by L. L. Raand
Synopsis
Niki Kroff has one mission in life—to lead Sylvan Mir's elite guard and protect the wolf Alpha's life. When Lara, another of the centuri, becomes a Vampire in the course of saving Sylvan's life, Niki is assigned to protect her during her transition. Removed from Sylvan's guard, Niki struggles to find her place in the Pack and control her desire for a forbidden Were whose call grows stronger every day.
Sylvan, driven by primal instincts to protect her pregnant mate, grows more powerful, and more deadly, than any Alpha Were in centuries. While Sylvan rallies her allies, Vampire and human, to fight extremists, radical groups, and members of their own Praetern coalition in a war to preserve the autonomy of all Praetern species, Niki fights a private battle with her own dark urges—a battle which, if lost, will cost her everything.
A Midnight Hunters Paranormal Romance.
Night Hunt
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Night Hunt
© 2012 By L.L. Raand. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-687-8
This Electronic Book is published by
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 249
Valley Falls, New York 12185
First Edition: March 2012
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Credits
Editors: Ruth Sternglantz and Stacia Seaman
Production Design: Stacia Seaman
Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])
By the Author
By Radclyffe
Romances
Innocent Hearts
Promising Hearts
Love’s Melody Lost
Love’s Tender Warriors
Tomorrow’s Promise
Love’s Masquerade
shadowland
Passion’s Bright Fury
Fated Love
Turn Back Time
When Dreams Tremble
The Lonely Hearts Club
Night Call
Secrets in the Stone
Desire by Starlight
Honor Series
Above All, Honor
Honor Bound
Love & Honor
Honor Guards
Honor Reclaimed
Honor Under Siege
Word of Honor
Justice Series
A Matter of Trust (prequel)
Shield of Justice
In Pursuit of Justice
Justice in the Shadows
Justice Served
Justice For All
The Provincetown Tales
Safe Harbor
Beyond the Breakwater
Distant Shores, Silent Thunder
Storms of Change
Winds of Fortune
Returning Tides
Sheltering Dunes
First Responders Novels
Trauma Alert
Firestorm
Short Fiction
Collected Stories by Radclyffe
Erotic Interludes: Change of Pace
Radical Encounters
Edited by Radclyffe:
Best Lesbian Romance 2009-2011
Stacia Seaman and Radclyffe, eds.:
Erotic Interludes 2: Stolen Moments
Erotic Interludes 3: Lessons in Love
Erotic Interludes 4: Extreme Passions
Erotic Interludes 5: Road Games
Romantic Interludes 1: Discovery
Romantic Interludes 2: Secrets
Breathless: Tales of Celebration
By L.L. Raand
Midnight Hunters
The Midnight Hunt
Blood Hunt
Night Hunt
Acknowledgments
Nothing is quite as exciting or as intimidating as creating an entirely new world and populating it with characters who are at once recognizable and more-than-human. Writing the the Midnight Hunters novels has challenged and rewarded me as an author, and along the way has been great fun. Hearing readers say they tried one even though “they don’t like paranormal books” makes all the work worthwhile.
Thanks go to my assistant, Sandy Lowe, for her efficiency, skill, tireless support, and amazing good humor; to author Nell Stark for her keen eye to story and enthusiastic feedback; to Ruth Sternglantz for her tremendous job of editing; to Stacia Seaman, for ensuring a stellar final product; and to my first readers Connie, Eva, Jenny, and Paula for insight and encouragement during the early drafts.
And to Lee, who reads every story like it is the first—Amo te.
L.L. Raand 2012
Dedication
For Lee, everlasting
Chapter One
Just before sunrise, Lara pulled Niki beneath her and pressed her mouth to Niki’s neck. “I hunger.”
Niki arched her back and gave her throat to her Packmate, in submission and invitation. “Feed.”
Through the haze of her bloodlust, Lara’s heart constricted. Niki, the Pack imperator, the leader of the Alpha’s elite centuri guard, had never submitted to anyone except the Alpha, but she offered herself willingly now for Lara’s need. Daylight was coming, and Lara’s newly turned Vampire physiology drove her to consume the blood that would keep her alive during her somnolence until the circadian cycle edged into night and the deadly ultraviolet rays of the sun were neutralized. Before her body became quiescent, she had to replenish the essential ferrin compounds that her system lacked. Without blood, she would die. When she tried to resist the urge, a terrible chasm of pain opened inside her, stripping her reason, driving her mad. Lara groaned and her vision hazed to red.
“Feed,” Niki murmured, threading her fingers through Lara’s hair, forcing Lara’s open mouth harder against the bounding pulse in her neck. “Please, I need you.”
Need, desire, all-consuming hunger rolled through Lara’s mind and scorched along her nerve pathways, thrumming beneath skin so tight she feared she might tear apart. She was Vampire, but she was also Were. Claws erupted from her fingertips, canines—thinner and sharper after her change—shot from their sheaths. Her lips drew back in a snarl. Brown pelt feathered the trench between her abdominals, and her clitoris lengthened. She pulled Niki to her, scoring shallow gouges in Niki’s chest that ran crimson in the dusky glow of almost-dawn. Lara licked the scarlet flow and Niki writhed, her swollen sex hot and hard against Lara’s thigh. Lara rubbed her stone-tipped breasts over Niki’s and sank into Niki’s throat, injecting a flood of erotostimulants into Niki’s system with her bite. Niki growled and her face morphed, her canines erupting, her jaw elongating. Lara pulled at Niki’s throat and Niki released a torrent of thick, hot victus, roaring in an agony of pleasure.
Lara’s hips pumped in time to the contractions in her throat, her continuous climax driven by the surge of blood into her tissues. She knew nothing but the blood. She drank, but the dark hollows within her never filled. Her clitoris pulsed, her sex glands emptied over and over, but she craved more. More, and never enough.
A faint whimper penetrated her lust-clouded consciousness. Niki. Niki strained in her arms, vulnerable and defenseless. Niki. Lara wrenched her mouth away, panting, her canines still throbbing, her abdomen so tight she could barely breathe. Niki shuddered in midshift, her eyes wolf-green, her red-g
ray pelt shimmering beneath her sex-sheened skin. Lara fell away and Niki threaded her fingers through Lara’s hair and kissed her, licking the blood from her mouth.
“More,” Niki growled, dragging Lara’s head down to her neck. “Take more.”
“I can’t,” Lara gasped.
“Yes.” Niki slid her hand down Lara’s belly, gripped her sex, and squeezed. “Drink me.”
“No,” a cool voice said from across the room.
Lara stiffened and flung herself to the far side of the bed. Away from Niki. Away from temptation. Away from the blood that called her like a lover. She wrapped her arms around her middle and buried her face between her knees. “Get away.”
Heed her, little Wolf. The command slid through Niki’s mind like a knife.
Niki whipped her head around, snarling as she came up on all fours, inching closer to a full shift. Her jaws ached, her heart thundered. Her pelvis throbbed with the pressure of sex hormones swelling her glands. She was ready to fight or fuck. She focused on the Vampire in the shadows. Gates, lethal as a blade where she leaned against the wall in dark pants and a white shirt open between small breasts, her eyes fiery red, her skin silvery pale in the glow of a morning she would never see again. Niki growled a challenge. “I can feed her all she needs.”
Jody Gates pushed away from the wall and swung the shutters closed over the windows, blocking the daylight. Muted amber lights came on just inside the door. She regarded Niki with a chilly, dismissive expression. “You might be able to. You’re centuri. If you were human, she would drain you. Even other Weres cannot give what you give and survive. She has taken enough.”
Rage tore through Niki’s blood. Need curdled in her stomach. Somewhere nearby she felt the Alpha running, running without her. But the Alpha’s call still stirred her, and she had nowhere to turn, nowhere to go. No one to ease her terrible emptiness. She needed to lose herself in the addictive pleasure of Lara’s bite. The Vampire watching her had taught her that pleasure the night Niki had first offered her blood to save the Vampire’s life. Now she was left with the insatiable desire for the pleasure, and oblivion, only a Vampire’s bite could bestow.
“You have fed her for the last time,” Jody said.
Niki came out of her crouch with a powerful thrust of her legs and launched herself at Jody’s throat. She would not be subjugated to the will of this Vampire or any other. She answered only to the Alpha. She would take her pleasure where she wanted, when she wanted, and no one would dictate to her or any other Were. She struck the thick log wall where Jody had been standing, her claws scraping timber and her jaws snapping closed on empty air. She’d shifted in midflight and her wolf fell heavily, rolling with a growl onto her feet. The Vampire had moved so quickly as to be invisible. Vampires carried no scent detectable even to a Were’s heightened senses, forcing Niki to track her by sight. Whirling around, she scanned the room with a quick sweep of her head. Jody stood between Niki and Lara, who had fallen into her daylight somnolence, naked, blood-covered, coated in victus and sex sweat. Niki stalked forward, lips curled back, eyes fixed on her prey.
“You forget, little Wolf,” Jody said softly. “I am Risen now. You are no match for me.”
Jody’s eyes darkened to the color of burning blood and Niki whined, the pressure in her skull from the Vampire’s thrall forcing her down on her belly. She would not show her throat, she would die first. The pressure grew and she whined again. The Vampire was suddenly crouched in front of her. Cool fingers threaded through her ruff, lifting her effortlessly until her muzzle was extended and her throat exposed.
“I could take you now, little Wolf,” Jody murmured, “if I wanted. There was a time when all wolves came to the call of their Vampire masters. I could call you to me again, but I won’t.” Jody lowered Niki to the floor. “Understand this. Lara is centuri, and she is Were. But she is also Vampire, and she is mine. She will not feed from you again.”
Niki staggered on unsteady legs to the bed and crawled up next to Lara. She rested her muzzle on Lara’s breast, shielding her. Guarding her. She had been born to guard and the Alpha had ordered her to protect Lara. This she understood. This she would do, or die.
*
Jody slipped out of the room, satisfied her newling would be secure until Lara rose again at nightfall and she took her out to hunt. She glided down the wide hall of the Were infirmary toward the room where she had risen only a short time before. Becca was there. Jody’s throat tightened. Becca.
A female stepped from the shadows and Jody slowed, misting into visibility. She nodded to the Were medic with the pale blond hair and haunted cerulean eyes. “Sophia.”
Sophia murmured, “It is good to see you, Detective.”
“Thank you.” Jody didn’t bother to correct her. The moment she had risen, she had ceased being a police detective. While she had been a pre-animate—what the humans called a living Vampire—she had appeared on the surface to be more human than Praetern, and even then, her colleagues distrusted her. Most feared her. There would be no place for a Risen Vampire in the human law enforcement hierarchy, especially not one with the level of power bequeathed by her ancient bloodlines. Now she had no choice but to take up the mantle of her Clan and prepare to rule the Dominion that would pass to her when her father stepped aside or the balance of power among the many families shifted and she would be forced to take his place. For now, her responsibility lay in ensuring the survival of her species.
Sophia glanced over her shoulder toward the massive wood doors at the far end of the hall. Doors built for a fortress, not a hospital. A sliver of sunlight glowed beneath them. “I know you must go. Niki—and Lara. Are they all right?”
“Lara is safe. Niki guards her.”
“Has Lara fed?” Sophia asked. “We didn’t send anyone.”
“She has been cared for.”
Sophia colored. “Of course. Niki. Thank you.”
“Much has changed in a very short time,” Jody said, her heightened empathic powers reading sadness verging on despair in the Were’s psyche. “Everything will not always be as it is now.”
“No one knows that better than I,” Sophia said. “I won’t keep you. I only wanted to let you know we have dispatched guards to your room and Lara’s, although here in the Compound you are safe.”
“That’s not necessary. My soldiers will see to it.” She had already called for her soldiers and her blood servants to come to the Compound. When she woke at sunfall, so soon after rising, she would be voracious, and she could not risk Becca being the only one nearby to host. As to how safe she was in the Were Compound, she trusted Sylvan Mir’s word that she and her Vampires would be protected, but she was no fool. If Sylvan fell, the next Alpha might have a different view. Until her transition was complete, she would not be able to function well during daylight hours. Soon, she would not be so weak. Her powers were emerging quickly. Even now her body resisted the pull of the torpor ignited by the rising sun.
“Then you will be doubly guarded.” Sophia smiled. “The Alpha has ordered it.”
“Thank you, then,” Jody said and left Sophia to join her consort.
Jody stepped into the room where she had risen. Becca had already closed the blinds and shuttered the windows. A lamp beside the bed illuminated Becca’s shoulder-length ebony hair and made her coffee skin glint with mahogany highlights. Jody latched the door behind her and strode to the bed, unbuttoning her shirt as she walked, watching Becca watch her undress. Becca’s eyes gleamed and Jody saw hunger there. She’d seen hunger countless times in the eyes of her hosts, males and females, human and Praetern, but no one’s hunger had ever stirred her the way Becca’s did. Becca hungered for her, not the pleasure her bite would bring or the chance for immortality.
“You show me worlds I never dreamed of,” Jody murmured. Her throat ached to taste her. Her need filled her until all she knew was Becca.
“I can see myself reflected in your eyes,” Becca said. “You make me feel beautiful and desir
able.”
“You see the truth.” Jody stopped at the foot of the bed and unzipped her pants. She stepped free of everything—clothes, preconceptions, old wounds—when she went to Becca. “I don’t have much time.”
Becca pushed the covers aside. “I know. Come to me.”
Jody slid under the covers, lassitude spreading through her. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You’re here with me. I couldn’t ask for anything else.”
Smiling, Jody traced the line of Becca’s jugular, flowing hot and fast beneath her skin. “No?”
“You see the truth, as well.” Becca caught Jody’s hand and kissed her palm. “Lara? Is she all right?”
“Yes. She did well.”
“Good.” Becca’s eyes were worried as she skated her fingertips over Jody’s throat and down the center of her chest. “Will you be safe today?”
“Don’t worry. My people are already here.”
Becca glanced at the door. “I don’t hear anything.”
“I feel them.”
“Are they in your blood, like me?”
Jody pressed her mouth to Becca’s throat and let her incisors pierce the skin infinitesimally. “There is no other like you. You are my blood mate. My blood flows in you, and yours in me. We’re bound, eternally.”
“Eternally,” Becca whispered, sadness swirling in her eyes. “But I am human—”
“Becca,” Jody whispered. “When I rose this morning, my destiny changed forever, as did yours. I have much to tell you.”
“I know. When you wake, there will be time for us to talk.” Becca rested her hand beneath Jody’s breast, her fingers trembling. “You’re growing cooler.”