Chapter 1 #2
He only tilted his chin and jerked his head once—a silent command aimed at the back-alley door.
No charm. No words. Just permission—and warning.
She followed anyway, heels clicking, too eager to care about the signs she should’ve feared.
Outside, the night air hit cold and sharp, thick with rain and rot, but Rhen barely registered it.
The second the door shut, the world narrowed.
Rain hissed against brick and rusted metal.
The alley stank of wet asphalt, old piss, and rot baked into the cracks.
Neon bled through the drizzle in sickly streaks—red and violet smearing across puddles like wounds.
Rhen didn’t give her time to breathe.
He shoved her into the wall hard enough to knock the laugh out of her, his palm flattening over her stomach as he pinned her hips and forced her spine against every ridge of brick. She made a sound—surprise turning to thrill in the same breath.
Her heels scraped for purchase. Her dress rode up without shame. She tipped her head back like she’d been waiting for someone exactly like him, throat bared to the rain, mouth parting in a grin that said she wanted to be handled.
“Do your worst,” she purred, eyes bright and blown wide. “I like it rough.”
Rhen’s gaze dragged over her with contempt. Not desire. Not softness. Assessment. Appetite.
“Stop talking, female.”
The words came out like gravel, low and ugly, a command edged with warning.
His hand slid down her thigh and squeezed—hard.
Not a caress. A claim. His fingers dug in until she hissed, until her body reacted the way he wanted it to: pliant, eager, chasing the pain like it meant something.
He caught her hair in his fist and yanked her head back, baring her throat further, forcing her to look up at nothing but rain and the slice of neon above.
His mouth found her jaw. Not a kiss—an almost-bite. Teeth grazing skin. Breath hot against the pulse jumping beneath it.
She shivered. She liked it. Of course she did.
“You’re taking too long,” she taunted, breath catching, hips pressing back as if inviting the impact.
A growl rumbled up from his chest, deep and involuntary, vibrating against her skin. He hated the sound. Hated that it came so easily.
“You talk too much.”
He should have returned to the hunt, but hunger had already narrowed the night to heat, teeth, and the pulse beneath her skin. Human disease could not touch his kind, and consequence had never interested him. She was willing, available, and irrelevant beyond what her body could give him.
He freed himself with rough, impatient movements and dragged her hips into position.
Her laugh broke sharp and thrilled when he drove into her, the impact forcing her palms against the brick.
He established a punishing rhythm, using the fist in her hair to hold her where he wanted her while rain slicked her skin and the music inside the club thudded through the wall.
There was no softness in it and no illusion of intimacy. It was appetite given a body and permission, violence made useful. Whatever loyalty forbade him to take, whatever need he refused to name, he drove into her until it became something simpler—force, control, silence.
Her body started to chase release in frantic pulses—tightening, trembling, desperate to pull something from him.
She ground back, greedy, trying to take, trying to claim.
Rhen denied her the satisfaction of believing she could take anything from him.
Just as she started to fracture, she turned her face, cheek brushing brick, eyes bright and wrecked.
“Bite me,” she whispered like a prayer. Like a prize. Like she’d paid for it.
Rhen’s mouth skimmed her ear.
He wrenched her head to the side and sank his fangs into her throat.
Her gasp tore out of her like an animal sound.
Her whole body went rigid—then shattered, climax ripping through her in a helpless wave as the bite pushed her over the edge.
Blood flooded his mouth, hot and tainted, laced with chemicals and recklessness, thick with the kind of arrogance that made humans believe they were invincible.
He drank anyway.
He fed hard, pulling from her without care, without restraint, until the hunger finally loosened its grip. Her knees buckled. Her body sagged against the wall, breath breaking into weak little sounds as her pulse slowed, the narcotic rush of his bite turning her boneless in his hands.
When he pulled back, blood streaked his lips. Rain hit it and made it shine.
She slid down the brick, shaking, dazed—and smiling like she’d just been blessed instead of bled.
Rhen stared at her for a beat longer than necessary.
He reached into his pocket, flicked out a hundred-dollar bill, and let it flutter down to the puddled concrete at her feet.
“Don’t spend it all at once,” he muttered.
Then he crouched, pressed two fingers to her temple, and scrubbed himself from her memory.
He shoved through the back door, and the bass hit him like a freight train.
Heat, sweat, and cheap perfume crashed over him, barely masking the metallic tang coating his tongue.
He wiped his mouth out of habit, though her blood was already burning through his veins, heavy with chemicals, liquor, and panic.
He hated feeding from humans like her, but hunger did not care about purity, and neither did he once it had its teeth in him. Dax, Cole, and Malakai chose their donors as though clean blood made them different from the creatures they hunted.
Rhen had no use for the distinction.
He fed, fucked, and destroyed because appetite demanded an outlet, and control meant deciding when the damage began and where it ended.
Red neon flickered through the haze as he crossed the sticky floor, catching on the damp edge of his jaw where rain clung like sweat. Then something fouler moved beneath the club’s familiar stench.
The trace was thin but unmistakable, ancient rot threading through blood, perfume, and the faint ozone scent of their kind.
Heretic magic already clung to Bar X, but one strand stretched away from the building and into the rain, drawing a path beyond the Quarter as though something wanted to be followed.
Rhen stopped long enough to fix its direction in his mind.
His mouth curved without humor.
Let it try.
He spotted his brothers lounging in the back booth—always the same booth, deep in the corner where the light barely reached and no one dared sit unless invited.
The table was littered with empty glasses, the sharp tang of liquor mingling with the faint ozone scent that always followed their kind.
He reached the booth and caught Cole’s eye across the low table. His voice was rough as gravel, low enough to be missed by the crowd.
“I’m taking the back roads,” he said. “Gonna circle. Don’t wait up.”
Cole looked up slowly, the ghost of a smirk dancing across his mouth, but he didn’t push. He never pushed. You didn’t leash Rhen. You let him burn and prayed he didn’t burn everything else down with him.
“You good?”
He was never good.
Not in this life.
Not in this body.
But he’d be damned if he let anyone name it for him.