AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I was glad Darian was the one talking. Locke had previously explained to us his plan to pretend Raine had turned into a shifter, but I had no doubt the vampire bitch would be able to sense my lies.
I loathed Perene, and lying convincingly wasn’t part of my skill set. Darian, however, had grown up in the House of Saceris, the high house of water monsters. From what he’d told me, the monsters in that house were as vain as they came, with tongues as sharp as vipers’. No, this time, I was more than happy to let him take the lead.
“Such a shame,” Perene said, her perfect lips forming a pout. “I was hoping for another vampire to add to the House of Nesarin. Not to worry. Miss Lana is proving to be quite the addition.” She motioned with her head toward the vampire seated at the table. The dark-haired female was still watching us, but she’d discarded her now empty vial. A tight navy dress was fitted to her body, and she leaned forward, her elbows resting on the table and her breasts practically falling out of her dress.
“Oh, how so?” Darian asked, his gaze trailing from Lana back to Perene.
“She’s taken to being a vampire splendidly. It’s not easy taming bloodlust, you know, but she has been quite formidable. You should tell my son to stop playing with that…shifter,” she said, her top lip curling, “and come visit me here.”
My gaze went back to Lana, who smiled a saccharine smile that did nothing to hide the new darkness in her eyes. Gone was the human who had trembled when Locke had selected her back on the island, and in its place was a predator. A vampire. A monster.
I knew Locke would want nothing to do with her. He didn’t hate vampires like I hated the demons, but he hated his father and all that the House of Nesarin stood for. He wasn’t about to claim the new vampire and follow in his parents’ footsteps.
“We’ll be sure to tell him,” Darian said, though he had to be thinking the same thing I was.
“So the newbloods are progressin’ well?” I prodded, wanting to get out of there as quickly as possible.
Perene’s sharp gaze cut to me. “They’re all adjusting well enough.” She paused, and her gaze became suspicious. “Why did my son really send you here? He knows the Taratun council have this in hand.Ihave this in hand.”
“Warrick asked Locke to check in on your progress,” Darian drawled. “Locke sent us in his stead.”
The female vampire sighed, the suspicion leaving her eyes. “Between my husband who never leaves his lab and my son who avoids me at every opportunity, it’s like I have no family at all. You can tell Locke all is well, and he’d better finish playing with the last newblood and bring her to me soon. There are only three nights before the Week of Orash begins, and the shifter will be expected to participate, as will all the newbloods. We can’t have a monster without a house to belong to.”
I ignored Perene’s barb at us not belonging to one of the houses.
“Of course,” Darian said with a smile. “We’ll tell him.”
CHAPTER 16
~ Raine ~
Isatinthedarkness for a long while, the room feeling like an empty void now that the monsters weren’t looming over the end of the bed.
It was all too much. This was supposed to be simple. Get chosen. Try not to die. Escape the monsters and find Cara. Fine, not simple, but simpler than whatever the hell this was. It was clear I was part of some sort of experiment. They expected me to turn into one of them, and the fact that I hadn’t yet changed had complicated things. A dark laugh slipped from me, and I rubbed a hand down my face.Fuck.
And what were the monsters talking about when they mentioned a bond? They thought it was me who’d linked to them? They were obviously delusional. But even as I thought it, something inside me was urging me to get out of bed. To go find the monster who I knew was on the other side of the door. I groaned.
Collecting myself, I slid off the bed, planting my bare feet on the carpeted floor. The plush material was soft between my toes, nothing at all like the cold stone floor of the room I’d been in for the last few nights. Taking a step forward, I was surprised at the lack of pain in my thigh.
As I ran a hand up the bottom of the long shirt and along my thigh, my fingers passed over the bumps of the bandage wrapped around my leg. I’d seen what the bite had looked like. It was nasty and felt just as bad as it looked.“We only changed the dress and cleaned the wound,”Asher, the demon with the horns and tail, had said. How could my leg be this healed if they’d only cleaned it?
I padded to the door and entered the adjoining room. The space was large, with blue flames flickering in an ornate fireplace, plush settees, numerous tables, and an entire wall filled with weaponry. My gaze snagged on the expertly crafted swords, daggers, axes, spears, and an array of other weapons that I didn’t even know the names of.
“Don’t get any ideas,” said a smooth masculine voice, and my gaze snapped back to the other side of the room. Locke lounged on a bloodred settee, an open book on his lap.
Monsters…read?Even more surprising was the monster’s appearance. Where I’d always seen long black claws were soft, rounded fingertips, and instead of eyes that were an unnerving black, white surrounded the dark pupils, making the male seem almost…normal. Well, maybe not normal—he was still ridiculously handsome—but he almost lookedhuman.Where are his wings?
As if he knew why I was gaping, his lips twisted as he gave me a dark smile. “Not what you expected?”
I cleared my throat. It didn’t matter if he could control when to show his true monster side. I knew what he was.
“What did you do to me?” I asked, my hand reaching down again to my thigh, though the bandage was covered by the gray shirt that reached almost to my knees.
Locke’s dark gaze trailed down my body, scanning from my face, down to where the shirt ended just above my knees, and then back to my face again. I clenched my jaw, refusing to let my body tremble at the look he’d just given me.
“I think you mean ‘thank you.’ And you’re welcome, beautiful.”
I glared at his incessant use of the nicknamebeautiful.Coming from his mouth, it almost sounded like a plea. Or a curse. “How long was I out?” I asked, my voice hard.
