Page 34 of Ruthlessly Mated (Shared Mates #2)

C onroy

I come to in a cell, naked, cold, and fucking furious. This vampire does not know what he has done. He’s fucked up several times over. First when he hurt my mate, second when he hurt my best friend, and third when he caught me as well.

“This was a mistake,” I tell the ancient creature who inevitably comes looming out of the shadows.

This is the second time I’ve met Alexander. The first time was not pleasant, and I have no reason to think this time will be any better. He wants something from me. I know this, because I am breathing.

“I assume you’re the alpha of this little group of males,” the vampire says. “You were the mouthiest when I interrogated you the first time around, and you were the stupidest this time around. Loud and stupid usually corresponds to a threatened alpha.”

“Where is Kita?”

“Nice and safe, don’t worry about her. Worry about yourself.”

“I don’t care about myself.”

“Delightfully predictable. None of you wolves seem to have any sense of self preservation. Makes it very easy to catch you and even easier to break you. Kita has already crumbled. She doesn’t have the resilience of a wild one like you.”

She’s crumbled? That feels like a lie to me. Kita wouldn’t crumble. She wouldn’t break. She wouldn’t even bend. If he could get what he wanted out of her, he wouldn’t have me in a stone box. So he’s lying. And that means he’s probably desperate.

“You can kill me. Do whatever you want to do to me. Just free her.” I say what makes the most sense to say, playing along as if he is the powerful one who holds all the cards, etcetera.

“Free her? Absolutely not. This entire process has been about capturing her. I’ve decided to keep the entire set this time though. You. Your dapper friend, and the girl.”

He doesn’t know Damon is part of the pack. He never met him. Maybe he didn’t realize that Damon was shot at the port. That’s more evidence it wasn’t vampires at the port. Just run of the mill opportunistic looters.

“What do you want from me?”

“She’s going to get my maker’s heart back, and then she’s going to have some adorable little pups, all of whom will be born into silver captivity. It is for the best. I like wolves. You should survive, but in your original role, as servants. You should never have been let out of your kennels.”

“Again. What do you want from me?”

“Fuck her. Mate her. Breed her.”

“Why?”

“I want to see her bred.”

“You’re sick.”

“I might be, yes.”

“I’m not going to fuck her on command.”

“Well, wait until you hear my proposal. If you can show me that she is well and truly under control, I might consider releasing you all into a sort of tentative freedom. A broader captivity.”

“Why?”

“I confess, I have some affection for her. Having kept her alive for so long, I feel a certain obligation to her. But I cannot have her going about stealing relics. I want her bred. I want her contained. I want her…”

“Don’t believe him!”

Kita shouts down the hall. “He’s going to try to steal our babies. That’s what he does! He’s a baby stealer!”

“Baby thief,” Alexander corrects her. “And it is quite common for humans to keep pets of the lesser species. I do not see why I cannot do the same. Your kind, as I have already explained, has always been subservient to ours.”

This vampire has an ego, and that’s hardly surprising. He’s lived forever. Individuals like me don’t count to him. We’re all pawns. Things to play with. He wants to toy with us like little kids like to toy with insects in jars.

That also means he has a vulnerability. “Vampires are a dying breed. Routed out. Hunted. Staked. Unable to reproduce except for when they bite and bleed a human and even then most of the time the human dies. Meanwhile, our kind is on the rise. Eclipse City contains lines of royal lineage. You? You’re a relic of a… ”

I am thrown against the wall, having gotten the ire of the vampire up. Alexander looms over me, hissing furiously down at me.

“You are the stupidest creature I have ever encountered,” he says, his fangs flashing. “I should drain you. If you will not do what I want, I will drain you.”

“Leave him alone!” Kita shouts again from down the hall. “Come and fight me, stupid!”

She’s being incendiary. Trying to draw the predator away from me. I see the flash of irritation in the vampire’s red eyes.

“Your maker smells like garlic!”

I groan inwardly.

“She wants attention,” Alexander says. “She always wanted attention. Irritating little thing.”

There’s a note of very reluctant affection in his tone. He likes her. Not like a lover, but she has clearly gotten under his skin in some way. The liking does not seem to be returned.

“Is this about your maker’s heart? Or is this about Kita?”

“It is about both,” he says. “The heart must be returned, and that stunted little wolf belongs to me.”

“Why are you so obsessed with her? She’s just another animal, isn’t she? She’s nothing to you. Or she shouldn’t be. She’s another pointless little animal who won’t live as long as you breathe or blink. So why are you doing all of this? Why haven’t you killed all of us?”

“Stop with the incessant questions.”

I think I know why he hasn’t killed us. He is powerful in ways that cannot be imagined. But he is something much worse. He is bored. And he might even be lonely.

I let the silence draw out between us, until even the great evil being feels the need to fill the silence.

“She’s a dark little beast. Tenderness is not in my being, but I do feel a certain connection with her. Her parents chose to die when I met them, but she clung to life with a ferocity I could not deny. Since that time, I have considered her part of my possessions.”

“She doesn’t belong to you. She belongs to me. And you know it.”

“You are an animal. You can’t own anything. I own you all.”

“Let him go or I’ll let your maker’s heart go boom!”

Kita continues shrieking threats from some other part of the dungeon.

“Quiet, wretch!” Alexander booms the words back at her. “I have had enough of your incessant shrieking. Another word and I will tear out your tongue!”

“Tear out my tongue and it goes boom!”

“She will not be quiet,” Alexander sighs.

“Probably not,” I agree. “Are you sure you want to keep her in captivity?”

“I am sure I want to get my maker’s heart back, and I am sure I do not want her out of my sight. She is a liability.”

“She is.”

I am starting to understand that the vampire is actually somewhat desperate.

He took Kita when she was a pup and now she is more trouble than she’s worth.

He wants to kill her, naturally, but killing her feels bad to him for all the reasons that are now so terribly obvious to me.

A murderous, vicious, terrible creature who enjoys torture and inflicts death for his amusement is struggling with softer feelings.

“Let me see him!” Kita screams out again. “Let me see them both!”

“It might be easier to put her in here with me,” I say.

“Yes. It might.” Alexander leans in. “I will have that heart back, wolf. I will have it back at all and any costs. Do you understand? I may not kill Kita, but I will kill you. I have already killed your friend.”

My blood runs cold.

“Tailor? You killed Tailor?”

“He was redundant. You are clearly the stronger and more dominant of the two, and nobody needs more than one mate.”

The fury and grief I feel is incredible. It is like I have been punched in the chest. There is no time to react, and there is no way I have any intention of allowing him the satisfaction of seeing my pain.

“You seem sad. Don’t be. It means you have increased usefulness, and increases your chance of survival by quite a margin. Are you ready to see your mate?”

“Yes. Sure. Why not.”

Alexander smirks coldly. “I am not impressed by your attempt at seeming unaffected. You will die as easily as the other one when I decide your time has come. And the most frightening thing of all, from your limited animal perspective, will be that you will beg for it.”

“Am I going to see Kita, or are you going to keep the foreplay going, big guy?”

I inject enough sass into the dryness of my tone to hopefully show him just how little I care. He is not the master of my emotions. I am.

Alexander swings the door of the cell open and invites me to step out with a curt come hither gesture of two fingers. It takes all my self-control not to shift and hurl myself at his throat. I know it won’t do any good though. He’d burst into a thousand bats before I got anywhere near him.

Alexander is the originator of absolutely every vampire rumor and theory. Bats, garlic, crosses, sparkles. Actually, not the sparkles. I don’t need to know everything about him to know that I have absolutely no chance against him in a 1-v-1 situation.

“Good boy,” he says, taunting me. He wants me to try to attack him. He wants me to make myself seem stupid and weak. He wants to humiliate and torture me, the same way he no doubt humiliated and tortured Tailor.

I am not going to be the one to tell Kita he has killed Tailor. I do not want to acknowledge it or admit it myself.

He leads me down the hall to a cell where Kita is at the bars, clinging to them with fury.

“Alexander! Why are you like this? This is stupid. I’m not going to get you the heart back if you do this to us. Let me out. Let us all out. Then, maybe, if I’m in a really fucking good mood, I will think about getting you the maker’s heart.”

“Kita, if you keep acting this way, I will eat you.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Do not mistake the fact that I have not done it yet for the idea I will not do it at all. I am thousands of years old. You are a snack. I have not spared you because you are special. I have spared you because you are the human equivalent of the crumbs on the floor of my larder.”

“Good speech,” she throws his attitude right back. “I’m a crumb with your maker’s heart.”

He opens the door and thrusts me into the cell with her.

“Good luck,” he says. “She is entirely uncontrollable.”