by Sadie Moss
But whatever sharp craving twisted inside my stomach, it wouldn’t be satisfied by any kind of food I could think of.
The stranger must’ve noticed my throat convulsing as I fought down the bile rising into my mouth. His expression softened, regret and pity filling his eyes. He gripped my chin gently.
“I’m sorry, wildcat. I wouldn’t have wished this life on you for the world. But I have something that will help.”
Keeping his eyes trained on me, he reached for something on the bed behind him. He held it up, and I blinked.
“What—?” My voice cracked. I cleared my throat and tried again. “What is that?”
He didn’t answer, but he really didn’t need to. I’d seen enough hospital TV shows to know exactly what he had in his hands.
It was a bag, small and made of opaque white plastic. A brownish-red fluid sloshed around inside. But what I couldn’t understand was the scent that came from it. Even through the plastic, I could pick up the rich, tangy flavor. It was the most tantalizing aroma I’d ever smelled—and I worked in a top-notch bakery.
This.
This was the thing I’d been craving, the thing my body had ached for, had tried to turn itself inside out for. I hadn’t been able to give it a name until now.
I still couldn’t name it aloud, but I bit my lip, my stomach contracting painfully as the thing I craved hovered so close, yet so far away. The man’s gaze fell to my mouth, and for a moment, he stilled. Then his attention slid up to my eyes, and a rueful smile split his face as he waggled the bag.
“This will be… unsatisfying.” He shook his head. “But it will keep the hunger at bay.”
His words barely penetrated my brain, not that what he’d said made much sense anyway.
My gaze was locked on the small bag, as if nothing else in the world mattered anymore. My breath hitched when he brought it to his mouth, tearing a small hole in the plastic with his incisors.
Before I could speak, he wrapped a hand around the back of my neck, lifting me slightly as he pressed the bag to my lips. Thick, coppery liquid rushed into my mouth. My mind rebelled, refusing to think about what it was, but my body had no such reservations. I clamped my lips around the hole in the plastic and drank with long, hard pulls.
The liquid was cold, its rich flavor muted.
The man had been right. It was unsatisfying. Like eating junk food when I was craving a home-cooked meal. But right now it was all I needed. As the bag emptied, the burning in my stomach eased.
The man stood and picked up a second bag once I’d finished mine. I tracked its movements like a hungry wolf, biting my bottom lip before I looked up at him hopefully. I would’ve happily drained two dozen more of those bags. Although the bite of hunger was gone, the coppery scent elicited a craving I wasn’t sure would ever be fully sated.
But this bag wasn’t for me.
It was for him.
He tore through the plastic in the same way he’d done with mine and tipped the contents into his mouth. His dark eyes watched me as he drank, a challenge in his gaze. It was like he was daring me to… what? To look away in horror? To tell him what he was doing was wrong? How could I, when I’d just done the same thing?
And there was no way in hell I could look away.
I’d never seen anything so primally beautiful. I couldn’t stop staring at the way his Adam’s apple moved with each swallow, at the corded lines of his throat as he tipped his head back, the fullness of his lips. A slight growth of stubble adorned his sculpted cheeks and chin, making him look deliciously rough. One single, red drop escaped from the corner of his mouth, and his tongue darted out to catch it.
A small sound, almost a moan, reached my ears—and to my horror, I realized it had come from me.
The man’s eyes darkened as his hand clenched tightly around the now-empty bag he held. I looked away quickly, a flush rising in my cheeks.
But the man didn’t speak, and before I could utter a word, he plucked up the first empty bag from the bed and left.
The door closed, and the lock turned.
I was alone again.
Still alive.
And still tied to this damned bed.
7
Sol
I had never begrudged Fate for taking my sight.
She’d given me so many things in return, it didn’t feel right to mourn the loss of a single sense.
But as Malcolm carried the girl’s unconscious body back to our house in Washington Heights, as her cherry and almond scent invaded my nostrils, I bit back a wave of jealousy that my brothers could see this stunning creature, and I could not.
I consoled myself with the knowledge that while they could smell her sweet blood and intoxicating skin, they missed the subtle notes of wine and honey that lingered in the background. That they couldn’t sense the warm, bright shape of her aura like I could. That they weren’t attuned to every small movement of her body.
Maybe it wasn’t true, but in that moment, it was a lie I needed to believe. So I let myself believe it.
She was strong. That she’d attempted to fight a shade and held death at bay as long as she did was proof of that. Her strength would serve her well as she underwent the transition from human to vampire. I could remember my change vividly, the agony still as sharp in my memory as it’d been in reality. But as my brothers and I waited impatiently in the downstairs study, we heard only a few cries and moans from the guest room where we’d secured her.
The change was a deeply personal experience, and tradition dictated that none of us be present while she completed her transformation. But hearing her in distress set my teeth on edge, and I had to grip the arms of my chair to keep from flying up the stairs to comfort her.
When the sounds finally died down, Jerrett and I remained in the study as Malcolm tended to the girl, bringing her blood to help ease the pain.
Whether he admitted it or not, Malcolm was a natural leader. We had sworn our allegiance and our lives to him, and we followed his lead in all things—this included.
But by the time we’d made it back to the house, I had felt the tension radiating from his body. He’d had too much time to think as we shadow ran through the streets of New York in silence, and he already regretted what we’d done.
I knew why he felt that way, knew he viewed vampirism as a curse. But I’d never been able to see it like that. When I’d been bed-ridden as a human, dying of a mysterious disease, I had prayed for divine intervention.
I hadn’t been finished with living yet—there was so much more still to do.
Some threads of life weren’t meant to be cut short.
No matter what regrets Malcolm held, I was certain we’d made the right decision. To let something so precious wilt away like a neglected flower would’ve been a crime against Fate. The enchanting, mysterious woman had been put in our path for a reason, and we’d simply played out our destiny by saving her.
“What the fuck was that shade after? It carved those marks all over her body. Like it was a fucking preschooler trying to make confetti!”
Jerrett’s chair scraped as he rose to pace back and forth across the room. His breath came short, and his heart thudded erratically.
I frowned and leaned back in my seat, remembering the shade’s sickly aura. It’d felt like blackness and decay, and underneath that… something I wasn’t quite able to identify. Something woody and light, at odds with everything else about the dark creature.
“I don’t know, but something about that monster was very, very wrong. Once we deal with the girl, we need to return to the hunt. We’ll find the shade and destroy it.”
“Yeah?” Jerrett’s footsteps stopped. “You know, I’m starting to think it’s not the only one of those things in the city. It would explain why it’s been so fucking hard to track. Because we’re not picking up the trail of one, but several. That’s why it’s always one motherfucking step ahead of us.”
He kicked a chair, and it skidded across the room, slamming into a wall and cracking.
I rubbed a hand down my face. Yuliya wouldn’t be pleased to have to clean that mess up. She had an unlimited budget to replace broken pieces of furniture, but my temperamental brothers kept her busier than most housekeepers probably were—even though ours was aided by magic.
Malcolm’s footsteps sounded on the stairs several minutes before he stormed into the room. Before he even spoke, I knew he was angry.
No, not just angry.
My brother was wound tight in a mass of self-loathing, frustrated desire, and rage. I should’ve expected it. He’d broken a vow tonight that meant more to him than almost anything.
She fed from each of us. We should all feel equally guilty.
But I couldn’t bring myself to regret our actions one bit.
“Took you long enough!” Jerrett’s aura churned with interest and agitation.
“How is she? Is her body handling the change all right?” I rose quickly, turning toward the door where Malcolm stood.
“Well enough to land a kick on me before I could give her a blood bag.” He chuckled, his aura lightening briefly.
Jerrett let out a low whistle. “Damn. She’s fierce. Did you see the scrapes on her knuckles too? She tried to fight the shade. I’m sure of it.”
He was right. My heart swelled with pride for the girl, although I barely knew her. But the moment of levity was broken as Malcolm stalked farther into the room, his dark mood returning.
“We shouldn’t have done this,” he ground out, his footsteps heavy. He smelled of stale blood from the blood bag, and of the girl.
What is it about her scent? Something about it draws me in, makes me hunger for her in a way I’ve never felt before.
“We should have stuck to the plan and gone after the shade.” Malcolm leaned on the mantel over the fireplace as the fire popped and cracked within. “How could I have let her drink from me? I swore I’d never turn another human, and I should’ve kept my promise. It was a mistake. A stupid mistake.”
“What were we supposed to do? Let her die?” Jerrett shot back, his voice dropping into an angry growl.
Each man’s body temperature rose slightly, and I tensed.
My brothers rarely fought, but when they did, it could get out of hand quickly. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that. If Yuliya was upset about the chair, she’d be absolutely furious about having to scrub bloodstains out of the carpet.
“I don’t know.” Malcolm’s voice was thick. Then he cursed under his breath. “No! Of course not.”
Jerrett huffed. “Exactly. And since we did turn her, she’s our responsibility.”
“A responsibility we don’t need. One I don’t want. We’re hunters, and we have a job to do. We need to get back to tracking that shade before it attacks again.”
“So what do we do?” I asked.
Malcolm was silent for a moment. A vampire’s heart usually beat much slower than a human’s, but his sped up now, thrumming powerfully in his chest.
“We make sure she finishes the transition safely. Keep her strapped down, because the wildcat fights back—then we let her go.” He sank into his usual chair near the fire.
I could hear Jerrett’s teeth grinding behind me, feel the fresh wave of anger radiating from him.
“Cut her loose? Like she’s a stray fucking cat we don’t want? No way in hell. She’s one of us now. We did this to her. She needs our help!”
“We saved her life. That’s enough,” Malcolm muttered.
“Enough? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Of course, I’m not kidding.”
“Well, then I guess you’re just insane. I’m not letting her go.”
Malcolm blew out a heavy breath. “I know you may not believe this, brother, but I’m not just thinking of myself. It’s better for her this way too. We have our lives. She has hers. Just because we turned her doesn’t mean we have to drag her along on the hunt with us. She doesn’t deserve that.”
“You’re both forgetting something.”
I spoke quietly, but Malcolm and Jerrett stopped bickering and turned to me. They’d known me long enough to understand I wasn’t one for wasted words—when I did speak, it was because I had something important to say.
“Yeah, what’s that?” Jerrett asked.
“We’re supposed to declare her.”
A moment of stunned silence met my words. I could feel Malcolm’s regret looming like a fourth person in the room as he scrubbed a hand through his hair.
“No. I won’t do that.” His voice was hard.
I nodded, resting my forearms on the back of my chair. “Understandable. I was just pointing out that we’re supposed to declare her.”
“Shit,” Jerrett muttered.
“That decides it,” Malcolm said grimly. “If she stays with us, she’s more likely to be discovered by the court. And I will not put her through that. On her own, she can stay under the radar forever. I know there are undeclared vampires living in secret. If she’s smart, no one will ever find her.”
“Shit. Fucking fuck!”
“Yes, that about sums it up.” Malcolm’s voice was tinged with sadness. “Look, I’m not suggesting we throw her out on the streets without giving her any help. We can keep her supplied with blood bags. She’ll never have to worry about that.”
Jerrett hissed through his teeth, lashing out to punch a hole in a wall for the second time tonight. At least it was our own property he was destroying this time, although I wasn’t sure Yuliya would see it that way.
“Fine! We’ll let her go. But just for the record, I fucking hate this.”
Malcolm grunted in response, a sound of commiseration and assent. A heavy silence fell over the room as the fire continued to snap and pop.
My thoughts drifted upstairs to the girl.
Her unique cherry and almond scent lingered in my nostrils even now. I wondered how she was doing after her first feeding. How she was handling the transition. It wasn’t an easy process, especially on top of the trauma of a near-death experience. I knew that from experience.
She’s strong.
That thought kept rising to the top of my mind as the warmth of the fire bathed my face.
She’s strong.
She must be, to have survived as long as she did tonight. To have fought that shade even when she had no chance against it. Hell, she was strong to have fought Malcolm. His size and commanding presence intimidated even powerful vampires.
I admired her strength. Her spunk.
And something told me even if we tried to let her go, it wouldn’t be that easy.
8
Willow
As soon as my captor left the room, I resumed struggling. The coppery taste of the liquid lingered on my tongue, taunting me, but my brain shut down any attempt I made to analyze what it was. Every time I did, my stomach threatened to reject what I’d so happily consumed as waves of nausea and horror rolled through me.
What the hell is happening to me?
I pulled so hard at the straps, I feared I really would dislocate my arms. But it was no good. The bonds were unbreakable. No matter how much I thrashed or struggled, they wouldn’t budge. Whoever my captor was, he’d planned well for this.
Maybe I’m not the first person he’s done this to. Jesus. What happened to the others?
I let my head flop back to the bed, closing my eyes. My wrists were raw and bruised from my struggles, but I had nothing to show for it. Maybe a better option would be to play nice, to give this man whatever he wanted and hope that he’d eventually let me go.
Flashes of hot and cold washed over my skin, bathing my body in sweat and goose bumps. The hunger pangs had faded, but now it felt like there were insects crawling through my body—a strange prickling sensation that spread out through my limbs. As I wriggled uncomfortably on the plush mattress, I wished for the first time in months that I were back in Ohio.
I’d been so happy to leave, so proud of myself for picking up and starting my life over in the city I’d always dreamed
about. But maybe I never should’ve come.
My apartment in Brooklyn was a tiny shithole, I was exhausted and stretched thin all the time from working two jobs, and I ate ramen at least four nights a week. But none of that had bothered me, because I was pursuing my dreams. The past eight months in New York, I’d felt more alive than I had for the nine years I’d been married to Kyle.
We’d married the summer after I graduated high school, and I had been so sure I loved him, so certain he was everything I needed in a man. But what the hell did I know? I was a kid.
And he wasn’t a man. He was a boy.
My parents had thrown a fit, but I hadn’t listened to them. I’d never been close to my father, even less so to my stepmom, so their disapproval had only bolstered my confidence that I was making the right choice marrying Kyle. They’d refused to come to our small wedding and had cut me out of their lives afterward.
Years later, as the depth and breadth of the mistake I’d made slowly began to sink in, I often picked up the phone and punched in my dad’s cell number, only to hang up before he answered. Too much time had passed, and too many harsh words had been exchanged between us, for me to turn to my parents for help and support.
So I’d gathered my courage on my own and finally told Kyle I couldn’t stay with him anymore. That I needed more than the half-life we were living together.
His lack of resistance to my request for a divorce was more heartbreaking than if he’d fought me on it. I still didn’t know if his apathetic response was because he truly didn’t care about me anymore, or because he was certain I’d fail in my attempt at a better life and come crawling back to him.
Sadness sat like a brick on my chest as I stared up at the ceiling in this unfamiliar room. My blood continued to prickle, as if all my limbs had fallen asleep. Heaviness weighed down my eyelids.
I’d wanted to prove Kyle wrong. To show him, and myself too, that I could make it in New York City. That I could achieve the daunting goals I set for myself.
I wished I had more to show for my attempts than being tied up on a stranger’s bed.