Blood Bond: Bloodline Saga, #1

By Elle Beauregard

Trapped in a cult she will one day be expected to lead, and betrothed to a man she despises, Matra has lost all hope of ever again seeing Christopher—the vampire she was forbidden to love, who left five years ago with the rest of his kind. But fate delivers her an opportunity to escape and magic delivers her a new reason to fight: the inexplicable child—Christopher's child—she's carrying in secret. If anyone in her "family" discovers her betrayal, she will lose not just her hope of ever seeing Christopher again, but her unborn daughter's very life.

 

The sweet taste of Matra's blood was still on his tongue when Christopher abandoned her to the whims of her deranged "family." Their worlds diverged into Us and Them with the introduction of laws that forced the relocation of his kind. But now that he has the backing of the most powerful vampire in the world—and a one day pass back into the human sector—when he finds Matra again, he won't let anything stop him from keeping her by his side.

 

Destiny and magic conspire once more to lead them to each other, but Matra and Christopher's reunion is heavy with risk. To keep their child safe, they must embrace forbidden power that could get them captured—if not killed. Because if anyone finds out the girl is impossibly Christopher's daughter—or the lengths he will go to keep her safe—it won't just be Matra's family, but the entire world that descends into darkness.

Blood Bond is a character-driven, slow burn (with a high-heat payoff) cult and vampire urban fantasy romance featuring tropes such as lost love found, unbalanced power dynamics, childhood love, surprise pregnancy, magical pregnancy, found family, and a woman overcoming her past to forge her desired future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elle Beauregard
• Release date: Nov 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201946661

Book preview

Chapter 1

Matra

Business in Beta and back before breakfast.

If Matra saw that ad copy run across the screen one more time, she might scream.

Her head was killing her. So were her shoulders and hips, her lower back and neck. She’d been sitting in front of the screens watching coded internet babble scroll by for nearly twelve hours. She needed to move, to close her eyes and stretch her neck, but she wouldn’t. Her eyes might be the difference between life and death for everyone living in this compound.

Each screen held a unique dashboard, each running a different set of encrypted searches that spidered the web looking for key words, phrases, and names. Each dashboard displayed the results of those searches—encoded so they were nothing but nonsense to the casual passerby—on either side of the screen. One of the searches looked for data about the Beta Sector, which is why she saw the coded copy for that advertisement about a hundred times every hour.

The system had been born of her coding skills combined with her friend Alix’s uncanny psychological intuition—a perfect example of humanist technology. In the six years since they’d designed it, their group had come to rely upon it as their primary source of intelligence—their main safety net. Which was why Matra took extra shifts whenever they were needed. Nobody knew this code as well as she did. Nobody could decipher the encoded babble as quickly as she could. And all of their safety relied on that speed.

The sound of the door opening pulled her attention but not her eyes.

Have you been here since the morning shift?

She let her gaze flick toward the voice of her best friend, Callee, then return to the scrolling code. Pamela asked me to pull a double shift. It should have been Audil sitting here for the last six hours, but they needed him on tunnel detail. He was better at physical labor than deciphering code in any case—not that she’d ever tell him or anybody else that.

Audil was good at everything. The golden boy. That’s what the parents thought of him at least.

The son of one of the group’s founding families, he was hell-bent on serving their group’s purpose—exposing the outer establishment for what it was and protecting their family until the opportunity to do so arose. But he was... well, he was Audil. Hot-tempered and more than a tad entitled, he was committed to their way of life, committed to the family and their future.

He was also who she was supposed to marry.

But nobody talked about that.

Yumi can take over until dinner. Come outside with me, Callee said, her voice low and gentle like she was coaxing a child away from their favorite toy.

Matra was glad she’d kept the skeptical look off her face when she flicked another glace at Callee only to see Yumi beside her. She hadn’t realized the younger girl was there.

Yumi raised her thin arm and gave a wave, the smile on her face far too eager for the task she was being handed. Audil lets me cover his breaks now.

Matra sighed but managed to keep the eyeroll to herself. She really did need the break, so she paused the scrolling just long enough to stand. You’re going to have to catch up for the last thirty seconds or so.

No problem. Yumi took Matra’s seat with the eager alacrity of childhood.

Which was no surprise—she was only fourteen years old.

Five minutes later, Matra was drawing a deep breath of fresh air with Callee beside her and the compound’s only exterior door, a sliding glass door with the windows painted over, behind her.

Good, right?

She smiled at her friend. Good. Thanks for pulling me away.

Callee’s white-blond hair was in need of a trim, the edges of her pixie cut long on the back of her neck and at her temples. Let’s walk.

They began a slow amble on the same route they’d taken more times than Matra could ever hope to count. This yard was the only outside space she’d ever seen, after all. Alix stepped out from the side of the building as they neared the corner, but Matra wasn’t surprised. Wherever Callee was, Alix was nearby if there was any reasonable way for him to be—without drawing attention to it, of course.

Fancy meeting you here, he said as he fell into step beside Callee.

Matra took the lead to buy Callee and Alix the time to talk as they reached the trees that lined the farthest wall of the yard. She wound between the trunks, dipping between them and the fence, turning her body to fit when the space got tight. It was a game she’d played as a child while the adults were watching. It was a quiet game that kept her hidden beneath the thick foliage. She could remember the way the adults would relax, the way they’d begin to hold quiet conversation with one another when she did it. It was something she’d noticed then, but only understood as she got older. There was little risk of being seen by neighbors when she played this way, and even less risk of being heard. This was a safe game, under cover of leaves and silence.

Matra’s fingers trailed over the bark of a tree she knew better than all the others, one of the few deciduous trees in the yard.

I have to go in for med shift before dinner, Callee said loudly enough for Matra to hear.

Have a good shift, Alix replied.

Matra should have said something in response, too, but she didn’t. Instead, she was stuck, lost somewhere between the present and the past, unsure which she wanted to fall into.

Normally, she would have turned back. She wouldn’t have looked up into the leafy branches of that tree. But this time she let her eyes follow the familiar, dappled brown bark past the chain link ceiling, until it disappeared into the wide, green leaves. They were sticky this time of year—she could remember that. Remember the way they used to grab gently at her clothes when she climbed in secret. That was before the fence around the yard had a ceiling.

Climbing the tree was not a safe game. In fact, it was forbidden.

She’d been a teenager, no longer supervised by the parents, allowed to go outside on her own after her studies and chores were complete when she’d begun doing it.

The first time she’d been caught climbing, she’d been paddled on the behind, then grounded for days.

She’d told them that was the first time she’d ever done it, although it had probably been the hundredth. And when she’d regained her freedom she’d done it again, no matter that she’d told them she never would. She just couldn’t deny herself the freedom of sitting among those branches, looking at the rest of the world.

It seemed so huge.

And so exciting when Christopher was in the branches with her.

Now he was out there, beyond the fence, in the huge, exciting world. And she was here.

Her thoughts began to branch and spread like the branches of the tree, limbs she worked hard to keep pruned sprouting and racing toward the sun of her attention.

What was he doing now? Did he ever think of her?

Her mind cast her back in time, to the day she first met him. She’d been ten years old. Pamela had come to the classroom and pulled her away from her lessons—

Heart in her throat and fearing the worst, Matra followed.

Had they seen her in the tree yesterday afternoon? Did they read her journal and see the things she’d written? She racked her brain to guess what punishment she was about to endure.

When they entered the family room and Matra dared pry her gaze from the toes of her shoes, her eyes first landed on the unfamiliar adults and her heart felt like it might stop on her chest. What was this? Then, just as quickly, she was shocked to see a boy standing between the adults. A beautiful boy she’d never before met.

His eyes were gray like the sky in the dead of winter. They were such a striking complement to his dark hair that laid across his forehead and tufted off to the side on the crown of his head in one small cowlick Matra instantly wanted to touch.

Not that she would. That would be weird.

Matra, this is Christopher, Pamela said as the woman Matra didn’t know nudged the boy forward. His family will be joining us and I’d like you to help him feel at home.

She’d never met someone new before. It was thrilling and horrifying all at the same time.

Topher, this is Matricia—Matra for short, Pamela said to the man standing behind the boy. Matra is one of the oldest of the children, along with Audil and Callee and Alix.

Are they the intuitives you mentioned earlier? Topher asked.

Callee and Alix, yes, Pamela confirmed. No Born Immortals in our ranks—besides you, now, of course—but I think Christopher will find he’s in good company with the other children.

Born Immortals? Matra had to fight to keep her surprise and intrigue from her expression. They were vampires! She’d read about their kind—Born versus Turned, their customs, and history—but she’d never seen an Immortal in real life.

She’d never seen anyone but her family in real life.

See, making friends already, Topher remarked, nudging Christopher in the shoulder while he did it. And you thought you wouldn’t fit in.

Matra, Topher is Christopher’s biological father, Pamela chimed in. And this is his biological mother, Julia. She motioned to the woman, thin and brunette, whose smile was warm and kind.

It’s nice to meet you Matra. Thank you for helping our Christopher adjust.

Matra had to stuff down a smile when Christopher rolled his eyes. None of the adults had seen him do it.

At around eight years old, we begin having the children call us all by name and remove the biological aspect of family from our interactions with the children, Pamela went on, speaking to Christopher’s parents. Given some of the circumstances for you, we’ll have to discuss how to handle that—nothing to worry over now. In the meantime, she turned to Matra, Christopher will have the bedroom next to yours. Why don’t you show him where it is and help him settle in. She laid a hand on Matra’s shoulder.

Matra jumped—her mother hadn’t touched her in over a year—but she hoped no one noticed. When she smiled at Christopher though, the subtle question in his expression made it clear he’d seen her reaction. For a fraction of a second, she was inexplicably embarrassed. Then he returned her smile and all at once her tense muscles loosened, and her heartrate slowed. It felt like taking a full breath for the first time in months.

That’s what Christopher was for her, from that moment on. Her fresh air. Her oxygen.

The romantic side of what he was to her—the fire that fed on the oxygen he created—came later as they grew.

Back in the present, it wasn’t until she felt something against her cheek that Matra realized she was crying. She brushed the tear away with a small, embarrassed laugh she hoped Alix took as no-big-deal despite knowing he never would.

You miss him, Alix said simply.

Matra’s gaze swung to him while in her mind she took sheers to the branches of her longing for the man she’d never see again. Don’t, she said simply. Don’t shrink me.

Alix held his hands up. I’m friending, not shrinking.

Matra sighed, feeling her mood lighten by some ounces. Alix could sense a person’s emotions even when he didn’t mean to—or want to. Even when she didn’t want him to. He’s gone. It doesn’t matter.

It really didn’t. Whether she missed Christopher or not made no difference. It wouldn’t change anything.

He’d been part of their family, connected by commitment not genetics, along with his mother and father. He’d been her very best friend. More than that. And he’d been a Born Immortal—a vampire born to parents, not a once-human turned. It didn’t matter, though. Turned or born, they’d all been forced to leave, relocated together by the government when the Mythological Ordinances had been revised. Relocated to the Beta Sector. She’d been nearly sixteen years old.

Business in Beta and back before breakfast. Unless you were an Immortal—then it was a one-way ticket.

A one-way ticket she wished she could buy.

Sometimes talking lightens the load, you know, Alix offered. Still friending, by the way. Though in the spirit of transparency, my shrinkiness agrees.

Matra had to laugh at that. Alix was a good man and a dear friend-brother, but her response was with less levity. It’s been five years. The load is as light as it’s going to get.

A buzzing sound entered Matra’s awareness in a way that told her it had been present for some time but had gone unnoticed. She looked to Alix. What is that sound?

His expression said he heard it too, his brows furrowing as he turned an ear toward the noise.

It was an odd sound. Like a whining, but definitely not a human, and not an animal. It sounded mechanical.

All at once, Alix’s lips fell open with a shallow gasp, his eyes shooting wide as they landed on her. A drone.

Matra’s stomach fell to her feet. Citizens can’t have drones, can they?

Alix shook his head as he ducked further beneath the trees, grasping Matra’s hand and tugging her along with him. Citizens definitely cannot.

So then—

That’s a police drone.

Fuuuuuuck. The syllable stretched long and low in Matra’s head. What the hell was a police drone doing in their neighborhood?

It won’t be able to see us if we stay beneath the trees, right? he asked in a rush.

Unless it has infrared, she hissed.

All at once, the drone came into view, bringing with it that obnoxious, whining buzz. Matra peered up through the foliage above their heads. She could only see the thing because it was black against a blue-gray sky, and even then, she could only see what bits and pieces of it were visible between the leaves.

Still, it terrified her.

That thing had the ability to identify her.

Or not identify her, as was the case.

Because if it caught sight of her face, it wouldn’t be able to match her to an identity in any database. If it tried to scan her for identification, it wouldn’t find a chip with data on who she was. Alix either, for that matter. Or any of the other non-parents in their family.

In every way that mattered, they didn’t exist.

Chapter 2

Matra

M atra, can you pass me the greens, please?

Matricia!

Matra shook herself. Yeah. Then she stopped short, grimacing at the use of her given name. I’m sorry. What did you need?

Pamela gave her a look of annoyance, her brows raised. The greens.

Greens, got it. Matra reached, took the bin of mixed, deep green lettuce from the counter, and handed it to her mother.

To Pamela.

You’re distracted today, Pamela remarked as she pulled the lid open with a staccato snap!

Just tired I guess, Matra replied. She’d come inside with Alix just twenty minutes ago, but sometimes it took hours for her brain to fully come back online after a double shift in front of the screens.

I hear Audil and Greg are making a lot of progress in the tunnels.

Matra nodded. Good. I heard Leif is helping too.

That’s right, Greg told me that.

A beat of awkward silence.

You ought to let Audil take you on a tour, said Pamela. It would be smart to be familiar with the space, but more than that, you should show interest in what Audil is working on.

Matra had to fight to keep her expression from turning into a sneer, though she supposed part of Pamela’s suggestion had merit. It would be smart for her know more about the tunnels in the event they ever found themselves living under the city.

That drone in the neighborhood today was concerning, Pamela went on. I figure that’s why you’re so distracted.

Oh, yeah, it was, Matra replied. It’s not what had her distracted, though. In fact, she hadn’t given it much thought since coming back inside. She and Alix had waited until the thing appeared to be facing away, then made a run for the house.

It had all been very uneventful in the end.

But letting Pamela believe the aftereffects of the excitement were the cause of her distraction was smart, so she went along with it.

It was certainly a bit of a shock to hear about during the evening parents’ meeting, Pamela went on. She shook her head, pausing after taking a carrot in one hand and a knife in the other. If something had happened to you...

Matra felt her eyes go wide but kept herself busy gathering an apple, a cutting board, and a knife as Pamela continued.

If you’d been seen, imagine the implications to the family. She shook her head and went to cutting the carrot. It’s too much to think about.

Matra’s moment of surprise deflated like a once-overfilled balloon. Her mother never used language that could even be misinterpreted as loving or showing preferential treatment toward her. So why Matra had thought this conversation would have broken with that tradition, she didn’t know. That didn’t mean the sting of knowing you were nothing more than a parent-detached adult to the woman who had birthed you—who you could remember having loved you when you were very young—didn’t register.

No, that revelation stung like a bitch every time she had it.

Twenty minutes later, Matra tried to keep her expression pleasant as she sat at the dinner table while the others filtered in and found their seats.

Hey, I heard you pulled my shift today.

She turned to see Audil taking his place at the table beside her. Yeah. It was nothing.

He gave her thigh a squeeze as he settled in. That had to make for a long day of it. You hold up okay?

She swallowed. They were surrounded by the rest of the family so there was no way to remove his hand without drawing attention. Just fine, thanks.

Callee and Alix were in love. They’d been together for years and nobody knew except Matra, because having a relationship with one of your siblings was considered treason to the family. No matter that almost none of them were related by blood. Vega had her by-blood-sister, Exa, and Nev had a genetically-related older brother, Leif, but other than that there were no shared chromosomes between any of them. Still, Callee and Alix loved each other in secret, while Audil and Matra were expected to love one another by