Page 79 of Collared by the Vampire Prince

Fear rises, crests, and gives way to something worse.

Despair.

We are standing in a room built entirely to celebrate what his family did. Whatever role I had imagined him playing in the Takeover, I had not imagined this. That he had hunted a young cub. Dragged her back. Delivered her to be slaughtered by his father.

My voice trembles as I whisper, “What did you do?”

His eyes hold mine. “What do you think?” he asks, his voice soft and dangerous.

He crosses the floor towards me, and I stand frozen as his footsteps grow louder across the stone. My knees threaten to give out. My mind screams at me to move, to run, to do anything, but my body will not obey.

His hand closes around the front of my shirt, hauling me up onto my toes before my legs have even finished deciding to buckle.

“Who told you that you could come in here?” he hisses.

“No one.” My hands grip his wrist, my shoes barely scraping the ground. “No one. Susie tried to stop me. I just—”

“You were not meant to see this yet.”

Yet?

His nostrils flare as he looks down at me, anger rolling off him in a wave so cold my whole body goes rigid. Then his eyes flick up to the ceiling.

“Look at it,” he commands.

I shake my head.

His grip tightens, not quite enough to choke. “Look.”

I obey, lifting my gaze to where the royal family hangs above us, fur bathed in the red light. King Bakker. His court. His child.

Something raw flashes across Nathaniel’s face. Then it is gone.

“The late Wolf King Bakker,” he says, his voice stripped of all warmth. “My father had the pleasure of killing him, of course. But the taxidermy was my idea.”

“T-taxidermy?” I ask, stammering.

His mouth curves, but there is no humour in it. “Oh, yes. It truly is an art form.” He turns me slowly in a grotesque parody of a dance, one hand still fisted in my shirt while the other gestures towards the ceiling with showman-like grace. “My father would have left them to rot. But isn’t this better?”

The words are cruel. Almost flippant. Yet his voice trembles at the edges, a violent anger pressed so tightly it has nowhere else to go.

I don’t understand.

I don’t—

“Now,” he says softly, “if you are done admiring my trophies…” He drags me sideways.

My feet scramble beneath me as he hauls me across the stone, past the rows of benches, past the hanging dead, towards the dais at the far end of the hall.

“What are you doing?” I gasp.

“It is time you learned your place, Kira.”

“Stop!” I cry in alarm.

He ignores me.

My pulse slams against the collar, burning at my throat as every thought turns to shifting. Fleeing. Teeth and claws and wings I cannot reach. I shove at his arm, his chest, anywhere I can reach, but he gives me one hard shake. My teeth click together, my body going still as terror swallows every other instinct.