The show went on for a few more minutes, and then, after a round of applause, everyone settled in to eat. Bastien took a seat next to Lucy, who kissed him on the cheek and made him turn the color of a ripe apple.
The tension between Hunter and Rasha made for an awkward start to the meal, but it wasn’t long before the warriors at the table started telling jokes and reciting stories, and Aylin found herself enjoying not only the food but also the company.
As she set down her fork and breathed a heavy sigh of contentment, Hunter stood.
“I know some of you are wondering what’s going on with the situation outside our walls,” he said, his voice carrying as if he were using a loudspeaker. “Human hunters are suddenly everywhere, and the emphasis now seems to be less on capturing vampires and more on killing us. Humans outnumber us ten thousand to one, and their weapons are getting more sophisticated and efficient. But we’re not helpless, and we’re not going to sit back and let them exterminate or enslave us. Our joining with ShadowSpawn will clear a path toward peace talks with other clans, and it’s my hope that instead of fighting each other, we can concentrate on dealing with the humans.”
He gazed out at the clan members, and Aylin wondered if everyone was as mesmerized by his commanding presence and deep, authoritative voice as she was. She could listen to him talk all night. Of course, that thought had her thinking about talking all night in bed, and she had to take a gulp of ice water to cool down those errant thoughts.
“We’re all going to be in this together,” he continued. “And we each have different skills and backgrounds that can be of use in the months and years ahead. I invite you all to bring your ideas to me or to one of my senior warriors.” He stepped back from the table. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have clan business to take care of.”
Two big males, including the one Aylin had been afraid would kill Bastien, rose from their seats and joined Hunter as he strode out of the room. The moment he was gone, the atmosphere became charged with tension as Riker braced his forearms on the table and addressed Rasha, his body practically radiating hate.
“I’ve been on my best behavior, because I respect Hunter and don’t want any of this to be more difficult than it already is,” Riker growled. “But I won’t forget what you and your clan did to Nicole, Lucy, and me. And I won’t let you hurt anyone in this clan again.”
Rasha’s lips turned up in a cruel smile that Aylin knew too well. Shit, this was going to get bad.
Clutching the table edge with both hands, Rasha shifted forward so she was practically nose-to-nose with Riker. “I liked you better when you were chained in our dungeon, bleeding and begging for us not to hurt your precious Nicole.”
“Rasha!” Aylin hissed, just as Nicole burst to her feet, knocking her chair over with a crash that silenced the entire dining room.
“Rike might be on his best behavior,” Nicole snarled. “But I’m not.”
Heart pounding, Aylin leaped to her feet, desperate to stop the confrontation before it took a violent turn. “It’s been a long day,” she said quickly. “Rasha, we should get settled in.” She grabbed her sister’s arm and pulled her away from the table, shooting Riker and Nicole apologetic glances as she did.
Surprisingly, Rasha went without an argument, squaring her shoulders and lifting her chin as if she was a queen lording over her subjects.
When they were in the hallway, Rasha jerked out of Aylin’s grip. “I hate it here.”
Aylin loved it. The floors were clean, the food was good, and the people were . . . happy. Oh, and they bathed. Bonus. “Maybe if you’d quit being a bitch, you’d like it more,” she suggested.
Rasha started in surprise. “What did you just say?”
Yeah, Aylin kind of surprised herself with that one. But something about this place made her feel safer than she’d felt in a long time. “You heard me. And don’t sound so shocked. You know I’m right. You’re going to be mated to this clan’s chief for a long time, so you might as well try to make some friends.” She reconsidered that. Finding a friend here wasn’t going to be easy for Rasha. “Or at least try not to make more enemies.”
Aylin hoped the bitterness in her voice was audible only to her own ears. Rasha was getting everything Aylin wanted, and she was too damned stubborn and mired down in the ShadowSpawn way of life to appreciate it.
Rasha started down the hall toward their quarters. “Silly, naive Aylin.” She patted her on the shoulder as if Aylin were a small child. “Leave the politics to me, and go back to looking pretty. I’ll handle Hunter and the clan my way.”
An unsettling sensation of doom settled over Aylin like a death shroud. Rasha’s way was always the violent way. Aylin had only been at MoonBound for a few hours, but she already knew Rasha would never fit in with these people.
Unless . . . what if Rasha didn’t plan to fit in? The invisible death shroud closed around Aylin like shrink-wrap as a horrible thought formed in her brain. The only reason Rasha wouldn’t care about forging relationships was that she had something else in mind.
Rasha didn’t want to fit in at MoonBound. She wanted to take over.
HUNTER HAD NEVER been so glad to be done with dinner in his life. Rasha was the most obnoxious, nasty female he’d ever encountered. How was he going to live with her for a lifetime if he could barely tolerate spending an hour with her?
He’d grown gradually angrier every time she opened her mouth and revealed her thoughts on “merging” the clans, the seating arrangements for “the defective,” and breeding Bastien. It seemed they were never going to find common ground, and he wondered how futile any efforts to deprogram her would be. Maybe Riker, who had military experience, or Jaggar, whose time in the CIA when he was human had benefited the clan greatly, would have some insight into bringing Rasha over to their way of thinking. He hoped so, because as it stood now, she had her head up her ass.
Granted, the clans did need to work out some sort of relationship, and the thought that Riker’s son might pass on his ultrarare talent of invisibility to his offspring had crossed Hunter’s mind, but hoping for kids with his gift was different from breeding for it. To do that would make MoonBound no better than Daedalus, which Nicole said had been planning to do exactly that with Bastien.
Bastards.
The bastards were, even now, planning more ways to destroy vampires, and as Hunter stood in his office with Riker and Nicole, he shared the latest.
“You need to watch this.” Hunter hit the button on the TV remote, and the video from a Seattle news station started up, releasing the paused image of a male reporter standing with another human male in front of a modern building with a huge glass front that, frankly, looked like a pain in the ass to keep clean.
“I’m here on the grounds of Daedalus’s main office with CEO Charles Martin.” The reporter turned to a towheaded man who appeared to be in his late thirties. “Mr. Martin, you’ve led the charge to eradicate wild vampires despite resistance from vampire-rights groups. Can you tell our audience why this is so important to you?”
“We’ve proven with decades of research and experience that vampires aren’t capable of coexisting with humans unless they’re tamed and collared,” Martin said. “What these vampire-rights fools don’t understand is that vampires eat us. They’re stronger, faster, and they have no sense of morality. To them, we’re nothing but food. Imagine if lions and bears ran loose in the streets. Vampires are a hundred times worse. We can’t allow predators of that caliber to walk among us. They killed my sister and destroyed one of our labs, killing dozens of humans and even other vampires.”
Nicole growled. “That’s not true. He’s lying. That bastard.”
Hunter nodded. “His crusade is starting to drown out the vampire-rights groups. There’s a growing call to exterminate us. The human poacher in the prey room said as much.”
Nicole’s lips pursed, and for a long tim
e, she just watched as the reporter asked Charles more questions before moving on to state representatives who were apparently considering expanded measures to “reduce the vampire population,” which included targeting clans, open hunting seasons in all federal and state forests, and Vampire Strike Force sweeps through city slums and sewers. If what the Stake Reaper said was true and Baddon’s intel was good, it looked like the government was already working to reduce the vampire population . . . but they were doing it secretly, right under civilians’ noses.
“We can’t fight that kind of targeting for long,” Riker said. “If they have the ability to destroy our wards, they’ll locate the clan eventually.”
Nicole blew out a long breath. “What if we go a different route? What if we sabotage Chuck with Daedalus’s own practices?”
“I’m not sure I follow,” Hunter said.
Nicole grinned. “We leak Daedalus’s practices to the media.”
“No one will believe you,” Riker said. “You’re a vampire. They’ll say you’re making stuff up, and no one will blame them.”
“But I have records,” she said. “Remember the files we stole from the lab? Grant and I still haven’t gone through all of them, but we’ve got a lot of information I’m sure the media would love and the public would find horrifying. Breeding experiments, dissection of conscious vampires, cruel death trials . . . If we can make the public aware, maybe we can generate some sympathy.”
Hunter eyed the female, who until just three months ago had been human. And, as the CEO of Daedalus, vampire enemy number one. Now she was the clan’s doctor and a huge asset to the vampire race.
“Do it,” he said. “Let’s stir up some shit.”
Nicole grinned, but Riker’s expression remained battle-hard. “There’s something else,” he said, and Hunter went cold. “Rasha knows some things she shouldn’t know, and she claims she has dirt on pretty much everyone close to you.”
“Like what?”
Rike bared his teeth. “She knows about Katina’s past and Aiden’s . . . indiscretion with females. And she somehow dug up details about Myne’s captivity by the humans.”
Nicole frowned. “Who has Myne told? You said he hasn’t even talked to you about it.”
“Exactly,” Riker said. “He hasn’t told anyone. Which means she got the info from Daedalus.”
As disturbing as the news was, there was an upside. “ShadowSpawn must have someone on the inside,” Hunter said. “Which means we might not have a spy in our midst.”
“How so?” Nicole asked.
Riker turned to her. “You remember the midwife we borrowed from ShadowSpawn?”
“How can I forget?” Nicole said wryly. “Daedalus captured her, and she’s the reason you kidnapped me.”
Unfortunately, even with Nicole’s help with the rescue plan, they’d been too late, and Neriya had died in a Daedalus lab.
“ShadowSpawn knew she’d been captured,” Hunter said. “And we didn’t tell them. We knew they either had a spy in our clan or one inside Daedalus. This new information could confirm the Daedalus theory.”
Riker nodded. “It’s good news. And who knows, maybe Rasha can actually be of use if she can help us strike at the humans from inside.”
Maybe. But Hunter wasn’t going to count on her for anything. And he definitely wasn’t going to trust her.
What a great way to kick off a forced mating.
HUNTER INHALED DEEPLY as he stood inside the ceremonial teepee outside MoonBound clan’s headquarters. Myne and Baddon had accompanied him to perform the ritual necessary to summon his totem animal, and as blood from their cuts ran down his chest, he wondered if they even suspected the true reason he’d come.
He wasn’t here to have a chat with his spirit bear. No, he was here to talk up the demon who had created the vampire species. A demon who had long ago made clear that if anyone spoke of the truth of their origins to another vampire who wasn’t an Original or a first- or second-generation vampire, he’d destroy their entire race.
Message received, and even though Hunter hated doing it, hated pretending he believed the absurd story about the raven and the crow, he’d spent his entire life quashing rumors that even hinted at a demonic hand in vampire creation.
Smoke from the fire in the center of the teepee swirled all around Hunter, wrapping him in tingling warmth as he opened himself up to the spirit world. A mist of gray clouded his mind, and a great pressure swelled under his breastbone, until it felt as if he was going to collapse in on himself.
“Samnult,” he called out the moment before the pressure became unbearable. “Yo, Sam, you around?”
A blast of heat seared his back. “You’re late.”
Wheeling around, Hunter stared at the being who had appeared in his tent. No human appearance for the demon today. Nope, his gunmetal skin was spiderwebbed with pulsing crimson veins. His twisted, blackened horns jutted a good eighteen inches into the air, and filthy claws tipped his freakishly long fingers.
“Only by a night,” Hunter said. “Why does it matter?”
Samnult snarled, his chapped, scaly lips revealing a mouthful of sharp gray teeth. “You don’t get to question me. I’m your god.”
“You’re our breeder,” Hunter bit out. “Not the same thing.” Arrogant ass.
The demon’s claws struck Hunter across the chest, adding four more ragged gashes, from his left shoulder to his right hip.
Pain screamed through him, but he clenched his teeth and managed not to strike out in retaliation.
“Do you want to go through the trials or not?” Sam growled. “It makes no difference to me. I’m more than happy to take the firstborn child from your mating.”
Hunter inhaled deeply, forcing himself to remain calm. If the demon decided he didn’t want to let Hunter take the tests, Hunter was screwed. Time to suck up.
But only a little.
“I want this. I was hoping we could do it after the full moon.” Mainly, he wanted more time to make sure Rasha would be on board with taking the demon’s test with him. He couldn’t do it alone, and Hunter couldn’t risk Rasha’s refusal.
“No.”
Hunter stared. “No? Just . . . no?”
Sam casually picked at his teeth with those sharp, black-tipped claws. “You hard of hearing?”
“Fuck,” he muttered.
“Maybe later.”
Hunter wanted to punch Sam in his ugly face.
The demon flicked tooth crap onto the ground. Disgusting. “Remember, you can take either twin with you.”
Aylin would definitely be the more pleasant traveling companion, but he needed Rasha’s fighting skills. Besides, Rasha would likely be more willing to fight for her own child. “When we first spoke, you said they’ll both be the death of me,” Hunter said carefully. “But one will choose to save me. What does that mean?”
“That’s for you to figure out.”
Were all demons so cryptic? What assholes. “Can you give me a hint about which one will save me?”
“I’d look at which has more to lose if you die. Or if you live.” Sam shrugged. “But then, you may not have a choice. If I were Aylin, I’d tell you to take a hike. She’s not the one who will give birth to your firstborn.”
That was along the lines of Hunter’s thoughts. “So when do you want this to happen?”
“Day after tomorrow. There’s a portal near Lake Chelan. You and the female will meet me there.” Hunter quickly calculated the drive time, but Samnult dashed his hopes of hopping in the Rover by adding, “You’ll go on foot.”
Great. An added element of danger. “We’ll have to leave tomorrow.”
“Then you’d better get ready.”
“How will I know where to go?”
Samnult moved in a blur to slap his palm on Hunter’s forehead. A throbbing rattle banged around i
n Hunter’s skull. “You’ll feel it.”
The demon stepped back, flashed a grin full of sharp teeth, and disappeared, leaving Hunter with a vague awareness of the portal in the distance, a pounding headache, and a sinking sense of doom in his gut.
He’d made a deal with a demon, and now he had to go make another.
AYLIN FOUND THE lab exactly where Hunter said it would be. She’d gone back to her own room following dinner, but now, after ten minutes of restless pacing, she decided to see if Nicole was working.
The pretty, strawberry-blond female was in the lab, bent over a rack of test tubes. When Nicole saw Aylin enter, she grinned. “It’s good to see you again. We didn’t get to talk much at dinner. How are you doing? Is your room okay? Everyone treating you well? Can I possibly bombard you with more questions?”
The other female’s concern for her welfare left Aylin momentarily flustered. “Ah, yeah. Everything is wonderful.” Her smile faltered. “Too wonderful, I think.”
Nicole gave Aylin a troubled look. “You don’t want to go back to ShadowSpawn, now, do you?”
A shiny, sharp scalpel on a tray next to a microscope caught Aylin’s eye, and out of habit, she nearly swiped it to stash under her mattress. But she wasn’t at ShadowSpawn, didn’t need to squirrel away items simply to have things to call her own. Still, the temptation had her flexing her fingers until she moved past the table. “Would you want to go back?”
Nicole didn’t need to answer that, and they both knew it. “Maybe you can stay. Hunter could negotiate with your father to let you move here. Or you could mate one of the clan members.”
“Those are good ideas.” Aylin meandered through the lab, marveling at the equipment and furniture. The “lab” Nicole had used back at ShadowSpawn was little more than a cobwebby closet. “But none of it is possible.”
“Why not?”