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  I looked past Christian to Natalie’s slight, yet strong frame. I hadn’t met her very many times, but the times I had, I didn’t get the same impression of her that Samuel gave off. She didn’t seem like the type that would like to run The Fort. What she really wanted was a family and to be a mom. It was odd to see her so pale and drawn like she was now. She’d looked so happy during the party to celebrate her bringing her child into the vampire world. “I hope if she doesn’t want to take it over that your father won’t make her. She should be able to do whatever she wants.”

  Christian’s lips tilted up as he stared at me. He cocked his head and then shook it. “I agree,” he said, even though he sounded surprised. “It’s always been that the Rajyvik’s handle the guard training, but I suppose after all this, if Natalie doesn’t want to, why should we make her?”

  I nodded my head once. It only seemed appropriate to me that someone who actually wanted to train the guards should do it. Otherwise, the training would be sub-par. We needed someone with heart, someone who lived and breathed it. Someone just like Samuel Rajyvik. “What happens now?” I asked, looking up at Christian and Connor. “I mean, about the next fights…”

  Christian rubbed his cheek. “This doesn’t change anything. We didn’t give them any time to mourn their fallen warrior so tomorrow will happen just like today. The Rajyvik’s have said they’ll wait to return Samuel home until after this is all done. Lex is already in the training rooms. She only stopped by for a little while to pay her respects. Rajyvik has even said that the best way to honor Samuel is to defeat the Dumont Clan.”

  A hot flash shook my body quickly followed by a cold burst. They were absolutely right. The fights hadn’t changed. The goal certainly hadn’t either. If anything, it only secured the outcome we needed in my mind. Someone who trained his fighter to cheat and to win at any costs, even when they had lost, definitely did not deserve to be in power. They needed to be stopped.

  Connor placed my hair behind my ear. “You want to go to the training rooms now, don’t you?”

  My hands turned to fists. “If I can help in any way...”

  “You are a marvel, Princess. I know you’re thinking Samuel must have been disappointed in you, but that’s just not possible. No one could be.” I started to shake my head, but he grabbed hold of my wrist and squeezed. “I’m not fooling around. Months ago, you didn’t even know this world existed, so whatever you give us is an added bonus. Not many people would’ve been able to do what you’ve already done, and continue to do.”

  I heard what he said, but to me, it didn’t matter. I could’ve done more. I knew it. We all knew it. Because of that, I felt like a failure. It was all about the clan, not the individual people within the clan.

  I nodded as if I agreed with him and then all three of us made our way out of the large room. Once in the empty hallway, we turned toward the training wing. That’s where I could make the most difference. It didn’t do good to dwell on what happened to Samuel right now. Mourning him wouldn’t bring him back, but we could let his death stand for something. We could win the rest of the fights, and give him back the world he loved.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Hours later, I left the training room in a sweaty mess. Out of all the hours I’d spent in a room like that, those were the most intense. No one spoke. There didn’t seem to be any real training plan, just guards wailing on focus mitts and heavy bags, and throwing weapons as hard and as fast as they could.

  Believe it or not, it helped. Focusing on technique and training was like a balm to the soul after Samuel’s death. We sweat out the feelings. We trained in the way he showed us. The whole time, his words played in the back of my head, reminding me how to hold the focus mitts while Lex punched and kicked them. He told me how to help her just like he’d helped me through the transition into this life from my old one. I felt closer to him in training than I ever did in that Council room with his coat of arms draped over the casket. That wasn’t to say others wouldn’t have appreciated that way more. Training was just how I knew Samuel, and to be doing what he taught me to do, felt like he was still here. It felt like he was still rooting us on. All of us.

  Just before midnight, Lex told me she needed to get some sleep, but wanted my help tomorrow as well. We said goodbye to one another in the hallway as I crept up the stairs and she lingered down a side tunnel. Christian and Connor had left a long time ago, but to be honest, I wasn’t even sure when. I barely even looked up the whole evening. I just remembered seeing them and then not seeing them. It was one of those instances where time was infinite and impossible to pin down. For all I knew, they could be asleep up here.

  But no. I walked in and my vampire princes looked up as if I’d startled them. It was virtually impossible for a human to surprise a vampire because even when we were trying to be stealthy, we were basically clumsy messes. On top of that, I could say with one-hundred percent certainty that I wasn’t even trying to control my tired body as I brought it up the stairs and to my room where I knew my princes would be waiting. Something else was going on.

  Nicolai stood over Stephan. In the split second before they noticed I was there, I saw them scowling at one another. I narrowed my eyes, and Nicolai quickly stepped back. Too late. “What’s going on?” I asked them both. Peering over at Stephan, I frowned, worried for him.

  He shook his head and forced a smile to his face. “Nothing. We were just waiting for you to get back from training. How did it go?”

  I shrugged, still wary of his too bright voice. “Fine.” Though training had been more than fine, and I was still filled with adrenaline and on a workout high, he wouldn’t understand so I didn’t bother to go into detail about how laser focused we all were tonight. Besides, I knew they were keeping something from me. Gazing at them all and feeling the heavy cloud in the room, I walked further in. “What’s going on here? You guys seem tense.” Connor stood and tried to make his way over to me. I dodged him, and held my hand out. “Oh no, pretty boy. There will be no distracting right now.”

  He smirked. “I just wanted to give you a hello hug.”

  “A hello hug?” I pulled my drenched black t-shirt away from my body and let it go. It went straight back to being suctioned to my skin. “I don’t believe you.”

  “I think he was actually going to push you in the shower,” Nic said, the corner of his mouth tilting up.

  “Believe me, I’m heading that way, but only after you all tell me what’s going on.”

  Christian stepped forward. He took my arms and then turned me around toward the bathroom door. He placed a soft kiss on the top of my head as he steered me away. “We just have a few more things to discuss. We’ll be done by the time you get out. I promise we’ll talk then.”

  He led me into the middle of the bathroom and then I felt the press of his body heat leave. When I turned, the bathroom door was closing, and I watched as it clicked home. I blinked, staring at the door as if I could see my four princes on the other side. It was quiet, at least from what my human ears could hear. I really hoped they weren’t fighting. Right now, we needed one another and the support of each and every one of us.

  The door cracked open and Connor’s honey-colored head appeared. I took a step forward and he smiled. “It’s okay, Princess. Really. Take your shower.”

  He disappeared and shut the door again while I was still in mid-stride. Realizing there was no way they were going to let me hear whatever was happening right now, I resigned myself to just running through different thoughts in my head while under the hot spray of the shower. My muscles were tired, overused. I hoped Lex and Zeke would be fine tomorrow and the intense training stint we had wouldn’t have any negative effects on whichever one of them fought. I looked down and watched as the discarded bubbles of soap swirled around the drain and retreated. Even though I wanted to hear what they were discussing/arguing, it felt good to be under the firm pressure of the shower head. It was like a massage into my skin, working out all the day’s troubles.


  However, curiosity got the better of me before too long. I squeezed out the excess water from my hair and stepped down onto the bath rug after turning the water off. Still no sounds came from the other side of the door, so I toweled off and put a brush through my hair. Miraculously, a pair of sweats and a t-shirt had shown up on the closed toilet lid so I put them on before opening the door to the bathroom and walking back into the room.

  The princes’ lengthy bodies were strewn all over my bed in our usual fashion. All that waited for them was me. I picked up the pace and crawled into the opening Nicolai left me with by raising his feet. I settled into place and immediately, four hands touched me. One on my calf. One on my hip. One on my shoulder. And one prince entwined their fingers with mine. I looked over to find Stephan staring at me. “Are you okay, Ariana?”

  I nodded into the pillow, digging myself down deeper. I mouthed, Are you?, and he nodded once too. To all of them, I asked, “So, what did I walk in on earlier? You’d think you guys would be stealthier if you didn’t want me finding out. You are vampires, you know.”

  Connor chuckled, but it was Christian who answered in that same serious, deep voice I remembered from the first time I met him. “We weren’t going to keep it from you, Ariana. Some of us were…passionate in discussing some things so we didn’t hear you come in.”

  “By some of us, he means all of us,” Connor said.

  I patted the hand that squeezed my hip and smiled.

  “The thing is, Ri,” Nic started. “After what happened today, we’ve decided to make plans about how best to go about this if we should lose. Soren has already told you to get out as soon as possible, and we’re all in favor of that advice.”

  “In fact,” Christian spoke up. “We’re taking it a step further. Depending on how the next few fights go, we’re leaving early.”

  “Early?” My head tried to wrap around what they were saying and once it did, my stomach plummeted. “You mean, if we continue to lose. How early?”

  “Some of us think we should go as early as tomorrow, depending on whether the fight is won or lost.”

  I shook my head, unbelieving. If the princes left, that would send the wrong message to the rest of the clan.

  “We haven’t agreed on the best time yet,” Nic said reassuringly. His thumb traced my calf muscle. “We just know that to stay here when no chance of winning is in sight would be dumb.”

  “But, the pledge they signed…”

  “We’re not willing to risk it,” Christian said. “Sure, Dumont has said he won’t take any formal action against the Ravanas, but we also now know that he’s a cheater. His word means nothing and since we’re a part of the reigning family, we’re going to have a target on our backs. Our lives are just one thing we’re not willing to sacrifice, especially if all is lost anyway. We don’t plan on sticking around to find out if Dumont will keep his word or not.”

  I sat up on the bed and eyed all of them. They perked up, responding to my movement. “I…understand,” I said, looking at each one of them individually. And I really did, but I was still confused. “I’m sure there’s a way Dumont could renege on his promise while still feeling like he kept his end of the bargain. But, are you guys okay with this? Leaving everyone? Would Gregor and Isabelle be coming with us?”

  “Gregor won’t leave until every one of his clan members who wants to go is gone. Isabelle might go sooner.”

  “We think,” Stephan said, correcting Nicolai.

  “We think,” Christian agreed. “At least she may be persuaded to go.”

  “But to leave your home, where would we go?”

  “There’s a commune in Australia that we know about. They keep to themselves, but I think they would let us in. At least for a little while.”

  “And if that doesn’t work,” Nic offered. “We’ll just live on our own.”

  “What about your food?”

  Nicolai shrugged, but there was a tug of apprehension in his forehead. “Same way we do here. There are blood banks all over the United States.”

  A dull ache started in the back of my head. “You’d be willing to take from them?”

  His eyes hardened. “We’re willing to do whatever it takes to make sure all of us survive this.”

  I bared down on my jaw, clamping my teeth tight together.

  “He didn’t mean it like that, Princess.”

  “The hell I didn’t. What part about what I said wasn’t true? None of it. We’re all willing to leave our family—our entire clan—here to make sure we all survive this, so why the hell wouldn’t we be willing to sacrifice a few human lives so we could feed ourselves?” He looked up at me, his voice softening. “You know I’m right. There’s no other way and we’re not even sure it’ll come down to stealing blood from blood banks. Like Christian said, our first stop is the compound in Australia then we’ll go from there.”

  I relaxed my jaw and reached out to touch his cheek. He was just being realistic, and there wasn’t anything about what he said that was particularly wrong. He was just laying it all out to let us know what we were up against. Besides, they wouldn’t directly be taking human lives. Indirectly, yes. Directly, no.

  I rubbed my hand down my temples and tried to make sense of the plan. Even if we lost another fight, we weren’t destined to lose. Leaving too early might just seal the fate of the clan. We still had Lex coming up. We could put our faith in her. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind she would win her fight. She would do it out of sheer will and determination. Zeke was another story. Not that he didn’t have the skill to do it because he did, but his integrity still weighed on me. Would he be willing to tough it out until the end? What if his opponent was bigger, stronger, better than him? Would he just give up? Look for a way to get out of it? I wished I trusted him more.

  Then there was Gregor. If it came down to his fight, I doubted the princes would want to leave and if they did, what kind of unity did that show? The princes escaping right before their father put his life on the line would be a terrible mistake. If Gregor won, we certainly wouldn’t be welcomed back into the clan with open arms. ‘Traitor’ kept floating through my head.

  “We don’t have to figure it all out right now,” Stephan said.

  A hand came up to rub my back.

  “We kind of do,” Nic countered. “When else are we going to figure it out? There’s anther fight tomorrow and then the day after that. We have two days worth of fights left with the very best scenario. If there’s a win tomorrow, we can all rest a little easier, but what if there’s not? What if there’s a loss tomorrow? Then either we’ve lost it all, or Gregor is going to be forced to fight and we still may lose it all.”

  “Then maybe we shouldn’t decide anything until after the fight tomorrow,” I suggested. “We’ll have a much clearer path after that.”

  Stephan shook his head. “It doesn’t matter when we make the decision. It’s still going to suck.”

  My mouth dried out as I stared at him. He was right. Deciding to leave, deciding to stay, we were still screwed unless we won the rest of our fights and Dumont was forced to leave. Even if we did win, we’d have to employ guards to make sure Dumont stuck to his word and left us alone because right now, his word was crap.

  “Come on,” Connor said. He pulled down on my shoulder and my back fell against the mattress again. “We honestly can’t do anything until tomorrow. Let’s just us all keep this in the back of our heads so if we have to make a decision, we’ll each know firmly where we stand. We all need the rest anyway.”

  Sighing, I cuddled down into the bed and the princes followed suit. I wished I could enjoy the closeness of their bodies, but as soon as I shut my eyes to relax, my brain wouldn’t shut up about all the different scenarios we were faced with and how we should react to each one. One thing was clear, none of this was going to be easy, and no matter what decision we made, we were upheaving someone or some things we loved. There was no other way around it.

  Chapter Sixteen
r />   I woke up feeling like I could throw up. The discussion from last night didn’t help any, but what mainly ran through my head was: Who would fight today? Would we win? Would my princes want to leave as early as tonight?

  I barely ate anything for breakfast, sticking to just plain toast as I hurried out of the makeshift dining area to get to the training rooms. Nic was close on my heels. I knew he could run ahead of me or pass me, but he stayed just off my left shoulder. I’d barely spoken at all that morning. I’d had enough conversations going on in my own head that I didn’t feel like having another one with the real world.

  When we got to the training room, Lex was already there. Nic threw a bottle of orange juice at her head and she plucked it from the air and smiled. “Thanks, bud.” She winked at him, toweled off, and then leaned against the wall as she drank the orange juice down.

  Afterward, we went through different scenarios with both Zeke and Lex since we weren’t sure who was going in. By the time it hit late afternoon, my stomach was beginning to tighten even more. We had yet to see Soren. I hadn’t even seen him at Samuel’s funeral. Though, I guessed that wasn’t out of the ordinary. They didn’t even really know each other, but I just kind of thought he’d be there. I was about to go looking for him when he came in through the entrance. He slipped in casually during one of our scenario trainings and stood off to the side. I motioned toward Lex so Nic could take my place and then went to talk to him. “Hey,” I said, approaching him tentatively. I wasn’t in a good mood today, but he definitely didn’t seem like he was up for any socialization.

  He dropped his chin and stared at the ground. “Young One…” he started, shaking his head. “I am very sorry about your instructor.”

  A lump formed in my throat and I swallowed it down. “It’s not your fault.”

  He peeked up, eyebrows raised, then leaned against the padded wall as if all the energy had left him. He reached up and scratched his beard line before meeting my eyes again. “I can’t stop thinking about how Dumont needs to lose. We can’t let another one of your people die, Ariana.”