, and then she would run and hide. Nothing was going to make her do this terrible thing. No one was going to make her love so unlovable a male.

      Syreena stood in the empty window casement, her slim hands braced on the cold, flat stone. The Romanian early winter breeze swept over the jagged mountain and chilled lakes before churning harshly up the walls of the towering edifice that had come to be her home, reaching her exposed position at last. The biting chill and powerful press of it blasted through the casement and into her body, snapping the heavy satin of her loose gown back until it was plastered against her like a white, shining skin, the excess fabric whipping behind her body as if it were a standard of truce.

      When a man’s hand slid into the curve of her waist, the contrary warmth of it gave her goose bumps that flushed up her belly and breasts. She turned to look down at him with a smile that was full of delight and mischief. She reached down with a stone-cold hand to stroke her fingers across his face.

      Then she leapt out of the window.

      Damien, Prince of the Vampires and husband to the high-diving woman, stepped up into the window she had abandoned and quickly leaned over to watch what would become of his wife.

      She laid her arms back along her body as she rushed headlong toward the jagged rocks at the base of his family holdings. Her loose gown whipped and billowed, the fabric sheeting back until it slipped entirely free of her lithe body, buffeting into a swatch of swirling white as it continued on to the stones below.

      Syreena, however, would not be joining it. In a flash, she went from the form of a beautiful human woman to the swift dip and reel of a small peregrine falcon. She did this just in time to avoid the sharp rocks below. And though she was famous for her “on the fly” Lycanthropy, she still had the power to take her husband’s breath away with the trick, after making him hold it in a fearful moment of doubt. It wasn’t that Damien doubted the skills of his clearly talented wife. She was the most skillful Lycanthrope alive. It was because he still had moments where he imagined he couldn’t be so lucky as to be the first and only Vampire in his society for eons to know what true and lasting love really was. He was the only Vampire alive who was married, and to an outsider no less. He had broken a great deal of ground, and more than one long-standing law, in order to take her as his bride.

      That had been a little over nine months ago, and a great deal had happened since they had gone public with their relationship. The results had been mixed. Some good, some bad. It was the bad things that drove his wife to jump out of windows in the highest towers of the castle.

      He didn’t have to tax himself to figure out what had happened that had her turning to her ability to fly as the falcon for release and escape. He was Prince of the coldest, most troublemaking race of Nightwalkers alive. And while their respect, civility, and Vampire law kept them in line for the most part, Damien’s marriage to Syreena had given a few of the more unruly members of his society an excuse to start trouble. This trouble had taken all kinds of forms, but it was the most recent that had gotten under Syreena’s skin.

      Damien watched as she reeled toward the lake, flying like a quick brown and black kite, lofting from one shelf of air to another with a skill that always impressed him. The Vampire wasn’t as assured of his shape-changing abilities as his wife was. He changed and became a large, glossy black raven while still safely seated on the windowsill. He’d only had the ability to become the raven for the last year. While he had flown all of his life in the shape of a man, a skill every Vampire had after a certain age, it wasn’t until he had fed off his bride that he was able to become the raven. Now, as he flew after her, it was clear what the months since then had done for his skill. Still, he preferred to be cautious as he practiced. It would be silly to end a millennium-long lifetime with an awkward splat on the rocks below. It would be a rather ignominious end to the longest-reigning and most powerful Prince in Vampire history.

      Damien chased down his wife with determination. She had given herself away, and he was fixated on hearing her troubled thoughts. Before she had wed him, she had been a Princess in her own right, heir to the Lycanthrope throne and counselor to the current Queen, her sister Siena. So she was no stranger to political machinations and the sometimes undesirable results that churned forth from them. But that didn’t make it any easier for her to bear them. Not when they touched her so personally.

      Syreena was diving toward the glassy surface of one of the mountain lakes. That was when Damien knew she was aware of him following her. She would make her next change on purpose, knowing full well how much he hated the bracing cold of winter water. That, more than the breakneck dive of earlier, could be successful at dissuading him from following.

      She morphed from bird to dolphin about five feet above the water as she dove toward it. She cut the water cleanly, only a ripple from the break of her tail fins giving away her entrance point. Damien didn’t follow. He lighted on a rock and changed back to his masculine form, crossing his long legs casually and resting a hand on his thigh as he waited for her to surface.

      It wasn’t that he couldn’t swim. It was just that a Vampire’s body temperature remained warm only as long as the blood from his last feed remained so. He had no circulation to speak of, so he steadily lost heat over time, becoming colder to the touch the further he got from his last feeding. If he followed his wife into the water, it would suck the heat out of him in an instant, and he wouldn’t be allowed to so much as touch her or kiss her until he fed again and warmed his icy flesh. A delay like that would impede his desire to comfort her when she finally stopped her torrid escape.

      The subject of his thoughts surfaced in the middle of the lake, this time in the shape of herself. At least above the water. Below, he had no doubt that she resembled a mermaid instead of a human, with a fin, not legs, keeping her buoyant. In all this changing, there was only one form she hadn’t taken as yet that was available in her repertoire: the winged woman she liked to call the harpy. This gave her a total of five forms, two more than a normal Lycanthrope. She was a mutation, a unique creature amongst her people. Amongst all Nightwalkers. But extra forms or not, Damien would have known that anyway.

      At last, Syreena began to swim toward him.

      The decision now made to go to him, she did so with all speed, the strong fin below the water propelling her swiftly. She made the transition from water to land as smoothly as she had made all her others, tossing back her dark hair as it dripped sparkling water into the air around her. He uncrossed his legs, opening his arms to her, and she slid into his embrace as she knelt before the rock that made up his makeshift seat.

      Damien sighed in tandem with her as she accepted his strong comfort. He placed a gentle line of kisses across her forehead and СКАЧАТЬ