The Hunger Saga

by Tyranni Thomas

  “You just gonna hold the door down all night? Get the fuck in here. Get out of that shit before you catch your death.” He scoffed.

  My slow, confused glance was met with a snort.

  “That honor is mine,” he said, with a smile that made me veer my path to the fireplace, purposely keeping a bit of distance between us. It wasn’t like it mattered. The bastard could move faster than I could blink.

  “That’s right. See that you don’t forget it,” he quipped.

  And . . . he can apparently read minds.

  “Correct,” Dom answered.

  I stood slack-jawed, frozen where I had once been in the processes of gathering my shirt to remove it.

  “But . . .,” I couldn’t really wrap my head around it, “why did you let it happen?”

  He turned and stole my breath without any effort at all.

  Fuck! Breathe. Relax.

  “You know you don’t have to tell yourself to do that. I mean you either will or you won’t. Worst case scenario, you pass out and wake up a few minutes later.” He laughed. “I promise, I’ll be right here waiting.”

  “You knew . . . all that time.” I struggled to process. “You knew about my feelings for your brother.”

  He shrugged and smiled at me like I was being a simple-minded mortal, as he called us.

  “What of it? You have feelings?” He smiled and shook his head. “I can drain you of those, if I choose. Why would I be threatened by them?”

  I tried to tear my gaze away, to focus on the fire, the wall, anything, but that knowing stare.

  He stepped closer and ran his hand low against my side. I sucked in air and shifted, instinctively trying to avoid the subtle tickle. My efforts to avoid it only made me lurch towards him. An amused sound was snuffed in his throat and he started to slowly peel at my shirt.

  I had to force myself not to cling to it. The minute my hands were free of the sleeve, I tried to hug myself. He must have expected it, because he stopped me before I could even fold my arms.

  I had just gotten rid of the goosebumps when he ran his hands up and down my back, unnerving me further. When he finished, he stepped away from me, and sat down on the arm of the sofa.

  My stomach flipped. I knew what time it was.

  “Now’s your chance . . .” He canted his head and tsked.

  I had to lick my lips a few times before I could manage to ask, “For what?”

  “To run.” He cut his eyes toward the door and then back to me.

  “Right,” I defeatedly whispered.

  “Go,” he said a bit firmer. “See how far you make it before I tell them you’re gone in the morning.”

  I put my head down and tried to reason past the double dose of adrenaline that was threatening to give me a stroke.

  “I can’t,” I whispered, knowing damn good and well that Queen of the Dark Ones or not, my mother would be excommunicated if I refused. I’d be next, once they found me.

  “What’s that?” he asked, a bit louder and much more pointedly.

  I stood up a bit straighter, and my breath caught when I forced myself to look into his dark green eyes.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I shakily managed, after the longest pause of my life.

  “Mm,” He quipped, with a tight smile and a somber nod of his head. “Right then. Pretu.”

  Cold sweat broke out around my neck, chills ran down my back, and those fucking goosebumps flushed so quickly I jerked on a gasp.

  He crooked his finger and wiggled it, before pointing to the ground. I started to bring my arms up to cover myself but was quickly met with a fierce. “Aht.”

  I took a step. Then another. It seemed like an eternity before I made it to the center of the room. Once I was there my whole brain went blank. I stood there staring at him until his gaze pointedly dropped to my pants.

  Fuck!

  I willed myself not to panic and tried my best not to think about anything in particular.

  “You spend too much time in your head,” Dom announced, before sliding from the sofa. I instinctively shifted to retreat, until I saw the way his head cocked in warning.

  I put my foot back down and applied as much of my weight as I could.

  “Even now, you’re desperately trying to hide the fact that your legs are shaking.”

  I swallowed hard and closed my eyes. There was nowhere else to hide. He snuffed a bit of laughter on a grunt and with a blink he was nose to nose with me.

  I cried out, fully expecting my throat to be ripped open.

  “Silly mortal.” Dom laughed. “I don’t have to kill you to feed. Your life source bubbles right to the surface. You’ve an aura that could brighten even the darkest of shadows.”

  I caved my shoulders and cowered from his menacing words, only to realize a few moments later, that he had pushed my hands aside to re-fasten my pants rather than take them off. I stared down, incredulous, only to have my hair grasped and my head jerked back without warning.

  “I looked the other way, when it came to physically sharing you. . . . I will not look the other way when it comes to sharing your energy.” His tongue ran hot over the two puncture marks that Julie had made.

  Before I could draw my shoulder to my ear, he had flown from the cabin, leaving me alone and confused once again. Only this time, I was grateful.

  Chapter Twelve

  Jaysen

  I’d been his unsired prisoner for two days. At least the rain stopped long enough for us to sit outside a while. I was so sick of those four cabin walls. Dom yawned and slammed the axe down again. The log split with ease and he used his foot to knock the remaining piece off the block.

  The Oracle had said that I would die if he fed off me directly, but then again, she’d also been singing all types of crazy shit about my future. I was pretty sure she only said it to keep Angel happy and to keep me alive.

  “I thought giving you time to calm down and accept things might make all this a little easier for you, but I see you’re one of those that stews on things.”

  “Ar . . . are you really going to? I mean, even though she said it would kill me?”

  “You don’t seem to think she was being honest, why should I?” He smiled and pointed to the bare patch of dirt. It was just dry enough to hold weight.

  I’d been with him long enough to know not to dally. I made my way to the place he’d pointed and wiggled out of my shirt.

  When I glanced up again, he was posted up on the handle of his axe like it was a cane.

  “Pretu,” he stressed.

  “Oh,” I whispered, realizing that my delusions were over with. He hadn’t changed his mind, and my fate clearly had not changed. I was so stupid for having thought that being sentenced to fate was anything but what it was meant to be, a death sentence.

  I fumbled with my pants and cursed my introvert nature. I’d never really been comfortable with the skin I was in. I wasn’t ripped like my brother, or the tall, skinny type either. I was just a little stocky and a lot shy.

  He spun the axe like a wheel, showing off with it a second before he smacked it into the block. There it remained. He came close to me, and I knew with just one peek at his face, that there wouldn’t be any mercy this time.

  My time was up.

  He hooked a thumb on either side of my waist and pulled pants and boxers both down with one quick haul. I flinched to cover myself, and he caught my arms.

  “Step out of them,” he ordered, before carrying a few pieces of wood to the firepit in front of me. He stoked the fire and played with the positioning of his logs until it caught. Then, he went to the side of the cabin, and I noticed for the first time, a long row of what looked like fire pokers. Each one had a different-sized shape on the end. It wasn’t until he brought it back and laid it, emblem side to the fire that I realized what he meant to do.

  “Dom . . .,” I quietly began, even though I knew it had to be done. It was what differentiated us from those who fed the masses.

  “Hm?” he as
ked, before glancing back toward me. I’d long since settled on my knees, spreading them just so and was doing my best to keep my chin up, even though I didn’t want him reading my expression.

  He was privy to enough, surely, he could afford me some small dignity.

  My mind started to play tricks on me. I swore I could smell his last victim’s flesh being burnt away from the iron. Every nerve in my body was alive and screaming in anticipation.

  No matter how many times he’d snatched me by the hair, it wasn’t a sensation I could get used to. I’d been tender-headed my whole life. Unfortunately, it seemed my groans and gasps fueled him. He took a good hold this time and started to tip me backward.

  “Catch yourself,” he warned, giving me permission to use my hands. It left my body bowed and at his mercy. Dom was tall, over six foot with long arms that easily reclaimed the iron.

  “Dom!” I panicked, only to feel his lips on mine.

  It scared the hell out of me. About the time it started to feel nice, he bit me and pulled back.

  “Be brave, you got this.”

  Only I didn’t have it. While he tried to carefully align to the lower side of my pelvis, I curled my stomach away from the heat, and shivered with dread.

  “Be still,” he said, and just as I started to apologize, he stuck that miserable iron to my skin. Cold chills shot through me, only to be chased by panic and excruciating pain. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. The sound stuck in my throat and tears welled in my eyes.

  I didn’t realize it was over, until I heard the iron clank against the firepit again.

  “Why did you mark me, if you can’t have me?” I asked once I had stopped making all those pitiful noises and trusted my voice not to waver.

  “I need to explain myself to you now?” he mused, with that unnerving smile.

  “I . . . no!” I quickly answered, when all the play fell from his features.

  “You’re wide open . . .” Dom snorted. “That’s scarier than anything I could ever be.”

  I stared, blinking. I’d been certain he was about to hurt me.

  “You know why people think I’m so cold? It’s because I have walls. No one gets my energy. Not unless I give it to them,” Dom declared, with all the confidence of an Executioner. “I’m not their fucking beacon. I’m stingy. You need to be stingy, too, or you’re going to drain yourself before I get a chance to.”

  I didn’t mean to, but I pulled my shoulder up and shrank from him a bit. His hand shot out like lightning and reclaimed it none too gently, forcing me to confront him.

  “I mean it. You have to learn boundaries. You’re a fountain of energy . . .” His tone ebbed with concern, it almost sounded like pleading.

  “What do you mean?”

  I wasn’t a fountain of energy. I was a depressed, anxious mess.

  “Yeah, you’re that, too.” He laughed, and the man who had just marked me for life, tossed a wink like nothing had happened at all. “. . . But first and foremost, you were born of his line. You’re Fae.”

  I shook my head and scoffed, finally stressed past the point of sanity, “She only said that, so you wouldn’t kill me.”

  Why would I say that? Maybe I wanted him to. Maybe part of me was just resigned to the fact that I was going to die one way or another at this man’s hands, and I was tired of anticipating the hour.

  His hand shot to my throat, and he leaned in and patiently ran his tongue over my pulse point. Even my soul shuddered.

  “Dare me again . . .,” he whispered against my saliva-slickened flesh.

  I couldn’t have if I wanted to. My lungs stopped working, and I was pretty sure if this kept on, my heart was soon to follow.

  “Mm. Do you know how high I just got off of you and your mortal emotions?” he whispered, rubbing his face against my neck until his lips were perched against my earlobe. “Wide. Fucking. Open.”

  I shot both hands out and shoved him squarely in the chest. It took him and me both completely by surprised. My eyes widened with the realization of what I’d done, and my lungs suddenly went into overdrive, sucking in air.

  “Dom, please!” I cried, fighting the urge to draw my arms up and defend myself. Thankfully, he was still on his tangent about me being wide open.

  “You don’t even miss what energy I take.” He scoffed and waved his arm like it was plain to see. “It’s only darkness, the emotions you would call negative ones, but still it fuels me. If I were here to hurt you, you’d have psychically given me the bullets.”

  What the fuck else was new? People had been taking or preparing to take from me my whole life. How could anyone blame me if I no longer noticed.

  “Do you enjoy it? Because if you like being blindly robbed, I’ll happily leave you to it . . .,” Dom taunted.

  “Get out of my head!” I shrieked.

  “Get out of my head,” he mocked in a shrill feminine voice. Then his eyes narrowed until they were nothing more than snake slits. “I wish someone would try to go into my head. I’d let them! I’d let them crawl right in and get comfortable. Then I’d show them things they could never forget. Things that would torment them so deeply that even sleep wouldn’t provide an escape.”

  I stared at him, speechless and disgusted. I had no doubt he could do it.

  “Close your eyes,” he said, without raising his voice from that low gravel.

  I swallowed hard and did what he said.

  “Now claim your space. Acknowledge and claim this piece of land you sit on.”

  My eyes shot open, and I raised a brow. His face fell and his gaze settled on me without amusement. It remained there until I closed my eyes and focused once again.

  “Picture an anchor dropping to the center of this earth and holding you firmly in place.”

  I did as he said and visualized a long rope shooting out of my feet and latching on tight to the core of the earth.

  “Now the space above,” he instructed. “You know how it feels when your cheek is in the sun. That warmth.”

  I nodded without opening my eyes.

  “Picture a hula hoop around you, and all the sun’s warmth and light is around you in the hula hoop. Nothing gets in without you saying so. Nothing goes out. It is yours. Claimed.”

  It was weird, I started to feel a subtle pressure and warmth on my back and around my arms.

  “Good. Now keep your eyes closed and hold it. Just maintain it. That small circle. You don’t need much. In fact, the more space you claim, the more energy it will require.”

  I did as he asked. At first, I was afraid it’d stop if I didn’t aggressively focus on it.

  “Hold. I’m going to test it.”

  A finger touched my head and pushed it back ever so gently. When I opened my eyes, Dom was standing some ten feet away manipulating a finger in the air.

  “Try again.”

  I closed my eyes and anchored. Then I set up the ring of light. This time, I felt something pressing, challenging my space. I clenched my muscles and pushed back.

  “There! There, it’s yours, do not cower to it.”

  I opened my eyes again and was promptly shoved to the wall. Rather than a finger, he’d been shoving my circle with his whole hand!

  Chapter Thirteen

  Dom

  He was a natural. Julie was right. He was so fucking sweet and delicious. Almost pure fae. The rumors, deemed ridiculous back then, were, indeed, true. He was the son of Talon. Not that I made any move to enlighten him. Why the fuck would I? Talon sure hadn’t. The bastard was my best friend, and he had denied the rumors to my face, for nearly two decades now!

  I sucked my lips and stared at his throat. His veins were beautiful . . . nearly virgin. Damn that oracle! Why did she have to be a such a greedy bitch? It wasn’t right, having a pretty face like hers on such a dishonorable Dark One. Sure, we were all monsters in our own right, but we had codes. It was what separated us from the Lost Ones.

  The ones who had lost so much of themselves to the shadow that they
were no longer human. Some of them never had been. Not that I was one to talk. At least they knew what they were. There had been those before them that set the way. No one had ever invoked the energy I had. They weren’t prepared for me, most of them thought I would die during the conjuring.

  Martyred. That’s what they called it, when a person died in ways that were unspeakable.

  Killing another Dark One is the most heinous of unspeakable acts.

  I stared at the mortal before me. My mortal. My harvest, and something in me, resonated with him. If anyone knew what he was, he, too, would have been martyred.

  I guessed I couldn’t fault Talon too much for keeping him a secret. He had to have known that when he reached his harvest age I’d find out. It was almost ironically the mother of all gifts. By keeping him safe, and keeping the secret from me, he’d allowed the progeny’s power to age like a fine wine.

  Man, fuck Julie!

  At least she hadn’t drained him. She hadn’t completed the harvest. There was still a bit of sweetness in him. I just had to find a buffer to get it out. The entire idea of it infuriated me further.

  “Dom?” a tearful voice called from behind us. I spun and hissed on instinct, blowing my pupils so fast it hurt.

  The poor familiar screamed. A high-pitched sound that echoed through the forest around us.

  “There’s . . . there’s been a martyr, sire!” She hit the mud near my feet and started sobbing and babbling about mercy. That one word saved her wretched life. Martyr, not mercy.

  I was five the last time I heard it uttered out of the mouth of anything that still had a mortal heartbeat. Reaching down, I snatched her by both underarms. Then, I plucked her up none too gently and glared at the snot-faced woman.

  “Who? Martyred how?” Someone would pay. I’d see to it. These types of things became full blown epidemics if they weren’t snuffed out immediately.

  “Dom. Dom it ain’t her fault,” Jaysen quietly bid.

  I settled down, until the darkness cleared, and I could see the messenger’s twisted, terrified face.