“Later, later.” Jack was pushing them toward the open doorway, shoving them into a dark tunnel.

“What is this?” Aria gasped.

“Security tunnels, all the apartments have them. They lead out of the palace. We have to go fast though; they’ll kill us if they find us, and personally I don’t feel like being caught and branded as a traitor. It is not a pleasant death,” Jack informed her.

Aria imagined it probably wasn’t. She kept her hand tight in Max’s, taking strength in his warm touch. She was struggling not to cry as they fled through the dark tunnels with Jack leading the way. She could barely see through the darkness, but Jack moved with unerring speed and sureness. She didn’t look back until they reached the end of the tunnel, and then she only paused for a moment. She vowed that she would never look back after this, never think about anything that had happened within those hated walls again. Though she wanted it desperately to be true, she knew that she was lying to herself.

She stared down the darkened tunnel for a long moment. Her heart was broken; her chest ached with the force of the agony consuming her. She was leaving that palace and that world behind, she would never return to it, but she knew that it would haunt her for the rest of her life. She would never escape what had happened within those walls, never be free of the agony inflicted upon her. Though she didn’t want it to be true, she knew that it was. She also knew that she would never be same, knew that the woman that walked out of this tunnel was far different than the girl that had first entered as a captive.

Max tugged on her hand, pulling her forward, tearing her from her melancholy thoughts. She turned away, fighting back the tears of hurt and anger that burned her eyes. She would never look back again; especially not now that she had her freedom, and would soon have her family. They plunged into the wonderful sanctuary of her beloved woods, blurring easily in with the surrounding forest.

***

Braith was shaking; rage consumed him, boiling through his blood, causing his eternal darkness to turn a fierce shade of red. She was gone. He had known it the moment he stepped back into his apartment. He had sensed her absence when he had been downstairs, but it wasn’t until he had returned that the lack of light, and her beauty, confirmed his fear.

Keegan whimpered softly, moving slowly away from Braith’s leg, slinking away into the shattered debris that littered the room. To say he had lost his temper would be an understatement; he had been in a rage, furious at himself, furious with Jericho, and furious with her. He knew that his youngest brother was behind this, there was no one else that could have taken her from these rooms without being seen. There was no one else that would have known when Braith would not be present, and where the tunnel within his apartment was located.

“Your highness.” He turned slowly at the sound of the wavering voice. His hands clenched tightly on the head of his cane, he would need it now that he had destroyed the room. There were obstacles in his way that had not been there before, and she was no longer present to light his way. “There is no sign of them outside of the palace walls.”

“Of course there isn’t,” Braith growled. Jericho was smart, he was quick, and he would be long gone by now. Using his cane, Braith maneuvered his way through the shattered remains of his furniture. His display of temper and destruction could be blamed on the fact that his brother had stolen his blood slave; all of his kind would understand the betrayal, the wound to his pride, and the denial of his toy. But as he stopped in the doorway of his bedroom, he knew that it was far more than that.

The scent of her blood assailed him; it burned into his nostrils, flared through his body, causing an aching hunger to explode through him. She had been so wonderful, so free and giving last night and so delectably satisfying. Her blood was delicious, it had filled him and nourished him in a way that he had never felt nourished or filled before. But even more potent than her blood, had been her words. Whispered words of love repeated over and over again as she had clung to him. Words he had never heard before, but that he had relished and believed in. Just as he had believed her vow to never leave him, to stay with him always.

Lies, it had all been lies, and he had been the fool that believed them. He clutched the head of his cane tighter, fighting the urge to smash it off the wall. He wanted to rip his brother limb from limb, he wanted to shake her, grasp her, make her tell him why she had offered her blood to him, why she had told him she loved him, and then left him the very next morning. It was the betrayal that made him angriest, the betrayal that made him want to hunt them all down and destroy them. And he could, he could find her so easily.

He could track her through her precious woods, seize hold of her, drag her back here, and lock her in a room for the rest of her miserable life. He could make her pay dearly for her betrayal, make his brother pay. He could make both of their lives a living hell if he chose to. He could destroy them, ruin them completely. Arianna may not have known that he could find her whenever he chose, but his brother should have known better. Jericho should have known that Braith would make him pay for their perfidy, that he would come after them, and that he would make Jericho pay for helping her, and make her pay for her lies.

“The other blood slave?” he growled, turning back to the servant.

He could hear the man shifting nervously; feel the fear coming off of him. “Is gone also your majesty.”

Rage suffused him once more; he couldn’t stop himself from smashing his cane off the wall. The impact jarred through his hand, the cane shattered, sending pieces of shattered debris flying. He wasn’t sure if it was Keegan, or the servant that yelped in response. Braith stood for a moment, shaking with anger, barely able to keep his fury under control.

“Get me a new cane,” he snarled.

The servant scrambled away, his feet cluttering over the debris. Braith stood for awhile, trying to regain control of himself and his wildly swinging emotions. It was a long time before he felt calm enough to move again without ripping something to shreds. It took even longer before he could take a new cane from the servant, without fear of killing the innocent man.

“We’ll go after them, we’ll make them pay.” Braith turned at the sound of Caleb’s voice. It was funny that just yesterday Jericho had been his favorite, now he despised him even more than he ever could have disliked Caleb. “There are already men gathering to hunt them down.”

Braith remained silent for a moment, he could hunt her down, he could find her in a matter of hours, but he found himself not wanting to do so. He did not want that traitorous bitch back in his life, did not ever want to see her again. He preferred his world of blackness to the sight of her disloyal, hideous face. She had wanted her freedom so badly that she had lied and manipulated for it, as far as he was concerned she could have it. She could have her starvation and cold, she could have everything that she so badly wanted.

He wanted nothing to do with her anymore, and would not stand in her way.

“Jericho has been labeled a traitor.”

“He is,” Braith said softly.

“There is a large bounty on his head; it shouldn’t be long before one of the starving masses turns him in. I am sure that the other two slaves will be in his vicinity, and I am also certain that he will turn on them as swiftly as he turned on us when we find him.”

Braith nodded, wrapping both his hands around the head of his new cane. “If he is found, I want him brought to me. I want all of them brought to me.”

“Of course,” Caleb murmured.

Braith leaned back, closing his eyes as he tried not to think about the depth of her betrayal. He would not hunt them down, he would not go into the woods after the two people he had come to rely on and trust the most. But if they were captured and brought back here, he would be the one to make sure that Jericho was destroyed, and he would be the one to hand her over to Caleb, one of the most vicious vampires he knew. And then he would sit back, and relish in the sounds of her screams as Caleb did what he did best.

Until then, he was going to gorge himself on as much blood as it took to help him forget this horrendous mess. He moved toward Caleb, finally beginning to understand his brother’s cruelty and hatred as those emotions started to curdle through his gut, move through his chest, and bury him beneath its crushing force. He had never experienced these emotions to this depth before, but he relished in the hatred and bloodlust as it was the only thing that buried his betrayal and hurt. “Clean this mess up,” he growled at the servant.

Keegan whimpered softly as he padded slowly after Braith, following him down to the dungeons. The wolf had never been here, it had been years since Braith had been down here, mainly because he despised it. But now he found himself craving it, needing it, desiring it with a ferocity that left him shaken. He threw the doors to the dungeons open, the scent of humans and fear assaulted him. These were the blood slaves of the royal family, at least until they were drained dry, and discarded to make room for others.

He moved swiftly through, stopping only briefly to pick out three women from behind the bars. He did not know what they looked like, but the scent of their blood was not as repulsive to him as some of the others. “Have them cleaned and brought to me,” he commanded the guards.

He may not have Arianna now, but he sure as hell was going to satisfy his hunger and attempt to ease some of his fury. It was funny; a skinny wisp of a girl had managed to do in one month what his father had failed to do in over nine hundred years. And that was to turn him into a coldhearted, blood thirsty monster.