Fated Ties: A Werewolf Paranormal Romance Novel (The Twisted Destiny Saga Book 3) (7 page)

Ryan chuckled. “Perhaps if she were a vampire.”

“Indeed,” Nathanial agreed. “Also, let me take a look at those
veins
. They are concerning.”

“I know.”
Something is very wrong. What the fuck is going on?

CHAPTER 7

“Cora!” an angry voice called from behind her as she strolled down the palace corridor.

She spun around to see her father striding towards her.
Shit, he’s pissed.
She eyed him expectantly.

“What you did the other day was unacceptable. You do not interrupt meetings of my Royal Court.”

“You were discussing my son.”

“It was business. You need to learn how to separate that from your emotions. It is weakness to be unable to do so.”

“If I hadn’t been holding back my emotions, I never would’ve left that damn room until you’d agreed to what everyone wanted.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “And what was that?”

“To strike against Oriana before she can do any more damage. To unite with Nathanial and pool our resources.”

“The situation is beyond your comprehension. There are many intricacies that you are not aware of.”

Cora rolled her eyes. “Don’t patronize me, father. I’m not a child.”

He gripped her arm tightly and pulled her towards him, his gaze boring into hers. “You will not do anything about Oriana. Do you I make myself clear?”

She wrenched her arm from his grip. “Don’t touch me! No one…touches me, okay?”

He looked completely startled by her vehement reaction to him laying his hands on her.

She knew it was crazy, but she just couldn’t take anyone manhandling her at the moment. After what David had done to her…she just…she couldn’t stand being touched.

“Cora—” he began.

But she recovered quickly and cut him off. “I will do whatever I need, to protect my son.”

“Then I will be there to stop you.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Is that a threat?”

“If it needs to be.”

What the hell?
“What’s going on? What aren’t you telling me?”

“She will
kill
you if you cross her.”

Cora scoffed. “Her power isn’t as strong as mine.”

“She is more experienced than you. And she wields black magic alongside her white now.”

Cora started, surprised at the revelation.
Oriana wields black magic? Oh my God. She really is insane. That magic rips through a person’s soul and hollows them out until there’s nothing left.
She felt herself hesitate for a moment. But, then she thought about her son and Ryan and it restored her resolve. “If she touches my son, she’ll die.”

Vazra released an exasperated sigh. “Then you will leave me no choice.”

“What does that mean?”

He glared hard at her. “I will bring you to your knees, if you try to go up against her.”

Cora couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her father was threatening to fight her with his magic if she disobeyed him on this issue? The look in his eyes told her that it was anything but a mere threat. He would really do it. What kind of a man was he then? To be able to strike his own daughter?
Who are you, father?
She swallowed down her hurt and the hesitancy that his threat had caused and met his gaze head on. “Do whatever the hell you have to and I’ll do the same.”

And with that she turned her back on him and continued down the corridor.

CHAPTER 8

As Ryan sat on a chair in Nathanial’s
lab
—the place where he concocted various magical potions and worked on his magic—he watched Orion in awe. A few moments prior, he’d started to feed him his bottle and he’d snatched it from his grip. He was now sitting on the marble floor feeding himself, clutching his bottle tightly with his paws and suckling at the soft rubber teat with wild abandon.
Like father, like son,
Ryan mused.

When they’d arrived back at the castle moments prior, Ryan had taken a much-needed shower to wash away the blood from his fight with Damon earlier. Afterwards, he’d attempted to give Orion a bath in the bathroom sink. Just being in the dark forest had left a thick layer of soot and dust all over his white fur. As soon as his little paws had touched the water, Ryan had discovered something new about his son. He
hated
baths. It’d been one hell of a fight and Ryan had been forced to use a ferocious growl to make Orion obey him.
Definitely his mother’s son. Extremely difficult.

His gaze fell to Nathanial, who was mixing a potion over on the other side of the room. Several vials and jars of all shapes and sizes floated in front of him as he worked over a massive, stone table that extended a good ten feet. All around the room were shelves filled to the brim with more magical potions, artifacts, and charms than Ryan had never seen in his life.

He sat in the small seating area of the mammoth room. He glanced at a couple of spell books lying on the table. They were ancient and coming apart at the seams. He couldn’t make out the words on them, because they weren’t in any human language—or wolf.

“Take off your shirt and jacket,” Nathanial said, suddenly standing before him with a jeweled dagger in one hand and a small, golden vial in the other.

As Ryan complied, Nathanial pulled up a chair and took a seat in front of him.

Ryan eyed the dagger. “That better not be silver.”

“Steel,” Nathanial assured him.

“And we need that, because…?”

“I need to pierce your heart.”

“Excuse me? You need to do what?”

Nathanial’s eyes grew dark with pain as he revealed, “I know what’s happening to you. It has nothing to do with your difficulty reacclimatizing to the Dark Realm. Your fever and cough are the extent of that. The
veins
are something else entirely. If the black magic reaches your heart, you will die.”

What the fuck?
“Black magic?”

“Yes. The only thing that has slowed it down is Cora’s blood. The power in it has been fighting the infection. An infection that I suspect was actually intended for me, as it contains properties of pure sunlight. If it had seeped into
my
blood it would have killed me within a few hours. She obviously assumed that you and I would have completed the coronation ritual by now, which we would have, if it hadn’t been for our mission earlier.”

Ryan was well aware that the coronation ritual, that would’ve bound them as joint Kings of the Dark Realm, involved the joining of their blood.
Wait…he said ‘she.’
“She?” he asked.

“Oriana.”

“What? You think my mother did this to me?”

“It is her ‘style.’ She also had the opportunity. She touched you—that embrace she gave you the other night. There is a purpose behind everything she does, Ryan. I was a fool not to realize that it wasn’t just an innocent embrace between a mother and a son. She had an agenda.”

Ryan didn’t respond for several moments as he tried to absorb the realities of what his mother had done. He’d never spent much time with her as a child, on account of the secrecy surrounding his origin. He’d spent most of his life with his father. But now he was beginning to realize just what kind of a woman she really was, the malicious bitch that she had become. Had she always been that way, or had she been driven to it with the death of his father, her true mate?

“I am sorry, Ryan,” Nathanial offered.

“Was she…?”
No, forget it, I can’t ask him that.

“Always like she is now?” Nathanial finished for him.

Ryan nodded.

Nathanial heaved a heavy breath. “Let’s just say that no one had the power to come between your father and me—until
she
entered our lives. Aside from what I did to Cornelius, there is nothing I regret more than marrying her. Her actions almost ripped the realm apart. Today you saw for yourself that we are still suffering the consequences.”

“She was his true mate.”

“It is not
what
they did together. It is how they did it. The extent of their betrayal. For one hundred years they kept it from me. If Cornelius had asked my permission, I would have granted his request to take her. The very fact that he didn’t was her influence. I know that
now.
But my rage at the time failed to allow me to see that.” He looked away as he murmured, barely above a whisper, “I killed the wrong person and I am truly sorry.”

“I know you are.”

At the sound of his words, Nathanial raised an eyebrow, disbelief evident in his eyes.

“I forgive you.”

They stared at one another in silence for a long while, both of them acknowledging the weight of the words between them. After centuries of hatred they had finally found a way to move beyond it.

“Thank you,” Nathanial finally choked out, struggling to bite back the emotion that Ryan could see all over his face. He was trying to hide it for the same reason that Ryan always tried to. He couldn’t show weakness. Not in front of anyone. It was his curse as a leader and Ryan got that on every level. He faced the same thing. He had to appear impervious. He was the strength behind his kind. They were looking to him for that.

Nathanial cleared his throat and placed his hand on Ryan’s chest, holding him steady as he pressed the dagger to his heart. “I need you to remain as still as possible.”

“Do it.”

In one sudden motion, Nathanial plunged the dagger into Ryan’s heart.

Ryan gulped as he felt the agonizing burn of it. “Fuck,” he rasped, his claws biting into the chair beneath him.

He heard Orion start to cry at the sound of his pained cry. He tossed his bottle aside and bounded over to him, nuzzling his leg frantically.

“It’s…okay…Orion. Daddy’s just enjoying…a little…open-heart…surgery.”

Nathanial chuckled and eyed Orion as he reached for the potion he’d left on the floor. He paused briefly to pet him. To both his and Ryan’s surprise, Orion purred in response, momentarily distracted from his fear for his father. “Interesting,” Nathanial commented. “That’s the first time I’ve been treated to a positive response from a wolf.”

“There’s…hope…then,” Ryan rasped.

Nathanial smiled and opened the potion bottle. Using his magic, he drew the solution up through the neck of the bottle, forcing out every drop until it floated in the air between him and Ryan.

“This will hurt. Have you ever used the antidote to the poison Michael coats his wolves’ claws with?”

“Yeah.”
Oh fuck. Not again. That shit hurts like a bitch.

“That is the best way I can describe how
this
is going to feel. The pain will dissipate after a few seconds. Ready?”

“Yeah.”

Nathanial raised his hand in front of the potion, guiding it closely to the incision he’d made over Ryan’s heart. And then he clenched it. Immediately, the potion rushed into the incision.

Ryan bellowed in agony. He thrust his fist into his chair. It broke under the force of his strength. Before he hit the ground, Nathanial was there in a burst of vampire speed. He held him steady against the wall as he writhed and hissed in agony.

“Just a few more minutes. Hold on.”

“Minutes? Fucking
hell
,” Ryan hissed through gritted teeth. “You lied. It’s…worse than that…antidote…and you said…
seconds
.”

“If I’d told you how bad it was really going to be, you wouldn’t have let me do it.”

As Ryan struggled against the agony ripping through every part of his body, Nathanial tightened his hold on him to keep him steady.

“Sorry…about…your chair.”

“Your strength really did reach maturity today during your fight with Damon. That chair was made of material stronger than titanium. The only other being that can break it is me. Today you finally accessed your full potential as joint King of the Dark Realm.” He eyed him with a wry grin and added, “Took you long enough.”

Ryan managed a laugh. “Denial…is a…powerful…thing.”

He saw Nathanial studying his chest. He followed his line of sight to see that the black tangle of veins had almost dissipated completely. And then the searing pain started to subside.

“Ah…yes,” he breathed with relief.

“The pain is gone?”

“Yeah. Finally. Christ, Nathanial. What the hell was that potion?”

Nathanial released him and stepped back. “Its purpose was to burn through the infection Oriana had implanted in you.”

“Burn? That’s a fucking understatement,” Ryan said as he slipped his shirt and leather jacket back on. “Still not as painful as being forced not to shift during a full moon, though.”

“I can only imagine. Luca gets his sadism from his mother’s side. And she’s not even a vampire. You’d think it would have come from me.”

“You’re not like other vampires.”

“As King, I have to be
more
.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that,” Ryan said over his shoulder as he bent down and scooped up Orion. “I’m gonna get some rest before we leave in a few hours.”

“Would you like me to summon Jada here to relax you after what you just endured?”

Ryan’s gaze snapped to his. He saw the humor in his eyes. “Hilarious. That would be a ‘no’. But I can ask one of your vampire vixens to pay
you
a visit if you like.”

Nathanial laughed. “Marella is the only woman I will take to my bed.”

Ryan smiled. “Good. Just checking.” With that, he opened the door and left the lab.