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)
It may be morning, afternoon, evening, or the very depths of night when Piotr enters my presence. I have stopped caring for things like time of day. The sun and the moon are irrelevant if I cannot have Anya. I pace my office and I think of killing those who have deprived me of my mate.
My vengeance will be brutal and complete. I dream of death, day and night—except when I sleep. In my sleep, I dream of Anya. I feel her in my arms, I smell her scent, and I feel her body against mine. Waking from slumber, I sometimes forget that she is not here with me. I reach for her, or try to hold her closer, and I find myself with an armful of nothing.
Before meeting Anya, I was always so calm and so contained. I had no lingering, crushing, terrible sense of loss that now seems to suffuse me with every breath I take. I miss Anya. I crave her. And I cannot forgive myself for allowing her to be stolen from the very place she should have been the most safe in the world.
“My alpha?”
I realize someone has been trying to get my attention for quite some time. Piotr has his head in the door. It is rare that the ranking pack members come to see me now. I have been biting heads off, declaring I will see nobody unless they have some kind of resolution to the matter.
“What is it?”
He opens the door and actually dares to enter my presence. Nobody has dared do that in quite some time—but he seems quite confident as he announces:
“My alpha, there is word from the vampires.”
“What did they say?”
“They’ve given us an address and a time.”
I extend my hand for the piece of paper he is holding. The address, that is all I care about. The time is irrelevant. I will not be going to see this vampire for a cordial meeting. I am going to reclaim my mate, and ensure that she can never be taken from me again.
Glancing at the paper, I discover it is more like a card. It is formal, gilt-edged, and hand-written in script, which suggests a practiced talent for calligraphy. Exactly the sort of soft bullshit that a vampire would waste time doing while holding the love of my life hostage. The flourishes on various letters make me near incandescent with rage.
I start walking. I need to get a car. Now.
“It could be a trap,” Piotr says, a slight note of panic in his voice. “Why would the vampire hold her all this time, and then simply send us a card with his address on it? It has to be a trap. We should consult with Vlad and Elena.”
I answer over my shoulder, barely bothering to turn my head. “I don’t care.”
At this stage, running headlong into a trap would be preferable to simply existing in the castle. I would undergo any amount of pain, endure any humiliation for the chance at reuniting with my mate.
I get in the fastest car we have, I set the satnav to the address, and I go.
I am faintly aware that others in the pack are no doubt following at a safe distance. I am sure Piotr has a copy of the address and knows where I am going. I don’t care what they do. I don’t care what they say. I do not care what they think.
I am so single-minded in this moment that any thought, let alone any discussion would be as perverse a thing as I could imagine.
Anya
“You’ve been melancholy,” Dom says.
His observation would suggest kindness if it came from someone else, but I know there is no kindness in this monster. I remain captive in his… I could almost call it a home, but it isn’t a home. It is a warehouse for vampires. They don’t do anything. They sort of swan in, sleep occasionally, and then leave again to do terrible things.
The pack is always full of life and love and yes, as cliché as it might seem, laughter. They live so deeply and intensely. I miss them almost as much as I miss Alexei. I even miss their disapproval of my behavior from time to time. They cared. Really cared.
This vampire calls himself my father, which is a perverse kind of nonsense. He does not care about me in the slightest. He is playing at caring, imagining what it might be like to love. I don’t think he is actually capable of it.
“I miss my mate,” I say.
“I know. You are bonded,” Dom says. “Bonds are strange things, aren’t they? Capable of sustaining us, or destroying us.”
I grit my teeth as he pontificates. I am sitting on a cushion at his feet, more or less, because that’s what he likes me to do. He likes to tell me what he is thinking, what he imagines, what he observes of the world around me and of his own cold internal state.