SWNOVELS Chapter 2
“Long ago, in a time where the world tasted of change, I dreamed of the miracles my gifts could weave,” the male voice fell over me like a fog; it was soft, touched with reverence and laced with power. I could feel the penetrating gaze of this man right down to my bones.
I knew who he was. His face had followed me into the depths of the darkness when I had lost consciousness on that stars-forsaken operating table. Somewhere among the thick, impenetrable shadows of my mind, I had remembered him. The man with the scar through his left eye, an eye which was as black as death itself.
Reality came pouring in on me like the stars were tipping an urn of wakefulness over my head, not letting me escape the terrible truth that awaited me beyond this measure of darkness.
I fought it, preferring to hide in the recesses of sleep, but there was one reason to wake that I couldn’t turn from. My mate. My Rosa. I could almost feel her shaking me now, refusing to let me shy from fate. “Get up, stronzo! Fight!”
I blinked, finding myself laying prone on a cold stone floor, the walls around me metal and dull as if the misery of this place had seeped into the making of it. The only thing in the room with me was the man with the scarred eye, his gaze fixed upon me, his features haggard, weathered by time, those lines around his mouth painted there by a thousand wicked smiles. One of which, he aimed at me now.
He wore all black, his hands clasped at the base of his spine and pride glinted in those malevolent eyes. Ownership too. As if he believed that I was his creature, his twisted little pet.
I shoved to my feet, taking in the magic-blocking cuffs on my wrists though that wouldn’t be enough to stop me from destroying him.
A low growl rolled through my throat as I ran at Roland, the need for his death spilling through my flesh, clad in iron. A rush hissed through my limbs at the motion, some strange and unknown sensation tearing along my bloodstream and filling me with nameless power. The room around me blurred, my feet moving altogether too fast and I crashed into a clear pane of glass that I hadn’t seen, my nose close to breaking as I fell back onto my ass with a bellow of shocked agony.
The world was still spinning as I glared up at him, his smile only growing.
“You are fast becoming my favourite miracle, Nightroary,” Roland purred, his voice carrying through a speaker so I could hear it loud and clear in this room, though it sounded too loud, ringing in my head for far too long. Something wasn’t right inside me, my own body didn’t feel like my own.
Roland cocked his head as he admired me. “You probably don’t remember the rise of the Dragon King,” he said, lifting a brow. “You were locked away in Darkmore through that time. A forgotten creature. Powerful in your own right – but all that power was going to waste down there. Was it a crime to make use of it for the greater good? I think not. Do you realise what you are yet? You are so very special.” His voice echoed inside my skull, too loud, then too quiet and I winced as my head spun from the unnerving sensation.
“What have you done to me?” I rasped, my body feeling so unlike my own. My movements were too fluid, and as I focused on this monster of a man before me, I felt like I could pick out every line and wrinkle on his face, seeing him all too sharply.
“If you survive the alteration, you will be my greatest achievement. You will change the world. No longer will the lesser Orders have to remain in the pitiful forms they were born with. A curse of the stars finally broken. You see, I saw what the Dragon King never did. To eradicate and exterminate is a trying cause. But to rebirth, to recreate? Ah, yes. There is so much more beauty in it, don’t you think?”
I pushed myself to my feet, moving too fast again and stumbling as I adjusted to the strangeness in my limbs. Despite my size, it was as if I was walking on air, able to float along with barely any effort at all. A burning sensation was growing in my throat and as I lifted my head to take in the cut of my enemy, my gaze homed in on the throbbing pulse in his neck.
I could practically see the blood pounding through his veins, the flush of it in his cheeks and, if I really focused, I could hear it too. The pounding of his wretched heart was music to me, a lure I couldn’t ignore the pull of. My tongue weighed heavily in my mouth and the burn in my throat grew deeper as wicked, hungry thoughts flitted through my head.
“What have you done to me?!” I bellowed the words this time, lunging at the glass and throwing my fist at it. The pane shuddered but didn’t crack and I sensed there was magic imbued in it, because no normal glass could have withstood that strike.
Roland looked to a camera up on the wall beside me and gave it a small nod. At his signal, a hidden door opened in the wall and a woman was forced into the chamber with me. She was dressed in white scrubs and she let out a pitchy scream as a taller woman behind her fisted her golden hair and slashed her throat wide open. I recognised the bitch holding her as Angie, the one who had reached into my chest and taken my Lion from me.
I ran at her with a snarl of hatred tearing from my lips, promising her death, but she threw the blonde at me and quickly retreated, slamming the door closed. I caught the falling woman as she spluttered and choked, but as I looked down in a bid to help her, something switched in me. The burn in my throat grew to a roaring command and I felt my canines lengthen in my mouth. All at once, the blood spilling from her became such an irresistible desire that it stole every ounce of my focus. The need to help her subsided and instead, a far more terrible urge took over.
I wrenched her head sideways and dropped my mouth to her neck, acting on instinct alone while a voice in the back of my head cried out for me to stop. The metallic tang of blood against my lips sent sparks of light exploding through my mind. Without another thought, I drove my newly grown fangs into the exposed vein of her neck and before I could even try to stop myself, I drank. It was akin to ecstasy in a way nothing I had ever experienced before had been, the pure, sinful rush of it consuming every piece of me.
I swallowed one mouthful of her blood then another, and another. All I could focus on was how good it tasted, how much I needed this. But as the well of magic swelled inside me, and the woman’s thrashing grew weak and finally fell still, a horrifying truth found me amidst my frenzy.
Roland’s voice fell over me, naming my new Order. Though I was certain I could have guessed without his declaration.
“Vampire,” he laughed, then he crowed it, celebrating his victory in me. “Vampire! You are a Lion Shifter no more.”
As the burn in my throat finally eased, I dropped the lifeless body of the woman who had been murdered for the single purpose of exposing my new Order, scrambling away from her and feeling her blood drip from my chin. Horror coated me from the inside out and a tremor ran through my hands as I looked down at my red-stained palms. This wasn’t me. This Order was foreign and wrong. It didn’t belong in my body. I wasn’t made for this, I was made for shifting, running in my Lion form. I was made for Charisma and pride. I was no Vampire.
“This isn’t me,” I denied Roland’s words. “Take it back – fix it,” I rounded on him, panic seizing me in its grip. “You can undo it!”
Roland shook his head. “You are what I made you to be. You have been born anew. You are my glorious proof of what is possible. The process has been perfected, and you will be my crowning example. The stars have bestowed me their powers of creation and I, like them, will be a maker of fate from this day forward.” He turned his back on me, striding out of a door and leaving me alone in that chamber to shout after him in purest rage.
But between my despair and the chilling truth of my reality, I found something worse to fear than this fate. My mate, my beautiful, courageous mate who had never learned the meaning of fear, never knew when to back down, would be out there now looking for me. And I never wanted her to get close to this place. To that monster who knew how to do the unspeakable to Fae-kind
“Rosa,” I whispered thickly into the icy air. “Don’t come for me,” I ordered, repeating the words I had said to her in our parting moment, hoping the stars would guide her away from me now. “Don’t search for me anymore, little pup.”
I was Roland’s mutation, my identity stripped in every way possible and reforged into something I refused to claim. My mate loved me as I was before, not as I was now. Like this, I was not her Lion anymore. And I was never going to be the Fae she had sworn her heart to again.