Chapter 3
Balthazar
Moonlight slanted over my face. I didn’t move, I just kept my eyes on the newest member of my household.
Devil’s balls, what the fuck was I doing?
I’d given him my blood. Twice. And before this night was over, I’d do it again, and again.
As many times as he needed. I had no idea why I had this compulsion to save this stubborn-arsed shifter.
I owed him nothing. And I could easily let Connor believe he died during the bloodlust.
I sat forward, resting my forearms on my knees while studying Shane from an armchair.
He was good-looking in a rugged, bad-boy way that really did it for me.
But most supernaturals were beautiful. Just like humans, though, they weren’t all roses on the inside.
I definitely wasn’t, but I’d earned the godsdamned right to be a bastard when I chose.
I’d been alive long enough to see, hear, and do every kind of evil this fucked up world could imagine.
I was as ugly on the inside as the demons of Hell.
I was just honest enough to admit it. I owned my evil.
In the eyes of mortals, even some immortals, that made me unpredictable and frightening.
Just the way I preferred. The more people feared me, the more compliant they became.
And word of mouth was always a good deterrent.
Shane moaned and twisted on the bed. His face was covered in a heavy sheen of sweat, as was his ripped, yet too thin, torso.
He was a big male, a shifter who was brave enough, if not powerful enough, to challenge me.
His skin gleamed, but it wasn’t the goosebumps that covered him, or even his pallor, that made me frown.
Red, raised scars covered his body, especially the base of his neck over his major veins.
I snarled, my nostrils flaring, my gut tightening at the memory of how I’d found him.
His wrists were chained together, and he’d been hanging from a hook in the ceiling of a cave.
Bite marks had covered his skin—all over.
His neck had been missing lumps of flesh, too, but it had been the scores of lacerations on his buttocks and around his groin that had enraged me.
They still did. Even weeks after he’d healed, I wanted to end the fucker who’d tortured him.
Slowly, and with as much pain and humiliation as possible.
I took a deep breath to quell my rage. The Made who’d kidnapped him was in my dungeon.
Yes, a real dungeon. One I’d used for many of my foes over the years.
My home was built on the bones of my enemies.
I’d lived in Dundean castle for over seven hundred years, and in all of that time, my dungeons had never housed a being I despised more.
I’d leave the fucker, who also happened to be Elliot’s stepfather, to rot for now.
He’d be starving and weak. It was a punishment, though not nearly enough for the acts of violence he’d been a part of.
That fucker was a bastard of the highest degree, but interrogating him could wait.
I didn’t trust myself not to snap his neck before he could be of use.
Delaying his questioning was mainly due to the shifter now writhing on my bed.
My focus was on getting Shane through this dangerous transition.
There was no way I’d allow him to die. Then I’d think about how to handle his abuser.
Shane groaned again, his arms stretching above his head, fully exposing his stunning body and toned arms. My cock twitched.
He was a good-looking bastard, alright, tall, square-jawed, and burly.
And when he recovered to his previous health, he would once again be powerfully muscled.
I’d met him before, briefly, and I’d paid attention, especially when his blood had called to me, but actively pursuing someone because he was sexy as fuck wasn’t something I indulged in.
It wasn’t arrogance to say I didn’t need to, and that lovers were as easy to find as plucking an apple from a fruit bowl.
I didn’t have the time to chase down anyone, male or female, not when the Gambit was my playground, and my responsibilities as King Stefan’s right hand took me all over Europe.
Not to mention the increasing outbreaks of the Blood Lust virus.
Yet the club was my personal den of iniquity.
There, I could click my fingers and have my pick of lovers, or if I was feeling sadistic, I’d punish my enemies by using their bodies, or mouths, or any other part of them I wanted.
Sadly, circumstances hadn’t thrown Shane and me together again until recently.
That fucker, currently locked in my dungeon, and the vermin that followed him, had kidnapped and fed on Shane and his alphas for weeks before they’d been discovered.
I’d gladly given Connor my help when he’d shown me the video of Shane and Owen being blood raped and tortured.
Normally, I wouldn’t give a shit about shifters being killed, not even that whole town.
But I’d recently struck a deal with Connor Maxwell, and it was in my interests to keep it in place.
An official accord between vampires and shifters had been agreed just over two years ago.
I’d helped the Shifter King shut the Hell Rift and kill the demon army that Satan had released.
In return, he agreed to help me fight the vampire war that was coming as surely as the sun would rise every morning.
There was a faction of Mades who wanted to seize the Blood Throne, and that couldn’t be allowed to happen.
The Blood Throne was the ultimate seat of power in the vampire world, and since the beginning of time, it was held by an Original of the royal bloodline—someone with their inherent power to rule.
Other than one point in time, when the first Made had become a murdering despotic tyrant, it had been in the same family for over one thousand years.
No Made was getting it again; not while I still lived and breathed.
Shane turned his head and inhaled. My eyes narrowed on his canines, my blood heating.
The erection that hadn’t died down since he’d sunk his fangs into my wrist throbbed hard.
A snarl curled my lips. He was scenting me, and it was all I could do to force my fangs to remain hidden.
My feral reaction to this fledgling was unexpected and inconvenient.
When I’d offered to see if he went into an uncontrollable blood rage, it had been a strategic decision.
Keep Connor happy, and be in a position to kill Shane should he become too dangerous.
New vampires were being infected by the Blood Lust virus in their thousands.
It was spreading across the globe at a rate that was almost impossible to contain.
I was stretching my resources as much as I could, and calling in favours from around the world to restrain it.
But this was a relatively new strain that destroyed the minds of those who were turned.
All Made vampires went through bloodlust. It was the completion from human to vampire.
They either fed and fucked and survived it, or they fought their instincts and died.
When fledglings were infected with the virus, they lost their minds completely.
They fell into an uncontrollable and violent rage, killing indiscriminately.
The infected were becoming rampant in the big cities of England and Europe.
If I couldn’t stop it, it wasn’t just humans that would be destroyed; all supernaturals would become targets.
They were faster, stronger, and more vicious than humans on a normal day.
In bloodlust, they either died or became insatiable and impossible for any siring vampire to control unless they were very old and very powerful—like me.
Add in a virus that ramped up their instincts to hunt, feed, and fuck, and they were monsters that needed to be put down.
The number of infected humans and the slaughter that followed each outbreak had increased to the point that the human governments were pushing back against the vampire king, threatening their own measures against the vampire population.
If this virus were allowed to spread, then not only would we be fighting the Mades, the humans and supernatural communities would declare vampires the enemy.
Original or Made, it wouldn’t matter; it would be carnage on all fronts.
The news of Shane’s kidnapping and blood rape had spread.
In the Gambit, Davlov had heard our customers whisper about how he’d been turned, and that I’d let him live.
If he survived and killed indiscriminately, the Mades would try to turn more and more supernaturals into demented killing machines.
They didn’t realise it was me who had given Shane the strength to fight the virus and maybe survive. Maybe…
I contemplated Shane’s writhing form. I should have killed him, but the savage, most bloodthirsty part of me had raged at that idea.
Now, if he lived, and I didn’t have to end his life, he would become something fearsome, and fear was one of the most critical foundations of war.
I’d seen it too often in my lifetime. Shane would become a half-shifter, half-vampire hybrid species, who was under my control.
In short, he would be a weapon against my enemies.
No one outside my close circle needed to know, nor would they suspect, that my blood and the genes it carried were the sole reason for his survival and the continued functioning of his rational brain.