Page 61 of Claimed By Fangs and Darkness

The gaze of the man leading the pack took a strange turn. The look in his eyes boiled my blood and provoked my starving shadows.

Lust.Hunger. And even if it didn’t make sense, I swore I saw possessiveness in those demonic eyes.

Evie’s small hand gripped the back of my shirt. Her heart thumped in a distracting cacophony.

The next words out of the born man’s mouth were a shocking punch to the gut.

“Hello again, my bride.”

Now it was my turn to struggle to breathe.

My lip curled, my shadows singeing my skin.

Evie vibrated behind me with fear or anger or some combination of the two.

I worried I might crack my jaw with how hard I was clenching my teeth. I reminded myself, over and over, that we stood in a trap, another calculated born game to secure the upper hand. I couldn’t lose control.

The blond man’s eyes flitted from Evie to me and back again. I wanted to rip those eyes from his skull and shove them back down his undeserving throat.

He made an audacious, condescending clicking noise with his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

“It would be a pity,” he drawled. “If such unique, perfect,deliciousblood was ruined by impurity.”

A low hum of power began to build. Evie tried to step to my side, but I gently stopped her with an outstretched hand.

I finally stole a glance to find that her fear had transformed into fiery rage. Her face was twisted with it, her palms twitching at her sides.

“By a blasphemy, a bastard of Lillian, no less,” he said with a sigh. “I hate to see a child of Lillian so lost and confused.”

I wanted to comfort Evie, but I didn’t want to give away any clues about who she was to me, or who I was to the clan. They were fishing for information with every word.

Even if it was horrifyingly apparent that Evie’s identity was already compromised.

Don’t,I hissed at my shadows internally, begging them not to give in.

The wordsmy briderattled around in my skull in compulsive repetitions. Thank fuck for my mask so I could seethe and strain against my power without the born seeing a fraction of my fury.

Evie was mine. Fuckingmine.

Lord Conrad stared at me, sizing me up. He barely paid any mind to the turned women next to me, as if already deeming them irrelevant. The born refused to let their beloved tradition of misogyny die, no matter how many centuries had passed.

In the distance, I could make out the sound of several heavy footsteps approaching. The sickly sweet smell of the born multiplied.

Every born vampire reached maturity in their mid-twenties and halted. But with a keen eye, you could detect the ancientness in their permanently youthful, enticing features.

Lord Conrad’s dark hair framed a face made stoic and frigid through centuries of immortality. His blue eyes were so cool they were nearly ghostly. There was no sign of life in their cold depths.

“Fuck you,” Evie said, piercing through the silent stand-off.

I tensed. The man smiled, delighted by the sound of her voice.

Evie was unaware of the born moving in to watch how we handle ourselves in the aftermath of their massacre.

“I was a child,” Evie said, prodding at my protective, enraged heart. “That was why you wanted me, right? Because only someone who didn’t have a choice would ever be with a vile, decrepit monster likeyou.”

The man’s smile dropped. I held my breath, silently pleading with Evie to resist making a move, pleading with myself to do the same.

Lord Conrad was a lethal force, possessing devastating pain magick. Could I take him? Maybe, if I moved quickly. But I didn’t know the nature of the other borns’ magick, and I could only assume the second predator was rich in power as well.