To stop any more impositions on his Vampyre self, Kateryna declared they would marry. By the time his Master left the Vampyre Court, Leonid was a completely different Akrhyn than the broken male found pleading for death in the quiet of the night.
However, as much as Kateryna trained him, Leonid was a peasant at heart. Court suffocated him. The Made there were vapid, conceited, vile and skirted around the rulings of the Vampyre Court as much as possible. Leonid persuaded his love to allow him to venture out of Court and see the world. Kateryna had been one of the Made for one hundred and fifty years before him. She had seen the world and personally, found it lacking. However, her inability to say no to her husband was one of her only weaknesses. The Elders of the Vampyre Court gave their consent, and Leonid was free.
He roamed the globe, learning different fighting techniques, cultures, lore. The Lycan accepted him into their packs, and for years he lived with a wild pack in the very north of Canada. On his return to the Vampyre Court, Leonid was unsurprised to learn his wife was now the ruling member of the Vampyre Court.
Delighted with her husband’s new skills and learned graces, she called forth the Great Council. After a lavish ball, Kateryna put her proposal to the Great Council that her well-travelled and knowledgeable husband should be considered and accepted onto the Great Council. What more could they want? He was educated, a fierce warrior, well-travelled and an ally not to be turned away.
The Great Council deliberated for many hours and, on their return, informed Kateryna and Leonid that he would indeed be a welcome addition to the Great Council.
Leonid refused. Kateryna’s wrath at her husband’s refusal of such an opportunity knew no bounds. Vampyres fled the Court in order to escape the fury of the Vampyre Queen. The offer was rescinded, and Leonid remained at his wife’s side for the next sixty years until she had recovered from his insult.
However, he had always had an itch to see more. Bored with Court, Vampyre politics and a Great Council who still bore his rejection as a personal slight, Leonid left again. The Americas were calling him again. Time changed too quickly when you were sitting still.
Headquarters were being introduced, territories declared, factions organised and trained. The Great Council were moving with the times, and Leonid was eager to experience the changes. He settled in the northern territory. The forests and woodlands of Canada would always call to him for their wildness and freedom.
Leonid’s ability to fight and his patience for training were finally ensnared by the Great Council when they asked him to assist in training the Elite Sentinels. No catches. Train and educate. As an ignorant peasant, his wildest daydreams had been to have an education. He soon learned that his passion was teaching. To pass on knowledge and sculpt a student’s learning? Leonid knew no other high like it. Perhaps not even the taste of blood.
His wife again agreed to let him wander and teach, growing more impatient as the years passed. Her agitation was palpable when Leonid seemed to favour the Prince George Headquarters rather than be with her in her Court. Kateryna eventually had enough, and she called her husband home. TheVampyre Queenhad indulged him for too long, her patience finally worn out.
And so Leonid returned to his wife and a Court that despised him as much as he hated it. He passed many years with his wife until she eventually snapped at him over a banquet to leave. With a kiss for her cheek and a whispered endearment, Leonid was back over the frozen lands, heading to Canada.
Celeste Ivanov called to him from the moment he first met her. Fragile but so fierce. Her skill was impressive, but her heart ruled her head too much. Caught easily in daydreams, Celeste had her head in the clouds. However, thanks to Leonid’s training, she was a trained Elite Sentinel. She had always lacked social skills, keeping to herself, and it was too late for all concerned when he realised Celeste’s and Salem’s love. He advised his student to forget. To leave. To move on. Start fresh.
Her heartbreak at the announcement on the night of Salem’s betrothal ceremony to Mikayla would be a memory of Leonid’s for many years. He saw her face whenever he looked at Tegan.
As he lay on the stone floor and tried to pull his thoughts back from his past, he couldn’t help but wonder what life would have been like for Tegan had her mother survived. Would she be the same Sentinel? He hoped so.
Kateryna had not been happy to hear her husband was choosing to raise a female Akrhyn as his own. Children were not an option for Vampyres. No Vampyre could be born as an infant. The body essentially died when an Akrhyn was Made. Reproductive organs withered and died. Saliva, sweat, and most bodily fluids all stopped being produced as soon as the Made’s transformation was complete. Blood was survival. A small amount kept an undead heart working, but the rhythm was long gone. Hunger was real, but Leonid suspected it was more a craving of his heart not to die again, more than a need to be sustained.
A heart did more than keep him existing. His heart loved. He loved his wife, he had loved Celeste, and his love for Tegan was immeasurable. She was his daughter even though it was impossible. He had held her when she took her first breath, hovered over her for when she took her first step, and he had been with her for almost every step since. His love for Celeste’s child was unparalleled to any other being he had ever known, even his beloved.
Nineteen years in which he had not seen his wife. Kateryna’s discontent was getting louder as the years passed, but Leonid would not leave Tegan until he was sure his daughter was ready to face the world and life in a way that her mother had not.
When she passed her final Trials, his elation at her accomplishments had been dimmed by the summons back to Court. Leonid could feel the change coming. He knew something was stirring, he was too old and too travelled to not sense it. He had determined he should go back to Court and hear their thoughts. Find out as much as he could about the threat.
He had left his daughter in safe hands. The hands of heractualfather, although it tore at his heart to do so. Within weeks of being away from her, the danger that he had sensed coming, arrived.
However,itfoundhim.
* * *
Leonid was sitting in the corner, watching darkness. Something had changed; he could sense it, but he could not see it. He had first felt it the day before. Day? Perhaps night. It was beginning to merge into one. The shift in the air had been subtle, but he had felt it. He hadn’t been able to hear anything, but his skin, so sensitive to touch, had prickled. He sat, he watched and he waited.
His brain was telling him that it was nothing but the fact that he had been in this room for far too long. He had moments of believing his brain. He had more moments of trusting his instincts, and his instincts were telling him that for the first time since he had been here watching the darkness, the darkness was watching him back.
It was not a good feeling. He was a Vampyre, he knew bad feelings. He put great stock in a warrior’s instinct. The Akrhyn that he trained, he taught them to hone the skill. He would often leave candidates in cabins in remote locations and test their senses. It was one of his first training lessons, then as they neared their Trials, he put them back in the same environment. Testing them again.
Tegan would laugh at him. She said he was always training, always testing her, and he was. Just as he was continuously learning, she was too. How could she be the best if he was not the best?
Being Made, he was also known for his patience. Vampyres were almost immortal. They would “live” forever since their heart stopped beating. They continued to age, but it was more akin to decaying. The death pulse that ran through them when they took their last breath paused as the venom in the bite took over. Leonid had heard stories of the death pulse being reanimated and sped up; however, he had never seen it.
In his years as a Made, he had seen small infinitesimal changes, his hair, which was still styled today as it was when he was Made, now had one or two more grey hairs than he had when his Master gave him the bite. A Vampyre could change their appearance. Facial hair could be shaved or grown. Slowly. Very, very, slowly. Hair could be cut and regrown, but the process took years. Where their senses were amplified and sped up, their physical appearance slowed to an almost stop.
Leonid had always surmised that it was part of the balance. You could not have too much of one without having too little of the other. Everything in life was about maintaining the balance.
Without balance, what was there? Anarchy and chaos.
Leonid watched the darkness. Is that what this presence wanted? It wanted to upset the balance? It made sense, too much darkness meant there was less light.