Page 6 of Plug and Claim

Inside her closet was her travel bag, but she had no idea what to pack. The fact that he was even allowing her that opportunity astonished her, and she wondered if it was a trick. Her gaze roved over her belongings, looking upon them in a new light now that she had a chance to take them.

However, the most precious items had already been removed—journals and paintings that alluded to her past, which had been thrown out a year ago when they’d left the cottage. In fact, the entire cottage was carefully curated to suggest that she’d lived an ordinary, lonesome life away from other wolf shifters.

But the locket was here, hidden in the desk in a secret compartment, and the temptation to retrieve it was high. It was her only link to her past; to the night of the Revolution when rogue vampires overran Wintermaw Keep, home of the Royal Wolf family. They had slaughtered every last shifter they could find and claimed the Keep as their own. According to Mary and Byron, who had been working in the Keep as guards, Kira had been wearing the locket on that bloody night fifteen years ago when they found her sleeping in the servants’ wing. They’d rescued her from the castle and raised her as one of their own.

The identity of her birth parents remained a mystery. Byron and Mary were the only parents she had ever known. Try as she might, she’d been unable to recall her four-year-old self’s memories of loving parents—if they’d ever even existed.

But she remembered the other children. She had an old memory of playing with them in a sunlit meadow. It grieved her to think that they’d perished, and of the terror they must have felt as she slept through that night’s horrors.

Kira broke out of her reverie and glanced at the clock. Fifteen minutes. The vampire was being generous to let her linger this long—or perhaps, he would punish her when she left her room.

Just another minute…

It was difficult to say goodbye. The cottage was the only home she could remember. Nordokk was a sleepy village a few hours by carriage from the Capital, a sprawling city that contained Volmasque Academy at its centre. On the far side of the city was Wintermaw Keep, where the Vampire King now resided, ruling over the fragmented lands and controlling the wolf shifter population with increasingly strict rules.

Kira had never seen any of it in person, not even the Capital, an ancient wolf city which had transformed in recent years into a central hub for vampires looking for an easy meal.

Kira glanced at her window. It was large enough to fit through if she decided to escape.

I can still change my mind.

A year on the run hadn’t been so bad. Hunting for food and cooking it over the campfire. There had been a tranquillity to it. At least until she’d woken to the sound of logging. She’d been distressed to discover that the vampires were gathering timber for their multi-storey mansions and had commissioned miles of woodland to be decimated. The sight of the wood stumps was what had finally convinced her to return to her original plan. Someone had to do something, and it may as well be her. The vampires had taken her family from her, and their harsh laws had stripped away her freedom. She wouldn’t let them take her home, too.

Wintermaw Keep was where her journey would end—it was unlikely she would walk away alive. Byron and Mary both knew it, though they never said it, and their tearful embraces of goodbye yesterday had confirmed it.

Her hand hovered over the desk, brushing the coarse texture of the timber Byron had shaped himself. The stocky man with salt-and-pepper hair had encouraged her painting. He and Mary had given up the cottage’s only bedroom for her. Byron always referred to her room as her ‘art studio’, and he’d tried to convince her to carve out a new life for herself.

Except Kira had never been able to let go of the past. She did not want to spend her entire life hiding her wolf form and the dark secrets that clung to her heart. There had to be something better.

The walls were bare. The paintings that she’d made of her dreams of a new revolution were gone, as were the nails that had held them, but she remembered exactly where each canvas had been and the bloody scene each one had depicted. The wooden box of paints still sat in the corner, and she half considered taking them. Byron had been full of excitement when he came home from the market with a set of tin paint tubes. It had been his last attempt to sway Kira from her pursuit of revenge.

She ran her hands over the paint tubes. All of them were full and untouched, except for the red one, which was rolled up and nearly empty. Revenge only needed one colour. And, as Byron had informed her, black was not a colour.

In the end, she took nothing. She would leave her happy reminders of her life at the cottage behind. Maybe, if she survived, she would be back one day to claim it.

Worry gnawed at her as she crept to the door. Would the vampire be mad she’d taken so long?

Tentatively, she opened the door and peeked out. The cottage was deserted. She glanced at an empty space where, until just a few days ago, Byron and Mary’s bed had been. The couple had moved it out of the cottage in preparation for Kira’s demonstration, stripping the cottage of any evidence they’d ever lived there.

It hurt to think that even after she was gone, Byron and Mary would not be back. They were both unregistered wolf shifters, and staying here was too risky. Despite their good standing in the community, the humans would not hesitate to report them. The lure of immunity from feeding, which was what the vampires offered in exchange for reporting illegal wolves, was too great.

It was why she’d insisted that they not stay for her capture.

“Promise me, you’ll leave,” Kira had begged, her voice shaking as she tried to hold back tears. “Go somewhere far away. I don’t want them to take you, too.”

Unlike humans, who could work normal jobs like farming, all adult wolves were allocated roles by the Vampire Council. Most were assigned to be donors and were required to present to vampire households every week for the purpose of being fed upon. Sometimes, the vampires solicited other services.

Kira exhaled through her nostrils. She was thankful every day that the two old wolves had escaped that fate, and that to this day, she’d never had the misfortune of being fed upon either.

She lingered a moment longer, trying to picture the bed that had been there. One of her happy childhood memories was of playing hide-and-seek beneath the sheets with Mary and Byron. The old couple had humoured her as she peeked out giggling, pretending they couldn’t find her. She pushed the cherished memory deep down, protecting it from the outside world. Steeling her nerves, she went outside.

The vampire was waiting on the back porch, looking at Byron’s beloved garden.

Her heart squeezed.

How dare he stand there as if he owns the place?

She hated the sight of him. She hated his chiselled face, and his commanding presence, and the predatory grace of his movements as he turned to face her. His expression gave nothing away as he regarded her, but lurking behind his mask, she sensed something seductive and dangerous, and she felt drawn to him like a moth to a flame.