Tree Of Souls (Transfusion Saga #6) - Stephanie Hudson

Prologue

I Run to You

The second the song came over the radio I cursed that my hands were full and therefore I was unable to turn off the beautiful notes of Lady Antebellum’s ‘I run to you’ quickly enough. It had been nearly two months of banned love songs and as the lyrics seemed to tell my life’s story it was of little wonder why…

‘I run from hate, I run from prejudice, I run from pessimists, but I run too late…I run my life, or is it running me?’

And wasn’t that just the question right now I thought as I struggled to the table with yet another armful of research papers my friend Yosef had given me. Damn my Spotify account recommending songs!

I quickly got to the table only dropping a few scrolls and one book, doing so just as the lyrics continued with…

‘Run from my past, I run too fast, or too slow it seems… when lies become the truth…’

“Yeah, you can say that again!” I said picking up my fallen articles with annoyance and slapping them back on the counter just before grabbing my tablet and turning it off just as the beat kicked up with,

‘That's when I run to you… this world keeps spinning faster, into a new disaster so I run to you…I run to you baby’

“Nope, not now and not ever,” I commented as I killed the music and the second I did, that was when I felt it. Like a presence so powerful it sucked all the energy from the room and left me near gasping for breath. And that difficulty in breathing wasn’t just from the moment you realised that you were no longer alone, but it was more when you realised who it was that stole that solitude from you. Because when you were on the run there was only one being out there you hoped not to find in the room with you…

The hunter.

And I knew my time was up when the first words spoken in that smooth hypnotic voice of his that told me,

“Now that is a shame.”

I sucked in a deep breath, one that felt as though it had the power to suck much more than just the air into my lungs. Which was why I started questioning my sanity the moment I heard it. The voice that I had heard so many times in my dreams. The one that had me crying out his name nearly every night. The one that had me in tears and wishing I could go back. Go back to the beginning, just to relive those perfect moments together. The dreams I had that didn’t include the reasons I ran but only the reasons why I never wanted to. The moments where I was his one and only.

But then I would awaken to my reality. One that told me that I could never go back.

Not after what I knew.

It could never be undone.

So, he became a cruel dream I couldn’t control. He became the dream I longed sleep for as much as I tried to keep myself awake from having it. But now it wasn’t a dream and that cruel temptation was standing in my reality once more. I didn’t know why or how he had found me. I had been so careful. I had left no traces. No breadcrumbs to follow.

Not a single scrap of evidence.

But yet found me, he had.

I knew this the moment I felt that presence behind me stepping closer. A presence so strong that you could do little but feel it. The way it seemed to consume me. Draining me dry of every emotion before emitting back a force powered from the core of what I knew was a stone-cold heart of a Vampire King who had been hunting me.

Well, the hunt was over.

I had been found.

I had been caught.

And the moment I felt those hands take hold of me I knew with his whispered words, words I had forbidden him to ever speak again, that I had also been,

Captured…

“Found at last, my Khuba.”

Lucius

Chapter 1

Fists and Forgiveness

The moment I saw Amelia stepping out from her chosen hiding place it took me just a single look at the devastation on her face to know that the conversation she had heard, hadn’t been the same one spoken. I had even started to quickly replay certain parts of it in my mind, ready to begin to rectify the situation as soon as I first overcame what I knew was her urge to run from