Page 1 of Blood of the Damned: Thorn (Vaughn Winery #1)

Ledger

The fall of the first Vaughn brother.

Ledger listened to the sexy sat nav voice he’d chosen tell him that he’d reached Bayfield, his destination.

He slowed as he entered the town limits, and the corners of his mouth dipped in disappointment.

What he’d envisioned when he’d received the sommelier job offer at one of the most prestigious wineries in the country was not what appeared to be a ranch town.

Dust and cowboys were all he could see out of the windscreen.

Yes, cowboys absolutely were hot. And from those he could see roaming down the sidewalks, they were most definitely falling into the category.

What wasn’t so hot was that it was all that Ledger could see.

Most looked like they wouldn’t know an excellent wine if it sat atop a saddle.

He sighed, disheartened by the fact, in his rush to escape his last boyfriend, he’d accepted a job without doing any due diligence on the area. Vaughn's winery was synonymous with producing some of the best wines and Champagne. But how did they do that from here? In the back of bumfuck nowhere?

Having come from a family that cast him aside for being divergent—someone who couldn’t shift into their inner animal—Ledger was never one to allow a defeatist attitude.

He cast off the grump wanting to descend on him like a rainy cloud.

No, Ledger didn’t look at life through the lens of defeat, he looked at it seeing opportunities to be seized.

Right now, though, he was willing to admit it was a little harder than usual.

Had he jumped from the frying pan into the fire?

He slowed, allowing a car to pull out of a street-side parking spot, which he then parked in.

He didn’t have the exact address for the vineyard, just the town.

The internet search had given him the town's name but no exact location, and again, that should have raised a red flag.

Especially when Thorn Vaughn suggested they meet in town and not at the vineyard or winery.

He cursed Sylvester for chasing him out of LA.

His ex had turned into a major creeper in the end, besides always insisting he take heat blockers to prevent any unwanted babies.

That had stung when what he actually meant was he didn’t want to chance being ‘lumbered with a divergent child’. His words, the asshole!

Yes, Ledger had focused on progressing his career, but that didn’t mean he didn’t want children. He most certainly did, with the right person, who most certainly wasn’t Sylvester!

Ledger was past thinking about the mistake that was his ex. No, he needed to concentrate on the immediate issue. Like how was he going to get out of the year-long contract he’d signed when he wasn’t sure Bayfield was the right place for him?

He moaned aloud, recalling the exact words Ky, his lawyer best friend, had said about the contract he’d asked him to look over. “Best damn contract I’ve ever seen.”

Ky, who was impressed by the diligence of whoever had drawn up the document, basically said Ledger was stuck for the next twelve months if he signed it.

A year isn’t that long, really!

On the sidewalk minus his jacket, because of the heat being a little overbearing, he strolled down the street, looking in shop windows, working on reinforcing the positives to himself. The disheartened feeling lessened at the artisan shops he passed. The place wasn’t giving him a bad vibe.

A little further down his nose twitched, catching some divine scents. He searched the line of shops, and a grin appeared at the sign for Kit’s Cakes.

Result!

His stomach rumbled with delight and gave him the nudge to get something to eat since it had been hours since breakfast. His mouth watered as he peered through the gleaming windows at glass-fronted cabinets full of delicious looking pastries, cakes, cookies, breads, and a wide selection of open-faced sandwiches that could rival any LA bakery Ledger had frequented.

“Now this is cool,” he murmured to himself, his nose all but pressing against the glass. “A major plus for a bumfuck town in the middle of nowhere.”

“I’m sure Kit will be pleased to hear that,” came a silky-smooth voice from behind him.

Ledger spun around, blushing and all but swallowing his tongue at the hunk of stunningness gracing the sidewalk. There was so much to take in his brain went into immediate overload.

The guy towered over Ledger’s five feet height.

Sophisticated was his first thought. Elegantly dressed in expensive cut black slacks and a pale lemon fitted shirt, open at the throat to reveal honey gold skin.

Stylish cut mahogany waves showed off a prominent forehead, bright blue eyes, chiselled, dimpled cheeks, and the fullest lips that Ledger had ever seen in person. Ones he wanted to taste.

No, no, I don’t!

Yes, yes, we do, his animal half came back with. A cheeky little squirrel who had a very playful nature, and Ledger suspected if he’d been able to shift into his animal form, he’d be the kind to get Ledger into trouble.

You can do that all on your own, he pointed out. But this one, you should most definitely get into trouble with.

The smell coming from the bakery didn’t mask the spicy scent that made Ledger’s animal spirit want them to get closer, so they could stick their nose in all the intimate places to see where it was strongest.

Behave!

His sensitive nose could detect the warmness of saffron combined with Italian fruits. It created a contrast of intense spiciness with luminous accents.

The man—alpha—didn’t fit with the town. Heck, Ledger didn’t know where he would fit, but he wanted to find out.

No, mister, you aren’t falling for the first guy you meet in bumfuck. Not happening, you hear me?

Why are you talking to yourself like that?

His animal was actually laughing at him, and Ledger was feeling very insulted.

Except everything about the alpha appealed on so many levels—mainly the naked kind.

All the promises he made about getting involved with an alpha that got his dick hard seemed to evaporate as the guy moved closer, offering his hand.

“And who might you be, sweetling?”

Sweetling. I’m swooning.

Those eyes held him enthralled in their depth of blue ringed with black.

Ledger fell hard enough that his innards felt the impact.

It radiated through every cell inside him.

Spellbound, he took the hand, having lost all sense of reality when cool, long, tapered fingers wrapped around his hand, engulfing it.

“Yours,” he murmured with absolute certainty.

Thorn

“You most definitely are.” There on the main street in Bayfield—and as the sweetling with honey eyes had put—in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, no other reply made sense.

This, Thorn could now see clearly, was what had driven him to arrange a meeting with their new sommelier in town, when he easily could have given the man directions to the winery.

Like his brothers, Thorn had enhanced senses that few outsiders of the family, and even in the vampiric community, were aware of.

As an ancient coming from one of the oldest vampire families, his abilities had been honed over centuries.

Abilities he never questioned.

Initially, he’d become intrigued at seeing a bright red corvette in town.

Not a familiar sight in these parts, where SUVs and trucks were the norm.

Then the blond-haired divergent omega had stepped out of the car, and Thorn’s senses had heightened painfully as he followed the omega’s progress down the sidewalk.

A sense of knowing washed over him, and he was unable to deny that the omega belonged to him.

His senses spoke to this tiny divergent being his destiny and the need to claim him as such—now. As a vampire, he’d heard the lore about finding his dhampir, the only problem with that a dhampir was usually female. The cutie in front of him was most definitely not female.

As of right now, he needed to find out what the omega was doing in town and how to introduce him to a vampire family few knew existed.

While he considered if using his thrall to get the answers was the done thing, a knock to his shoulder forced him to let go of the hand or wrench the omega’s arm from its socket.

He scowled at the idiot who’d walked into him, then forced back a groan at seeing the big alpha, Brigg.

Thorn had a dalliance months earlier with the bear shifter and had no wish to repeat, no matter how persistent Brigg was.

Thorn, on a very rare occasion he chose a bed mate, wanted one that was strong enough to cope with his vampiric strength.

The bear, he recalled, hadn’t met his expectations at all.

“Thorn, what a surprise to find you in town.” The bear actually simpered, like that was an attractive trait, flirting way too obviously.

“I came to find…” Thorn glanced at the omega, then frowned at seeing him hustle off down the sidewalk, providing a view of the impressive sway of his slim hips and how his bubble butt moved in the designer jeans. Where on earth was he going?

“Me, I hope,” Brigg interjected, stepping in front of Thorn and blocking his view.

Thorn was not quick to anger. His brothers often said he had ice in his veins as it never heated like Dacian’s or Calvert’s.

In this moment, however, he found himself furious at how Brigg was impeding him from claiming his dhampir.

The bear would be lucky to keep his head on his shoulders.

Thorn’s eyes flashed red as his back expanded, his wings working to unfurl.

He grabbed the bear by the throat and got treated to a dose of pheromones that made his nose burn unpleasantly after the sweetness of the omega.