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She knew in her heart that she could not fight such a being. Rowan couldn’t either. Moonwood was doomed. The sinking reality settled in her gut like a rock dropped into a pond.
There was nothing they could do to stop this beast. She had not noticed it earlier, but now that she searched for it, she could feel it. Her wards had been broken. She had no idea how, but she reached for them and there was nothing.
The wards were a thin veil of protection against such an old and powerful enemy, but they had bought the town some time. They were terribly exposed now. Nothing would stop the vampire from blowing through the town like a winter gale.
Guilt and regret swelled in Juniper’s chest as she considered the last twenty-four hours. Everything she knew and loved was at the risk of being blotted off the face of the earth by a malevolent force of nature. And she had no way of warning them.
Rowan flashed through her mind. She saw the image of him, naked in the sheets just before she’d left his bedroom earlier that day. He had watched her as she left, a sad look on his face.
She had been too afraid to look at him a second time. She knew that if she had, it would have been impossible for her to resist running back into his arms. And now, she wondered if it was the last time she was ever going to see him again.
It occurred to her that she never got to forgive Rowan. If she died today, he was going to live the rest of his life believing she had died without forgiving him. Somehow, that was the one thing that hurt her the most, and she suddenly wished she could go back to that morning, and spend the day in bed with him.
She forgave him. Deep in her heart, she knew she had forgiven him a long time ago. She wished that she had told him. She wished he had known. The pain of the realization left a deep cut that ran through her chest. A foul, gaping wound.
She thought about her baby. Rowan had made it clear he wanted to be a part of their lives. She couldn’t die. Not like this. She had discovered a reason to live. To survive.
The vampire had kept her alive, strangely. He could have killed her just as he had her sister and mother. And yet…
She was neither bound nor restrained. Apart from the throbbing in her head and the stings from the cuts on her body, she was fine. She had been awake long enough and she had started to feel her limbs again.
Juniper sat up and looked around the clearing. She didn’t think she had ever been in this part of the forest before. Her clothes were a tattered mess, and her face was stained with dried dirt and broken leaves.
She thought she was alone, until she turned around and saw the vampire sitting on a massive rock behind her. Her heart leaped in shock as she saw his cool, pale face.
How long had he been there? He had a wicked grin on his face, and his red eyes seemed to be searching deep into her soul.
Juniper felt fear rising inside her. Her breathing sounded too loud to her, and her pulse throbbed visibly in her temples.
“What did you do?” she asked with a shaky voice. “Why did you hurt them?”
“Oh, but I thought you were upset with them?” His lips drew into a thin line as he cocked his head to the side, regarding her curiously.
“Of course I was upset with them, but that doesn’t mean I wanted them killed!” Her voice got stronger as she spoke.
He made a clicking sound and shook his head regrettably. “It doesn’t matter. I never planned to let them live, anyway. You might as well be grateful to me.”
Juniper felt a cold dread as she listened to him. It was hard to imagine this encounter ending without a deep gash in her throat, and her dead on the forest floor.
However, she was still alive. For whatever reason, this thing had decided to go through the stress of keeping her alive. It was a thin thread of hope, but she held desperately onto it.
He sat a little distance from her, but she never considered flight. It was impossible to outrun the vampire, and he sat with confidence that came from that knowledge. That’s why he hadn’t even bothered to restrain her.
She tried to control her breathing. Her brain worked furiously, running through a thousand fuzzy thoughts. He had a reason for keeping her alive. She was certain of it. Now, she just had to find out what that reason was.
He looked much better than he had looked before. He had shorn his hair, and it extended just past his skinny shoulders. He had on a clean set of clothes and she didn’t want to think of where he could have possibly found them out here in the woods.
“Why are you doing this?” Juniper asked cautiously.
“I can hear your heart beating from here. Oh dear, your fear is so thick, I can taste it on the air. Calm yourself, will you? I have no intentions of hurting you.”
Relief flooded through her so suddenly she almost laughed. She picked herself up slowly from the ground and swayed a bit. She found her balance and looked at the vampire. She could tell he had something on his mind. There was nothing she could do except wait for him to say what it was.
“You asked why I am doing all of this? I woke up only a while ago. I had been buried for a very, very long time. The last thing I remembered was being in Moonwood in the time when the wolves used to hunt and kill my kind.
“I’m only just realizing that those memories are from about a thousand years ago. So much has changed since then, even the world seems different now. The air feels different. Everything I knew is gone. I was asleep for far too long.”
Everything else he said sounded distant to Juniper.A thousand years!The understanding of how old this being was settled on her. This was an ancient being of immeasurable power. If he had been asleep for a thousand years, how old was he? She shivered but it wasn’t from cold.
