Book 1 chapter 1...
(1544: Henry VIII)
“By the summer of 1544, events that year had set me upon a bad path and the repercussions of that ill choice haunted me for centuries. My bubble of contentment was shattered and Thomas of the Frazer clan was the catalyst that sent my world into a downwards spiral of regrets and mistakes.
He had survived the ambush from the MacDonalds on his clan at the Battle of the Shirts; half dead, he was trying to find a warm fire and a kind heart to nurse him back to health. But sadly his journey ended on a little mud track in a wood. You may say Lady Luck was on his side, that I was passing. But really, maybe it would have been better if he had died that day alone.
I was out playing in the woods with my wolves. Apart from Alex, my human, they were my world and I spent most of my evening running with them and hunting. It was the alpha male who found him as he lay in the fallen pine leaves. I knelt down and he leant up and cupped my face. “Are you an Angel, here to take me to the afterlife?” I didn’t speak; I was engrossed in his story as it flashed across my mind.
His wounds were deep and fatal. What I should have done was drain him and give him that pleasurable dream of holding my hand as we drifted up to the lights of the afterlife. But his life was so exciting, he was so fierce and magnificent, I did something else - I healed him. I bit my wrist and dripped my blood into his wounds and healed the massive sword wounds that crisscrossed his chest. But still he was dying in my arms. So I opened up my wrist again and held it to his lips and he began to drink. I only meant to give a little blood, just to replace the blood that he had lost, but something strange happened: I felt his fangs.
I tried to pull away fearing what I had done. I was scared for so many reasons. I was scared what my parents would do, but also that he was so strong and getting stronger with every pull from my wrist. I was screaming at him now to let me go, telling him that he had to stop. But he kept on drinking. The world began to spin and I felt the pine leaves bite into my cheek and blackness. When I woke my mother looking down at me as I lay in the wood, her wrist pressed to my lips.
“You stupid girl what were you thinking.”
I sat up scared. “Mother please don’t tell Feyd. I just wanted to keep him alive, so I could finish listening to his story, I fear I have...”
“You did. You have turned him and come dawn we must kill him.”
“No.” I screamed, “Please let me keep him, I want a companion, someone to take me out hunting.” She looked down at me. “Please Mother.”
She thought for a moment and then said. “I will wipe his mind of you. He and everyone else will believe that I am his sire. I made him this night for you, to give you a companion.”
I grabbed my mother’s hand in gratitude, relieved for so many reasons. One because I could keep him, another because Feyd would never find out and punish me for making a vampire without his consent. But most of all because this was the first time my mother had showed any sort of kindness to me and this was now something that bound us together.
“Thank you.”
And that is what happened. She took him away and for a month she did what was needed to make him safe. I didn’t even feel a pull to him like a sire does. At the time I didn’t know I should have. You don’t miss what you have never felt. But if I had known then what I know now, I would have seen the warning signs, That Thomas wasn’t mine fully, his mind was my mother’s and I was the link that made it possible for her to control him.
