Page 58 of Fangs

“Lucy—”

“No.” I glare down at him, defiance flaring weakly in my chest. “I don’t trust you. I don’t trust a single monster in this cursed house. I have no reason to stay—I have the funds to settle my father’s debts and run.”

Cain’s expression shifts. A flicker of absolute, feral darkness surges behind his obsidian eyes.

“You drank my blood,” he whispers, his cadence dropping into a hypnotic, inescapable rhythm. “You accepted my blood. That means you answer to me now. Body and soul.”

His large, cold hands clamp mercilessly around my bare shoulders, fingers biting into my flesh.

“Look at me,” he commands, his voice wrapping around my brain like iron wire. “Look into my eyes, Lucy.”

I try to tear my gaze away, to fight the gravitational pull, but his eyes are bottomless abysses, swallowing my will whole.

I feel the cold steel of his compulsion winding tight around my thoughts. I thrash mentally against it, but his dominion is absolute.

“You will come to the coast with me,” he dictates, each word striking like a hammer. “You will meet who waits there, and you will obey every command I utter.”

“Every command,” I repeat, the words falling flat and uncontrolled from my slack lips.

“Blake drained you,” he presses relentlessly, twisting the knife. “You broke the curse, and he vanished. That is the true nature of our kind, Lucy. We are incapable of love. Everything he whispered to you—every touch, every oath—was a calculated lie.”

“No,” I choke out, the denial weak and shaking. “He loved me. I felt it in my soul.”

“You felt what he allowed you to feel,” Cain spits, devoid of mercy. “He manipulated you. He needed a mortal fool to break the curse, and you did exactly what he wanted.”

I shake my head, but the motion is sluggish, my thoughts drowning in syrup.

“He got what he needed,” Cain whispers, his thumb stroking my blood-slick cheek with chilling possession. “He bled you out and left you for dead in the dust. I’m the one who saved you. I’m the one who bled for you.”

“Saved me,” I murmur like a broken prayer.

“Yes.” His eyes bore deeper. “You are going to be my mate now. I will buy you at your auction. I will accelerate it, make it happen as soon as possible. We will feed from each other, and we will become one.”

I can’t find the strength to fight the tide dragging me under.

“Blake doesn’t care about you,” Cain says. “The fifty-two vampires of the Order are coming, and he doesn’t give a fuck. He left you. He abandoned you.”

“Left me,” I murmur.

“I am the only one here for you.” His hand cups my face. “I am real. I am alive. I am your mate.”

“Mate,” I whisper.

“Yes.” He leans closer, forehead pressing against mine. “You are mine now, Lucy. Say it.”

“I am yours,” I breathe.

Deep beneath the layers of his compulsion, a solitary voice claws at the inside of my skull, screaming in absolute terror.

No. This is wrong. This is wrong.

I should fight, resist, but my body is no longer my own.

Cain smiles, a cruel, beautiful arc of triumph.

“Good pet.”

Dream