Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 65871 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 329(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 220(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65871 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 329(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 220(@300wpm)
I’ve been told shifters don’t eat people. I’ve been told we hunt animals, deer, elk, anything with hooves. But in this moment, I am certain that humans are prey. They are made of meat as much as any prey animal, and they are of the soft and squishy edible kind. They are not sinewy like predators. They are tender and they are delicious, and their arterial blood is like great spraying fountains of sugar. I lap it up, roll in it, I bite and I feast and I consume to my heart’s content.
Alexei
Anya is taking a very long time in the bathroom. The conversation is relatively intense, and it takes me far too long to realize that she is not actually coming back in anything resembling a timely fashion.
“Excuse me, I believe my mate may need my help,” I excuse myself.
Going into the ladies’ bathroom is not my habit, but I am already getting the feeling that something is going quite wrong. Call it a gut feeling.
There’s nobody in the bathroom. But there is an open window, and as soon as I see that, I know that there is a problem.
I cannot believe she snuck away from me like a spoiled little girl. When I find her, she’s going to be in so much pain. I am going to absolutely whip her ass, as the Americans say.
A good twenty minutes have passed since she first left the table. That is not good. Her scent is messy and difficult to track because the city is so busy, but we eventually follow it to a bar, where it is confirmed that she went drinking.
“Two of her friends took her home,” the bartender says.
“Friends?”
“Local boys,” he says.
“She does not have any local friends,” I growl. The bartender swallows deeply and takes a step back. He does not know who I am. He does not know who she is. He does not understand, logically, the events that have taken place beneath his nose. But he knows that he has made a terrible mistake.
I leave the bar vowing that she will never be out of my sight again. I will cuff her to me. I will make her mine so deeply, punish her so severely that she will never think of leaving my side. My mate has run away, and I am worried. This level of concern and fear has rarely, if ever, been present in my body. I thought I was worried about her before I claimed her, but the bonding we experienced at our first mating has intensified my concern. I would burn the world to find her. I would tear down each and every one of these pretty historic buildings.
Everybody who came with me, including the local pack, is searching. Minutes tick by, feeling like hours. Something terrible has happened, I just know it. I was too happy. I took things too casually. I trusted that fate would keep my mate safe, and that my mate would behave in a sensible fashion.
I forgot how young she really is, and how impulsive she really is. I don’t know why she decided to run off. Maybe she was following a scent. Or maybe she was just following one of the many bad ideas that apparently still inhabit her mind. I remember Elena trying to tell me on the plane that Anya would need to be disciplined. I have done nothing but spoil her. Everybody has.
“Alexei!” One of my pack rushes up to me.
“We’ve found her, boss, but the scene…”
His expression is so fraught, I know something terrible has happened. I feel as though the wind has been taken out of me. If she has been hurt, or worse, I will never forgive myself, or anybody else.
I always thought the problem in getting a mate would be finding her. I never thought it would be a matter of trying to keep her.
He leads me to an inner city residential building in a shady part of the town.
“Here,” he says. “She’s inside. But she’s…”
I push past him and into the house. There are no lights on inside, and flicking the switch does nothing. There’s no power. That’s a bad sign. It smells too, mostly of blood. I smell that before I smell Anya at all.
I can barely pick her up among the general olfactory grossness. So it’s the blood I follow, into a room with peeling wallpaper and the remnants of a bed. Well, a mattress on the floor.
I cannot believe my eyes. The entire place is absolutely covered in pieces of people. Hairy limbs torn from torsos, bones gnawed on and then discarded. The mattress is soaked in blood and there are spilled innards draping the floor like decorations.
I am looking at a vampire kill tableau—it has to be. Perhaps Elena was right. Perhaps they are becoming bolder and tracking us. Maybe my failure to listen to my advisor has led to the death of my mate.