Chapter 2
Loren
They'd found a cache of humans. Loren swore silently to himself. Minor royalty, he had freedoms the others in the hunting party didn't share, but he couldn't be seen as weak. Not with his brother there, even farther from the throne than Loren himself was. Not with all of the others all around him.
But an entire group of them, stupid and defenseless and frightened.
Young, mostly. The ones they'd run down, the ones whose scent one of the hunting party had recognized, they were expendable.
They'd killed a Vampyren in a sneak attack with pipe bombs and nails, and their bravery would be commended before they were ritually drained to the point of death, then beheaded.
There could be no mercy. The planet belonged to the Vampyren and they needed to take everything of value from it before the Lucian sent enough force to make their threat reality.
That meant breeding the women to increase their numbers even as they fled with the babies.
It meant eating enough to be stronger than the wolves when they came.
Lucian. Fucking scavengers. They followed on the heels of the Vampyren, taking planets the Vampyren first conquered. They had formidable strength and an abiding hatred for the vampires.
This was his party, though. His party no matter how Sav nipped at his command. They'd do things Loren's way and none would be harmed.
Even the assassins, because Loren was too far down in rank to handle it himself and besides, their execution needed to be witnessed by everyone on Earth.
No human could be allowed to kill a Vampyren.
He didn't mind killing the older humans.
Their blood would be nourishing, but not like younger blood.
They were reaching the age when they would first start to break down, though the woman – he thought she might be breedable.
It would be worth slaughtering her mate and keeping her to make up for the loss of the Vampyren they'd killed.
His heart raced. He'd been the one to sense them, one of the few to make it back from that doomed hunting party, the one taken out by the bomb. Now to have the opportunity to punish those responsible.
He took a stilling breath, collecting himself, and stepped into the house, taking in the number of males and females, where he sensed the warmth of blood and the beat of human hearts.
Then his gaze fell on the girl.
She was beautiful. Tall and sleek, with muscles like a female of his own kind.
Her long, glossy hair was the color of dirt after a rain.
The fury on her face, the way her hands tightened and knuckles whitened around the wrench she held.
She wouldn't stand a chance against even the smallest of the aliens but he liked that she'd try.
Her scent matched that of the much taller male beside her. Litter mates, then, or born in different pregnancies, but related. There was another scent to her blood. He sniffed, shook his head, aware of Sav and the others waiting on him, but he scented –
"It's not them," Perdita said. He was smaller than the others, a head shorter than Loren's eight feet, but sharp. His beard was full, his eyes avid, his skin what the humans called olive. Physically beautiful, but then, all Vampyren were.
"What do you mean?" He scented the air again and smelled corruption.
Perdita shook his head. "Someone close to – " he sniffed again and pointed to three of the assembled humans.
Three males, one of them the killer, and four females, one of them the breeder.
Perdita closed his eyes briefly, then opened them with the nictitating lids in place, protecting himself.
"Those three," he said, pointing to the girl Loren had already observed and the brother, and a third girl who stood with her hands up in front of her, frozen in place. "Someone they're close to is ill."
Loren took another breath and this time understood.
A blood disease. Interesting. Once they secured this group, they'd follow the scent, find the sick relative and take him to the labs.
Occasionally Vampyren stock became corrupted.
Understanding how to prevent such illnesses of food – blood – would be worth it and guarantee the human their life.
As long as the human cooperated.
Sav moved past him in a blur, impatient and raging. He'd been the other survivor of the doomed hunting party and now he grabbed the male and yanked him down to his knees, pushing the man's head back at an extreme angle. His fangs snapped down into place.
Loren was at his side before he could move any farther. "You'd answer to command for that. You know what they'd extract. This is bigger than your revenge." In fact, Sav didn't have the right to even desire such revenge.
He didn't bother saying that. His brother had a savage temper and the winter and the darkness were making him feral.
It made Loren exhausted.
He turned to Perdita. "Use who you need to get them secured. Those two, they're the ones we were chasing." Because not everyone in the party could sense that. Those who hadn't been on the fateful mission had no idea. "That girl – she's mine. Secure her and keep her safe."
The humans reacted instantly. An explosion of movement as the male sibling came for Loren as if he stood a chance of doing damage with his bare hands.
The girl, the one he wanted, put down the piece of plumbing she held, gingerly, as if it were somehow important, and brought up the wrench, advancing.
The other girl reached for her, shouting, the same as the other females shouted and the other males moved and the couple they had been pursuing began to scream.
Loren hated scenes like this. Fate was fate and when it became evident how it was to play out, railing against it was obscene.
"Take them."
She ran at him then, avoiding Perdita because he'd gone for her sister, heading for the wrong girl, avoiding Sav because he went instantly for the largest male, hoping no doubt for a confrontation that would allow him to tear a human apart.
Avoiding the others because she was fast and lean and angry and didn't care about herself in that moment, only cared about those with her.
Jericho rounded on her, going after her because she was going after Loren, the leader. He held up a hand to stop him, pointed at one of the other girls who had started to run.
He turned back in time to stop the wrench that was coming down fast at him. He had her wrists in his hands then, clutched together, her spitting, hissing, hopelessly outnumbered attack stopped in its tracks.
She started to cry but where Loren hated their tears, hated the weakness they implied, he found hers to be tears of sheer fury. Without knowing quite why he did it, he pulled her into his arms and held her against his chest.