The Ballad of Aramei Read online

  I STAY WITH EVA and Aramei for several hours, but Aramei remains sleeping and I can’t seem to get inside her head again. I even tried waking her at one point, taking both of my hands and shaking her body gently back and forth but it’s like she’s in a coma.

  To think I could’ve been like this….

  I’m anxious to get back inside her mind, but it looks like what I saw is all that I’ll be seeing on this visit.

  “Aramei will not able to hold the connection for very long at a time,” Eva says while lighting a lantern on the other side of the room. The afternoon is quickly slipping away into the evening hours, and the cabin, shrouded by a thick forest, is becoming dark fast.

  I sit at the table overlooking the downstairs floor, watching servants come and go, dust and mop and stand quietly until they are called for by Eva for any number of duties. One brings up a plate of fresh fruit and vegetables with Ranch dressing and some other weird-smelling sauce that I really have no interest in. I’d like a Black Angus burger or a melted ham and cheese sandwich, but I don’t expect I’ll be getting anything like that around here.

  Before long, the area is bathed in orange light from the lanterns; the shifting shadows on the log walls slow and deliberate. Everyone here is so orderly, taking their time in every little thing they do as if to make sure they get it right the first time. They never speak. Never. When I think back on it, even when I saw Aramei in the cave so long ago, the servants didn’t speak then, either. At least not to one another. Just thinking about it makes me anxious. I could never live like they live, so submissive and disciplined and seemingly without any sense of self-determination or freedom.

  But even still, not anything nor anyone else can hold my thoughts more than Aramei, who still has not moved or whimpered or fluttered her eyes since I came out of her mind.

  I can’t believe I was even in her mind. Or rather, I do believe it. It’s hard to push extraordinary things like this away anymore. I am a werewolf, after all, and if that doesn’t help me believe that there are many strange things in this world that I didn’t know before, then nothing will. But regardless of believing it, some things are and probably always will be hard to understand. This is definitely one of them.

  As I begin to wonder when I’ll be able to leave, I hear a vehicle pulling up to the front of the cabin. And before I think to head downstairs and see who it is, the front door opens and Trajan is walking inside.

  Eva’s demeanor shifts back to that solid, quiet manner as she walks over to stand against the wall.

  Trajan’s footsteps coming up the stairs make me edgy.

  I take a deep breath and go to sit at the little table. When Trajan makes it onto the upstairs floor he doesn’t say anything to me at first. He walks right over to Aramei, leans over and brushes his strong fingers through her hair and then walks over to the nearest lantern, turning the little knob to raise the fire.

  “I don’t think you…want to know what I saw,” I say to Trajan, jumping right in rather than letting it linger.

  Trajan stops in the center of the room and folds his hands together in front of him. He peers across at me, his deep blue eyes piercing into mine and that fixed, expressionless look on his face makes me all the more nervous. He wants to know everything, like he said before, no matter how much I think it will anger him.

  I tear my gaze away from his and say cautiously, “Viktor was in love with her. It was a long time ago.”

  Trajan moves toward me and my muscles tense every inch he draws closer. His steps are calm and gradual until finally he makes it to the table where I sit and he stops directly in front of me. I feel the warmth seething off his body; his shadow looming over me like a mountain.

  Carefully, I look up at him.

  “She told you this?”

  I hate it that I can’t read him, that there are no distinguishable emotions on his face, or anything in the tone of his voice to indicate how I should react.

  I shake my head once. “No,” I say cautiously, “I saw it.”

  A flicker of curiosity blinks across his features. “You saw it how exactly?”

  I let out a sharp breath and softly hit the palm of my hand on the table. “Do you mind not standing over me like that?” I say, fed up with being too intimidated to think straight. “Really, I…it’s making me uncomfortable.”

  A tiny, almost unnoticeable snarl ruffles the side of one nostril and the corner of his lips. He’s obviously irritated with me, but thankfully not intolerant. He moves back and takes the empty seat at the table with me.

  I sneak a sideward glance over at Eva to my right and catch the slim smile she flashes me so fast that if I were to have blinked in that half a second I would’ve missed it.

  “It was like I was there,” I finally go on. “It was as real and vivid as I’m sitting here with you right now.”

  Trajan nods slowly, as if taking in my explanation with the utmost attention. “Interesting.”

  I wait for him to go on, but he doesn’t.

  Geez! I don’t know how anyone can stand being in the same room with him. He’s about as interesting as a block of wood.

  I turn around, pulling my legs underneath the table and I look across at him. “How is that interesting?” I fold my hands together out in front of me on the table.

  Trajan takes his time about answering, casually tending to his attire, smoothing an invisible wrinkle in his shirt, dusting an invisible something-or-another from the leg of his jeans.

  Finally he says, “I can read her mind because she is connected to me, but I cannot peer as deeply into it as you apparently can. The things I see are indecipherable, flashes of thought about she and I, or things that have happened in front of her recently.”

  I’m surprised he hasn’t said anything about Viktor being in love with her, or that he doesn’t seem at all disturbed by the information. This tells me that he probably already knows and has for a long time.

  “What did you see of her life?”

  I pause, thinking back to hours ago that still feel like minutes ago. “It was when she first met Viktor, in her village.”

  “Go on,” he urges me with the gentle nod of his head.

  “He was kind to her,” I say, “and she took to him easily. In a short time she was sneaking out of her village to see Viktor, but….” I have to think about this part because I want to be sure that I’m right. “…she didn’t feel the same way about him as he did about her. It was more like she just enjoyed his company and he was something new, someone different from anyone she had ever met and he excited her. But she didn’t love him. Clearly, he fell in love with her though.”

  Trajan nods once more, appearing deep in thought. He brings one hand up and props his chin on the pad of his thumb, his index finger pressed against his cheek.

  “Did Viktor love her?” I ask carefully, unsure about how rapid the waters are that I’m treading with this topic.

  “He thought he did, but Adria, don’t mistake love for obsession,” he answers and I’m surprised he gave up the truth so easily. “Viktor and I were at war long before either of us knew of Aramei, but his so-called love for her would be what ultimately caused the greatest treachery our kind has ever known.”

  I swallow hard, but don’t dare say a word, not because I fear him but because I want to know as much as he’s willing to tell me and I don’t want to interrupt.

  “Viktor wanted my throne,” he says. “His defiance and his wars and all of the rebellious tricks that he pulled were never treacherous. They were normal. He knew he could not defeat me in battle, one on one, and so he did anything he could do to make my reign more…difficult. But when Aramei came into our lives, his defiance and rebellion turned into madness.”

  Trajan stops and stares out ahead of him in some dark, distant memory that even troubles me though I don’t know what it is.

  “His hatred for me made him a rogue,” he says still staring out ahead. “Hatred of that magnitude changes our disposition and we evolve into
something far more irrepressible. Viktor was the first rogue in the history of our kind. And he did unforgivable things.”

  I’ve been holding my breath practically this whole time, only realizing it now as I let it out in a long, wheezing shudder.

  I can’t grasp that he’s even telling me these things.

  “What did he do that was worse than waging war against you?”

  Trajan turns his head casually to face me. “You already know what he did.”

  I gaze across the room at Aramei and then back at him. “Bonding her to him is worse than defying you or trying to take your throne?” I find it totally believable, but at the same time, odd.

  “To be at war with one another is a part of our life,” he says looking away from me again. “It is our nature to obey and serve and challenge and conquer. Some of us have mated with the same females—Viktor and I both have offspring with Nataša and Sibyl, for instance—but to perform a Blood Bond with a wife is a treachery that can never be absolved.”

  I see Trajan’s jaw is clenched and it slowly relaxes as he lets the memory course through him.

  I, on the other hand, am a little disgusted with all of this talk of sharing mates and whatnot, so I know he had to notice the barely contained look of mortification that had been twisting my face and hardening my eyebrows. When I notice I’m still sort of looking at him that way, I let my expression soften.

  “You said wife,” I begin. “Were Nataša and Sibyl not your wives?”

  “No,” he answers without pause, “mates are simply that: mates. We share a bond of a different kind, one of equal need to have offspring, to keep our bloodline strong. But a wife…,” his gaze falls on Aramei and he stands up from the table. “…the difference is undying love. And Viktor sealed his fate the night he defiled her with his blood and his hatred and his sedition.”

  His boots tap gently across the wooden floor as he approaches Aramei.

  I remain seated.

  “My son is here for you,” he says nonchalantly, staring down at Aramei sleeping.

  My head snaps around when the front door swings open downstairs and bangs into the wall. A few gasps and squeals can be heard from the servants startled by Isaac’s entrance.

  I rise to my feet and look out over the balcony to see Isaac storming his way through the room and past the servants who quickly move out of his way. He looks pissed. My heart is hammering against the walls of my chest and I become unfrozen just in time to meet him at the top of the stairs and try to calm him down.

  “Isaac. Stop. It’s fine,” I say, pressing my hands against his heaving chest. For a moment I think he’s going to push me aside and disregard my plea altogether, but he backs down only for me.

  His eyes bore into Trajan’s back, full of fury and wrath and intolerance, but I know as well as Isaac knows that Trajan is fully aware of his anger.

  “Baby, I told you not to close your mind off to me,” he says with worry and relief in his voice. He grabs my wrists and stares deeply into my eyes and then pulls me beside him, grasping his arm around my waist. He glares back at his father with even more anger than before.

  “If I have nothing to worry about,” he snaps at Trajan, a growl reverberating in his throat, “then why have her shut off her mind to me?”

  “Isaac…,” I try to stand around in front of him again, but he holds me still at the waist. He never takes his eyes off Trajan, who still has yet to even turn around.

  Before Isaac has a chance to dig himself deeper into a hole with Trajan, I push Isaac’s hand away and glare at him. “Isaac!” I roar and then let my voice lower a level when I see that I have his attention. “He didn’t.”

  “What do you mean?” he says, looking upon me with confusion. “What…so you willingly closed yourself off to me?” He seems wounded by the very thought of it, that I would do something so dangerous.

  I shake my head no and soften my expression. “I didn’t do it, either.”

  As if to break the tension in the room once and for all, Eva steps away from her quiet, invisible spot against the wall and says, “It was Aramei, Milords.” She bows her auburn head lower than usual as if asking forgiveness of Trajan for speaking out of turn.

  All of us look right at her, even Trajan who turns fully at the waist. And when Eva isn’t chastised for speaking, she continues as though Trajan’s silence granted her permission.

  “I believe it was Aramei’s doing,” she says. “It must take everything in her to retain the connection.”

  “But how would Aramei know to do something like that?” Isaac says beside me, his body still rigid, but easing slowly. “How is that possible?”

  “She is right,” Trajan says. He moves away from the bed and toward us, stopping several feet away. “Though it may only be speculation, Evangeline I believe is right.”

  It seems as if Trajan is covering for Eva, though for what reason, I can’t possibly know.

  Trajan nods toward Eva and says, “You are dismissed,” and she bows first to Trajan and then to Isaac and me before heading downstairs to join the other servants.

  Hoping to keep the room in order, I don’t wait to go right back to convincing Isaac that his anger is out of place. I’m standing in a room with two Alpha males, but not just any two Alpha males and this is probably one of the most nerve-wracking feelings in the world. And just knowing that even I could Turn in the midst of a fight between the two of them and inadvertently get myself killed only makes me more determined to do everything in my power to maintain the composure in the room.

  I take Isaac by the hand and say to him in a soft, determined voice, “Please come sit down with me.” I look him right in the eyes and hold my gaze firmly to show him how important the request is to me.

  He looks across at his father as he lets me guide him to the chair, never taking his eyes off him.

  I don’t know what happened in the two weeks that I was gone right after Isaac infected me, but I know that Isaac’s relationship with his father changed. Maybe it was because Isaac became Alpha in my absence, that because he is a true Alpha now that their tolerance for one another changes due to dominance. Or, maybe something else happened that Isaac just isn’t telling me. He and I have talked about my time away and he told me all about the ceremony and how it went peacefully, but I always did feel like he was holding out on me the day he gave me the details. I honestly don’t think it went as smoothly as he claims, but how would I really know the definition of ‘smooth’ in such a circumstance? All that I do know is that whether it was something that happened then, or afterwards, Isaac is different when it comes to his father. He’s defiant and frighteningly intolerant of Trajan anymore.

  It scares me to death.

  “Isaac,” I say, enclosing his hands underneath mine upon the table and he looks right at me. “I’m glad I came here. I admit I wasn’t as sure this morning and I was a little afraid, but after sitting with her and seeing the things that I saw, I can honestly tell you that not only am I glad I did it, but I’m looking forward to doing it again.”

  This time I’m telling him the truth.

  Isaac’s eyes narrow. “Did my father threaten you?” He moves his hands from underneath mine and holds mine instead. I feel his fingertips pressing firmly around my knuckles.

  I shake my head firmly and sigh a deep exhausting sigh. “No…your father has been—” I stop myself because the word I had started to use was ‘kind’ and that might be too generous and only make Isaac even more suspicious. “He’s been reasonable. He hasn’t threatened me or even scared me for that matter.”

  “She is right,” Trajan says and Isaac and I both look over at him simultaneously. “I would say that you have a rather… insubordinate wife.”

  I blink back the shock of Trajan’s comment. Wife? So Trajan believes me to be Isaac’s wife and not just his mate? My face suddenly feels hot and my stomach kind of feels like it’s in my chest just below my collarbone, swirling around like a chaotic swarm of butterflies. I barely h
ave the mind to notice that Isaac seems to be grinning, but I soon see that it’s not because his father called me his wife.

  “Insubordinate?” Isaac says, looking across at Trajan with a smirk. “I’m proud for that.”

  “And you should be,” Trajan says with a single, solid nod of approval.

  Isaac turns his eyes back toward me and his expression has done a one-eighty. He’s not looking like he’s ready to kill his father anymore, but instead he’s looking at me like he’s ready to throw me on the bed or something.

  My face is boiling hot now.

  I look away.

  “You may leave,” Trajan says, abruptly changing the mood in the room. He turns his back to us again and goes toward the bed. “Isaac,” he says as he sits down on the edge of the bed and goes to remove his boots. “Bring her back in the morning. Aramei is trying to tell me something and I want to know what it is before this week is over.”

  Isaac stands from the table and takes me by the hand to stand with him. Surprisingly, he bows to Trajan and says, “Yes, Father,” giving him the same respect he has always given him as if he had never been angry about before.

  Trajan removes the second boot and turns at the waist to look across at us. And then as if it comes completely natural to me, I find myself bowing in the same manner that Isaac had. Trajan nods to me as if to accept it.

  “I’ll…see you tomorrow, I guess,” I say smiling squeamishly and sort of fumbling over the words, sounding completely unlike any formal werewolf in the presence of the Sovereign.

  I doubt I’ll ever be able to do that, to say ‘Milord’ or use big, sophisticated words that will only make me sound like an American trying to talk with an English accent. I’ll just stick with who I am and absorb a few essential tricks along the way that will at least make it seem like I know what I’m doing.

  Chapter 7

  BY THE TIME WE make it back to Hallowell, it’s pitch dark. I know I have to go home tonight and see Aunt Bev and Uncle Carl so they don’t start worrying. Thankfully, Genna helped with erasing their minds of my two week disappearance before she disappeared herself not long ago. But I haven’t been home in a week because I was sort of tied up, literally, in the basement of the Mayfair house. I did call a lot and talk to Beverlee and Uncle Carl, just to let them know I was okay, but I could tell in Beverlee’s voice the last time I talked to her that she was depressed about me being gone so long.