Vampire Mage 3: An Urban Fantasy Harem (The Vampire Mage) Read online

  Copyrighted Material

  Vampire Mage 3 Copyright © 2019 by Joshua King

  Book design and layout copyright © 2019 by Joshua King

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Joshua King.

  1st Edition

  http://joshuakingbooks.com/

  Sign Up For Updates

  For updates about new releases, sign up for the mailing list below. You’ll know as soon as I release new books, including my upcoming new series, as well as sequels to Vampire Mage.

  Click here to sign up.

  You can also join the Harem Nation Facebook group where I hang out with Daniel Pierce and Mark Albany.

  Click here to join.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Sign Up For Updates

  About the Author

  Vampire Mage 3

  Book 3 in the Vampire Mage Series

  Joshua King

  1

  Everything was exactly the same. I wanted it to be different. I wanted something to stand out to signify everything that had changed. Maybe a nice big neon sign that said "Gotcha" across the wall. But nothing had changed. Everything in the room was exactly the way I remembered it. It looked just like it did years ago, the last time it was really my room. I always thought it was strange my parents had kept my bedroom the way I had left it when I went to college and then headed out on my own. I thought they would be like other parents and have some sort of celebratory emptying of the room as soon as my butt hit the driver's seat and I drove to college. Maybe they would transform it into a sitting room for my mother or a gym for my father that would eventually become an avant-garde closet when he tossed clothes over the forgotten exercise equipment. None of that happened. Instead, the room looked like I had just finished packing and was still saying goodbye before heading to the dorm. My bed was even still made in the slightly haphazard way I left it.

  "Are you all right?"

  I looked to my side as Aurora stepped up beside me. She ran one comforting hand over my back as she stared into my room with me.

  "It's exactly like I left it," I said.

  She nodded.

  "It looks like it."

  "But why? Why would they keep it like this?"

  "Because we wanted you to know you always have a home with us."

  My mother stepped into the room and I rolled my eyes.

  "Why don't we get the rest of them in here with us and we can have a slumber party?" I snapped.

  I was angry and defensive to the point that the shock of sadness in my mother's eyes didn't even affect me.

  "Hayden, stop," Aurora said. "This isn't Molly's fault."

  I shot her a glare.

  "Really?" I asked. "I'm sorry if I can't go along with that, considering she's the one who's been lying to me my entire life. Her and Dad." I scoffed. "Maybe I shouldn't even be calling him that anymore."

  "Now, you can stop right there," Mom said, suddenly going into her best mama bear mode. "I know you're angry and confused, but you're not going to talk that way about the man who has raised you from the time you were a baby."

  I stepped further into the room and gestured around.

  "I just don't understand why you kept it like this," I said. "What was the point?"

  "What do you mean?" Mom asked.

  "It's all a lie," I said.

  "A lie?" Aurora asked.

  "None of this is me. Not really. None of this is the life I was supposed to have. It's like I'm in someone else's room, like you kept it as a show."

  "For who?" Mom asked.

  "You tell me," I said. "Who would care about these things? Who's going to care about my high school yearbooks or my football uniform from senior year? Who's going to care about my trophies or the science fair ribbon you insisted on having framed?"

  She looked at me, stung.

  "We had that ribbon framed because you worked so hard on that project and it was amazing. You won first place in the entire district, Hayden. We were so proud of you."

  "What did you do for your project?" Aurora asked under her breath.

  I glared at her.

  "I really don't think that's what we need to be focusing on right now," I said. She shrugged, and I looked around my room again. "It's all a lie," I said to her. "All of it. My entire life is a lie. Nothing I ever believed about myself or where I came from is true. What little there is to know or believe, of course, considering my lack of memories from when I was little. Is that another part of this? Something else you're not telling me? Did you or Dad do something to me so I wouldn't remember anything about being a very young child? You didn't want me to remember my real past?"

  Mom stared at me for a few seconds, her eyes like storms in her pale face.

  "Come with me," she said.

  She left the room and we followed her into the living room where my father and Ty sat on the couch, leaning toward one another and muttering under their breaths. They were so caught up in their conversation they didn't look up when we stopped in front of them.

  "Owen," my mother said sharply.

  "What's wrong, honey?" my father asked, looking up at her.

  Mom gestured at me.

  "Why don't you ask your son?" she said.

  "What do you mean?" Dad asked.

  "It's been twenty-eight years, Owen. Twenty-eight years of us hoping he wasn't going to find out and wondering what would happen if he did. Now he's standing in our home, the home he has always known as his, saying his entire life was a lie. This needs to be handled. Now."

  "A lie?" Dad asked, standing up. "What do you mean, Hayden?"

  "Look around you, Dad," I said. "Does this really look like the life I was supposed to have? All of this is fake. My whole life was made up."

  "That isn't true," Dad said. "That is absolutely not true. What you lived is your life. It might not be the one you would have lived if you had remained in the Underworld with your birth parents, but it is absolutely your life. We are your foster parents and we really did take you in when you were a very small baby, just as any other foster parents would. We might not be fully human, but that doesn't change our relationship or our purpose in taking you in."

  "He thinks we did something to him to make him not remember when he was a young child," Mom said.

  I felt like I was being scolded for rough-housing outside and tearing the knees out of
my pants. But considering this was a conversation they should have had with me when I was a kid, maybe they were just going with it the best they could.

  "That's ridiculous," Dad said. "Hayden, you were an infant. Only a few days old. We didn't need to do anything to you to make you not remember your birth parents or being in the Underworld. You weren't going to remember them anyway. I don't know why you don't have any more memories of when you were a little boy, but I can promise you, we were a family. We raised you and protected you. You went to school and we made you do your homework. We supported you in pursuing the goals you made for yourself and we punished you when you were out of line. There was nothing about your life that was any different than any other child growing up around here, and that was the point. We didn't want you to have anything different, or to think that you were unusual in any way. In our minds, you weren't, and we never intended you to be. You were our child. That was all that mattered."

  "Then why didn't you ever adopt me?" I asked. "You never even mentioned it."

  I already knew the answer, but I wanted them to say it. I wanted to hear the confirmation.

  "We couldn't," Mom said. "We didn't have the right paperwork to go through with an adoption. We had the option of having a birth certificate made that would make it seem like you were ours biologically, but we didn't think that was right."

  "Why?" I asked. "If you didn't even plan on telling me who I really am, why would it matter to you if people thought I was actually yours?"

  "You were actually ours. You still are. Just because we didn't conceive you and I didn't give birth to you doesn't mean you aren't our son. But the reality of it is you were taken. That's something none of us can get around. You did have other parents and another life, and neither of us wanted to completely obliterate that from existence. We agreed from the very beginning not to tell you about your past because we didn't think you needed to have that hanging over you. But the idea of pretending it didn't exist seemed disrespectful to you and to the family you left behind. Your father and I chose to give up the world we lived in and the promise of the life we thought we would have by not undergoing our transformations because we didn't want to be under Darian anymore. We had seen enough of what he was capable of and knew there was so much more to come." She looked at Aurora. "I'm sorry, Aurora," she said. "I know he's still your father."

  Aurora squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. She shook her head slightly.

  "It's all right," she said. "I'm quickly learning that he isn't the man I thought he was. You know as well as anyone else that he and I were never particularly close when I was younger. Our relationship has changed over the years, but I'm figuring out that he is far more manipulative and controlling than I ever could have imagined. I realize I'm not immune to that manipulation. I don't know everything he's done, but I trust if you say there was reason for you to make such an extreme choice, it must be true."

  Dad nodded and took over where Mom had left off.

  "When we made that choice, there was no turning back. We knew that was a final point, an ending for the life we had been leading. Once we decided not to undergo our transformation and leave the Underworld, we did it without hesitation, and without the intention of ever looking back. We walked out of that life and took on this one and have been living as humans ever since. Only a very select few in the Underworld knew what happened to us, and the people here don't know anything about our previous life. That was why Ty chose us. He knew we would be able to raise you with the understanding of at least some of the issues you might face, and protect you in case anyone identified you, but also that it was extremely unlikely anyone would ever figure it out. To the vast majority of the Underworld, we were simply gone. There was no reason to think about us or to think we might have anything to do with a plan that happened years after we were last heard from."

  "Why did you agree to raise me?" I asked. "If you wanted nothing to do with the Underworld or anything going on in it, why would you agree to take in a baby from there?"

  "We didn't think we would ever have anything to do with the Underworld again," Mom said. "That was part of the agreement we made. It wasn't an easy decision. I don't ever want you to think it was easy for us to just walk away from everything we knew and completely change everything we ever considered for our lives. We thought for a long time about it and tried to come up with as many different options as we could. Eventually, we knew the only choice if we were going to leave was to cut ties with that world. We didn't think we would even stay in touch with the people there, but a limited few found out about our plans and helped us when we relocated. They promised they would never say anything to anyone, and they stayed true to their word. We never stepped foot in the Underworld again, and we didn't even communicate with those who knew we were still alive. Not until Ty showed up with you and told us what happened. As soon as we saw you, we knew you were the child we were meant to have. We had wanted to be parents for so long, but we couldn't have any of our own. It wasn't safe. But that didn't change our desire to have a child. When Ty brought you to us, it was immediately obvious you were that child. You were another victim of Darian and had been taken from the life you were supposed to have. There was no way you were ever going to be able to be raised in the Underworld. It would have been too easy for them to figure out who you were and come after you. We didn't take you from your life, Hayden. It wasn't us that stopped you from being able to know the Underworld. We set out to give you the very best life we could, knowing you had no choice but to try to live normally."

  2

  “Was there ever a time when you thought about telling me?” I asked. “I know when I first got here and I was just a baby, it was probably really easy to just put it all aside and not think about what kind of life I might have had ahead of me if I had stayed in the Underworld, but what about when I got older? When I really started to become my own person and think about what my future might hold, did you ever stop to think even for a second that maybe you should be honest with me?”

  “That's where you're wrong,” Dad said. “It wasn't easy to just put it all aside and not think about what kind of life you might have had ahead of you when you first got here. That was never something either one of us could have imagined. Yes, you were just a tiny baby, but neither one of us believed you were just a blank slate. We were both fully aware of who you were, and what that meant for your future. There was never a day of your life when your birthright didn't cross our minds. From the very second Ty showed up here with you, and told us what happened, we knew you were our child, but I also knew that we had a tremendous responsibility. Ty didn't just hand you over to us and say ‘here, make sure he grows up.’ That wasn't the point. He brought you to us because he knew we were the ones who were going to be able to raise you properly and protect you throughout your life. We thought about your future and what it could be every single day of your life. And that's exactly why it was never even a thought in our minds that we would tell you about your birth or why you came to be with us. We talked about your family all the time. We talked about your parents and who you were supposed to be. We imagined what your life would have been like if you had been able to live as they had imagined you to live.”

  “If you imagined all that, why did you never tell me? What was so horrible about the life my parents would have intended for me that you couldn't bring yourself to tell me the truth?”

  “Nothing,” Mom said. “That's the point. There was nothing about the life your parents would have wanted you to live that we would have wanted to keep you from. But that life wasn't available to you anymore. From the second Darian got it in his mind that he was going to take you, that life was gone. There was never a possibility you were going to be able to be the prince you should have been because he never would have allowed that. Ty knew that, and that's why you ended up here with us. No one was going to be able to convince the Prime that his plan was not going to work, and no one was going to be able to protect you. Not in the Underworld. If
you stayed there, your fate was sealed. You would never survive long enough to enjoy the type of life they would have wanted you to have, and if you did survive, it would be in the servitude of the Prime. Coming here wasn't about taking you away from your life. It was about making sure you had one.”

  “Did you ever worry they were going to find me here?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?” Dad asked.

  “You keep talking about how dangerous the Underworld is, and that the only thing that kept me alive was being here. So, did you ever worry people were going to come after me?”

  My foster parents exchanged glances. It was the kind of look people who have been married for years can exchange that speaks a whole conversation without a single word being uttered. It was the same kind of look they gave each other when I wanted to know in third grade why I couldn't have the five dogs that would make me so happy, or whether they thought I was ever going to be able to play football again after my injury. When it was about the dogs, the look was a silent argument about which one of them was going to be the mean parent to turn down my carefully drawn up proposal featuring bar charts and a chore wheel illustrating just how those five dogs would be easily cared for, even in our small suburban home. The second time it was a much more difficult look to see. That day they exchanged glances full of pain and reluctance. Neither one of them wanted to accept the severity of my injury, or the tremendous and horrifying impact it had on my future. Even more than that, they didn't want to have to be the ones to confirm it to me. They knew just as well as I did that I would never see a football field again. They knew as soon as my body hit the grass that day, the hopes I had of a successful future were over, but they didn't want to look into my eyes and tell me that. The glances they exchanged were a debate. When to tell me. If to tell me. Who had to tell me.