The Rogue’s Stolen Bride

Chapter Two: Just Be Good

Kaida

“You can come out now, Kai,” my brother said. He was still sitting at the table, his head bowed slightly over the goblet he was clutching with both hands.

He had known I was there all along.

I shoved the curtain aside and took a shaking step out of the dusty shadows. I felt numb as I stumbled to the table and fell into the chair that Lord Vance had been occupying. There was no warmth, no residual body heat. The chair was hard and cold.

In desperation, I grabbed his untouched cup of wine and took a big gulp. The taste was sour on my tongue, and it burned the back of my throat as I swallowed. “Ben… Ben, what has father done?” I gasped.

He sighed, “Don’t blame father,” he said, rubbing his forehead. “He really had no choice. What do you think Lord Vance would do if we denied him?”

I looked at my fingernails, some of which were now broken and bleeding. “Go seek a wife elsewhere?”

Ben snorted. “You are so ignorant, Kai. He would have been insulted, and he would have retaliated against the pack. Who knows what he would have done to us. And you know we don’t have the manpower to fight back if he carried out a full-on attack.”

We had lost many of our pack members over the last two years to rogue attacks and sickness, and the long drought had severely depleted our financial resources. Ben was right that we couldn’t afford to offend a powerful vampire lord. “There must be some other way to appease him, apart from offering me up as a sacrificial bride!” I cried.

“Who’s offering you up as a sacrificial bride?” My other brother strolled into the room. Riley was my elder by less than a year, a fact that he never ceased to taunt me with. “Does someone actually want to marry my ugly sister?”

“Not someone!” I cried.

I didn’t mind that he called me ugly. Riley was always teasing me, but in my family, I believed that he was the only one who truly loved me. Benjamin merely tolerated me out of an exaggerated sense of duty. And Father… Well, my father had hated me since the day I was born, because that was the day that our mother, his beloved mate, died. “They have betrothed me to a damn vampire!”

“Language!” Ben scolded, as though I was still a child.

“A what?” Riley laughed and took the wine from my hand, “You must be joking! Ben, I’m surprised at you, I didn’t think you had a sense of humor!”

Ben stared back at him morosely and said nothing.

Riley lowered the cup from his wine-stained lips. “You…you aren’t joking?”

“Lord Vance came to ask for her, specifically,” Ben informed him flatly. “He couldn’t be persuaded to consider anyone else, even though father offered him his choice of the eligible ranking daughters.”

Should it comfort me to know that Father had at least tried to redirect the vampire?

“He insisted, it must be Kaida.”

Riley scraped back one of the heavy wooden chairs and dropped into it. “But, why?”

Benjamin had no answer, he just shrugged one thin, bony shoulder.

“We can’t let a vampire have her!”

“We can, and we will,” my eldest brother said coldly. “I know it’s hard, brother, but sometimes we have to make sacrifices for the good of the pack.”

I balled my hands into small, ineffectual fists. It was hard, for who? Ben wasn’t sacrificing anything! He was just getting rid of a kid-sister that he’d always seen as a burden. I was the one who would be sacrificing everything; my freedom, my future, maybe even my life. Not to mention any hope I had of ever finding my fated mate! It would all be snuffed out like a candle in a drafty window.

“No! There has to be another way!” Riley insisted.

“Well, if you can think of a better solution, I’m all ears, brother,” Ben said. He pushed back his chair and looked down his too-pointed nose at me. His eyes looked dull, like he was really uninterested in my plight, and he was tired of discussing it. “Just be good, Kaida, and do what’s required of you.”

I twisted in my seat and watched my brother walk from the room. He was too tall and too thin, and seemed to be all arms and legs and sagging shoulders. He’d always been a sullen, miserable man, burdened with the knowledge that sooner or later our father would either die or step down, and Benjamin would inherit the Stargazer pack and all the responsibilities of Alpha.

Just be good, Kaida.

I’d been admonished to be good my whole life. And where had it gotten me?

Riley finished off the wine and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Don’t worry, Kai, I’ll think of something. No way I’m going to let Father hand you over to that cold, dead, bloodsucker!”

I gave him a small smile, even though my face felt numb and unresponsive. I knew Riley meant well, but in the dynamics of the pack and our family, he was almost as powerless as I was. He was the second born. Unless Ben met some untimely end, Riley would never have to be Alpha. Father had tried to push him into military training, but Riley was allergic to discipline and hard work.

My brother was just the spoiled second-son of an alpha.

But at least he cared.

I stood, and, overcome with emotion, kissed the top of his head, before I turned and ran from the room. I didn’t want my brother to see me cry. I sprinted down the corridors of the manor, running until my lungs burned, and crashed into the door of my chambers.

Maggie was there, pacing anxiously, rolling her hands up in her apron. “What is it?” She asked, first closing the door, and then rushing to my side. “Is it bad?”

“It’s terrible,” I said, dropping down into the upholstered chair that was pulled close to the cold fireplace. The weather was mild, so Maggie had not lit a fire.

“What? What is it?” She dropped to her knees in front of me and gripped my thighs in her strong hands. “Is the pack in danger?”

I covered my face with my hands as the hot tears started to fall. “Not the pack.”

“Then, what is it? Has someone died?” She pried my hands away so that she could look into my eyes.

“Not yet,” I looked up at the ceiling and tried to blink away the water that blurred my vision. I took a deep breath. “Father has found me a husband.”

“A hus–” Her eyes widened in horror. “Not that man! He was a–” she bit down on her lip.

“Just say it, Maggie.”

“A vampire!”

I slouched in the chair.

“Your father promised you, to him?”

“Yes.”

“No! No, no, no! You can’t marry him!” She shook her head violently. “He’ll kill you!”

I slid lower. The only reason I didn’t slide out of the chair completely was Maggie holding tight to my legs. “I have to. If I don’t, the whole pack could be in danger.”