Authors: Maya DeLeina
“That was an instinctive predatory and defensive reaction we have in us. We can tell the governing authority that it was just a reaction you hadn’t learned to control yet. Steffan and I are both on the board, so we can make a case for you. Although, they may want to exclude you from the proceedings,” Eilian said as he looked at Steffan.
“They have already excluded both of us, Eilian,” Steffan responded coldly.
“How is she?” Rhys raced back to Steffan and Anya’s side.
“Better,” Steffan said. “Who’s watching over Ryan?”
“Anya did quite a number on him. He’s a hot mess. He is resting right now. Aeron and Haydn volunteered to watch him and help him recover. Guys, I need to know what is going on right now. Ryan told me some shit that’s not sitting well inside me.”
“Let’s go upstairs. I want Anya to lie down. I can explain everything.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Anya lay on the leather sofa in the fetal position. Her head rested on a pillow in Steffan’s lap. He gently smoothed back her hair to calm her.
“He’s claiming that he was married to Anya and that you took her from him. He said you two fabricated the entire story of him being with Anise instead so you could focus on claiming Anya for yourself,” Rhys said, speaking to both Steffan and Eilian. Rhys sat in the leather club chair directly across from Eilian.
“What? I’m the one who decided to change him in the first place because I wanted him to reunite with whomever he was talking about that night. And this is what I get in return? Look, he never recalled any woman once he was turned. I tried for days to coax it out of him but still nothing. After Eilian told me about Ryan and Anise, I went to M.J. to confirm that was the true story. Then and only then did I start looking for Anya. I didn’t fabricate anything, and I for damn sure didn’t take anything from him!”
“Rhys, Steffan, and I got the same story from M.J. We fabricated nothing. I don’t know what’s going on here, but Ryan is obviously doing this for some kind of attention or something.”
“Not exactly,” Anya said softly.
The men looked intently at Anya as she sat up on the sofa.
Their eyes traveled to Steffan’s in unison.
“What was it of Ryan’s that you touched? You never told me what the object was that made you feel our connection,” Anya said.
“It was a stone he was clutching just after the accident. Red jasper, I believe,” Steffan responded.
“And you turned Ryan because of an accident?”
Steffan nodded as he told Anya of the ordeal. “He was driving up to the house—the house you inherited from your sister. It was the night of the first snowstorm last year. I don’t know what caused the accident, but the Mercedes fell from a cliff on the mountain pass. That is when I found him. He was dying of his injuries, and he told me he couldn’t live without her. I had no clue who
her
was at the time, but I didn’t have the heart to take him permanently from his true love. I thought I was giving him something that I never had a chance for myself. Anya, this is the only reason why I turned him.”
Anya wept. “I gave him that stone that very morning. It was a gift…for my husband.”
“Anya, no!
You
are Ryan’s wife?” Steffan screamed, clutching Anya by the shoulders.
“Fuck man! How did this never get discussed during your claim? Steffan, you’re in a real bad place. This is Ryan’s mate you just claimed,” Rhys said. The shakiness in his voice frightened Anya.
“You’re married? All this time, you were a married woman?” Steffan stood from the sofa and looked at Anya. His eyes began to well, his voice trembling full of hurt and distress.
“No, I
was
married to him. I was granted a divorce before I even met you, Steffan. Ryan left me. He left me for my sister! He took all of our money and left me with nothing.”
“Why did you lie? You made me believe that your husband died!”
“It wasn’t a lie. My first husband, Ravi, died of a brain aneurysm. I just skipped over Ryan. I couldn’t tell you that the man before you left me for someone else. He left me for my twin sister of all things! I was in love with you. I wasn’t sure how you were going to react. How could I have told you that?” Anya wept hysterically.
Steffan embraced Anya and held her close to his chest. “My god, Anya, do you honestly think that would’ve mattered to me?” Steffan kissed her head. “Calm down, love, it will be all right. Everything will be all right.”
“Steffan, it’s not all right. She is in fact Ryan’s wife. She was off-limits to the claim according to our laws,” Rhys said in a panicked voice.
“But I divorced him! I was no longer his wife. Is no one considering my feeling and wishes in all of this? I’m not an object of ownership to anyone!” Anya said in protest.
“Divorce doesn’t exist for vampires. The council won’t give two shits about that! The fact is Steffan claimed another vampire’s human mate. That is against our laws. He didn’t follow his own rules!” Rhys said coldly to Anya.
“Wait a damn minute, Rhys, I did follow my own governing rules for the family, and you’re forgetting a couple of things here that the law doesn’t account for. Ryan never recalled Anya. Nothing in the law accounts for this. I mean, we never considered it. If they were true mates, there’s no reason why he couldn’t recall her. I did the right thing and went to M.J. to confirm the background on him since he couldn’t remember.”
Eilian jumped to Steffan’s defense. “And the other point here is that Ryan broke their emotional and physical bond before he even became a vampire. Anya ended any of the remaining legal binding with the divorce. We may not believe in divorce, but it does exist in the human world. Humans don’t have the ability to identify mate connections within each other, so they go off of judgment. Divorce for them is like a means to erase a wrong decision, as if it never happened. The council will have to take divorce into consideration in this case.”
“Rhys, please, you were human once.” Anya pleaded.
She didn’t know where Rhys fit in with the hierarchy of the family, but there was no doubt that he was a formidable presence. He stood as tall as Steffan and Eilian, but his build was much more defined, more demanding, and completely captivating. She couldn’t help but notice he had a way with his eyes as well, pivoting from an object of fear to a romantic trance. For her, his eyes were something to get lost in, mesmerizing against his jet-black hair and thick eyebrows that framed his photogenic face.
Rhys was downright gorgeous.
Then there was Eilian, equally as handsome with his light-brown hair and green eyes, but with an air of intellectual sexiness surrounding him.
In fact, running through the images of all the men of the Ambrose Heights family was like flipping through the most delicious calendar she had ever laid eyes on. Of course, Steffan would be the month of June, dead center of the calendar, demanding of a centerfold, capturing all of him.
For her, Steffan still outshined them all.
Rhys kneeled down before Anya, softening his speech, his hands gently caressing hers.
“Anya, I’m sorry if I’m scaring you. But you must understand. Rules and laws are very important to me. When Steffan found me in Nepal, he planned on destroying me. I wasn’t trying to hurt Steffan at all, he and his brotherhood just happened upon my territory. Truth is, they were exactly what I was looking for. I was turned long before Steffan. I lived like a rogue because that was the way of the world for vampires back then. After some time, I longed to be human again. I wanted to be part of life, part of a society again. I didn’t want to live in solitude, lurking in shadows like a monster. I heard about the new breed of vampires that was coming about. They were taking up brotherhoods, searching for their mates to start families and lairs. I had never come across any of them in all of my years, until I saw Steffan and his brothers in 1936. Anyway, Steffan was able to hear me out, take me in, and spare my life. Our creeds, our laws are so important to me because it’s what separates us from being rogues—what we were bred to be. I just hope that Eilian is right and we can convince the council.”
“Rhys. I had no clue that you were once a rogue! I would’ve never guessed it. Are you not on the governing council as well, to help us?” Anya asked in desperation.
“No. They won’t allow vamps that were once rogue to pass judgments,” Rhys said softly. Swiftly, he changed the subject and paced the room. “You know, I still don’t get it. If Anise was fooling around with Ryan, why was the house in her name, and why did she leave it to you? I don’t understand.”
“Actually, I was beneficiary to everything Anise owned. After she passed away, I was going through all of the paperwork that was given to me and I realized Ryan was slowly funneling our money to Anise. I think he was planning on hiding all of his assets so he would show nothing when he would file for divorce. I don’t think he realized she had a will naming me a beneficiary to her estate.” Anya suddenly gasped. “Does he even know that someone torched her in a well?”
The three men shot glances back and forth at each other.
“Anya? What are you talking about? Anise died in a car accident,” Steffan said with a look of confusion.
“No. The detectives told me they found her burned in an abandoned well on a cattle ranch.”
“Detectives? What detectives, exactly?” probed Steffan.
“Well, one detective. Doyle was her name. The other was Sergeant…”
“Stemper?” Steffan responded, breaking Anya in midsentence.
“Yeah, that’s right!”
“And when did you meet them?”
“A couple weeks after Ryan left. She called me at home. I had to come down to the station. She questioned me about Ryan, Anise, everything.”
Steffan took a deep breath and ran his fingers angrily through his hair. “Fuck! She knew! She knew all the time, Eilian! And she has mate-sensing abilities. I’d already touched the stone and started the connection with Anya by that time. She knew that Anya and I were a match.
Gwrach!
”
“Who is she? What are you talking about?” Anya screamed, looking for answers.
“M.J.!” Eilian said feverishly.
“I don’t know who M.J. is that you guys keep talking about! I’m talking about Detective Doyle, Madeline Doyle.”
“M.J.
is
Madeleine-Jane Doyle!” Steffan explained.
“Oh, my god!” Anya exclaimed.
“She told me her team was off the case and the humans took it over. But from what Anya is saying, it looks like she and Alex
were
handling the case. This means Anise was one of us!” Eilian concluded.
Anya shook her head at everything that was slowly unraveling. “She was a vampire? It all makes sense now! I could never understand why someone would burn her. It was exposure to the sun that did it. So if she was one of us, how come you didn’t know who she was?”
Steffan adjusted on the chaise to face Anya. “When did you last see Anise, when you could for sure say she was human?”
“Probably over a year ago. That’s when we kicked her out of our home and after that, I never heard from her again. I didn’t even know she was still here in town.”
“But we would’ve known if someone in the family had turned her,” Eilian said.
“Think about it. Who disappeared around the same time?” Steffan probed.
“Dominic,” Rhys said coldly. He remained standing, crouched over, his forearms resting on the back of the leather club chair.
Steffan shook his head and sat next to Anya. “Shit. Something inside of me told me not to entrust M.J. with this big of a responsibility, regardless of her telling abilities.”
“But we had Alex in there with her. He would’ve sensed something right away,” Rhys said.
“I know. We will have to find him.”