Broken Angel

Chapter 2

Rayne:

Wisps of ivory satin streamed behind her as a small breeze rushed inside.  She stared gloomily out of the window, dressed but not ready for the huge step she was about to take.  A caramel ringlet bounced happily past her tiara and then settled delicately against her cheek.  Inhaling the fresh scent of earth and home, she felt Diego’s presence around her strongly and shivered.  Her pale gray eyes turned stormy in the moonlight that filtered through the clouds, and Rayne’s mind drifted to anywhere but there.  She refused to be in the present, where her life was about to take a turn for the worst. 

Gravel crunching along the winding driveway on the other side of the house alerted her to unwelcomed guests.  Two cars came to a halt, but only three doors opened.  And then one slammed shut.

In ten minutes, she would be called upon by the elders to take her vows.  Her mouth would say the words that her heart could never accept, because it belonged to someone else, along with those promises. 

It was always supposed to be her and Diego. 

Her eyes clouded as tears threatened to spill.  She resolved to make this as difficult as she could for the Vampire, knowing how pleasurable his misery would be for her. 

Besides the hurt she felt at being used by her pack and the anger at the Bloods for fulfilling the writ, she also felt betrayed that her uncle would so easily let her go.  They had sacrificed her before their eternal enemy, all for the sake of their own well being.  As if sensing her mood, a soft drizzle began to sprinkle the ground, misting the land around her, magnifying the scent she was fighting hard to forget and stealing the last of the moonlight.  Her mate may have never been a wolf, but he had the spirit of one.  She knew from the haphazard spattering of blood on the trees from where he went missing, that he did not go down without a fight.  And he’d fought to stay alive for her, she believed that wholly.  Sometimes she could catch a tortured voice calling out to her, a shadow of pain and longing that she knew she mirrored, and then she would dream of her lost love.  Those dreams would leave her feeling more depressed than ever.

At first she thought that she could exist in a perpetual coma because that was where she would have him, but that wasn’t Rayne.  Her love for him even in death had forced this reaction from her, that she’d rather keep his memory alive and be conscious of it and avenge him, than mourn for him in dreams where his last words would haunt her forever. 

Vampires had killed him, taken him away from her, but never from her heart and mind. 

Rayne doubted that they knew they’d taken her mate that day.  Wolves mating with a human was not unheard of, but it was rare.  And she being the Alpha’s daughter had been warned repeatedly by her father not to act upon it.

Rayne had passed him daily since when they first moved to that house one hundred and fifty years ago.  She hadn’t thought much of it until the day their eyes met.  Neither of them could deny the attraction of his soul to hers, and so began their star crossed relationship.  Her father, after catching Diego’s scent on her, had forced her to stay away from him, but before he could properly intervene, the rich merchant’s daughter had already fallen in love with a lowly woodcutter…She went against everything her father said and showed him what she was.  Rayne needed to believe that he would not think her a monster, and Diego didn’t.  Startled at her shift, he had turned to her awe, not fear, and with eyes filled with love.  He accepted her wholeheartedly.  Later that night when they fully mated, he’d been gifted when she marked him.  It wasn’t much, but it had slowed down his aging process and given him inhuman strength.  He could never shift as she could, but every time she did, he managed to keep up with her speed and agility.  Even his body healed faster than  normal, though not a quickly as hers.  Her marking him, had allowed for those little changes so that they could remain together.  But even that wasn’t enough to protect him from the undead.  Vampires were cold creatures, things of the night…their hearts were silent like stones, and she’d been thought to hate them since birth.  She knew what could destroy them; and having practised harder since the day she lost Diego, to bring them all down, she knew she could handle them.  It would be easy to go through with her decisions since she already hated the thing her soon-to-be husband was.