Lover Unbound (Black Dagger Brotherhood 5)

"Greetings, sister."

Cormia looked up. The Chosen who was holding back the doorway's white veil was a model of selflessness and service, a truly upstanding female. And Layla's expression of calm contentment and inner peace was one Cormia envied.

Which you were not permitted to do. Envy meant you were separate from the whole, that you were an individual, and a petty one at that.

"Greetings." Cormia stood up, her knees loose with dread at where they were going. Though she had often wanted to see what was inside the Primale's temple, now she wished never to set foot in its marble confines.

They both bowed to each other and held the poses. "It is my honor to be of aid."

In a low voice, Cormia replied, "I am... I am grateful for your instruction. Lead onward, if you will."

As Layla's head came back to level, her pale green eyes were knowing. "I thought perhaps we would talk here for a bit instead of going to the temple right away."

Cormia swallowed hard. "I would favor that."

"May I take ease, sister?" When Cormia nodded, Layla went over to the cot and sat down, her white robe slitting open to mid thigh. "Join me."

Cormia sat down, the mattress beneath her feeling as hard as stone. She could not breathe, could not move, barely blinked.

"Sister mine, I would seek to allay your fears," Layla said. "Truly, you shall come to enjoy your time with the Primale."

"Indeed." Cormia drew the lapels of her robe closer. "Yet he will visit others, won't he?"

"You will be his priority. As his inaugural mate, you will hold special court with him. For the primale there is a rare hierarchy within the whole, and you shall be first among all of us."

"But how long until he goes to the others?"

Layla frowned. "It would be up to him, although you may have a say in it. If you please him well, he may stay with only you for a time. It has been known to happen before."

"I could tell him to find others, however?"

Layla's perfect head tilted to the side. "Verily, my sister, you will like what passes between the two of you."

"You know who he is, yes? You know the identity of the Primale?"

"In fact, I have seen him."

"You have?"

"Indeed." As Layla's hand went to her chignon of blond hair, which Cormia took the gesture as a sign the female was choosing her words with care. "He is... as a warrior should be. Strong. Intelligent."

Cormia narrowed her eyes. "You withhold to soothe my fears. Do you not?"

Before Layla could respond, the Directrix swept the curtain aside. Without a word to Cormia, she went to Layla and whispered something.

Layla stood up, a flush blooming on her cheeks. "I shall go right away." She turned to Cormia, an odd excitement in her eyes. "Sister, I bid you good leave until my return."

As was custom, Cormia rose and bowed, relieved that she had a reprieve from the lesson for whatever reason. "Be well."

The Directrix, however, did not depart with Layla. "I shall take you to the temple and proceed with your instruction."

Cormia wrapped her arms around herself. "Shall I not wait for Layla - "

"Do you question me?" the Directrix said. "Indeed, you do. Perhaps then you shall desire to set the agenda for the lesson as well, knowing as much as you do about the history and significance of the position for which you have been chosen. For truth, I should enjoy learning from you."

"Forgive me, Directrix," Cormia replied in total shame.

"What is there to forgive? As the Primale's first mate, you shall be free to order me about, so mayhap I should acquaint myself with your leadership now. Tell me, would you prefer me to walk steps arrear of you as we go forth unto the temple?"

Tears welled. "Please, no, Directrix."

"Please, no, what?"

"I would follow you," Cormia whispered with bent head. "Not lead."

Ishtar was the perfect choice, V thought. Boring as hell. Long as the year. As visually arresting as a saltshaker.

"This is the worst load of crap I've ever seen," Jane said while yawning again.

God, she had a nice throat.

As V's fangs unsheathed and he imagined pulling a classic Dracula and rearing up over her prone body, he forced himself to look back at Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty trudging through the sand. He'd picked the POS in hopes of getting her to knock out - so he could tunnel into her mind and get all over her.

He was jonesing to have her come against his mouth, even if it was only in the ether of a dream.

While he waited for her to be bored into REM sleep, he found himself staring at the desertscape and perversely thinking of winter ... winter and his transition.

It was but a few weeks after the pretrans fell and died in the river that V went through his change. He had been aware of the differences in his body for quite some time before it hit: He was plagued by headaches. Constantly hungry yet nauseous if he took food. Unable to sleep though exhausted. The only thing that remained alike was his aggression. The camp's demands meant you always had to prepared to fight, so the sharpening in his temper was not marked by any overt shift in his behavior.

It was in the depths of a cruel early snowstorm that he was born into his male self.

As a result of the plunge in temperature the cave's stone walls were frigid, the floor sufficed to freeze your feet in fur-lined boots, the air so cold the breath from your mouth was a cloud without a sky. As the onslaught prevailed, the soldiers and the kitchen's females slept in great heaps of bodies, not for sex, but for shared warmth.

V knew the change was upon him, for he awoke hot. At first the ease of the heat was a boon, but then his body raged with fever as an agonizing hunger swept through him. He writhed on the ground, hoping for relief, finding none.

After forever, the Bloodletter's voice pierced through the pain. "The females will not feed you."

From amidst his stupor, V opened his eyes.

The Bloodletter knelt down. "Surely you know why."

V swallowed through the fist that was his throat. "I do not."

"They say the cave paintings have possessed you. That your hand has been oe'rtaken by the spirits trapped upon the walls. That your eye is no longer your own."

When V did not answer, the Bloodletter said, "You do not deny?"

Through the morass in his head, Vishous tried to calculate the effect of his two conceivable responses. He went with the truth, not for veracity's sake, but for self-preservation. "I... deny."

"Do you deny what they say elsewise?"

"What... say... they?"

"That you killed your comrade at the river with your palm."

'Twas a lie, and the other boys who had been there knew it to be so, as they had seen the pretrans fall of his own fault. The females must be making the assumption on the fact that the death had occurred and V had been in the vicinity. Because why would the other males be desirous of passing along evidence of V's strength?

Or mayhap it was to their benefit? If V had no female who would feed him, he would die. Which was not a bad outcome for the other pretrans.

"What say you?" his father demanded.

As V needed the appearance of strength, he mumbled, "I killed him."

The Bloodletter smiled broadly through his beard. "I suspected. And for your effort I shall bring you a female."

Indeed, one was brought to him and he did feed. The transition was brutal, long and draining, and when it was through, he overflowed his pallet, his arms and legs cooling on the cold cave floor like meat from a fresh kill.

Although his sex had stirred in the aftermath, the female who had been forced to feed him wanted nothing to do with him. She gave him just enough blood to see him into the change; then she left him to his bones snapping and his muscles stretching until they ripped. No one attended to him, and while he suffered he called out in his mind to the mother who had birthed him. He imagined her coming unto him aglow with love and stroking his hair and telling him that all was well. In his pathetic vision, she called him her beloved lewlhen.

Gift.

He would have liked to have been someone's gift. Gifts were valued and cared for and protected. The diary of the warrior Darius had been a gift to V, the giver perhaps not knowing that in leaving it behind he had done a kindness, but still.

Gift.

When V's body had finished with its change, he had slept, then awoken to hunger for meat. His clothes had been torn from him by the transition, so he wrapped himself up in a hide and walked barefoot to the kitchen area. There was little to be had: He gnawed on a thighbone, found some breadcrusts, ate a handful of flour.