Chapter Three
New Year’s Resolution Number Three: Pick a new exercise regime. Get your heart pumping!
She was being hunted? By all of the paranormals?
She was supposed to spend the start of the new year running?
“That new year’s resolution sucks,” Lark snapped at him as a shiver slid over her body.
Fear was heavy in her heart. A pack of werewolves had just come after her.
Of course, she was afraid. On her own, she wouldn’t have been able to defeat them. The vamp had saved her ass, literally.
Then he’d tried to drink her blood.
You just couldn’t trust vamps.
Devereaux exhaled…and finally moved away.
She kept her fingers clenched around the stake. Just in case. Vamps could move amazingly fast, and she wasn’t about to take any chances.
“It’s an unfortunate resolution. But I got to you. So they’ll just all have to back the hell off.”
Her heartbeat thundered in her chest. She knew he’d hear the telling sound.
With their enhanced hearing, vamps could hear almost everything.
“Why are they after me? I’m not exactly in the family business.
I walked away from it when I buried my mom.
The beasts are supposed to stick to their world, and I’m sticking to mine. ”
“Oh, love, it’s not that easy.”
Love. The guy had an accent. A slight British rumble that was ever so sexy.
That was the thing about vamps—they usually were sexy.
Even asshat Charles had been sexy. It was the whole undead allure gift thing.
Vamps were able to charm and seduce their prey.
They were the elegant ones. The werewolves were the wild and fierce predators.
Wolves were savage while the vamps were all about seduction.
“Your protection is at an end. It ended with your birthday.” He paused. “Happy birthday, by the way. Twenty-six today, I believe?”
Yes, she was. She’d been born on New Year’s, shortly after the stroke of midnight. Another reason she’d decided to go out on the blind date from hell. It was bad enough to ring in the new year alone, but to celebrate another birthday by herself?
I totally should have just stayed home.
Voice not very regretful, he explained, “The bargain ended with this birthday. I’m afraid you’re fair game now.”
The stake was smooth and cold in her grasp. “What bargain?”
“Your mother killed an awful lot of paranormal creatures. She made it her mission to abolish them. She didn’t even care if they were guilty of crimes. Didn’t matter to her whether or not they’d broken the covenants in place—”
“Stop.” Memories swirled up. Memories she didn’t want to face.
He didn’t stop. “Rage drove her, I suspect. Rage and hate. She’d been tricked, so she wanted to exact punishment.
” A pause. “Vengeance. That’s what she wanted.
” Devereaux sprawled back against the leather seat and watched her.
His gaze dipped over her body. “It’s what they want now, too.
The protection ended for you, the old promise not to harm a hair on your head—it vanished with the dawn of the new year.
You had years of freedom. So many years when the beasts wouldn’t touch you. But now, my love—”
Again, with the love thing. He needed to stop that.
“You’re fair game. Every beast out there—every paranormal monster who ever lost a loved one because of your mother—will be at your door. Wolves, witches, demons, dragons—they’ll all want their pound of flesh from you.”
Her breath came faster. She looked at the stake, and it seemed so incredibly small to her.
He had to be making up a story to scare her.
“I don’t…I don’t have a hunter’s skills.
” Her shame. A shame her mother had never let her forget.
Her mother had come from a very, very long line of monster hunters.
The power had been passed from mother to daughter over and over again for centuries.
Hunters were faster, stronger, and far more agile than normal humans.
But Lark didn’t have those skills. Not any of them.
She’d also never been able to stare into a monster’s eyes and kill. Though her mother had tried to get her to attack. Again and again.
The scars on her side—scars she always kept hidden—seemed to burn Lark.
She swallowed and glanced toward the front of the limo. A privacy screen was up, blocking her from seeing the driver. “I need to give him directions to my house.”
“Totally unnecessary,” Devereaux dismissed with a wave of his long, elegant fingers.
“You know my address?”
“I know every secret you possess.”
No. “Don’t be so sure of that, Dev.”
“Dev?” Surprise rumbled in his voice.
“Yeah, well, if you keep calling me ‘love’ like I’m your sweetheart, then I can sure give you a nickname, too.” Devereaux felt far too formal to her. But then again, he was a prince. So…
“What do you know about me?” Devereaux asked her. “I’m sure your mother told you all sorts of things.”
“You mean before she was brutally killed by a band of coyote shifters on my sixteenth birthday?”
Silence.
She had a flash of her mother’s body. All of the blood…No. Don’t go back there.
“Yes,” he responded softly. “Before that moment.”
Lark rolled the stake between her fingers. “She mentioned your name. Told me to always stay the hell away from you and any royal vamp. Royal vamps are stronger and more dangerous than the others.”
“We are.” He stared at her. Waited.
Only she didn’t have anything else to say.
“She didn’t tell you…more?” Devereaux finally prompted.
Lark shrugged. “Sorry. You weren’t a big topic of conversation at our house.”
He leaned forward.
She tensed.
“You need an ally.”
She needed to get the hell out of the limo. “I’m not looking to hurt the monsters out there. I’m just minding my own business. They need to leave me alone.”
“They won’t. They won’t stop until you’re dead. Your mother took too much from them. Some deserved what she did. Some didn’t.” He eased even closer to her. She had to strain to see his features clearly in the dark interior of the vehicle. “On your own, you’ll be dead.”
She wasn’t in the mood to die. “What are you offering?” And why?
“I’ve waited a very long time for you.” His fingers rose and slid down her cheek.
“Uh, okay.”
“You are not meant to die at the hands of wolves or coyotes or anything else.”
“Great to know.” His scent was nice. And when he got that close, her body felt a little shaky. A lot out of control. She thought of the kiss. A kiss that had absolutely incinerated her. She’d never felt a surge of desire that consuming.
Had to be a vamp trick.
“You are meant to rule.” He cupped her cheek. “At my side.”
“Wait—what?” She’d gotten a little distracted and had missed a bit of what he’d said. “Did you just say—”
“I will keep you safe from every threat out there. But there is a price. You have to rule with me. Become my bride. No paranormal creature would dare to touch you once we are bound together.”
Breathing was a little hard. “You just asked me to marry you.”
“Yes.”
“Are you crazy?” He must be. Delusional vamp.
Figured. “I’m the daughter of a monster hunter.
Monster hunters don’t marry vamps. They kill each other!
There is no freaking way I’m meant to rule over the vamps my mom told me I was always supposed to kill!
” Was her voice getting too high? A wee bit hysterical? Well, it was that kind of night.
And Lark realized that she wasn’t cold any longer. Not cold at all. In fact, she was starting to feel a bit too warm. Her breath came faster, heaving in and out, as her heart raced. “I don’t feel so good.”
His fingers trailed down her throat. “He should never have tasted you. I was the one who planned to introduce you to our world.”
“I-I want you to stop the car.” So what if they weren’t close to her place? She needed out. Like, right the hell then. Something was wrong. Her skin had started to burn. “Now.”
He didn’t stop the car. A fire coursed in her veins as Lark lunged forward. She shoved open the car door, letting cool air rush inside and bathe her overheated skin.
“Don’t! You’ll hurt yourself!” His arms wrapped around her, pulling her back against him.
His touch made the fire so much worse. Her whole body shuddered. She couldn’t draw in a deep enough breath, and her heart felt as if it was about to gallop right out of her chest. Heart attack? Was she actually having a heart attack?
“You have to trust me,” Devereaux told her.
Trust a vamp? Um, never!
“I need to bite you. Charles triggered your body, and that’s why you’re hurting right now.”
Triggered? What in the heck did that mean?
“Let me bite you, and I can make the pain stop.”
“Like…I’m going to fall…for that line.”
“Dammit, Lark! I’m not here to hurt you! I’m here to help you.” Then he banged on the privacy screen that separated them from the driver. “Stop the freaking limo, Helsing! Lark is hurting!”
Hurting. Burning from the inside out, same thing, wasn’t it?
The limo screeched to a stop. She tore herself from Devereaux’s arms and jumped out of the vehicle.
She stumbled to the side of the road even as snow drifted down on her.
The snowbank was thick near the road’s shoulder, and the snow falling on her felt like heaven against her hot skin.
Lark tilted her head back, spread her arms, and let the cold sweep over her.
She just had to get cool. Had to slow her racing heart. Had to get her shit together.
“Lark.” His voice was low and deep and her eyes opened. She really wasn’t sure when she’d closed them.
“It’s only going to get worse. The heat that you feel. The burn. You need my bite to soothe you.”
Bullshit. His bite wouldn’t do anything but make her worse. “Bites aren’t s-supposed to do this.” Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.
He glanced down the long, dark road. A road that did not lead to her tiny apartment, by the way. She had no freaking clue where they were.