Renegade (The Captive Series Book 2) (4 page)

Max moved her back, pulling her stiff
body away from the sight before them. “Hurry!” William
hissed.

“It will be ok, Aria. It will be ok.”
Max wrapped his hand around the back of her head, pulling her close
for a brief moment before tugging her toward the woods. They
plunged into the darkness, moving swiftly through the dense forest.
William led the way, taking a zigzagging route that wound rapidly
toward the banquet tree.

Aria felt numb, hollow. The screams of
the tortured followed her, long after they were out of ear shot of
them. Aria was panting, breathless by the time they reached the
banquet tree. She fell against the large tree, clinging to one of
its branches as she gasped for air that she couldn’t quite get. Her
legs buckled, she fell to her knees before their childhood tree.
There had been so many dreams and plans and hopes that grew from
this spot.

There were none now. Now there was only
bleak hopelessness. Now there was only death, and the echoing
screams of the innocent. Now there was only hurt and loss and
suffering. Yet, beneath all of that there was something else,
something new rising up to course through her. For a moment she
couldn’t identify the novel emotion through all of the agony and
confusion rolling through her. For a moment, she didn’t know what
it was that was consuming her. And then, she did.

It was hatred.

It was pure and simple hate. She hated
this world of cruelty, hated the monsters that had created it. She
hated with everything that she had, and was. And she hated the
monster that had done this to her, the creature that had stomped
all over her heart, making her weaker, making her a broken shell of
the person she had once been. And now, well now that shell was
filling up again. That shell was angry and twisted and so hate
filled that she could barely breathe through its fiery
consumption.

The prince, she hated the prince, she
realized.

There would be no more grieving for
him, there would be no more wondering and hurting. What had passed
between them was the past. It was over. She would forget it, she
would move on, and if their paths ever happened to cross again. She
would kill him.

CHAPTER
3

“There was a raid.”

Braith stood silently, thinking over
his brother Caleb’s words as the tailor moved slowly around him.
The tailor had stopped mumbling to himself, and although he
continued to work, Braith knew he was listening intently to the
conversation. “And?” Braith asked quietly.

“She was not amongst the
captured.”

“The dead?”

“No. The soldiers know that she is to
be brought back here if caught. That they all are.”

Braith shrugged, disliking the feel of
the coat he wore. “No matter the orders, there are always
casualties in war,” he murmured. He expected Caleb to leave after
delivering the news. Even twisted, brutal Caleb didn’t like to be
around him for any length of time anymore. No one did. Braith’s
temper had become volatile, his fury and paths of destruction were
well known, and feared, amongst the residents of the
palace.

A lot of blood had stained his hands
over the past two months; he had consumed more blood in the past
eight weeks than he had in the past eight years. But it was not
enough, it would never be enough to bury the hatred and anger
festering inside of him. His murderous rampage had died down, but
only because he had calmed enough to realize that the deaths of
innocent people did not ease his rage as much as he had hoped it
would. Now he just consumed mass quantities of blood, but most of
the time the people survived his attack now.

“Is there more?” he demanded
impatiently of his brother.

Caleb cleared his throat. “She was not
amongst the dead, and she was not amongst the captured, but she was
there.”

Braith’s head came slowly up, he turned
toward his brother. He could not see Caleb, darkness ruled Braith’s
life once more, but he could smell the faint hint of fear and
excitement that rolled off of him. Braith stood for a long moment,
stunned by Caleb’s words. There had been no sign of her since she’d
left here, and though he could have found her at a moment’s notice,
he refused to lower himself by going after her, by making her think
that he wanted her back, because he didn’t. She had betrayed him
after all; he wanted nothing more to do with the traitorous
bitch.

And yet he felt a moment of fear rock
through him. He wanted her punished for her treachery, wanted her
to suffer for what she had done to him, but did he truly want her
dead? Did he truly want her back here where she would be tortured
and punished for her treachery? He had believed so, he had wanted
it to be so, but now that his troops had stumbled across her, now
that they were hot on her heels, he wondered what he would do if
she was recaptured. She would be tormented, beaten, and eventually
killed. She would be punished for being a traitor, and it would be
a brutal punishment.

If he really wanted her back, then he
would have gone after her himself and brought her back here by now.
But even though he hated her, even though she had sliced him
deeply, he had to admit that he did not want her dead. He wanted
her to hurt as badly as he had upon first discovering that she was
gone, but he did not want her dead.

In all the time since she had been
gone, it was the first time that he actually realized this fact. He
wanted her blood, he wanted to taste her and see her again, and he
wanted to make her pay for what she had done. But he wanted to be
the one that made her pay, not his brother or his father, and he
did not want her dead. His jaw clenched tight as he grasped the
lapels on the jacket he wore. The hated jacket. The tailor made a
soft sound of protest as he stepped down from the dais he had been
standing upon, ignoring the annoying gnat of a man.

“How do you know she was there?” he
growled.

“One of our people spotted her; it was
why they went in when they did. They were hoping to capture
her.”

“Went in?”

“They were in a group of caves,
apparently well engineered caves with a series of tunnels and gates
throughout them. The caves were discovered last week, but they were
going to wait until they knew where all of the exits were before
raiding them. Our guards got a little overexcited when they spotted
her though, and jumped the gun early.”

Caves, she was living in caves. She had
spoken about her woods, and her forest, with such reverence that he
had assumed she’d returned to the trees and plants that had brought
a small smile to her face when she spoke of them. That she had
returned to the world of freedom and wilderness that she had so
openly craved. Instead, she was living in caves, hidden beneath the
earth, trapped beneath mounds of dirt and rock. It made no sense to
him, but what made even less sense was the fact that he even
remotely cared where she was living. What she was doing.

He had moved on with his life, he now
owned several blood slaves, and though none of them were her, he
found he did enjoy them. They made him forget for a little bit,
they made it not so hard to get through the days. And unlike
Arianna, these ones were more pliant and less defiant. He was
getting married in a matter of months, granted he couldn’t stand
the woman, but he need only have a male heir with her and then he
wouldn’t have to have anything to do with her again. It was just a
matter of time, and his wife’s family would help to strengthen his
own. He had not planned on marrying the woman, no matter what his
father wanted, but he was resigned to it now. He had never intended
to do his duty as the eldest son. Not until Arianna had abandoned
him, not until she had fled here with his brother and another blood
slave.

After that, all he had wanted was
vengeance, and to forget. All he had wanted was not to think about
her soft smile, bright eyes, delightful innocence, and sweet blood.
And there were even times during the day when he almost did forget,
brief moments when he found a little reprieve from his memories in
the copious amounts of blood. Those moments never lasted long, and
there was a part of him that hated himself for what he was doing,
but he knew that with enough blood, and enough time, he would
eventually forget her. And eventually Arianna would die, she was
human, and she lived a dangerous life. It was only a matter of time
before it happened, he would know when that time came, and he had
thought that he would feel relief when it did.

He wasn’t so sure now.

“Was there any sign of
Jericho?”

Resentment boiled through him at the
thought of his younger brother, the sibling he had trusted and
liked the most, and the one that had betrayed him the deepest. The
one that had taken Aria from him. Though he doubted she had put up
any fight. In fact, he was fairly certain that despite her vows of
love, and her promises to never leave him, that she had probably
run eagerly through the tunnel once it had been revealed to her.
She was a fickle bitch after all, or at least that’s what he had
come to believe. Why else would she vow to love him forever and
then leave him the very next morning?

And Jericho had become enemy number one
now. Braith may not personally destroy Arianna, but he thought he
would have a try at Jericho.

“They did not see Jericho there, but
I’m sure he was nearby. He betrayed us for her after all; she must
mean something to him.”

Jericho had said that he was here to
rescue Arianna because her father was the leader of the rebels.
Jericho had come here for her because he was one of the few that
could get her free. That was what he had said, but Braith had a
hard time believing anything that had come out of his brother’s
mouth during those days. His brother had also said that he would
not do anything without consulting Braith first, and then he had
disappeared the next day.

In fact, he thought that Caleb was
right, that Jericho did feel more for Arianna than just friendship
and loyalty, why else would he have taken her like he had? Braith
had never revealed to Caleb, or his father, Arianna’s true history.
There was no point in doing so, she was gone now, and there was no
way to use her against her family anymore.

“There was a different man with
her.”

Braith’s eyebrows lifted sharply, his
mouth curved in a sneer. “Was there,” he said sardonically. How
many damn men that the little bitch have? He wondered angrily.
First the blood slave, Max, then his brother, and now some other
mystery man. His fingers twitched into a fist, he struggled against
the fierce surge of bloodlust that tore through him. He needed to
bury his fangs in something in order to try and forget the anger
raging through him.

“Yes. They have no idea who it was, but
it wasn’t Jericho and it wasn’t the other blood slave.”

A muscle in his cheek began to twitch
in aggravation; he felt his temper beginning to unravel. He had
thought Arianna a sweet innocent who had brought light back into
his life. He was beginning to learn that nothing could be farther
from the truth.

“I see.” But he didn’t see, and he
wondered why he didn’t go after her and drag her back here kicking
and screaming. Why he didn’t go after her, destroy her family,
smash her rebel cause, and hunt down his treacherous brother and
make them all pay. Braith paced away, shooing away the tailor that
tried to follow him. He tore the jacket off, suddenly feeling
claustrophobic within the material. The tailor made a strangled
sound of despair as the material ripped, but Braith did not care.
“Have they brought any blood slaves back?” he demanded.

“Yes, they are leading them onto the
stage now.”

Braith nodded, he grabbed his cane and
hefted it into his hands. Keegan, his ever faithful wolf and seeing
dog, yawned before rising to his feet. His claws clicked against
the wood floor as he walked beside Braith. “Let’s go.”

Caleb hesitated for only moment before
falling into step beside him. Braith was used to the darkness, used
to navigating it; he needed no assistance as he wound his way
through the hallways of the palace. The cane clicked off the floor,
but it was Keegan that always alerted him to any new obstacle that
may have been placed in the way. With a subtle pressure against his
leg Keegan could steer him easily one way or the other.

Braith made his way swiftly down to the
stage that held the future blood slaves. He looked it slowly over,
but he saw nothing. There was no glowing light upon it, no
redheaded girl staring in horror and fear at the crowd. He had been
shocked into immobility at the sight of Arianna, unable to move,
unable to believe that he could actually see anything again, let
alone the frightened, dirty, bedraggled girl that was everything he
had ever disliked about a woman.

She was not round, she was not
voluptuous, she smelled far from decent, and yet he had seen her.
She was the first thing he had witnesses in over a hundred years.
And slowly, over the time he spent with her, she had become
infinitely beautiful to him. Yes she was defiant, harsh, far too
skinny for his taste, and not beautiful in the classical sense but
she was also strong, sweet, innocent, and unbelievably wonderful.
He had come to care greatly for her, until he had realized that it
was all a lie. That she was in fact none of those things, and was
instead a cunning, manipulative shrew.