Mated Enemies

The bird flew down and landed on her lap and she mindlessly ran her hand over his head. Watching the two of them gave me an idea. A way I could keep tabs on her for the next few days without her knowing and still be close.

I need to stay close, to not only watch over her, but to learn as much as I can about her in the next few days so I’d know how best to make my approach. I was about to leave my little hidey hole when I felt the presence approaching. I knew who it was, one of my kind, but not someone I’d expected to run into here.

“Sabrina, what brings you here?” She landed not far from me looking more like she was going to a dinner party with the leading dignitaries of the world than a mountaintop. I steeled myself against her usual onslaught as we’d been through it a million times before with the same results.

Sabrina is an orphan, someone my parents had taken in long ago when her own parents had been destroyed for defying clan rules or some such thing when she was a very young girl. We’d grown up together, though I’m a couple hundred thousand years older.

When I was much younger I adored her company, as an only child she was like the younger sister I never had. But then somewhere along the way things changed for her, though they didn’t for me. She started seeing me as something more, while I could never see her in that way.

Over time her needy persistence only served to build a rift between us, something I regret but found necessary. There were plenty others who were interested in her, and as my parent’s foster child she could have her pick at any time.

But ever since she made her first move and I rebuffed her, she’s not let up once. Sure in her mind that I was the only one for her. She knows all about imprinting and how it works but in her mind she was willing to settle for being my concubine if and when I get married.

I have no interest in living such a life, but no amount of telling her that has ever worked. She’s one of the reasons I stay away from home as much as I do. Her constant mooning had grown stale a long time ago. Plus the fact that I didn’t like hurting her, or seeing that look of misery on her face each time I turned her away.

She came closer now as I got to my feet, in a hurry to get back to my woman and put my new plans into action. “I heard that they’ve chosen a mate for you.” I tried to ignore the note of hurt in her voice and the sullen look on her face.

“No they haven’t, I imprinted.” The words hurt her just as I knew they would. It’s one thing for the elders to choose a lesser consort for me and another for my nature to actually imprint on someone. The side concubines can be left at will, my true mate will never leave my side. It’s the truest form of mating amongst our kind.

“Have you seen her? What is she like? Who is she?” The tone of jealousy in her words grated on my nerves but I told myself to be patient. She’s ran off more than a few or my conquests in the past with her shit, but because I didn’t care that much I always let it slide, for her sake. This time I’m more likely to take her life if she messes with my Natalia. “No one you know.”

“I heard she’s not even one of us…”

“Stop right there. ‘She’, will be my queen and the only woman to sit beside me on the throne when the time comes for me to rule, have some respect.” My words hurt her it was plain to see, but there was no point in encouraging her.

Better to nip this shit in the bud now. A jealous vampyre female is a force to be reckoned with and not my cross to bear. I can’t let my feelings of brotherly affection interfere this time, can’t pull my punches and think of her feelings. Before it was always the fact of her pitiful existence that held me back from scolding her too harshly.

Orphaned at an early age, with none of her own kin around, though she lived in the monarch’s home among my family, everyone knew she wasn’t really one of us, wasn’t of noble blood, and some treated her with disdain.

But with an imprinting comes a whole slew of new rules and feelings, things I literally have no control over. If it comes down to it, I’d forget I ever knew her and could very well destroy her if she did or said anything to offend Natalia, something she should already know.