Page 41 of Eternally Bound
He didn’t reveal to her that those numbers had never recovered in the nearly thousand years since the battle. Few vampires reproduced, unless they were of the royal line and required an heir, and that practice had fallen away after the war with the Savages. Other vampires found their mates over the years and wanted to have children with them, but mates were a sporadic thing and sometimes even mated vamps didn’t want offspring.
To this day, he only knew of a little over a hundred purebreds in existence. Their numbers were growing, but not fast enough. If there were other purebreds alive that he didn’t know about, they weren’t many. Ronan sighed and ran a hand through his hair as he thought back to the stark night that had forever altered his world.
“So much time has passed since then,” he murmured, “but I can clearly recall standing on that field and gazing out at the thousands of bodies surrounding me. Blood soaked the ground so much that the dirt no longer absorbed it, and it turned the green field into a lake of red.”
Kadence realized he was stuck in the past, haunted by the memories when his unseeing gaze focused on the wall behind her. Sorrow swelled within her as she watched him. She didn’t know how long ago it had been, but it was clear that battle had forged him into the man he was now, and it still haunted him.
“I found my parents amongst the carnage. My mother was decapitated, but my father had been torn to shreds, and bits and pieces of him were scattered across the earth. The stench of their blood stuck in my nostrils as I stepped over the bodies of the many vampires who raised me, yelled at me, trained me, and laughed with me.”
Kadence’s hand flew to her mouth as she stifled a cry over what he had witnessed and how much he had lost. He would not want her sadness, and she knew he would stop speaking if he believed she was giving him any kind of pity. And she didn’t pity him; she admired him and understood him far better. He’d survived something horrific, yet he continued to fight every day for his kind. Her heart swelled with emotion. Despite her anger with him for bringing her back here, all she wanted was to hold him against her and try to soothe the lingering grief she sensed in him.
“Everything I’d ever known before then was slaughtered on that field, my life forever altered, my hatred of the Savages secured,” Ronan recalled. Yet, he still teetered on becoming one of them no matter how much he despised them.
“Were you hurt?” she asked when he stopped speaking.
He tore his eyes away from the wall to focus on her. “My arm had been nearly severed by a broadsword and hung on by a thread of muscle. I had more cuts and stab wounds than I could ever count, but somehow, I survived. I left Ireland the following week, and I’ve never stayed longer than a week the few times I’ve returned to my homeland.”
“And the Savages who attacked you, what became of them?”
“They were all slaughtered in the war, but not before the number of vampires on both sides were wiped out to the point of near extinction.
“How many vampires survived?” she asked.
“Myself and fifteen others. Some of the survivors were turned vamps, and some were purebreds, but only one other purebred was a Defender, and I was the only one with royal blood who survived, so most of our old ways were lost after the war.”
“What happened to those survivors?” Kadence inquired.
“Some turned Savage and had to be destroyed, others were taken out by hunters, and some were killed by other vampires. Before they died though, those survivors turned humans, or had children of their own to keep the vampire race from going extinct. I am the only one who remains of the original survivors.”
Kadence’s heart twisted and tears unwittingly sprang into her eyes. Her life in the stronghold had been lonely, but so had Ronan’s. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like to be the only one who remembered such an awful event, or the time before it occurred, when things had been far different for him.
“Who was the other Defender that survived?” she asked.
“Declan’s father, Aengus. He’d been my toughest and most demanding instructor while I was going through Defender training. After, he became one of my closest friends.”
“What happened to him?”
“He left Ireland with me and we worked together until he turned Savage about forty years after Declan was born. I killed him so that Declan wouldn’t have to.”
Kadence bit on her lip to keep from gasping at that revelation. Ronan’s gaze was challenging as he stared at her, almost as if he dared her to condemn him for it.
“That must have been very difficult for you to do,” she whispered, feeling like she’d uttered ahugeunderstatement.
Ronan clamped his teeth and gave a brisk nod as the memory of destroying Aengus played through his mind. He’d never thought it possible that Aengus would ever succumb to his darker nature. Ronan had believed him to be far stronger than that; believed Aengus to be a better man than him. He’d been wrong.
Killing Aengus had been the most difficult thing he’d ever done. Aengus had been his last tie to a life all but forgotten by the other vampires, his closest advisor and friend, but his death had been necessary. The destruction Aengus wrought before his death had caused a panic amongst the humans, and Declan hadn’t been physically strong enough to kill his father at the time, even if he had wanted to be the one to do it, which he hadn’t.
“It was very difficult,” he murmured.
“Declan doesn’t hold any anger towards you for it.”
“He understands it had to be done and that I didn’t enjoy having to be the one who did it. Now, I have a feeling history might be trying to repeat itself and that the Savages are organizing,” he said.
Her mouth parted and her eyes widened as realization sank in. “Joseph and those vamps who arrived to help him.”
“Yes.”
“Can you bring in more vampires to help fight him?”
