If they come for her?
Someone hunted her?
His sleeping mind turned the information over.
Shadow demon.
Prison.
Yes. They might try to come for her.
No one invaded his lands.
“I was just wondering if I could go see the sun…I haven’t seen it in weeks.”
Her voice whispered to him, beckoning, and he listened to the shift in her heartbeat. To the discussion from the boys wanting her to not risk it. Vampires in transition were particularly vulnerable. If the transition wasn’t taking, the sun was the fastest way to end their suffering.
Not all vampires could walk in the sun. The bloodlines had begun to weaken. The natural born retained some of the skill, but the turned? More and more, they faded too quickly. Power and hunger had made selection an open market rather than a chosen few carefully shepherded.
Selfish bastards.
Movement against his wards had him stirring.
Crows.
They swarmed toward his garden. Another power touched their minds, and he dislodged it easily. This was his keep. His land. Everything on it was his. The interloper fled at the first brush. An image scorched against his mind, a challenge.
Then he stared into the garden through the eyes of the many. Red hair snagged his attention, full lips and pale golden skin.
The red eyes pulled all his focus, and her pout when they insisted she return inside. He agreed, he didn’t want her to go, but then she was gone, and Rogue stared at the crows with a warning on his face.
It had been a long time since he’d lain eyes on his brothers. Rogue didn’t know it was him, he worried it was the other.
Then they were gone, and Alfred let his mind wander as the crows flew. Time had marched on. How much had passed, he wasn’t certain. He needed to find out.
Anger.
Rebellion.
Lust.
The scent of it permeated the keep. Fiona.
Her name was Fiona.
Maddox called her Kitten.
Fin labeled her Beautiful.
But it was Rogue’s nickname that pulled at him. Little sváss.
Little Beloved.
His heart rate began to increase. They were courting her. Draining her. Feeding her. Fin pled with her for more time. The little hellion wanted to leave. They always ran. But it had been a few days, and she was still in the keep. She still fed from them, and her signature and scent grew stronger every day.
Alfred wanted to see her
Wanted to test her.
Taste her.
Awareness rippled through the keep as a door opened and she left. Her heartbeat grew more distant. He’d been listening to it for days now, the cadence of her heart. When it sped, when it slowed, when it pumped furiously as one of his brothers pleasured her. He understood each rhythm. It slowed and grew fainter as she left the safety of the interior for the sun.
The crows came at his summoning. At his first glimpse of the firebrand’s hair, his pulse quickened. The chamber opened with a single wave of his hand, and he stepped out. Hunger assailed him.
Hunger and need.
Like a ghost, he moved through the keep. The locks fell away at his presence. The spells infused into the stone had also used his blood. Outside, the sun warmed his skin and blinded him, but he didn’t need his own eyes. The crows gave him all the angles he needed. Her tousled curls. Her full lips. The fact that she wore only a robe and her feet were bare despite the snow.
The flush to her cheeks.
Life suffused the hellion. Life and power.
The first whiff of her stroked through him as he took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the musky femininity. All of his brothers had marked her. The breeze shifted her hair, baring the bite mark on her neck. The puffiness of it hadn’t faded. The transition wasn’t complete.
They’d kept her alive.
There, just below the sweetness of her perfume and the overlays of his brothers blanketing her scent, was the taint of shadow. It was still there, like a dark invader lurking beneath her skin.
The demon had done more than just mark blood and her body. He’d marked her soul. It was as much a declaration of property as it was of war. Alfred met her gaze when she jerked to look at him.
Red eyes blazed back at him. But they hadn’t always been red. No, that color belonged to his hellion’s hair, not her eyes. She needed to complete the transition, to let go of the dual ties and sink into the place she belonged.
Fin might be right about her.
While he’d shared the vision, Alfred had never seen the woman’s face. Only her hair.
The same scarlet hair now blowing in the wind. A wind that shifted and flooded him with her scent. Hers, theirs, and the shadow demon’s.
Hunger assailed him.
She ran her tongue over her lips, trapping his attention on her luscious mouth. “Take a picture,” she challenged as she pushed up from the rock to face him. “It’ll last longer.”
Amusement curved through him. Defiant.
No wonder his brothers couldn’t get enough of her.
She had spirit.
“Fiona,” he tested her name on his tongue. Everything about her seemed encapsulated in her name. Queen and demon. Lover and threat. Friend and enemy. Fiona was far more dangerous than she realized.
Dangerous.
Beautiful.
Intoxicating.
“Yep,” she replied, brazen in her challenge. Not once did she dip her eyes. Most vampires couldn’t meet his gaze head on. Most couldn’t even look in his direction. Fiona? She raised that chin and straightened her spine. “That’s my name. Don’t wear it out.”
Lust punched through him. Burrowing beneath his skin to arouse a hunger he hadn’t experienced…ever.
He closed the distance. The need to touch her overrode everything.
“Fiona,” he whispered the hellion’s name with the reverence she deserved. The fact that the shadow demon’s taint still stained her incensed him. No more. His brothers had tried to erase it. Alfred would remove it entirely. His eyes narrowed on the mark on her throat. Unlike the others, it had faded to a near scar. It was the first one. The one that would remain, even after the others cleared from transition.
It was the mark of the one who made her.
Quiet fury suddenly bubbled in his sluggish system, quickening the pace of his heart and flushing him from inaction to reaction. No one else was allowed to mark her. Not the shadow demon.
Not the bastard vampire.
The need to obliterate their marks and replace it with his own surged like electricity through his blood. He sank his teeth into that mark, his arms locked around her to keep her still. The last thing he wanted to do was tear out her throat. The soft vulnerable column was not a match for the pierce of his teeth as he sank into her sweet flesh.
The first dribble of her blood over his tongue, and he locked his lips to suck deeply. The hot liquid quenched his parched throat, sating both his desire and starving him for more. Every flash of hot decadence rolling around his tongue let him taste her. Her whole body softened against him, the sweet tang of her need adding to the spice on his tongue.
Hello, Alfred. Her biting words lashed at him, even as she gripped his shoulders, clinging to him though she was in no danger of falling. He had her. Really not nice to meet you… Asshole.
He plunged deeper, drawing it from her. All of it.
All of her.
“You’re new,” the male said as he slid onto the stool next to me. New? Really? What a tired line. I slanted a look at him without turning. The mirror behind the bar gave me a good visual.