by Larissa Ione
Fuck. This.
As the sole of Tseeveyo’s boot filled Hunter’s vision, a death blow that would have crushed his skull, Hunter rolled. He snapped his hand out, catching Tseeveyo’s ankle with a tug that brought the son of a bitch down into the snow, which had grown slushy with their mixed blood.
But as Hunter shoved to his knees, his injured leg buckled again under his weight, the ice beneath his knee sending him sliding down a gully with NightShade’s chief scrambling after him. Tseeveyo’s hand clamped around Hunter’s throat as he pinned him to the icy ground.
“You fucking whelp!” Tseeveyo snarled. “I knew Bear Roar. He was powerful. Strong.” His fist slammed into Hunter’s skull so hard he saw stars and heard bells. “He would be ashamed of you.”
Invoking Hunter’s father’s name was like summoning a demon, and deep inside Hunter’s chest, an evil shadow flickered to life. Even as Tseeveyo lifted Hunter to his feet by his throat, he smiled, feeling an ice storm gathering overhead.
Suddenly, they were wrapped in a tornadic blizzard so fierce that frost formed on the other male’s eyebrows, his lashes, even his lips, which turned pale blue as he tried to squeeze the breath from Hunter’s body.
“My father’s . . . shame . . . makes me . . . proud.”
Summoning his last, desperate breath and taking a page straight from his father’s book of dirty tricks, Hunter whipped a blade from the sheath at his back and drove it deep into Tseeveyo’s groin.
Tseeveyo screamed, then screamed again when Hunter yanked the knife upward, slicing through the bastard’s balls as if coring an apple.
“That’s for every one of your child-brides,” Hunter snarled.
Tseeveyo threw himself backward, gripping his crotch as blood spurted between his fingers. Eyes wide with pain and horror, he scrambled, stumbling, away from Hunter. The bastard could try to get away, but Hunter was the predator now, and he’d tasted his prey’s blood. His fear.
And he could smell death coming.
The knife was slippery with blood, but Hunter gripped it like a lover he would never let go.
Like Aylin.
With every step closer to Tseeveyo, he relished the male’s terror. He knew he should be horrified at his own bloodlust, but Tseeveyo was a monster who deserved to die a far worse death than Hunter was going to give him.
The male stumbled over a broken branch and fell awkwardly to the ground, his skin growing ashen as blood loss took its toll.
All around, humans and vampires were fighting, but Hunter ignored it all, allowing only a tiny portion of his senses to alert him to anyone who came too close as he crouched over the fallen chief.
Something flashed in the corner of his eye. One of Tseeveyo’s mates, a girl with a black eye and a swollen cheek, peered at them from behind a tent flap, her gaze filled with hatred for the bastard on the ground.
For a moment, Hunter watched her, waiting to see if she was going to fight for her mate, but her eyes caught his, and in them he saw encouragement and victory.
“I’d like to cut off your dick and shove it down your throat, you sick fuck,” Hunter growled, “but that’s what my father would do, and I’m nothing like him.” With that, he brought his blade swiftly across Tseeveyo’s throat, opening it from ear to ear.
Behind the tent flap, the female acknowledged Hunter with a solemn nod.
Leg throbbing, head aching, ribs screaming, Hunter stood. The wind around him died down, and vaguely, he heard someone call out his name.
“Hunter . . . chief . . . Hunter.” A MoonBound warrior, a female named Trish, jogged toward him, flanked by another female and a young male who had only graduated from battle training a month ago.
“The humans are fleeing,” she said through split lips and a swollen jaw. “ShadowSpawn is broken.” She broke off to fire an arrow to her right, and he heard a grunt and the thud of a body hitting the ground.
“Aylin,” he breathed. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I saw Riker to the south.”
Gathering his weapons, he limped toward them. “Take care of NightShade’s females and children. They’re not to be harmed.” With one final look at Tseeveyo, whose last dying breaths were whispering over his lips, Hunter headed south.
The monster was dead.
And now, Hunter knew, so was the monster inside him. His father was gone, and would never again have a hold on him.
HUNTER WAS IN a panic. He’d made his way to the designated meeting spot, but Aylin wasn’t there. He could feel her, but he’d been badly wounded, and through his own pain, he couldn’t sense Aylin’s. If she was hurting, he had no way of knowing.
Inhaling deeply, he caught her scent. She was with Riker and Takis, but there were so many other odors in the air that tracking them led to a lot of wrong turns.
He moved as quickly as his wounds would allow, but that wasn’t nearly fast enough. Not when he saw vampires rushing through the forest, completely ignoring him when they should have been trying to kill him. The humans had to be right on their tails.
Pain lanced him with every step and every breath as he negotiated the uneven ground. But as he came around a hill, the reason the vampires had been running for their lives was swirling in a huge circle between two trees. And as he watched, the shimmering portal moved. It actually fucking chased the humans bolting away from it. The thing was like a giant vacuum, swallowing people up as it went.
Finally, it collapsed. Except for the cries of the wounded and the stray sounds of an occasional skirmish, the woods were quiet.
“Hunter!” Aylin’s beautiful voice came from thirty yards away. He loped toward her as fast as he could and caught her in his arms. “We did it,” she breathed. “I can’t believe it.”
“I never doubted.” He looked out over the devastation left by the battle. So many had died, and more had been wounded. They’d won, but the price was never easy to pay.
Scowling, she pulled back from him. “You’re hurt. We have to get you to Nicole.”
“Not until I’ve located all of my warriors and we’ve secured all of NightShade’s females and children.” He nodded his thanks to Riker and Takis, who had started scouring the battlefield for fallen MoonBound members. Surviving humans would become blood donors, and enemy clan members who survived would be given a choice. They could join MoonBound or die. Simple as that. “I want to get you back to the clan, though.”
She shook her head. “I’m staying with you. I can help. Besides cooking, the one thing I got to do a lot of at ShadowSpawn was patch up wounds. And I can help with the females and children.” He was about to refuse her offer when she jammed her fists on her hips. “Hello, I can whip out a portal and take care of anyone who tries to attack us. Or I can go through it myself to escape. Don’t treat me like an invalid.”
She was right. He wanted to protect her, but she was doing a fine job of that on her own. “You win.” He pressed a kiss into her hair. “But don’t expect to win often. I hate to lose.”
She grinned. “You’ll learn to love it.”
The brush rustled, and he wheeled around to see Tena emerge. She had Rasha with her, her hands bound behind her back, her feet loosely hobbled with wire. She looked as pissed as a wet cat.
“Sorry, chief,” Tena said. “But I found her tied to a tree, and the bitch wanted to tell you something. Said it was important.”
Rasha sneered at Tena, but when she turned to Hunter and Aylin, her expression turned contrite. “Is Kars dead?”
“Unfortunately, no.” Hunter tugged Aylin more firmly against him. “But Tseeveyo will never hurt anyone again.”
Aylin squeezed his hand. “If my father is still alive, he’ll never stop coming after you.”
Rasha closed her eyes, and when she opened them, they were liquid with what Hunter would swear was defeat. “Let me handle our father.
I’ll get you out of the contract.”
“I think it’s far more likely that you’ll help him plot against us,” Hunter said.
Hunter expected a defiant comeback, so the fact that she merely sighed told him how defeated she truly was. “Does that mean you plan to hold me prisoner?”
It was tempting. But now that both clans had been soundly trounced, there was no point. Holding Rasha would only make Kars even more volatile and prone to revenge. Aylin was right; Kars would never let this go, and even if he could no longer launch a full-scale attack on MoonBound, he could still cause a lot of damage. A wounded bear was far more dangerous than a healthy one. He turned to Aylin. “She’s your sister. This needs to be your decision.”
For a long time, Aylin stared down her twin. It wasn’t until Rasha, once the alpha of the two, looked away that Aylin nodded. “Let her go. But Rasha? After this, our father is dead to me, and if you betray us, so are you.”
MOONBOUND HAD WON. And just as important, no one had seen Myne helping from the periphery, slaughtering humans and enemy clan members alike. Rasha probably hated him more than ever for tying her to a tree for Tena to find, but he couldn’t care less.
What he did care about was whether she was going to keep her word and help Aylin and MoonBound, too.
He followed her from a distance, staying far back until she finally located her father. Kars was several miles away from the battle, one hand badly broken and clutching a human head in the other.
Very carefully, Myne eased close to the pair as Kars held up the head. “This should be Hunter’s. It will be Hunter’s.”
“Father,” Rasha said, sounding saner than she ever had, “you need to let this go.”
“Let this go?” he bellowed. “Hunter has no honor! He went back on his word. He humiliated our entire clan and shamed you. I swear to you, I will destroy every MoonBound male, and I’ll force him to watch as his females and children are dragged to ShadowSpawn in chains. Then I’ll skin that bastard alive and wear him like a coat in every battle from the day of his death on.” He snarled. “And Aylin, that traitorous whore. I’ll beat her daily for the rest of her sorry life. She’ll never see another day in the sun for as long as I live.”
“No, Father,” Rasha said, knocking the gruesome trophy out of his grip. “You won’t do any of that. You’re going to leave Aylin and MoonBound alone.”
He stared, speechless, before his face went crimson and his eyes flashed with fury. He struck out, slapping Rasha so hard she rocked backward.
What a great father. Kind of reminded Myne of his own late sire.
“You will never speak to me that way.” He leaned forward aggressively and practically snarled his words. “No female ever speaks to a clan chief with such disrespect, not even my own daughter.”
Rasha spit blood on the ground, splattering pink drops on a patch of snow. “See, that’s where you’re wrong. You will listen to me, and you will accept Aylin and Hunter’s mating.” She smiled, a sneaky, knowing smile, and Myne wondered what card she held in this game. “Or I’ll tell Aylin that you’ve been lying to her since the day she was born.”
Lying? About what? Must be a fucking great card.
He snorted. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would, and I will. I promise you, I’ll tell Aylin how she was the firstborn, not me. She’ll know that when you saw her twisted leg, you considered drowning her in the bucket you had ready to drown the second twin. But it’s bad luck to kill a firstborn twin, so you had to keep her. When I was born, you told everyone I was first and that you decided not to kill the second twin, Aylin, because a raven appeared and told you not to.” She smiled around wicked, bared teeth. “And the fools who hang on your every word believed you. Well, except the midwife, who knew everything. Funny how she was killed by humans a few days later, isn’t it?”
Every drop of blood drained from Kars’s face. This just kept getting more and more interesting, didn’t it?
“Lies,” he rasped.
“You told me yourself. One night when you were drunk and pining for my mother, you confessed it all. I kept quiet all these years, because, like every other fool at ShadowSpawn, I believed that you always do the right thing for the clan. So I let Aylin think she was a curse on our people, like you said. I let her believe that she was the reason our mother died. I treated her like shit to make you happy. But I’ve seen how things can be different, and now I know how poorly you’ve led our clan.”
He hissed. “Hunter has brainwashed you. Filled your head with insanity—”
“Hunter has nothing to do with this. He’s too soft on his people, and he runs MoonBound like it’s a big theme park. But his clan is in far better shape than ours, and his people love him, which is more than can be said for you.”
Some of the color came back into her father’s cheeks, leaving them splotchy with anger. He raised his hand to strike her again, and she dared him with her stare. Myne might despise the bitch, but he had to admit, she didn’t back down from a fight. It was her lone admirable trait. For some reason, that made him think of Sabbat, whose lone negative trait was that she was human. Well, that, and she killed vampires for money.
“Do it,” Rasha said quietly. “Do it, and I swear it’ll be the last time you ever touch me.”
“You ungrateful, spoiled little bitch. I should have drowned you. I should have drowned you both.”
A quick flash of hurt crossed Rasha’s face but was gone a heartbeat later, replaced by the familiar, ever-present icy mask of indifference. “And I should have stood up to you a long time ago,” she shot back. “For me and Aylin. But whatever. I’m doing it now, so here’s the deal. Things are going to be a little different for ShadowSpawn from now on. And you’re going to let Aylin and Hunter live in peace.”
Fury darkened Kars’s gaze. “Or you’ll tell her the truth.”
“Oh, I’ll do more than that. I’ll tell everyone in our clan the truth. I’ll tell them how you’ve been lying for a century. That you named a second-born twin as heir and killed the clan’s midwife in order to keep your secret. Best-case scenario? Some will desert ShadowSpawn, and those who stay will never trust you again. They probably won’t listen to you, and you’ll have to defend every decision you make. Worst-case scenario? They’ll rise up and banish you.”
He swallowed. Hard. “They’ll do the same to you. Maybe worse.”
“Maybe. But I have options. There isn’t a clan out there that wouldn’t take me, a born female from a second-generation vampire.” Oh, Myne could think of one clan that wouldn’t take her. Shrugging, she studied her father, who suddenly looked very old and very tired. “So what’s it to be? Are you going to leave Aylin and Hunter in peace or not?”
For a long time, a storm cloud brewed in Kars’s expression, and Myne thought the chief was going to refuse. But finally, he let out a gruff curse. “I’ll agree to your terms,” he said. “But you are a huge disappointment.”
“Then don’t look in the mirror, Father, because I turned out just like you.” Pivoting on her heel, she walked away, heading in the direction of ShadowSpawn’s territory.
Myne flicked his tongue over his titanium fangs, his brain working to process everything he’d just heard. Aylin was the firstborn and true heir to ShadowSpawn. It was a revelation that, in Hunter’s hands, could destroy Kars.
Or Myne could use it to his own advantage. But how? And to what purpose?
Pressing his tongue against the tip of one fang, he drew blood, the tiny prick delivering a dose of pain-pleasure that made him shiver. Pain and pleasure. Two sides of the same coin. It was what gave him joy, and what made him miserable.
Funny, that.
Movement drew his attention away from his peculiar preferences, and he looked over to see Kars kick the human head across the clearing before limping off after Rasha. Myne supposed that was his cue.
It was tim
e to get the hell out of MoonBound’s territory. Out of Washington. Maybe out of the Pacific Northwest.
Or maybe he’d just hit the city scene, see what Seattle had to offer. Because one thing was certain: Myne didn’t belong in a clan. He never had, and when he thought back to that day all those years ago when Hunter had sent him and his brother packing, he realized that the guy had done him a favor.
Because ultimately, pleasure and pain were the only family he needed.
TWO WEEKS AFTER the battle that destroyed NightShade and decimated ShadowSpawn, Aylin was still amazed that she belonged to such an incredible clan.
Hunter had gladly taken in NightShade’s survivors, mostly females and children, so the compound was bursting at the seams, but no one seemed to mind. Baddon was, even now, arranging for needed supplies to expand the living quarters and common areas. The biggest challenge would be getting the provisions to MoonBound without human notice.
And that was where Aylin came in.
The supplies would be delivered to the cabin where she and Hunter had stayed on the first night they’d met, and from there, MoonBound members would haul the provisions and building materials through an Aylin-created portal to the clan’s compound. She’d spent hours each day learning to hold the portal open, and now she could keep it gaping wide for nearly ten minutes before she had to close it and rest. Even the time she needed to recover was decreasing, and she could reopen portals about an hour later.
Pretty cool.
Even better, the human threat had taken a significant turn. The information Nicole had leaked to the media had caused a political shitstorm, and not only had Daedalus’s practices come under fire, but all vampire hunting had been temporarily banned.
The loss of hundreds of humans had raised protests everywhere, and while some protesters called for an immediate extermination of vampires, the majority wanted all violence to stop. Newspapers and magazines had begun to interview anonymous vampires, and the leader of a hidden city clan had come forward with a request to begin a peaceful dialogue between the two races.