Page 19 of Stalked By Seduction and Shadows

I smiled. Tonight, Jaxon and I would look at our maps and plot and scheme. This time we were the valiant explorers, the partners in crime. Us against the world.

And that was exactly the kind of love that Beatrice had told me to hold close.

After we’d mapped out our grand plan, Jaxon insisted on walking me back home. He said it was inexcusable that he hadn’t the night before, but I’d assured him I understood. It had been his last night with his friend Quill, who was definitely more than just his friend but was deeply uncomfortable admitting that to anyone else.

Good riddance. Quill was a coward and didn’t deserve my friend’s affection. There was nothing left here for Jaxon either.

We were high off our own silliness and sleep deprivation when we heard the shrill scream pierce through the night.

At first, I didn’t understand what was happening when Jaxon grabbed me, pulled me to him, and dove behind the overgrown bushes to the side of my cottage. All I knew was that the scream belonged to Isabella.

“We have to?—”

Jaxon’s hand clamped tight over my mouth. “Not. A. Sound,” he whispered directly into my ear, giving me a chill with the tickle of his warm breath. “Vampires,” he uttered, so quietly I could barely hear it. I could almost convince myself that I’d imagined the word.

Vampires.

Vampires?

Why? And more than one? No. This didn’t happen. Not in Crescent Haven.

Disbelief and confusion warred with fear in my bones. Worse than the sound of my sister’s shrill scream was the deathly silence that followed.

I opened my mouth to speak again—to say we needed to alert the village vampire hunters—but Jaxon pressed his hand harder against my mouth.

“This isn’t the one,” a deep, scratchy man’s voice said from the doorstep. “She’s not even remotely what was described.”

From our position covered by bramble and glued together on the dead grass, I could only make out three pairs of feet on the doorstep. Two wore heavy black boots. The other’s feet were dainty and bare, and they were being drug along the ground as if they belonged to someone unconscious.

Panic seized me, and when my body jerked, Jaxon gripped me tighter.

“Doesn’t matter,” another man replied. Another vampire. “I smell shifter. The guard must’ve found us. We need to leave.”

A curse echoed against the chilly night. Jaxon held me in a death grip, and though I wanted to fight him, to scream into his palm, I knew why I couldn’t. Why he wouldn’t let me.

One noise, and we were both dead.

In this moment, I hated Jaxon. I hated him for not fighting for my sister, for not letting me fight for her. Even though I knew neither of us could win.

Isabella groaned, and my heart pumped with gratitude that she was still alive.

“This one won’t be worth nearly as much,” the first man said. “Did you not hear how he described her? Did you not smell her on those sheets?”

I was going to be sick. The logical side of my brain had already solved the puzzle—already knew exactly what was happening and why—but the rest of me was clinging to denial.

“We can come back, dumbass. But not if hunters catch us. Let’s go.”

A grunt and then a scuffle, and then the pair of bare feet disappeared from my line of sight. In a flash of movement, they were gone, as if merely apparitions—a nightmare that I was soon to wake from.

I flailed against Jaxon, a wail building up in my throat.

“No, Scar, not yet,” he pleaded softly. “They couldn’t scent you because of me but they could still hear you. If you catch their attention now, you’ll only be forced into slavery too, and I’ll be dead.”

He was right, and I hated it. I hated him. I hated them.

Anger and desperation coiled together, something strong brewing in my darkest depths. Yet all the fire was a mirage, a coverup for the slick, suffocating guilt breaking through my shock. It infiltrated my system, rooting in all of my cracks until I was stuffed full of it and couldn’t take in enough air.

I saw black splotches, my body going limp.

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