Page 1 of Hunted (Love and Revenge #5)

Josh

T he dream always started the same way—more memory than imagination. She would never let me forget that night.

Cold marble. Her delicate, simperingly sweet face.

.. that girlish smile giving way to the monster it concealed.

My own hoarse screams. Her mouth on my neck as she stole everything from me, took my life and my free will.

That flash of blinding pain before the hunger roared awake and swallowed everything I was.

I jerked upright in bed, breath sawing in and out, hissing through my newly acquired fangs.

I didn’t strictly need sleep anymore, but sometimes it was a nice relief from being awake.

Not this time, though. Sweat glued my shirt to my spine.

The sheets tangled around my legs like restraints.

My heartbeat felt heavy and too slow in my chest, compressed and wrong.

“Alone,” I panted out, pressing my hands over my chest. “You’re alone, Josh. Alone and alive.” No vampire queen chewed at my neck. No cold grave dirt was being sprinkled over me while some sorcerer muttered and cast black magic. I was alive—mostly. Safe and alone in my room. For now.

I tried to calm my breathing and tap into what my strange new enhanced senses told me.

It was late. Or early, depending on your perspective.

The guest wing of The Fox was silent. No voices in the hallway.

No laughter. Just the soft, invisible hum of the wards against my newly paranormal aura, and the occasional distant creak of old wood settling, the sounds of the historic building that perched above this section of the basement.

Everyone else was likely still asleep. Someone was probably on guard duty, doing rounds or watching the cameras upstairs. But there were no traces of living creatures in my hallway. No heartbeats. No faintly rushing blood calling to me like a rare delicacy...

A glance at my phone showed me it was three a.m.

I looked around the room once more, able to see perfectly without turning on a light. The perks of my new condition. The room was still empty. The nightmare memory was just that. A nightmare. A memory. Nothing more. And yet... I knew I wasn’t entirely alone. I probably never would be again.

I listened harder with all my senses, waiting.

And... there it was. The whisper, curling at the back of my mind like ivy around a broken stone: “Still pretending to be human, my sweet, stubborn little slave? How quaint.”

Acacia’s voice was a passing thought, rather than a command, quieter now, but never gone.

It was faint, like a bone-deep bruise that didn’t show on the surface, but never stopped aching.

I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead and tried to breathe past the nausea that coiled in my stomach.

She wasn’t focused on me right now. The feeling would pass.

“I’m not yours,” I whispered into the silent room.

The room didn’t argue.

Robin had ordered me to move out of the private wing of the inner sanctum deep below The Fox—and I’d agreed with her decision.

My new room was in the small, out of the way hall where the rebel court occasionally entertained business associates that they didn’t fully trust. Sadavir had tried to put a positive spin on it.

He said it was for my safety, so the others wouldn’t be tempted to get rid of me.

Said it would help keep things calm if I wasn’t right up in their nest putting everyone on guard.

But we all knew there was more to it than that.

I wasn’t being kept separate for my safety. I was being kept apart for their safety. I was untrustworthy now. Unpredictable. A liability to the entire rebel court.

My current suite—a polite name for what was essentially a nice, comfy cage—sat at the far end of the guest wing.

It was a place, as I understood it, that was usually reserved for messengers, uncertain allies, and diplomatic pests.

Not for me. Not for someone who used to sit around the kitchen table with the others at dinner, or sprawl on the couch during movie night, or spar in the main gym, or fall asleep gently sandwiched between Ruya and Sadavir after they made love. ..

For one brief moment, I thought I had found my place in the world, once more. A new home where Sadavir and I didn’t have to live in fear. A family who might grow to love and cherish us. Now, I was a threat to that very peace. An involuntary spy. A ticking bomb no one could disarm.

Acacia might be watching through my eyes right this moment.

Listening through my ears. Sifting through my thoughts for some golden nugget of information she could use against the rebel court to ensure they kept going along with her god-awful plan.

Sometimes I could almost feel her smile just behind my lips.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and hunched forward, hands in my hair, trying to catch my breath.

My skin felt cold and clammy, like I hadn’t fed in weeks—which was a lie.

I’d fed the night before last, under Sadavir’s watch, from a blood bag laced with things Yukio and Martina insisted should help somewhat suppress my hunger.

It hadn’t helped. It never helped. The hunger was always waiting.

It shouldn’t be this bad, according to Richard and Martina, and according to what I’d learned in my time overseeing the vampire queen’s menagerie.

But something was making me into even more of a monster than expected.

It was probably because of my link with Acacia and her constant check-ins and presence inside my mind.

She was more prone to bloodlust and instability than the other vampires I had encountered.

And I wouldn’t be surprised if that was trickling into me through our bond, poisoning me with her insanity.

It wasn’t me. It was her influence inside me. But it was hard to remember that logic when the self-doubt crept in. There was an emptiness inside me bigger than the hunger. A gnawing in my gut that told me I wasn’t who I thought I was, and maybe I never had been.

Maybe I was never the good person I had tired so hard to be.

Maybe my beta nature, my urge to care for others, the pledge I’d made to serve Sadavir.

.. maybe it was all just a lie hiding this darkness inside me.

A darkness that the vampirism had not created, but had simply brought to light.

Maybe I’d always been rotten inside, and I’d just been really good at hiding it until now.

I fought my dark, paranoid thoughts and viciously shoved down the hunger that made my mouth dry and my fangs ache. No. This wasn’t who I was. I wasn’t secretly some awful person.

She made me like this. And no matter how far I ran, no matter how many rituals, or counter-charms we tried, no matter how many hope-laced mantras I whispered to myself over the past few days, that truth stuck like a barbed hook in my chest.

Regardless of the reason, I was no longer me.

I used to be kind. I used to be proud to be a beta—steady, protective, gentle.

The kind of person who held others together when the cruel world was too much, who held space, who healed, who listened with patience and gentleness and anticipated every need.

Now, I was the kind of person they kept at arm’s length.

Someone they had to watch their words around.

Somone who could betray them or attack them at a moment’s notice.

Someone who wanted to taste their hot life’s blood any chance I got, simply for the pleasure of it.

I crawled out of bed and made my way to the bathroom.

The silly human stories about vampires not having reflections weren’t true.

The only time a vampire didn’t have a reflection was if they used a spell or potion to achieve that effect.

And that wasn’t really something most people found useful, in the day-to-day.

I turned on the bathroom light out of stubbornness more than need.

I could see just fine without it, but the color of the bulb cast a warmer glow on the room.

It made my reflection seem at least a little bit less cold and foreign

I turned the fancy taps and washed my face.

Cold water. Sharp-scented soap. Mechanical motions—it gave me a flashback to all the time I’s spent cleaning blood off the floor back in Acacia’s cathedral, back when I was her assistant, her fixer of broken toys, the silent little caretaker of her involuntary blood donors.

Here I was, her slave again, just when I’d thought I was free.

I glared into the mirror. My skin was too smooth. My coloring wasn’t as warm as it once was. There were dark circles under my eyes, and the eyes themselves looked bright and brittle, like shattered glass. It was the face of a stranger.

Sighing, I left the bathroom and plopped down in the chair at the far side of the suit to try meditating again, to build walls around the part of me that was still me and keep the monster who had sired me out of my head.

But my defenses were weak. Instead of sturdy barriers, I only managed to erect fragile, fractured glass walls.

No shelter. Just—crack after crack, and the thing on the other side pacing the perimeter, laughing at me, multiplied in every mirrored shard.

Snorting in disgust, I gave up the mental and magical exercises and picked up the nearest book in the pile Richard had dumped on me a few days ago with a muttered “for your bedtime amusement,” and a crooked grin.

The Quest for Liberation: Journal Accounts of the Blood Bonded.

It turned out to be a compilation of dozens of old journal entries and accounts from humans who had been turned into vampires against their will and sought a way to sever the blood bond.

The book was ancient, the paper yellowed and fragile.

And I doubted a single one of these poor bastards had ever succeeded in breaking their blood bond to their sire.

My newfound pessimism rose up and threatened to choke me. Very useful. In the way a paper umbrella is useful in a thunderstorm. I shoved my skepticism away and forced myself to read. It wasn’t like I had anything else to do at the moment.

I read for hours. Passages and diagrams began to blur together.

I underlined a few sections I didn’t understand, and circled one name again and again—Claudius .

Apparently, someone had gotten free without simply killing their maker and hoping they didn’t die along with the vampire who created them.

But the mysterious Claudius’s story wasn’t actually included in the book.

It was just mentioned in passing about a million times.

Awesome. Good to know.

I shoved the book off the table with a frustrated groan and leaned back in the chair, pushing into it with my increased strength until it creaked under my weight.

Anger was starting to overtake the despair.

The simmering rage was definitely a more empowering and useful feeling.

But it didn’t help with the hunger, or the potential for violence inside me.

Across the room, Ruya’s pet crow, Odin, sat on the curtain rod over the painted-on window, as still and dark as ever. It was odd for Ruya’s pets to glom onto anyone other than her. But Odin had been here all night.

“You spying on me? Going to tell the others how messed up I am?” I asked. But the intended wry humor fell flat. My voice cracked halfway through.

Odin didn’t answer. Just blinked. Tilted his head like he was studying an interesting new puzzle.

He’d been sitting there since before I’d tried to lose myself in sleep. Ruya trusted him. And she trusted me not to hurt him. Which meant... maybe she still trusted me, a little.

I dragged a blanket off the bed and curled up in the armchair, knees to my chest. The urge to cry came and went like a tide. Mostly I felt hollow. Like I was wearing a Josh-shaped skin over something much uglier.

When the dreams had first started, I thought the trauma would pass, that the voice would fade. But she was a part of me now. And it seemed that connection only grew stronger as the days passed.

I missed the others. Badly. Craved a comforting touch or a soft kiss.

Something to remind me that I was still.

.. human, I suppose, even though I really wasn’t.

Oh, they still tried to interact with me like nothing had changed.

But I couldn’t let myself reach out to them for comfort the way I might have in the past.

Every conversation. Every apology. Every glance, or touch, or stolen from Sadavir or Ruya in the hallway.

Every flinch when Cicely smiled too brightly.

Every time I lingered near Ruya’s aura like it was a balm, and then darted away because I didn’t want Acacia to see .

The monster saw it all anyway. She saw the respect, and care, and love we had for one another.

And I knew she would use it against me, against us all, whenever it best suited her.

No one said the word spy. Or weapon. They didn’t have to. It was obvious. I curled tighter into the blanket.

The overhead light flickered. The wards flaring again.

Sanka hadn’t been able to find a way to block the blood bond entirely.

But he had been fiddling with the protections around The Fox and had managed to at least make it so Acacia had to work harder and expend more energy if she wanted to reach me.

The pressure in my head grew sharp, like a needle twisting behind my eyes. Her punishment for the interference.

I pressed my hand to my chest. Whispered the words again. Not for Acacia. Not for anyone else. Just for me. “I am not yours. I belong to me.”

Odin clacked his black beak loudly and croaked in what I hoped was agreement.