Page 71 of Taming His Vampire Mate

We all turned. I had to admit, he looked convincingly frightened, bound in silver chains to a chair in the center of the vampire king’s dungeon. His eyes were wide and shining. “Please, please, just let me go. I won’t tell anyone you took me.”

It was a very good act.

He might’ve fooled my human self, but my wolf wasn’t buying it. It could sense the vast emptiness inside him. His eyes gave him away too—they were flat, cold, and calculating. The gaze of a great white shark. And the dried blood caked around his mouth didn’t help his cause either.

“Enough,” Thierry said, flashing fangs and glaring down at Quinn. “Drop the act. Let’s start with the basics. Your name tag says ‘Quinn’—but is that actually your name?”

Quinn’s gaze lingered on my mate’s fangs.

“I asked for your name,” Thierry said, dangerous now.

The attendant weighed his options, then said, “Quinten.”

Poppy’s brows shot up. “Your parents named you Quinten? No wonder you went evil.”

“Darling, don’t antagonize the murderous vampire,” Simone said mildly from beside her. Her posture was relaxed, but if Quinten so much as looked at Poppy wrong, I suspected I’d see a much darker side of Simone.

“There’s nothing wrong with my name,” the vampire bristled. “And everyone calls me Quinn. Or Q.”

“Hello, Quinn,” Thierry said, ignoring Poppy. His gaze was unreadable, his tone icy. But through the bond, I felt the desperate hope thrumming in him, even if his face betrayed nothing. “I know you’re still in there somewhere. Buried, perhaps. But still there.”

“Do you?” Quinn’s smile turned mocking. His empty gaze locked on Thierry’s. “I’m fine the way I am. Let me go and I’ll prove it. I promise.”

“Today is your lucky day,” my mate said softly. “Because we’re going to bring you back. You don’t have to stay like this. You can be yourself again.”

Quinn stared, his smile fading. “What the hell does that mean?”

No one answered him.

Poppy scooped up the copper bowl from the table. “Yeah, enough of this. Time to begin the spell. We can question him afterward.”

“A spell?” Quinn’s voice spiked, his previous coldness vanishing into alarm. When you feel nothing, I guess it’s easy to switch gears on a dime. “You can’t be serious. Magic isn’t real!”

Everyone in the room exchanged a sidelong glance.

Simone arched her brows, serene. “Then you have nothing to fear. The spell won’t harm you. It won’t even hurt.”

“Well, actually—” Thierry began. Simone’s warning look cut him off. After a pause, he snorted. “Sure. Why not? It’s like a trip to Disneyland.”

Quinn seemed to realize we were serious. He stared at Simone, trying the puppy-dog-eyes routine. “Let me go. Please. I swear I won’t tell anyone. I’ll just leave, and you’ll never see me again. You don’t have to do this.”

“You’d stop killing?” Poppy asked skeptically.

Quinn’s lips curved, the gleam in his eyes chilling. “Of course I would,” he said, voice earnest, eyes lying. “Anyone I hurt was an accident. I didn’t know any better.”

“If we allow you to walk out of here, you’ll keep killing without a shred of remorse,” Simone said, her voice hard. “I think not. Be silent and behave while the love of my life gives you your humanity back.”

Power rolled off Simone at those words. Brutal, inexorable, it hit Quinn like a battering ram.

His mouth snapped shut. His eyes glazed.

I stepped back instinctively, alarm spiking through me. If I’d been in wolf form, my ears would’ve pinned flat.

No one else seemed concerned about standing beside a vampire goddess who could compel obedience without blinking. So they must’ve been used to it.

I sure as hell wasn’t. I gawked at Simone like it was, in fact, my first trip to the rodeo.

My next thought—once the urge to back away slowly passed—was that she had to be exceptionally ethical, or she’d already own the city. The state. Maybe the whole western seaboard. Mortal, wolf, witch… with power like hers, no one could’ve refused her.