Born to Bite by Lynsay Sands Page B

an immortal life mate for her sister the nun but merely gestured for him to continue.
    “The convent wasn’t far from our home and I expected her back by dawn, but it was the next night before she returned with a vibrantly healthy Agnes in tow.”
    “She turned her?” Eshe guessed solemnly.
    Armand nodded with a grimace. “I had told her our laws about each only turning one and having only one child every hundred years and so on, and rather than watch helplessly as her sister died, she used her one turn to save Agnes.”
    Eshe nodded silently. Most immortals saved their one turn to turn a mortal who was a life mate. However, Susanna already had a life mate, and obviously hadn’t considered that he might die and she might need that turn someday to turn another life mate in the future. Fortunately for her, that day had never come. Or perhaps it was unfortunate for her, since the only reason it hadn’t come was that she’d died first. Pushing that thought aside, Eshe asked, “And John?”
    “About a month after Susanna brought Agnes home, John arrived. He’d gotten word that Agnes had left the convent and came to see what that was about. He was angry at first, and it took some extra persuasion to calm him.”
    Eshe could tell by Armand’s expression that what he meant by “extra persuasion” was that he’d calmed the man using their special abilities. They had several of them. Immortals could read the minds of mortals, as well as of immortals if they weren’t guarded, but they could also wipe the memories of mortals or put thoughts or even new memories in their minds.
    “He stayed about a week,” Armand continued. “And then the day before he was supposed to leave we all went on a hunt, and he took a terrible tumble from his horse. He broke his neck. I don’t think he would have survived the night if Agnes hadn’t used her one turn on him.”
    “I see,” Eshe murmured, thinking that while the woman probably hadn’t considered it at the time, she’d made a huge sacrifice. But then so had Susanna when she’d turned Agnes, and indeed, as it turned out, so had Armand when he’d turned Susanna. While he had gained a life mate by turning her, he hadn’t gotten to enjoy her for long before he’d lost her.
    “John went home briefly after I’d taught him to hunt and fend for himself, but it was only a matter of weeks before he returned,” Armand continued and explained, “Susanna’s father was a baron too, but John was a second son with no likelihood of inheriting the title or property. He asked to work for me. I knew it was risky having so many of our kind in one place, especially since Susanna was pregnant and there would soon be five of us, but Susanna begged me to let him stay and in the end I said yes.”
    “And they stayed on after Susanna died?” Eshe asked.
    “Yes. Agnes was a great help raising Nicholas, and John was my second. When it was time to move on, I took them with me, and then the next time and the next. By the time I followed the rest of the family here to Canada, I didn’t even ask if they wished to join me. I just assumed they would, and they did.”
    “If Agnes and John were with you, why didn’t Agnes raise Thomas as she had Nicholas?” Eshe asked curiously. “Why did you send Thomas to Marguerite?”
    “They weren’t with me anymore by then,” he explained. “They both moved out when I married Althea. Agnes worried that Althea might be uncomfortable having my first wife’s family around. She also thought as newlyweds we should have time to ourselves, and she said she wanted to visit the old country.”
    “England?” Eshe asked.
    Armand nodded. “John took her back to England and they visited old haunts and then toured the rest of Europe. They returned to Canada when they heard about Althea’s death, but by then I’d already sent Thomas to be with Marguerite.”
    “Why didn’t you just bring him back?” Eshe asked. “Couldn’t Agnes have helped raise him as