The reality of Titus Evictus Roman's choosing lent itself well to reflection. Here within the travertine walls of the Colosseum in Rome, on his podium overlooking the arena where many of his brothers had once battled, he could think, could connect deeply with his son. He chose a crowd of five hundred, all shouting in anticipation of the battle ahead. The intense noise blocked out everything superfluous and allowed him to focus on the emotions and fears within the Scottish credenti.

He could not be harmed inside his own reality.

"Feeling weak, Titus?"

No matter who chose to enter it.

His eyes opened, his gaze searching the massive space for the form attached to that voice.

"Or hungry?"

In the very center of the arena stood Cruen. He was still wearing his Order robes, the hood pulled back to reveal those startling blue eyes and the black circle brand around the left.

Titus lowered the level of crowd noise within the reality and stood. "You have no right to be in here."

The paven grinned up at him, his fangs long and curved and bloodred. "I apologize for intruding on your time-out. But that is what happens with you run away like a scared little balas."

"You would know, wouldn't you?" In one thought, Titus was on the ground before him.

"Impressive," Cruen said. "You know, if you weren't so depleted, if you weren't the half-assed Breeding Male you used to be, I'd have you lay with the Breeding Female. Payment for the blood you will always require. She comes from another line, after all."

"I will never lay with that female," Titus said darkly. "And neither will my son."

His blue eyes as calm as a steady ocean wave, Cruen nodded. "We'll see about that. Hunger, power, and the desperate need for sanity forces us to make difficult choices sometimes, does it not?"

A low growl rumbled through Titus. Maybe he wouldn't escape the binds of his blood master here, but Lucian would never be taken. Never. "Stay away from him, Cruen. My son will have nothing to do with you or your schemes."

"Your son," Cruen mocked.

With barely a thought, Titus had the crowd on their feet, had them jeering at Cruen.

Shaking his head, amused, Cruen shouted over the din, "Honestly, I don't know who your son despises more-me or you." His eyebrow lifted. "But if you wish to remain as part of the Order, you will not interfere again."

Without another word, Cruen disappeared, leaving Titus alone with his thoughts, his fears, and a crowd of five hundred strangers who had all suddenly fallen silent.

The day had aged thoroughly by the time Lucian carried a beautiful and worn-out Bronwyn through the woods toward home. The rain had gentled somewhat, and its soft, wet pings to his skin felt good and refreshing after such delicious labor. She hadn't said much to him, only releasing from her throat three cries of climax beneath their tree on the forest floor, then the coos and heavy breaths of a satiated and perhaps thoughtful veana. And he hadn't pushed her. His declarations, his demands during lovemaking had been enough for them both. He had said what he felt, what he'd felt for a while now, and its repercussions would be dealt with soon, he imagined.

The cottage stood quiet and empty, the loch beside it higher and darker with the heavy rain, the rain that didn't still as they reached the door.

Bronwyn stirred sleepily in his arms and he placed her down ever so gently on his pallet, then got to work lighting the fire and heating water on the stove. Drowsily, she watched him as he filled the bath, higher and higher until the steam hovered inches above the tub's rim. Then he came to fetch her, lifting her nude body and placing her in the water.

She gasped at the heat, then sighed and unwrapped her limbs, her knees bobbing up toward the surface, her arms drifting to the sides of the tub.

Lucian went to sit beside her, watched her as she let her head fall back and once again sigh with pleasure. In that moment he understood the drive and the wish to care for a veana. It was a strange, overtly tender feeling that made him want to simultaneously touch her and run to the fields to gather her a bouquet of wildflowers. He wanted to call himself eight kinds of asshole-he didn't appreciate soft emotions or grand gestures, but for her he was pretty sure he'd grow those fucking flowers himself if she wanted him to.

Pussy.

He grinned, shook his head.

"What are you smiling at, Paven?"

His head came up, eyes too, and focused on the water nymph with blackest hair, eyes the color of the verdant loch at midnight and lips heavy with the stain of his kisses.

"You." He took a breath, cursed, because well, he was still him, and said, "I'm sorry, Princess."

She sat up just a fraction. She regarded him seriously, but without malice. "Why didn't you tell me?"

The fire crackled hard and harsh behind him. "Besides how you feel about me, about the Breeding Male-about what happened with your sister?"

"Yes."

"You will hate this balas." His gut constricted with so much pain he couldn't breathe for a moment.

Pussy.

"What?" She sat up, water splashing over the edge. "No-"

"You will hate this balas because of how it was conceived-who conceived it with you." Goddamn, the pain in his lungs was fierce as fuck.

"Never." She shook her head. "I could never hate a child, my child."

Why was it he could barely hear her-or was it believe her...? "Then you will hate the babe's father for what he is and what he will become."

"Lucian."

"The balas will be ashamed." He was on a roll, a shitty, nonthinking, every self-loathing thought he'd ever had kind of roll.

"Stop, please."

He was staring at the floor, at his feet. "The kid-and fuck, I've never wanted a kid, mostly because I always had the feeling I was destined to be the Breeding Male. The kid is going to look at me like I fucking ruined its life. If it ever looks at me, speaks to me, thinks I'm anything but a goddamn monster."

"Lucian!"

His head came up, his fierce eyes fixed on her. "I couldn't bear it. Do you understand?"

"And I will love this balas. Do you understand?"

Every muscle in his body clenched at her words. Not because he believed them, but because he'd wished, prayed when he'd realized what he'd done, that he'd planted the seed of life inside her womb, that she would say such a thing aloud. He was on his knees, leaning over the tub, his arms in the water, his chain, still attached to one wrist, lying across her belly. "Stay here, Bron," he begged. "With me. In this ancient cottage in this dreary, old-fashioned credenti. Forever." His hand trailed in the water, down her thigh. "Keep me tied up like a dog, feed me scraps, and let me lick you whenever you're unhappy."

Her eyes closed and for a moment she said nothing. Then a sigh and, "I wish-"

"That things were different?"

She nodded.

"They're not. Never will be."

Her eyes opened. "I have mated, Lucian."

"Me," he said fiercely, possessively. "You have mated me. In every way that matters."

She shook her head. "A Breeding Male cannot have a mate-"

"Don't," he warned, his eyes suddenly fierce. "Don't tell me what I can't have. I am a Breeding Male now and still in control, able to reason and choose. With your blood-"

"I don't think it's my blood," she said, though her eyes had gone heavy and her hips lifted, sending her core closer to his palm.

"What?" he rasped.

"You must've thought about it, Lucian. I know I have. In my work, it would be my first thought, my first educated guess knowing what I know. Breeding Males take blood from the veanas they lie with-not all the time, but it's not uncommon. The community, the Order, would know by now if veanas' blood had such an effect on the Breeding Male. At the very least, it would be spoken of in scientific circles. It hasn't. Ever." She swallowed tightly. "But a Breeding Male never goes back to the veana he has impregnated. They'd never know if balas blood-or the combination of mother and balas-spurred on such a reaction."

"No." He released her, pushed himself away from the tub, stood over her.

She stared up at him, her eyes pained, yet heavy with desire. "If we're speaking truth, it can't be just the truth we wish to hear." She reached for his hand. "I don't think it's my blood that's keeping you sane and controlled."

Lucian's jaw tightened.

She sat up completely now. "And if that is the case, what happens when I bring this balas into the world?"

"Well, I suppose I'm good and fucked," he uttered, turning away, heading for the hearth, his pallet, his corner of the world.

She said nothing for a moment. The room fell silent except for the fire, its snaps and pops orchestrating a terrible sound track for the scene in which they found themselves.

"Perhaps your brothers will find an antidote," she said behind him, her voice filled with a doomed sadness.

"Perhaps," he muttered, feeling the heaviness of the shackle around his wrist for the first time since his escape. Yes, perhaps his brothers would find a cure for his coming madness. "But if not," he uttered aloud, "I will become what I am meant to become, and seconds afterward, I'll force one of them to end my miserable life."

In an abandoned hut forty miles outside the Banchory credenti, Erion stood in the center of the darkened room, his hand curled around the neck of Lucian Roman's number one guard. The other was dead and buried already, his wounds from the Breeding Male attack too severe to keep his Impure heart beating. If he'd been raised to feel and exhibit compassion, Erion might have given the dead male's associate here a moment to grieve.

But he wasn't raised to feel anything save blind loyalty to his father. It was enough that he had experienced a few lapses in that stalwart devotion as of late. That momentary error had passed.

"You will take us to where your master and his veana are hiding," he said with absolute calm, absolute confidence.

White with terror, the guard shook his head. "The Order has protection on them," he stuttered. "Heavy protection on their dwelling."

"Of course they do." Lycos stood a foot away at an old beat-up table, sharpening his blade. "And is it just on the dwelling, Impure? Or the whole fucking credenti-because when we were inside fetching the two of you, we could barely breathe at times. What is it? Pockets of magic?"

The guard's gaze was locked on Lycos, who as usual appeared as near to a wolf as a paven could get, and whimpered. The Beasts were the stuff of nightmares, the ghost stories told round the credenti campfire.

"Do not go mute, Impure," Erion said flatly. "Unless you have a burning need to join your friend belowground."

The guard gasped. He shook his head. "The magic exists inside the credenti, but around the property and cottage in which my master and his veana dwell, it is as thick as these stone walls with the Order's magic." The guard swallowed, his gaze running over Erion and the scars on his face. "Your genetic structure will never allow you to get close."

Erion growled at that and dropped the male near the back of the cottage. "Just get us back inside and headed toward their dwelling. We will take care of the rest."

Bronwyn stood up in the bathtub, her eyes narrowed and her voice deadly. She'd never been so angry at anyone in her entire life. "How dare you!"

Lucian turned away from the wall, his expression changing from confusion to lust as he caught sight of her stance-naked, wet, pink.

"Please," he uttered hoarsely. "Return to the water, Bron." His gaze ran down her body, following every drop of bathwater. "It is unsafe for you, for the balas-"

She heard nothing, just shook her head at him. "How dare you tell me I am yours," she said tersely. "Tell me you love me, force me to admit my feelings for you, then say you're going to have your brothers kill you."

"I cannot live as a monster, Bron. Would you want to see me that way-know I was fucking anything and everything that crossed my path-without their consent?" She winced, and he narrowed his eyes. "Would you want our balas to know me that way, know the Breeding Male as a father?"

The question didn't have an easy answer anymore, and as Bronwyn stood there with water dripping down her skin, growing colder by the moment, she felt the instinct of her mind and soul and the one inside of her speak, guide her to the one who held her heart. Gingerly, she stepped out of the tub, didn't bother with a towel as she went over to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. "Call me a fool a hundred times over, but I believe I want you any way I can have you."

"Oh shit," Lucian whispered, his mouth to her hair, his arms tightening around her. "We're the most fucked-up pair of bloodsuckers on this earth."

She smiled against his chest, the warmth of him infusing her senses. "I know. Ain't it grand?"

He chuckled. "Ahh, this poor kid."

She looked up, her brow lifting with humor. "If he or she turns out to be as bad as you, at least we'll know he or she will be loved."

A shadow, small and worried, crossed his features, and he pressed his lips together as though he fought against speaking. Then his hand moved from her back and tunneled between them until his palm lay flat on her belly. "She."

Bronwyn stilled, her breath caught in her throat. But she managed to utter a soft, "What?"

His eyes warmed, warmed like she'd never imagined they could. She had seen them cold and heavy-lidded, angry, and filled with lust, but she'd never seen them...cozy, emotionally supple. He gave her one gentle kiss before answering. "We are having a wee veana, Veana."

Bronwyn could barely breathe, could barely believe what she was hearing. She reached up, took his branded, beautiful face in her hands. "How?" she whispered. "How do you know? Did you choose that?"

"No," he said quickly. "I had no sense of it until after becoming the Breeding Male. Then I wasn't sure of what I was feeling, sensing...if it was you or...her."

"But now you know."

He nodded.

"A little girl?"

"Yes." His face softened, though his eyes were fearful, concerned, perhaps even a bit hurt. "Does this please you, Bron? You can tell me the truth."

The truth. She closed her eyes. What was the truth anymore? Did she even know? Did she even care? The whole of her world had just exploded brilliantly, and comically and beautifully before her very eyes. For all of a sudden she was no longer the Bronwyn Kettler of the Boston credenti, the veana who would do anything-had done everything-to stop this very moment from becoming her reality, her now, her future.

She pulled his face down to hers and kissed him, kissed him with everything she was and felt, everything she couldn't say-maybe could never say. Then she opened her eyes and placed her own hand over his on her belly. "I love her."

Lucian's eyes grew wide, disbelieving, yet so hopeful it hurt her insides.

"I swear, Luca," she said breathlessly. "I swear. I love her. Always." She tried to stop the tears, but they came heavy with her words. "Just like you."

Lucian pulled her close and took her mouth under his, giving her kisses that were both passionate and grateful, loving and melancholy. For now...for now they had this, each other, a moment in time, a moment of perfect pleasure that they were both going to enjoy for as long as they could.

Bronwyn gripped that thought tightly as Lucian gathered her in his arms and carried her down the hall, into the back bedroom, the one she'd never seen, the one that had gone unused. The one that they would claim as theirs for however long they had together.

Bronwyn hugged him, so tightly that when he placed her on the bed, he came along for the ride. Her face tucked into his shoulder, her mouth near his ear, she whispered, "Feed me, Luca. Feed me and your balas."

Lucian sucked in air as she nuzzled his skin with her nose, let her fangs rake across his thick vein. She could taste him already, his spicy, delectable blood. And then his hands came around and slipped under her backside. He gripped her tight, kneading her flesh, pressing her up and against his thick cock, trapped inside the confines of his jeans.

"Do it, Bron," he rasped. "Fuck me with your fangs. Go deep, drink deep."

Her core swelled with arousal and she bared her fangs and struck.

"Christ!" he called out, then with a deep, guttural snarl, he flipped them over so that he was on his back, his mouth tucked into her neck.

Bronwyn's fangs never faltered as he struck her vein, and as she drank from him he drank deeply from her.

Lucian had always hated feeling any sentiment, any sweet emotion, the beginnings of connection with anyone but his brothers. But this time, with this veana, he couldn't help himself. He wanted her, all of her, every inch of her skin, every muscle and bone; her mind and her laugh, her cunt and her sighs. He wanted to please her, give her anything her unbeating heart desired, make her the happiest she'd ever felt. He wanted to be worthy of the love she'd given him and the love she felt for him.

He felt her hands on his hips, tunneling between them, tugging at his button, sliding down his fly. She worked his jeans down over his hips until his cock sprang free, until it found its way between the wet folds of her cunt, until it pressed hard against her clit.

She moaned against his neck, the sound of her deep, hard sucks making his muscles clench, making his mind frenzied, making her blood cascade down his throat at a frantic pace. Finally, he couldn't stand it any longer. He left her throat and dipped his head. He wanted her breast, wanted to suckle her nipple until it rose up hard and heavy against his tongue.

His mouth left a blood trail down her collarbone, and Bron followed his movement, still suckling, still drinking, her hips lifting and lowering as she silently told him her pussy needed to be filled.

"Mmmmm," she murmured when he finally captured her nipple, sucked it deep, then flicked it with his tongue.

He pulled back, she did too. They stared at each other, their mouths, their lips, their fangs, bloody and hungry for more than just blood to feed them.

Goddamn, Lucian thought, she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen; her eyes, blazing down at him, her neck with his deep puncture wounds; her breasts, coated in her own blood; and her belly, humming with the growing life of his balas.

Her hand came up, her thumb brushing the excess blood from his lower lip. Before she could pull it back, he turned his head and captured it in his mouth. He suckled it, his fangs raking over the one spot that still belonged to another.

"Say it," he whispered, his tongue lapping at the mark. "Say yes."

Her eyes widened. She hesitated.

"Fuck, Princess!" He suckled on her finger. "It doesn't belong on you anymore-it never did. Let me take it from you as you come. Let us all be free."

Before he said another word, she sat up, her knees bracketing his hips, her eyes trained on his cock. Shit, he was so hard, the thing looked like an immobile pillar, a slab of burning-hot marble that wanted only to be suckled by the sweet, wet walls of the veana above him. And then she moved, dove, sat down right on top of him, her drenched cunt swallowing him up inch by inch until he was completely hers.

"I have taken you, Paven," she said, completely impaled by him now, her eyes hot and heavy with passion. "You must have everything of me."

She placed her thumb in his mouth, pressed the spot where her mark lay right up against one razor-sharp fang. "Take it. Take it while I take you."

Lucian needed nothing else. He pierced her flesh and as she held on to his hip with one hand, she rode his cock. She rode him so hard and fast as he pulled the ink from her, he thought he was going to come. It was her eyes, black and savage as she gazed down at him, as she fucked him-this veana who was once tamed and tamped down and scared of her past, present, and future. She was living now-really living, taking what she wanted with no fear, not even a trace of it.

The way she clenched around him, her walls fisting him as though he were home, as though he belonged in her-just her...Shit, he was going to lose it.

He lifted her up, off his pulsing shaft that shone with her arousal and yanked her forward, set her down near his mouth. "I need your wine, lass. I need the sweet milk of your pussy on my tongue."

Bronwyn stared down at him, breathing heavy, watching him.

"Yes, lass. Watch me. Watch as I spread your pink lips, watch as I drink every drop of you. But first." He turned his head, his fangs extended, and bit into her inner thigh.

She cried out, reached behind herself and gripped his chest, her nails digging into his flesh. As he suckled and drank from her vein, he slipped two fingers inside her trembling cunt. As she moaned and writhed above him, her body calling out how close she was to orgasm, he groaned at the way her body hugged him, how her wet and tight core fisted around him.

He hated to do it, to leave her, but hunger and desperation called.

He stopped drinking her blood, and eased his fingers from her body, shiny and slick. Oh fuck, he was going to die from wanting...With a groan of hunger, he pushed his tongue inside of her, let her heat, her cream slide down his tongue to where it truly belonged.

"Oh, God, Lucian," she cried out, watching him with heavy-lidded eyes, her fangs dropped and pressed against her lower lip. "Whenever I thought of you, I touched myself." Her fingers gripped his nipples, rolling them between her fingers, making his cock pulse and bead at the tip with cum. "I imagined your tongue on me, your cock in me."

Her cunt clenched, spasmed against his mouth and he felt her cream against his chin.

Fuck, he wasn't going to hold on for long, not with the way she was rubbing herself against him, the way she flicked his nipples.

He lifted her up, came with her, and flipped her around so she was on her hands and knees facing the window. Outside the sun shone down on the surface of the loch, the water slow and smooth.

Bronwyn arched her back, pressed her legs apart, showing him the pink mounds of her buttocks and ruby-red opening of her cunt.

"Lucian, please," she called. "I need you. Now!"

He needed no more invitation than that. Lucian mounted her and sank his rock-hard cock deep inside her.

Bron didn't gasp. She sighed, and her cunt suckled and fisted around him. Madness gripped his brain as he thrust into her, over and over as she cried out, keened, screamed for him to work her harder and deeper and faster. And then without thought, his fingers slipped from her hip and began to play with her ass, with the sweet, soft pucker in the very center.

"Yes," she said, slamming her hips back. "Yes, touch me there."

Surprise registered within him, but didn't hold him long. He had promised to give her the greatest pleasure, whatever she wanted, however she wanted it.

Sliding his hand down until he found her hot, wet core, he lubricated his fingers with her juices, then gently slid one finger inside her anus. It was tight, so delectably tight, and the farther he went the more his brain succumbed to madness, the more his balls tightened, and the more his cock begged for release.

"Oh, God, yes!" Bronwyn milked him, arching her back, swinging her hips as arousal leaked from her body and snaked down her inner thigh.

Lucian kept his touch inside her anus gentle, but his thrusts inside her cunt fierce. As her walls spasmed around his cock, signaling how close to release she was, he kept the pace, kept touching her. Sweat broke out on his brow and he pummeled her flesh, his hips slamming against her backside, making it move, making it grow pink to match her cunt and her anus.

And then she screamed. She screamed so loud, he had a moment of worry. But her hips continued to slam back against him and her cunt flooded his cock with cream.

Goddamn, nothing felt so good as being inside of her; as holding her, moving with her-loving her. He wanted no other, would take no other, would drive his cock into no other but her.

He'd die first.

He'd die.

He could feel the cum rising to the head of his prick. It wanted inside her, wanted to coat her walls, mark her. "Oh fuck!" It was too much, the sensations, the rockets going off inside his brain and her sweet walls gripping him like a vise. "Bron, my beautiful Bron," he called. "Princess, I'm done for."

A growl ripped from his chest and he dropped onto her back, reached around, and cupped her breasts. He pounded into her, calling her name as his hips shook and he took his climax.

His veana.

His.

He must've made a sound, something plaintive as she shuddered around him, because she gripped one of his hands with her own, one of the hands that held her breast. "What? What's wrong?"

A soft curse escaped his dry throat. He kissed her back, slow and seductive, and whispered against her skin, "I don't think I can give you back, Princess."

"I can stay...I can stay..."

"Only for a short while," he said, the pain of his words nearly debilitating. "Until she is born." He pulled out of her and lay down on his side, easing her back against him like two spoons.

This time he didn't say his thoughts aloud.

When the wee veana comes into the world I must leave it.