The Blood King

7: Better The Devil You Know

OLIVIA...

MY HANDS shook uncontrollably as I stood in a hallway in a place I had never been before. I was officially kidnapped by people I was very sure were not okay mentally. I kept on giving myself hope that this was just some twisted dream and that I was going to wake up any time soon then laugh about it and go to work to tell Amber and Damon about it but every time I pinched myself I just felt pain. 

Amber was dead and Damon had abandoned me. I was alone in that loony house with a bunch of people who spoke crazy fluently. 

Right after arriving at the house, Rayn deposited me in that hallway and commanded Cedric to follow him to what looked like a study room where all I could hear were growls and sharp words the two men exchanged to each other. I could have sworn they were very close yet I was the reason why they were arguing. The solution was simple, they could have just let me go and let me get back to my boring little life where I could  pretend like nothing happened.

Liar....a voice echoed in my head.

Who was I kidding? I couldn't even think straight just remembering what happened six months ago, how the f**k was I going to pretend as if I didn't come close to my death--yet again--with two very large wolves, not to mention Amber's lifeless eyes staring up at me as if accusing me for not helping her. 

Nah, I just had to accept that I was thoroughly f****d and I just needed to find the best way to get around my current situation. As I scanned my surrounding, there were a few guards loitering around which meant I wasn't going to even make it out the door before either getting shot or getting dragged back inside by my hair. 

"Would you like anything to eat or drink?" A woman dressed up like the guards came to me and asked politely.

I shook my head vigorously. I already had been poisoned once on the night I was mangled by a crazy beast, I didn't want it to happen again. "No thank you. Um--could you show me where the bathroom is though?"

"Right down the hallway, the last door to your left." She said as went about her way.

I nodded and walked cautiously towards it. I was afraid something might jump out around the corner and end my life. I almost died once, God knew what else was out there for me. Once inside the bathroom, I locked the door behind me and sat on the toilet contemplating on exactly what I woke up to that morning. If only I had heed my heart and stayed home for the day, none of that s**t would have touched me. This was what I got for ignoring my gut. I couldn't stop myself from shaking yet there were times when I thought about Rayn and the fear subsided. I reached for my phone from my pocket and had gone off. I always forgot to plug it during the night when I slept and on the day I that actually needed it, it was low-battery.

I sighed and placed it back in my pockets. Even if it did have charge, who was I going to call? The police? And tell them what? That I had been kidnapped and I was being held in some house just outside town? No one would believe me.

I was sure I was on the right side but then there was Ronan, Tamara, Jaylan, Dominiq and Verik in that mix. Apart from Tamara and Jaylan, I had no idea who the others were but I was positive they were players in Rayn's game. I hoped Tamara and Jaylan were alright because they never posed to hurt me though I could read the hostility between them and Rayn. 

Suddenly I heard muttering just out the bathroom door and quickly turned the faucet by the sink on, letting the water gush down the drain and just mute my misery. It was laughable how I was sitting in there quietly and thought the water to keep me from being discovered. I needed to get out from there sooner or later. I needed to face whatever that was going to be thrown at me head on.

It had been a couple of minutes and eventually I mastered enough courage to open the door and to my shock Rayn had pulled a chair and was sitting opposite the door with his eyes lightly closed and his arms crossed against his thick chest. Though he was always in a suit or shirt, I was not blind to that body underneath. I saw it when he moved about, when he unconsciously flexed as he walked or as he sat down. At that moment, I saw the bulging biceps and the sinew legs that were stretched in front of him and crossed at the ankles. His ethereal beauty radiated from him with his expression so serene. He was a sin, utterly forbidden yet powerfully alluring. 

My tongue instinctively darted out to the corner of my upper lip.

"With thoughts like that, how am I supposed to leave you alone?" He muttered and I thought he was dreaming...until his opened his mesmerizing eyes and stared up at me. 

"You can read my thoughts." I stated the obvious, feeling so violated at the moment. When he nodded, I felt as if I stood naked in front of him.

"But I can teach you how to keep me out." He unfolded his arms and sat up. 

I frowned at him and defensively folded my arms across my chest as if the action would keep him from seeing more than just my thoughts. "What Cedric said about the bonding thing--"

"Blood-bonding." He supplied generously which made me scowl even more. How could he be so casual about it?

"Yeah, that--what does it mean? What did you feed me that night of the attack?" I could still remember the deliciously flavored and richly thick syrup he gave that changed my life completely.

"I gave you blood." He said seriously.

A nervous chuckle escaped my lips. "Rayn, this is a very odd time to start joking about such things. Seriously, what was it?"

"It was blood, Olivia." He assured me just as serious as before. "My blood."

I swallowed hard because bile was making its way up to my throat. I found myself pushing a loose strand of hair from my face with my shaky hand and cleared my throat. "It was--not blood. It was something else. Blood is coppery and that was a syrup that didn't have the coppery, bloody taste in it."

"It didn't taste like blood?" He sounded surprised and I almost lost it.

"It wasn't blood!" I exclaimed feeling my heart thumping loudly in my chest. "Unless you are a f*****g vampire, blood doesn't do what that syrup did for me."

"Well, not necessarily a vampire..." He winced at the name then looked up at me and must have seen how pale and close to fainting I was because he stood from his chair and asked. "Would you like to sit down, Olivia?"

"No!" I protested. "Would you like to take me home, Rayn?"

He shook his head. "It's not going to happen."

"Why?" The panic was rising again within me. I raked my hands through my messy hair and asked. "Why are you so hellbent on keeping me here?"

"Because." He growled. "The moment you return to your place, either Dominique or Verik will capture or kill you. Believe me, I am the nice one in the family. Verik will have you in chains until he finds out why I blood-bonded with you and why you didn't lose your mind in the process or die."

That caught my attention. Apart from the dysfunctional family background, I caught the losing my mind and dying part. "I could have died when you blood-bonded with me? You took a risk on my life when you did this?"

"You were going to die anyway." A new voice came through and when I turned, Cedric was making his way towards us. "It wouldn't have made a difference if you did in fact die."

"Ced..." Rayn warned him yet again.

Yep, I was convinced Cedric really hated me. 

"Rayn also took a risk trying to save your life. If you lost your mind or died, the council would have come for his head." Cedric ignored Rayn's warning and continued. They were more than just a man and his bodyguard if he could talk to me like that.

"Then why would he do that?" I asked Cedric then turned to Rayn, "Why risk everything to save some stranger?"

"Because I knew you were exceptional." He answered.

"Exceptionally annoying." Cedric gritted his teeth as he looked at me, his eyes piercing into mine as if trying to decipher my soul! 

"Ced!" Rayn exclaimed tiredly. 

"You know what, I don't need this s**t right now. Just let me go and I will take my chances with Verik or Dominiq or whoever else is after me." I was five seconds away from punching Cedric's face. He looked like he could really handle himself so I was really five seconds away from broken fingers and being rendered unconscious. 

Cedric's eyebrows snapped up in shock. "Verik and Dominiq would peel the skin right off your body while you watch. You prefer that over our hospitality?" 

I trembled in my feet and looked at Rayn. He looked amused. He was enjoying seeing Cedric ruffle up my feathers, the sick bastard! 

"Cedric, take her to the guest bedroom. Let her freshen up and I will talk to her later." Rayn sighed and placed his hands in his pockets. 

"I'm not your housekeeper." He assured Rayn. 

Rayn turned coolly towards the man and drawled. "You want us to go there again?"

Cedric snarled and started walking, expecting me to follow him but I held my ground. He suddenly stopped and asked. "Should I let Dominiq know, you want to meet him?"

I quickly jogged across the hallway and followed him while Rayn chuckled behind me.

RAYN...

OLIVIA WAS taking this exceptionally well, I thought to myself as I went back to the office. After the talk with Cedric, reminding him that we were dealing with a mundane that only read about wolves and Bloods in story books, I came out of the office and found her gone but Trude told me that she had been in the bathroom for quite a while. I could only imagine how she was feeling. Slowly, I was dragging her into my world. It was natural for her to panic, I just hoped she didn't pass out, fall sick or die in the middle of it all. 

Blood-bonding was popular in the old times because though it didn't pull the human right into the Blood world, it gave them a glimpse of it. Bloods' special abilities were only passed on to mundanes if they had strong psychic abilities that would be able to connect with the Blood that bonded with them in order to keep their little minds sane. These abilities included, acute senses, prolonged life and strength and agility though not as a true Blood. Also they were more resistible to infections and diseases. However, they couldn't completely transition into Bloods because Bloods were born and not created like in the human stories. 

However, blood-bonding became an outlawed practice that was recognized by the council as illegal and any Blood who practiced it could face execution if the mundane did not survive or went mental and started a killing spree. So, why did I take the chance? I felt it in my gut that Olivia wasn't like other mundanes and that she would survive it. She surpassed my expectations because not only did she survive but she was able to use the inherited abilities without even thinking about them. Also, she fought some forms of mind-control which meant with practice she would be able to keep me and anyone else who tried to hack into her mind out. 

I felt that she was just at the tip of exploring her abilities and I couldn't wait to see what she was capable of. There were prophecies in the Blood world of rare humans who were born to create a link between the two species, humans as powerful as Bloods themselves, born once every five hundred years under the solar eclipse. These humans neither belonged to the human world nor the Blood world but could be fully assimilated in either world if they chose. Such women were called the Silver Daughters. I thought it was an absurd prophecy but the Blood community believed of such a woman and many searched their entire lives for her.

Cedric didn't want to accept that Olivia was special but I knew the mutt also felt it. He was just being stubborn about it. There were very few humans in the world like Olivia and it was why she needed to be protected from the likes of Verik and Dominiq.

My phone trilled in my pocket and when I removed it to check the number, I frowned softly and answered it.

"Where are you, Rayn?" My mother's concerned voice came through.

I knew she was worried because she had some hint of what I was doing. It was tradition that an announcement of Verik getting the position of crown prince was made for every Blood and obviously mother must have received hers so she had an idea that I wasn't going to take any of this sitting down.

"I told, I am on a business trip--"

"I know what you are up to , so you can stop lying now. I don't want you to get involved with your uncle and cousins, Rayn. They are powerful and they will use everything in their power to make sure you don't see tomorrow. Please, just come back home." She begged.

I gritted my teeth and refrained from snarling before I told her. "I am not going to sit back and watch this whole world go to an i***t like him. At least Dominiq has a sense of justice but that moron has nothing but bloodlust and wickedness. He will kill his father the moment he gets that position and then all hell will break loose. There needs to be someone to keep him in check."

"So, what do you plan to do about it?" His mother asked softly.

"I will challenge--" 

"Rayn!" Mother cut me off, her voice full of fear.

"I will challenge Dominiq. I don't need the crown prince title. I am the rightful Blood King." I told her. I never refused my title and I wanted my right back. I was going after Dominiq's head because I knew him and he knew that this day was going to come. It was the reason why he wanted me dead all this time. 

With Ronan and his hounds patrolling Blackstone Creek, it was very difficult to catch a break but it only made the hunt worthwhile! 

"Rayn, I know you and I know, no matter what I say, you will not listen to me but I want to ask you one question? Is all this worth it?" 

It was all worth it because I was going to make sure my father's name was cleared. He died with the label traitor and the same people who praised him and listened to him, all shunned him and said his name with loathing and distaste. My father always wanted what was best for the Bloods. He knew humans because he did a lot of business with them, got some of the trustworthy ones to supply blood for his people in an orderly manner which prevented a lot of attacks and killings within the Bloods. 

My father also got to know the humans' strengths and weaknesses. He knew they had technology that could flatten the earth, killing everything alive. He knew they could use Bloods to create biological weapons that could wipe the entire species from existence and it was the reason he tread cautiously around them. Dominiq didn't see any of that. The moment he had my father killed and took over the throne while casting me and my mother out, he had officially signed off the Bloods' lives to the humans and now with the killings increasing, it was only a matter of time until they retaliated.  

"Yes, mom--it's all worth it." I assured her.

There was a long pause in the other end to the point I thought I had shocked her into passing out. She released a tired sigh and said. "When I lost your father, I made a promise to myself that I was going to protect you with everything I had but at the end, you have been doing the protecting. When I was a coward, you were my courage. I understand what this means to you, Rayn--but I just wish you would have trusted me enough to tell me what you were up to."

"I didn't want to burden you any further, mom. With your frail health, this would have sent you to the bed the soonest." When she chuckled, my heart was at ease. Although I could hear the concern in her voice, I could tell she accepted what I wanted to do. 

"I am not that fragile. Rayn, I want you to take care of yourself and make sure you and Cedric return to me intact. Tell Ced, if he ever thinks to die without my permission, I will kill him myself." 

A smile appeared on my face. "I will. Get some rest and take care, mom."

"I love, Rayn." Her voice thickened with unshed tears.

"I love you too." I said and I hung up quickly, not wanting to hear her weep in the phone. 

She knew of the risk Ced and I were taking. If we failed, there was no escaping death because Dominiq was going to make sure he hunted us to the ends of the earth for it. Right now, the Blood laws protected me from him. As long as I was not in the motherlands, I could keep my life but those same laws changed with an attempt to remove the reigning King failed. The council itself would mobilize a hunting team to off whoever failed the coup. 

"Rayn..." A voice came through and when I turned to the door, Trude was standing with her arms crossed on her chest. "What are you doing bringing her here, Rayn?"

"The last time I checked, I didn't have to answer to anyone about my actions." I told her. Not only was she as good as Cedric as a hunter, Trude was also a close friend. She was someone I could air out my problems to and she never turned down the opportunity to scold me whenever I did something of out character.

"Are you kidding me?" She arched her eyebrow at me. "Do you think it is easy to keep your ass in tact while taking care of your girlfriend as well?"

"She's not my girlfriend--"

"Yet she has your blood in her system. Two more offerings and she will be unstoppable. What if she loses her mind and goes on a killing spree? As it is, we still haven't found the incubus rogue but you just want to dig your grave deeper than it already is." She cut me off. 

She was making solid arguments but it was useless to cry over spilled milk. The deed was done and I was blood-bonded to Olivia. "Two more offerings of my blood and she will be my mate." I corrected Trude.

Mating with another Blood meant the exchange of blood known as offerings between them but it was different from humans. First of all, the human had to be compatible with the Blood's offering. Compatible humans had acute psychic abilities that enabled the Blood to connect with them and keep them from losing their minds as the blood started changing their bodies. It took three offerings to get the human ready for a Blood's claim. This enabled them to have longer life spans and other abilities similar to that of Bloods. However, these humans didn't rely on blood to survive because that was a genetic thing for Bloods. 

"Are you planning to claim her?" She asked me.

I gave a long sighed and rubbed my eyes. "I don't know." Truth be told, I didn't even know what possessed me to blood-bond with her but I couldn't deny that if I could turn back time to that faithful night, I would do it again. The only thing different I would have done was to take her with me that same night. Claiming Olivia fully meant that we would be inseparable and have a long life together; one half could not leave without the other. Would she want that kind of life? 

"If Dominiq gets his hands on her, you will be vulnerable." Trude aired her true concerns. 

Yes, Olivia made me vulnerable because the first offering that blood-bonded her to me meant that I was obligated to protect her with everything I had. Hurting her meant that I would feel everything she was going through and that would stain my soul for all eternity. If Dominiq knew of my blood-bond to Olivia then he could use that to scatter my focus. 

"Dominiq will not get to her." I reassured Trude. "We are out of the motherlands. We are safe here for now."

Trude sighed and nodded. "For now, but you know your uncle. I hope you are ready for a confrontation."

A smile touched my lips. Trude was always ten steps ahead of everyone. Though she always made it look like I had a choice in a matter, as long as it concerned her, she never asked for permission to take an action. She was different from Cedric--who always had to check with me before he did something. It was the reason why I needed both of them. They complemented each other even though they didn't really get along. Trude acted where Cedric hesitated and Cedric was considerate where Trude wasn't.

"I know you, Trude. I know your boys are already mobilized waiting for your command to go hunting." I told her and she gave me a nonchalant shrug. 

"I can't wait for Cedric to make up his mind on whether he wants to fight Dominiq or kiss his ass. The hunters are ready whenever you need them." Trude opened her mouth to add something but she quickly pursed her lips and turned to the door. "I have s**t to do. See you later." She walked out.

One thing I couldn't do was to read Lycanthropes' minds. They had very strong psychic abilities that enabled them to communicate among themselves while keeping intruders out. As loyal as they were, they were also very secretive and mysterious.