Read Ensnared by the Dream Lord (Dark Lords) for Free Online

suffering.  I will try on the morrow to be better.”
     
    He sniffed and cleared his throat.  The chair scraped the floor as he stood.  He bent over her and kissed her temple before straightening.  “There’s my beautiful girl.  Try to get some rest.  We’ll take a ride tomorrow and see the countryside.  You’ll enjoy that.”
     
    He moved quietly across the room and closed the door behind him.
     
    Poor Father, he had no idea what she was going through, and she couldn’t bear to tell him the truth.  Far better to play at being her normal self than to break his heart, she thought.  One broken heart in the keep was enough.
     
    Hardly had he gone when a chill wind burst through her window, fluttering the curtains and knocking out the fragile candle flame.  Adriana had rolled over to relight it when a voice stopped her.
     
    “Are you the maiden, Adriana Bordeaux, sister to Lady Cerise Erlansson, wife of Lord Daegon Erlansson?”
     
    She whipped around with a gasp to see a man standing inside her room.  The window curtains streamed around him in a brisk and sudden wind, as if he conjured the very air to his command.
     
    “Who are you?” she demanded, jumping off the bed to her feet.  “I’ll scream if you come closer!”
     
    He snapped his fingers and the candle lit, burning with a flame many times brighter than normal.  In the light he appeared normal, but the air sizzled with magic.  The scent of lightning permeated the room.
     
    His black hair remained still despite the tendrils of wind creeping around him into the room—another sign of magic if ever she’d seen one.
     
    He was handsome, but that did not mean she should trust him. 
     
    He smiled as if reading her thoughts.  “You can be no other than that she-cat’s sister.  I am Drago Kadar.  Your sister’s husband persuaded me to come to your rescue.”
     
    Adriana regarded him with suspicion, but her movement toward the door eased.  “How am I to know you tell the truth?”
     
    “She expected this.”  He removed a wax sealed missive from the inside of his jacket, tossing it onto the bed.
     
    Adriana snatched it up and backed away again, scanning the contents quickly lest the move prove to be a trick.  As she quickly read, though, she saw he told the truth.  Cerise, worried over her stay in the tower, had persuaded her husband to find a man capable of bringing Adriana safely to her husband’s lands.
     
    Oh how she wanted to go!  She desperately needed her sister’s guidance.  Though Cerise had ever been headstrong, some help was better than nothing at all.  And Cerise had succumbed to her own dark lord only months before, as had Bianca, the eldest.  They would both empathize with her torment.
     
    But Morpheus … what if he should come and she had gone…?  “I wish I could, but I dare not.”
     
    Drago frowned.  “Why not?”
     
    She would have to tell him so that he could inform her sister, she quickly realized.  There was no other choice.  She didn’t want to risk this man’s discovery by going down into the castle in the middle of the night to search for quill, ink, and paper.  “I must await Morpheus’ return.”
     
    His brows lifted in surprise and more than a little disapproval.  “Morpheus Dragunas?”
     
    Adriana tensed.  “Yes.”
     
    “I know the name well.  You have summoned him before?  And he answered?”
     
    A sick feeling invaded her stomach.  Something in his look and tone of voice boded ill.  “I have.  He has come to me many times.  How do you know so much?”
     
    “All men of Hellsing realm know his name.  You must not call him again.  If it is as you say and he has come many times before it can only mean that you are his weakness.  ‘Tis death that awaits his return.  Morpheus Dragunas cannot fall in love with a mortal woman.”
     
    Pain and dread enveloped her at that, but also disbelief and suspicion.  She frowned, shaking her head.  “You’re