Cain sits on his throne at the far end, the greying hairs at his temples lending sophistication to the plain black morning coat he’s wearing. Our sire always makes a careful effort to ensure he looks the part of the suave ruler. All silver good-looks and dangerous little smiles.
Our other sisters are sitting around him, but only Callie is stretching out of her chair to touch him, stroking his arm with a smug look painted across her face. Her blonde tresses are deliberately arranged behind her shoulder, exposing the fresh, twin puncture wounds of Cain’s bite like a badge of honour.
Callie genuinely thinks that the fact our sire feeds from her vein and fucks her gives her some kind of influence over him. Her own twisted definition of safety. If anything, it shows how little regard Cain has for her.
Our sire only fucks and feeds from her because he can’t find any other use for her.
If she hasn’t figured that out by now, she never will.
Maybe she has,I muse.Maybe she just doesn’t care.
Beside her, Bella frowns down at everyone, her gold jewellery glinting against the warm, dark honey colour of her skin. I don’t take it personally; it’s just her resting expression. The eldest and most serious of us all, she’s the political mastermind of our family. She understands the delicate ins and outs of court and enjoys the sadistic games they play here.
I understand her usefulness, but I despise politics with a passion, so we stay out of each other’s way.
A blinding grin beside her brings my attention to our final sibling.
Morwenna. The psycho.
Our middle sister hates everyone. The court. The guards. Us. Probably even Cain. She was dragged into our family as an angry child and she gets worse every day. That rage is hidden behind her huge smile right now, but I don’t make the mistake of thinking it isn’t there.
Morwen smiles while she’s thinking about gutting you.
Cain enjoys that about her.
She rarely attends court, preferring to do whatever it is she does in the outer reaches of Cain’s territory. Her brown eyes wander across the gathered crowd, as she plays with the bronze beads in her mass of black, braided hair. She looks bored, and that doesn’t bode well for anyone. The last thing we need is for her to decide to start making her own fun.
The last timethathappened, we lost three ambassadors and started a war that led to me slaughtering an entire lycan pack in cold blood.
A rattling noise draws my attention away from our family and toward the huge, silver cage on Cain’s left.
That’s new. And unexpected.
The ghouls inside it are tearing mindlessly into a corpse on the floor.
Although they’re technically undead, like us, they’re incapable of higher thought processes. They’ll do anything to feed, and they only consume human flesh.
They are beasts of instinct, nothing more. Contagious beasts who happen to have the ability to turn anyone—human, vampire, or lycan—with a single drop of their venom.
Immy visibly shakes at the sight of them, but she follows my lead in dropping to a curtsy.
“Sire,” I say, keeping my tone even.
“Sire,” Immy echoes. “We finished destroying the nest that was causing problems.”
“Did you now?” Cain doesn’t even look at her. “Why did I ask you to do that again, Evelyn?”
Immy jumps to answer. “To stop them from disrupting the flow of human blood donors to the manor, Sire.”
Cain leaps from his throne so fast that Immy doesn’t even see him coming.
He backhands her so hard that she flies across the room, landing sprawled over the floor with a little sob.
“Did I ask you to speak, Imogen?”
He only ever uses our full names—whether we like them or not. The shortened versions we’ve used since childhood are—in his mind—bastardisations of the names he picked for us. Though he indulges us when we use them for each other.
Cain knows that Immy hates her full name with a passion, something which only increases his delight in using it.
