Page 5 of Snowed in with the Vampire Prince

Look all you want, I told myself firmly. But he’s going to run for the hills the second the shock wears off. Don’t you dare mess around with him. No matter how gorgeous he is.

“I would have done that for anyone,” I said stiffly.

“But you did it for me,” the young man replied.

“We’ll figure out how to get you home in the morning,” I added, still waiting for his horror to sink in. For the screaming and cowering to start when it snapped into place, exactly what I was. The fact that he was trapped in a remote mountain cabin with a vampire. When that didn’t immediately happen, I added, “But for right now, you need sleep.”

“You keep saying that, but if you think I’m sleeping right now, you’re out of your mind!” he snapped, glaring at me. “I was just bitten by a wolf, and then I got rescued by a real-life vampire. And now you want me to sleep?”

“A wolf,” I repeated, tension darting through my body. “What do you mean that you got attacked by a wolf?”

“Yeah,” he replied, grimacing. “There were a bunch of them, and they were huge. But only one of them attacked me. It jumped on my chest, and then it bit me.” Then he frowned. “It was strange, actually. He only did it once, on my ribs… Like he was trying hard not to kill me in one go. Then they ran off, all at the same time. It was really weird. And painful.”

“Damn it,” I whispered. “Fucking werewolves.”

“Wait,” he said, his eyes getting wide. “No. No way. You’re joking.”

I shrugged.

“Am I—am I going to turn into a werewolf now or something?”

“So, you can be sensible about the supernatural,” I said, catching the wavery note of fear in his voice. “Good to know.”

“Please don’t joke about this. I don’t want to be one of them.” He actually shuddered. Apparently, vampires were fine with him, but werewolves were a bridge too far.

“Their bite would have killed your mortal body and remade it, and then you would have become a werewolf. But you’ve ingested quite a lot of vampire blood, which healed you, and now there’s no bite. You’ll be fine. You’ll be a little sensitive to silver from now on, maybe.”

Why, oh why, did I feel so relieved at watching him visibly relax like that? Why did I want to comfort him, this handsome stranger who was crashing my death day? It was the strangest thing, but I felt strangely… drawn to him. There was a pull between us that felt almost palpable.

You’re being crazy, I chided myself. There’s no pull. He’s handsome, and you’re lonely. That’s all.

Besides, I had much bigger problems than worrying about this human’s emotions. Werewolves lurked nearby. And they were stalking this young man.

Werewolves were rare, and they were generally very reclusive creatures. They sometimes formed strong bonds with human communities, to the point where they could consider entire human families and even towns to be an extended part of their pack. But they generally detest other supernatural creatures, except perhaps shifters and other breeds of were-creatures. And there was a werewolf pack in the Cascade Mountain Range, but they were supposed to be about a hundred miles north of us, up near the Canadian border. They weren’t supposed to be this far south. They weren’t supposed to be setting up shop anywhere near my cabin.

I felt the wild urge to leave this mortal and scour the mountains until I found the pack. Then I’d beat some sense into them. What were they even thinking, attacking this young man?

Werewolves don’t hunt humans. Generally speaking, they protect humans. They are supposed to be guardians. So, if they had bitten him, it meant only one thing: they wanted him as part of their pack. There was no other explanation for it.

I stared at the human, feeling a mixture of resentment and protectiveness as I tried to make sense of this. What the wolves had done—tried to do, at least—was brutal. They’d tried to rip this young man from his life and fit him into their small corner of the wider supernatural world, where he would have had to give up absolutely everything for them. And without so much as a single word of explanation as to what was happening to him. They hadn’t even tried to get his consent first. He had thought he was dying. Worse, they hadn’t even stuck around to make it easier for him, to comfort him as he transformed. It seemed wrong to me what they’d done.

The same thing had been done to me one hundred years ago, but it was different in the sense that Nathaniel hadn’t had any choice—if he had tried to get my consent, I would have died. I had been so badly hurt that not even his blood would have saved me. But the Alpha that had claimed this young man had been able to choose. And he’d chosen wrong.

But had I just unwittingly trespassed on an Alpha’s claim?

As the king's only progeny, I would have to be very political about how I handled this. We were probably going to war with the Seattle witches at any moment, so we couldn’t exactly afford to make enemies of some random werewolf pack as well.

Still, for reasons I couldn’t quite explain, even to myself, I didn’t like the idea of this young man becoming a wolf against his will. And yes, I was certain that my blood had undone the effects of the wolf bite—now it made perfect sense why it had taken so much of it to heal his wounds—but there was no guarantee that the wolves wouldn’t come back and try again.

They wouldn’t dare, I thought, glancing at the door.

“You’re worried they’re going to come back,” the young man guessed, following my gaze. He shivered again, even though he was right beside the fire and should have been at least reasonably warm. He added, “Aren’t you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, even though he was right. “We might seem like monsters to you, but we have rules for how we do things. As long as you’re here, you’re perfectly safe.”

Probably. But I didn’t say that part aloud.

He didn’t look convinced. Thinking that he meant to argue, I cut him off before he could. “If you won’t sleep, can you at least go shower?” My voice sounded snappish and far unkinder than I meant for it to be. I pointed in the general direction of the bathroom. “You’re covered in blood, and it’s making it hard for me to think rationally.”

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