The Blood Bundle, Books 1-2: Blood Singers and Blood Song (New Adult Paranormal Vampire/Shifter Romance) (19 page)

She swallowed and he waited in pregnant silence.
“I felt a sense of...”

He arched his eyebrows. “Foreboding?” he
intuited.

She nodded, relieved he understood. “Yes.”

He straightened. “You sense that now?”

She nodded again, it was a vibration in her
body, humming in an ominous way she hated. And the headaches were
back.

Turning, she walked toward him voluntarily for
the first time.

William watched her come, a graceful
slow-burning flame, eyes and hair a liquid gold that ignited a
torch within his soul. He stuffed his emotions deep inside, giving
her his pleasantly neutral face. It was something that was now a
daily challenge. Before, it had been made easier by her
indifference. He did not feel that from her right now, in this
moment.

Julia came very close to him. Reaching out she
placed a small hand on his arm and he stifled the gasp that tore
from inside him as their flesh connected. Her eyes moved to his.
“I'm not afraid of you anymore. I don't know how I feel, but I know
you'd protect me.”

It took every ounce of willpower not to touch
her back, caress that face he had caressed mentally a thousand
times before with his eyes. How badly he wished to do it with his
hands. Instead, he forced them against his side, remaining
unmoved.

“Today, I'm afraid. Even this near, this
protected. I don't want to be with the Were.” Julia knew however
bad this new life was, that the alternative with them would be
worse.

William stiffened. “We would never allow that.
They have tried for you twice, and failed. They would never
succeed.”

She shook her head, the ginger of her hair
sliding over shoulders encased in the smooth nylon material of her
exercise gear. He watched the silken strands and wanted to run his
fingers through it. The low light of the skylight caused it to glow
a soft red. William suddenly wished he could see it in the sun. He
imagined it would be quite red.

“They may succeed,” she said.

He looked down at her as she looked up at him.
“No,” he said fiercely, his emotion overwhelming his sense.
Wrapping both his hands around her forearms. “It cannot be
precognitive. If that were so, they would have tried for you months
ago, when you were more vulnerable.”

Julia stared at him. He wasn't believing her.
She'd be given her nightly exercise, regardless. Maybe she had a
case of nerves.

Maybe her unbearable loneliness was in the way.
She felt the heat from her body warming his. Still, that small
space separated them. She noticed his hands encasing her arms and
suddenly her eyes were on his lips.

Julia's mind trembled at the possibility. Her
emotions and intellect warred in a heated battle.

William felt her gaze shift from his eyes to his
mouth.

He waited. She must decide.

He had never had a greater challenge, his nerve
endings on fire.

Julia felt her emotions unraveling, guilt over
Jason, his death, their unconsummated marriage. Missing him like a
pit of misery in her stomach. She knew what she was beginning to
feel for William was wrong. But she could only go on so long with
the constant loneliness. William was right, he had proven himself.
She was the one that needed to move on.

Her decision made, Julia stood on tiptoe, using
lips that hadn't kissed in almost two years, she brushed a
featherweight's press over the softness of his mouth.

Julia's eyes were closed, one hand on his chest
for balance. She didn't feel his response and her skin flushed with
embarrassment. She began to draw away.

Until she felt his hands move off of her arms
and snap around her body, jerking her against him. His mouth moved
over hers with a barely contained hunger, eating at it until she
opened it for him.

He lifted his mouth just long enough to say, “I
will always protect you, Julia.”

“I know...” she began but his mouth came down on
hers again and she twined her arms around his neck. The heat that
moved between their embrace felt overwhelmingly natural.

Too natural.

Julia pulled away just as there was a knock on
the door and she felt his arms release her reluctantly. She watched
William’s face as he followed the progress of her hand as it
touched her mouth, swollen from his kiss. Bruised from his
affection.

Guilt assailed her. “Come in,” she said,
relieved for the interruption.

“It's time,” Pierce said, looking from one to
the other, sensing the broken tension like shards of glass laying
dangerously all around them.

*

William

William was angry at the knocking, the sweet
scent of Julia filling his nose, his senses wailing to take her, to
make her his. Their first contact was more overwhelming than even
he could have imagined. That she initiated it, that their blood
share was all but washed away, made it all the sweeter.

He looked upon her as she pulled away, guilt and
desire mixed up in her features. He had a pang of regret, then
shoved it away. He had not taken what she'd loved away from her. It
was the Were that had stolen her husband's life. In their haste to
acquire her, they'd killed a Singer unnecessarily. It had been
long, almost two years of patience and frustration. If he could
finally be joined with her. If she would possibly be open to a
courtship, he would not dissuade her. And his competitors were
less.

Actually, the horrible attack of Julia had
tightened things up considerably in the coven.

He glanced at Pierce, coming to his senses as if
in a fog. He shook off the lethargy of his desire with difficulty.
Gabriel wished for Julia to exercise, to be away from the coven. He
did not think she was coping well. Even William had to admit that
she was progressing better with the exercise.

Her words of disquiet were troubling. William
did not assume everything. He wished to be as confident as possible
but to discount a Rare One was not prudent.

William considered himself pragmatic. And
ruthless.

Always that.

He turned to Pierce, “Let us take an additional
five runners.”

Pierce's brows came together.

William answered his unspoken question, “It will
ease Julia.”

He turned and smiled at her. She gave him one of
her rare genuine smiles. He loved seeing it on her face and smiled
back.

William wished he had put more weight in her
comment. It would haunt him in the months to come.

Julia looked at William and was instantly
relieved. He had not discounted her warning. He was more than a
protector now. She wasn't sure what he was becoming, but in that
moment a small space in her heart softened, a fissure formed,
allowing William in.

run

Julia wiped sweat of her brow, running with a
thousand vampires at her side.

Not really. That's just what it felt like.

She'd told William that the Were were sniffing
around and so far, nothing.

Julia was feeling foolish. She decided to tell
him so.

She knew that they didn't need fifteen anymore.
Five was probably enough. He'd smiled and kissed her forehead
casually, calling off the vampires for the following evening's run.
Her sense of impending doom had lessened.

It had been a full week since she'd mentioned
her uneasy feelings to William. It was so similar to what she'd
felt before Terrell went madder than a March hare, as Aunt Lily
would have said, that she'd felt compelled to speak. Now, she just
felt like a dumbass. Getting the vampires wound up because she had
an emotional hiccup. Julia needed to be stronger.

She smiled at William. Julia thought there would
be a ton of awkwardness between them but he'd been solicitous,
touching her subtly day by day. A slow bridge of small intimacies
were building one on top of the other.

She came to find herself looking forward to the
subtle touches and glances, anticipating them. If anyone had told
her that she was going to be crushing on a vampire two years ago,
she would have written the letter to have them committed
herself.

Yet, here she was. She hadn't forgotten Jason,
but the pain was less acute.

Julia was also not certain of her path. She knew
in her mind that Jason was gone. That this weird new life, however
much she hadn't wanted, it was what she had now. Julia realized she
needed to move on. A vision of Jason's face, once so clear, had
turned fuzzy at the edges. She felt herself all at once profoundly
sad again. It was not just losing him in reality. It was the memory
of him slipping away day by day that tore at her heart.

William stood watching the myriad of emotions
play over her face and having made a study of humanity in the past
two hundred years he knew some of what she reconciled.

Damn the Were
, William thought for the
hundredth time. She would have been separated from her husband
regardless. However, his death had marked her. Even now she
struggled.

“Julia,” William said. He looked at her, the
sadness clinging to her like greedy fingers and thought that she
looked so fragile and small standing there. The hopes of his race
depended on a young woman barely more than a girl.

Julia looked at William and the blanket of
memories slid away for the moment. She swung her face to Pierce and
the other three. Julia nodded. She was ready. She focused her
considerable will on the moment, not on the past.

They were deep into the run, her body singing in
muscular tension and heat. The vamps were barely on a jog. Julia
felt like she was practically sprinting. They used the steep hills
of the city and climbed them like the Swiss Alps. An occasional car
sputtered by, the gears grinding together in the ascent. When they
reached the area the famous Nordstrom's occupied they stopped. The
loneliest part of the night embracing them as they stood in a loose
group. William grabbed the water bottle from a small backpack that
lay between his shoulder blades. Handing it to her she gulped a few
swigs, admiring the building. Cyn would have died ten deaths to go
shopping there, Julia's melancholy stealing its way inside her
again. Her face tilted to take in the vertical sign. It was
completely black, save for the letters in ivory. She noticed it was
lit from the sides, the characters softly illuminated.

William watched Julia grapple for a life that
was no more and broke into her thoughts, “Let us go back.”

She nodded and was struck dumb with a pain so
acute, so widespread she gasped and fell to her knees.

The five vampire took their eyes from their
posts to assist her.

As Julia lay sideways on the concrete sidewalk,
the sign poised above her head like a guillotine, she saw the Were
slide out from the dark corners the city provided.

There were many.

Julia whispered through her pain, which she now
recognized as an alarm come too late, “Werewolves...”

Joseph and Tony watched, alongside the remaining
nine Were, as the small group of vampires allowed Julia Caldwell to
rest.

Six long days they had waited for the vampires'
complacency to reestablish itself. For their perfect moment of
opportunity.

Finally, it had come.

Joseph took in the sight of her. The golden hair
swept back in a ponytail, the navy athletic gear looking black to
his wolf vision, so soft a color in the darkness he knew it was
blue. He felt her awareness before she did, watching her drink
water.

“She will know we are here soon. Be ready,” he
gave Tony a significant glance and he raised the dart gun in
acknowledgment.

“I'm not gonna fuck this up, I told ya,” he said
in a growl.

Joseph turned his snout to Tony, their golden
eyes locked on each other. “See that you don't. We won't get
another opportunity like this one.” Their eyes held for two
heartbeats more and Tony broke the stare, his status in the group
firmly set at first. Not Alpha.

Not yet.

Joseph swept his eyes amongst the other Were
soldiers and they gave him the subtle eye contact he required. The
affirmation that let him know they were ready to battle the
vampires.

On his scent command, they released their bodies
from the shadows and stepped out into the open.

William knelt beside Julia, stifling his rising
panic. The first thing that flooded his mind was her warning, nary
a week old in which she had told him of her unease. He had
listened, acted. But now he saw the alarm on her face and realized
that the Were had chosen their time.

And it was now.

William brushed the hair that had come undone
away from Julia's temple.

Tenderly.

He stood and readied himself for what the Were
would bring.

The four that were with him spread and flanked
his position. With a last look at Julia, he stepped in front of
her. The look blazing in her eyes scorched a path in his mental
imagery. What he had seen in them clenched his insides.

Trust.

Julia trusted him.

As he looked out and counted eleven of the
enemy, he hoped that the sentiment was not misplaced.

Julia reclaimed tenuous control of her body and
stood on shaky legs. She was fatigued by the run but was numb with
fear. She backed away from the vampire that stood in front of her
and her eyes met the Were that stood in front of them.

One in particular captured her attention.

The rapist.

Julia backed away until her butt collided with
the Travertine fa
ç
ade of the building.

It was dark as they came, the streetlights
illuminating the Were in patches of streetlight then disappearing
as the dark embraced them again. Julia didn't take her eyes off the
one.

He was the biggest. The most intense. She
immediately understood that he wasn't the leader. Then she saw it.
In his hand he held something.