Savage Thirst (Corona Pride Book 4)

by Liza Street

  But he wanted to figure it out. He wanted to follow this to the illogical conclusion—a long life at Gracie’s side.

  His lion wanted to settle down…with a vampire.

  Preposterous.

  Better to get out now while he still could.

  He couldn’t be with a vampire. It simply did not make sense—there would be no babies. There would be no big happy family. Her court had kidnapped Laura’s little brother. They’d bled him and Dristan. They’d brought all kinds of trouble to the Corona Pride.

  But maybe the pride could get past that.

  Fraze could see his brother moving around inside the deli, getting the place ready for the day.

  He leaned his head forward against the steering wheel and banged it there gently. Shit. Shit. Shit.

  Finally, he straightened his spine, got out of the car, and strode to the door of the deli. The closed sign was up, but he tried to open it anyway. Locked. He banged on the frame.

  “We’ll be open in an hour,” Dristan called from inside.

  “It’s me,” Fraze said.

  Dristan’s footsteps were heavy on the tile floor inside while he came to the door and opened it. “What’s up?”

  “Need to talk,” Fraze said.

  “Good. I heard from Laura that shit’s going down with the new court, and I’m not supposed to pass it on. But I was never ordered not to.” Dristan smirked.

  More drama with the vampires. Fraze shouldn’t be surprised anymore, yet he was, every time. “What’s happening?”

  “Some people were kidnapped from Belnedge again. Returned three days later, with no memory of what happened to them. They can’t keep doing this.”

  “They don’t even need to,” Fraze muttered, remembering Gracie outside of Hart’s with that woman.

  “They what?” Dristan’s eyes were big.

  “They…never mind,” Fraze said.

  Dristan grabbed his arm and dragged him to the back of the deli. “Help me cut the pastrami.”

  Fraze frowned. It just figured that his brother would put him to work. He washed his hands and rolled up the sleeves of his thermal, then put on the kevlar and vinyl gloves. While he sliced, Dristan was quiet.

  “Something’s going on with you,” Dristan finally said, over the soft hum of the slicing machine. “You wanna tell me what it is, or I do I have to drag it out of you?”

  Fraze bent his head, trying to lose his focus in the rhythmic swishing sounds of the slicer. “It’s…”

  “What do you know about vampires, for example?” Dristan pressed.

  “I heard they can do just fine with taking a little bit from random people. No kidnapping, no caging necessary.”

  Dristan snickered. “Sort of like free-range chickens?”

  Fraze couldn’t help it, he laughed. “Yeah, something like that.”

  “But what’s bothering you isn’t that you have this knowledge.”

  “No.”

  “It’s how you got this knowledge.”

  Fraze grimaced. “Yeah.”

  “Frasier, you know you’re my brother and I love you and we went through shit with our parents. But I gotta be straight with you. Get your head out of your ass. You’re seeing a vampire, aren’t you?”

  “How’d you…?”

  “You smell like her. You carry a new scent with you. It’s just like theirs. Secretive, dark. Old blood. Wine.”

  “I don’t—I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “That’s exactly right,” Dristan said. “They’re dangerous. You gotta walk away while you still have legs.”

  Fraze let go of the machine and stood back from it, feeling faintly disgusted. “I don’t think I can.”

  “You can be stronger than this, man.”

  Fraze looked at his brother, the conviction in Dristan’s blue eyes, the ferocity writ all over his handsome face. His brother’s expression was intent, serious. Fraze could do this, he could walk away. If he didn’t believe it, his brother would believe it enough for both of them.

  “Okay,” he finally said. “Okay.”

  He didn’t know if he really meant that—in fact, he was sure he didn’t mean that—but it was the answer Dristan wanted, and Fraze obviously needed to think about this on his own. Holding in a sigh of frustration, he turned to go.

  “Wait, you’re not going to finish slicing the pastrami?”

  Fraze turned to him and raised his eyebrows. “You gonna start giving me a paycheck?”

  “It was a therapy trade.”

  “And therapy’s over, asshole,” Fraze said.

  He heard his brother’s laughter as he walked back out to his car.

  Thirteen

  Gracie’s day stretched ahead of her. Holed up in her little room, she was surrounded by sketch pads and colored pencils. She adjusted some shading and erased a little mark.

  She was drawing Fraze’s face, she realized. She hadn’t meant to. She’d started out trying to draw something completely different. A study of a hand. But the hand had grown a forearm and then a muscular shoulder, and then a neck, and then a bearded face had come into view.

  Even the likeness of Fraze looked kind and gentle. Commanding. Confident.

  She put on a show of confidence all the time, but she was losing herself in this man.

  It wasn’t the time or the place. The court was getting ready to grab him. Two nights from now. They were already strengthening one of their cages so they could contain him when the madness set in.

  Gracie looked at the drawing with regret. He was so beautiful, so perfect. To give him the final kiss and take that away from him? That was the true crime. He’d done nothing to Clive.

  Her phone buzzed. She glanced down at it. Well, speak of the devil.

  Fraze: I used to wish I was human.

  Gracie stared at her screen. Where was he going with this?

  Fraze: My girlfriend dumped me after the first time we had sex. She called me disgusting. She said I was like an animal, a monster. I guess I was too rough, during sex. But I thought she was into it. Should have checked in more with her during.

  Sympathy welled in Gracie’s heart. She knew what it was like to feel like a monster—because hell, she was a monster.

  She waited to see if he would say anything else.

  Fraze: If I were human, I could relate better to people. Maybe I wouldn’t have had my heart broken so bad.

  A few seconds later, her phone buzzed again.

  Fraze: You used to be human—what do you miss the most?

  Gracie stilled, her hand frozen above her phone. She missed, oh, she missed so much. She missed the warmth of the sun on her face. She missed riding through the shadow-dappled woods on the mellow horse Clive had given her, Jack Fine. She missed hanging laundry out to dry, watching the heavy linens flap in the wind.

  More than anything, though, she missed the sunrise over the valley. The way the light would creep over the hills. How it would light up the tops of the flowers first. How much it looked like some kind of miracle, every time she saw it.

  Telling Fraze would be revealing too much. What they had right now, it couldn’t last forever. It was temporary. Years from now, she would remember it as the brief time she let herself believe she was in love.

  She couldn’t love. She didn’t know how. She’d forgotten that night in the cold jail, when she accepted the final kiss.

  Except…she’d had quite a few kisses since then, all from Fraze.

  Picking up her phone, she typed out one brief sentence.

  I miss the sunrise over the valley, how it lights up the country.

  She waited for a response, but she had a feeling the conversation was over.

  It didn’t matter. No matter what happened with her court, she wouldn’t be showing them where Fraze lived. She wouldn’t be telling them shit. She wouldn’t help them find him, and she wouldn’t help give him the final kiss.

  Even if it cost her life.

  Fourteen

  Fraze kept his att
ention on Marlana’s face throughout the entire pride meeting, but if anyone quizzed him on what she was saying, he wouldn’t be able to answer.

  Gracie was the only thing on his mind. When he’d see her again, what they would do together. How he could show her, with words or actions, just how much he cared, how hard he was falling for her.

  Eventually, Marlana dismissed everyone. Fraze avoided his brother and slouched his way to the other end of the room. Ben and Doug Channing were off in the corner. Seeing the two of them talking quietly got Fraze’s fur up—nothing good could come of their scheming.

  He glanced down at Gracie’s response to his texts. The valley being lit up by the morning sun. His little vampire…she was a romantic. She seemed so stoic, otherwise. Well, aside from this, and the time she’d cried on Burglar’s Bluff.

  Fraze felt someone’s gaze on him and quickly closed the text app. Glancing up, he saw Dristan glaring. Fraze shrugged and flipped him off, then turned away. If he hadn’t looked away, he wouldn’t have seen Viviana slip quietly upstairs.

  And then he saw Ben’s gaze on Viviana’s ass as she went. Something about the way Ben was nudging Doug and whispering bothered Fraze. Those two were up to something, and if they were planning to hurt Viviana, Fraze would make them bleed.

  Edging closer to the sofa where Ben and Doug sprawled, Fraze pretended not to listen as they talked.

  “We could find the place on our own,” Ben said.

  “Fire in the hole,” Doug answered, snickering. “This time no survivors.”

  They leaned their heads together and said something unintelligible, but Fraze didn’t need to know the details—he could tell what they were talking about…and it wasn’t Viviana.

  “What about the treaty?” Fraze asked.

  “Fuck the treaty,” Ben said. “They obviously have. And stop listening in on private conversations, asshole.”

  “Stop trying to have private conversations in a room full of shifters, asshole,” Fraze retorted. But he said it lazily. Arguing with the Channing boys was an art—and he’d been doing it since he was twelve years old and newly orphaned. They’d tried to give him shit for years after Fraze’s parents had tried to take over the pride, but Fraze had just spooned it right back to them.

  He walked away, acting bored, but inside, his mind was churning. They wanted to take down the court? But Gracie was in there. This was some kind of fucked up Romeo and Juliet situation. The Montagues and the fucking Capulets. Those scenarios never ended well.

  Fraze searched out Marlana. She was in the kitchen with Mateo and Rafe’s parents, and it seemed they’d go on talking for an eternity, but finally Julian and Gloria walked away, and Marlana stood alone at the edge of the counter. “What do you want, Frasier?” she asked.

  She called him Frasier, too, just like Dristan. Just like their pretentious mother had done.

  “I heard Ben and Doug Channing talking,” he said.

  Marlana turned her icy blue eyes to him. “They do that sometimes.”

  “Yeah,” Fraze said. “I mean, yes. Thing is, they’re talking about taking down the vampire court.”

  Marlana shrugged. “We don’t have a treaty anymore. They can search for that lair all they want. They might even find it. In the meantime, I’m formulating strategies.”

  “You’re okay with them going behind your back?”

  She turned to face him with her whole body. “There’s nothing happening here that’s behind my back. You think I don’t have a pulse on what’s going on in this pride? I know more than you think.”

  The way she stared at him gave Fraze the chills. Did she know…about Gracie? She couldn’t. He forced himself to meet her gaze for a second longer, but then he looked down to show respect. Had his gaze looked dishonest? He needed to get away from her sooner rather than later.

  “You want to tell me why you’re so interested in the goings on of the vampire court and our relationship with them, all of a sudden?” Marlana asked.

  “No, ma’am,” Fraze said.

  “I expected as much,” she said. “You come to me when you’re ready to talk. In the meantime, you’re dismissed.”

  Fraze held his breath as he turned and walked away. Instead of going out the front door, though, he stepped up the wide staircase leading to the family portion of the mansion. Viviana’s door was closed, so he knocked.

  “Come in,” she said.

  He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Viviana was stretched out on the floor, doing some bizarre pose that looked like it should break her neck and back in three different places. “What the hell is that?” he asked.

  “Wheel pose. Two more breaths, so hang on a second.”

  She inhaled and exhaled, and then eased down so her back was flat on the floor.

  “I didn’t know you did…whatever this is.”

  “Yoga. Yeah. It’s good for when I can’t get out and run as much as I want to.”

  “Like lately?” Fraze asked.

  “Exactly. Marlana wants me to stay close, stay safe. She’s even got some of our Guardians watching me at night. Fraze, I’m feeling kind of crazy. Like I want out. I feel like, I don’t know, some kind of prisoner here sometimes.”

  He sat on the floor next to her. He couldn’t exactly identify—he’d always been given maybe more leeway than others. Always watched with suspicion, but nobody was around to care if he stayed out too late or got drunk or didn’t even come home until late in the morning.

  Viviana had the opposite problem—she was watched too closely.

  She said, “You wanna watch a movie?”

  Fraze wanted to say no. He wanted to go to Hart’s, maybe see if Gracie happened to be there…even though they’d planned not to meet so often. But Viviana’s expression looked so lonely, almost like she was expecting him to turn down the invitation.

  He made himself comfortable on the floor in front of her bed, but he pulled his phone out of his pocket and rested it on his knee in case Gracie called or texted. “Sure.”

  She raised her eyebrows, but nodded. “Great. Any preferences?”

  “I haven’t seen the latest Bond, have you?” He pushed a button on his phone to check the time. Gracie would probably be out hunting right now. The thought of her taking blood from some random human guy made Fraze want to punch something.

  “Haven’t seen it yet. Let’s watch it.” Viviana grabbed her laptop and leaned up against her bed next to Fraze. She pulled the movie up on her computer. As the opening song came on, she said, “I have a confession, Fraze.”

  He stopped fiddling with his phone and looked at her. “Yeah?”

  “Ben broke up with me, not the other way around.”

  Fraze put his phone on the floor. “I thought you dumped him.”

  “I let you believe that,” she said, wincing. “I’m sorry.

  She looked like she might cry. Fraze scooted closer to her. “It’s okay, V.”

  “No, it’s not. I just feel like a total failure. I couldn’t even keep a relationship going with Ben Fucking Channing. It’s worse that he was the one to dump me.”

  “It was your first relationship, right?” Fraze said.

  She nodded and wiped a stray tear off her cheek. “Yeah.”

  “Don’t worry about a thing—I certainly don’t care who dumped who. The most important thing is that you’re hurting, and I’m here so we can hang out together and you can feel better, okay?”

  “Yeah, okay.” She returned her focus to her computer screen, so Fraze did, too.

  A few minutes later, Fraze’s phone buzzed. He nearly dropped it in his rush to check the message—it was from Gracie.

  Fraze, be on your guard.

  He stared at the words. What did it mean? Was he in some kind of special danger?

  “Everything okay?” Viviana asked.

  If she were any of his other friends, she would have tried to read over his shoulder, but instead she kept her eyes on the movie. Respectful, cautious.

  “
I don’t know,” he said, turning off the lock screen. He’d ask Gracie about it later, and in the meantime, he’d be on his guard. He was too smart to ignore a warning from a vampire.

  Fifteen

  Gracie remained in her room, until she heard the last of the footsteps walking down the hall. Night had fallen, and her kind were assembling to hunt for Fraze. They were hoping to grab him tonight and then wait until tomorrow for the kiss.

  No matter what, Gracie wouldn’t help them. She was glad they were meeting somewhere away from where he lived. As soon as he’d sent directions to his cabin, she memorized them and then deleted them.

  Once all the soft footfalls had passed, she slipped out of her room.

  Someone grabbed her, and a female voice said, “Well. Look who’s not eager to join the hunting party.”

  Cosette.

  Gracie struggled, but it was in vain. Cosette had an arm around Gracie’s neck, and she pinned Gracie’s hands.

  “Come along, little cowgirl,” Cosette said, her French accent thick. She dragged Gracie down the darkened hallway and shoved her into the basement.

  The place was empty except for the big boxes lining the walls. Not coffins, but light-tight, person-sized boxes that could have just as easily been coffins.

  “I ought to lock you in here until you shrivel,” Cosette said.

  Gracie heard a noise and looked around. Mikhail and Bo stood in the corner behind her. “Bo?” she asked.

  Bo’s arms were folded over his chest. His hair was down, shadowing his face. Then he looked up and met her gaze, his dark eyes intense. “I couldn’t lie to her. She knows something’s up. We all do. But what is it, Gracie Jane?”

  Gracie pursed her lips. She’d be damned if she’d say a thing about Fraze.

  “Hold her shoulders, Mikhail,” Cosette said.

  Gracie had never liked Mikhail, and she liked him even less right now. He smelled like mold and made her nose itch.

  He came into place and Gracie did her best to get out of their grips, but she was stuck fast. She felt Cosette’s hand sneaking into her pockets and she tried again to wriggle away. No use. Cosette gave a victorious smile as she held up Gracie’s phone.

  “Let’s see,” she said, pulling up the text app. “I knew it. Look, gentlemen, she’s consorting with the enemy. Fraze—that’s the name of the shifter we want, isn’t it?”