“Stake Reapers,” Baddon growled.
“Shit,” Aiden breathed. “You guys okay? Rike?”
Riker cut a sharp nod at Aiden. “I’ll be fine. We need to get Jag help.”
They moved faster now, with Aiden and Takis clearing the way, and had no more trouble. Still, it was unsettling that the Stake Reapers had set their traps so close to clan headquarters. MoonBound’s mystic-keeper had warded the area to passively repel humans, but either the wards had been destroyed or the Stake Reapers possessed some ability that rendered the wards useless.
Either way, the clan could be fucked. Their headquarters was concealed by ancient magic, so if the wards could be neutralized, it was possible that the invisibility spell could be, too.
“Baddon.” Hunter shifted Jaggar’s weight to relieve the pressure that was making his right arm go numb. “See if you can do some more digging into the Reapers. If they can neutralize our wards, your theory that they have a vamp in their ranks might be dead-on. Riker, I want extra patrols assigned for the next few days, and tomorrow I’ll personally meet Rasha’s party at our territory’s border.”
Baddon gave a crisp “Yes, sir,” but Riker glared. The guy would no doubt give Hunter an earful about how it was too much of a risk for him to leave headquarters, but Riker’s efforts would be wasted. Hunter wasn’t going to take any chances with his future mate. He didn’t like her, didn’t want this, but if something happened to her inside MoonBound clan’s territory, her father would mount every MoonBound vampire’s skin on his walls.
So yes, he would make sure his future bride and his clan were safe.
His fate, however, was very much up in the air, and as they covered the final miles to headquarters, the voice of the demon who had come to Hunter two months ago rang in his ears.
Before the winter ends, you will be dead.
FATE WAS FOLLOWING Aylin Redmoon like a wolf on the trail of an injured deer. With every step closer to MoonBound clan’s territory in the rugged Cascade Mountains of Washington State, the sense of impending doom grew.
Very soon she was going to be mated to a brutal male, her virginity taken against her will, before being cast aside as garbage.
But first, her twin sister was to be mated. And unlike Aylin’s future mate, Rasha’s was handsome and respected by his clan members, and he believed in bathing more than once a year. Aylin had never seen Hunter up close, but she’d heard the chatter, which, if it was to be believed, made him out to be some sort of vampire Adonis.
Patches of melting snow from last night’s storm crunched under Aylin’s hiking boots as she and her sister made their way along a winding riverbank. Rasha’s boots didn’t make a sound.
Aylin cast a sideways glance at her twin. Rasha’s blond hair was pulled into a severe ponytail, while Aylin’s waist-length locks were bound lower and looser with a leather thong, but aside from that, they were identical. Even their clothing matched, but not out of some silly twin-sisterhood thing. No, Aylin had been set up as a decoy so that Rasha, the firstborn and ShadowSpawn heir, would have a better chance of escape in the event of an attack by humans or a double cross by MoonBound.
As they walked, Aylin was careful to stay behind her sister and to the right, the submissive position she’d been taught to take with every male and some females in her own clan. It didn’t matter that she was the daughter of the clan chief; her status as second-born twin ranked her below all males, and her physical flaw automatically made her inferior to healthy females.
But that didn’t mean she didn’t sometimes “forget” her place. She always paid for it, but those few minutes when she mouthed off or outwitted one of her “superiors” were worth it.
A deer bounded across the trail a few yards in front of them, its nimble steps lending to a nearly silent run through the trees. How Aylin envied that deer its freedom and agility.
Rasha moved just as gracefully, every step deliberate and soundless, one gloved hand clasped firmly around her crossbow, the other poised over the hilt of the dagger at her hip. Her blue eyes scanned the forest ahead, cataloging every windblown leaf, every bird flitting from tree branch to tree branch. Rasha was in calm, cool warrior mode . . . even though she was on the way to mate with the enemy.
“Aren’t you nervous?” Aylin asked.
“Why should I be?” Rasha signaled one of their six escorts to range out ahead. They should be coming across MoonBound’s warriors at any minute, and they wanted no surprises. “I’m about to be mated to the leader of one of the largest and oldest vampire clans this side of the Rockies. I’ll be a queen. And Hunter is fucking hot. I could be mating an ugly monster with a harem of females.”
“Like I am?” Aylin looked up at a squirrel scolding them from the branches of a tree.
You should be hibernating, buddy.
The squirrel didn’t hear her thoughts, of course. But deep inside, like shadow wings fluttering against her soul, Aylin’s totem animal, her mourning dove spirit guide, awakened, preparing to deliver the message to the little rodent if needed.
“Exactly.” Rasha leaped across a narrow in the river, but Aylin had to use a fallen log to cross. “I know it’s not what you want, but you need to make the best of it. Isn’t that what you’re always telling me?” She cast Aylin a teasing grin. “It’s annoying, isn’t it?”
Aylin tossed a pinecone at her sister. They had an easy relationship when they were alone and Rasha wasn’t being scorned for being nice to her crippled, cursed sister.
“Telling you to make the best of mating with Hunter is a little different from you telling me to make the best of mating with Tseeveyo,” Aylin pointed out. “You actually want to mate with Hunter.”
“For the good of our clan.” Rasha swatted a branch out of her face. “But he doesn’t want me.”
“And Tseeveyo only wants me because he needs our father as an ally.”
Rasha averted her gaze. They both knew there was another reason Tseeveyo wanted Aylin, but neither wanted to go there. “You need someone to take care of you, Aylin. You’re lucky Tseeveyo wants you, and at least this way, you get to be a clan chief’s mate.”
One of his mates. “I can take care of myself.” She definitely didn’t need a male whose evil deeds had given birth to the Hopi legend of the child-eating ogre known to many as Cheveyo.
“Really.” Rasha cast a skeptical glance at Aylin’s crooked right leg, which nearly buckled as she stepped off the log. “You can’t hunt, and you can’t compete with other females. Without me at ShadowSpawn, it won’t be long before you’ll be shoved to the fringes of the clan and begging for scraps. And if something ever happens to our father, your last line of protection will be gone. The clan will either shun you or kill you.”
What Rasha was saying was true, but that didn’t mean Aylin wanted to hear it. “Thanks for the breaking news,” she muttered over the incessant squirrel chatter.
Rasha looked completely perplexed. She never had understood that she shouldn’t say every little thing she was thinking. “I was just being honest.”
“You were reminding me where my place is in the clan.”
“Because you never learn,” Rasha said, glaring up at the squirrel. “You’re always bucking the system, and believe it or not, I don’t like to see you punished. If you’d just accept your place in society, your life would be so much better.”
“If I accepted my place, I’d be dead, and you know it.” How often had she heard not only clan members but her own father say that she should have been drowned before she took her first breath? Aylin wondered what offended everyone most—that she was the second-born, the “cursed” twin, or that she’d had the audacity to be born with a deformed leg in a survival-of-the-fittest world.
Rasha sighed. “Just, please, will you behave with Tseeveyo? I know he’s a bastard, but if you lie low, follow orders, and do what he says, it’ll be okay. Just do your best—”
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“Enough!” Aylin bit out. “The last thing I want to talk about is how I’ve been sold to a clan that is, somehow, worse than ShadowSpawn. So will you shut up about it, already?”
No one else in the world could have said that to Rasha. Not if they wanted to walk away with their teeth intact. But Rasha, for all her faults, hadn’t physically harmed Aylin since they were children. Not seriously, anyway. No, Rasha had other, more effective ways to put Aylin in her place, and Aylin had learned long ago never to let her sister know what was important to her. Rasha knew too much about Aylin’s soft spots as it was . . . as she proved now by raising her crossbow and taking aim at the noisy squirrel. “That thing needs to shut up.”
“No!” Aylin struck out, slamming the weapon up as it fired. The bolt went wild, and the squirrel skittered into a hole in the tree trunk.
Rasha snarled, baring her fangs. “Dammit, Aylin. Animals are food, not pets.”
“Spare me,” Aylin said, starting toward MoonBound’s territory again. “You weren’t going to eat the squirrel. You were going to kill it to hurt me.”
“Not to hurt. To help. Do you see what I mean about you not learning your lessons? I do these things for your own good. I wish you’d see that.” Rasha shoved past Aylin to take the lead. Aylin nearly fell over, her bad leg shifting awkwardly as she tried to regain her balance, but Rasha’s hand snapped out to catch her.
Aylin shrugged out of her grip. “Oh, I learned very well not to keep a pet.” At ShadowSpawn, compassion for animals was considered a weakness. “I was only going to ask that squirrel what brought it out of hibernation. I think it was trying to tell us something.”
Hissing, Rasha rounded on Aylin. “Shut your mouth,” she whispered harshly. “If any of the warriors had heard you—”
“They didn’t.” Aylin bent to tie her bootlace. “And I’d have been careful.”
“It doesn’t matter. Communicating with animals is forbidden, and you know it.”
Of course, she knew it. Every vampire was gifted with a special skill or two, but Aylin’s talent of using her totem spirit to talk to animals was considered taboo for reasons Aylin had never understood. But then, much of what went on in the ShadowSpawn clan didn’t make sense to her. And because of that, because she questioned the ideology of the Way of the Raven, the other clan members thought she was either stupid or a troublemaker. Usually both.
They continued through the forest in uneventful silence. Then, as they dropped into a valley that bordered MoonBound territory, Benito, one of their young scouts, stumbled out from the shadows, his face streaked with blood, his black clothing shiny with wet splotches.
“Fucking . . . humans,” Ben gasped.
He coughed, spraying pink mist as he collapsed onto the fern-covered ground. A thick wooden handle rose from between his shoulder blades, and it took Aylin’s brain several precious moments to realize a hatchet was lodged in his back.
Suddenly, the woods exploded with movement and the sounds of battle.
Rasha spun in a blur, and Aylin felt a sharp sting in her right thigh. Rasha’s blade slipped silently into its sheath; Aylin hadn’t even seen her sister remove it.
“Aylin, run!” They’d prepared for this scenario, but now that it was real, Aylin froze, paralyzed with terror and pain. “Dammit, Aylin, go!”
Blood dripped down her leg from the shallow cut Rasha had made—again, part of their contingency plan. Aylin was a decoy, the cut intended to explain her limp and fool anyone who captured her into thinking she was Rasha, injured by an enemy blade.
Spurred by a series of gunshots and screams, Aylin ran as fast as she could in the opposite direction.
Tree branches slapped at her face and arms. The ground slipped out from under her as she scrambled up the hillside. The sounds of fighting seemed to be right on her heels, but when she glanced behind her, there was nothing but forest. Relief that no one was chasing her veered sharply into terror when a man wielding a steel pipe topped the ridge just a few yards ahead.
Cursing, she fumbled for one of the two throwing knives at her hip. Her hand closed on the hilt, but before she could set her stance to throw the blade, a burly human male burst out from the trees to her right. He swung his crossbow up, training it on her chest.
She let the dagger fly. Thanks to countless hours of training when she was a child, she could hit a wasp in the air at thirty yards, but this guy’s eye was a much better target. He went down with a grunt.
“Vampire bitch!” The pipe-wielding maniac dived at her, smashing the pipe into the backs of her legs.
Agony shot through her, and she crashed to the ground. The bastard kicked her in the ribs, knocking her onto her back. The air exploded from her lungs in a painful burst. His boot came down on her throat, pinning her to the ground.
His ugly, gray-bearded face stared down at her as she clutched at his ankle in a futile attempt to dislodge his foot. What little air she could suck in felt like whips of searing fire.
“Aren’t you a pretty one?” he said. “And going by those blue peepers, you’re purebred, too. You’ll fetch a fortune in the sex-slave market.”
Terror made her clumsy, but by some miracle, her fingers found the second blade at her hip. Hurry . . . hurry . . .
The knife slipped out of her hand. Dammit!
The pipe man’s foot crunched down with more pressure, and black spots floated in her field of vision.
Concentrate. You know how to handle a blade.
Forcing herself to stay calm, she palmed the knife. With as much strength as she could muster with the crappy leverage she had, she stabbed the dagger deep into his denim-clad calf. The man screamed and fell back, but as she struggled to her hands and knees, something pierced her shoulder, and instant sizzling cramps seized every muscle in her body.
Shock dart.
Her fuzzy thoughts understood what he’d nailed her with, but her body no longer functioned, and as she lay on the ground, seizing and shaking, she could only pray that Rasha had gotten away and would come for her.
Please, please, save me, Rasha.
Because, spirits knew, no one else would.
THE PRISONER WAS defiant. Hunter might have appreciated that quality in a vampire, but from a human . . . it just proved how stupid they were.
“You’re in a vampire stronghold, chained in a prey room, and you still can’t say anything except ‘Fuck you’ and ‘Fuck off’?”
“Fuck you,” the human snarled. “I ain’t afraid of you.”
“Your scent says otherwise.”
The human, stripped down to his Harley-Davidson boxers, spit a bloody wad onto the dirt floor. “I said I ain’t scared.”
So. Damned. Stupid.
“You ain’t scared?” Aiden, whose usual mild manner and surfer-dude good looks concealed a dark talent for torture, ran his thumb over the sharp edge of his favorite skinning blade. “We’ll see what we can do about that.”
Hunter stomped on the chain looped around the human’s wrists, yanking his arms hard behind his back and wrenching this shoulders in their sockets. The scumbag gritted his teeth but didn’t make a sound.
“How many Stake Reapers are there?” Hunter asked. “Who’s hiring you to poach us?”
The gang member, whose black leather jacket’s name tag read “Chem,” bared his red-streaked teeth. “We don’t need no fucking money. We’d string up your kind for free.”
Hunter kicked at the bag they’d found slung over his shoulder beneath the jacket. “So the vampire fangs and scalps in here weren’t going to be sold?”
Chem’s lip curled. “Didn’t say we don’t make money doing what we love.”
Rage swept in, swift and hot, and Hunter’s hand snapped out to catch the fucker around the throat. “Listen to me, you piece of shit. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Aiden prefers the hard way. He has a
n unholy love for his knives. Me? I’ve got better things to do.” Like prepare for his mate to arrive in the morning. “So why don’t you save us both a lot of time and pain and tell me what you know? Because you will talk eventually. I promise you that.”
“Fuck. You.” Chem grinned, his lips pulling back from yellowed, chipped teeth. “You leeches have no idea what’s coming, do you? A storm, man. A fucking slaughter, and by the time it’s over, you parasites will be extinct in the wild. The rest of you will be slaves . . . just like the pretty young thing we pass around in our clubhouse.”
How did people who despised vampires justify using them for sex? Fucking assholes.
A low growl boiled up from Hunter’s chest, and his hand tightened on Chem’s throat. Deep inside, the desire not just to kill the thug but to do it in the cruelest way imaginable writhed like a demon trying to break out. Hunter’s father would have displayed Chem in the common room and let everyone watch as he jammed sharp objects into sensitive orifices. Then he’d spend days divesting him of body parts, starting with his balls and cock.
A surge of excitement rolled over Hunter as that evil demon thrashed at its restraints.
No.
Sweat broke out on his brow, and beneath his palm, his fingers squeezed harder. Chem’s face turned a brilliant shade of purple, made even more colorful by the veil of crimson that formed across the field of Hunter’s vision.
No!
Hunter refused to turn into his father, but the darkness ran through his veins like a malevolent sludge, infecting his thoughts. Do it. Cut him. Open him from crotch to sternum, and let the clan’s children play with his innards. Do it!
Nausea churned in his stomach. Releasing the human, he stepped back and forced himself to calm down.
“Jesus Christ,” Chem rasped, his bloodshot eyes wide as he gaped at Hunter. Wetness bloomed across the front of his boxers. “Jesus . . . the fuck?”
Aiden was staring as intently as the human, but in an instant, he blinked, collected himself, and slammed his fist into the human’s jaw. “What, never seen a pureblood vampire rage out? The red eyes and four-inch fangs are just the beginning, asshole.”