I felt sorry for her.

Lacing my arm into Isaac’s I said, “What’s wrong with her? Is she sick?”

“...No,” he answered absently. “It’s the price she and my father pay for her immortality.”

I think I stopped blinking. “Immortal? How?”

“The Blood Bond.” Isaac walked with me toward Aramei. Reluctance weighed my feet down again, but this time for a different reason. I worried Aramei might be scared of me.

She didn’t stir.

Aramei was the woman in the painting with Trajan, only she was more alive then.

Isaac went on, “It’s a sad story, really.” He sat down on the far end of the bed. I sat next to him though I felt I was being disrespectful.

I watched the servants tend to Aramei while he told me the story.

“There was a war between my father’s clan and Viktor Vargas’, many years ago in the Carpathians. My father was wounded on the battlefield and he woke up in a barn in one of the nearby villages. Wounded so badly, he wasn’t strong enough to shift back into his human form.”

A servant lit two more candles on the bedside, while another rubbed Aramei’s skin with scented oil.

“Aramei, the poor daughter of a fisherman, found him in the barn.”

“While he was in his werewolf form?” I couldn’t imagine being her and seeing something like that.

“Yes,” Isaac said, “and she wasn’t afraid of him; not like a human should be anyway. She pulled the swords from his chest and back. She even sewed the gash on his throat. My father could have killed her. In fact, when we’re wounded severely enough that death is a possibility, blood is the one thing that can sustain and heal us. But my father was powerful even then and could control his rages, the pain.”

Aramei lay against the pillows on her side. A servant covered her middle body with a silk sheet. Her feet were so delicate, so small.

“If she were anyone else,” Isaac continued, “my father would have killed her without a thought. He almost died himself because he couldn’t.”

“He fell in love with her.”

“Yes, he did.”

The servant stroked Aramei’s hair and face softly as a mother would do to her child.

“When he was healed enough to shift,” Isaac said, “he wouldn’t shift because he didn’t want to scare her—I know that sounds dumb, but—”

“I know why,” I interrupted. “Trajan was afraid if she saw him shift into a man, it would be too overwhelming.”

Isaac nodded slowly. “Yes, that’s right. A beast is one thing, but a beast that is also a man is many things. He left one day and couldn’t ever go back. He knew that just being near her would sooner than later only get her killed.”

Isaac looked into my eyes. I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking about me being human, about the danger he posed. And I found it disturbingly beautiful how similar our stories were, that I would meet the real Isaac wounded in a barn, too.

He turned away.

“A few years later,” he went on, “Viktor’s men were ravaging villages and Turning the men. He wanted an army that could defeat my father’s. Aramei’s village was one of them. By the time my father made it there, her family had been killed or Turned. He found Aramei lying in the woods, bloody and dying, but she had not been infected.”

Isaac took a deep breath, watching Aramei.

She shut her eyes.

“My father fed her his blood, bonding her to him,” he revealed.

The dancing candles cast shadows upon the walls. The light dimmed slightly as a servant gently blew the candles out near the bathtub.

Isaac turned back to me, severity in his face. “Our blood, male werewolf blood, will protect a human from age and disease. It can heal grave wounds and ward off sickness. It’ll make them immortal, though just like us; a human can still be killed.”

It was the answer to everything, this Blood Bond. My mind was running a million miles a second.

“Milord,” said a servant, “will you be sleeping with Milady this evening?”

A weird lump caught just below my throat suddenly. I stopped blinking again.

“No,” Isaac said to the servant, “Adria and I will be leaving soon. You can lay with her until my father comes.”

Isaac placed his hand upon my leg and turned back to me.

“The price,” he said, “of her immortality is her mind. Aramei has not been herself for at least two hundred years. She knows only my father and few people can be left with her.” He glanced at Aramei and then back at me. “She can never be left alone. Tonight you’ve seen her quiet and emotionless...and well, you know. But sometimes she goes into these uncontrollable episodes. Sometimes she cries and hurts herself. Other times she’s violent toward others. Never know what it’s going to be.”

“So awful....” I said.

As Aramei lay there sleeping, I saw nothing but peace in her. I never wanted to witness her violent or suicidal. The thought of it was blasphemous.

“But why was she...on Trajan’s lap like that?” I had to ask. It was obvious Aramei was no ‘whore’, but I couldn’t understand the relationship between her detached personality and what I saw at the table.

Isaac’s gaze strayed toward the floor, his posture suggesting pity and regret.

“She’s barren,” he said lamentably. “The blood made her barren. She had been trying to give my father a child since before the blood started taking its toll on her mind. Her thoughts, they sort of…stuck that way. My father will never tell her she can’t have children. Her mind is too fragile. He’ll do anything for her; let her have her way with him whenever and wherever she feels the need.”

He added, “My father is her life, as she is also his. If one of them died, the other would follow.”

It was the most heartbreaking thing I’d ever heard.

It was also a devastating end to my so-called answer to everything.

I stood carefully from the bed and watched Aramei from afar; my hand cupped my mouth and nose. A servant curled up next to her, stroking her hair.

Aramei was like an angel laying there.

Isaac moved in front of me, taking my hands away from my face. “Now do you see why I can’t do it?” The way he said it, with such devotion, crippled me. I put my hands to my eyes, trying hopelessly to wipe away the steady stream of tears. “Adria, you have to be the way you are. I’ll never risk killing you with the Change. And like my father, I’ll keep you in my life, but unlike him, I’ll never leave you to her fate.”

My tears won. They kept coming. Isaac crushed me devotedly against him. I could hear his heart beating so fast. I knew I was going to have to accept the way things were, that Isaac and I would not be forever. It shattered my whole world, the world I created when I met Isaac Mayfair. The one that had only him and me in it.

The giant wooden door came open softly.

Trajan stood in the doorway.

“Adria Dawson,” Trajan said in a calm, low voice, which still managed to frighten me. “The one to win my son’s heart.” He let the door close as he walked further into the room. I saw his gaze fall upon Aramei as she slept. I could tell that even after a few hundred years, his love for her had not withered an ounce.

“Father, I had to bring her here.”

Isaac never let go of me.

“Your reasoning,” said Trajan “is what disturbs me most.”

Isaac glanced over at Aramei, too.

“It was important that she know.”

All of the servants scurried out of the room, leaving Aramei alone in the bed. She stirred just slightly, but that seemingly normal movement caught Trajan’s vigilance.

He wore a dusty old black leather trench coat with no shirt underneath. I tried not to look, but couldn’t help but notice how muscular his chest was, though not as scarred as I would have imagined.

“Yes,” Trajan admitted. His attention never left the sleeping angel. “It is important that she know because you feel that she must be given a choice.”

A hidden pain lay quiet in his face.

I spoke up:

“She...Aramei, I mean, didn’t have a choice, did she?”

Trajan looked at me. Another seemingly normal movement, but it meant so much more coming from him. Either I had offended him by speaking of Aramei, or I was worthy of the gesture.

“No, Adria,” he said, still composed. “I was selfish. I took everything from her. Death would have been kinder.”

“That’s not true,” I said, pulling out of Isaac’s embrace. “She would’ve wanted you to do it, because she loved you that much.”

Trajan and Isaac locked eyes.

“And how would you know that?” Trajan said to me.

Isaac moved to stand behind me, resting his hands around my arms.

“Because I love Isaac, and because I don’t want to be without him, or him without me, ever.”

Silent words passed between them.

Trajan turned away. I could feel Isaac’s hands get warmer against my skin. He kissed my hair.

“As long as I am the Alpha,” said Trajan, now approaching Aramei on the bed, “there will be no Blood Bonds. If my son goes against me, you will both regret it.”

I said nothing in response and Isaac knew better.

Aramei’s eyes opened carefully and she gazed up at Trajan. She reached out a delicate hand to him. Trajan leaned over, placing his arms underneath her small body and lifting her into them. He held her like a child. She draped her arms around his neck and rested her head against his nak*d chest.

Like in the previous room, Trajan whispered something to her, which I could not hear. I knew they had to be words of love and affection.

He sat upon the bed with her in his arms.

“Onto other matters,” Trajan announced. “Seems our skittish little visitor out there told me something quite interesting.” He turned to see Isaac and then me. “You both should know.”

“What is it, Father?”

Aramei lifted slightly and turned her body to sit upright facing Trajan. She wrapped her bare legs around his waist and laid her head back down against his chest.

I was just glad that was all she wanted to do.

Trajan’s giant arms enveloped her tiny frame.

“Viktor Vargas has found a potentially strong female in which to make his mate,” said Trajan.

“I feel sorry for her,” said Isaac, “whoever she is. Why does that matter, anyway?”

“Because your girl there,” Trajan said nodding once toward me, “is the one he wants.”

Isaac’s body jerked around; eyes already churning black like oil. It felt like the oxygen had been sucked right out of the room.

“What?” Isaac’s voice growled and echoed.

“Calm,” demanded Trajan. His voice sent a ripple through me. “Never here, Isaac. Never in front of her.”

I knew he meant Aramei. I thought Trajan would come off the bed with churning black eyes, too.

Isaac calmed, as much as he could.

I, however, was as far away from calm as I could be.

“No...Why?” I said absently.