Never Been Bitten by Erica Ridley

Author:Erica Ridley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2016-04-25T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Cain wandered restlessly amongst the dense greenery in the darkest nook of the conservatory, hoping to avoid both servants and revelers whilst his puppy cavorted out-of-doors.

His fractured shoulder was healing, although not as quickly as he would have liked. If he had been thinking about his injury, he would’ve spirited away one of the party’s insipid coquettes for a drop or two during last night’s card-playing. Instead, he had been thinking about the bonny Miss Ramsay. That is, when he was capable of rational thought at all.

After centuries of fruitless searching and prolonged homesickness, he had crossed paths with renegade vampire Aggie Munro. At long last, he could see an end to decade upon decade of solitary hunting, peppered by the occasional wild pup that invariably grew old and died, leaving Cain to walk his path alone. No more. If he could not talk the deserter into accompanying him peaceably, he would return her forcibly. He had not gotten close to his quarry just to fail now.

Then there was the question of returning Miss Ramsay—Ellie—to her real family. Whomever they might be. Depending on how much detail Aggie had Compelled her human companion to forget, Ellie might never recall her true life . . . or even her true name. “Elspeth Ramsay” was much too Scottish for a modern English rose. Aggie might have stolen her as a child, might have used enough Compulsion on the parents so that they even forgot they were parents, violating virtually every sacred tenet of the rigid Code at once. Unforgivable, as far as Cain was concerned, but the Elders valued his brawn, not his opinions. He was simply required to deliver Aggie to their mercy.

Victory was finally at hand . . . if unexpectedly bittersweet. Cain had no desire to turn Ellie’s world upside down and then abandon her in the wilds of England to fend for herself, but what choice did he have? He certainly couldn’t drag a human girl into the heart of vampire territory. Not without her becoming just another servant.

Without freedom, she would not be allowed to leave the keep, much less to return to England. Cain could never consign another person to the same desolate homesickness he himself had suffered. And he would never forgive himself if Ellie were Compelled to spend the rest of her life serving the Elders.

So why did he feel like he was losing something important?

Cain leaned his good shoulder against the conservatory wall. He bloody well knew why he regretted leaving Ellie. Because he liked her, dammit.

She was bonny, clever, delightfully skeptical. . . . He’d actually had to work to charm her and was not at all confident as to the extent of his success. She, for her part, had managed to charm him quite effortlessly, with her arch wit and unpredictability. Yet her very mortality ensured he could never have her. His clan only accepted fellow vampires as mates, and he would not turn her. Conversion had been banned for centuries, for good reason: Only one in a hundred survived the process.

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