Series: The Un Series by Izzy Sweet
Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 109192 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 546(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109192 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 546(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
“Let…” she breathes against me, struggling against my embrace. “Go… of me.”
No, I can’t. Not while she is still fragile and vulnerable to the world. She’s still human and too much shit could easily kill her.
Shaking my head as I look around the rooms, I shush her gently. “Shh, my love. I need to make sure we’re safe.”
My thoughts wander as I carry her through the dilapidated house. I want a clean, safe space for her turning, but nothing looks right.
Nothing feels right.
Five hundred years ago, from its size alone, this hovel would have been considered a lord’s house.
Even if it was this filthy.
Hell, some of the manors I remember seeing and being inside of were worse than this.
Now it’s barely befitting of the rats scurrying in the walls.
“Help,” my fated breathes out loudly, and this time I catch a small scent of her breath.
Looking down at her plump lips, I instantly long to kiss them. To feel them crushed against my own.
They move again, but I’m utterly transfixed as I stare at them and have no idea what they’re saying.
There’s a small scar on her lower lip, a line that’s so faint most wouldn’t notice it, but it stands out to me plain as day.
Her lip was split there sometime in the past. Like someone hit her and it caused her delicate human flesh to break. Her precious blood must have spilled…
Red slowly begins to seep into my vision over the thought of someone touching her in such a way.
The rage I feel brings the beast clawing his way back to the surface. He thrashes against my chest to find the one who did this and show them the true meaning of suffering.
But a sharp tug on my bond and a buzzing in my ripped-up pants instantly snaps me out of it.
Shaking the fog from my head, I’m forced to wonder how it’s possible for me to delve into so many unnecessary things when what I have in my arms is the only thing that matters in the universe.
How is it that I keep getting stuck inside my own mind while admiring her beauty? It’s like there’s something there, buried beneath her features, that crawls into my head and sinks its hooks deep inside my brain.
I keep getting transfixed by her…
But I’m not a newborn vampire. I’m over five hundred years old, for fuck’s sake. I haven’t been so easily fascinated or transfixed by something shiny and pretty for hundreds of years.
Fear comes through our bond, faint, but it’s there.
Her wide eyes stare at my mouth in horror. She’s terrified of me, and I can feel two pointy reasons why in my mouth.
Fuck.
Snapping my jaw closed, I try to push soothing calmness into the bond, but I don’t think she’s feeling it.
“I’m sorry, my dear soul,” I whisper in apology. “So very sorry.”
Moving us back to what was once the living room, I carefully set her down in a shabby chair.
“I… I…” she stutters before looking away from me.
Her deep blue gaze turning away from me nearly kills me.
Focus, I tell myself.
Focus on her mental wellbeing. Don’t fixate on her perfection.
“Stars,” I whisper. “I promise you safety.”
“From you?” she asks.
“No,” I growl instantly. “From those who would hurt you.”
Shying away from me, her voice trembles. “But you’re… you’re one of them...”
One of them.
“The damned,” she finishes.
I scoff to hold back my angry chuckle. “Ah, I haven’t been called that in a long time.”
The phone in my pants starts to buzz again, but I ignore it. Nothing is more important than her right now. I’d hear another human or shifter’s heartbeat approaching, and I’m positive I’d sense another of my kind anywhere near me right now.
All my instincts are on hyperalert. Not only do I have to protect her, this is the most crucial of moments.
“Please let me go,” she pleads, her eyes finally meeting mine again.
She’s confused and scared, but the feelings are faint. Like I’m only getting the echoes of them.
I don’t know if it’s from the drugs Nikolaos’s coven pumped into her system or something else.
But I should be feeling her emotions stronger than this.
I should be able to share mine as well.
Lifting her hand to her chest, near the swell of her left breast, she rubs it tenderly as if she’s massaging an ache.
I’m not entirely sure she’s even aware of what she’s doing. It’s surely not meant to be an erotic gesture...
Is she feeling the bond?
The thread that’s connecting us?
A thread that’s too fucking weak and hanging on only by the thinnest of fibers.
“Look,” I say as gently as possible, “my name is Raphael. What’s yours?”
Shaking her head again, her raven-black hair waves back and forth in front of her face.
She curls up in the chair like she wishes the filthy cushions would swallow her.
My heart crumbles just a little more each time she refuses to even look at me.