Page 4 of Incandescence

Chapter Three

Alexander

Iraised my eyebrow. Maya mustn’t be as completely out of it as I’d suspected, if she’d absorbed my name when my master had brought her to the nest. She also had to have more than a fair idea of what our master was, but it seemed she needed to hear it.

I withheld a sigh. I guess I’d been in denial for some time too after I was captured. But even the memory of that event had been diluted over the years, right along with my willpower.

“He sucked blood from your throat,” I said drily. I wouldn’t let sympathy for her plight color my words or my emotions.

“So he’s a leech?” she retorted, even as an undertone of terror leaked through her sarcasm.

“You know as well as I do what he is. He’s a vampire, I suspect one of the oldest and most powerful of his kind. You’d do well to revere him.”

An open and scathing disgust washed away her disbelief and fear. “I’ll do no such thing! I don’t care who or what he is. He didn’t respect me or my life when he brought me here and I’m not about to lie back and let the monster suck me dry. Not a second time.”

She might have offended sensibilities now, but she had no idea how much living the way I did changed a person. She also had no idea how far a human was willing to go to survive even while wishing for death. I arched an eyebrow. “And how do you intend to stop him?”

She shook her head, her face pasty and eyes glittering. I mourned for her, or at least the girl she used to be. My master’s bite had already infected her. Soon she’d be craving the blood in my master’s veins more than she would a desire to escape. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the hunger pains would never cease, and that only sheer brute willpower overcame a perpetual state of being half starved.

I blew out a slow breath, my belly cramping with both blood hunger and rejection for the food on the table. “We eat, or suffer the consequences.”

Consequences that wouldn’t only involve my master drinking her blood. Now that my master’s infection was inside her, the moment he drank from her again, she’d succumb to her deepest sexual yearnings.

I didn’t understand the science behind it, but I’d witnessed the event enough times to know what to expect.

My dick stirred at the thought. But despite my physical needs, mentally, I hated that sex with my ‘playthings’ happened not because of a genuine attraction, but because they needed physical release almost as much as they needed my master’s blood.

I took a seat and distracted myself by scanning the sumptuous spread. My belly gurgled, but not with appetite. It felt hollowed out at the unwanted calories I’d be forcing into it. I looked up at Maya with a half-smile and murmured, “Bon appétit.”

Half an hour later, Maya pushed away her empty plate before I swallowed down the last mouthful of the breakfast spread. I would have devoured this food in my long-ago normal life.

Now, it could have been sawdust.

Maya stood, her face showing a little more color. The food had lent her some strength, but I gave her a couple of hours at most before she threw it all back up when fierce hunger overcame her.

An unquenchable need for my master’s blood.

Ourmaster, now.

I swept a hand toward a door at the far end of the dining room, opposite our master’s chambers. “There’s a shower through there. I’m sure you’d like to freshen up.”

Once the hunger pains hit, a shower would be the least of her concerns.

She sent me a scathing look. “I’ll only feel clean again once I get out of here.” She turned and marched purposefully toward the elevator. Her steps faltered and slowed. It was like watching a straight-backed and disciplined soldier morph into a wilted flower.

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