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  Her mouth dropped open. “A new keep?” she whispered, shock turning her green eyes almost black.

  “Warwyck Castle,” he said proudly.

  “You built your keep on the backbone of my family’s fortress?” she asked, astonishment making her face pale even more.

  “I built the keep on my land,” he said. “It was forfeited when your family were charged with treason. I bought it and I can do anything with it that I like.” He knew his slow, taunting smile was hateful for he could see it mirrored in her stricken eyes. “As I can do whatever I like with my rebel wife.”

  Tears falling down her cheeks, she stared at him with growing horror then slumped in the chair, her shoulders sagging. She hung her head—her limp hair covering her smudged cheeks. A hitching sob left her throat and she put a quaking hand to her lips. The links of the manacle clanked together.

  “Your tears no longer affect me, Antonia,” he said, straightening up, crossing his arms over his chest. “They mean nothing to me.”

  “They never did,” she said in a small, defeated voice that cracked over the words.

  He looked down at the top of her head and had a rebellious desire to smooth his palm over it, to soothe her. It was all he could do not to do just that.

  “Let me die, Garrick,” she whispered.

  “Never.”

  She raised her tear-stained face to him, pleading with her eyes. “If you ever cared anything at all for me, please just let me die.”

  “Give me Alyxdair Clay and I will allow you to die.”

  He watched her chest cease to move. Fear ran rampant through her eyes though she did not blink. She was watching him as though he were a ghoret poised to strike. When she did not speak—just continued to stare at him—he nodded.

  “I thought not,” he said bitterly. “I’ve always known his life meant more to you than your own.”

  “There was a time when your life meant more to me than his,” she said.

  He snorted. “Liar.”

  “Believe what you will,” she said in a tired voice.

  “There might have been a time when you pretended I meant more to you than him,” he accused. “But that time is long gone.”

  “With the razed timbers of Castle Blackthorn,” she said softly.

  “Like the love I once had for you,” he said.

  “Aye,” she agreed on a long exhalation of weary breath. “That love is surely gone.”

  He looked down at the Joining band on her arm. “I’m surprised you didn’t have it lasered off.”

  Tiredly, she lowered her gaze to the band. “I wouldn’t have done that. I needed a remainder.”

  “A reminder of what?”

  Her smile was fleeing as she turned her face from him. “Of just how much I hate you.”

  The tent flap opened and Capt. Marcus Zoltán—Garrick’s second-in-command and his best friend since childhood—rushed in. He came up short as soon as he saw the profile of the woman sitting in the chair.

  “By Bastet, it can’t be!” he said. “Tonia?” He looked down at her manacled wrists and winced.

  “You’d better have a goddess-be-damned good reason for intruding, Marcus,” Garrick snapped.

  Marcus tore his gaze from Antonia to look at Garrick. “Oran told me she’d been found but I couldn’t believe my ears. I had to see her with my own eyes.”

  “Now that you have, you may leave,” Garrick told him. “And take the rebel whore with you.”

  His 2-I-C shot him a surprised look. “Beg pardon?”

  “Take her with you as you go and leave her with the healer. Tell him to clean up her ass. She stinks.”

  Antonia gave Garrick a withering look but remained silent.

  Marc’s forehead creased. “But—”

  “I gave you an order, Captain!” Garrick shouted.

  “What of the shackles?” Marc asked.

  “They stay where they are.”

  “Garrick, please,” he said. “This is Tonia.”

  “And that is precisely why the chains stay where they are,” Garrick stated.

  “You can’t—”

  “Do not argue with me! Do what you are told, mister!” Garrick bellowed. He clamped his mouth into a thin, straight line, a muscle flexing savagely in his cheek.

  “Aye, Sir!” Marc acknowledged with a harsh look to his friend. He gently took Antonia’s arm and helped her up.

  “When you’ve delivered her to the healer, I want you back here. You and I need to have a little talk, Zoltán,” Garrick said.

  Antonia gave Marc a tremulous smile but he dared not answer it. His commanding officer—who at that moment was not the friend he’d known for over thirty years—was staring daggers at him. He escorted her from the tent and away from the red-hot glower that made him shift his shoulders.

  “He’s not angry at you,” she said as he shortened his steps to accommodate the shackles binding her legs.

  “Aye, well, I’m angry at him,” Marcus said around a stiff jaw.

  “Don’t be, Marc. Not over me,” she said.

  He looked down at her manacled wrists. “That is just wrong, Tonia.”

  “He believes he has his reasons and there is a death warrant out for me,” she reminded him.

  Marc stopped, whipping his head around to stare at her in horror. “By the goddess, I’m not about to let them execute you with the others!” he stated, his eyes pinpoints of fury.

  “Neither is he,” she said on a long sigh. “Trust me. My death is the last thing he wants.” She tried to smile but didn’t seem to be able to. “He wants to punish me himself for as long as I draw breath.”

  * * * * *

  Garrick had always had an open door—or in the case when in the field—open tent policy. He did not generally require his men to seek permission to enter. After all, he was the commander of the greatest army in the Cairghrian Galaxy. Privacy was not an option. He had to be accessible at all times to his trusted staff. Besides, only five men enjoyed that distinction and only they were ever allowed inside the tent. If they came visiting, there was a reason.

  Marc returned half an hour later with his shoulders squared and his jaw set, expecting to do verbal—if not actual physical—battle with his old friend. To find Garrick lying on his back on the cot with an arm flung over his eyes was not a good sign.

  “Where is the algés?” he asked quietly.

  “Desk,” Garrick mumbled.

  Moving to the desk, Marc opened the only drawer and took out the vac-syringe, a foil packet containing an alcohol swab, and a vial of the heavy-duty med that was needed. With expert efficiency from having performed the procedure hundreds of times, he quickly filled the vac-syringe, returned the vial to the drawer and went over to the cot.

  “Put your arm down,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper for he knew the faintest sound was magnified a thousand times in Garrick’s brain.

  With a shuddery sigh, Garrick let his arm fall above his head. Without being asked, he turned his head to give Marc access to the pounding vein in his neck.

  “When did this start or do I need to ask?”

  “You don’t.”

  Marc laid the vac-syringe on Garrick’s chest then tore the foil packet open with his teeth. He swabbed his friend’s neck. “Okay,” he said, picking up the vac-syringe. “Ready?”

  “I’m never ready,” Garrick said and let out a yelp when the needle drove into the column of his neck. “Fuck that burns like fire!”

  “You’re such a pussy,” Marc told him.

  “Let me inject that shit in your vein and see how you like it,” Garrick groused. “It spreads like fire through my fucking brain.”

  Almost instantly the med began to take effect. Garrick put his arm over his eyes again to block out the light from the lantern on his desk. “Did you get her settled?” he asked, his words already slurring.

  “I told the healer to let her take a shower then give her something to eat. By the goddess, Rick, she looks half-starved,�
� Marc replied.

  “Clay doesn’t take very good care of his whores, does he?”

  Marc frowned. “Don’t do that,” he said. “You know goddess-be-damned well she is not that.”

  “She left me for him,” Garrick said. “What does that say about her?”

  “What now?” Marc asked, not wanting to get into the specifics of what had happened at Castle Blackthorn all those years before.

  “She broke my heart,” Garrick said. “It’s only fitting that I break hers.”

  Chapter Two

  The hills overlooking Castle Blackthorn, twelve years earlier

  “Is he dead?”

  Lady Antonia Blackthorn barely glanced at her little sister. “I don’t know.”

  A low groan and a ripple of agony undulated down the warrior lying in front of Antonia.

  “Get the canteen from the saddle,” Antonia ordered.

  Lady Ashlyn Blackthorn nodded. She pushed up from her kneeling position beside her sister and hurried to her sister’s horse. She grabbed the canteen and ran back, handing it to Antonia.

  “Take my horse and ride back to the keep. Tell Arbra to bring a cart. We need to get this man help if he is to survive.”

  At the ripe old age of twelve—today being her birthday—she would at last get to ride the Arabachian stallion that was her older sister’s pride and joy. Running to the mount, she had trouble getting her foot into the stirrup but Corbeau stood very still—his black coat gleaming in the moonlight—as though the beast knew she was but a child. Grunting as she threw her spindly leg over the mount, Ashlyn drummed her little heels into his sides.

  “And tell Arbra to bring the healer with him!” Antonia shouted after her sister.

  The man who lay so still was staked to the ground with iron bands around his wrists and ankles. His bare arms, chest and legs were burned horribly but the flesh was rejuvenating even as she watched. Across his hips was a loincloth, which meant he was of the nobility. Whoever had staked him in the sun would not have been as respectful of his modesty had he been a peasant.

  His face was turned away from her and she had no desire to see it. If the flesh was as charred as the rest of him, the memory would haunt her forever. When he groaned again, she looked away from the loincloth to his chin. She saw him sweep his tongue slowly along his upper lip.

  “You are safe now, milord,” she said and he jumped.

  With effort he began to turn his head.

  “Water,” he pleaded.

  She dared not touch him for fear she would cause him more hurt.

  And for another, more pressing reason.

  Instead, she uncapped the canteen and held it above his face, trying not to look at anything but the blistered lips. Yet as she trickled the water into his open mouth, her gaze moved up to his eyes and held.

  They were the most beautiful blue eyes she’d ever seen on a man or woman. Long, thick dark lashes framed them to perfection. Though they were filled with horrible pain, they seemed to be probing into her soul. Deep twin grooves angled downward from the sides of his eyes—giving evidence this man smiled often and easily. As his throat worked convulsively to swallow, those eyes flickered as if the very act of getting the water down was agony. When he closed his lips, the water flowed over his mouth and lips before she moved the canteen.

  “Enough?” she asked.

  “Aye,” he managed to say then those dark lashes fluttered closed and he sank back into unconsciousness.

  Kneeling there so closely beside him that the skirt of her gown touched his burned side, she wondered who he was and what he was doing on her world. He was not a Volakisian. She did not recognize the tribal tattoos that were beginning to reappear on the undersides of his forearms. Under one tat were words in a language she did not know. A niggling suspicion in the back of her mind told her he was the Modarthan for whom her father had been waiting.

  As the blistered, ruined flesh of his face regenerated, the image of a very striking man began to appear amid the hideous carnage. When fully healed, she knew he would be one exceedingly handsome warrior. Already the restoring skin on his rib cage was beginning to reveal corded muscles that were striated across the abdominals. His physique would be what her Serenian lady’s maid called “ripped”.

  “Who are you?” she whispered, aching to push back the lank brown hair that fell over the deep horizontal lines of his forehead but the skin there wasn’t fully healed.

  And she dared not put her hands to him anyway.

  She tore her attention from his face to his wrists. The bones beneath the iron bands were clearly visible—the flesh melted away. Until the magic-suppression armlets and anklets were gone from him, the flesh there would not heal and it would be excruciating when the restraints were removed.

  Her knees finally giving out from being pressed into the rocky ground, she dropped to her rump with her legs curled beside her. She set down the canteen and folded her hands in her lap—lacing the fingers together to keep from touching the warrior. She did not understand the compelling desire to do such a thing. Outside her father and uncle, she’d never laid hands to a male. It was forbidden until the one who was to be her Life-mate entered her life. When that one appeared, she would be drawn, compelled, to touch him, unable not to put her hands to him. That had been the prophecy of the Chosen One for Antonia Blackthorn, firstborn daughter of the Black Baron.

  “Are you him?” she asked, her eyes moving over the beautifully formed face that was now free of ravages. “Is that why I have this yearning to touch you?” She lifted her right hand and started to do just that. Her hand trembled violently the closer it came to his naked chest. She swallowed, took a deep breath then…

  In the distance she heard the jingle of harnesses and knew her father’s Sargent-at-Arms Dobryn Arbra would soon come riding in ahead of the wagon. The steady, pounding clop of racing hooves on the road reached her ears as that thought flitted through her mind. She angled her head toward the rolling hills over which he would ride and smiled when she saw his large roan thundering over the crest.

  She snatched her hand back, feeling as though she escaped a horrible fate.

  “Milady?”

  The weak voice held a tinge of panic and she snapped her head around, wanting to reassure him.

  “It’s just my father’s man,” she said. “You are safe, milord. Fear not.”

  “F-father?” he questioned and his eyes narrowed in unspeakable pain.

  “Baron Demas Blackthorn,” she answered and watched him slowly close his eyes. She could almost hear what she took to be a sigh of relief her words brought to him. “Are you the one for whom he sent?”

  He did not answer for he had fallen back into unconsciousness, his lips parted to reveal his fangs.

  Her eyes widened. “Vampire,” she whispered and a tiny chill flitted through her. Her gaze went to his chest as it rose and fell. She longed to put her palm against his heart.

  A long sigh escaped her. “Aye,” she said. “I believe you are that warrior,” she said.

  Arbra’s horse came to a skidding stop about five yards away. She watched as he swung a leg over the mount’s head and slid to the ground, hitting it running as he rushed to her.

  “What happened?” he asked in his gruff Rysalian brogue.

  “I believe this is the man Father has been expecting,” she said, realizing she was blocking the man from Arbra’s view.

  “Ash said he was dead,” Arbra stated. “Staked in the Sun.”

  “Aye, but he is alive and rejuvenating at a good rate,” she replied.

  Arbra hunkered down on the other side of the warrior. His dark-brown eyes widened. “Merciful Alel, that’s not the man your father sent for. That’s the king’s bastard son!”

  Antonia gasped and scrambled to her feet, putting distance between her and the man on the ground.

  “Lord Garrick Warwyck?” she asked in a voice a full octave higher than normal.

  “Aye, the Crimson Lord, himself,” Arbra agree.
“The man they call the King’s Executioner. He’s a Panthera Vampire.”

  “That’s worse yet! I wish I’d not come across him,” she said, backing farther away.

  “It’s a good thing you did, lass. One more Sunrise and he would have been ash,” Arbra said.

  “I want to touch him, Dobryn,” she said. “It’s all I can do not to!”

  Arbra slowly turned his head and looked up at her, eyes wide. “Say again?” he asked in an ominous tone.

  “I want to put my hands on him!” she said, beginning to tremble. She clutched her hands in front of her—twisting them as though she were striving to rid them of contamination.

  “Nay,” Arbra said, shaking his great mane of white hair. “That can’t be.”

  “I almost did,” she said. Tears were forming in her eyes. “Had I not heard you coming I would have.”

  “Get your ass on my horse and get out of here,” Arbra said. He returned his hawk-like gaze to the man on the ground. “Do it now, Tonia!”

  She needed no second command. Hiking up her skirt, she ran as fast as she could and all but vaulted into the saddle, jerked the mount’s head more viciously than she intended to turn it. She hissed her apology to the animal as she spurred him into motion.

  As his employer’s eldest daughter raced toward Castle Blackthorn, Arbra stared at what he instinctively knew was going to be prime trouble. Except for that portion of his body clamped beneath the iron bands, the Crimson Lord’s flesh had completely regenerated. The heavy muscles of his chest, the bulging muscles of his arms, and the sturdy girth of his thighs bespoke the rigorous training through which the Modarthans had put the warrior. The tribal tattoos that marked him for who and what he was brought a groan from the Sargent-at-Arms’ thin lips.

  “Sweet Merciful Alel. Why you?” he asked. “Why the fuck you of all the warriors in the Megaverse?”

  As though he’d heard the questions, the warrior slowly opened his eyes. There was unspeakable agony registering there but it was overridden by keen intelligence.

  “My Life-mate?” he whispered.

  “Aye,” Arbra said on a long sigh. “I fear so, milord.”