Chapter 10
CHAPTER 10
A nya
I am looking into the beautiful blood-red eyes of a creature so powerful it could crush me in a moment. He came through the window, walking on air as if it were perfectly reasonable to do so. Now he is standing at the end of the bed, his hand outstretched to me.
“Come with me,” he says.
I get up. I don’t want to, but I do. I do precisely what he says. I get out of bed and I slide my hand into his icy cold grip. He closes his fingers around my hand and lifts it toward his lips.
“Good girl,” he says. “I knew you would be good for me.”
I don’t want to be good for him. I want to scream for Alexei, but I can’t seem to make myself do it. I can’t even take my eyes off the vampire. His eyes somehow seem to expand to fill my entire vision. There’s nothing but him.
I try to fight. I try to take a single step away, but I find myself absolutely unable to move. My muscles are not following the will of my mind anymore. They’re following his will.
“Please, let me go. I don’t want this.”
“It doesn’t matter what you want,” he says. “All that matters is that you stay nicely obedient for me. Not that you have any choice, do you?”
I feel my head turn side to side, shaking no .
“That’s right. You don’t have any choice. I am inside you. A very little part of me, minuscule, really, but still present, is in you. It has buried its way deep into you, and I can use it to puppet you as I please. It’s best to just let it happen. Resisting will cause you pain.”
I try as hard as I can to walk away from him, but he is right. The second I try to force myself to walk away, the most excruciating pain shoots through me, right through my spine. I let out a cry, but even that is cut short as the vampire forces my jaw to shut.
“Shhhh,” he says, reaching out and caressing my face with his cool hands, cupping my clenched jaw as I attempt to shout for help. “I am trying to help you, little one. There is no need for you to be afraid. I am not going to hurt you. I have come for you because you are mine.”
“Not yours.”
I manage to grind those words out in spite of the pain. I fight through it in order to tell him he’s not winning. I don’t care if I can’t resist. I don’t care if I can’t get away from him. He’ll know that deep down, what’s happening here is against my will.
“Yes, little one. Mine.”
He squeezes my hand gently and leads me to the window. Outside, the night is dense and dark. The moon has gone somewhere, abandoned her children, the wolves, and left us vulnerable to our one predator.
“Hold on tight.”
He sweeps an arm around me and pulls me close to him in an embrace that holds no affection, but plenty of possession and even some protection. He holds me like something he has stolen.
He steps out into thin air, taking me with him. Gravity is suspended, and so are we in midair. I do not know how this works. His cape billows out behind us as we sweep through the skies, quite literally flying.
I cling to him, afraid of falling, knowing I have no way down if he were to let me go. This is the strangest thing that has ever happened to me, including the day I first discovered my mother was a wolf, and so was I.
Years ago…
I am seven years old and small for my age. I am trying to keep up with my mother as we walk home from the central city. The way is long and my legs are tired. I know hers are too, but her strides are more than twice the length of mine.
“Hold my hand,” she says. Her tone is a little curt. We have been out all day. She’s trying to find work, but she doesn’t have anywhere to leave me, so she takes me with her and makes me sit somewhere safe. I’ve sat in the reception halls of six different places today. One time I fell asleep in an umbrella stand. It was just the perfect size to tuck up in.
She has not gotten a job. I can tell because we don’t stop at any of the stores that smell so good. I know better than to ask. I know it will just make her feel bad. Even though my stomach is growling, I walk beside her without complaint, holding her hand, and trusting that she will make everything right.
“Hey, bitch!” A man’s voice rings out in the gathering night.
We turn around. My mother pushes me as far behind her as she can. There’s a man nearby. We have no choice but to walk under a dark overpass on the way home. It’s just how it is. At this time of night, there’s hardly any traffic out here in the city, so the only light to see by is the streetlight that isn’t even really close enough to illuminate the area.
“Come,” my mother mutters. We hurry on, trying to put distance between us and the yelling man. I can feel the tension in her. Where before she was just sad and worried, there’s now a kind of rage.
I can’t quite keep up with her. I am tired, and I am hungry, and it’s not easy to rush. I stumble and almost fall, but she has hold of me and swings me up onto my feet again.
“Come on, baby,” she murmurs. “We need to go.”
“Bitch!”
The man behind us seems very, very angry that we haven’t stopped. I look over my shoulder and stumble again as I see him gaining on us. A scream escapes me. I can’t help it. He is so big and he looks so terrifying. His face is twisted up with deep anger that makes every instinct in me react.
He catches up and reaches not for my mom, but for me. He grabs me by the back of my coat, ripping me out of my mother’s hand.
I let out a shriek of pure fear and burst into tears.
My mother takes her coat off.
That moment will live in my memory forever, me screaming for her, reaching for her, and seeing her simply put her bag down and take her coat off with a look on her face I never saw before that moment, or any time after it. She was so perfectly calm.
One moment she is a harried woman in a long chiffon skirt and floral blouse, and the next, there is a massive she-wolf next to me.
I am not scared. Not even a little bit. There is a scent in the air, a wolf smell that feels immediately familiar to me, almost as if I smelled it a long time ago. The smell tells me I am safe.
Right now, I am the safest creature in the entire world—but nobody else is. My mother emanates pure menace as she rounds on the man with a snarl that exposes sharp rows of supernatural teeth. I can smell something new now: his fear. It is so intense the air is thick with it. I can practically taste it.
Mom is not here to play. She is here to deal with a threat. She doesn’t give him time to scream. She leaps at him, her massive, furred form knocking him to the ground. There’s a grunt, and a gurgling sound, a rushing of air from a new hole in his throat as she bites, and bites, and bites.
Then she feeds.
I crouch by a pillar and I wait, knowing better than to move. I do not ever remember seeing my mother take this transformation before, but I am not afraid. It feels natural to me, so I tuck myself away in a safe place and wait for her to be done.
It takes a while. Long enough that I drop off to sleep again, trusting that she is able to protect me. I feel safe deep in my gut.
When she is done, she puts her coat on and she gathers me up in her arms, holding me like she hasn’t done since I was a lot smaller. She’s smiling, like she’s happy. The stress that was lining her face is gone. I don’t know where, but I think what she just did made her very happy.
“Let’s get you home, sweetheart.”
That night, I have the sweetest steak for dinner. The following days bring plenty of ground meat and sausages. I am well-fed, and I am curious as to what I saw. It takes some time for the questions to come, but when they do come, they do so in a torrent.
I ask her one night before bed.
“Mama, how did you turn into a wolf?”
“All women are wolves, deep down,” she says, brushing my hair out of my face. “Only some of us can actually take the form, but never forget how powerful a woman can be.”
“Will I be one?”
“You will,” she says. “One day, when you need to be, you will.”
“How will I know when I need to be?”
Her face becomes solemn, and I know she is doing that thing she does where she tries to answer in a way she thinks I’ll understand. She censors the world for me, because the world is a terrible place and she doesn’t want me to be afraid. It doesn’t stop me from being afraid, though. It just means that all my fears wear faceless masks.
“Usually it is once you find your mate. When a woman finds a man, she will need to be able to protect herself and her cubs.”
I don’t know what that means exactly, but I do know it means that my mother’s ability to turn into the scariest of monsters is linked directly to her desire to protect me.
My mother showed me who I was. This vampire is showing me who I am not.
I am a she-wolf, fully realized, but I may as well be a pup dangling in his arms. I am helpless, controlled, and captive. I don’t know if a shift is possible, but I don’t want to fall from the sky by becoming impossible to hold.
We land many miles away and I am put into a vehicle with the vampire. From there, the journey is blanketed in darkness. The moment I am put in the car, the vampire wraps a black velvet blindfold around my eyes.
“Relax,” he says. “This will be over soon.”
His words do not bring the slightest bit of confidence, but I have no choice.
I am so deeply exhausted, and entirely under the vampire’s influence that I find myself dropping off to sleep. By the time I am aware of the car coming to a halt, there is daylight creeping in underneath the blindfold.
Don’t vampires have to avoid the sun? How is he functioning? The power of this being is deeply concerning.
“Come,” he orders as the car stops.
I have no choice but to do as I am told. My body is already moving. He is speaking to a part of me that has been taken by his consciousness.
I am led inside some kind of structure. Finally, the blindfold is removed. My surroundings are relatively modern and brutalist in style. We’re talking polished concrete and steel construction, the kind of house that is so cool it looks entirely uncomfortable to actually live in.
I used to wonder who would live in a place like this, but it makes sense now: vampires. Vampires don’t need softness like normal humans do. Rattling around in a big square gothic place with next to no windows makes sense for them.
The vampire, Dom, is with me. There are many others, but they are not in our immediate vicinity. They move around, doing their own things, speaking to one another in a blend of languages both dead and alive. I can hear them echoing now and then as they open and shut doors elsewhere in the house or whatever this place is.
He leads me into a room that has a bed in it, which immediately feels odd. It has the look of a bed that was made once and never used. Vampires don’t sleep the way we do, I think. Either that, or this is the guest room of the guest room of the guest room. The guest-iest room that ever was.
“This is where you will be staying,” Dom says. “You are allowed to decorate it as suits you.”
That seems like a generous offer, but I don’t understand it. I don’t know what the point or purpose of this is. He clearly has some kind of agenda, and some assumption that I will be staying.
“How did you know where to find me? Like, where in the castle?” I start with a couple of simple questions that he might answer. He likes explaining his abilities, I’ve noticed.
“I told you. I would always know where you were.” Dom smiles at me. “You consumed the blood of my progeny, and in doing so, you consumed a little of me.”
“Yeah. I know. We swapped spit or whatever. Drank from the same vessel.”
“That is an admirable description, actually,” he says. “We did drink from the same cup. Well, I drank. You destroyed it.”
“Needed to be broken,” I say.
“Maybe. But, regardless, that is why I know you. Why I can find you, why you are, in some sense, my child.”
“That’s stupid.”
He looks at me with an ancient kind of indulgence. “Is it?”
“I’m your mortal enemy. I’m a wolf. I’m not your child. And okay, I might have killed your kid, but those thralls weren’t your children. They were your food supply. If anything, I’m the dog that stole your dinner.”
He throws his head back and laughs.
“That might be a more accurate description, but this has become a political matter. For political purposes, you strike me as a fatherless little thing. It will be good for you to have some paternal influence. And, by taking you as my child, and you being the mate of the alpha, that creates an alliance between our houses, which is a good thing to have when one wants to avoid wars that have been brewing for quite some time.”
He explains this all in very slow tones, raising his brows to make the point that I have clearly missed from the outset.
“Elena was right? The vampires are coming for the shifter packs?”
“The vampires are rising,” he says. “It is cyclical. If I want to protect the packs as I always have, I need to make alliances that place them under my protection. In the past, I have mated with a shifter female. But you, sweet little thing, are already mated, and I find you charming. So I will take you as my child.”
He’s talking as though what he is saying makes sense and is very reasonable. I know I am not really being given a choice. I could refuse and resist, but then what would happen? What would a vampire with the ability to control my mind do to me if I tried to deny him his plan?
I decide not to test it, because so far he seems interested in looking after me and little else.
“What do you want from me?”
“I want your respect, and perhaps one day, your love. Not romantic love, you understand. I have a tenderness for my children. You have several siblings. You will meet them in due course. For the moment, simply make yourself comfortable and try and be obedient. It is easier for us all if I do not have to manage your mind constantly.”
“But I need to go home. I need to get back to the pack. Alexei will be worried about me. He will be trying to get me back.”
“Don’t worry. I have sent word to your Alexei. Now, my dear daughter, indulge me. Let me look after you.”
There is a madness in this creature. He does not care what I think or what I want. He has taken me for his own ends and he expects me to take the role he has assigned to me.
“What if I won’t?”
“I have many ways of controlling you,” he smiles, a hint of sadism entering his eyes and his smile. “I have been gentle, because I have no desire to damage you, but if you wish to make this difficult, and be treated like the beast you are, then…”
“I’m not a beast!” I don’t know how I manage to be offended. Perhaps he’s relaxed his mind control. Maybe he is allowing me to have my own thoughts for his own amusement.
The way his upper lip curls when I say those words makes me think that might be true.
“Of course you are. A female shifter is both beauty and the beast. She wears the skin of a pretty lady, but underneath pure brutality courses in her veins. You bristle with potential for violence, Anya. It has been bred into you.”
My mother always made it clear that our animal side was for protection. That’s the only time I ever saw her take her wolf form. She could have been a monster if she wanted to, but she always chose being civilized.
Dom sees the worst in me. The smallest in me. The most base and basic in me.