2. Isolde
CHAPTER TWO
ISOLDE
“ T he presumptuousness of humans never ceases to amaze me,” Selene muttered, glaring out from the depths of her hood as she and Isolde wove their way through the village streets.
It was Burning Night—a festival to celebrate the humans’ first stand against the Wolves during the Bleeding War.
Human legend claimed they’d lit bonfires all around the village to confuse the Wolves’ senses with the smoke, allowing people to escape when the beasts came to slaughter them.
Supposedly, their tactics had worked, and no humans died that night.
The irony of it all was that one month later, on the Night of the Bleeding Moon, the final clash between Vampires and Werewolves claimed the lives of more than half the humans who’d gotten caught in the crossfire.
Of course, there was a Bleeding Moon festival, too, where the villagers celebrated just as raucously.
“They just like to have something to celebrate.” Isolde twitched the hem of her dark gown away from one of the festival bonfires as they passed.
She and Selene made their way through the smoke toward the village square, where the dancing had already begun.
“And don’t act like you’re not just as thrilled to dance and drink as they are. ”
“Yes, well, you might recall that I was actually there on the original Burning Night, and it wasn’t the fires that saved the villagers,” Selene replied dryly. “It was the Vampires.”
“Yes, you’ve told me the story a time or ten.”
Not only had she fought on Burning Night, Selene had led the Vampires in the Bleeding War.
She’d defended Bloodhaven down to the very last battle, and then she’d signed her name on the Blood Pact.
The humans hailed her as a hero, even still.
Selene Lascar, they whispered when she passed, Wolf Slayer.
Sometimes they even bowed, which Selene pretended to hate. Isolde suspected she secretly loved it.
“I wouldn’t have to tell it if you didn’t insist on dragging me to this dark-forsaken festival every year.”
“You and I both know I can’t force you to do anything you don’t want to, Selene.”
“Know your place, girl,” Selene replied, but the words didn’t carry any venom. “Go find yourself some handsome young thing to feed on.”
“Yes, Sire,” Isolde said, and with a mock salute, she slipped off into the crowd.
Though it was just after moonrise, the festival was already in full swing.
The largest bonfire of all burned in the village square, with its flames rearing a dozen feet high.
Beside it, a trio of fiddlers played a lively tune, accompanied by two men beating on hide drums. All around, hogs and fowl roasted over smaller fires.
Villagers clutched flagons of ale and skewers of meat and whirled around the bonfires in wild dances.
There were men in wolf masks chasing women clad in silver, and even three boys dressed as pigs, who’d made a game of falling into the snow and squealing whenever a masked man darted by.
Isolde had to admit that Selene had a point about the frivolity of the festival.
It did seem a little silly for the villagers to be dressing as Wolves and their prey, reenacting what might otherwise have been a bloodbath—especially with…
something on the loose, killing humans with increasing frequency.
Still, Isolde always loved Burning Night.
She loved to dance. She loved the moonshine the villagers made, and sampling their human foods.
It reminded her of being human, of sneaking away when she was seventeen to go to the Solstice festivals in the village near her family’s estate.
Of being young and alive and dancing until the sun rose and painted everything warm and golden.
Now, she could only nibble at the human food. She couldn’t get drunk, and she had to make her way home before dawn, or risk the wasting sickness that befell Vampires who were touched by the sun.
At least the festival allowed her a good hunt—the thrill of selecting her prey, tracking him through the crowed, seducing him…
Knowing that there was nothing he could do to hurt her.
Isolde would never feed from a man who didn’t want her, but she found no shortage of willing partners in the village.
Eyes followed her as she wove her way through the heaving crowd. She and Selene were the only two Vampires left in the village, since Selene’s original coven had moved north, farther away from Wolf territory, some fifty years prior. Selene loved Bloodhaven too much and had refused to go with them.
The villagers might have revered Selene, but they were relatively indifferent to Isolde.
Most people regarded her with a mixture of wariness and curiosity, but no outright hostility.
As Isolde prowled the festival, some people veered off to keep their distance while others—men, mostly—tracked her with hungry stares.
But even the men who stared didn’t dare approach Isolde before she gave them the invitation, which was one thing she had to admit she loved about being a Vampire.
Isolde pushed her cloak over her shoulders, revealing the black velvet of her gown, which clung to her hips and swirled around her feet as she joined the sea of dancers.
She raised her arms above her head and let her body writhe, matching the rhythm of the drums and the movement of the crowd.
The feel of eyes on her intensified as she moved, and she scanned the crowd from beneath lowered lashes, keeping her head tilted so the sheet of her silvery hair spilled down her back.
Within minutes, she’d spotted her target for the evening.
He was tall and lean, with a shock of coppery hair and a pretty face.
His friends laughed around him, sloshing ale onto their boots, but his gaze was locked on Isolde, his expression hungry.
Slowly, Isolde let her mouth curl into a wicked smile as she crooked one finger and gestured for him to join her.
He didn’t waste a second.
The man was across the square in an instant, his eyes not leaving Isolde’s until he slipped into her space. He was taller than her, but not by much, his breath coasting over the bridge of her nose. Isolde watched the way his attention slid from her eyes down to her mouth, where they held.
“Dance with me,” Isolde purred, just loud enough for the man to hear her over the music.
“Whatever you want.” The man was practically panting, his pupils blown wide with desire, and he made no objection as Isolde turned her back to him and began to sway. His hands found her waist, pulling her close as he matched her rhythm.
Isolde let her head fall back, leaning it against the man’s shoulder.
From there, it was easy to turn her head, let her nose graze the side of his neck.
Until her fangs pierced his smooth, bronzed skin, she wouldn’t be able to smell his blood in the way she wanted, but this…
this was enough. Like catching a whiff of baking bread through an open window, she could smell the hint of sweetness in his blood, the slight saltiness, the tang of warm iron.
Isolde waited until she felt him harden against her back and heard his breath turn ragged against her ear. Twisting again in his arms, she opened her mouth to say?—
She stilled, the words dying on her tongue as her eyes locked with a pair of dark ones across the square.
This man stood alone. Despite the winter chill, he had his sleeves rolled up to reveal the corded muscle of his folded arms. His dark chestnut hair ruffled in the breeze as he watched her, and the look in those dark eyes…
It was different from the way the other men watched her. It was less… desperate, but the scorching intensity of that stare heated her through like nothing she’d ever felt before.
And then, as she held his gaze, he arched one thick bow and smirked .
Before she could think better of it, Isolde was turning the rest of the way toward the copper-haired man. “Thanks for warming me up, love,” she murmured, and then she slipped out of his grasp and away, into the crowd.
Isolde almost never approached men first. She preferred to lure them in, let them come to her. That made things easier, too, since she’d never feed off a man who didn’t want her to.
Now, though… her feet seemed to move of their own accord, carrying her across the square toward the dark-eyed man like a moth to a flame. She slipped through the crowd like a ghost, all her senses honed on his presence.
Just as she neared the place where he leaned against a rough stone wall, he moved.
Isolde’s predator instincts roared to life. It had already been a bit too long since she’d fed, and she’d just gotten herself riled with her nose pressed against the pulse of the copper-haired man.
And now, this other man had caught her attention with that burning stare, and he thought he could slip away?
She could feel her body straining against the control that kept her moving at a human speed. Her canines extended, sharp against the inside of her lip. Despite the blinding firelight, her vision narrowed, the color leaching from the world as her darksight took over.
The man slipped through the crowd ahead of her, keeping just out of her reach. Every so often, he flung a glance over a broad shoulder with a smirk that only intensified the hunger pulsing in Isolde’s veins.
Somewhere deep within her rational mind, warning bells were ringing, and they only grew louder as the man slipped through a shadowy doorway. But the hunger, and the desire brought on by that smoldering stare of his… they roared louder.
So Isolde followed him inside, into a dark room with a crimson glow at the back… a forge. This was the blacksmith’s workshop, she realized vaguely, as her darksight adjusted and revealed the bellows, the anvil, the shelves of smithing tools.
“Didn’t care to dance, I gather?” she purred as she prowled along the edge of the workshop, keeping her back to the wall and the man before her.
“Not in the way the others do,” the man replied.
His voice was low and rough, like he’d spent years breathing smoke from the forge.
He didn’t move, just planted himself in the center of the room and watched her circle him.
To his human eyes, she couldn’t have been much more than a shadow in the dimness of the shop.
“What’s your name?” Isolde asked.
“Bastian,” he replied.
“No surname?”
“Thessarian.”
“Bastian Thessarian,” Isolde repeated, testing the name out on her tongue. It sounded familiar, somehow, but she couldn’t put her finger on where she’d heard it.
Bastian tilted his head to one side. “And your name?”
“You don’t already know? Most people do.”
“I’m new in the village.”
Right. The old blacksmith was nothing more than a dismembered hand.
“My name is Isolde Renault.” Now, she pushed off the wall and prowled toward him. “Are you enjoying Burning Night?”
“I’m not one for this sort of party,” Bastian answered, still holding his ground.
“No?” Isolde paused just within arm’s reach of him, savoring the difference in size between them.
He was tall enough that she had to crane her neck to hold his stare, and his shoulders…
they were so broad, so powerful, pulling at the seams of his white shirt as he unfolded his arms. “So you were just out there hoping to entice yourself a partner for some… other festivities?”
“You could say that.” Bastian’s voice was even lower than before, even huskier.
His eyes glittered in the darkness as they roamed hungrily over Isolde’s face.
Slowly, he took a step closer to her, and then she caught his scent: amber and woodsmoke, and something deep and earthy she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
Beneath all that, the iron of his blood, rich and spicy and sweet all at once.
“Well,” Isolde whispered, letting her gaze drop to the wide curve of his mouth. “I suppose we’d better get on with those festivities, then.”
Bastian’s hands were around her waist in an instant, hauling her close as she surged up to catch his mouth with hers.
It took everything she had to control herself, to keep her canines from sliding out and puncturing the hot, pillowy swell of Bastian’s bottom lip.
He tasted as good as he smelled—and yet nowhere near as heavenly as she knew his blood would be.
God, she’d never met a human who smelled this good before.
It was enough to drive her nearly feral.
Heat surged in Isolde’s core as Bastian’s hands slipped down to her ass, his fingers curling into the soft flesh there when he lifted her.
He caught her groan of approval in his mouth as he began to walk, carrying her across the room until her thighs hit the edge of a workbench.
A metallic clattering sounded as Bastian swept the surface clean, and then he was pressing Isolde backward, laying her out beneath him.
“Do you know what I am?” she managed to say, thrusting her hands into the silky strands of his hair as his mouth found her jaw, and then her throat.
“Yes,” Bastian replied, nipping at the tender skin beneath Isolde’s ear and drawing another groan out of her. “You’re a Vampire.”
Isolde could have wept with delight, hearing those words come out of his mouth in that rough, assured voice. She wouldn’t have to explain, or talk him through it if he already knew.
The muscles in Bastian’s shoulders flexed beneath Isolde’s hands as he settled over her, the hard length of his cock pressing between her thighs. She ground her hips upward, searching for the friction she needed, and he pressed back, just where she needed him.
“Can I drink from you?” Isolde asked. She curled one hand around the back of Bastian’s head, angling her mouth against the thrumming vein of his neck, resting her lips against the hot, silken skin there.
Isolde’s mouth watered at the scent of him, at the pulse she could hear, the promise of the rich, hot blood she was about to taste.
Bastian leaned back, and Isolde nearly snarled at the loss of that sweet scent.
Then the icy edge of a razor-sharp blade met her throat, and Bastian said, “What were you doing at the southern wood pile last night?”