By My Choice...: A Valentine's Day Story (Valentine's Day Stories) by Christine Blackthorn

the seam of her bra and there was no way to blame the cold for their engorged state. If anything, the room as too warm, her skin too hot. Every inch of her body, of her mind, seemed to yearn for something. But she still needed him to say the words, needed him to take away the last vestige of escape for what she suspected was too horrible to contemplate.  
    “You are an ErGer, a Bloodhaven.”
    There it was, out in the open, and though it was preposterous, the magnitude of the declaration nevertheless robbed her of her breath. An ErGer, one of the almost mythical power nex ū s. Though most races could produce them, they were so rare, and so rarely survived to adulthood, that much was still unknown about them. It was assumed their innate ability to unite the most disparate courts, their capacity to call forth the deepest loyalty from sworn enemies was a result of some ancient genetic mutation, or of inbreeding with a race long since disappeared from this earth. It mattered little, there was no real medical research on it as none of the existing ErGer’s Lords were willing to allow anyone close to their prize. There was the rumour of an unattached Bloodhaven on the run, but most held this to be the paranormal version of an urban myth.  
    An ErGer was the most powerful tool a Lord could acquire and therefore they were coveted and jealously guarded. For an outsider it would seem strange that the ability to concentrate loyalty, to create a feeling of home so strong the members of a court would be willing to sacrifice all for it, would be so highly praised in a society in which most was based on pure strength and power. But there is little more powerful than loyalty. Furthermore, there are few things any being would not do in the pursuit of happiness, even if that happiness was merely a limitless sensation of belonging and an illusion of safety. Though what made the ErGer so useful to any Lord was that the loyalty it created was not centred on the ErGer but rested with the Master holding the bond. And there was no need for reciprocity. There was no need for the ErGer to feel any form of happiness, or even safety, for their owner to reap the rewards of their mere presence. Fate’s cruel sense of humour.  
    One of the reasons why the ErGer were so rare was the way the genetic mutation made itself known. At the same time as paranormals became able to sense their rare nature, they became immune to any form of mind control of forced bondings and their blood became addictive, not just to vampires but all paranormals. Most bled out, torn apart by courts who had desperately wanted to own them. The first documented example of an ErGer was St Valentine. In honour of his tragic life the one day in which an ErGer’s hormone levels made bonding a certainty, the one day their mental shields were undermined leaving them open and without any inhibitions, was named St Valentine’s Day. An ErGer on Valentine’s day became a maniac, a being at mercy of its own body’s urges, sexually demanding without reason and if unable to fulfil that need, violent towards itself.  
    An ErGer’s only chance to survive was a strong bond with a paranormal able to protect them against all others and that bond came, as was rumoured, with the absolute subjugation of the ErGer’s will to that of the one holding said bond. An ErGer bonded to a master on Valentine’s Day never recovered the mental shields, utterly dependent on a Lord who more often than not broke their mind for the power they presented. No one knew for sure as the few ErGer known to exist were jealously guarded, rarely seen outside their courts. And he thought she was an ErGer? Impossible. More than impossible — and not just because she could not imagine a worse fate. He was overlooking one pertinent point, one fact which would refute his assertion of her state as ErGer. With all her strength she held on to the hope in that omission:
    “I am twenty-nine years of age. I cannot be an ErGer, I