Page 148 of Crimson Oath
He locked his gaze on wide blue eyes the color of the summer sky. He kept his voice and his hand soft even though everything in him wanted to grab, to conquer, to steal her away like the barbarian he was.
“Call me your husband, Tatyana Vorona. Grant me your love. Ask me for my protection and you will have it. You will be my mate. No one will touch you. I will care for you, your family will be my own, and you will want for nothing ever again.”
Chapter 32
Tatyana
Her mind wasshattered.
“I’ll leave you now. Just think about what I asked.”
Oleg kissed her forehead and returned to his trailer before dawn, leaving Tatyana staring at the wall.
He wasn’t asking her to marry him, he was asking for her to be some kind of queen. A ruler. Hismate.
Tatyana barely understood what that meant.
She’d jumped straight from falling in love with the scary, dangerous, and strangely honorable vampire lord to considering whether she was willing to tie her life to his for eternity.
Nothing really prepared a person for that.
Tatyana wanted her mother, but that wouldn’t help either. Anna would sit her down, tell her that marrying a king was a horrible idea, that she’d never have a moment’s peace. Wasn’t there a nice clerk at the city office who didn’t mind a wife who only came out at night?
No, her mother was not going to be any help at all.
What would Rumi say?
Oleg Sokolov’s marriage proposal was not something that Tatyana could ask Rumi and Desiree for advice about. She had afeeling Oleg would end up wiping their memories quite thoroughly if she did something like that, and she didn’t want her friends’ brains altered without their consent.
Marriage?
Like… in a church? Could vampires go into churches?
They must have been able to because Oleg told her he was godfather to Elene’s children, which would imply that he’d been at their baptisms, which would mean?—
She was spiraling.
What he was asking was crazy. She wasn’t old enough to get married, especially to a thousand-year-old vampire. She wasn’t anyone’s queen. She had no idea what it would be like to lead.
Did that mean she’d have to occasionally take up a battle-ax and go defeat his enemies like when Zara had attacked the house in Sochi?
Would she have to sit in on business meetings?
Were there diplomatic events?
What exactly did a vampire queen do?
If Tatyana hadn’t been vampire, she would have been awake for hours. Luckily, the sun rose as inevitably as the turning of the clock and dragged her into a deep and dreamless sleep.
The following night,Tatyana was standing in the meadow and watching the final preparations for the grand Vashana Zata with thoughts of Oleg still racing around her mind.
She didn’t want to sit with the rest of the immortals who seemed to be in some kind of grandstand that faced the stage, so she lingered in an area just to the right of the main stage and waited for anyone who looked familiar.
Oleg was in the stands, wearing another immaculate suit and thecape he’d had on when they walked around the camp. He caught her eye from across the meadow but offered only a nod. She saw him speak to several immortals sitting nearby, but mostly he spoke to Mika, who was sitting to his left.
He left the seat on his right side empty.
Madina and Darius were sitting behind him. René DuPont was also there, along with the other vampire guests, most of whom were wearing traditional clothing of various sorts.
