The night air went a long way to cooling my ardor some as I flew through the night, not stopping to investigate anything I passed on the way because I kept my mind connected to hers. ‘Natalia!’ She looked around as if expecting to find me in her room. ‘I’m coming to you.’
‘No, don’t.’
‘Shh!’ I tried sending her calming waves of protection as she started to panic in fear. Her mind was filled with thoughts of the past horror and I realized in that moment that nothing is going to quell that fear but showing her that she has nothing to fear.
I’ve been a fool to think that time and space would work to bring her around. The kind of fear she felt wouldn’t be that easily swayed, not as deeply rooted as it now was. If her fear wasn’t enough to deal with, her multiple personalities seemed to be warring against each other even now as I went to her.
Instead of abating her panic only rose and she became frantic, her thoughts splintering in a million different directions at once. I had to pull back and away from her thoughts for a while because seeing her in pain and not being able to get to her was no the best thing for us right now.
Of course now that I needed to be there with her it seemed like it was taking longer than usual to get to her even though it had only been a few short minutes since I left my home. T o clear my mind I let in the elements around me for a split second, anything but the thought of what was going on inside her at this very moment.
The animals in the woods around her house became restless as I flew overhead and I calmed them with just the touch of a spell. As I got closer to her home I felt her essence much stronger; that mix of fear and excitement reached out to me in a silent call.
The mark I’d left on her had unintentionally started the bonding process, something I hadn’t been conscious of doing when I drew her flesh between my teeth the night before. Or maybe somewhere deep inside of me I’d wanted this.
It was part of the reason for her behavior now. And that mixed with her body’s changing chemistry made her scent more tantalizing, almost irresistible. Neither of those things good in our situation. If I didn’t know better I’d swear that someone or something was actively working against us. Someone wanted us to fail, but I couldn’t for the life of me think who would be so daring.
I wasn’t about to let outside interference destroy us though. Whoever it is couldn’t possibly know about my strength of will, or they underestimated me. Or maybe they were banking on the rift between the vampyre and fae clans.
It’s true that there’s no love lost between our clans, and some fool might believe that as the crown prince I might be against our match for various reasons. But they can’t possibly know and obviously don’t understand the strength of the mating call, which makes no sense because all immortals know about that shit. Except…
Yeah, how could I have forgotten about her? I’d been so caught up in us that I’d forgotten our visitor from the night before. I hadn’t even given any thought to why she’d been here.
It’s not normal for a hag to go against one of my caliber but their scheming asses would try anything once. Something for me to look into in the future. Right now I have to concentrate on Natalia and the fear that threatens. Only now do I truly understand that the longer I leave things the harder they will become, even of it’s just a few short days.
I landed softly on my feet on the soft mossy ground beneath her window and looked up. She was no longer in the window seat but pacing back and forth in her room. I looked for a place to land and sprung up and onto the windowsill outside her bedroom window. She felt my presence and looked towards the window. ‘Open Natalia!”
Natalia
I knew the second he breached the perimeter and crossed the property line. I’m not sure what the connection between him and this thing on my neck happens to be, but from the moment it started tingling I knew. I’d been shocked earlier when he invaded my mind, and even more so by his candid forthcomings. Not sure why I expected him to lie, to evade.
From a distance his voice is almost soothing, reassuring, but now that he’s this close I feel that sense of dread creeping up on me once again. It hadn’t been an easy day, not after the conversation my sisters and I had at breakfast. I’m still trying to figure out how I could’ve missed what they felt, heard; sensed.