Twisted (Rogues Shifter Series Book 3) (5 page)

“You
want an heir.” He nodded. “There are many women who could give you an heir, women who would love you. My heart is already given to Garrett.”

“I have not come across another
non-fae woman with your power in combination with your beauty. We will create an almost perfect child. It will not be pureblood fae, but it seems those children are not to be. And please do not misinterpret me. I do not require your love. You may love whomever you wish. I only require the temporary use of your body.“

“This isn’t my fertile t
ime.” I tried to keep my voice calm, but I was beginning to panic.

“Two days before the full moon you’ll be ready. That doesn’t mean we can’t practice
beforehand.” He smiled and stood, unfastening his sash. My blood froze in my veins and I started to tremble. He saw my fear, but instead of getting angry he shook his head in disbelief. “I can’t imagine why you resist me. I promise that you will have every luxury and will experience great pleasure. You should consider my offer to be an honor for a shifter."

“I’m not a whore, Lord
Kennet.” He raised an eyebrow. “I ask with all respect that you let me go home. I’ve pledged with blood and magic to remain faithful to my mate, so the only way you’ll have me is by raping me as I fight against you. I can't imagine that a fae lord would enjoy taking with violence what he can get easily from other willing females.”

He smiled, but his eyes remained cold. “
Fae lords and their tastes are as diverse as any other group. But, sweet Jacqueline, there
is
another way. I can force you to want me. You will come to me and do whatever I ask you to do. And you’ll
want
to please me.” My eyes were wide with the realization that this could be true and that I was absolutely helpless to fight against it. “I will demonstrate.” He lifted his chin and spoke in a resonant tone. “Stand and walk to me.”

My whole body betrayed me by suddenly turning to swing my legs to the floor and then slowly standing.  My mind screamed at me to crawl back into the bed, but it was overpowered by the consuming need
of my body to obey him. I walked to him, my face stopping only inches from his.

He didn’t reach out to touch me, instead he simply
whispered, “Kiss me.” Without the tiniest bit of hesitation my head tilted and I leaned in to kiss him. He tasted vile, but it didn't matter. I was horrified to find that my body responded to his thin lips pressed against mine as if they were Garrett's. How could I want this revolting creature? Shamed beyond words, I wanted to crawl into a dark hole and bury myself. Still, I continued to kiss him, the robot he controlled wishing only to please her lord.

The part of
Me
still conscious, screamed in silent anguish as he trailed kisses down my neck and whispered. “It will be much easier for you if you come to me of your free will. Raping you while you kick and scream is not appealing to me in the least. Forcing you to do my will as I’ve just done, is manageable for me, but rather horrible for you, I believe.” He stroked my face. "If you come to me freely, I will be gentle and I will not control your mind or treat your body as my puppet. Your mate will not blame you for your choice if he truly loves you."

I'd lost the ability to speak, although he seemed to be waiting for a reply.

"Because I have other important work to attend to, I’ll give you another two days to decide, but no more.”

“Isaiah!” He called out his servant’s name and the man appeared instantly. “Support her so she does not fall.” Isaiah held me around the waist and suddenly I felt Kennett release control of my body.
Immediately, my knees gave out. If Isaiah hadn’t been holding me, I would have collapsed and hit the floor hard.

“Jacqueline, I would never have dealings with a whore. You are superior to every other non-fae female I’ve encountered. The fact that you are true to your mate makes you only more desirable. I will be back in two days, I hope that you will make the right decision, because no matter how you choose, you wil
l conceive and carry my heir.” Kennet nodded to me and disappeared.

As my knees buckled, Isaiah allowed me to slowly crumple to the floor where I curled into a ball and sobbed.

Chapter Nine

Bridgett: 2:00 AM Wednesday

Garrett looked worried when he walked back into the room. I felt really bad for him. It was so obvious that he and Jackie were crazy about each other and he must be going nuts thinking about Kenn
et mistreating her. He'd managed to stay pretty calm, even with so much shit that he had to organize as far as the search and rescue was concerned. It was all over his face that what he really wanted to do was run out the door and vamp speed it up to where Liam was searching.

I peeked over at William, hoping that he wouldn’t notice me looking. I wo
ndered what it was like to be head over heels in love with someone. How long did Jackie and Garrett know each other before they kissed for the first time? I’d never kissed anyone seriously. I looked down at my way-too-skinny body and ran a hand through my messy hair. Who’d want to kiss me anyway?

Garrett sat down and spoke, “I’m going over this once more. Rob will
be here from dawn to dusk. He'll organize the search here at our home base, overseeing Sinc and Bridgett on the phones and computers or any other work that he feels is necessary. He's in charge, If he's called away for some reason, Sinc will step up."

"
Sasha is in charge in the evening." I couldn't help wincing, but luckily, Garrett didn't see it and neither did Sasha.

Garrett looked at me and William. "You two will
cooperate and follow their orders, do you understand?” We both nodded. Garrett looked back at Sasha. “Elizabeth may be in and out once in a while to check the sovereignty of her wards. Work on the new house is suspended until Jackie is back. The wolves will be contacting other packs to get information and will be calling the house. If something important comes in you'll get the info to me or Liam immediately.” Sinc nodded.

“At night, Heinrich and Sasha will take tur
ns patrolling the grounds. Sash, you, Will and Rick will have to take turns feeding. If for some reason it isn’t safe, you can bring a donor here to the house, but only as a last resort. Glamour them so they don’t remember where they've been. You'll lose your heads in a heartbeat if anyone gets injured. Do you understand?”

"Yes Garrett," Sash answered.

“Will, you’ll need to make sure communications get sent to the correct party when Rob leaves and Sinc and Bridgett are asleep."

"Yes, Garrett. I'll go over everything with Sinc."

“And this is the most important thing. Except to feed, no one leaves the grounds until I get back with Jackie. You're all stuck here together until this danger is past. I can’t be worrying about you
and
her.” It was obvious that he was stressed to the limit, and yet he was somehow holding himself together. His fists were clenching and unclenching and I wondered if he even knew he was doing it. I felt like I wanted to say or do something to help him.

“Garre
tt, I know she’s alive. You’ll find her soon so don’t worry about us. We’ll do what Rob and Sasha and Sinc say.”

H
e actually smiled at me, losing some of the tension in his face. “Thank you. I appreciate that. You can go and organize yourselves now. I’ll be leaving within the hour.” He stood and said, “Sasha could you come into my office for a minute?” He turned and left the room followed closely by his second in command.

I felt a hand squeezing mine and I froze for a few seconds. When I turned to look at William
, he was smiling at me.

“What you said was perfect.” I smiled back and looked down at our hands joined together on the arm of my chair. “Do you want me to take my hand away?” he whispered
.

I looked up into his lovely light blue eyes and saw something there I’d never seen in the eyes of any other young man: admiration and maybe even…attraction
? Maybe with a little fear thrown in for good measure. He was scared, like me. I felt too warm and my heart was beating faster than normal, but it was all good.

“No
. Leave it where it is.” His shy smile turned into a true grin and I watched him breathe in my scent as I turned my hand over and threaded my fingers through his.

Chapter Ten

Garrett
: 4:15 AM Wednesday

I jumped ove
r the fallen oak tree branch and hit the ground without a break in my stride. Vamp speed was a definite perk and I was making the most of it tonight, racing through various towns leaving behind only the impression of a passing breeze. As I ran, I pulled up power from the lines in a constant stream so that my energy was continuously renewed in a magical loop. Liam had called Carol’s mom to let her know what town I was resting in during the day so that there would be a volunteer waiting for me when I woke up later this afternoon. Magic from the lines was a tool that I used to fight or travel, but it wouldn't sustain me for long.

As I raced through the rainy night  toward Liam and the others,
I found myself thinking about my maker, Eleanor. I felt no guilt over her death or the manner in which I’d killed her. She’d murdered hundreds, plus threatened Jackie’s life and the Crescent City shifter community. We'd all agreed that she had to die. Her death had accomplished much that was good, bringing money for use in the community and added powers to help me protect those who needed my help.

With rain
soaking my clothes and stinging at my face, I thought back to the night I’d been kidnapped by her nest. My family and I were asleep, completely unaware that there were vampires who’d moved into our territory. They attacked three hours before dawn, forcing us into dirty cages in an abandoned mine. She'd appeared, exquisitely lovely, her seductive feminine charms a ruse to first entrap and then make you a victim of her horrible cruelty. Eleanor fed from me, allowing Antoine and two others to feed from my parents and sister, then had us tortured for everyone’s amusement. I will never forget the sound of my mother's and sister’s screams. After we’d healed, she moved us to her villa in Carmel, where she'd tried to change us one at a time by draining us to near death and then replacing our lost blood with hers.  First my mother died, followed the next night by my father and then the next, my sister. By the time she came to me, I was ready to die, but that wasn’t what the fates had in mind for me.

I was sent to hell, instead.

When the rare mood struck her, Eleanor would play the benevolent despot, treating us all like favored underlings, laughing with us and actually seeming to enjoy our company. Unfortunately, those peaceful spans were brief, and sometimes, within only minutes, we'd be once again drowning in a desperate misery which, for some in the nest, was not survivable.

Her ego bred a fantasy where the dozens and dozens of vampires whom she
'd created would worship her, all of them grateful and eager to please her in any way they could. The reality was not as she'd imagined, and that made her furious and vengeful. When a human is changed against his will, he is not particularly grateful, nor eager to please, at least not at first. After a few rounds of punishments, a newly made vampire would either be dead or groveling. Even I spent years on my knees at the beginning.

She was creative with
her various tortures and they were usually done in front of all the others, the punishment combining pain with humiliation. Most of us despised her, some more openly than others. I was never completely successful at hiding my revulsion, and strangely, Eleanor respected me for my courage.

Because I was unique, the only shifter to survive the change, she treated me as a favorite, which didn’t mean I wasn’t punished as brutally as the others, just not quite so often. But she would always force me to watch, and to me that was harder than enduring her cruelty myself. Sasha
, and then eventually Heinrich, became her enforcers, but I often saw them lie to her about someone’s guilt to save that vampire’s skin. They hated what they had to do, yet we were all grateful that it was them performing her tasks and not one of the more sadistic vamps in the nest like Antoine. To discourage the friendship that Sash and Rick had formed, one was sometimes forced to punish the other.

In recent years, y
oung William endured the most. Eleanor enjoyed starving the weaker members of her nest just to see how long they could last. They would be fed very little, if at all, and were never allowed to hunt. We did what we could for them, but many died. Her attitude was that there were always plenty of humans around to change if her entourage grew too small. Will survived, partly because Heinrich brought him stray dogs. Yet as hungry as he was, he refused to take enough to kill the animal. And starvation wasn’t the only torture he’d suffered.

I wiped the rain from my face, some of it having turned pink
, as I remembered the misery of those dreadful times.

In the end, the ones who
'd survived were masters at disassociation. Our bodies were in pain, but our minds and our spirits were elsewhere. It got me though decades of misery, yet left me closed to many of my feelings. Rob and Liam helped me with their trust and their friendship. But it was another cheetah, running through the night on a deserted road, who gave me hope: who opened my heart again with her love and her strength and her trust.