Page 43 of Stalked By Seduction and Shadows

I deserved blood.

The blood of every man who had ever betrayed my own needs and desires in favor of his own. Every man who’d made me feel the crushing, suffocating weight of my own loneliness, who’d shoved me into that empty place where the sound of my own heartbeat was too loud, too much.

Flares of magick flew all around, and I realized Snow had rushed to the aid of a witch to our right who’d picked a fight with a turned vampire woman.

I became aware that everyone around me was in motion. I was at the center of the crowd, the only stagnant force, surrounded by a violent, writhing tangle of bodies. I was entranced, caught in the center of this web, at once connected to all others and yet utterly, achingly alone.

It was only when a body slammed into me that I was knocked from this strange, inexplicable stupor. Before I could hit the cobblestone, arms wrapped around me, and a feral, guttural noise sounded at my ear.

I stared up at Rune’s wicked, ethereal features, a beautiful nightmare in a field of violence and shadow. Tendrils of his dark magick reached for me, pulling me to his chest before we lifted from the ground.

In a rush of wind and movement, he’d used his speed to pull me away from the fray. I sucked in a grounding breath as he lowered me to my feet, and I clung to his arms for stability as vertigo spun me in a circle.

My surroundings came into focus, and as soon as they did, I let go of Rune’s arms.

I was in a secluded, dark alley with the vampire lord of Aristelle.

I scrambled away, my back slamming against the wall of a damp stone building.

Rune crossed his arms and smirked, a cruel gleam in his eyes as I scanned from right to left. Not a single other mortal or vampire in sight. I could hear the chaos of the crowd only as a distant hum.

The tattoos on his arms reached up his neck, moving ever-so-slightly as they vibrated with power. His cocky smile had the anger in my blood boiling over, and I suddenly, stupidly didn’t care that he could kill me instantaneously.

“Was all of that a joke to you?” I snapped.

He lifted a brow, but his infuriating expression remained unchanged.

I shook with fury, watching Rune’s face at the same time as I remembered the way Isabella’s feet had dragged across the porch. Limp and helpless.

“Have you been a vampire for so long now that you couldn’t give less of a fuck about humanity? You have no idea, do you? How it feels to be hunted like prey, just a mindless body to be used and then discarded. You don’t care about any of us.”

His smirk finally fell, and as he stepped closer, I should’ve shut my mouth. I should’ve remembered that I needed to be careful, have a shred of tact. I needed him as an ally, not an enemy.

He was the night itself, Lillian’s bastard son, in all his terrifying allure. He stared down at me as his cool breath feathered across my cheek.

“Everyone says that it’s the born who traffic young mortals. But why do you turn a blind eye? Do you profit off us too?”

At that, Rune’s face darkened, and his unearthly shadows bathed us in a cold onyx stillness. I finally shut my damn mouth.

Rune laughed coldly, and I flinched when his hand shot out to rest above my head. He homed in on the movement with a frown. “You make a lot of assumptions for a human who only arrived in Aristelle… what, a few days ago?”

How did he know that? Oh. Duh. I’d told Seraph, and I’d told the table of born vampires too. He either could’ve overheard me or asked Odessa’s manager for more information about his newest hire.

“You’re going to punish those mortals for fighting for their stolen family, for merely asking you to enforce your own laws,” I hissed. “How many of them will your clan kill?”

“We were not the ones who started the violence,” he said. His dark eyes held mine captive while I fought to stay focused, not to inhale too much of his intoxicating scent. “I rule this city, as I have for over two hundred years. And you have the audacity to assume you know better than I do how to maintain order and protect my people?”

I opened and closed my mouth. His voice seemed to come from everywhere, capturing my undivided attention as I inched closer to him on purely subconscious impulse.

His eyes flickered, and I snapped out of it, leaning back into the wall.

“Your anger looks divine,” he whispered, and my heart skipped. “But it is misplaced. There are much more dangerous threats to Valentin than Aristelle’s born thugs. Every move any of us make has the power to make our world a far worse place than it is right now. And luckily for you, someone who knows what the fuck he’s doing is calling the shots.”

I recoiled, but he only moved in closer, his face inches from mine.

“Listen closely, my Little Flame,” he whispered. His eyes consumed me as my chest rose and fell rapidly. “If you ever again accuse me of doing business with the born, let alone profiting off human slavery, I will make you fucking beg to be put in your place.”

I forgot how to breathe as his words moved through me, reaching into my darkest corners and encouraging my body’s betrayal. I was now molten in a different way, my anger twisting into something pleasurable as it rushed down between my thighs.

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