by Liz Meldon
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Prey
The Hunt, #2
Liz Meldon
Copyright 2018 Liz Meldon
Published by Liz Meldon. All rights reserved.
License Notes
Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. References to persons and places are for fictional purposes only, and are not linked to anyone outside of the author’s fictitious world. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to purchase their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Reader Warning
Prey (The Hunt, #2)
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Newsletter Connect
Thanks for reading!
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my fantastic beta reader Amanda for all your love and support. I love that you are just as passionate about Moira and Severus as I am. Much love to my phenomenal proofreader Phoenix, for catching my errors with poise and tact, and going along with my crazy publishing schedule. As always, much love to my author besties group, my sun and stars, and my parents for being incredibly supportive of this journey. A huge shout-out to the amazing #bookstagram community for all your love and support! Last, and certainly not least, a great many thanks to my readers. Without you, there’s nothing but me and my imagination.
Reader Warning
Prey has a rating of EXPLICIT. Readers uncomfortable with graphic violence may find certain scenes disturbing. Beyond that, this novel also contains graphic sexual content and coarse language.
Prey (The Hunt, #2)
Pearls and Polaroids
PEARLS AROUND HER NECK
Moira Aurelia has put her faith in a demon. She offered her hand and he took it. Partners. Just like that. Black eyes and sinful smiles, she trusts an incubus to lead her into the abyss if it means she’ll finally find her dad on the other side. Her real dad. The creature who cursed her.
Or blessed her. Because from the way Severus—snarky, seductive Severus—watches her, touches her, ravishes her, Moira can’t decide if this new body is a curse, or if she’s finally growing into the woman she was always meant to be.
POLAROIDS AT HER FEET
Unable to fathom how this woman, this ethereal creature, has so much raw power over his inner demon, Severus tries to keep her at an arm’s length while he helps her hunt down her father—but he can only abstain for so long.
Moira is the sweetest hell he’s ever tasted, a woman who squares off with his truest self and doesn’t even flinch. When he’s with her, the loneliness disappears, the bitter ache in his heart—mended. How can he resist such a divine temptation?
Meanwhile, the Farrow’s Hollow demon community is positively aquiver when news of Moira’s heritage leaks—and suddenly Severus isn’t the only demon in town who must have her…
Chapter One
“How could you keep this from me?”
Moira tried not to glare at the glossy photo of her mom, but she couldn’t help it. Her fingers clamped down on the flimsy bit of memory, thumbs leaving fat prints at the edges. If Russ—Severus, she had to consciously remind herself—was correct and she was a hybrid, then all her recent changes would almost make sense. She was developing powers, not dying of some crazy illness that no one in the medical field could figure out. This was rebirth, not the end.
But why hadn’t her mom told her?
Sure, she had been out of it toward the end—all that pain medication would do that to a person. But she’d had her entire life to tell Moira what she was, what the possibilities could be in the future, and she hadn’t.
Moira’s glare grew heated, burning into the face of her smiling mother. Those eyes, that hair—Moira had once shared both of those characteristics. Green eyes. Warm chestnut-brown curls. If her mom had still been alive today, she wouldn’t have recognized her. Not really. She had issued a warning before she passed: everything would change after Moira turned twenty-two.
At the time, Moira hadn’t put much thought into it. After all, her mom, the only living relative she had any connection with, had been on her deathbed—she was raving as the illness took her, raving about twenty-two and onions and Moira could hardly stand it.
Once she’d passed, there had been the mourning period. Then Moira had needed to deal with all her mom’s remaining worldly possessions, which had ripped her grieving heart open again. And then she’d had to try to figure out how to move forward with her life, her career, her education—and the whirlwind of it all, preparing for this next stage with Ella by her side, had been exactly what Moira had needed to bounce back to being someone who resembled her old self. But then the changes had come, just as her mom had said they would.
And according to Severus, a fucking demon of all things, Moira’s other side was finally making itself known.
Her angelic side.
How could her mom not have known she’d had sex with an angel?
Moira’s glare lost a bit of its venom as she considered it. According to Severus, most of the supernatural beasties you heard about in stories were real, and humanity had no idea. Well, most of humanity. A few were privy to this secret society of supernatural monsters—and angels, apparently. If she hadn’t known angels or demons or, or, vampires were real just by going about her day-to-day existence, then logically she couldn’t fault her mom, especially if she hadn’t known the guy she was taking to bed had a pair of feathery wings and a halo.
Moira had sort of had sex with Severus without realizing he was anything but human. Sort of.
His eyes should have been a dead giveaway, but Moira had summed her brief glimpse of them up to her mind providing a reason for her to get the hell out of that hotel room. But it had really happened. She’d seen a piece of his true self, of his soul, if demons even had souls, and she still couldn’t decide how that made her feel.
Frightened? Not really.
Aroused? A little.
Concerned? Yup.
Her mind could have rebelled against all this—easily. It was only two days ago that Severus had stood at her underwear drawer, crotchless red lace panties in hand, and shattered her entire view of reality. She could have chosen not to believe him, called him insane—but that would have been a pointless waste of time. Moira couldn’t deny that some of the changes she’d experienced, particularly her sudden and curious new strength, had a supernatural edge to them. She had just been too frightened to consider it.
Before he’d left her house, Severus had told her that he’d felt the air turn cold when she cried—yet another thing to add to the ever-expanding list of personal weirdness.
Moira had given the whole thing a lot of consideration, two long days of thought and reflection holed up in her room whenever she wasn’t attending classes, and she had decided to just go with it. Severus’s intentions had read as genuine, though she had promised herself to stay on her toes around him. He was still a demon; his offer to help didn’t negate that.
If she tried to fight it, to reason her way through everything, to
come up with another saner rationale, nothing would get done. Severus had offered to help her find her dad, who they both now assumed was an angel working for Seraphim Securities. The longer Moira spent in an existential crisis, the more it would delay meeting the man who had cursed her—or blessed her—with this side of herself. If she could find him and just talk, just get her questions answered, Moira would be happy. She didn’t expect a tearful family reunion, although it would be nice to be on good terms with the only being who would truly understand what she was going through.
Still, for all his callousness, Severus had had a point. There were two possibilities when it came to dear old Dad. One: that he had known about her and what she would become her entire life, and just hadn’t bothered to reach out. Shitty, but probable. Two: that he hadn’t known of her existence at all. Maybe her mom had hidden her somehow, but Moira had lived in Farrow’s Hollow all her life, and supposedly her dad worked at the local angel security office downtown. The chances of him having zero idea about her existence seemed slim, but they were odds Moira was willing to work with.
Before her mom died, Moira had been an optimist. It would be nice to finally get some of her old confidence back. Looking at the world through a grey haze, hating herself for what she had become, helped no one—least of all Moira. She had someone on her side now, demon or not, and she planned to make the most of it.
All the while trying to ignore what the breathtaking creature did to her. Good grief was he ever gorgeous, and learning that Severus was, in fact, a demon hadn’t changed that by any means.
It certainly made him more dangerous—and Moira wouldn’t, couldn’t, forget that.
Not that she had any idea what to do should his demon side rear its ugly head—or handsome head, depending on the circumstances. From digging around internet forums, archives, theological debates, she’d gained some additional information about demons and angels, but nothing that would make her an expert. No one could agree on anything, be it in books or online, and a lot of the intel she dug up, wrapped in her blankets and surrounded by pillows, sounded more pop culture, pop fiction, than reality.
She had always been adept at thinking on her feet—learning on her feet. Sure, the last couple years had been a little all over the place for her, but Moira was ready to throw herself into this new world, this new life, with everything she had. What did she have to lose? If Severus acted out, her threat of putting him through a wall still stood.
Her phone chirped softly at her side, coaxing her out of one of the many headspace dives she’d taken lately. The last one had gone on for hours; one moment she was staring at her laptop screen, the latest Wikipedia page on angel hierarchies blazing back, and the next it was midnight and her battery had died.
It was all just a lot to digest.
Lower lip caught between her teeth, she unlocked her screen and found a text from Severus awaiting her. It had been his idea to swap numbers, and she’d spent a long time staring at the photoless profile he’d crafted on her phone, wishing she could call at two in the morning and unload her thousands of questions on him, hoping he might have actual answers.
Instead, she kept it all inside. Talking about it, saying the words out loud, still made her feel a little crazy.
As crazy as one could feel reading a text message from a self-professed lust demon.
Are we still on for today?
They had plans to meet at the coffee shop across the street from Seraphim Securities. To anyone watching, they were just two friends sharing lunch, but Severus had wanted to do some reconnaissance work before they got into anything too serious. Even though Moira had staked out that damn building for all of last summer, its rigid lines and hard edges of slate grey and black openly mocking her, Severus wanted to make his own observations.
Leaving the house shortly, she texted back. Will take the 11:50 bus.
From her place on the other side of campus, it would take roughly half an hour to get to downtown Farrow’s Hollow. Not ideal, but she didn’t feel like trekking all the way to the university to grab an express bus—which, in the end, would only maybe shave ten minutes off her ride.
I’ll be here when you arrive. Look for me at the front by the window. I’ve already taken two seats facing the building.
She rolled her eyes, resisting the urge to poke fun at his punctuality. They weren’t meeting for another forty minutes, but apparently someone was eager to get started.
Grinning, Moira typed out a saucy reply, but then worried that that might come across as too friendly, too forward. Sure, he’d seen her naked, but after the other day, their relationship had basically started again from nothing. Moira wasn’t the woman who’d blushed red as a fire truck and run off into the night, angry tears streaking down her face. And Severus wasn’t the soft-spoken, understanding escort who’d stalked her for a week.
She was the daughter of an angel. She could bend metal like it was nothing and turn the air cold with her grief—and Severus was a lust demon who made her heart and her sex feel strange, unsettling, wonderful things. Their relationship had begun again as soon as he’d told her the sordid truths of this world, and that was that.
It had to be.
So, instead, she erased everything and fired back a succinct Cool, then started to get ready. Five minutes later, she had pinned her mom’s photo back on the tackboard over her desk, shimmied into a pair of skinny-fit black jeans that were too loose on her these days, and added a black T-shirt and wool cap to complete the ensemble. In the shared bathroom down the hall, she brushed on a hint of makeup, if only to make her look like she belonged in the land of the living. With some color on her translucent cheeks, she snagged the jean jacket hanging on the back of her door in passing, then hurried down the stairs.
Only to nearly run smack into Ella as her bestie swung up the staircase, anchoring herself with a hand on the railing.
“Ah!”
“Oh my god!”
They giggled, separating from one another, and Moira breezed by her to slip on her poorly aged black flats, dug out from the pile of housemate shoes next to the front door.
“I didn’t even know you were home,” Ella remarked, looking quite cute in that short-sleeved yellow sundress. Moira stared at it for a moment, wondering why it looked so familiar, then realized it was hers; Ella had a penchant for raiding her closet, though she hadn’t seen that little number in at least a year. Not that she cared. After all, Ella had the boobs for it, while Moira’s had steadily deflated from an almost-D-cup to a handful of B. Just another bit of angel weirdness to wrap her head around.
“I was in my room,” she said when she felt Ella staring back. “Just getting ready.”
“Don’t you usually have class right now?”
“Decided to skip.” She’d been too anxious about her meeting with Severus to sit through a mind-numbingly boring seminar.
Ella gasped, half mocking, half serious. “What? You skipped a class?”
While rare, Moira didn’t think it was a momentous enough occasion for her best friend’s dramatics. “It’s been known to happen.”
“Does that mean you’re free for lunch?” Ella asked as she swept her enormous mane into some semblance of a bun at the back of her head, her hair tie stretching to its limits to contain everything.
“Er, no.” Moira went for her purse, one of two hanging on the coat hooks next to the door, all the while knowing Ella would need more than a stammered no to satisfy her. “I’m meeting with one of the other TAs for my class to go over some stuff. We’re going to grab lunch downtown.”
Ella’s perfectly plucked eyebrows shot up. “You hate all the other TAs in your class.”
“Well, I hate this one just a bit less,” she said with a forced chuckle. Over her shoulder, she read Ella’s skeptical look loud and clear, but she didn’t need permission to go out—or to not go out with her. “I’ll see you tonight?”
Ella hummed in agreement, arms crossed as she leaned against the coiled bannister at
the bottom of the stairs. “You sure will. Have a fun lunch.”
“Trust me, I won’t,” she announced as she hurried out the front door. Knowing she hadn’t heard the last of that conversation, Moira jogged to the bus stop up the street, her heart pounding—and expectations high.
Moira had about two minutes to get here before he left. Jaw clenched, Severus tore his gaze from a looming Seraphim Securities across the street, a building marred by hard lines and bleak tones. A quick glance at his phone told him she wasn’t late per se, but he didn’t like the idea of loitering around a hub of angel activity longer than he needed to.
After Moira’s breakdown and his subsequent offer of assistance, Severus had spent the last two days wondering if he’d had an aneurysm. Demons were impervious to such ailments, of course; they healed quickly from wounds on Earth, and were all but indestructible in Hell, although still vulnerable to pain.
Still, what other explanation was there for his decision to help her hunt down the angel who might be her father? Outside the brain injury angle, Severus blamed the demon inside and the appendage hanging between his legs. If he hadn’t been so inexplicably attracted to Moira Aurelia, angel-human hybrid and walking beacon for curious onlookers the stronger her new powers became, then he wouldn’t be risking his life.
Risking his freedom. No angel wanted a demon digging into their history, especially an angel who had fucked up royally enough to get a human pregnant. He exhaled sharply, staring down at his untouched coffee and scone. This could all go to pot—fast—if he didn’t play the game carefully. He wasn’t sure how determined Moira was, how desperate she was, to find her father, but family had a knack for making you do things you wouldn’t ordinarily. Family had a knack for fucking you over, too. Severus knew that firsthand.