I fucking lost.
“Go,” I ordered Ransom and Lachlan, pointing to the path ahead.
They didn’t question the command—they valued their lives more than that. Lachlan would grumble at me privately, but never in front of anyone else.
I stopped suddenly in front of the human woman, dropping to my haunches and running my gaze over her frame in less time than it took my heart to beat. The scent of her blood made my mouth water, and I gritted my teeth against the craving. I ordered my fangs and my cock to stand down. Damn, I hadn’t even seen the woman yet, and I was hard—she smelled that good.
“Asshole!” she shouted down the path where the demon had run.
Obviously, it hadn’t been a death blow.
“Are you okay?” I growled, annoyed as fuck at myself for checking on a human when my sister was in danger.
She shoved her mass of blonde hair out of her face and looked up at me with widening green eyes.
Fucking beautiful. I took in a breath reflexively, then wished I hadn’t, because all I could smell was her.
Oh shit, I was fixating, which was as good as draining the woman right here. A fixated vampire hunted his prey no matter the consequences. The craving was too strong to deny, and it would drive us mad if we didn’t satiate it.
Fixation, that’s all this was…right? Her blood called to me.
“I’m fine,” she said, her gaze flickering down the path again. “He barely got my forearm. But that asshole was chasing two other girls.”
Avianna.
I blinked, trying to free myself of the fixation, the craving, but I didn’t lunge or pounce on her as fixated vampires did. Instead, I took her wrist, testing her pulse. Quick, but strong, and given the change in her scent, flooded with adrenaline. Fuck, her skin was warm and soft. Perfect in every way.
Gravity shifted.
My chest tightened like a damned vise.
Electricity coursed through my veins.
Every cell in my body screamed one word—mine.
Wait. What the actual fuck?
“See? It’s not bad.” She lifted her arm, showing me the cut, and I bit back a growl. That demon had sliced into her delicate skin and—what if it was laced with poison?
A scream pierced the silence, and we both snapped our heads toward the sound.
Avianna. My heart lurched, worry quickly replaced with icy rage.
“Get out of the park,” I ordered the human as I took off. “It’s not safe.” My sister’s cry must have broken the fixation because my body was my own to command again.
“He was wearing a black hoodie and a Halloween mask with blue horns!” she called after me.
I sprinted faster than I should have and turned the corner in time to see four demons— including the one who’d attacked the human woman—advancing on my sister and her bodyguard.
Lachlan shot the first.
Ransom took out the second.
The remaining two stared at me with horror, but not surprise. They knew exactly who Avianna was and one of them had her under his knife.
I saw red, disappearing and wending, materializing in front of a yellow-eyed demon. “You attacked what is mine, and the sentence is death.” I wrapped my hands around his neck and twisted, breaking his spine. “Justice served.”
The last demon, the blue-horned one who had attacked the human, wended, leaving the three bodies behind.
I was going to fucking kill Xavier for this.
“Alek!” Avi cried, her slim figure racing toward me.
“Avi.” I swept her into my arms and clutched her to my chest, cradling the back of her head. I’d lecture this one later. Right now, I just wanted to feel her breathing.
Guilt was heavy and sour in my mouth. How the fuck had I let myself get distracted with that human while Avi was in danger? I’d almost let my parents down. Let our entire species down. The loss of one female was tragic, but the loss of the princess? Unforgivable.
“Are you okay?” I asked her, cupping her cheeks and looking into her eyes. They were pale blue, just like mine. Just like our mother’s.
“I’m fine, I promise.” She gave me a shaky smile.
“Benedict is almost here with the car,” Lachlan told me quietly as Ransom argued with Avi’s bodyguard about the safety of the park.
“We need to get out of here before someone reports the gunshot,” I told Avi. Humans were a nuisance, not that they could even tell the difference between demons—
The breath froze in my lungs.
She had. Cinnamon and vanilla. Blonde. Green eyes. Impossible. But she’d seen him. Even told me what he’d looked like.
A human had seen the demon’s horns. Horns that by demonic nature, were hidden from human eyes by glamour.
I took a deep breath.
“Fuck.” The distance of her scent told me she was long gone.
But I also knew I’d be able to track that scent anywhere in this city.
And I would.
2
Lyric
“How many times have I told you not to walk home through the park at night?” Valor’s tone was anything but library approved.
A few aggressive shushes were thrown toward the mahogany desk we occupied—the one tucked into the farthest corner of the massive campus library. Red and blue and brown books filled the row of shelves to our right, reaching all the way to the high, arched ceilings. The campus library had become my second home since I’d started my collegiate career, and now I was only a few months away from scoring my doctorate.
“Oh, bite me,” Valor hissed over her shoulder at the other students who’d shushed her.
I pressed my lips together, shutting the old text I’d been pouring through. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you,” I teased, shaking my head. In reality, I told her everything. She’d been my best friend since freshman year.
Valor glared at me, her pale green eyes as hard as gemstones.
“I’m joking,” I hurried to say. “Obviously. But you’re a tad overprotective, don’t you think? I am a grown woman, fully capable of walking myself home at night—”
“Who gets mugged by some creep in a demon costume?” She cut me off, crossing her arms over her chest. Her long red hair fell in a braid that swept over her shoulder.
I swallowed hard, chills racing over my skin. “I wasn’t mugged,” I said, my voice a few degrees softer, and not because we were in the library. Something had been off about the jerk who’d plowed me over.
I glanced down at the tiny slash on my forearm—nothing more than a scratch, really. The screams of the girls he’d been chasing had haunted my mind since last night, but not as much as the image of…well, whoever he’d been. Not the creep, but the man who’d knelt to check on me.
My fingers absentmindedly massaged my wrist, a soft tingling itch I hadn’t been able to rid myself of since yesterday.
Those eyes, blue-gray and emanating a glow so real it could’ve been starlight.
I couldn’t get those eyes out of my head, or the dark hair, strong jaw, and spectacular build either. He’d been so brutally beautiful and just this side of terrifying. But he’d tried to help me before he’d chased after the girls.
Embarrassment flushed my skin, and I rolled my eyes at myself. It wasn’t unusual for me to stumble over my own two feet, especially while hauling a load of rare texts from the library, but this? Why’d it have to happen in front of easily the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen in my life? And the most terrifying? Another chill danced along my spine. The timbre of his voice had been enough to freeze my blood and heat my core. The primal demand in it, as if I’d owed him an explanation of my well-being.