Page 24 of Prince with a Chance of Darkness

She’d been at it for hours with no signs of slowing.

Vlad had been busy dealing with her sister, who had spiraled into the dark abyss once again—the same as the young wolf. It was a testament to their sisterly bond. Their twin link. They could sense the other's distress and didn’t like it one bit.

Lucian had yet to fully mind link with the young wolf, despite having been who sired her. He should have been able to enter her mind with ease, but he couldn’t. He suspected it had something to do with her slayer lineage.

When he’d first been contacted by Helen Murray, he should have told her to take her plans to free Dragos and shove them. Initial contact had come by way of another of Lucian’s wolves—shifters who had once filled the forest but who he had been pushing away slowly for years, sensing his mental decline.

With no mate to tether him and far, far too many years under his belt, Lucian’s mental state was questionable at best. He walked with one foot in the world of a vampire and the other in that of a wolf. It had been the way of it from the start. From the moment he’d been sired by Dragos.

He could still remember the shock on the master vampire’s face when Lucian had awoken not as a vampire but as some bastardized version of a shifter meets vampire. No one knew Lucian had wolf-shifters in his family line—distant, but there. The discovery came after his transformation was complete.

Dragos was thrilled. It meant he had yet another powerful weapon at his disposal. And the vampire had used the weapon to the fullest, commanding Lucian to do unspeakable things. Things that haunted his sleeping and wake hours to this day, hundreds of years after he and Vlad had won their freedom from the master vampire.

At the thought of Vlad, Lucian’s wolf reacted, snarling. While Lucian saw Vlad as a brother, the wolf saw him as a threat to its independence, to its dominance. It didn’t like answering to anyone or anything, least of all another vampire. It had been forced to obey Dragos for centuries. It wanted total freedom.

But that couldn’t be. Not with the bloodlust Lucian suffered from and the need to drink blood every few days to satisfy his vampire tendencies. While Lucian was an extremely powerful wolf-shifter, his vampire was something he could not control.

Lucian needed a vampire who was stronger than him mentally to help him maintain control. First it had been Dragos and then it had been Vlad.

Vlad was a far better master vampire to serve, though Vlad had his moments too—like any. He was nothing like Dragos, despite what the world believed.

A huff came from Lucian at the thought of how Vlad had been depicted throughout history books and even in death—in fiction. Very little of it was accurate, though the man played it to his advantage.

He always had.

He let others think what they wanted of it. Let them fear the rumors. It was easier to let them think he was a monster in the truest sense of the word than to expose the truth—that he felt too much—that he cared too deeply. That the world had taken a young boy who had so much empathy and compassion in his heart and molded him into a killing machine.

The young white wolf picked then to lunge at Lucian. He was on the other side of the bars. She slammed into them, spittle flying, eyes flashing with madness.

A madness he knew all too well. He knew the signs. Knew the look of a mind splintering apart, little by little, until there was nothing left but hate.

Lucian knew very little of her from before the night of the cave incident. Before he’d allowed himself to be swayed by Helen’s promise of ending his suffering. Helen had told him very little about the twins, apart from them being the key to freeing Dragos.

As much as Lucian never wanted that monster to walk in the world freely again, he couldn’t fight the pull anymore. For centuries, the vampire had lived in Lucian’s head, always taunting him, continually trying to talk him into setting him free. Dragos would push Lucian to turn on Vlad—to kill him.

That was something Lucian would never do. He truly did see Vlad as a brother. He cared for him. Loved him like family—as much as a wolf-shifter walking a tightrope of madness could love. Vlad had been there for him through some of the worst times of his life. He owed him more allegiance than he’d shown.

Come to me, Dark One.

Dragos’s voice slashed through Lucian’s mind, the command in his words leaving Lucian’s wolf feeling as if it must obey. Lucian closed his eyes briefly and rolled his shoulders to loosen them. It was getting harder to think clearly.

Harder to sort fact from fiction.

Agitated, his wolf began to circle in his mind, pacing much like the white wolf. Lucian tried to calm it too, but like the white wolf, it snapped at him. The pull of its maker too great to resist.

Dragos’s dark laughing filled the gaps in Lucian’s mind.You cannot resist me, Dark One. I am who created you. I am your true master. Not the other. He is weak.

Lucian snarled. Vlad was anything but weak.

Dragos pushed at him more from the cave, which didn’t seem to ever be far enough away for Lucian’s liking. With the master vampire’s push came something else. Something darker even. Something powerful. Like the other times Lucian had sensed it over the past few months, it sounded like a soft melody in his head—soothing in some ways.

Alluring, yet deadly.

Lucian didn’t trust it, but he was fairly sure he knew who was causing it. The forest witch. He’d never seen her. Not directly. But he’d felt her before. She was part of this land. She bled into the roots. Haunted the stone.

The Young Wolf slammed into the far wall again and dropped to her haunches, sides heaving, nostrils flared, eyes wild and unblinking. She crouched low and snarled, mouth flecked with foam and blood.

Lucian didn’t react. He didn’t need to. She wasn’t looking at him—she was staring through him. She wasn’t the only one unraveling.

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