Pregnant for the Ruthless Billionaire Vampire

CHAPTER 7

ELENA'S POV

The barrier symbols on the doorframe stopped pulsing.

For exactly three seconds the cabin was silent.

Then the front door exploded inward.

I spun around, dagger raised, heart slamming against my ribs.

Seraphine stood in the doorway.

She was covered in blood. Her tactical gear was shredded at the shoulder, a deep wound underneath still seeping through the torn fabric. Her silver-white hair was matted to one side of her face. She was breathing hard, which I'd never seen her do before.

But she was alive.

"Seraphine…."

"Viviana. Where is she?" She was already moving past me down the hallway, reading the cabin in seconds the way only someone trained for centuries could.

"Bedroom. End of the hall. She's convulsing, the veins came back and…."

Seraphine was already through the door.

I followed her in.

She took one look at Viviana's body arched against the mattress, the black veins blazing across her face and chest, and dropped to her knees beside the bed.

Her hands moved immediately, no hesitation, no assessment period. Like she'd seen this before and already knew exactly how much time was left.

"How long has she been convulsing?"

"Two minutes. Maybe three."

"Did you give her the green vial?"

"Yes. Half orally, the rest on the veins. And I added my blood…."

"Good. That bought her time." Seraphine reached into the inside of her shredded jacket and pulled out a long thin vial filled with something that glowed faintly silver. "Hold her shoulders down. Don't let go no matter what she does."

I grabbed Viviana's shoulders and pressed down hard. Her body was still rigid, still convulsing in those terrible arching spasms, her eyes rolled back, her jaw locked.

Seraphine uncorked the silver vial with her teeth and forced it between Viviana's clenched lips, tilting her head back, making sure it went down.

Viviana's body seized harder for one awful moment.

Then went completely still.

"Is she…."

"Unconscious. Not dead." Seraphine pressed two fingers to Viviana's throat. "Pulse is weak but it's there. The antidote needs time to fight through the adaptation layers." She looked up at me. "You did well keeping her alive this long."

"She told me what to do."

"And you listened instead of letting her die."

Seraphine held my gaze for a moment. "Not everyone would have."

She stood and moved to the shelves in the hallway, pulling supplies with focused efficiency. I stayed beside the bed, watching Viviana's chest rise and fall in shallow, uneven movements.

Without the convulsions she looked different.

Younger somehow. The perfectly constructed armor of her, the ruby eyes and the expensive perfection and the cruelty she wore like a second skin, all of it stripped away. What was left was just a woman. Pale and damaged and fighting to stay alive.

Seraphine came back with a bowl, more herbs, and two vials she mixed together standing at the bedside.

"Help me sit her up."

I slid my arm behind Viviana's back and lifted while Seraphine pressed the mixed vials to her lips. Most of it went down. Some ran down her chin and Seraphine wiped it away without breaking focus.

"The black veins keep coming back," I said. "She said the poison adapts."

"Nightshade poison always adapts. It's designed to."

Seraphine began applying something from the bowl directly to the veins on Viviana's collarbone, working upward methodically. "Whoever ordered this wanted her to suffer. They wanted her to know it was coming and be unable to stop it."

"Morgana."

"Yes."

"She ordered the hit on me too."

"She's been ordering it since the night of the ritual."

Seraphine didn't stop working. "You just didn't know it yet."

The black veins were retreating slowly but visibly, pulling back from Viviana's jaw and cheek, leaving pale skin behind. Her breathing steadied with each passing minute.

"You're hurt," I said, looking at Seraphine's shoulder.

"I've been hurt worse."

"Let me…."

"When Viviana is stable." Her voice left no room for argument.

I sat back in the chair and watched them both.

Seraphine worked with five hundred years of knowledge in her hands. Viviana is fighting something designed specifically to kill her.

Then Viviana made a sound.

Not a convulsion. Something smaller. A murmur from somewhere half-conscious, her head turning slightly against the pillow.

"Let me go," she whispered. "Just let me go."

"She's delirious," Seraphine said without looking up.

"The poison affects the mind before the antidote clears it. Don't engage, just let her talk."

But I leaned forward anyway.

"There's nothing left," Viviana murmured. Her voice was stripped of everything. No performance. No armor. Just something raw and exhausted underneath. "They took the house. They took Father's title. There was nothing left and I had nothing to offer except…." She stopped. Her head moved restlessly against the pillow. "I did what I had to do. I did what I had to do to survive."

"The Drakov line collapsed about forty years ago," Seraphine said quietly, still working. "Bad alliances. Council debts called in all at once. Everything stripped. Title, estate, resources. She was the last one with enough standing to rebuild. But she needed a powerful alliance to do it and she needed it fast."

"Lucian," I said.

"Lucian. And Morgana saw a desperate woman and handed her a purpose. Gave her hope and a target and pointed her straight at you."

Viviana's head turned again. "Mama said hold on," she whispered. "She said hold on, Viviana, we don't let go, we don't surrender, we hold on…." Her voice broke on the last word into something that wasn't quite a sob but sat right beside one.

I reached out before I could stop myself and took her hand.

Still burning hot. But her fingers curled around mine automatically, like something in her recognized the contact even through the delirium.

Seraphine looked at our joined hands and said nothing.

My phone rang.

I grabbed it fast with my free hand. Unknown number. Not the same one that sent the warning text. Different format entirely.

I answered. "Who is this?"

A male voice. Low and careful. "You don't know me. My name is Kyle. I'm one of Lucian's inner circle."

I went very still. "Why are you calling me?"

"Because what's happening to you isn't right and I'm not willing to stay quiet about it." A pause. "Lucian knows you're in the mountains. His mother gave him a tracking frequency tied to the blood exchange from the ritual. He's been following it for the last two hours."

My stomach dropped. "How close is he?"

"An hour. Maybe less if he pushes." Another pause. "He's not coming to hurt you, Elena. I need you to understand that. He found out tonight that Viviana's pregnancy was fabricated. He found out what his mother ordered done to her. He's…." Kyle stopped.

"He's not the man he was twenty-four hours ago. But he's moving fast and he's moving alone and you need to decide before he arrives what you're going to do."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I've served Lucian for a century and I've never once seen his eyes turn gold." A beat of silence. "I know what that means. And I think you deserve a fighting chance to be ready for it."

The line went dead.

I lowered the phone slowly.

Seraphine was watching me. She'd heard every word.

"One hour," she said.

"Maybe less."

She looked at Viviana, then at the door, then back at me. "We can't move her. The antidote needs another hour minimum to stabilize her enough to survive transport. If we put her in that car right now she dies before we hit the main road."

"So we stay."

"So we stay." Seraphine straightened and began unwrapping the shredded fabric from her shoulder.

The wound underneath was deep and still seeping. "And you need to decide what happens when he walks through that door."

"I haven't decided anything."

"Elena." Her gold eyes were direct and steady. "He is your mate. Whether you want that or not, whether he deserves it or not, when he walks into this room you will feel it. Your powers are still awakening. The bond will pull hard." She held my gaze. "I need to know you won't let it make the decision for you."

"I won't."

"Say it like you mean it."

"I won't let it make the decision for me." Harder this time. Certain. "He stood in that chamber and said I was nothing. Whatever I feel when I see him doesn't erase what he did."

Seraphine nodded slowly. "Good."

She sat and began cleaning her wound herself, jaw tight against the pain she refused to acknowledge out loud.

I crossed to the first aid kit and brought it to her without asking.

She looked up at me.

"You said when Viviana was stable," I said.

She almost smiled. She let me help.

I worked on Seraphine's shoulder in silence while Viviana's breathing slowly evened out beside us.

The wound was deep. Whatever had done this had meant it. I cleaned it carefully, pressed the bandage down firmly, and Seraphine sat through all of it without making a sound, her eyes on the window, watching the darkness outside with that slow steady rotation that never stopped.

"How many did you fight?" I asked.

"Seven."

"Seven vampires. Alone."

"Eight," she corrected. "One came through the back while I was handling the first seven."

I pressed the last strip of bandage into place. "And you won."

"I'm here, aren't I?"

I sat back and looked at her. Five hundred years of this. Five hundred years of fighting and surviving and searching and waiting. All of it for a promise made to a woman fleeing into the dark with her infant daughter.

"Why did you keep looking?" I asked. "Three hundred years searching for a bloodline that might not even exist anymore. Why didn't you stop?"

Seraphine was quiet for a moment. "Because I made a promise to your ancestor the night she fled. I put them in a cart heading south and I told her I would find them again." She looked at Viviana's face. "I don't break promises."

The wind outside picked up, pushing hard against the cabin walls.

Viviana stirred.

Her eyes didn't open but her head turned toward me and her lips moved around something without sound, like a conversation happening just below the surface.

I leaned closer.

"....always told me I was the one who had to fix it," she murmured. "Always me. Always Viviana. Never enough, never fast enough, never…." She stopped.

Her brow pulled together hard. "I'm sorry, Mama. I tried. I tried so hard."

I kept hold of her hand and let her talk.

For two years I had heard those heels on the marble floor and built a story around them. Cruel. Selfish. Untouchable. A woman who took what she wanted and felt nothing about the cost.

But cruelty and desperation wear the same face sometimes. And the woman lying in front of me right now, apologizing to someone who couldn't hear her anymore, had been carrying something heavy for a very long time before she ever walked into that penthouse.

I didn't forgive her. I wasn't there yet and I wasn't going to pretend otherwise.

But I stopped hating her. And that was its own kind of shift.

"She's going to wake up angry," Seraphine said quietly from behind me.

"Good," I said. "Angry means alive."

A sound outside. Distant but growing. The low growl of an engine pushing hard up the mountain road.

Seraphine's head came up instantly.

Our eyes met across the room.

"He's early," she said.

I stood. My hand went to the dagger on my hip without thinking. My heart was already doing the thing I didn't want it to do, something that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with what Seraphine had warned me about.

The bond pulling. Quiet and insistent, like a tide that didn't care whether I was ready.

I pressed it down hard, kept my hand on the dagger, and kept my feet exactly where they were.

Then the small monitor Seraphine had attached to Viviana's wrist let out a single long flat tone.

Seraphine was across the room before the sound finished.

Both hands on Viviana's chest, pressing hard, her face shifting into something I had never seen on her before. Not focused. Not fierce.

Desperate.

"She's flatlined." Seraphine's voice came out stripped and raw. "Elena, I need you. Now."

I was beside her in a second. "What do I do?"

"There's a ritual. It's the only thing strong enough to restart a vampire heart stopped by dark magic." Her hands kept pressing, kept working, kept refusing to stop. "But it requires Nightshade blood as the catalyst. Without you it won't hold. I cannot do this alone."

She grabbed my wrist with one hand and looked at me with an urgency I had never seen on her face.

Not in the alley. Not in the brownstone. Not once in all of it.

"Elena." Her voice cracked at the very edge. "She will die in the next sixty seconds if you don't help me right now.”