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“I’m not that desperate.”
Her cheeks reddened. “I might have lost Astor.”
“Then I would have done you a favor.”
“Are you going to hate me forever for what happened?”
“You mean how you tried to have Olivia killed, and me?”
She rolled her eyes up. “I told you already. I didn’t know about you.”
“It doesn’t matter. The results are the same. Go cry to someone else who cares. I’m busy.” I eyed the dark-haired woman and walked to the bench where she sat. The smell of the ocean still lingered on her hair.
I didn’t turn, but heard Gwen race away, muttering some obscenity before disappearing back through the double doors. I walked to the mortal woman, lowering myself onto the seat next to her. “What’s your name, love?”
“Does it matter?” Her voice was raspier than I expected. “You’re going to feed on me whether or not I desire it.”
“That attitude is going to get you killed,” I warned, having seen a thousand girls like her come through. None I’d been able to save from the wrath of vampires who hated anything other than submission.
“So, I should get in line and submit?” She scoffed. “We were warned of your kind, your lustful, dark desires, and how you will do anything to get what you want.”
“I wish I could tell you that isn’t true.”
She tilted her head, and after a minute of silence, she stretched her thick lips into a frown. “You haven’t tried to bite me yet.”
“Very observant.”
She looked at my shirt. “You still have blood on you.”
“That’s not from feeding,” I confided, but was vague enough. “Where are you from?”
“Asland.”
“Ah, we’ve been having problems with a certain princess of yours.”
“Penelope,” she spat as if the name were one of a demon. “She always sympathized with your people. I was not surprised to see her here.”
“The king is afraid there will be a war with your kingdom.”
Fear threaded through her brown gaze. “I hope not. My people will be slaughtered here. I still have a family. Sisters.”
“When did you arrive here?”
“Four days ago. They kept us in these dingy places,” she said with a thick, guttural accent.
“Blood dens.”
“Yes, but they said I was pretty enough to be brought here.” Her top lip curled in as she looked around the tall ceiling. Hundreds of benches and tents were set up for private feedings. I noticed a spill of blood in the corner that the servants hadn’t yet mopped up. Someone got carried away. “This place is ancient. You don’t even have any technology here. It’s like I walked back in time, but the people are monsters instead.”
My heart pounded heavily, the hairs on the back of my neck prickling. I saw my reflection in her eyes. I was the thing to be feared in the dark. I’d always put myself a hair above that, but as I thought about my recent actions, I realized I wasn’t any better than the rest of them.
Closing my eyes to the way she looked at me, I growled under my breath. I wanted to forget everything—Olivia, the wedding, the guards, and Hamza. Peeling back my eyelids to reveal the woman, I allowed for my pleasures to overtake me, hunger devouring my morals, drowning them as I looked at her clavicle.
“Better me than one of them,” I told her as my fangs elongated, and I leaned in, holding her still. A scream erupted from her lips as her Aslandian blood coated my tongue, tangy but sweet.
The other man who’d come down for breakfast and was eyeing the mortal, moved on. After a few seconds, the woman collapsed into my arms. I grazed my thumb across her shoulder, filling myself with her blood. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head, a moan of ecstasy fresh on her tongue. The venom was hitting her. I remember the feeling. It was better than any drug, like liquid lust and elation. I couldn’t feel bad for her. Over time, when there was no one there to tell me something was wrong, like back in the mortal kingdoms, it was easy to become numb to it all. Feeling just ended up in more heartache, and I had no room for that.
The sound of bells snapped me back to the room as we lost ourselves in each other. Me in her blood, her in my venom. Those were the chimes of a war meeting.
