by Larissa Ione
His fangs throbbed with the desire for blood—her blood. Maybe Rasha’s would be the same. Maybe it wouldn’t taste like battery acid the way he imagined.
You have to try. Aylin is lost to you. She’ll be with someone else shortly, if she’s not already.
He straightened with a snarl. Made a mental note to tell Riker never to reveal the name of the male who spent the night with Aylin. As much as Hunter would like to say he could be objective and logical . . . yeah, when it came to Aylin, his civil side was pretty much nonexistent.
The need for blood began to cloud his thoughts in a haze of red. It was time, and he couldn’t put it off. Most vampires could miss a moon feeding . . . two or three if they really had to. But as a second-generation vampire, his instincts were too strong, and he’d learned the hard way that missing a feeding on the full moon meant a month of viciousness he sometimes couldn’t control. Fourteen years had passed since the last time Riker had been forced to chain him in the prey room, and he didn’t want to end that streak.
His father, as a first-generation vampire descended from the Originals, had been even worse. When he missed a feeding, he’d been the epitome of the word monster. He’d even changed physically into a horrific skeletal creature with a gaping maw of sharp teeth and serrated claws that could slice through steel. It had been terrifying, a beast so mindless and bloodthirsty that it had once tried to eat its own infant son.
Sometimes Hunter wondered if he’d have even cared about killing his son when he turned back to normal. And as much as Hunter despised his mother, he had to give her credit for her willingness to go to the creature on the next full moon and allow it to use her.
He questioned whether Rasha would have done that, but he had no doubt about Aylin.
With a nasty curse, he headed toward his chambers. Rasha wasn’t expecting him yet, but he didn’t give a shit about inconveniencing her. He needed to get this over with while he still possessed a thread of self-control. He’d take her blood, but he wouldn’t take anything else from her.
But what if, in the fever madness, he thought she was Aylin? What if he was so far gone with bloodlust that he couldn’t control himself? Again, normal vampires were better with self-control, but during the moon fever, Hunter was little more than an animal feeding its basest desires.
Even now, his senses were zeroing in on what he needed, identifying the location of nearby females with the accuracy of Doppler radar. There was one in the room he’d just passed. Six gathered in the common room. Two—with a male—in the storeroom ahead. The scent of blood and sex billowed from it like steam, ramping him up a dozen notches. Sweat bloomed on his hot skin, his mouth watered, and his cock ached like a son of a bitch.
Aylin.
No.
He shoved open his chamber door. And went on instant alert.
The scent of blood and arousal was coming from the rear of his quarters.
A chill of foreboding rippled up his spine as he eased his way through his office and living area toward the bedroom. He instinctively palmed the hilt of a dagger as he shoved the door open.
He stepped through the doorway and came to a sudden, stunned halt.
Rasha was pinned against the wall, panting softly at what Hunter was pretty sure was the edge of orgasm, her barely clothed body undulating against the big male whose teeth were buried in her throat.
Titanium teeth.
Hunter couldn’t believe what he was seeing. His vision went ebony and crimson, like blood dripping down a black wall, and rage awakened the primal beast inside him. A male he hated on a good day, wanted to kill on the bad ones, had invaded Hunter’s den and was feeding from Hunter’s female. Didn’t matter that Hunter didn’t want the female. She was his, like it or not, and as clan chief, what was his was sacred.
With a roar, he seized Myne by the back of the neck and ripped him away from Rasha. Blood sprayed from the torn wound in her throat, but he barely gave it a thought.
She’d recover. Unfortunately.
Surprise flashed in Myne’s coal eyes as Hunter bashed his fist into his jaw and slammed him into the wall before the guy could recover. “Bastard.” He wrapped his hand around Myne’s throat and pounded his fist into Myne’s face again, savoring the crack of his nose breaking.
Myne pitched to the side to avoid another blow. “It’s not what you think.”
Crack. Fist to the face. “Were you feeding from her?”
Myne spat blood—Rasha’s and his own. “Yes, but—”
Crack. Myne was going to need a good dentist. Maybe the one who had given him the titanium fangs. “Then it’s exactly what I think!”
“He . . . he forced me,” Rasha said from behind Hunter. Myne’s head whipped around to her, his incredulous stare telling Hunter all he needed to know. Rasha was lying. Myne was a bastard, but he wasn’t a rapist.
“You understand what you’re saying.” Hunter ground out the words between clenched teeth. “If Myne forced you, it’s a death sentence.”
She lifted her chin. “I’m the firstborn daughter of a second-generation vampire and clan chief.” In other words, she was daring him to call her a liar. Her hand came down on his shoulder, and he shrugged out from under her touch.
“Stay here,” he told her, as he hurled Myne out of the bedroom and slammed the door behind him.
Myne wheeled into the couch, his heavy body cracking the frame. “Dammit, Hunter, listen to me.”
“You were feeding from my mate!” Snarling, Hunter dived, hitting Myne with a full-on tackle. They crashed onto the floor in a tangle. Myne tried to get up, but Hunter was faster, flipping the male onto his back and slamming two hard blows into his ribs.
“She’s not your mate,” he wheezed. “You don’t even want her.”
The truth of that was as infuriating as it was humiliating. And leave it to the one male in the clan Hunter hated most to voice it out loud. In one quick, seamless move, Hunter straddled Myne and decked him hard enough to feel a bone crack. “You disrespected me in my own fucking chamber! We took you in when you were broken. I trusted you. And this is how you repay me?” Fisting Myne’s T-shirt, he shook him hard enough that his skull cracked on the floor. “Did you fuck her?” Say yes and die. And why in the hell was Myne not fighting back?
“No.”
“You told me that once before. Remember that, asshole?” Hunter slipped a dagger from his harness, the soft hiss of metal clearing its leather housing the sound of impending death. “You lied then, so why should I believe you now?”
Myne’s black eyes went dead. “You shouldn’t.”
Hunter put the tip of the blade to Myne’s jugular. There was no fear in Myne’s gaze, no resistance in his body. He expected to die and was prepared to go out like a warrior.
And for all of Myne’s faults, he was a warrior. A damned good one. An image of Myne as a boy flirted at the edges of Hunter’s anger. A boy only a few years older than Hunter’s ten-year-old self, standing at the edge of the forest with his brother, both waiting for a decision that would determine the rest of their lives.
Hunter had had to make that decision. To this day, he wondered whether he’d made the right one all those years ago, and it was that doubt that stayed his hand now.
Sheathing his blade, he popped to his feet and stared down at Myne. “Get the fuck out of my sight, because I don’t know how long I can keep myself from eviscerating you.”
Myne didn’t look at Hunter as he staggered to his feet and out of the chamber.
The bedroom door whispered open, and the soft sound of footsteps came toward him.
He smelled fear.
“Please, don’t kill him.” Rasha’s unsteady voice rang with alarm. “And please, don’t let this affect our mating. My father will only blame you.”
“Well, that’s one hell of an apology,” he snapped. “And why in the ever-living fuck
would he blame me?”
She had the decency to look away while she explained away her behavior. “Because you’ve ignored my needs. I was forced to do what I must—”
“Forced? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means,” he said, mimicking a character in one of his favorite classic movies. Gotta love The Princess Bride. So many good lines, so many cool ways to die.
Rasha slid the spaghetti straps of her dress off her shoulders. “Let me make it up to you.”
“Make it up to me?” he sputtered. “You’ve made me look like a fool in my own house!”
“No one has to know.” The skimpy slip slid down her curvy body and pooled at her feet, leaving her naked and nowhere near as beautiful as her sister.
“I’ll know.” He couldn’t deal with this, couldn’t deal with anything right now, and he headed for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“To feed.” Looking back over his shoulder, he gave her his coldest, cruelest smile, the one his father had had down to an art. “I came to be with you, but it looks like you’ve already been used.”
THE TREMOR STARTED so subtly that Riker didn’t notice until the pictures on the common-room wall began to rattle. He looked up from the pool table, where he, Jaggar, Bastien, and Baddon had been finishing one more game before they went their separate ways to feed.
Well, not Bastien. He hadn’t blooded yet—a miserable event in a young vampire’s life, when he or she felt the first yearnings of moon fever.
Jaggar put the eight ball in a corner pocket. “Earthquake?”
The ground shook under their feet. Baddon’s head whipped up. “I don’t think so.”
“Hunter,” Riker whispered. “Shit.”
He tore out of the room and jogged down the hall toward Hunter’s chambers. Myne, bloody and holding his ribs, came around a corner and slammed into Riker. He snarled and shoved Riker into the wall.
“What the fuck?” Riker held his fists at his sides, but only because someone had already beaten the holy hell out of the other male.
Myne stared, his gaze as empty as it had been when he’d first come to the clan. For a long time, he just stood there, his eyes haunted, his face pale.
“Myne? Buddy?”
Myne released Riker and stumbled backward. “Sorry,” he rasped. “I . . .” He shook his head. “Sorry.” He took off, leaving Riker baffled and staring down the hall.
A sudden, dark suspicion spurred Riker on faster now, but he skidded to a halt when the door to Hunter’s chamber flew open. The clan chief stormed out of his quarters, his knuckles shredded, his dark eyes radiating a crimson glow. Instantly, Riker’s suspicion was confirmed. Hunter and Myne had gotten into it.
But this wasn’t like the other times, when both Hunter and Myne walked away with similar injuries. This had been one-sided, and where Myne had smelled like shame, Hunter smelled like murder.
“Hunt.” He grabbed the vampire’s arm, halting him in his tracks. “Obviously, you’re pissed—”
“You have no idea,” Hunter snarled.
Oh, Riker had an idea, all right. “What happened?”
A rumble boiled up from deep in Hunter’s chest. “He fed from Rasha.”
Riker sucked in a sharp breath, his thoughts immediately going to what he knew about Rasha, which was that she was an evil skank. Maybe she’d lied to Hunter. “Who told you that?”
“I saw them!” he roared. “They were in my fucking bedroom.”
Holy shit. So it was true? And Hunter had let Myne live? “Hunt, listen to me. Myne didn’t mean to disrespect you.”
“He betrayed me!” Hunter’s expression was thunderous, his eyes flashing like lightning from a summer storm.
“I know. But I guarantee he’s punishing himself harder right now than you ever could.”
“I doubt that.” Hunter jammed his hand through his hair. “What was he thinking?”
“He was thinking he was hungry.”
“And of all the females he could choose from, he chose mine?”
Riker cursed this situation, not wanting to betray Myne like this but also not wanting Hunter to destroy the guy. “He didn’t just decide at the last minute to screw you over. He’s been feeding from Rasha for years.”
“What?” Hunter’s voice throbbed with warning. He wasn’t happy that this had been kept from him, and Riker didn’t blame him. “Why?”
“No one else will have him,” Riker said carefully. He didn’t want to end up with a rearranged face and broken ribs à la Myne. “Myne’s bite is too painful for other females. No one in our clan will feed him. I’m not sure how he hooked up with Rasha, but it’s the only way he’s been able to feed.”
Hunter scrubbed his hand over his face. “Why didn’t he—or you—say something when Rasha first got here?”
“Because he made arrangements for a female at the Velvet Fang. One who didn’t know how painful his bite is. But when he went into town today, he found out she was killed by a hunter. He got back an hour ago.” Myne had been snappish and jittery, and Riker wished he’d stuck closer to the guy. “He was going to try to find another female. He wanted to stay away from Rasha, but he’s missed a couple of feedings. He was starving. I should have known he couldn’t resist.” Riker squeezed Hunter’s biceps. “Hunt, you need to know that he wouldn’t have approached Rasha. She would have gone to him.”
A muscle in Hunter’s jaw twitched. “Did he lie about not fucking her?”
Riker shook his head. “He knew her father would rain down hell on our clan. He refused to put us in danger.”
Hunter closed his eyes and breathed deep. When he lifted his lids, his eyes no longer burned with anger, but Riker wasn’t sure the icy composure was any better. “Keep him away from me, Rike. Keep him away, or so help me, I’ll kill him.”
FUCK.
The only thing worse than feeding from the chief’s mate would have been to sleep with her. The fact that Hunter and Rasha weren’t formally mated wasn’t important. According to vampire law, touching a clan leader’s potential mate without the leader’s express permission was a grave trespass.
It was within Hunter’s rights as clan chief to slay Myne for what he’d done. He probably should. Many would simply see it as putting down a rogue cur, and no one would question it. Hell, killing Myne would send a strong message to the clan that betrayal wouldn’t be tolerated.
Myne was such a piece of shit. It didn’t matter that his blood feud with Hunter went so far back that no one in the clan was even aware that he and Hunter had clashed long before he became MoonBound’s chief.
Shame tore at him. He had betrayed a pureblood chief. Betrayed the clan that took him in when was barely alive. He couldn’t call himself a warrior. He didn’t deserve that title. Honor gave him only one choice, and that was to leave.
Well, he could kill himself, but that wasn’t going to happen. Myne had learned a long time ago that his sense of self-preservation was extreme.
He shoved the last of his clothes into a duffel and looked around his chambers. Nothing here belonged to him. It never had, he supposed. Hunter had merely allowed him to stay here. Myne had never lived here.
Which, really, was Hunter’s fault. If Hunter had made a different decision all those decades ago, things would have been different. Myne’s brother would still be alive, and Myne wouldn’t be the titanium-toothed freak he was now.
So, really, he could lay the blame for all of this at Hunter’s feet.
Yep, he’d go with that.
There was a light tap on the door, and then it whispered open, and Rasha slipped inside. Mother. Fuck. Seriously? At least she’d changed into a much more modest outfit of jeans and a fluffy blue sweater that matched her eyes.
“Get out,” he growled. If Hunter knew she was here, there’d be no second chances for Myne.
Her demeanor was uncharacteristically subdued, her gaze averted, her stride hesitant. “I only need a minute.”
“Just long enough to make sure Hunter kills me?”
“I’m sorry about that.” She moved forward, her eyes pleading, which had to be an act. “I panicked.”
“So you told him I forced you,” he said flatly. “What the fuck?”
“I said I’m sorry!” she snapped, her moment of contrition expired. “I freaked out—”
“And have you admitted that you lied? Have you told Hunter the truth?” Her pursed lips and silence were enough of an answer. And it wasn’t the answer he’d wanted. “So even now, Hunter could be rounding up a team of warriors to drag me to my execution ceremony.” He had to get the hell out of there. Now.
Rasha shook her head. “If he’d wanted to kill you, he’d have done it in his chamber like any other chief. And even if he was still thinking about it, don’t you think he’d have you chained in the pit right now?”
Maybe.
Or maybe he was trying to make Myne sweat a little before he hauled him off to the chopping block.
“Why are you here, Rasha?” He zipped his duffel and tossed it onto the chair by the door. “To apologize for being a lying bitch? Mission accomplished. So get the hell out.”
Rasha’s cheeks flamed red. “How dare you?” she snarled. “I’m the daughter of a chief, soon to be First Female of a clan. You do not speak to me that way.” She sniffed, going from batshit pissed to calm in a heartbeat. “I came here to apologize. But I can’t have you ruining my future. You need to leave.”
Had she missed the fact that he was packing to do exactly that? But her command rankled, and he found himself pushing back. “And if I say no?”
One corner of her mouth curved into an evil smirk as she grasped the collar of her sweater and ripped it far enough down to reveal cleavage. “I’ll tell everyone you attacked me.”