“Where her actions there are making less sense every day.”
“If this goes forward, you can ask her herself what the hell she is doing in Minnesota. In the meanwhile, we will need to consult the lawyers, and ask the council’s permission to move forward. We’ll send an ambassador to Prague to lay the groundwork among any families who are her supporters. We don’t want any of them giving her shelter. You understand she’ll have to be taken by force.”
Mikhail leaned back in his chair, glancing up at the tattered battle flag. Here we go again. “I wouldn’t imagine she’d be pleased to marry me after all these years.”
“Don’t forget she’s your destined bride. She will be pleased. Eventually.”
“It doesn’t make sense.” They’d already been together––and it had ended.
“Back then, it wasn’t the right time. Now it is.” His father began to pace the rug, his hands behind his back, thinking aloud. “You’re coming into your full power. The families love you. They’ll back you in this. Everyone agrees Alya is dangerous. Everyone will thank you for bringing her under rein.”
“And let’s not forget the small matter of her territory.” Mikhail knew this, more than anything, drove his father’s interest in the marriage.
Whirling around to face him, his father said, eyes gleaming, “Claim her, my boy, and we rule both coasts.”
If Mikhail did not know his mother considered her dreams sacred and would never lie about them, he would suspect this entire scheme to be a pretext for war. In his way, his father was as much as an expansionist as Alya. Mikhail had deep reservations about expanding their holdings across the country, when their own territories needed all of his attention.
Mikhail steepled his fingers under his chin, imagining all the players in this game as pieces on a chessboard. As knyaz he spent a good deal of his time enforcing law at the street level. But what he really loved was the intricacies of politics, unwinding the thin strings of self-interest that kept their world united. Considering the possible reactions, and how the various interests played off one another, was such an engaging problem that, for a moment, he was able to forget Alya. Until his father said,
“But you may not wish to marry her. It is within your rights to refuse the dream. This is what you must decide before we take another step.”
Mikhail watched his father over the tips of his fingers, wondering how he would take the news. “I can’t deny the dream. I’ve tasted her.”
His father stiffened and his eyes darkened with interest. Master of understatement, he said, “Ah. I see.”
Mikhail hadn’t bitten Alya. He hadn’t been that stupid. But one night she’d nicked herself while practicing with her knives. A single, ruby drop had welled on her knuckle. Without thinking, he’d kissed it clean and sealed his fate. Because she was his destined mate, that one drop was enough to alter his chemistry and bond him to her for life.
If he’d tasted any other girl in the world, nothing would have happened.
If he’d had more than one drop that night, the mistake might have killed him.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “So you see, I’m damned already, and twice damned if I take her as a bride.”
His father leaned on the desk, his gnarled hands splayed wide across the glossy wood. “If I’d known, I swear I would not have rested until—”
Mikhail waved his apology away. “I wasn’t strong enough. That’s why she left me. Even if we’d known, I couldn’t have claimed her. Pity isn’t her strong suit.”
“It isn’t ours either.” His father pushed up his coat sleeve. A fine, silken black rope wrapped his arm from the wrist up. “Give me your hand.”
The black rope came to life and slithered across their joined hands, unfurling from his father’s arm to twine around Mikhail’s right wrist. Mikhail watched wide eyed, but did not flinch. This was old vamp magic. Rarely used, and seen less.
“It is called bride rope. Have you heard of it? This my father gave me to capture your mother, long ago.”
“She didn’t come to you willingly?”
That was hard to imagine. Even after sixty years, his mother doted on his father, and his father, though less demonstrative, loved her still. It was in his every look.
His father only smiled at that question. So, tracing the lines of the rope around his wrist, Mikhail asked another. “And Gregor? Alex?”
“They did not need this to claim their little girls, but one such as Alya will never respect you unless you bring her to heel first. When you capture her, give her no quarter. A proud woman will never trust her heart to a man who isn’t strong enough to protect it.”
“And the rope?”
“The rope knows your desires. It will teach her how to bend to them.”
His father spoke man to man rather than father to son. The suggestion was clear. Mikhail supposed he should imagine Alya hogtied on the floor, naked, and begging. But the thought did not excite him. He’d been shut down so long, he couldn’t remember what it felt like to desire someone.
Not in that way, at least. All his adult life, no matter how often he hunted, hunger gnawed at him. Now he knew it was all because of her. Only she could satisfy him. What he desired was her flesh between his teeth, her hot blood flooding his mouth. The next conclusion followed naturally, an idea as sharp and ruthless as Alya herself.
“I do have a choice. Roland’s Choice.”
His father’s brow creased. “There is that. If you take her soul, you’ll be free of the blood bond, but in doing so you make yourself a monster. Remember the story. Illysia was already dying when Roland exsanguinated her. No one will forgive you for murdering your destined bride in cold blood.”
“And who has ever been cursed with a wife like her?” He spoke too loud, and his voice cracked with frustration. Reining himself in, he continued in a lower tone. “We have the cover of war. We claimed Minnesota first—she is the aggressor there. If I take her down, who will blame me? No one need know the truth.”
As he spoke, his mother rushed into the room and threw herself at his feet.
“Mat’!” Appalled, he leapt from his desk chair, taking her outstretched hands in his. He tried to make her rise, but she would not. For all her smallness she was very strong.
“For so long I prayed, Misha. You have been alone too long. I hoped to bring you joy.”
“I don’t blame you for this. You know I don’t.”
“Who do you blame if not me? Do you say God is wrong? The dreams come from his angels. No one else.”
Mikhail sat back down in his chair to be closer to her, keeping hold of her fine-boned hands. “Yes, I call God wrong.”
Angry at his blasphemy, she snatched her hands away. “You loved her.”
“Once.”
“And she loved you.”
“It didn’t keep her from turning to that swamp rat Jean Courtableu in front of everyone. From humiliating all of us. From starting her long glorious fuck to the top at the tender age of sixteen!” He realized he was shouting and turned his face aside. “I beg your pardon.”
His mother stood, unfolding herself with her dancer’s grace. “You don’t know what was inside her head back then. She is an Adad. They are like jackals, that family.”
“I don’t want a jackal for a wife.”
“That girl, she is your only chance at happiness.”
Mikhail laughed aloud, for the first time in a long, long time.
“The. Dreams. Do. Not. Lie.” On each word she jabbed at him with her finger. “There is a path for you to follow. Have faith.”
“What faith should I have in a God that has left me to suffer for thirty years, and then completes my misery by giving me this woman as a bride? She is my salvation? She is my future?”