Page 1 of V for Vindictive

Chapter 1

Wingman

Two weeks had gone by, and I’d finally settled into my new routine with the pack and Sloan. Mainly, hanging out in the cave day in and day out and prepping for my imminent future: a clash with a certain Dark Fae.

Sloan somehow procured materials for me to learn all there was to know about creatures frequenting this plane—still a difficult pill to swallow—and he spent a good portion of each day training me for fights. It was the continuation of what we started in Austria, except now I had a pack of Shifters as backseat fighters.

Lucky me.

Nigel and Topher were the worst, always correcting my stance and telling me where I went wrong. You know, because Sloan kicked my ass every fucking time we trained, and it was really starting to piss me off. But the parroting Shifter duo were the most annoying, particularly because I rarely saw that patronizing side of Nigel. Not even when we were partners had the dude been this obnoxious. Until Phillip, Nigel never talked down to me or went out of his way to correct something I did.

Mansplaining took on a whole newform—werewolfsplaining.

Before hell unleashed on my life, the Shifter was considerate, gentle, and never condescending. But I guess those days were long gone now. The mask had come off. The façade melted away, and this was the new Nigel.

I mean, why not? He wasn’t trying to win my affection anymore. Maybe this was Nigel’s real personality.

Then again, back when we fought together, I hadn’t been worried about a Dark Fae with the power to attack me with magic either. And in all fairness, most of Nigel and Topher’s criticisms were valid.

I’d learned that Nigel was much older than he looked. Much, much older. Like fifty years older. Turns out, Grams altered some of the memories of my childhood and school life to fit the story I was told. So, I’d never truly know if the life I lived up to this point was a total fabrication, or pockets of real mixed in with lies. Not unless one day I got the chance to talk to Grams again.

It was another betrayal that sat in my throat every time I thought about her. It was the other shoe dropping to realize my life was just a stream of carefully crafted lies, but I was dealing. Not that I had much choice but to get over it and move on.

In a surprising turn of events, vampires and Shifters were from the same realm and natural-born enemies, much like the stories told. That, however, didn’t stop them from getting down and dirty with each other it seemed.

A tidbit I was unfortunate enough to stumble across when Claude reminisced about some of his past lovers—two men and a woman. All vampires and all who made it their personal crusade to kill him someday.

Talk about bad exes.

Honestly, Claude was a real basket-case. But for some reason, people still found him unbelievably alluring. In an odd, sort of deranged kind of way, it made sense. Not that I was one of them.

Thankfully, vampires couldn’t procreate the same way Shifters could, so hybrids weren’t a thing until the Organization went and played around with their genetics. Now we weren’t terribly sure what sort of beasts they’d created. With what might possibly reside in my blood, I wouldn’t be surprised if some werewolf-vampire Frankenstein monster was out there somewhere.

So, I continued to learn whatever I could from the materials Sloan gathered and from the stories the pack told. I asked questions. I pried into their pasts, because any distraction I could manage after a shitty few months was wholeheartedly welcomed.

Unfortunately, it didn’t ease the pain or worry I carried in my heart about the man I’d left behind. While Sloan did a good job of keeping me distracted by conversation, and I was given plenty of time to get to know every person in Nigel’s pack, nothing could ever truly keep my thoughts away from the Austrian who neither Sloan nor I had heard from since we fled Austria.

And it was far from the only thing I worried about.

Sloan had been a distraction in plenty of other ways. His sexual prowess couldn’t be denied, and it made my mouth water when I thought about all the things we still hadn’t done. His kiss inspired fantasies of what his mouth could do to other parts of my body. What would I discover about the Brit if he just touched me a little bit? Would the pleasure compare? Would I lose myself in his touch the same way I lost myself in Phil’s?

I’m the worst.

It wasn’t a question anymore if I was sex-addicted. I’d come to terms with my insatiable appetite in the bedroom, but I couldn’t quite accept how quickly I moved from one man to the next. I was a Hunter, so relationships were complicated right from the start. But to think I was capable of wanting two men at once was not something even I knew about myself.

It begged the question: was I really this heartless?

Worse, Nigel hadn’t surrendered his sultry attention either; made clear after the first day of our stay. He may not be pushing like before, but it was still there. He definitely hadn’t given up wanting more between us. So now I was caught between a weird shuffle of three men—one dude I wasn’t even sure was still alive—and it was a nightmare of my own making. I didn’t have anyone else to blame.

Fuck my life.

Both Sloan and Nigel continued to steal glances my direction, and it didn’t help that sex was all I thought about these days. I hadn’t felt the warmth of someone’s body in a way that was pleasurable since the night Sloan and I kissed.

The night I betrayed Phillip.

I closed my eyes and swallowed around the knot of shame in my throat. Sat in a room full of people, all I wanted to do was feel Sloan’s lips on mine again, and I couldn’t pretend I didn’t anymore. I couldn’t ignore the dark, carnal desires anymore. Now that I had a taste of pleasure, I yearned for it in weak moments. Even when I shouldn’t. Even when I had a world of guilt weighing down on my shoulders.

But I wasn’t really at liberty to flee the building sexual tension. Not when it was evident anyone with an agenda against the Organization—or reallyanyone supernatural—planned to find and use me to do their evil bidding. It wasn’t the sort of popularity a teen girl dreamt about, but I didn’t get much of a choice in the matter.

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