Chapter 28 Sable
SABLE
Iheard the voice like a snake hissing in the distance, but I couldn’t see him. My wolf had been so consumed by this closeness with Rhys that my other side missed his approach. Or he was just that good. Rhys growled. I put a hand on his chest to calm him.
I had to be the one to deal with this.
“Still playing house with the puppies, I see. How… domestic.”
And there he was. Tall, pale, moving through the trees with a casual grace that said he’d had centuries of practice.
He was at the edge of the clearing, his head tilting as he scented the air.
Then he cast a bubble of silence around us.
No one at the celebration would be able to hear or sense a thing.
That was old-world magic.
The vampire offered a fang-filled smile.
“I don’t know you.” Power built beneath my skin, silver magic responding to the threat automatically. I kept it contained.
“Ah, but you do. A part of you always has. I’m your dear blood-brother, Ivan.” He took a step closer, and I caught the scent of old blood and older sins. Rhys tugged my arm to make me step back, but I held myself in place. “You’ve been away from family too long, Sable. It’s time to come home.”
“This is my home.” It came out so naturally, I surprised myself.
“Is it?” Ivan nodded toward Rhys. “Does he know what you are? What you’re capable of?”
Rhys bristled. “I know enough.”
My vampire brother never took his eyes off me.
“And does the alpha know about your feeding? About how you’ve been slowly turning their precious beta into something that’s no longer entirely wolf?
” He was studying me with predatory interest. “Do they know that every time you drink from him, you’re changing him? Making him more like us?”
Ice flooded my veins. “You’re lying.”
“Am I? Haven’t you noticed how well he feels afterward? How he craves more?” His smile turned cruel. “You’re making him into a hybrid, little sister. Just like you.”
I’ve been changing him—since the first feeding.
“Stop,” I whispered.
“Father knows about your plaything here,” he continued, apparently enjoying my reaction. “Knows how it’s evolving.” He paused. “He’s very interested in studying your fuck buddy.”
Studying. Which meant if I went with him voluntarily, Rhys would still be in danger. They weren’t interested in me alone. And once they discovered that we were fated mates, they’d want to examine how vampire and wolf natures could merge so completely.
They’d dissect us both to figure it out.
“I won’t go with you,” I said firmly.
“I was hoping you’d say that.” Ivan’s fangs extended fully. “Father said I could have some fun if you refused to come quietly.”
He moved faster than human eyes could track—but I’d been expecting it. Silver magic erupted from my skin in a defensive barrier that sent him stumbling backward, smoke rising from where the energy had touched him.
The bubble of silence popped. The wolves would hear us, and there was no doubt in my mind they’d be coming to protect their beta any second now.
“You still think you’re strong enough to deny your nature,” he observed, circling me. “Still fighting what you are instead of embracing it.”
Rhys growled, his wolf pressing against him, eager to fight the threat, but I knew that would only make things worse.
He wasn’t at full strength, and I didn’t know the powers this vampire brother of mine could have.
I spent most of my life running away from this part of my family, trying to pretend they didn’t exist. From the way Ivan spoke and the bubble he cast, he wasn’t going to be easily overpowered.
I lifted my chin. “I know exactly what I am.”
“Do you? Because from where I stand, you look like a half-breed trying to play house with creatures that would kill you if they knew the truth.”
Ivan moved with another surge, this time to the side. I spun, silver magic lashing out in a whip that caught him across the chest and sent him flying into the nearest tree. The trunk cracked under the impact.
He was back on his feet within seconds, laughing. “Better, but not good enough. This is your last chance. Come with me willingly, and I’ll leave your pets alone.”
I looked back at Rhys. I knew he was calculating the odds and finding them wanting. I also knew that if I fought here, people I cared about were going to die.
People I loved.
Somewhere in the mess of bonds and feeding and forced proximity, I’d fallen for the infuriating, seemingly soulless wolf who’d rejected me and then couldn’t stay away.
And there was a good chance I was about to get him killed.
The sound of wolves running in our direction filled the night. Logan emerged into the clearing in his giant wolf form. More pack members flooded into the clearing behind him.
“Orion wolves,” my vampire brother called out, his earlier confidence cracking as he found himself outnumbered fifty to one. “This doesn’t concern you.”
Logan shifted back to human form, stepping in front of Rhys and me. “Everything on our territory concerns us.” Logan’s voice went flat with menace. “Especially threats to my family.”
“All I want is the hybrid.” He gestured to me. “She can’t be pack, anyway. It isn’t in her blood.” He smiled thinly. “It’s a great deal, frankly. Just one life for hundreds. Considering all that you’ve faced with this curse, it seems like this is firmly in your interest.”
“She’s with us,” Logan growled. “My pack. My family. And I said no one fucks with my family.”
Rhys stepped in front of me. “She isn’t going anywhere.”
Ivan snarled at us both. “Touching. The pet thinks he can help.”
“I’m not her pet,” Rhys said calmly, steadying me. “I’m her mate.”
Mate. Not a rejected bond. Not supernatural dependency. Mate.
The word made Ivan chuckle and then freeze. “Impossible.”
“Is it?” Rhys’s wolf power was radiating from him. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks pretty fucking possible. She’s my fated mate.”
Suddenly I felt another vampire approaching from the east. Another from the south. And another. Ivan hadn’t come alone.
A trap. This was all a trap.
“Stay in position,” Logan ordered, but his eyes were on me. “What are you sensing?”
“They’re circling. Coming from every direction.”
The forest went quiet around us.
The temperature plummeted so fast I could see my breath misting in the suddenly frigid air. The shadows began moving wrong—sliding across tree trunks, independent of their sources, pooling in impossible places where no shadows should exist.
It wasn’t human, and it wasn’t wolf.
“Orion, shift. Now.” Logan’s alpha voice brooked no argument. Rhys shifted beside me. I stayed in this form, my wolf submitting but knowing I was more useful to the situation like this.
We needed my vampire abilities.
I looked at Rhys, and the terror I felt must have shown on my face because his wolf form went rigid with protective fury.
Around me, the pack was transforming. Bones cracked and reformed, fur erupted across skin, human forms dissolved into their wolf shapes with violent efficiency.
Logan remained human while Kenza’s small sand-colored hunter was positioning for an attack, with Killian and Blair and their enforcer wolves spreading into defensive formations.
I remained stubbornly human, both hands pressed against my temples as the supernatural radar in my head overloaded. Every vampire felt like a migraine spike, and there were too many of them. Too close. I couldn’t track them individually, and my wolf couldn’t emerge while I was so connected to them.
My hybrid nature was screaming warnings I couldn’t fully interpret, caught between wolf pack bonds and vampire territorial awareness in ways that left me dizzy and nauseated.
Shapes moved between the trees, flowing through the darkness with predatory grace.
Their scent hit me—old blood, grave dirt, and something that whispered submit directly to the deepest parts of my brain.
I couldn’t tell how many of them there were—fewer than there were wolves—but that might not have mattered.
These weren’t vampires of the New World. These were apex predators who’d survived centuries by being smarter, faster, and more ruthless than anything else in the darkness.
The wolves formed a defensive circle, the pack bond guiding them into position with me as the vulnerable center they were protecting. Rhys was part of it, his wolf looking over his shoulder to check on me as the pack set themselves in place.
They’d claimed me as theirs to defend.
The vampires stopped just outside striking range, all pale faces and gleaming eyes, forming a perfect ring around us. Close enough to demonstrate their confidence. Far enough away to prove they weren’t reckless.
They were toying with us. Testing our responses. Gathering information for a real assault.
“Alpha Logan.” Ivan’s voice came from everywhere and nowhere, distorted by a power that made my vampire nature cower. “We bring an offer.”
“Speak,” Logan snarled, authority rolling off him in waves that even I could feel through the pack bond.
“We want the hybrid. Alive and unharmed. And your pack sees another sunrise.”
Hybrid. The wolves’ attention shifted toward me.
Through our bond, Rhys’s wolf rage spiked so violently it nearly knocked me over. Whatever doubts he might have had about my nature, whatever questions he had about what I was changing him into, none of that mattered when faced with creatures who were trying to take me away.
“Generous,” Logan replied, his tone carrying a deadly calm. “Here’s my counter-offer.”
Is he giving me up? Does knowing I’m a hybrid automatically make me an enemy?
Silence stretched between the predators, each side measuring the other’s resolve.
Logan declared, “Leave now, or I’ll decorate the forest with your remains.”
Laughter rippled around the clearing, cold and crisp as breaking glass. The sound made my vampire side want to bare its fangs and submit simultaneously.
“You cannot fight us all. We are speed, we are strength, and your pets would never be able—”
Ivan cut off mid-word.
Gone. My vampire brother simply wasn’t there anymore. I felt his absence like a scab being ripped off. One moment a pale figure stood between twin pines, the next there was only empty air and the acrid scent of sulfur.
My supernatural senses reeled, trying to process what had happened. Vampires didn’t just disappear. They moved fast, yes, but they left traces. Scent trails. Displaced air. Something.
This was erasure.
The remaining vampires shifted nervously, their supernatural confidence fracturing as they realized something was hunting them in return.
“Where—” one began, and disappeared.
Another vanished. Then another.
Rhys growled and stepped closer to me, the pack filling the space where he’d stood in formation.
The oppressive cold that had accompanied the vampires was being replaced by something different: clean mountain air and a scent so ancient it made my bones ache.
Within seconds, the clearing was empty. The vampires had been systematically removed from existence, as if they’d never been there at all.
The crushing weight of their presence lifted so suddenly I staggered, my vampire senses finally able to function without being overwhelmed by predatory dominance.
The pack started to shift back to human form.
“What the fuck—” Kenza started.
A figure materialized in the center of the defensive circle and the wolves scurried back, getting ready to attack, if necessary.
Mariyah stood there in her collection of tattered robes, looking like she’d been taking a casual evening stroll instead of single-handedly disappearing a vampire assassination squad. Her ancient eyes surveyed us with a glint.
Her scent was elemental. She looked at me and tilted her head. While she’d looked old with her sunken eyes when she’d visited my cabin, now she looked bone-tired.
She offered the smallest of smiles. “You’re welcome,” she said.
And vanished.
For a heartbeat, nobody moved. We stared at the empty air. I tried to process what we’d witnessed, to understand what kind of power could make centuries-old vampires simply cease to exist.
And tried not to think too hard about what it meant that Mariyah had been watching. Waiting. Ready to intervene when the threat was too great for us to handle.