A baby. Vampires can get pregnant. What if they don’t want to get pregnant? Is there birth control?
“It is not something mated couples worry about, as pregnancies are rare.”
Talking about something so intimate pulled at an invisible cord. She opened her mouth to launch a million questions that popped into her head, but she snapped it shut. As a vampire, she still had choices. She would crave blood and with it, sex. It sounded like a sick joke. The sight of blood as a child made her faint and yet, she overcame that to become a fearless hunter. And now she would need to drink it to survive. What about working with Orion? Do I have to stay with the vampires? With Roman? With each question, her fury soared. A week ago, she was the master of her own destiny. Now she belonged to Roman.
One minute, she stood examining her options, and the next, she was flying full speed through the trees like a missile. Everything passed in a blur. She didn’t choose this sort of life. It wasn’t life. She was dead. A feral scream sounded out from her lips. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Isabella wasn’t one to make plans for the future. Come to think of it, she never pictured herself sitting on a porch with a husband and baby like Ella, either.
What am I going to do now?
Not taking care where she went, she charged at a furious pace, whizzing through the tall snow-covered trees until she stood at the tip of a long frozen lake and stared at the gathering of crows that flanked her on either side, sitting on the branches. The queen of war, the Morrigan, had stolen her life. Her chance to explore a relationship with Jake. Today, she existed, but that’s all it was. She may have choices, but it wasn’t the same. Nothing would ever be the same again.
No matter what happened, one thing was certain: the Morrigan would pay.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
When Jake demanded he take Isabella, the human had no clue what he was asking. Roman had been a vampire for five long centuries, and for the first one or two, fed and fucked every woman in sight. It hadn’t been an easy transition or one of his choosing. His maker had been a beautiful, exotic, Spanish woman named Madame Maria La Belle, a whore but a vampire. He had been an Italian soldier lying on the brink of death on the battlefield after fighting the Spanish forces. Madame Maria serviced and fed on both armies. She had stumbled across Roman strewn across the muddy field and his distinctive features stopped her. When she examined his dark, broody face, she said she had not been able to resist the need to transform him because of his rugged good looks.
Damn her to hell!
After Maria changed him, she brought him to Madrid, Spain, where she lived in luxury and comfort. When he was coherent and able to make sense of the horror of his new life, he left on a bloody rampage. He slaughtered hundreds of humans, consumed with the blood lust and a violent rage. It took years for him to gain control. During that time, he befriended other vampires who helped him. Accepting his new power and the abilities that came with his immortal life, he decided to use it for his benefit, and he went home to seek out his family back in Rome.
Returning here with Isabella in his arms, almost lifeless, he couldn’t delay what needed to be done. When he lay her down on the bed, he studied her absolute perfection. Jake asked him to save her and bring her back. But that wasn’t possible, not in the way the mortal imagined. He doubted he would understand or accept what she needed as a vampire. The driving force to feed would never change. The sex part he may be up for until he realized that vampires were stronger and could fuck like rabbits all night long. Humans tired easily. Vampires tended to be sexually demanding, even forceful at times.
Over the years, he had worked his way through his fair share of human conquests, usually after feeding, but there had been no emotion attached to it. In those days, he had been a cold and ruthless vampire. As time passed, he settled and chose to stick to his own kind for sex—less hassle, and less chance of killing them. Although, his appetite over the last century for his own kind had been harder to please. When he started building his acquisitions and merger empire, De’ Luca, it gave him a purpose, and with that, his status within the vampire community grew. The number of vampires who pledged allegiance to him ran in the thousands and with that came responsibility, and the need to establish and enforce laws. He acquired blood from the hospitals or blood banks for a healthy donation, reducing his need to feed from either a vampire or human, also reducing his desire for casual sex.
Finding a partner to share his extraordinary life seemed unobtainable. Something lost to him, and he had almost accepted it, until he met Isabella. When he discovered her two years ago, she intrigued him. His fangs protruded at the thought of her pale loveliness. Wondering and debating over the options, he dismissed them. He didn’t care what anyone else wanted. Not even Lucius. He couldn’t exist in any world without Isabella in it. God help him, he was a monster. Without wasting anymore time, he sank his teeth in her neck, draining her blood and flying around her body, sinking his teeth into her soft skin to empty nearly all her blood, until her heartbeat slowed to almost a standstill. At
