Page 7 of Vampire's Breath

“You can’t leave me with them,” Conall growled.

I threw a shirt into my bag. “I can and will unless you want to come with me. You’d be most welcome to.”

I had reached my wits’ end. Our parents were gone, and Aiden was out of control. Every day, he hunted hunters and vampires, testing his strength and inability to die. By then, we’d had five years of it. Five years of being afraid that Aiden would be dead or would lose himself entirely. Five years of the demands for subservience, which would never happen. Maybe we would have been better off if he had died.

Cormac tried to rein Aiden in and talk some sense into him. But he had also stepped into Father’s role as acting president for the business and was overwhelmed. I could have helped, but I couldn’t forgive his one failing: he would never cut Aiden off. Aiden had access to all our money and homes, which gave him the financial backing to create even more issues and no means of real escape for the rest of us. I hated the bloodshed, the violence, the demands for control.

“Where are you going?” Conall’s eyes pleaded with me to abandon my plan.

“I don’t know. But until Mother and Father return, neither will I.”

His voice became soft. “How do we know they’re still alive?”

Sometimes he still acted like a teenager, rather than an 800-year-old vampire. I crossed my arms over my chest. “Because Mother owns 51 percent of Dún Na Farraige Estates Incorporated. As long as she is human, no vampire other than those Mother invited in will cross our threshold. And Father must stay with her to keep her alive. She has been alive for nearly a millennium. Without his blood, she’ll die.”

I had spent countless hours with our mother quizzing her and learning every morsel I could about the magic that ruled our lives, including the blood bond she had with my father ashis mate. I never knew if it was love or loyalty to my father that made my mother more knowledgeable than he, but her teachings, including about the natural magic the witches tapped into, still guided my path.

Our mother was the oldest vampire mate known to exist. She drank our father’s blood daily to allow her body to heal. But that meant my brothers and I were not full vampires. Instead, we were dhampirs—half human, half vampire.

We stopped aging around age thirty with no need for us to die. And we always needed blood, starting with blood-laced milk from our mother’s bosom, tiny punctures opened for us by our father. Blood-laced wine followed as we weaned from our mother. If any of us went for too long without, we desiccated, suffering the same effects as any full-blooded vampire. Yet the sun never burned.

I pulled my mobile from my pocket, trying to convince myself I just needed to check the time. Instead, I flipped to my contacts and saw my brothers’ numbers—given to me over the years, even though I hadn’t wanted them. They were a reminder of bonds I’d never entirely severed. My thumb hovered over their names as though a force kept me from pressing Call. I’d never dialed them before and wasn’t inclined to start now. Any contact would only pull me back into a life I loathed. I gritted my teeth and tucked the phone back into my pocket, focusing on the road ahead, as much physical as metaphorical.

The garden center came into view. I took a breath, hoping the voices floating to me were from a neighboring property. The lights strung across the path and the banner over the entrance to the center made my heart sink. Instead of the quiet closing time I’d hoped for, the place was bustling: laughter drifted on the breeze, fires danced in the pits, and caterers moved about with trays of food. It reminded me of everything I had abandoned to live in solitude. My muscles tensed, instinct telling me to run.

I wasn’t fast enough. A woman with curly brown hair approached from behind a tree, a clipboard in hand, and a smile—open and welcoming—on her lips. The carefree warmth unsettled me further, causing my feet to glue to the ground.

“Hey, are you here for the party?” she said. “It doesn’t start for a while, but tons of people are already here.”

I shook my head, words eluding me. I couldn’t be here, I couldn’t stay. It was too loud with too many people. “No, I was just going to make a purchase, but you’re busy. I’ll come back tomorrow.” I took a step back, my shoulders drawing inward.

“Oh, no! Briar would never forgive me if I let you leave. She’ll want to make sure you have what you need. Come on in.”

She beckoned to me. I forced myself forward, each step pulling me out of my sanctuary of solitude, my mind screaming for me to return home. This was a world I no longer belonged to, but it was too late for me to do anything but enter it. I promised myself I’d be there only long enough to get what I needed.

Briar

“Briar?”

I looked at Amy, bringing my champagne flute down from my lips. She provided the sweet relief of an exit from this conversation.

“Briar, a customer is here.”

I glanced at the man trailing Amy, his shoulders hunched and his eyes darting this way and that. It looked like the last place he wanted to be was here. But then, it was a few minutes before the official closing of the shop, and as much as the fire drew me in, helping a customer gave me the excuse I had been searching for.

I turned back to the man I was speaking with. “Excuse me, John. I’ll be back shortly.” I wouldn’t. We both knew I wouldn’t because I didn’t need to hear one more thing abouthis new girlfriend. Who wanted to hear about their ex’s new relationship?

John smiled at me. “Take your time. I want to wander around and see what new things you’ve gotten this year.”

“Check out the kangaroo paw we just got in. They are toward the back.”

“I will,” he said as he tilted his head and smiled. The last time I had seen him was at my mother’s funeral. It was kind of him to check that I was doing well, but did he have to show up? There were other friends I wanted to catch up with more.

“He needs a plant,” Amy said, pointing over her shoulder with her thumb as I approached her. The man behind her straightened to his full height and—oh. My. God. His gaze fell on me, and my heart raced.

“Certainly.” I drew the word out, heat building in my cheeks. I took a sip of my drink, smiling over the rim as it came to my lips, but my eyes never left those of the man who towered above me.

Under the soft lights strung across the pathway, when he wasn’t hunched down rubbing his hands over each other, the man was absolute perfection. He was tall, over six feet, the outlines of his broad, well-defined chest just visible under the black T-shirt he wore, the sleeves hugging his proportioned biceps. The fabric hung loosely over the top of well-fitting dark jeans, his Converse completing the effortless look. His light brown hair—a shaggy, unkempt mass dropping almost to his shoulders—made him appear as though he spent hours on the beach surfing or playing volleyball, but his pale white skin told the opposite story. His clean-shaven face had a defined jaw and high, pronounced cheekbones that guided my gaze to his most striking feature: his eyes. Ocean-blue eyes, deep and pure as the waves hurtling toward the shore, dragged me in.

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