AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His brothers and their women, Lily and Claire, all helped set the table. Lily’s son, Josh, played video games. Gabriel talked to his head of security and afterward crossed to join them.
Gabriel’s smile was warm. “I’m so glad you’re going to be part of our family, and I heartily approve of Marius’s plan to keep supporting your work. You’ll love the Cascade system. Beautiful waterfalls and a hotel with a wonderful swimming pool. Good people over there.”
Shayna pressed Marius’s arms. “And there are good people here.”
Marius nuzzled her neck and Gabriel laughed.
Rumy arrived waving two bottles of Dom Pérignon in the air. “We have a lot of celebrating to do tonight. Eve said she’d be joining us in a few minutes, right after her last show. How does that sound?” A cheer went up.
“I’ll get some glasses,” Gabriel said. He crossed to take one of the bottles from Rumy.
Shayna owed Eve so much, the woman who embraced her sexual bondage side while facilitating healing through a lay counseling practice. She turned to meet Marius’s gaze. “Do you think she would mind if I asked her a few questions?”
* * *
Marius grinned and his heart heated up. Claire, who now sat beside Josh, called to her. “I know you ended up here because you won a computer game online, but how are you at video games?”
“I love them. I use them to relax when I’m grappling with a difficult theory.”
“Then join us.”
Marius felt her hesitate. “Go ahead. I need to talk with my brothers anyway.”
She reached up and kissed him, then planted herself next to Claire, who immediately handed her a controller. “Halo. I love this franchise. So how long have you played this game, Josh?”
Marius smiled, thinking that with Shayna’s intensity, Josh may have met his match.
He stayed put, enjoying Gabriel’s waterfall, a ten-foot sheet lit by three soft blue lights from below. The mass of blue crystals behind the waterfall set the entire room in a glow.
Adrien and Lucian drew close, each in turn clapping him on the shoulder.
“We’re glad you and Shayna are making a go of it,” Adrien said. “But it is amazing, isn’t it, these women that essentially Daniel chose for each of us?”
“A huge fucking irony. I don’t think this was what he planned at all.”
All three men chuckled. The last thing Daniel would have ever embraced was the warm family group his three youngest sons had created out of the nightmare Daniel had delivered.
Daniel was gone now, as well as the sons aligned with him. Their world would have a chance to breathe now and to grow. Marius was under no illusions: They were just getting started in terms of managing the illegal activities that some of his kind were prone to.
Lucian spoke quietly. “Rumy thinks we’ll have at least fifty cavern systems to uncover, each holding human slaves intended for Daniel’s clubs.”
Yep, he and his brothers had a lot of work to do yet, but they were no longer without power. Both Lucian and Adrien, wearing the Ancestral mark of the double-chains, had the corresponding power. Marius had something similar though it was agreed he might be the next evolution in his world. He wondered if just maybe his human mother was the cause—and wouldn’t that be another wonderful irony? But then Daniel had chosen her as well.
Now that Daniel was dead, Marius could let a lot of things go. His past for one, and his fear of his emerging powers for another.
He would regroup with his brothers in a few days, when he’d had a chance to be alone with Shayna and to set up his new apartment in the Cascade system. For now, he’d never been so content, so at peace, so hopeful for the future.
A call to dinner brought him back to Shayna. They gathered as the family they were, especially when Eve arrived just in time, vampires with one shared purpose: to see their world become a safe, well-governed place in which all could thrive.
Gabriel said the blessing. “In times of chaos, even in the midst of destruction, we are ever grateful for that which feeds our bodies, whether served from the sacrificial vein or from fare on the table. May the fire of the eternal spirit ignite your life force tonight and evermore.”
When Gabriel offered a short bow, everyone followed suit, then sat down to break bread together.
Marius held Shayna’s hand throughout the meal, not wanting to lose touch even for a second. With Shayna on his right, he had to work to eat left-handed, but he didn’t care. He’d found an extraordinary blessing and at least for now he honored that blessing by holding his woman’s hand and occasionally bringing her fingers to his lips.
She hardly noticed, however, because she’d asked Gabriel a question and the man not only answered her but encouraged her to ply him with as many questions as pleased her soul.
There were a lot of questions that night.
And laughter.
And love.
And above all a sense of hope that had not existed in his world for a long, long time.
