Page 2 of Jace’s Mate (East Coast Territory #1)

A nikka glared at her uncle, making no effort to mask the hatred simmering behind her dark eyes.

“For dinner tonight,” Uncle Wilton announced, striding into the cramped kitchen like he owned the world, “you’ll prepare that beef dish you made for last month’s feast.”

This was their third rental house in less than a year—another creaking, dingy box with peeling paint and flickering lights.

A symbol of instability. Of being kept off-balance.

The tension crackled through the air, like static in a storm cloud, fed by Wilton’s foul temper and constant need for control.

Anikka fought the urge to ignore him. She longed to tell the man—no, the parasite —that she wasn’t his servant. Wasn’t his blood. Wasn’t his anything. But instead, she stood still, outwardly calm.

Wilton wasn’t even her real uncle. Just the man who’d taken her in when she was a child.

She remembered that day with uncomfortable clarity.

There had been something unnatural about him—his voice, in particular.

A slow, syrupy tone that had wrapped around her thoughts and made it impossible to disobey.

Even as a little girl with more fight than sense, Anikka had felt something tightening inside her whenever he spoke.

Like invisible hands pulling her strings.

Now, his smug grin said he knew exactly what she was feeling.

He lifted his chipped coffee mug and chuckled softly, already amused by the fury burning in her eyes. He didn’t see it as a threat. He saw her reaction as entertainment.

Despite his portly frame and receding hairline, there was something slippery and unsettling about Wilton—like an oil slick in human form. His calm wasn’t real. It was a mask, hiding the sadistic joy he took in her silence. In the illusion of control.

One day, she thought. One day you’ll see how wrong you were to think I’d never fight back.

But today was not that day. Today, she waited.

Wilton took a long sip of his coffee—and hissed in pain.

“Damn it, Anikka! Is it too much to ask for coffee that isn’t boiling hot?”

His voice tore through the kitchen, sharp and cruel, thick with disdain. Anikka held her ground, resisting the impulse to bow her head. She knew the other staff could hear him, and she knew they feared him. But her pride refused to yield.

The cup exploded against the wall. Ceramic shards rained onto the tile like jagged hail. Coffee and cream splashed the dirty white paint and dribbled down to the floor in sticky rivulets.

Anikka flinched instinctively, but her chin remained high.

Across the room, Wilton’s subordinates bowed their heads as if on cue. They always did. As though some ancient compulsion rolled off the man in waves.

But not Anikka.

Not anymore.

“My apologies, Uncle,” she said, her voice steady—too steady. Too clear. She knew it would provoke him further, and part of her relished his anger.

Wilton’s eyes narrowed. His fists clenched. She saw the pulse hammering at his temple.

“I took you in when you were nothing!” he roared. “I could toss you onto the street tomorrow and you’d starve like the little stray you are!”

Internally, Anikka’s stomach churned—not at Wilton’s rage, but at the threat he dangled before her: being cast out.

Despite her disgust for the man, she couldn’t shake the lingering terror of being truly alone again.

That deep-rooted fear, buried since childhood, resurfaced like an old bruise aching in bad weather.

She remembered wandering through the streets of a sleepy town, nameless and unseen, always certain that something— someone —was missing.

When Uncle Wilton had found her, she hadn’t felt safe exactly, but she had felt… anchored.

No, that wasn’t quite right.

She’d felt seen. Understood.

Somehow, he’d recognized the strange sensations that sometimes bubbled beneath her skin—those urges she couldn’t explain. He hadn’t asked questions. He’d simply sniffed her like an animal and smiled.

That smile had terrified her.

But then he’d patted her head and murmured in a tone too calm to be comforting, “Those sensations prick all of us as we get older, my dear. Just resist them, and you’ll be fine. If you give in, then… well, bad things could happen to you.”

Anikka had believed him. As a child, she’d clung to his warning like a prayer.

Now, the sensations were back—stronger. Sharper.

Panic flared. It was happening again.

She clenched her fists, nails biting into her palms as the strange energy surged. Bending forward, she gritted her teeth and fought to contain the tingling that crawled beneath her skin. Her limbs trembled. Something inside her wanted out .

When she’d been younger, it had been easier to resist—like pushing down a restless dream. But now? It felt like her body wasn’t entirely hers. As if something ancient and primal lurked beneath her skin’s surface, pressing against her bones, desperate to break free.

She gasped and shoved her thick, dark hair off her shoulders. Her fingers gripped the back of a kitchen chair, and her nails dug into the cheap wood as if to ground herself.

Her vision flickered. Not to black—but to something else.

Not blind. Not exactly.

And then the prickling started. Like electricity tracing along her spine, as if her nerves were rewiring themselves.

Her dress—lightweight and floral—brushed against her legs, and the soft swish suddenly felt wrong . Agitating. The contact only amplified the strange, rising sensation in her body.

The monster was back.

Her muscles twitched. Her body twisted. The heat flooded her chest, her thighs, her stomach—like fire and fury and something wild that had no name.

And then—

“ Fight it! ”

Wilton’s voice cracked like a whip. Gravelly. Harsh. Afraid.

“Don’t you dare give in to those urges, Anikka! We are civilized! This is a city , not some backwater pack! You cannot let that bestial nature of yours show!”

His panic scraped at her composure, stoking the anger that pulsed alongside her confusion.

Eyes clenched shut, Anikka focused inward. She summoned every ounce of discipline she’d cultivated over the years, every moment spent hiding what she didn’t understand.

She breathed.

In. Out.

And she hummed. Quietly, in her mind. A familiar tune—one of the only comforts from her stolen childhood.

“It’s another tequila sunrise…”

The prickling slowed.

“Staring slowly ‘cross the sky…”

The flare of power in her chest dimmed.

“He was just a hired hand…”

Her fingernails lifted from the wood, one by one.

The monster—that thing inside her—settled back into its den, no longer clawing its way to the surface.

Anikka drew in a deep breath.

“Take another shot of courage…”

Slowly, she breathed in. Then out. One by one, her fingers loosened their death grip on the back of the chair, her nails lifting from the cheap wood with reluctant finality.

“It’s another tequila sunrise…”

The monster receded. The power crawling under her skin—feral, untamed, hungry—slipped back into its cage.

She’d won.

For now.

When Anikka opened her eyes, her heart sank.

Uncle Wilton was staring at her. So were his two bodyguards.

Their expressions startled her. Not anger. Not disgust.

Fascination.

Was that... admiration flickering in the taller guard’s eyes?

Heat flushed her cheeks. The shame wasn’t just from being watched—it was from being seen. Seen in the midst of her battle. Seen trembling, bent over, barely in control.

And yet, beneath the confusion, something else stirred. A faint, pulsing sense of triumph. That had been the strongest surge she’d ever felt—and she’d mastered it.

Anikka straightened her spine, rolling her shoulders back. She was still breathing hard, but she felt grounded again.

The monster hadn’t taken her.

Whatever strange force lived beneath her skin—whatever boiling, electric sensation wrapped around her spine and pushed her toward madness—she had bent it to her will.

It had been nearly fifteen years since she’d first felt that force, barely old enough to reach the counter, but she remembered. Back then, it had been easier to suppress. Simple, even. But now, at twenty-five, it was louder. Stronger. Closer.

And so was she.

They didn’t understand that. Not Wilton. Not his guards.

They couldn’t possibly fathom what it was like to feel something ancient and wild rippling just beneath your flesh, demanding to be let out. They didn’t know how it burned through her veins like fire, how it wrapped around her thoughts like a predator testing the bars of its cage.

If she ever lost control completely—if she ever gave in —she wasn’t sure she’d be able to come back.

And worse…

Her “uncle” might kick her out.

The thought made her stomach turn. Her knees went weak.

Wilton had threatened it before, casually—like tossing out the trash. But the idea of being banished for real, of being cast out alone, twisted something primal inside her.

She didn’t understand why it hurt so badly. But it did.

The fear felt bottomless. Like falling into a void where no one would ever hear her scream.

She didn’t understand, but knew that she wasn’t meant to be alone. She wouldn’t survive alone. The idea of being separated from this mismatched group—even this twisted mockery of one—sent her instincts into a full-blown panic.

It wasn’t just rejection. It would be annihilation.

Her terror at the thought made her physically ill.

But she couldn’t let Wilton see that.

It wasn’t just these increased urges that concerned her.

Other things, strange things, were happening and she had no one to talk to, no one to explain what was happening.

She looked at Wilton now, remembering the bloodstained sheets and the shredded clothes that returned with him after late-night outings.

She didn’t know what they did—didn’t want to—but blood didn’t lie.

She remembered the first time she’d asked about it. She’d been ten. Small for her age. Dressed in hand-me-downs two sizes too big.

Wilton had grabbed her throat and squeezed until she’d seen stars.