Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 112001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
And her brother had been the one to lure her back to the Colony and turn her in to her family.
Blade’s face was the last thing she’d seen before the bag was put over her head, and there had been no emotion on it whatsoever. As if she’d been lower than a stranger. As if she had been a dog to be put down.
After that? Off to the lab she had gone. Where she’d been experimented on by humans… tortured, really—
“No,” she blurted roughly.
“No, you haven’t hung up?” the wolven said.
“No, I’m not going to get in touch with my brother on your behalf.”
The wolven expelled a frustrated breath. “You could be sentencing a good man to die. Or letting his murderer go free.”
Absently, Xhex realized her free hand was shaking, so she tucked it under her hip. “But I’m definitely keeping a good female alive. My conscience is clear, believe me.”
“I don’t need you protecting me.”
Xhex shook her head slowly. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with or what you’re suggesting. Even if Blade helps you, it will cost you your life. You do not want to be in debt to a symphath like him.”
“Please—”
“No, I’m sorry—that’s my final answer. I’m ending this call now.”
As she cut the connection, she put the cell facedown on the carpet. “Fuck.”
Next to her, John Matthew tucked his dagger under his arm. Then he signed, You’re doing the right thing.
“Yeah. I know am. It just feels wrong.”
A vibration of stress rode up the column of her throat and made her clench her teeth. But instead of screaming the energy out, she wrapped her arms around her naked torso. For a split second, she was cold… but then the heat of deep-seated fury started to warm her blood.
Boiled it.
“God, I fucking hate my brother,” she heard herself say.
SEVEN
Deer Mountain
Walters, New York
UPON THE FALL of night, after the velvet darkness claimed the whole of the sky and the snow clouds departed to reveal a pinprick pattern of stars, the lone male emerged upon the summit of the mountain called Deer and came to stand at the keyhole view of the valley below. With the keen eyes of his vampire kin, he regarded the undulations of the topography, the acreage so vast, it deserved a poetic appreciation of its breadth and beauty.
Pity he was mostly a symphath. Things of beauty were wasted upon entities such as himself. After all, what leverage could one bring with a vista that merely pleased the eye?
Outside of a real estate transaction.
On that note, his calculating stare focused on the hotel site that had been carved out of the mountain across the valley. Lights twinkled in its many-roomed sprawl, a sign that the establishment was nearing an opening date—or mayhap it was already servicing its intended demographic of wealthy spa-goers looking to be one with nature in a completely climate-controlled environment that included on-demand facials as well as feather beds and Michelin-star-ranked food.
Frankly, he would rather camp with no gear. In frigid January. Out with the wolves.
Or… one wolf in particular.
Wolven, rather.
As melancholy washed over him anew, he erased the human-made eyesore with his ailing mind and imagined what the sunset might have looked like as the storm clouds of the afternoon began their departure unto the east, just as the last rays of daylight illumination funneled into the western juncture of evergreens on the far side of the silver sliver of lake. Thanks to his half-breed pretransition youth, he could paint quite clearly the gathering intensity of peach and pink as the sun died, a flare of vibrant red tickling the undersides of the clouds, a last gasp before darkness claimed the heavens.
Things were always most vivid just before death. And as he considered his turbulent emotions, he put his hand over the ache upon his heart and certainly felt as though he were dying. Yet he couldn’t remember ever being this alive.
“Messy business, this bonding…”
At the sound of a stick breaking behind him, his breath caught and he twisted around, hope bursting through the storm clouds of his pessimism, a brilliant color in the midst of his gray numbness—
Though his visitor remained within the shadows, his symphath side recognized their calling card.
The deflation was immediate. This was not the female who haunted him night and day, stalking his equilibrium through the alleys of his conscious purpose and distractions, hunting his sense of superiority as a male who was not to be toyed with, killing his coldness with a heat that came from sexual need and soul-deep yearning.
“To what do I owe this honor,” he drawled in a slow cadence. “I rather thought our paths would not cross again, given your distaste of me.”
There was a pause. And then Xhexania, his blooded, estranged sister, stepped out into the clearing. She was dressed head to foot in black leather, a gun holster around her hips, an ammo belt running across her torso, a knife strapped on her thigh. With her short hair and her hard gray eyes, one might have mistaken her for a Brother.