“Well, maybe you don’t know me all that well!” I snap back in a fit of temper.
I didn’t mean it and I regret it the second the words escape my lips. The hurt on his face is palpable and it makes me feel even worse.
“I’m sorry…”
“Forget it,” Frederick barks at me. “You have nothing to apologize for.” He comes to sit next to me protectively and I feel the rush of love for him that has returned with such a vengeance, it takes every single cell in my body, not to crawl into his lap and hold him. CK might have tried to beat it out of me, but it’s there. It’s real and it’s back and I have no idea what to do with it. He hasn’t made a move on me since I returned, and I doubt at this point he will. It will be up to me and right now, I just…can’t. I need to focus on me and Thia. No one else.
“There are horses in the stables,” Frederick says, after a pause. “Would you like to go for a ride?”
My eyes light up at the thought of the wind in my hair. Well, on my face anyway. That thought makes my heart sink and I remember why I am locked away from the World in the first place.
“Maybe later,” I murmur, finding his eyes with mine and feeling my heart beat faster. The white woman’s words echo through my head. “Wasting your life. No real love.”
I blink, tearing my eyes away from his penetrating dark ones as there is a sudden, and unexpected arrival in the bedroom. My mouth drops open in both shock and happiness when I see my sire finally return with my daughter.
“I hate you!” Delinda screams at him, and storms off, banging the door behind her in her own fit of temper that has left me open-mouthed and stunned.
“What the…?” I ask, looking over at Remiel, all queries about why he hasn’t been back before now flitting away in my surprise.
He gives me a world-weary look that says it all and sighs. “Talk some sense into her, will you?” he mutters as she pokes her head back through the doorway and gives me a big smile.
“Hey, Mama,” she says and I fully take her in now, my heart stopping momentarily, as what I see before me, is not the little girl I sent away a couple of months ago, but a petulant, beautiful teenager that is the spitting image of me. Well, if I had my long, flowing locks of course.
“Delinda,” I say, holding out my hand for her. She comes to me and bends to give me a kiss and ruffles Thia’s hair.
“Is my room, still my room?” she asks before I can say another word.
I nod, still stunned by her transformation.
“Good,” she mutters and stalks off, once again banging the door closed behind her.
“I just can’t…deal…with…that!” Remiel says to me, pointing a belligerent finger after his daughter.
“What has happened to her?” I ask. “Apart from the obvious.” I glare at Devon, who is gaping after her and he shuts his mouth quickly.
“Dracul is a fool!” Remiel spits out. “He has spoilt her.”
“You were supposed to go there to stop that from happening!” I roar at him, causing Thia to go into a meltdown. I shove her into Frederick’s uncomfortable arms and get up to pace. “That was the whole point in you leaving me!” I storm at him, furious that the one job he had that tore him away from me and caused me to suffer, he didn’t even do properly.
“I tried!” he storms back. “She is her mother’s daughter,” he adds witheringly, giving me a look-over that only serves to remind me that my hair is short and ugly. “What happened here?” His look turns to one of concern and worry and I can’t help the tears that well up and tumble out. Now that he is back, I just need him to hold me. I rush into his arms and he gathers me to him, surprised by my lack of fortitude.
“Where were you?” Devon accuses him eventually, after he can be heard over my wails. “We called you repeatedly. She needed you.”
“Called me?” Remiel looks down at me in confusion. “I didn’t receive any notifications?” He looks more worried about that than he does over me now and that annoys me, so I shove him away from me.
“I was captured, put on trial, tortured, burned alive and nearly gang-raped!” I shout at him. “Where the fuck were you?”
“What?” he bleats out, looking very much unlike the Remiel I know. “You called for me?”
“Yes,” I say, crossing my arms, err, crossly.
He shakes his head, and then he growls. “Dracul…somehow he must have cut me off. I’m telling you, Aefre, he isn’t giving up his hold on our daughter. You need to do something about it.”
That shakes me back into the present. “Does he know you are here now?” I ask, cautiously.
When he answers ‘no’, I automatically count down from three and lo and behold, my brother arrives with a thunderous expression that causes me to shake slightly and take a step closer to Remiel for cover.
“Where is she?” he demands with no pleasantries beforehand, which is very unlike him.