Page 14 of Plug and Claim

Kira’s eyes widened for the briefest of seconds, and he could only imagine how her heart raced at the thought that he might know more than he let on.

She quickly recovered. “There were no other wolves.”

He didn’t press the point. Unlike the authority he served, he was not interested in hunting illegal wolf shifters. He cared about her. The academy wanted to rehabilitate her—but he had other plans.

“How old are you?” Kira asked suddenly.

“How old do you think I am?”

“I don’t know. A century?”

“A century?” he asked in amusement.

“Two centuries? Your lot live forever, right?”

Her bored tone suggested she didn’t care, but he knew better. He was her captor, and it was natural she would want to discover everything there was to know about him. It was flattering.

“You are thinking of made vampires,” he explained. “They are ageless and not truly alive. But the majority of vampires are born vampires, myself included. We age just as shifters and humans do.”

“Glad you come with an expiry date,” she muttered.

He ignored that. “As for made vampires, there are very few of them left, and none of them are at Volmasque. We lost our ability to turn humans into vampires when the witches became extinct.”

“Wasn’t the witches’ extinction the vampires’ fault?”

“A little clumsy on our part, yes. And rather inconvenient.”

It was an understatement. Without witches, there was no magic, except for the scraps of enchanted items they’d left behind. With no way to create made vampires, the born vampires were under pressure to continue the legacy of their kind. But unlike wolves, vampires did not have many children, and the rising number of wolves was part of the reason the Revolution had been deemed necessary.

Fearing extinction, many vampires had rallied behind a ruthless vampire named Henrikk, who had annihilated not only the Wolf King, but their very own Vampire King as well. Under Henrikk’s leadership, the rogue vampires had seized control of both kingdoms to rule all factions. As for the extermination of the witches, that was a result of Henrikk and his followers hunting down the covens one by one and getting a little too carried away. As the new self-proclaimed king, Henrikk had later publicly acknowledged his regret at the ‘unfortunate accident’, but there had been no witches left to receive the apology. The announcement, therefore, had been made purely because of the vampire nobles’ frustration that there was no one left to enchant their newly built carriages and sulkies.

“I was born a vampire,” Nathaniel explained, “to parents who are both vampires.”

“So…you’re less than a century old?”

“I’ll be turning thirty in a few weeks.”

Kira shrugged as if she’d lost interest in the topic, but he suspected she was mentally calculating the age difference between them. Nearly ten and a half years.

“What happens when we arrive at Volmasque?” she asked.

“You will join the first years for class. It’s the middle of the semester, but I’m confident you’ll catch up in no time.”

“What about tonight?”

“Tonight?” he asked, his voice growing soft and hopeful as blood rushed to his groin.

Kira must have read his thoughts because she stammered, “I mean, where will I sleep?”

“In your own bed,” he said, resisting the temptation to invite her to his. The carriage paused while the wrought iron gates creaked open. “Here we are. Welcome to Volmasque Academy.”

Chapter 7

Volmasque Academy

Kira

Even though the sky had lightened, a fog still blanketed the school grounds. The carriage glided along a pebbled drive lined with trees. The academy building was an imposing presence, with dark stonework, arches adorned with intricate carvings, and tall but narrow windows. Stone gargoyles perched upon ledges, and towering spires pierced the sky, bleeding sunlight onto the iron vanes.