Chapter 94

Accepting My Twin Mates Chapter 94 CHAPTER 91 – WHO IS THE RED-HAIRED VAMPIRE?

Evgeniya My eyes felt a mix of sandpaper and glass, a dry irritation sealing my eyes shut and weighed down with bricks to keep them closed. Every muscle in my body throbbed and ached, especially my neck where it arced in a twist on the cool wooden floor.

For a moment, I wanted to pretend nothing had happened, however long ago it happened. I wanted to pretend the ghostly sensation of a slimy hand on my naked stomach was a figment of a nightmare. I wanted to pretend that the humiliation I had been forced to endure never truly occurred. I wanted to pretend I was at home, with Astennu and Badru and that soon, their warm palms would soothe the dull ache in my neck and body. All of my pretences would, unfortunately, leave me in a soul-splitting disappointment because I knew how the story ended; with me still curled on the floor feeling violated.

A single eye of mine cracked open, greeting the hues of pinks and oranges splattered across the sky from an early morning sunrise. How long had I passed out this time?

As I inched myself up to a sitting position, a tight band of tension lashed through my temples. I swiped a hand through my hair, teasing the threads that had stuck themselves to the side of my face. The strands felt dry, meaning I must have been out for hours for my thick long tresses to have air-dried.

Part of me felt like crawling into the soft bed near my feet, pulling the blankets over me and blocking out reality until it corrected itself. That would do me no favours.

‘It won’t do our little man any favours either,’ Evva’s groggy voice mumbled gravely.

My palm pressed to my currently flat stomach, blowing a sigh of relief that the small bond continued to tug despite the stress and the lack of care I hadn’t been able to show on my part.

Lifting my head and peering over my shoulder, the first images to greet my bleary vision were that of Bastiaan, shirtless and pulling his weight upwards without rest on the thick pipe above him. His glossy black hair was piled high in a looped bun and his muscular frame gleamed with sweat, accentuating the pastel colours swirling in the shadows of his skin. There were a few lines, scars, littering his torso that were devoid of colour, highlighting their existence.

But the sight that wrenched my heart was situated in the cell next door.

My father, kneeling at the glass with his head against its surface. From the direction his body was angled and the vague memories spiralling in my mind of him begging my name, he had fallen asleep where he was made to watch me implode and not be able to do a thing to comfort me.

‘He stayed there all night,’ my wolf whimpered, wanting to nose him awake.

“Dad?” My voice was barely above a whisper yet it captured the attention of both men without a repeat.

My father’s head snapped up at hearing my single small word uttered and I hadn’t seen him look worse than how he did in front of me. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot and heavily lined in black circles.

His tanned skin had taken on a pallid appearance, highlighting the scar on the left side of his face. The blood from his claws still smeared the glass from his attempts to stop Marceau taking me away.

“Solnyshko…” his voice was hoarse from exhaustion, and not from simply waking up.

A string of questions hung on his tongue that he wanted to ask but couldn’t find the words. He thought the worst and while the vile act he feared had occurred hadn’t, I wasn’t sure how to tell him the truth either.

I opened my mouth to speak, but not a single word came out, each syllable clinging to the back of my throat and churning my empty stomach. I couldn’t say nothing happened because he had seen in painful detail that it had. I couldn’t tell him that I was fine because I wasn’t. I couldn’t alleviate his fears and say I wasn’t touched because that would be a lie.

“…It’s a boy… at least, I’m pretty sure it is,” I decided to stick with something positive, something I couldn’t share before, rubbing the flat of my stomach.

My secret was out for the entire cell block to hear. What did it matter anymore whether they knew the gender on top of it?

“Vnuk… a grandson?” His gruff voice softened to the warm fatherly timbre I knew.

He hauled himself up a little higher, kneeling to the clear walls of his prison with his palms flat upon the glass.

“What Marceau said was true?” Bastiaan claimed my attention, his eye wincing harshly at my father’s snarl at the mention of that man’s name. “You’re… pregnant?”

I nodded, still trying to wrap my head around my predicament. “I didn’t know until I woke up here. I wanted to hide it for as long as possible and was hoping for more than a day. But, nothing ever seems to go the way I think it will.”

“You are preaching to the choir in this establishment,” he gave me a self-deprecating half laugh and, like my father, I could tell he wanted to ask ‘did he touch you’, but couldn’t.

Aside from the few lurid comments shouted from further down the rows, there was a distinct voice missing; Diego’s.

“He’s a most trying individual, yet you miss him when he’s absent,” Bastiaan guessed my unspoken question. “He was collected a few hours ago. The foolish pup may have done it this time.”

So Marceau had made good on his threat, that he would fight everyone’s matches in their stead. Would he even return?

The sudden sounds of boots on the hard floor and the metallic clanking echoed about and, on instinct, I scrambled away from the glass door, dreading being led away anywhere by myself again. The tip on my bare foot sent the bottle of vitamins rattling in a roll, smacking into the clear cell wall as a guard appeared and slid a tray, similar to that of yesterday, through the hatch.

Scents of butter, pepper and meats wafted around me, clawing at my stomach. I was beyond hungry at this point; the eggs and steak had been forgotten and gone to waste yesterday.

“Solnyshko?” My father said with such softness, I almost didn’t hear him. “Eat. If you try, I try.”

“He’s correct,” Bastiaan took his own portion without a fight. “Given your unborn pup, you require it.

And while I would never like to give these fiends any praise, they feed us exceptionally well.”

He wasn’t kidding. A large portion of poached eggs with hollandaise sauce on ham and toasted brioche greeted me on the plate and on the side, a mix of dry nuts that those opposite didn’t have. This must have been one of those things my ‘condition required’.

“Dad? What is it?”

I had inhaled mine and was sweeping the toast around the remnants of the buttery sauce. My father had only taken a few bites of his, staring down at his plate with such a raw expression, it squeezed my heart.

“Lucy made this… it was our first meal alone.”

“Is it at least as good as hers?” I asked with a weak smile.

“Not even close.”

“Who is Lucy?” Bastiaan tilted his head.

“My dad’s second chance mate,” I answered as my father’s mind was elsewhere, pushing the remains of his food on the plate and taking small bites. “She’s also my tiny best friend and she’s younger than me. We’re a strange family, so you being, like, my vampire uncle will fit right in.”

He grinned, opening his mouth to speak when a faint whirring came from the door hinges. The glass opened with a sweep to a single unobtrusive guard, quietly showing his armaments. It was that unsettling demeanour again of non-aggressive authority where no threat was made, but the ultimatum was clear. I noticed the cell doors opposite were open, too, as I inched my way forward.

“We’re being let out to the yard, that is all,” Bastiaan pulled a black long-sleeved shirt over his head, leaving his hair pulled back. “I suggest you take it, for it shall be the only fresh air you receive.”

My father was standing before the vampire had finished speaking and what remained of his meal was long forgotten, along with any care he had of the guard present. My impulses superseded any rationality of consequences. So when his arms collided around me in the warm embrace only a parent could give, my own arms responded in kind, clinging to him for dear life.

A click of something metallic resounded behind us and my father’s hold tightened, picking me up under my knees.

“If you merzkiye volki (filthy wolves) try to take my daughter from me or touch her again,” his snarl made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. “There is not enough wolfsbane to stop me taking your head!”

“I doubt there is any action you can take that won’t result in the young lady being harmed,” Bastiaan stood between us and the guard. “If the lycan doesn’t kill you, and that is a large ‘if’, we both know Marceau will.”

The mention of the French wolf had the guard thinking twice, begrudgingly stepping aside. I expected my father to put me down, but he refused, continuing to carry me as though I was a pup.

‘Dad? You can put me down.’

‘I made promise they would not harm you and I fail,’ he tucked my head under his chin, but I heard the small sniffle he tried to hide. ‘I no fail again.’

‘There’s no arguing with wolf males when protective mode is activated,’ Evva mumbled, still licking her wounded pride.

I did my best to ignore the rows of other cells, not wanting the painful reminder that I was the only she-

wolf in an enclosed prison with a horde of wolf males that hadn’t seen a woman in years. But what caught my attention were the nine vampires and how each of them nodded in reverence to Bastiaan;

especially the red-haired one with deep orange eyes that I had seen in the clinic. The wounds across his chest were now minuscule thin red lines, the only indicator that an injury existed.

We were steered through the reinforced black metal door that I had been forced through the previous day and led to the gate I suspected would usher us to the outside. Looking closer at the rows of footwear, I noticed each of the pigeonholes had a number on them and a thin black jacket folded inside.

“It is fortunate that your first day experiencing the outdoors here is not in a blizzard,” Bastiaan zipped himself up and lifted two sets for us that must have been our designated gear. “It looks a rather fine morning.”

A warning growl rippled from my father and before I could turn to see what it was, I was shoved behind his broad frame. Flexing up on the balls of my feet to see over his shoulder, I saw the guard hand over a thick sherpa fleece blanket, rolling his eyes and turning to open the gate separating us from the fresh air. He may have acted blasé, but he gripped the butt of his rifle tightly; not as unaffected as he thought he appeared.

The gate opened and an icy blast rushed through the gap, but the sharp edge was softened by the soft and warm blanket bundled around my shoulders.

‘What about you?’ I stared up into my father’s eyes as he cinched in the top.

He snuffed, a small quirk twisting a single corner of his mouth under his bushy beard. ‘This winter is nothing to me.’

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting from the prison yard, something atypical given the rest of this fortress, but it was virtually the exact image I would have conjured. A square yard with an open space and workout equipment under a covered area, encircled by a high smooth wall, glinting with silvery barbed wire and a snow-capped mountainside just visible above. Fine, it was much cleaner with a slick modern finish than I would have imagined, and from the steam drifting in coils to the air from a floor devoid of snow, underfloor heating?

“Who was the red-haired vampire?” I asked now that a guard no longer hovered over us.

“Barend,” a small smile slid onto Bastiaan’s face. “He is Dutch, as I am. One of the few vampires that fled our coven with my brother and I. He was our personal custodian guard as children and watched us grow.”

“How old is he?” The vampire male didn’t look a day over 25.

“Almost twice my age,” he gave me a knowing smirk at my surprise. “170 years old. He taught Christopher and me how to fence, he is quite the master swordsman. My brother was the only vampire who could best him. I came close on several occasions.”

“Did… he lose anyone?” I whispered.

“Yes, his soulmate and daughter… because he was defending us as his duty dictated. It is a debt I shall never repay, but I try. Which is why, unlike Diego, I must do as I am told to keep what little remains of my coven alive.”

“So that’s why you’re kept separate from them, because the vampires see you as their leader?”

He nodded, guiding us to the far end of the compound under cover. “Our kind’s leadership is passed down through blood, similar to an Alpha, but it is not enough to keep it. The coven can choose who they wish to follow and if they find you unworthy, you are deposed. To let me around my coven would be equal to allowing an Alpha around their pack; a risk of rallying the troops, so to speak.”

“I saw, uh, Barend, yesterday,” I recalled the state of his slashing lacerations. “He looked pretty badly injured.”

“It happens,” he sighed, his gaze wandering around us and no doubt recalling all the injuries that scarred him in more ways than one. “We are made to fight wolves. Vampires may be far faster, but we are beaten by your strength and healing rate. Another day and his wounds will fully heal. It wasn’t silver, so he won’t scar.”

A tense silence established itself, like the clouds beginning to roll together and gather overhead, darkening a once bright morning.

“If you saw my former custodian, you were taken to the clinic by Marceau?” Bastiaan broke the hush.

My father’s hand felt heavier on my shoulder, passing the weight of his fears as he silently stood over me.

My head bobbed in a small obscure single motion. “He didn’t touch me the way you’re thinking… he didn’t…” I felt sick just thinking the words and even sicker hinting at it out loud. “…He made me do the test in front of him and shower.”

“I should have killed that wolf where he stood,” my father rumbled behind me, pulling me into his embrace and stroking my hair.

“Believe you and me, many have tried,” Bastiaan blew a sharp breath between his teeth. “The man has deep pockets and he keeps the circle around him tight. He uses the technology at his disposal to keep us all under his control, as he calls it improved efficiency.”

“Does that mean,” I looked around both men to check the proximity of the guard and dropped my voice to the lowest whisper I could manage. “That there aren’t as many guards here as I’m thinking?”

“Not as many as he used to keep,” Bastiaan responded in a deep warning tone. “But enough to prevent the idea that is forming in that head of yours. You are not the only one to try and escape, and it has never ended pleasantly.”

We would see about that.