Nicholas Roman has no idea who his father is. His mother is
long dead, and he was raised by the vampire Breed. His only
wish in life is be a normal vampire but, instead, he's been
involuntarily changed into a gifted immortal. Now, his
life's goal is to stop the Eternal Order of vampires from
controlling his life. He also wants to stop them from
changing more males from his bloodline. That's all Nicky
wants. That is, until the night he meets a groin tightening,
gorgeous stranger who tracks him down to share a mind
blowing secret with him.
Kate Everborne is a vampire who claims she's protecting
Nicholas's son; a son he never knew about. He doesn't
believe her at first. If this child is his son, then who is
the child's mother? There's another secret that the
tantalizing Kate has that even she didn't know about before
she sought out Nicholas. She only wants her freedom from the
prison she's been locked up in for the past 10 years for
murder. As soon as she drops off the child with Nicholas,
she's decided to be on her way to a different world where
vampires like her can experience a freedom of sorts. Alas,
things rarely go as planned for Kate and that begins the
second she sets eyes on Nicky.
The Order wants both Kate and the boy. They also want Ethan
Dare's lifeless body before them and want the Roman Brothers
to provide that. Their threat to morph Nicholas's brother,
Lucian, years before his time, along with the threat of
losing his son to the Order kicks Nicky into high gear. His
brothers, Alexander and Lucian, want to help him on this
quest as Kate and the boy are taken into the Romans' house
for protection. The problem is that Nicky has some deeply
buried and shameful secrets of his own; secrets that even
his brothers know nothing of.
As Kate and Nicky work together to save the boy as well as
Kate's own life, they're drawn closer together in such a way
that it becomes almost impossible for them to part from each
other. The Order has no intention of letting them remain
together happily with the boy, and Nicky and Kate themselves
both are so damaged that they find it hard to trust. In
addition, there's one more secret that no one knows about
regarding the Roman brothers that will blow all of them out
of the water.
Once again, Laura Wright has taken us on a roller coaster
ride of lust, sex, blood, violence and true love. She's
crafted a most satisfying story with this saga of the Roman
brothers. If you read Eternal Hunger, the first book
in the
Mark of the Vampire series, you'll be happy to see some of
the same characters recurring in ETERNAL KISS. Sara and
Alexander are happily together, Gray is back but may have a
story of his own down the road, Lucian, the difficult
vampire with the look of an angel, and Dillon, the vampire
bodyguard. Be forewarned that you'll find some of the most
intense, blood stirring, erotic scenes in this book that
you've ever found anywhere. You'll love every second of this
wild ride!
Raised by the Breed, Nicholas Roman wants to stop the
Eternal Order of Vampires from controlling his life, and
using other males from his bloodline-including possibly
his son-for their vicious reign. Only a beautiful vampire
stranger can help him. But what are her true motives?
Excerpt
Mark of the Vampire
Nicholas Odysseus Claudius Roman did not fight. In fact,
as he lay on his back, strapped down to the stone table,
bare as the day he slipped from his mother’s weary body,
he projected an almost eerie calm.
The leather restraints placed on his upper arms, belly,
neck, and ankles by the Order sliced into his skin like
dull razor blades, but he ignored the pain. It was as it
must be. Inside the Tomb of Nascita, the massive hole cut
deep within hundreds of layers of rock, the Order
performed the morphing ritual several times per year. When
a paven hit his three hundredth year on earth, he was
brought to the tomb, laid out on the slab of stone, and
more often than not, held his position without restraints.
He was, after all, being gifted with the strength and
power of morpho. But the ancient ten were a bit unsure of
how the Son of a Breeding Male would react to the final
strikes of the maturation ritual. After all, their body
and brain chemistry were so very different than the
average paven. Would Nicholas Roman’s pain override his
good sense and spur on the instinct to attack, to drain,
to kill? No one was sure. So imprison him they must.
“Get on with it,” Nicholas said with grave irritation,
lifting his chin. “My brothers search for a way here even
now.”
One of the female members of the Order sniffed her
disbelief. “Surely they wouldn’t come without an
invitation.”
“There is no one who wishes to incur the wrath of the
ancient ten,” said the paven beside her.
Nicholas laughed bitterly. “If you think that, you’re all
even bigger fools than I thought you were.”
Several low, bloodthirsty snarls sounded behind him, but
one very cool head prevailed and the paven said, “We waste
time with things that matter not. Prepare yourself, Son of
the Breeding Male.”
There was a sudden crack, and above Nicholas, the
perfectly painted night sky split apart. The sounds of day
echoed all around him—birds waking one another, insects
searching for a meal, and in moments the cold, happy
darkness ceased to reign. The brilliant white light of a
fabricated sun spilled into the stone room, its greedy
fingers reaching for every dim corner and crevice.
And for the skin of a newly morphed paven.
No stranger to pain, Nicholas remained still as death,
even as the hot branding iron of the false sun went to
work on his forearms, carving the daggers and his true
mate’s marks into his skin. It took only minutes, but when
it was done and his arms smoked in the light, he cursed
his ancestry as he had many times in his one hundred and
fifty years. For most pavens, this would be it, the end of
the physical torture, but not for Nicholas. He was a Son
of the Breeding Male and his pain had just begun.
Up the heat traveled, over his chest and shoulders, up his
neck, trailing his jawline in savage pursuit of its target
until the blazing sunlight reached his cheekbones. A hiss
escaped his lips as the needle of fire carved the second
set of brands into his cheeks—the Breeding Male circles,
and his true mate’s symbols within it.
As quick as the light had come, its return to the
makeshift heavens was even quicker. The sounds of day died
off and the ceiling fused, and once again he was bathed in
darkness. Breathing heavily, his head feeling as though it
had been rammed against a brick wall forty times in
succession, Nicholas heard the gentle footfall and swish
of the Order’s burgundy robes as they approached him. The
ancient rulers, the treacherous ten, gathered around the
stone table and trained their eyes on him.
Cruen, as he so often did, spoke first. “Dare has been in
hiding these past months, licking his wounds, eerily
silent—like a rat. But he has emerged, calling Impures to
his fold—filling their heads with lies, filling their
hearts with a need for freedom. Find and kill him,” he
said, but through Nicholas’s mind he uttered, Or your
brother will have stone at his back, leather around his
extremities, and no doubt two empty circle brands on his
cheeks.
Nicholas hissed and pulled at his binds, strained to get
up and extinguish the pale blue light in Cruen’s
malevolent eyes forever. But he was held, caught.
The image of Lucian, circle brands on his cheeks with
nothing inside, no mark of his true mate because he would
never have one. No love, no life—only the cries of a near-
animal-like paven bent on feeding and breeding.
The possibility that any one of the Roman brothers could
have the Breeding Male gene was a good one, but Nicholas
and Alexander had long suspected that Lucian, with his
pale features and insatiable sexual appetite, was the
carrier.
It appeared as though Cruen believed so as well, and if
Nicholas wanted to keep his oath, his private promise to
protect his younger brother, as Lucian had once protected
him—resurrected him—on the dirty, dangerous French streets
all those years before, Nicholas would heed the monster
before him.
“Release me,” Nicholas demanded. “Now.”
Cruen grinned, his red fangs—a symbol of the Order’s end
of blood consumption—were pin-prick sharp. “I appreciate
your eagerness. Will you be a good little paven, then?”
It took every ounce of mental restraint for Nicholas to
spit out the words “I will.”
The thick leather straps around his arms, belly, neck, and
ankles evaporated like boiling water, and before another
word was spoken, before he could even sit upright, he was
flashed from the Tomb of Nascita and dropped naked, his
brands still smoking, onto the mountaintop next to the
cave.
Night covered the sky, a spring mist coated the air, and
his brothers stood at the mouth of the cave, matching
expressions of rage on their faces.
One
Vermont credentiAs the blue light of day succumbed to the
pale lavender of evening, a bitter cold moved over the
land, shook the snow from the trees, and curled around the
veana and the balas who sat on the front steps of the
small credenti elementary school. The snow on the ground
that had been melting just a few hours earlier now
glistened under the rising moon as water quickly turned
back to ice. It was nearing six p.m., and in accordance
with the laws of the Order, it was time to end the labor
of the day and begin the calm of night. Most residents of
the credenti had left their work or schooling and had
entered their homes for family meal and reflection. Kate
Everborne, however, had no family to go home to. What she
did have was a belief that reflection was for unthinking
drones and the unwelcome responsibility of a seven-year-
old balas who once again had to be watched until his
mother showed up.
“She’s not coming.”
Kate glanced down at the boy. With his large black eyes
and shock of white hair he didn’t blend in well. She knew
how that was. “She’s coming. She’s just late.”
“She’s always late,” he grumbled.
“Give her a break, okay, kid? She’s doing the best she
can.”
“She should work inside the credenti. Like you. Do what
veanas are supposed to do.”
The smile on Kate’s face was tight and forced, just like
the white purity bindings on her wrists and throat. The
last thing in the world she wanted to be doing was living
inside the credenti, or any vampire community, for that
matter. And her work at the elementary school, passing out
lentils and fruit during mid-meal—well, it was utter
bullshit, a way to keep her in plain sight, see if she
could live among society again.
But she didn’t have a choice in where she resided. Not yet.
“She dishonors my father’s memory by leaving the
credenti,” the boy continued.
“You’re a good kid, Ladd Letts, but right now you’re
acting like a brat.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t care.”
“Yeah, I can tell.”
“I don’t care about me and I don’t care about her.” He
puffed out his lips. “Maybe I wish she’d never come.”
Kate sniffed. “Maybe she wishes that, too.”
Ladd’s eyes grew wide and balas-wet as he stared up at
her, took in what she’d just said and molded it into the
worst possible abandonment scenario.
Ah, shit. Kate released a weary breath. She could be a
real asshole sometimes. “Listen, kid, I didn’t mean it
like that.”
“I’m here. I’m here.” Mirabelle Letts came running across
the tree-littered play yard toward them, her feet sinking
calf-deep in the heavy snow. She was a pretty veana—small,
curvy, with soft brown doe eyes that did their best to
exude happiness. Slightly breathless, she called
out, “Sorry, Kate.”
“No problem,” Kate returned, coming to her feet. She was
just relieved the veana had shown up. She really sucked
with kids, wasn’t sure what to say to them, how to comfort
them. Sticking her in a school wasn’t the Order’s smartest
move, but hell, she wasn’t about to complain. She had two
months left on her work release, two months until she
could finally consider her time spent in the vampire
prison, Mondrar, over and done, the debt for another’s
crime paid.
Until then, she was keeping her nose clean and her fangs
retracted.
Ladd jumped to his feet and waved his arms like he was
landing planes, all anger gone now. “Mommy! I see you!”
Kate chuckled at the quick recovery. At Ladd’s age, it
seemed that no matter what a parent did, said, or forgot,
they were always a welcome sight.
Give it a few years, kid.
No more than ten feet away, Mirabelle waved back at her
child as she waded through the snow. “Training went over
and there was a gardening demonstration—”
Something shot out of the shadows of the trees, cutting
off Mirabelle’s words. A paven, tall and dark. In under a
second, he was on Mirabelle, ripping the scarf from her
neck, searching her flesh. Kate opened her mouth to scream
when she saw a silver flash. A knife! Oh, shit. No! Terror
locked the scream in her chest, and she fought the dual
urges of running to help the veana and protecting the
young balas at her side.
Before she could make her choice, the paven plunged the
knife deep into Mirabelle’s chest, then yanked it back out
again and took to her thighs, slashing at her skin until
he severed the two main arteries. Blood exploded from her
legs in violent sprays.
Her attacker released her, let her limp body drop to the
ground, and a piercing scream whipped through the night
and jerked Kate from her horror.
Ladd.
His face contorted with panic, he tried to run to his
mother, but Kate caught him in her arms and held him back.
The dark-haired male suddenly glanced up, locked eyes with
Kate, and grinned. Fuck. It was there in his eyes, in his
smile—hunger to spill blood. He was going to take her out
and the kid too if she didn’t run or fight him off.
The butcher paven started toward her and Ladd, his
movements graceful, catlike. Knowing she couldn’t outrun
him, not with the boy, Kate shoved Ladd behind her back,
opened her arms to the evil coming at her, and flashed her
fangs. Come and get it, then, asshole. His smile widened,
the moonlight catching the tips of his fangs. Then
suddenly he stopped, lifted his chin, and sniffed the air.
With a growl of annoyance, he turned around and ran back
across the field, into the trees.
What the hell?
Kate sucked in the bitterly cold air scented with blood
and screamed, “Help!” Silently praying that Mirabelle was
still alive, she raced to the female’s side, Ladd at her
heels. The veana’s eyes were open, but her quick, shallow
breaths signaled how close to death she was. Kate dropped
down in the snow and pressed her hands to the gaping wound
in the female’s chest. Forcing up the healing energy all
Pureblood veanas possessed, she blew on the wounds in
Mirabelle’s thighs—back and forth, back and forth, each
breath a show in pure determination and desperation. But
the cuts were so deep, the femoral artery calculatedly
severed. Red death seeped between her fingers, over the
veana’s chest, spilling out onto the pure white-powdered
floor.
“Goddammit!” Kate screamed. “We need help here!” Darkness
had come. Where were all the selfless, community-first,
pious bastards when one of their own needed them?
Ladd laid his head on his mother’s belly and howled in
misery.
Mirabelle’s eyes were glassy as she hovered somewhere
between this world and the next. Her gaze flickered toward
her son, then back up to Kate. “Take him,” she uttered
through short gasps of breath.
“Don’t talk,” Kate said.
“Take him. Please. He can’t be tested.”
Lifting her head again, Kate yelled into the frigid
air, “We need help!”
“No!” Mirabelle rasped. “Please. Before they come . . .
take the balas.”
She was delusional, had to be. Kate shook her head. “He’ll
be okay. Don’t worry.”
Mirabelle whispered something.
“I can’t hear you . . .”
“Come. Please.”
Kate lowered her head, her ear to the female’s mouth.
“He will be . . . caged if they find out.”
“Find out what?” Kate uttered, keeping her ear close to
the female’s lips.
In the last seconds before her death, Mirabelle revealed
not only her secrets, but her desperate plea to save her
son’s life, all to the one vampire on earth who, if she
wanted to gain her freedom, could do nothing for her.
The steady beats of the Impures’ hearts beckoned.
They always did.
Ethan Dare was one of them and yet the males that hovered
so near within the Vermont credenti woodlands would be
hard-pressed to see his merciless destruction of a
Pureblood veana as a sacrifice to the cause. No. They’d
been raised to serve, protect, and defend their Pureblood
masters, not rebel against them. And when Ethan had
finally left the vicinity, they would run back to their
quarters and squeal to the very ones who had once upon a
time turned them over to the Order for blood castration.
Yes, even taking away an Impure’s ability to breed or even
enjoy sex could not spur the inferior class into running
away.
Ethan closed his eyes and flashed out of the woods.
According to the Order, his Impure brothers and sisters of
the credenti were sterilized for the good of the Breed.
Keep things nice and pure. Well, the Order could keep
their precious purity. After a slow recovery from the
bullet wounds he’d suffered at the hands of Alexander
Roman, Ethan and his recruits had begun anew, and soon he
would be coming back to the Vermont credenti just as he’d
done in the Maine and Pennsylvania communities to offer
each Impure a new life.
From frosty air and heavy snow to arid, oppressive heat,
Ethan touched down on the iridescent sand of the Supreme
One’s existence. His partner in the Uprising could command
time, place, mood, and, much to Ethan’s irritation,
temperature. The paven got off on heat—intense, land-of-
satan kind of heat—and for a male who had a hard time
regulating his body temperature as of late, it was a real
pain in the ass for Ethan to take a meeting there.
But he never complained. After all, he would always go
where the power meal was.
Sweating like a whore in church, Ethan trudged down to the
water’s edge. His arms hung at his sides, empty. They
should’ve held the balas, but his attempt to get Ladd
Letts hadn’t been successful. Not that he really gave a
shit, but the one who fed him, the one who gave him power
did, and Ethan knew he was in for a fang-lashing.
No sympathetic breeze caressed his face as he drew nearer
the water, just incessant blasts of wet heat. The Supreme
One’s reality was a massive one-room beach setting, open
to the elements, dressed with plant life and flowers, and
three white walls adorned with Hockney miniatures. As
Ethan passed by a stand of palm trees, he took in the
sight of his human female, lying on a beach chair sunning
herself. Pearl McClean’s eyes were closed and her hands
were on her round belly. She was a “guest” of the Supreme
One’s. Instead of staying with Ethan at his new compound,
which had been given to him by a Hollywood actress with a
penchant for males with fangs, the master had insisted she
remain with him. The sweet, stupid little thing had
happily agreed before he’d even had a chance to persuade
the paven otherwise.
Poor Pearl. She had no idea she was collateral.
Ethan kept walking until sand gave way to sea. Over the
water, lying in a hammock supported by nothing at all, the
Supreme One reclined, his gnarled hand passing back and
forth over the blue water, manipulating the speed of the
waves as they rushed to the shore. Slowly at first, then a
bullet train of salt water crashing against Ethan’s
thighs, followed by the ever-popular freeze in midair
trick.
Ethan sighed. Oh, the drama.
When he reached the Supreme One, he inclined his head. “It
is done, my lord.”
The Supreme One dragged his gaze from the water and
narrowed it on Ethan. “You’re certain?”
“Her blood ran like sweet wine into the snow.”
“And you saw the mark? The eternal kiss?”
“It was on the back of her neck, as the genealogist
claimed.”
The Supreme One grinned. “Nicholas Roman’s true mate
extinguished.”
“Yes, sir.” It was a bizarre partnership, Ethan thought,
wiping the sweat from his face and neck. The supposed
ancient Pureblood teaming up with an Impure who was hell
bent on the destruction of the Pureblood race—but they
both had much to gain, it seemed.
“And the boy?” the Supreme One said. “Where do you have
him hidden?”
There it was. The dreaded question. Ethan forced out his
chin. Fucking up was one thing, but he must never appear
the weaker to this paven—even if they both knew he was. “I
couldn’t get to the boy.”
The Supreme One sat up. “Fool!”
“There was a veana with him, and Impures close by,
watching. I didn’t want the whole of the credenti on my
ass.”
“Of course you didn’t,” the Supreme One muttered with
undisguised sarcasm. “Impure coward.”
Ethan sniffed. Impure coward indeed. Though the Supreme
One had great and awe-inspiring power, he had revealed to
Ethan the truth about his own blood—the drops of Impurity
that lay dormant in his cells, his secret lineage—a male
on his father’s side who had been born of a human woman.
The Supreme One hated his Impurity, even as he had given
his support to the uprising.
“I will get to the boy,” Ethan assured him. “I just need
to rest, gain more strength. Perhaps if you had fed me
more regularly during my recovery I could have remained
and fought—”
Ethan shot into the air, flew forward and slammed
headfirst into the water. A light thread of panic jumped
in his blood and he tried like hell to lift his head out
of the rushing current, but his neck refused to give. He
couldn’t move. Not even a fingertip. He knew better than
to criticize the Supreme One.
Holding his breath as long as he could, he whimpered his
exhaustion, his eyes scanning the empty sea floor. Then
his lungs gave out and he inhaled, swallowing the salty
water in gulps. Pain surged through him, an empty ache.
Recognizing he was in the moments before death, Ethan
conjured an image of the child he’d created yet would
never see. He barely felt the force yanking him up out of
the water and tossing him onto the sand.
Choking on the water in his lungs, weak as a balas, Ethan
tried to sit up. He clutched his skull and whimpered as
stars played on his eyelids.
“Open your eyes, Impure.”
Ethan forced his lids back.
The Supreme One still lounged in his hammock, a soporific
smile on his lined face. “You want your feed, do you?”
Ethan could only nod. What he would give to make the
Supreme One choke, just once.
“You may have it.”
Once on his knees, Ethan tried to capture a clear breath,
then attempted to stand.
“Remain,” said the Supreme One.
Ethan lifted his eyes. “My lord . . . ?”
“Remain on your hands and knees and crawl to me.”
Because he had to, for now he had to, Ethan did as he was
told, inching toward the master—a dog looking for a scrap—
as his human female watched from the sanctuary of her
lounge chair, her eyes losing a thread of their admiration.
Someday he would be the one who controlled all. Someday he
would make the Purebloods—and the paven before him—crawl.
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