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I started to shake, all my training falling apart.Remember,I hissed at myself.You took self-defence lessons for this.But what was I supposed to do? Fuck, I couldn’t think straight. I shook harder.
The garden started to blur around me as terror closed off my airways. I needed to stay calm, needed tothink.
“My matriarch offered you a chance to make the right decision, Calvert. You were a fool to ignore it.”
His matriarch? The threat came froma matriarch?I was so, so dead. They were the most powerful of all vampires, and not just because they were older and far faster; it was the status they wielded, the complete control over every other vampire.
If a matriarch wanted me dead, I was dead.
But Mum and Dad’s voices repeated through my head, their excitement for me to meet someone, their unwavering support. I didn’t want to leave them. I didn’t want to die.
So fight.
Elbowing him was doing nothing, but I couldn’t give up. Adrenaline pumped through my system, making blood rush through my ears.Fight.
I lifted my foot high and slammed it down on high instep, opening my jaw as wide as it would go before I gnashed my teeth into his fingers. I didn’t have sharp vampire fangs, but any bite could draw blood with enough force.
My attacker snarled, his arm dropping from around me, giving me enough freedom to twist away. Pain seared my cheek in four sharp slices as I spun out of his grip. He’d cut me with his nails, andfuckit stung. But I was free.
Panting, I assessed the man’s medium build, average height body with a critical eye, looking for weaknesses, cataloguing the way he moved when he—when he drew a knife from a sheath at his hip.
That was why he’d released my middle. He let me go, so he could stab me.
Fight,I snarled at myself when panic made my head blurry. I threw out a sharp kick, landing it on his knee but failing in dropping him to the floor like I hoped.
Okay. That was okay, I could still do this.
I shrieked when he launched at me, so fast that even spinning away didn’t spare me from a deep slice in my side. Blood soaked through my shirt and trickled down my pants, and I inhaled a sharp gasp when my attacker dropped the knife and dove at me, knocking me to the unyielding garden path so hard the breath was forced from my lungs.
I shouted in pain, trying to breathe again, my vision swimming as my brain rattled inside my skull at the impact. My leg wason fire,painthrobbing so viciously it was an effort to think.
The ground was wet from rain earlier in the day; it soaked into my clothes, chilling me to the bone as the vampire pinned me flat on my back. Fear cut off all my air. I blinked rapidly, wanting to burn his face into my retinas, this bastard who would kill me, but not daring to look at his face. One moment of eye contact and I could be compelled. Under his control. I'd rather die than be his obedient puppet.
I screwed my eyes shut, but I slammed a fist into his hard face, refusing to make it easy for him. Cold breath met my throat, and I knew I was seconds away from being drained dry. Murdered in the middle of my garden, all because a matriarch had failed to threaten me into marrying into her family. All because I was born, not made. Being this way was a damned curse.
I cast my hand out at my side, feeling along the wet ground, my heart hammering against my ribs. Where the fuck was it? He dropped the knife when he launched at me; it had to be here. It had to be.
A sob bubbled up when fangs punched into my skin. My whole body trembled.
I scrabbled along the ground, frantically stretching my fingers, desperate to feel the cold slide of metal and—there!
Another sob bruised its way up my throat, my head spinning as the vampire took a long pull of my blood, enough that I knew I didn’t have much time. He’d kill me in minutes.
I didn’t hesitate, even dizzy, even terrified and shaky. I brought my heavy arm up in a sharp slash, hating how weak I already was, and drove the knife into his throat.
The vampire didn’t hiss in irritation this time; he yelled in pain, and hope filled my chest until it was all I could feel.
Please, please…
When he wavered on top of me, I ripped the knife out and stabbed him again, over and over and over.
Blood covered me in a deluge, cold and hot all at once. It was all I could smell, all I could taste, the squelch of it all I could hear. It had invaded every sense.
“Shit,” a male voice breathed, and I opened my eyes a slit, shaking hard with dizzying relief when Silas sprinted out of the shadows of a hedge, looking menacing and deadly, his eyes glowing even in the dark.
Not alone—I wasn’t alone.
Silaswas here. Silas who was old and powerful and better able to handle this vampire than I was. All my strength fled me and I shook, my teeth rattling.
