Chapter4
Kane
“My turn.”
I sounded like some fucking animal who crawled out of the woods to steal good little omegas from their beds in the dead of night—and I didn’t give one singleshit. Her scent was the only thing on my mind, the taste, the connection, the blood bond surging from Ambrose to the rest of us, drawing me in. Man off, monster on.Feed.
My lips peeled back in a snarl as I circled sweet little Holly on the floor, diseased heart pounding, logic fading. A blood bond was the worst stroke of luck any of us could get—because vampires were never meant to have omegas.
The vampirism disease made us infertile, so, really, what the fuck was the point?
Omegas were justthingsbefore her—cattle, like the rest of this world, livestock bred and farmed for feed.
But, goddessabove, this trembling creature drenched in spilled blood and tantalizing slick—shewas everything.
A growl echoed from the shadows stuck to the black walls, and from there, a shaky Ambrose waved me and Laz off. We prowled like wolves, high on the blood in the air, but Laz, ever the good solider, did as our coven elder demanded: he stopped. Still as stone, he waited.
Fuck that.
I lumbered around her dazed form, hunting for the best spot to sink my fangs into—somewhere I could guzzle it downandsee her face when my venom made her come like an angel. Every taste deepened the bond, every bite fueled the connection.
And Ambrose had had his fill.
“Stand down, Kane.”Ifed next—that was the order of our coven. We did this by seniority, and I had sixty years on Laszlo.Me. But Ambrose ordered me back as he slumped against the wall and sank to the floor, crashing to the marble with a snarl, his long legs folded and his pupils shot. My eyes narrowed; he had barked me down in a language lost to the world today, out of fashion a good four centuries ago, like he thought our history would slice through all themate, fuck, bite, feed, breed, fuck her againblaring in my skull.
“Don’t test me,” I fired back, slipping effortlessly into the same dialect and emphasizing every syllable, reminding him thatIwas the one who had tutored him so we could pass as locals on that miserable shithole peninsula we called home for a time. “I’ll take what I fucking like—”
“It’s for your own good,” he argued tightly, massaging his jaw hinge with his knuckles, his fangsverypresent. “Trust me, brother.”
“Trust you?” I crouched by her feet and pinched her big toe, the nail painted bloody red like her lips. “Or are you just suddenly averse to sharing now that we’ve found our—”
“Enough, both of you,” Laszlo snapped. He adopted the common tongue used across all the islands, a universal language solidified when the wars stopped and peace became fashionable again. “You’ll scare her.”
Fair enough. I rocked back on my heels as Ambrose groaned and slumped deeper against the wall. Easy as it was to cycle through any of the dozen languages we had at our disposal, privacy a breeze in the company of idiots, this one sounded like a bunch of wolves snarling at each other.
Standing over her head as the omega rolled onto her side and chased her breath, Laszlo glared between us, his expression paired with an unsettling protectiveness that hammered at our bond so hard I felt it in my teeth. He had always been soft, my youngest blood brother, but this was something else.
This was his brand of ferocity.
Good.
We’d been waiting almost six fucking centuries to feel it.
But it was a godsdamn waste now. Scowling, I shot to my feet and planted my hands on my hips, head bowed and eyes shut. Only then did I realize I too was shaking.
This is fucking bullshit.
Tonight was supposed to be fun and frivolous now that Graves was done in this alpha-infested tourist trap. Safe and sound at his rental chalet, surrounded by social climbers and beta security, he had no need for vampiric bodyguards anymore—and wanted to reward us for using our curse to intimidate weaker alphas into lucrative contracts all week.
On his dime, we were supposed to share some cute omega all decked up for the yuletide season. Fuck her, feed from her, tie her up—Laszlo’s kink, not mine—and leave before sunrise.
Simple.
We could do this shit in our sleep.
And then…this.
Blood bonds were a sick joke. Vampirism was adisease, a curse, one passed when an uninfected victim died with venom in their system. It stoleeverythingfrom us, including the ability to procreate. So, fated or not, we couldn’t impregnate an omega, and that was the whole point of her kind’s existence: go into heat, have fantastic sex, get pregnant, and then carry on the living world.