Page 11 of Princess Broken

I must save Alexei!

Mother and father are dead. My sisters too. Only my little brother and I are still breathing.

I struggle against the vise grip of the Bolshevik brute who’s carrying me.

But then my mind returns to the present. My brother Alexei is long ago dead. Gone for over a hundred years.

And the arms currently crushing me belong to one of Mariano’s monstrous guards. I’ve been kidnapped.

The vampire’s massive body is hard as stone. His body odor reminds me of the forest—probably why I flashed to the memory of being there—but it’s tinged with something spicy and exotic.

I can’t avoid gulping down lungfuls of his essence, no choice in the matter as he holds me so close. He smells of masculinity and danger, and my adrenaline pumps wildly.

Snapping more fully out of my flashback, I know I wasn’t just taken from the room where my family was murdered, despite the similarities to what happened over a hundred years ago. My mind is still scrambled, but one thing is certain. The scene today was a massacre. A massacre that wounded all of the DEFTA security team members sent to guard me. I have no idea if any died, but the melee most certainly killed Timur. The image of that wooden stake protruding from my blood partner’s chest floods my mind and grief chokes my throat.

“Is the entrance blocked?” my captor’s deep voice vibrates through me like a bass drum, as he continues to run.

“Mission accomplished,” says another deep voice from behind us. “You know how much I love a good boom.” He chuckles.

“Where are we taking her?” asks another voice.

My captor slows.

This is my chance.

“Let me down!” I say as firmly as I can with my face pressed against the vampire’s body.

He tosses me into the air ahead of him, and then catches me under my arms as I drop, holding me aloft in his eyesight.

I gasp.

“Promise not to run?” he asks me.

He’s holding my feet far off the ground, like I’m a small child, and I suppose that’s how I appear to him, being barely seventeen when I turned. The vampire’s eyes are hidden behind dark glasses and the rest of his features are shaded by the baseball style cap, but it’s not difficult to perceive that his expression is grim, serious, threatening.

I am brave, but this vampire is terrifying.

Another vampire steps up beside him. Removing his cap, he nods toward me with respect, almost deference. Running from his ears to his nose, two symmetrical scars mar this vampire’s dark brown skin, as if put there to accentuate the angle of his sharp cheekbones and the sculpted valley that spreads down from there to his strong jaw.

I turn back to the one holding me. His face is still shadowed by the cap, but his skin is olive, and his unmoving lips are symmetrical and full, perfectly lush except for a thick scar that transverses the right side.

I have never been more terrified. Not since I was a human.

He sets me down.

I run, but he grabs me around my waist, lifting me off the ground using only one arm.

Kicking behind me, I curse the length of my silk gown and my bare feet—what happened to my shoes? My bare heels strike thighs as hard as steel girders, and I slam my arms down over the arm gripping me.

My captor takes that opportunity to trap my arms, pulling my body back even more tightly against his than before, but this time facing away from him.

“Let me go!” I shout.

“Listen.” The scarred vampire steps into my view and he pushes his sunglasses into the short, dark hair at the top of his head.

Our gazes meet, and a wave of terror rushes through me, along with something else—a feeling I don’t recognize, but it flows through me like a wave, then lands to pulse somewhere deep in my belly.

While the second vampire’s skin is deep brown, his eyes are silvery gray, and the combination is so striking it steals my ability to speak, to breathe. Other than the two thin scars on his cheekbones, this man’s skin is flawless, gleaming, like highly polished stone or glazed porcelain.

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