Anthony Marini was a big man. Bigger than Chaser. Bigger than that vampire Bailey. But not as big as Harley.
“You’ve got your mother’s looks,” he said, picking up a strand of my hair and rubbing it between his forefinger and thumb. The baritone of his voice was gravelly, as though he’d smoked a thousand cigarettes a day until his throat had turned raw.
“You’re acting like you never saw me before,” I snapped, pulling away.
“You’ve changed.”
“It’s been fifteen years. I grew up,” I said, implying I would fight with deadly force if I had to. “A whole lot.”
He nodded towards the door behind him. It was a silent command—the alpha asserting his dominance. If I was supposed to feel anything supernatural, I wasn’t sure, but I needed answers…so I obeyed.
Dad—I wasn’t even sure I should call him that—held out his hand, gesturing for me to step into the room like he was some kind of reformed gentleman. I wasn’t on the road with Chaser anymore. If he was the one standing there, I would give him lip, but he wasn’t.
Where was he?
The room beyond was large, part of a suite made up of a private sitting room with posh leather couches, a sleek bar fridge, and a massive, flat-screen television. A private bathroom and bedroom completed the presidential suite, all fitted out with the latest mod-cons. Marini was alpha, so he took what he was owed.
My gaze flickered around the room and settled on the automatic rifle mounted on the wall, and the handgun and long-barrelled revolver on the glass-top coffee table. The grip on the revolver was inlaid with mother-of-pearl.
Dad closed the door behind him and crossed the room. Sitting in the armchair, he leaned forwards and rested his elbows on his knees, waiting for me to take a seat.
I lingered behind the couch, my eyes on the guns in front of him. Did the air have a tang of copper to it, or was it my imagination? I could smell tobacco, spice, gunpowder, and something else…the same stench I’d caught a whiff of outside. Did werewolves all smell like wet dog?
Taking in the room, I was aware of him watching me as I saw the patched hole in the wall behind my head. I promptly stepped to the side.
Dad raised his eyebrows and resigned himself to the fact that I wasn’t sitting anytime soon.
“Did he hurt you?” he asked, his voice familiar yet oddly strange to my ears.
“Who?”
“Chaser. Did he take care of you?”
“Yes.” I narrowed my eyes, not liking what he was implying.
“Did he touch you?”
“No.”
Dad watched me closely, taking stock of my answer. Chaser had fed from me only hours before, but Dad couldn’t know that. He would cut Chaser open top to tail if he knew, and I’d be right back on the pack’s list of items to sell—if I wasn’t on it already. The vampires seemed to want me for a blood surface, after all.
“He was shot,” I went on. “He desiccated and—”
“Butcher will patch him up,” Marini interrupted.
“He did his job. He should be rewarded.”
He grunted, his lip curling. “Will you sit down?”
Tensing, I rounded the back of the couch and perched on the edge. My thighs burned, and my back thanked me for it, but it was a bed I longed for the most. A bed, sleep, and knowing Chaser was going to be all right. Maybe I should’ve been thinking about my own fate, but I was running on fumes.
“You will be given a room in the compound,” Marini stated. “You’re free to come and go as you please, but you are not to leave under any circumstances.”
“That’s the direct opposite meaning of ‘free to come and go as I please,’” I pointed out.
“If you need something, ask. Don’t bother Chaser with your inane requests. I know he saved your life, but that does not make him your errand boy. We have new recruits who specialise in those things. Ask them for your tampons.”
I snorted and rolled my eyes.
“So, when does the bidding start?” I drawled.
He stared at me and didn’t bother replying. His fingers stroked his beard while his eyes retained their icy lustre.
“The vampires attacking you is a slight on me,” he began, lowering his chin. The light bounced off his face in a demonic way, making my spine tingle. “It makes me look weak. You know I’m not weak, Betty. They’ve declared war on Fortitude by putting a hit out on you.”
I snorted. He really thought I’d buy that? Fortitude was going to war over me? The more likely scenario was that he wanted to sell me to the Hollow Men for their blood ritual.
“Betty died,” I said, lowering my voice to match his tone. “Fifteen years ago.”
“Ah, you call yourself Sloane now.” He smiled. He actually smiled at me like I was a cute little child playing grown-up games. “So, tell me, Sloane, how much of our world did you know about before Chaser retrieved you?”
I tensed, my lips thinning. “None of it.”
“And what do you know now?”
Werewolves, vampires, witches… A wolf who could turn at will, who was not enslaved by the curse binding her kind to the moon.
“I know you’re a werewolf,” I said. “An alpha. All those people out there…they’re wolves, too. Chaser is a vampire, and there’s a bunch more that are after me. Then there are other wolves, from other packs, who would like to see me dead, too.” I narrowed my eyes and wrapped my arms around my stomach. “I wouldn’t know why. I’m ordinary. I’ve never…”
Marini smirked. “Turned on a full moon?”
“No.”
He laughed and shook his head. “How fortunate for you.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why me?”
“Because I’m the alpha of the Fortitude Wolves, the dominant werewolf pack in the entire state…and you’re my only daughter.”
It was a lie, but I said nothing.
I swallowed my anger. “Then why aren’t I like you?”
“Your mother was human, Sloane,” he told me. “You take after her.”
One statement was a lie, and the other I wasn’t sure about. Was my mum human? The thought hadn’t crossed my mind, and I regretted not slowing down and asking Chaser about her. He hadn’t met her, but maybe he knew anyway.
“So, I just have to stay here?” I demanded. “Just because I’m your daughter? A daughter who you haven’t seen in fifteen years, by the way.”
“Yes,” Marini drawled. “Where you stay and how you are treated depends on your attitude.”
“You could’ve had something good,” I murmured. “It could’ve been great, you know, but you screwed it all up.” I reached out and picked up the revolver, knowing full well it wasn’t loaded. I stroked the mother-of-pearl, watching the colours shimmer. “I’m half her, but I’m also half you.”
“Is that what you want?” The undertone of his smile changed, and the leather creaked as he leaned back in the armchair. “To be acknowledged?”
Setting down the revolver, I rose to my feet, trying not to vomit on the way up. “It wouldn’t even matter. I’m human. It’s not like I can be alpha, is it?”
He nodded, the ice in his eyes beginning to thaw. His gaze never left mine as he took a mobile phone out of his pocket and brought it to life.
“You must be tired.” He pressed the screen. Lifting the phone to his ear, he added, “Rick. My daughter is here. Get in here and show her to her room. Get her whatever she wants,” he looked at me, “within reason.”
He put the phone away, and I wrinkled my nose as the door opened.
A man strode into the room, dressed in beat-up jeans, boots, and a faded Harley Davidson T-shirt. He had a shaved head, stubbled jaw, and soft eyes to match his baby face. A new recruit. I made a mental note to ask him for tampons.
“Rick, this is my daughter Sloane.”
I stepped around the couch, glad to get away from the dangerous tug of war that’d begun with my father.
The newbie wolf nodded, eager to serve his master like the de
sperate dog that he was. “Room’s this way.”
I took two steps before I stopped.
“Dad?” I turned, leaving Rick out in the hallway.
My father lifted his head and waited for my pearl of wisdom.
“If you ever try to hurt me again, the last thing you’ll see is my face as I put a bullet in your head.”
“Of course.” He smirked, lips curving lopsidedly. “You are half me.”
Chapter 3
Chaser
DeLuca and Rocket dragged me through the garage, through the compound, and into Butcher’s room.
Sloane was gone, I was back in my revolving-door nightmare, and the game had already begun.
“Did you get a look at her?” DeLuca declared.
“That’s Marini’s daughter?” Rocket asked before letting out a slow whistle.
I shoved down my jealousy—another human emotion I hadn’t felt for almost a century—and sat heavily, my arse hitting the chair with a dull thud.
Sloane and I had been on the road together for almost two weeks, and it was safe to say I’d gotten used to having her all to myself. Now she was gone and the sensation her absence gave me was strange and unfamiliar.
“What happened out there?” DeLuca asked as I rested my elbow on the table.
“Shut your pie holes,” a booming voice declared behind me. “He ain’t gunna tell you dogs nothin’.”
Butcher appeared in my peripheral vision, but I smelled him long before. Like a lot of the guys around here, he was built like a tank. The wolves called him the grey giant, but the name he’d earned from the alpha of the pack was much more accurate.
Before he’d joined the Fortitude Wolves, Butcher had been a paramedic, but his reckless behaviour had gotten him banned, and his underlying werewolf tendencies led him to a life of patching up the wolves he now called his brothers. Overseeing my emergency blood bank was just an added bonus.
I wouldn’t go as far to say I liked him, but at least I knew where his loyalties lied.
“What was it this time?” Butcher asked. “Bullet, stake…?”
I’d had just about every kind of injury I could think of…and died of a couple, too.
“Wooden bullet,” I replied, still aware that DeLuca and Rocket hadn’t left the room. I pressed the heel of my hand against my heart.
“She do it?” Butcher gave me a look, his silvery eyes full of suspicion.
I shook my head. “One of them.”
Butcher glared at the two wolves and jabbed his finger at the door. “Quit your starin’. Bugger off.”
Rocket snorted and strode out of the room with DeLuca on his heels. I got that some of these guys wanted to be on the in, but there was a hierarchy for a reason.
Butcher opened the stainless-steel industrial fridge and took out a hospital grade blood bag. I hated that I had to go to him for blood—yet another form of control the pack had over me.
“If it wasn’t for that spell of yours, you’d be dead by now,” the big man mused. “How long have you been all wrinkled like that?”
“Ten hours.”
Butcher grunted, knowing a lesser vampire would’ve snapped and gone on a feeding frenzy by now, and slapped the blood bag into my hand. “Get that in ya before you shrivel up entirely.”
Tearing open the top, I drank greedily, the blood soothing my burning hunger. Feeding from Sloane had tided me over, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
Once I finished the bag, Butcher gave me another.
Staring across the room as he waited for me to finish, my thoughts zeroed in on Sloane. She would be standing before her father right now, saying God knows what.
Was he going to lock her up? Was he going to sell her to the Hollow Men? Was he going to tell her the truth?
The only thing I knew for sure was that I was sick and tired of suffering for the pack’s greed.
“You’re starting to fill out, boy,” Butcher said as I sucked the last of the blood out of the bag.
“I’m older than you,” I remarked, tossing the bag. “Watch yourself.”
“You’re a hack, Chaser,” the wolf drawled. “A real butcher.”
“Look who’s talking.”
“What happened out there?”
I gave him a pointed look. He could ask all he wanted, but I never talked about what I did. Never. The bond didn’t forbid it, but it was best to keep my mouth shut.
The door opened, interrupting our intimate moment, and Rick appeared. He was newly welcomed into the pack, eighteen and with only a few years of full moons under his belt—a pup playing a wolves’ game.
“Marini wants to see you when you’re done,” he said, glancing at the blood bags on the table.
Narrowing my eyes, I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth. Looked like I was going to find out what happened to Sloane sooner rather than later. It’d been a long time since I’d had someone to worry about—not since Loretta—and I wasn’t sure I knew how to deal with it.
The little wolf scowled. “Now.”
“Careful,” I said, my lip curling. “You may be Marini’s new chew toy, but it doesn’t mean you get to order me around.”
“You better listen to what the vampire says, boy.” Butcher nodded. “The alpha may have singled you out, but it’s not because of your intelligence.” Rick opened his mouth, but the wolf barked, “And don’t you even think of talking back.”
I stood, my gaze fixed on Rick. He was desperate to impress…which made him stupid and dangerous.
“Don’t rip the kid’s head off,” Butcher said, glaring at Rick but talking to me. “I know two bags wasn’t enough.”
I smirked as Rick paled and edged past him a little closer than necessary. Hearing the change in his heartbeat, I chuckled and left the wolves behind.
I made my way through the building, dodging eye contact with anyone I passed—not that they wanted to talk to me. I was the token vampire, the slave who did the alpha’s bidding. No one wanted to mess with me.
I didn’t see hide or hair of Sloane, but I knew I wouldn’t. I didn’t know when I would see her again.
Marini was sitting in his armchair when I dragged myself into his rooms. He loved that damn chair. Why, I didn’t know, but his arse was permanently grafted to the thing.
“Another memento added to the collection,” he said as I closed the door behind me.
I grunted and walked over to the couch, masking the spark of humanity behind my eyes. My scars—even though they physically healed—were a painful reminder of the servitude I’d been tricked into. So was the tattoo on my thumb and the psychopath sitting in front of me. They weren’t a memento for my scrapbook.
“My daughter says you should be rewarded,” Marini went on. “Anything I should know?”
I gritted my teeth to keep from saying something I’d regret.
“You dropped the ball on this one, Chaser. Big time.” He picked up the revolver sitting on the coffee table and flicked open the chamber. Taking out some wooden bullets from his shirt pocket, he loaded them one by one in slow, deliberate moves. “Bodies left behind, shots fired in public.”
“They’ve upped their game,” I said, anger bristling up my spine. “We were forced to take an alternate route. I don’t know how they tracked us, but they were connected enough to block out an entire train with no prior planning. They ambushed us.”
Marini stared at me, his expression passive. He was a hard man to read at the best of times, but right now, he was blank. When he was like this, he was capable of his absolute worst.
“What are you going to do with her?” I asked.
“Be careful what you say next,” he snapped, closing the barrel on the revolver. “While you’re bound to me, you can’t die, but I can make it hurt.”
“I went to great lengths to get her here. I want to know if it was worth it.” The words burned my throat as they came out. Sloane was worth it. Took me time to realise it, but she was. I cared about her. When a killer cared about someone, things were
destined to become messy.
Marini snarled and waved the gun at me. “In the two seconds she’s been here, she’s made an enemy out of Harley, threatened me, and showed a weakness for you.”
“I can see the parallels,” I drawled. “Difficult was an understatement when I went to get her.”
“Shut the hell up with your clever words,” he snapped. “What did you tell my daughter, Chaser?”
“I told her what she needed to know,” I replied. “I couldn’t hide what I was if she was to remain alive.”
“Did you tell her what she is?”
“Did you?”
Marini’s expression dropped and the room went silent. We were the only two supernaturals in it, but it was like the air turned cold and someone pressed the mute button. He was holding a gun and had a reputation for using it—as recently as the day before I left to get Sloane. I noticed the plaster had been repaired at least.
“She’s back in her old room for now,” he said after a moment. “What happens next depends on her attitude…and yours.”
“I delivered her,” I said. “My involvement in her fate has ceased.”
“Just like that, eh?” He was baiting me, waiting for me to take a bite out of him.
“Unless you order me to.” I gritted my teeth. “You know that.”
“Yes.” The alpha smirked and put the revolver down. “I do.”
“What are you going to do about the Hollow Men?” I asked, fishing for my own answers. “They won’t stop now that she’s here. You may have bought the pack a reprieve, but it’s only a matter of time.”
Marini wasn’t having it, though. “You’re damaged goods, Chaser. You don’t get to ask me questions. Get out of my sight.”
Leaving the alpha and his bloodthirsty tendencies behind, I went to my room—a tiny hole with a bed, a window, and not much else. When I opened the door, I saw my bag sitting just inside. Closing myself in the room I’d called my prison cell for the past seven years—the last time the building was renovated—a wave of exhaustion finally smacked me in the face.
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