AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“So that’s the place, huh?”
We haven’t even made it the rest of the way down the fire escape before my shadow decides to comment.
I shoot Jace a look out of the side of my eye. “You say something?”
I’ve gotta learn how to be scarier. After spending most of my life pretending to be an omega wolf, most of my packmates—in Lakeview and in Mountainside—look at me and only see Shifter Barbie standing in front of them. Wide eyes, pretty face, long blonde hair… even though my old sundresses are a thing of the past, and I’m more likely to be wearing a scowl than a prim smile these days, I know what I look like when I’m in my skin, and scary I ain’t.
“Just saying it’s a nice place.”
“You’ve been there before.”
“Yeah, but not inside.”
He’s not wrong. The one time that he and Dorian stood guard outside of my apartment building while Ryker was chained up in his basement, they flanked the front and the back. Even if I wasn’t feeling the effects of moon fever myself, I wouldn’t have let them in with Ryker indisposed and Aleks still gone.
He’s a supe. Vamp or shifter, we respect territory. The apartment is Aleks’s—or it was. If I couldn’t bring myself to let Ryker inside, there’s no way I’m going to let one of the lower-ranked shifters inside. It would be a slap in the face to my roommate, and Luna knows I’ve done enough of that.
Literally.
“Well, I’m glad you like it, but I don’t think we’ll be coming back here anytime soon.”
He nods. “Yeah. I noticed that, too. Doesn’t look like the bloodsucker’s been back for a while, either.”
Jace is matching me stride for stride as we step down from the last of the fire escape before heading down the street. He’s not as big as Duke—he’s more rangy and lean than big and bulky—but he still has a few inches on me. He could probably take the lead easily, but he’d never do that if it meant leaving me behind where I was out of his sight.
It’s a weird quirk of me being a female alpha. Jace’s wolf has this need to be both submissive to my more dominant wolf as well as protective of me because I’m smaller than he is and his Alpha’s mate. If he moves ahead of me, he might miss any danger coming at me while also pissing off my inner wolf. If he falls behind, it’s also a risk to my safety. So he stays right next to me as I resist the urge to roll my eyes.
With him next to me, my elbow finds a home in his gut. “Don’t call him a bloodsucker. His name is Aleks.”
“His name is Aleksander, and you’re not even worth saying his name, you mangy wolf.” The accented voice is harsh and low, and it’s punctuated by a spitting noise. “Brudny wilku.”
I immediately went still the second I heard Aleks’s full name mentioned by someone unfamiliar, but the Polish? That has my complete attention.
I don’t know what the first word is, but the second? It’s wilku. ‘Wolf’ in Polish.
Aleks used to call me maly wilku. Little wolf. It sounds a lot nicer than whatever the other male said because, even before I turn around, I know that—despite the accent and the language—the speaker definitely isn’t my ex-roommate.
Later, I’ll admit that I should’ve been better prepared. It’s something about Muncie, I guess. After a year of being used to being untouchable because I wore Aleks’s fang, all it took was for me to come back for a few hours and I forgot all about how I gave it back to him. Returning the fang didn’t just signal to Aleks that I was never going to be his mate. It also signaled to every vamp in the Fang City that I was no longer under his protection. Add that to how the charm didn’t cover up my shifter side and, yeah, I should’ve realized that I might run into a vampire who wouldn’t be pleased to stumble upon two shifters in a Fang City.
He has a menacing presence, and when I slowly turn to face him, his eyes are blood red. Vampires, a race, all have very pale eyes: soft blue, light green, a gentle hazel. It’s like death has drained some of their color so that, when they rise again, their eyes mark them as different the same way their fangs do. The only time their irises go vivid and dark is when they’re either on the edge of bloodlust or fully in its throes.
When a vamp’s eyes go red, run or you’re dead.
It’s a silly little rhyme all shifters are taught from the time we’re pups. Vampires are our ancient enemy, and though I never actually met one until I rode into Muncie, you never forget the warning.
The white-skinned, black-haired vampire has eyes as red as blood, with fangs that jut past his bottom lip. His long, black jacket flares behind him as he hunches forward, his body giving him away. If I give him any reason to, he’s going to attack me.
Freaking wonderful.
I look him up and down, making it clear that I don’t see him as a threat. And I don’t. Not really. As a game, Aleks taught me how to tell the ages of the vamps I ran into in the Fang City. The older a vamp is, the more powerful it is. This guy is barely as old as I am. If pressed, I know I can take him.
Do I want to do that when I know it’ll piss Roman off? Not really. I still plan on coming back to Muncie, one way or another. Having Roman decide to close the borders to all shifters because I can’t control my temper will screw me over more than anyone else.
I give the vampire a tight-lipped smile. “A friend of Aleks’s, I take it?”
“You could say that.”
I highly doubt it. Considering Aleks is a high-ranking member of the Cadre with a great reputation, it’s more like he’s a sycophant.
