Bonds of the Vampire King (Blood Fire Saga Book 7) by Bella Klaus (romantic books to read TXT) 📗

glanced at the woman, whose awkward movements were peculiar for someone so young. Even though shifters aged as slowly as witches and wizards, she only looked a year or two from the academy.

“Why do they call you Chlamydia?” I whispered.

“What do you know about pack dynamics?” she asked.

“Only what they teach us in the academy,” I replied.

Shifters were one of the few supernatural creatures who didn’t concern themselves with inheritance laws, which meant anyone strong enough was capable of battling their way to the top.

I knew little about their wider society and how prides interacted with packs and parliaments and the other animal groupings, but there was always an alpha at the top, the beta beneath him or her, then a small group of faithfuls acting as enforcers of the alpha’s will. Everyone else fell into the next tier with no one at the bottom… At least that’s what I thought.

“Did you learn about what they do with outcasts?” she asked.

“Not really, but I assume they’re kicked out of the pack.”

The woman snorted. “If only the packs were so kind.”

“Sorry,” I murmured. “Is there anything I can do to—”

“No.” She stopped at a door and turned its handle. “Here’s the guest suite. There’s an adjoining room, in case you need privacy from your friend. If you want anything, just shout for Chlamydia.”

The woman continued down the hallway.

“Wait,” I said.

She stopped but didn’t turn around.

I swallowed around a dry throat. “What’s your name? Not that thing they call you.”

“Lydia,” she said through clenched teeth. “But I’m forbidden to use it.”

“Are you hurt?” I cringed the moment I said those words. There was only one reason someone with the healing ability of a shifter would shuffle about so awkwardly. Someone had either punished her moments before my arrival or placed an enchantment to make her injuries stick.

Lydia turned around, meeting my gaze with sad eyes. “If you really are the fiancée of the Vampire King, the best thing you can do for me is to keep your mouth shut. Beowulf will stop the bullying while you’re around, but it will get worse the moment you leave.”

“But what if I—”

“If you’re thinking of offering me a job somewhere else, don’t. Outcasts never get to leave the pack unless they’re dead.” She shuffled down the hallway, pulling that wretched mop and bucket.

A weight settled on my chest, and I stared at her twisted back until my vision blurred. If I thought my time at the academy was bad, it was nothing compared to what Lydia was likely suffering. This wasn’t the Human World where the police, social services, or the courts were available to protect the weak. In some societies, slavery still existed.

I leaned against the doorframe, frustration welling through my insides, my chest tightening until it reduced my lung capacity to the size of my fists. For all my newfound fire magic, there was nothing I could do to help Lydia if her king insisted on keeping her close.

With a sigh, I retreated into the room, which was about half the size of the apartment Valentine and I shared in the hospital’s convalescence suite but had the stone-clad walls and rustic wood furniture and floors of a hunting lodge, complete with a chandelier made of at least four pairs of antlers.

Maybe Valentine might know what to do about Lydia’s predicament. The young woman talked as though pain and humiliation would plague her entire life, but maybe that was because nobody with any real power had learned about her situation.

Trying not to think of the deer that lived in the park that surrounded Logris, I walked around the back of a leather sofa that faced a roaring fireplace, tip-toeing over rugs of bearskin, tiger-skin, and the pelts of wild animals I didn’t care to identify. Surely, there would be a door somewhere that might lead to a space less wooden and less flammable.

After passing a wall of mounted animal heads, I found the bathroom. It was as rustic as I had suspected, with walnut-wood floors and cabinets and a shower cubicle lined with dark gray stone that looked like reinforced concrete. After slipping off my cloak and my new clothes, and toeing off my shoes, I headed into the shower, pushed my magic outward, and shifted.

I focused on Valentine sitting in his cell and waiting to hear from me about Prince Draconius’s attempt to reach Kain. My magic flickered, but it was like bouncing against a barrier and being thrown back.

“Wards,” I cawed.

Pulling my magic back into my body, I shifted back and put on my clothes. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so hasty to give Valentine back the engagement ring. Now I had no means of flickering through the wards of the prison to reach him.

I returned to the room to find afternoon tea waiting on the low table. Whoever had prepared it had placed the items on a three-tiered stand, but apart from the scones at the bottom and the pots of jam and clotted cream on a side plate, it wasn’t anything like what was available in the Human World.

The top tier contained huge slices of cake—chocolate fudge, Battenberg, coffee, and lemon drizzle. In the middle tier, full-sized Scotch eggs sat among mini hotdogs and burgers the size of my palm. My mouth watered. This looked far more satisfying than the delicate cakes and sandwiches Beatrice and I had enjoyed in Claridge’s.

My mysterious benefactor had also placed steaming pots of tea and coffee on the table along with jugs of milk, cream, lemon slices, and a bowl of sugar.

As I lowered myself into the seat, something hard jabbed into my ass, making me wince. I shifted to the side, reached between the seat cushions, and extracted a remote control. As I lowered it to the wooden coffee table, my finger brushed the on button, and a television mounted above the fireplace flared to life.

“The search for the fire angel is over, and a young woman has stepped forward to claim the