Page 31 of Stalked By Seduction and Shadows

It seemed just as unnatural as a rabbit mating with a wolf. I couldn’t make sense of it. Humans aged and died… and vampires were immortal and irresistible and wanted to literally eat us.

“It happens,” Snow said. “I wouldn’t recommend it. Vampire-mortal affairs are never safe, none more so than a vampire-human pairing. But if you’re going to do it, you need to know that it’s a short-term fling only.”

“Don’t worry, I couldn’t be less interested,” I said.

Vampires couldn’t love. They had no humanity. They saw us as disposable toys and nothing more, no matter what the lesser-of-two-evils turned vampires said. It might’ve been the born vampires who were condemning people like my sister to slavery, but the turned were clearly complicit by allowing such horrific evil to continue.

“Good. That’s for the best, Scarlett,” she said, her gaze landing on me with a sudden weight. “You ready?”

We stood before the dark, elegant club, carved out of a building that looked well-maintained and beautifully ancient. We climbed the steps, and the city behind us fell away. Bouncers stood in between dark marble columns before the enormous entryway, and the floor beneath us was made from the same sleek, opalescent material.

“Ready,” I said, willing the word to be true.

The bouncers barely glanced at us as we passed, and I could sense distinctive witch energy radiating from their chiseled forms.

Inside the entryway was a hall that was short but wide, accented with hanging sconces and chandeliers. The walls were golden, the lighting dim.

Nothing could’ve prepared me for the splendor that lay beyond. I barely registered Snow’s amused laughter as my jaw dropped. My senses were overwhelmed with a sweep of pleasurable tingles over my skin, the smell of jasmine, musk, and something dark and sensual I couldn’t name.

My gaze moved from the dance of bodies spread across the floor—talking, kissing, laughing, biting—to the soft, suggestive lights, the meticulously designed space that was at once royal and divine, like the mythic palace of Lillian and her consorts.

Then, a different sensation slammed into me, as if I’d been punched in the gut or thrown down from a precipitous height. That same sensation of being watched—intensely, darkly, hungrily—fell over me, just as it had at Noel’s right before I’d left Crescent Haven.

It was stronger now, the undeniable taste of rage mixed with desire rich on my tongue. It made something inside me tighten as I took a step forward, fear stirring my darkest depths in a way it shouldn’t.

I was desperate to locate its source. I continued to scan the room, blocking out the beautiful distractions, Snow’s concerned voice, and the flood of pheromones and sharp, intrigued gazes that swam toward me.

When I took another step forward, so did a man in the center of one of the lounge areas. He was dressed in midnight black, thorny tattoo vines crawling along his exposed hands and forearms and up his neck.

He was a dark god, a prince of shadows. I knew who he was without question, without ever having seen him before. His dark brown hair was nearly black under the dim light, short enough to be out of his face but long enough to be able to run a hand through it. His eyes were equally dark, made darker by the wrath swimming in them that pierced straight through me.

It was as though I’d been ensnared between the iron clamps of a hunter’s trap, immobile and bleeding out as he stalked forward.

No longer did I feel like I was being watched. I was being consumed. Broken, exposed, opened. The heat on the back of my neck was searing, the buzzing under my skin a flood of tingles that raised goosebumps over every inch of me. I’d been knocked out of my own orbit and thrust into his. The lights flickered, and a cold chill swept through the room.

All I saw were his dark eyes, so rich with intensity that my body trembled with a visceral, primal fear. He ignored the vampire with honey blond hair that said something in his ear, and when the man placed a hand on his arm, the growl that left his lips vibrated through my own body.

Then his tattoos began to tremble, the thorny branches escaping his skin and crawling outward on the floor. A hush fell over the room, and bodies scrambled away.

I didn’t move an inch. Not even when he was directly in front of me, and an ice-cold tendril of shadow escaped to brush across my cheekbone.

Rune.

17

SCARLETT

Ishould’ve cowered under the weight of his fury, but I was stunned. The vampire lord of Aristelle, a cruel, merciless, infamous immortal with a kill list in the thousands, directed every ounce of his attention on me.

And I had not a single clue why.

His eyes scanned the length of me, his nostrils flaring and pupils dilating. When he revealed his fangs, I trembled, but I didn’t move.

His scent was intoxicating, like a crisp wintry forest, luxurious soap, and dark masculinity. I wanted to drown in it, slip into its depths and never smell another scent again.

“Why. Are. You. Here?”

The clipped words only pulled me deeper into a trance, his commanding voice somehow a drug stronger than his dark eyes, his heartbreakingly beautiful features, and his dangerous, reaching shadows.

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