Pregnant for the Alpha and Vampire

Chapter 6 The sleep walker

A few days had passed since the doctor declared Furia pure, but peace did not return to Lord Theron’s house because Furia had started waking in the middle of the night with screams trapped in her throat and no memory of what had frightened her.

The nightmares came every night without fail, dragging her from sleep into a darkness she could not explain, and worse than the nightmares was the sleepwalking, because she would wake up in strange corners of the house with her hands cold and her feet bare and no idea how she had gotten there. She found herself in the kitchen once, standing before the cold hearth with her nightgown soaked through with sweat, and another time she woke up in the garden with her dress tangled in the rose bushes and her arms scratched and bleeding.

Her parents were frightened by this strange behavior, but their fear did not translate into kindness because Lady Marguerite looked at her like she was carrying a plague and Lord Theron refused to sit near her at the dinner table. They treated her worse than before, as if her sleepwalking was a personal insult to their reputation, and Lady Marguerite took to locking Furia’s door from the outside every night with a key she kept around her own neck but It didn't stop Furia because she was always outside her room at night.

Only Rhys took care of her, sneaking into her room through the window when he could or leaving blankets and warm tea outside her door when he could not, and he would sit with her in the dark and hold her hand while she tried to remember the dreams that kept slipping away from her like water through her fingers.

The village began to buzz with talk of the Claiming Night registration, a once yearly event where every maiden of age had to present herself and her family name to the Ritual Council so they could count the girls in each household and prepare for the coming ceremony. The registration was usually a simple affair of signing names and paying a small fee, but there had always been rumors that the Maiden of the Star would be chosen during this first registration, and every family with an eligible daughter was always on edge when the time came.

Lady Marguerite spoke of nothing else at dinner, her voice sharp and her eyes fixed on Celeste as she explained that the Maiden of the Star was the woman who would serve either the Vampire Lord or the Alpha Wolf directly, a position of great honor and even greater danger. Celeste preened at the thought of being chosen, tossing her blonde hair and smiling at her mother, but Furia sat in silence with her hands in her lap and her eyes on her plate because she did not want any honor that came with more attention from the supernatural lords.

Lord Theron announced that both Furia and Celeste would attend the registration together, and he warned them that any misbehavior would be punished severely because the Council did not forgive mistakes. Lady Marguerite was not happy with the idea that Celeste would also debut with her daughter but she had no power over it as if it were her husband, she knew what to do but this was a matter of council.

That night, the nightmare came again, darker than before, filled with shadows and a voice that called her name from somewhere she could not reach. She saw a woman with grey eyes and dark hair standing in a forest, and the woman reached for her, and Furia reached back, and then everything went black.

She woke up cold and wet and surrounded by the sound of wind moving through leaves, and when she opened her eyes she was lying in a patch of bushes at the edge of the forest. Her nightgown was torn, her feet were bare, and her hands were covered in dirt, and she had no idea how she had gotten there or how long she had been gone.

She sat up slowly, and a twig snapped under her palm, and a bird flew out of the bush directly into her face. She swatted it away and muttered something unkind about the bird, its family, and its choice of nesting place. The bird did not care, but Furia felt a little better for saying it.

She looked back toward the village and saw the lights of her father’s house flickering in the distance, too far away to reach quickly and too quiet to mean anyone had noticed she was missing. She pressed her hand against the locket and tried to remember the dream, but it slipped away from her like smoke, leaving only the cold and the dark and the terrible certainty that something was very wrong with her.

Then she heard a twig snap behind her, and this time it was not a bird.

Far away from the forest, in the Vampire Lord’s study, the younger man who looked younger than his years sat in his leather chair with a glass of red liquid in his hand. The older man stood by the fire with his arms folded and his brow raised.

“You have been watching the girl again,” the older man said while rubbing his own face. “I saw you leave after midnight.”

The younger man did not answer immediately. He swirled the liquid in his glass and watched the firelight catch its surface, and then he spoke with a voice that was low and strange.

“It seems like Little Wanderer has a habit,” he said, and he smiled in a way that did not reach his eyes. “And a stalker.”

The older man stopped rubbing his face and stared at him. “A stalker? Who?”

The younger man lifted the glass to his lips and drank, and the fire crackled in the hearth, and he did not answer.