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At the same time, she resented that she had these thoughts at all. She’d grown up knowing about the Nine Realms, and that one of them actually had an access point in her home town of Shreveport. But the most she’d ever felt about realm-folk was a sense of uneasiness she couldn’t explain.
Now she knew why.
She was one of them.
She made her way to the workshop at the back of her house, where she designed her jewelry. Though she had a bachelor’s in sociology and she was working toward her masters, she made her living through selling her creations online and in the local shops. Her grandmother, part squirrel by nature, had left her an inheritance large enough to allow her a certain amount of freedom. Despite the fact that she had no family left, she considered herself blessed because she was free to pursue her own dreams when so many others couldn’t.
She sat down at the small antique oak desk that had belonged to her mother and which had been her favorite, something her mother had given her, one of the few keepsakes from a family Samantha knew little about.
Now she understood why her mother had refused, however gently, to talk about her family. How could she have when her parents had been fae? No, that couldn’t be right. Her father was human; his Louisiana heritage went on and on. This was about her mother, but she didn’t look fae. They had such pointed chins and strange ears. She’d seen her mother’s ears.
The truth settled in on her in a terrible way that her mother’s ears had been altered to fit her new human life.
Samantha felt ill. There were too many truths here to digest all at one time, too many new and frightening realities.
As she sat down, the ladder back chair creaked like the floors. This was the place her mother had written her journals, a bunch of them, all locked up in a black lacquer box, which she pulled in front of her.
“What are you writing, mama?” Samantha remembered asking her once.
Her mother, Andrea Bergisse, had smiled but even then, even when Samantha had been young, she’d seen and felt her mother’s sadness.
“Oh, child, just my life story in case you need to read it one day. But wait until you feel a call to my journals, not before.” She’d had such a pretty Louisiana lilt.
“What do you mean ‘a call’?”
“Somethin’ here, child.” She’d put her hand against her chest and patted with her fingers. “Here. It’ll be like a soft vibration—a train whistle from a long ways away. You’ll know. Promise me now.”
“I promise.”
Funny, that in all these years, she’d kept the box in its locked up state, as though she’d known all along that what lay inside was not something she ever wanted to know.
Yet, the time had come to look at the truth. She had a string of critical decisions to make, that much she understood, so she might as well get started. The sooner she figured things out, the sooner she could put this night behind her.
She placed her hand on top of the box, now smooth and cool beneath her fingers, except this time she felt a new sensation, a vibration, very subtle and as far away as that distant train whistle.
Then she got it. She was feeling fae magic, the same kind of vibrations she’d felt at the bar just before the vision had opened up.
Pulling out the center drawer of the desk, she removed the old and very dull brass key, then fit it into the box’s slot. The moment she turned the key, and the mechanism shifted, the fae vibration sang up her arm, like a soft jolt of electricity. For a split second, she could almost feel her mama beside her, a hand on her shoulder, telling her everything would be all right.
But how could it be? Samantha’s life had just been tossed high into the air and she had no idea what it would look like once it crashed back to earth.
She lifted the curved lid and there they were, each encased in a dull red leather, a full inch thick at the binding, five in all.
Samantha stared at the journals, but settled her hands in her lap. She didn’t want to do this.
She had all that she’d ever wanted in her life, well almost. Except for a man and maybe children, she had a good life with a job she loved, enough money to live on, an important ongoing education, and a home that had been built by her paternal grandfather. She didn’t need more than this. She didn’t need these journals, or her overwhelming desire for a vampire, or the knowledge that she was half-fae.
And she especially didn’t need to be something called ‘a blood rose’.
She slammed the lid down on the box and for one of the few times in her life she gave herself to the sudden despair she felt and wept, for her family long gone, for a vision that haunted her, for a world she wished didn’t even exist.
*** *** ***
Ethan followed in the wake of Finn and his team as they headed back toward the Bergisson plane to resume patrol duty.
But when he arrived at the checkpoint, he hesitated. Something nagged at him, refusing to let him leave the earth-plane. He hovered a foot above the ground, near the Guardsmen who controlled all the comings and goings between earth and Bergisson Realm, debating once more exactly what he should do next.
His thoughts were fixed on the woman, Samantha, a fae and a blood rose, who’d had no idea until this very evening that she was part realm. He couldn’t imagine what she was going through right now.
He shook his head: a blood rose. In Shreveport.
He still recalled his first meeting with Mastyr Gerrod’s blood rose, Abigail, and how with just a touch of her hand, a very human handshake, the woman had connected with his personal frequency, essentially his vampire mating frequency.
Even though he hadn’t actually touched Samantha tonight, something similar had happened; his mating frequency had come alive like bells pealing in a town square. The vibration still lingered, a physical sensation he couldn’t shake and which kept his drive toward her as strong as when he had first seen her.
That’s when the reason for his hesitation fell into place.
He wasn’t the only mastyr vampire in Bergisson.
Ry was one as well.
He knew from his original experience with Abigail that Samantha wouldn’t just be attracted to him, but to all mastyrs. Her blood rose potential, therefore, made her extremely desirable in his world and in the same way made her equally as vulnerable to abuse.
These thoughts sent his mind into a tailspin of horror, of Samantha being pursued by other mastyrs, and not just by Ry, who he didn’t trust, but by any of the mastyrs of the Nine Realms. Once it became known that another blood rose existed, how soon before Samantha became the object of serious pursuit? And some of the eastern mastyrs were known to be really wild.
