Immanuel's Veins Read Online Free

summer except the summer in Moldavia, Mother said, and Lucine agreed.
    It was said that Mother had once been the very vision of proper behavior under the scrutiny of her first husband, Dimitrie Cantemir. He’d ruled her with an iron fist, she said, and she grew to resent her life. But when Dimitrie had died of pneumonia while she was still pregnant with Lucine and Natasha, she had reportedly become a new woman.
    Mother had waited six months, then she accepted the full benefits of the Cantemir name and wealth left her, gave birth to twin girls, and, as soon as her body allowed it, set out to find a man who would allow her to live a life full of joy, not servitude.
    She and Mikhail Ivanov met a year later and were married in two months, but only on the condition that she be allowed to keep her full name, Kesia Cantemir, and pursue whatever pleasures she wished. For the most part Mikhail lived in a different world, and he rarely accompanied his wife and stepdaughters to Moldavia. At present he was busy conducting his affairs in Kiev.
    Mother taught her twin daughters to embrace the full offering of life, and both Lucine and Natasha had, with more passion than most.
    Lucine was only seventeen when she’d become pregnant. The father remained nameless, because she’d sworn never to think, much less speak, his name again. The thirty-year-old beast swept her off her feet with all the promises any seventeen-year-old might like to hear.
    She’d shoved the memory of what followed to the deepest hiding places in her mind, but it was still there, dulled by time. The way she’d felt a new life grow inside of her belly. The way her passion for this life had found fulfillment in her love for her unborn child.
    Kesia and Natasha had joined her in her delight—it was the Cantemir way. But the brute who’d given her his seed did not share any such pleasure. Lucine grew to detest him, and when she refused to be silent about her passion for this child within her, he flew into a rage, tracked her down, and beat her to within a single breath of death. With a stick of firewood he hit her belly until he was certain no life inside survived the beating.
    She miscarried that night, while she clung to life. She arose from bed two weeks later, tracked down the beast, and took his life with a knife while he slept.
    Then she put the incident behind her and insisted not a word of it be spoken. But she was not the carefree lover of men she had once been.
    Four years had passed, and Lucine longed to be romanced by a true man who would win her for only one kiss if that was all she would give him. A man who would die to protect her.
    Her twin sister, on the other hand, still preferred the wild ones with teeth because she was a ravenous wolf herself. And yet, at times Lucine wondered if they, being twins, were really still one and the same, living within themselves and vicariously through each other. Didn’t a part of her long for the wolf as much as Natasha did?
    â€œ. . . more men than I can possibly consider in one evening,” Natasha was saying.
    â€œWhatever you say, Sister. I—”
    And then Lucine saw the blond man staring up at her.
    â€œWhat is it?” Natasha twisted her head and followed Lucine’s gaze to the courtyard below. “What’s wrong?”
    He was just a man, a soldier of some kind, dressed in an officer’s black suit with short tails, and sporting a black hat. But he was such a fine specimen and he looked at her with such intensity and confidence that she felt immediately ruffled.
    The man with the golden mane removed his hat and, keeping his eyes on hers, bowed.
    Natasha chuckled. “My, my, does he ever clean up.”
    â€œWho is he?”
    â€œOne of the two I was telling you about, sent by the empress herself. That one is named Alek.”
    â€œAlek?”
    â€œAlek Cardei. They arrived an hour ago and were shown to their quarters. I saw them only from a