by Raand, L. L.
“I don’t recognize your Pack,” Misha said suspiciously.
Torren smiled. “I don’t have one.”
“You’re a lone wolf? You know the penalty for trespassing in Pack land without permission. I could kill you now.”
“I am not a wolf.”
Misha scoffed. “I took you down, remember? I tasted your blood.” Misha hesitated, frowned. She had tasted her blood and hadn’t registered in the heat of battle that she had not tasted Were. The stranger’s blood was not the thick, dark richness of Were blood, but light and teasing, spring sap shot through with the essence of mountain air. She narrowed her eyes. “What are you?”
“I would prefer to tell your Alpha that.”
Misha had two choices. She could escort the stranger back to the Compound, or she could kill her. The decision wasn’t as simple as it seemed. If she brought her to the Compound, she would be exposing the location of their sanctuary to this female who was something she could not identify. A spy, possibly. An enemy, probably. Dangerous, certainly. She was within her rights to kill her, but everything in her resisted. The brilliant eyes held hers, and her wolf stirred, pelt prickling beneath her skin.
“Why?” Misha asked. “Why are you on Pack land?”
“I have been a prisoner,” Torren said, reading the indecision in the young Were’s eyes. Seeing something else too. Something that spoke to her blood in a way she couldn’t explain. Her hawk’s song soared, filling her with light and heat. Magic danced along her skin. “I am alone. I am friend.”
“Who took you prisoner?” Misha snarled, furious for no reason that made sense.
“The Viceregal.”
“From where did you escape?”
“From the dungeons beneath Nocturne.”
“How long? What did she—”
“That is unimportant.” Torren’s pride would not allow this female to view her as a victim. “All that matters is that she failed to keep me captive.”
Misha growled. She didn’t agree, but the stranger was not hers to avenge. “Get up.”
Torren flowed to her feet. She stood naked in the moonlight, blood drying on her neck, side, and belly from the bites and gouges sustained in the fight. They would heal soon enough. She watched the wolf scan her body, saw the brief spark of gold. Were power washed over her and her nipples tightened. “I am not going to resist.”
Misha met her eyes, held the rifle on her. “I have no reason to trust you.”
“Not yet,” Torren murmured.
Gray stepped into the glade. “We should kill her.”
“She is not a Were.” Misha motioned with the rifle for Torren to start walking ahead of her. “So she is technically not a lone wolf.”
“Even more reason not to take her any farther.”
Misha kept a tight hold on her wolf. Gray’s threat to Torren made her bristle. She glared into Gray’s eyes until Gray grumbled and looked away. Satisfied Gray would follow her orders, her wolf relaxed and settled back to watch warily. “If she runs, shoot her. If she doesn’t, do not touch her.”
The silver cry of a hawk floated through Misha’s mind.
Thank you.
*
“I can’t leave her,” Katya said to Michel, nodding to Sasha, who still lay in her arms, somnolent after her torrential release. She would be prey for any Vampire who wanted to feed from her.
“I’ll have someone guard her,” Michel said. “She will be safe.”
“Your word.”
“My word,” Michel murmured, smiling inwardly at the request. Any other Were, any other Vampire, would doubt her, would expect treachery or duplicity. Vampires were masters of deception and rarely trusted anyone, even those closest to them. But this Were trusted her, and her faith stirred Michel in a way nothing had for centuries. She caressed Katya’s cheek, watched the blood pump faster in the great vessels in her throat. Her hunger exploded, robbing her of caution and control. She had waited too long, and her need ruled her. “Will you come with me?”
“Yes.” Katya believed her. Michel had never lied to her. “Call your guard.”
Nodding, Michel signaled telepathically to the nearest Vampire guard, who appeared instantly. “See that no one touches this Were.”
The blond Vampire nodded calmly. “Yes, Senechal.”
“You will be rewarded at dawn.”
“Thank you, Senechal. I will stay with her until you say otherwise.” The blond hesitated. “If she requests to host, Senechal?”
Michel raised a brow in Katya’s direction.
“She is a dominant Were, and if she chooses to host, she is within her rights.” Katya stared hard at the blond. “But she should not be harmed.”
“Of course.”
“You can trust Louis to protect her.”
“I trust you,” Katya said, settling Sasha on the sofa and slipping out from behind her. Rising until she and Michel were face-to-face, she slid her arms around Michel’s shoulders and kissed her. Her clitoris was distended, the shaft swollen and full. Her glands throbbed, tense and primed to explode. “I am ready for you. I want you to take me and I am tired of waiting.”
Michel slid a slender arm, strong as a steel band, around Katya’s waist and dragged her close, bloodlust suffusing her so quickly her awareness of anything except Katya disappeared. Her mind hazed to red. “I’ve waited for you, hungered for you. Tell me you want my bite, my bond.” She slid her incisors down the hot ridge of Katya’s jugular. “Tell me.”
“Yes, yes.” Katya grabbed Michel’s hand, pulled her away from the sofa where Sasha stirred and toward the dark recesses of the club. She would not risk another Vampire trying to join them. Michel would kill anyone who came close. “Not here. Take me somewhere where we are alone.”
Michel lifted Katya into her arms and cut through the crowd until they emerged in one of the myriad hallways in the depths of Nocturne. She set Katya down in a narrow alcove and pressed her to the wall. Michel’s eyes were pure crimson, burning torches boring through Katya to her core, reigniting her frenzy.
“Hurry.” Katya tugged Michel’s black silk shirt from her skintight leather trousers, ripping the buttons open in the process. Her claws punched out and she raked them down the center of Michel’s torso. She licked the scarlet streams and growled low in her throat.
Michel hissed and sliced into Katya’s neck with practiced penetration, injecting her feeding hormones into Katya’s bloodstream. Katya’s first orgasm crested as her blood flowed into Michel’s mouth, joining them in flesh and essence. The second followed as her bones melted, the third as Michel’s consciousness joined with hers. Power blazed through her, and she felt Michel’s pleasure as her own.
Katya whimpered, their union forcing a release so powerful her wolf broke her chains. Michel’s face was pressed against her throat, her slender form shuddering as she climaxed. They were secluded but not alone, and Michel was helpless in the midst of her feeding, lost in bloodlust, bloodlust for her. Katya wrapped her arms around her, shielding her from the faceless forms gliding by in the dark. Protecting her. Katya’s canines elongated and fire blazed in her blood. Her wolf demanded she make her claim. Katya bit Michel’s shoulder, burying her canines and spreading her essence in Michel’s flesh. Her wolf raised her head, howled. Mine.
Chapter Seven
“Tell me, my pet,” Francesca said from the height of her ornate gilded throne, her honeyed voice filling the opulent room with effortless command, “what happened in the dungeon.”
Daniela knelt naked before the raised platform, her hands clasped behind her back, her head down, supplicant and shaking. “I…I don’t remember, Mistress.”
“Regent,” Francesca murmured.
“Regent,” Daniela echoed through a throat dry with terror. She had awakened in the dark dank cell, the evidence of her loss of control—blood and sex fluids—coating her skin. She’d been confused but oddly excited, her breasts and sex tingling as if someone had sent an electric current through her body. Al
l her senses were alive, even though her memory of the last few hours was hazy. Strange images kaleidoscoped through her mind, fragments of sunshine and flowers, things she hadn’t thought of since she’d been turned. Things she hadn’t thought she’d missed until the dazzling light of the sun on her skin sent her reeling back in time. She’d awakened with tears coursing down her cheeks and the sensation she’d been dancing through fields of softly waving grass. The shackles lay in a tangle on the soaked sheets, and the door to the cell gaped like a mocking mouth. She’d stumbled to her feet, stared into the empty corners of the shadowy cell, and staggered into the hall. The other prisoners had been eerily silent, but she’d felt their eyes follow her as she struggled toward the heavy reinforced door that no one on this side—save her—should have been able to open.
When she’d tripped the lock with her palm and glided through into the lighted passage, the human servant guarding the door unsheathed a three-foot sword from the scabbard on his back and swung the lethal blade in a horizontal curve intended to behead. He’d aborted his strike with the shining blade inches from Daniela’s neck and stared in horror.
“Mistress Daniela,” he’d gasped, his sword clanging on the stone floor as he hastily lowered his weapon. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you return.”
“Return? I…I haven’t been gone,” she said, barely recognizing the languid tone of her own voice. The taste of wine, something she hadn’t drunk in a decade, lingered on her tongue. Had she been drugged? Poisoned? But how, when her Vampire nature should make her resistant to all those things? Alcohol, chemicals—had no effect on her blood now. But a gauzy curtain draped her in a delicate haze, as if she slumbered still in a daytime torpor. “What of the prisoner?”
“Prisoner?”
“The cell is empty. Where is she? Did someone come for her?”
The guard’s color turned to ash. “I don’t—no one has left after you.”
She grasped him by the throat and pinned him to the wall, her incisors lengthening with fury. “I told you, I haven’t left. What are you talking about?”
And he’d told her, but she couldn’t make sense of it. She’d still been trying to piece together the fragments of memory when two of the mistress’s private guards had come for her and dragged her to the throne room.
Francesca’s voice cut through her reverie. “What do you remember, my sweet?”
Daniela flinched. The mistress’s voice, soft, almost gentle, sliced through her like a blade, and she dared not raise her eyes. “I remember being hungry. So hungry.”
“Of course you were. And I gave you permission to feed from the prisoner, didn’t I.”
“Yes, yes,” Daniela said eagerly. “I took the Were to a recovery room, just as you said, and…and I went to the dungeon—I went to the prisoner’s cell.” And then, then she’d been so hungry and the Fae’s blood was so sweet, like warm honey on her tongue.
“And then?” Francesca’s voice whipped the air like a lash. “What happened?”
“I don’t know, Mistress—Regent. I don’t know.”
Francesca glanced at her spymaster. “Charles? What is your opinion?”
Charles, an ascetically handsome blond with pale blue eyes, was a century or two younger than Michel, although he kept to the old ways and still dressed in the high style of court. He might have appeared delicate with his slender build and ruffled shirts, skintight trousers, and thigh-high shiny black boots, but he radiated masculine arrogance and sexual superiority. He also had an extensive network of spies and informants in the Praetern and human communities and was astute at both politics and strategy. Francesca relied on Michel as her primary advisor, but Michel was absent, as she had been more and more of late, and Charles was a natural successor, if circumstances warranted. His large and tireless cock wasn’t altogether unimportant, either, even though she preferred Michel in her bed. Of late, though, even when Michel fed with her and later fucked her, she seemed partly absent. Francesca wasn’t used to sharing, and she always kept those with power close. “Charles?”
“The facts, Mistress,” he said in his cool, cultured voice that still held a hint of old Britain, “are that the Fae prisoner is gone, presumably having escaped while Daniela was feeding. Therefore, my conclusion is Daniela was enchanted.”
“And the guard who swears the prisoner did not pass? He had no reason to lie, and we gave him every reason to tell the truth.” She frowned. “I do hope he recovers soon.”
“I wager he was also enchanted—perhaps with a forgetting spell. He did seem confused as to when he first saw Daniela appear.” His expression grew disdainful. “Of course, he is human and more susceptible to influence.”
“Very probably.” Francesca’s eyes flared scarlet and she stabbed a claret-tipped finger toward Daniela. “But what of her—how could the prisoner influence a Risen—even a young one? The prisoner was chained in iron. I thought that would prevent her from using her powers.”
Charles shrugged and waved one hand indolently in the air. “Our knowledge of the Fae is centuries old. We have all evolved, and perhaps their magic is not as we once knew it. The iron should have been enough to suppress her magic, but if the Fae was strong enough, and…”
He paused as if reluctant to finish.
“Go on,” Francesca snapped with such force every Vampire in attendance flinched.
Charles, however, appeared unperturbed. “It’s possible if Daniela was deep in bloodlust, her shields would be lowered enough that the Fae’s magic, if strong enough,” he added almost apologetically, “could affect her.”
He somehow managed to sound regretful while placing the blame for events completely on one of the Vampires closest to Francesca.
“So Daniela’s carelessness set the prisoner free.”
Daniela’s head came up, her eyes wide with fear. “No, no, Regent, I would not—I would never—”
Francesca gazed down at her with a tender expression. “But you don’t remember, do you, darling?”
“No,” Daniela moaned, tears overflowing her lashes.
“You admitted you were hungry—and you fed from her.”
“Yes, yes—with permission—”
“Of course I gave you permission—I trusted you, my pet. I gave you my prisoner as a reward.”
Dread curled in Daniela’s breast. She had failed the mistress’s test.
“And you lost control, didn’t you?” Francesca stepped down from the throne and walked slowly around Daniela, trailing her fingers over Daniela’s naked body. “You lost yourself in bloodlust. And while you fed like a newling, with nothing on your mind except satisfying your own needs, you allowed the prisoner to escape.”
Daniela cast imploring eyes toward Charles, who gazed back as if she were invisible.
“I understand how that might’ve happened,” Francesca went on, her tone still reasonable. She placed one finger beneath Daniela’s chin and raised her head. Flame leapt in her eyes. “How you could have forgotten all about me when—”
“No, Mistress!” Daniela sobbed. “Never, I would never—”
“But, darling,” Francesca went on as if Daniela had not spoken, “you must understand, your transgression has had serious consequences. I think…I think you’ll need some time to reflect on your error.”
“I’m sorry, Regent.” Trapped like a small animal in a cage, Daniela couldn’t look away from Francesca’s hypnotic power. Of course she must be punished. Anything, as long as she wasn’t cast out from the heat of the mistress’s gaze. “I will atone.”
“I know.” Francesca motioned to two of the guards standing attendance against the velvet-curtained wall. “Escort Daniela to her room.”
Daniela sighed. She’d feared her punishment would be imprisonment, starvation.
“Until I decide otherwise, you will feed only from the blood slaves I provide, and you will be available for the entertainment of my guests whenever they desire.” Francesca gazed at Daniela. “You will be sure to treat anyone I send you
graciously, won’t you, my sweet?”
“Yes,” Daniela whispered. A sex slave, available to any Vampire or Were who wanted satisfaction, in any manner. The Risen, once they’d fed, would be potent, their sexual needs as ravenous as their hunger for blood. They would know she was disgraced, and they would take what they wanted however they wanted. She was being cast out from her mistress’s inner circle and relegated to a level lower than a blood slave. She bowed her head. “Thank you, Regent.”
Francesca flicked a hand and the guards lifted Daniela and half carried, half dragged her from the room. When the door closed behind them, she returned to the dais and dropped impatiently onto her throne. “Well, Charles? Your counsel?”
“We cannot let this affront go unanswered, Regent,” he said immediately. “The loss of a prisoner from within your very lair suggests weakness to your enemies. The prisoner must be recovered and punished.”
“I’ve dispatched a squadron of soldiers already.”
He nodded and said nothing.
“What?” Francesca hissed impatiently.
“That may not be enough, especially since they cannot move in daylight.”
“You have an alternative?”
“When I was advised of the…situation, I called upon a mercenary who might be useful,” Charles said.
“Did you,” Francesca said, wondering how long Charles had been aware of the escape, and who had told him. His sources obviously extended to within her very walls. Keeping him close was a very good idea. “Bring in your mercenary, then.”
Silently, he nodded, and a moment later a door opened on the far end of the room and the Vampire guard he had summoned escorted a tall, muscular female with leonine features and tawny shoulder-length hair into the room. She wore skintight tan suede pants and a sleeveless shirt open between her full breasts. She exuded animal strength and sensuality. Her angled green eyes took in the room in one rapid sweep, passed over Charles, and fixed on Francesca. Her full lips curved into an arrogant smile as she stopped midway up the deep red carpet leading to the throne.