Haunted by the King of Death (Eternal Mates Romance Series Book 11)

Felicity Heaton

A ruthless vampire warrior, Grave Van der Garde rules the mercenary Preux Chevaliers with an iron fist, determined to retain his hard-won position as one of the most powerful men in Hell and his reputation as the heartless King of Death. But beneath the cold façade beats the heart of a vampire torn between love and hate, ripped in two directions by a single ethereally beautiful female—his fated phantom mate.

Driven by her phantom instincts, Isla used a spell to make her solid in order to deceive the vampire who killed her sister’s demon mate and have revenge on him, condemning him with a single kiss to become a phantom too. But her plan took an unexpected turn when she fell in love with him, and with her new life, and the night she betrayed him shattered both of their hearts. Now, he lives to make her suffer through their connection, one that is fading with them as they begin to slip into the phantom world, and she must face the monster she created if she is to save herself and the vampire she still loves.

With a demon from Grave’s past determined to destroy him and everything he holds dear, and the clock ticking down to their inevitable doom, can he and Isla overcome their past and their pride to work together to claim the future they both desire deep in their hearts? Or will death finally catch up with the vampire king and his phantom mate?

Grave stood at a window in the huge library on the top floor of the palace, staring down into the courtyard, watching the slender female as she appeared from the building and stormed across the sandstone flags.

Her steps slowed as she neared the fountain and she looked back at the palace, an expression on her face that called to him.

There had been hope in her stunning blue eyes when she had spoken with him, but now there was nothing but despair and pain, and he enjoyed it, but gods, he hated it at the same time.

He cursed her in his mind and tried to tear his eyes away from her, tried to force himself to turn his back on the window and stop watching her, but he couldn’t stop looking at her and couldn’t walk away.

He had barely kept his cool and refrained from standing as she had swept into his grand hall, had barely leashed the hot bolt of lust that had burned through him on seeing her again.

She was as beautiful as he remembered.

Even with their apparently joint problem diminishing her slightly, she was still radiant. Ethereal. Breathtaking.

Dangerous to him because of it.

He had thought he was over her, that during their time apart the things she had done had destroyed any and all feelings he’d had for her, leaving his heart free of her. Leaving him cold and immune to her.

He had thought wrong.

One single glimpse of her. One single breath of her sweet scent. One single word falling from her lips.

It was all it had taken to pull him back under her spell.

He despised her for that, and hated himself too.

He turned on a snarl as she disappeared from view beyond the main gate of the fortress and began pacing along the bank of windows. Fury rolled through him with each hard step, anger at her for daring to walk back into his life and at himself for turning her away, and being foolish enough to hope she might fight harder, might have come back when she had stopped at the fountain rather than walking away.

Gods, had he really wanted her to come back?

He squeezed his eyes shut, growled through his clenched teeth and shook his head. No. He hadn’t. He really hadn’t.

A quiet voice whispered that he had.

Grave crushed it out of existence.

He paced harder, trying to work off some steam and purge her from his life again.

But her scent lingered in his lungs, her beauty still branded on his mind.

He grabbed the nearest wooden chair and roared as he sent it flying across the library. It smashed into the bookcase lining the far wall, shattering into pieces and knocking several books to the floor with it.

Grave grabbed another, and then another, and when chairs weren’t enough to satisfy the need to destroy everything because he couldn’t destroy what he really wanted—his feelings for Isla—he tipped one of the ebony desks over and unleashed his fury on it, attacking it with claws, fists and booted feet until it was little more than a scattered pile of tinder on the wooden floor.

His chest heaved as he breathed hard, head bent and heart pounding, anger still thundering in his blood.

He stilled when someone halted outside the double doors of the library.

Waited.

Asher wisely moved on, and Grave waited for him to pass beyond the sphere of his acute senses before he staggered backwards to the window and slumped onto the seat there, the back of his head smacking against the glass panes. He grimaced as his healing right shoulder ached under the pressure of his weight and shifted into a more comfortable position.

He stared at the destruction he had wrought, feeling nothing, not a single care about what he had done.

Not when his heart still beat for Isla.

He had thought he was free of her. He had thought he was stronger and able to see her without her affecting him, without feeling anything for her. He had thought that whatever he had once held in his heart had died when she had shattered that organ, but the sight of her had robbed him of his breath and her scent had made him hard as steel in his trousers, aching for her.

He was never going to be free of her, not so long as they were bound.

She would always affect him, no matter how much he hated it.

Grave tipped his head back, pressing it into the glass, and closed his eyes, breathing out a deep sigh as resignation filled him.

“Damn her,” he muttered, raised both hands and ran them over his dark hair, clawing it back.

He couldn’t think about her right now, not when he had more important things on his mind, things he had almost foolishly revealed to her with his careless words. He had caught the look in her eyes, the intense curiosity.

He lowered his right hand to his chest and rubbed his thumb across the pendant around his neck.

Just as he had witnessed the spark of hope she had felt on seeing he still owned the trinket she had given him.

And he had done all in his power to crush that hope.

Grave looked down at the intricate knot, recalling what he had said to her—he wore it as a reminder of what she had done to him in case he was ever foolish enough to forget it and relinquish his mission to make her suffer.

The reality was so much worse than that.

He couldn’t bring himself to part with it.

Gods, he had tried.

He had cast it into a valley in the Sixth Realm once and turned his back on it, only to end up scouring the black lands for it, desperate to find it again and have it back in his possession. It had taken him five days of searching, five days without sleep or blood.

When he had finally found it, he had experienced such a powerful surge of relief that his knees had given out and he had sat in the middle of the valley, clutching it tightly in his fist, close to tears.

He curled his lip.

There might have been one or two tears.

The metal warmed as he traced the knot, following the lines of it, the weight of it soothing in his fingers.

He hadn’t taken it off since that day.

He should have known from that alone that seeing Isla again had been a bad idea, that he wasn’t over her at all. If he didn’t have the strength to part with a stupid trinket, how the hell had he expected to have the strength to see her and feel nothing?

Imbecile.

He huffed and released the pendant.

Was it possible she had spoken the truth though? She was fading too, and rather than becoming phantoms, they were dancing with death?

A few days ago, he would have leaped at the chance to hear what she had to say, to bleed her for any information she had that might help him or even use her just to save himself, but now all he could think about was the pressing need he felt to save someone else.

The mark between his shoulder blades warmed and this time he didn’t close the connection to her, but he did hold things back from her, only allowing her to feel his negative emotions, the anger and frustration he felt.

Not anger and frustration born of her and her visit.

These emotions were born of the demon prince and his threat.

Grave turned his head to his left, looked into the courtyard below and then beyond it to the wall and the grand gate, and the dark stone buildings of the town outside. Was she still out there or had she already moved on, using one of the portals to teleport somewhere else in Hell?

The part of him that refused to give up and die, the piece that clung to his feelings for her, hoped she found the solution she was looking for and managed to save herself.

He ignored it, pretending it hadn’t said a damn thing, but it was impossible when the same voice whispered poisonous words in his heart, words that rekindled fear in his veins and had him coming to his feet.

The demon prince wanted her as his prize.

And wanted his entire family dead.

A family that wished the same thing for him, but one he was bound to in blood, obliged to warn despite their feelings for him.

He turned towards the window and studied the darkening horizon with a growing sense of dread. He had given himself a day to recuperate, a day in which he had locked himself in this library with three of his men and uncovered the record of the attack on the demon castle in the archives, arming himself with all the information he could muster because he knew he would need it if he was going to convince some members of his family to listen to him.

Now, he couldn’t delay any longer.

He focused on the mark on his back, felt it warm against his skin and start to tingle, and pictured Isla standing before him as she had in his grand hall.

Beautiful, enchanting Isla.

She had spoken about him getting what he deserved, and he wasn’t sure what she had meant by that, but there was a chance it was about to happen, and he couldn’t dispute that he probably did deserve it after what he had done to this person.

The one he intended to warn first.

Would she feel it when his eldest cousin, Snow, killed him in a fit of bloodlust?

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