Blood Oath (Blood Mafia Family #1)

Chapter 1

The bass throbbed like a living thing through Nightshade’s walls, dark and pulsing with a primal undercurrent. Every beat vibrated through stone floors and sweat-slick bodies grinding on the dance floor like they’d sold their souls for a chance to forget time.

Laser-cut strobe lights sliced the air in crimson and violet, flashing over bare skin, silk dresses, sharp suits, and blood-slick lips. Heat rose in waves. Lust hung heavy in the air, it’s not subtle or hidden. This place wasn’t built for the shy. It was built for sinners.

And above them all, untouched by the noise, untouchable in presence, I sat watching.

The VIP loft stretched like a predator’s perch over the club’s centre, high-backed black velvet chairs, dark marble tables, a long, curving balcony rimmed in steel and shadows.

No one entered this space unless I said so.

Not my soldiers or the women that serviced me, not even my blood brothers without invitation.

And anyone who caught a glimpse of me sitting here, still, quiet, in full view, looked away. Quickly, because one second too long was enough to get them noticed. And being noticed by Roman Dragic, the Vampire King of the Mafia World, was the last mistake most people ever made.

Nightshade wasn’t a normal club. It was a front for business deals, a sanctuary for Vampires to feed, a warning to the Demons that want to encroach on our territory, a trap for them like a moth to a flame.

The mortals thought they were coming here to play, to sip overpriced cocktails, get touched under blacklights, and pretend they were safe in the arms of wealth and power. But the real ones, the ones who knew, came here to deal, to bleed for our kind thinking that they can become one of us.

Vampires moved through the crowd like shadows. Syndicate men ran deals in the private rooms above the bar. Demons, if they were stupid enough to show up, didn’t leave alive. It was our ground, my territory, my throne .

And tonight, something was off, I didn’t know what yet. The air itched against my skin. My fangs felt heavier than they should. The silence beneath the bass had changed, it was subtle, but it was there, it was like fate had stepped into the room and I hadn’t seen it yet.

I sat back in my chair, tattooed fingers coiled around a glass of dark blood-blended wine, vintage, aged in barrels stained by centuries of war. My tattoos itched under my collar, I hadn’t fed in days, not out of hunger, but because nothing had tasted right.

Below, the dancers kept moving, flesh against flesh. Life imitating death. My black suit stretched tight over muscle carved like a monument, my every breath controlled, every blink calculated. I didn’t come here for pleasure, I came to remind this world who ruled it.

Across from me, Viking leaned on the railing, watching the chaos below. “Business is clean,” he said over the beat. “The docks are clear, and all the drugs have been moved. The girls transporting the product are safe.”

Viking was chaos in a black suit. Where I moved with silence and precision, he cracked like lightning, loud and sharp-edged, always one second from burning something down just to see the way the flames danced.

His long blond hair was tied back in a low knot, and his ice-blue eyes cut through the club like weapons, constantly scanning, calculating, ready to snap at anyone that got too close.

He was the second oldest of my brothers after me, and he made sure everyone knew it.

Viking handled operations. Everything illegal that crossed our territory like drugs, smuggling, high-stakes weaponry, black market tech, all of it ran under his watch.

He wasn’t just my lieutenant; he was the fire behind the machine.

The one who’d kick the door in while I stayed in the dark, pulling strings.

He thrived on adrenaline, on disruption. But where most men with that temperament burned out, Viking had discipline beneath the madness. A kind of dangerous brilliance that made him indispensable. He was ruthless, but never reckless. He could gut a man with a joke on his lips and barely blink.

Despite all that, or maybe because of it, he was the only one who could get away with teasing me .

We were brothers by blood and bond, but more than that, Viking had always known how to read me. He saw the tension I didn’t speak, the rage I didn’t unleash. He understood the weight of being king, because he carried the fire I couldn’t afford to show.

And even as he grinned and sipped his drink like we weren’t standing above a kingdom of shadows, I knew he’d kill for me without hesitation, just as I would for him.

I didn’t reply, instead my shoulders have tensed. Something has shifted, there is a scent, an imperceptible ripple in the air that has my attention on high alert. I sit forward slowly, my head turning, my eyes scanning the club below. There, just past the bar entrance.

Everything around me seems to stop, the air stills.

She walked in like she didn’t belong, it is clear that she feels awkward being around so many people.

Her simple jeans, her tiered black shirt, the soft curls falling like shadows down her back.

She wasn’t made for this world of smoke and sin, a world of debauchery that blackens the soul.

Even from this distance it is clear that her soul is filled with light and that her innocence is pure .

And yet, even though I know it shouldn’t be, deep down I know that she will belong to me. It is a feeling so strong that I have no doubt.

Time stands still as my chest burns. My fangs drop without warning.

Everything around me stopped, and then surged like a damn war horn through my bones.

My vision narrowed as I looked at her eyes.

They are wide as they look around, unaware of the danger all around her. Searching the room for someone.

Mate!

The word suddenly echoed like thunder through my soul, exploding within my body as it ignites a frisson through my brain. There is no hesitation, no second-guessing, no sanity.

“Bring her to me,” I order.

Viking turns, brows raised. “Bring who to you?”

I am already standing, my hands sliding over the balcony rail. “The girl by the door, the one that seems to be out of her element. The only one that radiates innocence. She’s mine. ”

Viking whistled low as he inclined his head towards the two Mafia foot soldiers in dark suites and dangerous stances with predatory eyes standing by the door. “Well, fuck” he mutters.

My sole focus is on her alone. I watch as my men make their way through the crowd, straight toward her. She didn’t even see them coming, a dangerous weakness in my world, she was oblivious to everyone around her as she looked around as if looking for someone.

The thought that she might be looking for a man slams into me like a steel blade.

My fangs punch down into my lip. My jaw locks so tight I hear the cartilage crack, my hands fisting.

If there is a man in her life, he is dead.

If she’s been touched, kissed, claimed by anyone else before me I’ll find him, and I’ll make it a slow death.

A growl tears loose from my throat, sharp and deep, ripping through the music. My hands curl into fists so tight I hear the bones strain.

“What the fuck Roman!” Viking mutters as he takes a step away from me.

Viking knows how volatile a Vampire can be when his mate is close.

He’s not afraid of me, not really, but he knows that my sole focus is on her.

He knows what happens when a bonded vampire gets pushed past the edge.

When the pull starts tugging at your spine, short-circuiting everything that isn’t her.

I watch as my men move through the crowd, a clean break in the chaos, cutting a direct path toward the girl who just shattered my world without knowing it.

I tense when I see one of the men take hold of her arm, “She doesn’t know them,” I grind out, “And they’re touching her.”

“They don’t know,” Viking says quickly, lifting his muscular arm before me, putting himself between me and the balcony rail. “You haven’t claimed her yet, haven’t even spoken to her. They’re just doing what you asked.”

“I didn’t ask them to lay hands on her like that,” I snap. My voice is low, lethal. “She flinched. I saw it.”

Viking’s expression tightens, “You go down there in this state, Roman, you’re going to rip your own men apart.

They won’t survive that, and you’ll lose control before you ever get to her,” I know he’s right, and I hate it.

I am someone that never loses control, but here I am on the verge of jumping over the fucking railing to the ground floor and eviscerating anyone in my way.

Every part of me is vibrating, screaming. Her scent’s already under my skin, and she hasn’t even said a word. The mark hasn’t yet been made, the bond isn’t complete, but my instincts don’t care. I see hands on her that aren’t mine, and all I can think about is that I want blood for it.

“Tell them to back the fuck off,” my voice comes out in a beastly growl. “No more hands on her unless it’s me.”

“They’re already bringing her,” Viking says, his voice steadier now. He’s trying to be my leash, trying to keep me calm, “Just breathe Roman. Look at me, not her, until she’s here. You see her scared, and you know that you’ll snap.”

“I’m not going to hurt her.” I snap,

“No,” he agrees, “but you’ll scare the fuck out of her if you don’t leash the beast long enough to let her see you first.”

My hands now twitch at my sides, my vision blurring with rage.

Then I feel her presence, I don’t turn, not yet.

Not until I pull the rage back behind my eyes, not until I swallow the violence.

Because the second I face her, I’m not just the Vampire King of the Mafia.

I’m her mate, and she’ll never forget that first look.

The bond between a Vampire and his mate isn’t a legend.

It’s law. Vampires are born immortal, powerful, disciplined and alone.

Most of us never find the one. Centuries pass without a single trace of her.

We take lovers, take bodies, take blood…

but never hearts. Because the heart doesn’t stir until we find her.

A vampire only ever has one true mate, it’s not a choice, or a coincidence, it’s a tether written into our blood by fate itself.

And when it happens, when that bond ignites it rewires everything that came before.

She becomes part of him, and he becomes part of her.

It’s like our very DNA is integrated into one stem.

When mated I will feel what she feels, if she’s scared, I’ll feel it like claws inside my chest. If she’s in pain, I’ll taste iron. Her joy will burn bright through my body. Her sadness will blacken everything around me.

From the moment I taste her, her blood becomes a map, a thread I can follow anywhere.

Across borders, across time. I could track her through a city with my eyes shut, through fire, through war.

And once I drink from her, once I take what only a mate can give, I’ll never drink from anyone else again.

She’ll feed me, from this day forward she will be the one keeping me alive.

I’ll protect her, with my life, with everything I have.

And every so often, I’ll return the gift, just a taste of my blood on her tongue.

It will make her stronger, slow her aging and extend her life until it weaves beside mine.

She’ll walk through decades with me without fading.

But the price of the bond is steep, because once it’s formed, it cannot be broken. A vampire who loses his mate is not a man anymore. He’s a weapon, he is a tornado without a centre, and if she’s threatened, if she’s even looked at wrong, he becomes the kind of dangerous that leaves cities in ruin.

That’s what I’m holding back right now. She’s here, close, I can feel her heartbeat flickering like a candle at the edge of my senses, she doesn’t know yet what she is to me.

Doesn’t understand what I’ll do to make her mine and keep her mine, but she will.

Because she has just become my greatest weakness and the reason to live.