Page 26 of Our Sins in Blood (Coven of Sin 1)

This fact shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Dr. Sharpe was in on it, after all. All he really did was lie and give me pills to make sure I didn’t go ape-shit on my mom whenever she pushed meatloaf and cranberry juice through my food flap instead of human blood.

Maybe I wanted to rise up to the throne of vampire queen just to make them all pay for treating me like an animal up until I was useful.

If only I was strong enough, I’d make them all pay.

“So what do you want, Feral? A big fat fucking thank you for springing me?Thanks.” My voice was clipped, and I propped my fists on my hips while flinging him an indignant glare. “I’d offer some kind of payment, but oh, wait. You stole my first kiss. So let’s just call us even, alright?”

The vampire’s nostrils flared, and his brows pulled together in a scathing grimace. “Oh, please. I get you’re a shut-in and all but stop acting like a petulant teenager. What, you gonna go write an angsty diary entry about how mad you are at the big angry vampire now that you can’t give your first kiss away to the prom king?”

Angry, hot tears burned my eyes, but I refused to let them spill. Vincent had a special way of making me feel stupid, and I hated him for it.

This wasn’t about my first kiss. Not really. It was about having the power to choose taken away from me. All my life, the choice to choose my own path had been taken away from me. I’d just let myself get swept away in the tide of lies.

Bile burned in my throat as I thought about how much I hated him, how I hated all of them. My mom, my dad, Dr. Sharpe, Vincent Feral. Corry was trying a different angle, but he was an asshole for trying to fool me into thinking he was a nice guy. So I hated him too.

And I knew I’d hate this Sterling person just as much.

“Look, I don’t know why you have such a hate boner for me, Feral. I already told you I don’t give a shit about your throne. Was my daddy really so horrible to you that you feel like you can get back at him for being a raging dickbag to me?”

The vampire prince’s lip peeled back, and my heart lurched in my chest, seeing he’d dropped his fangs. They were now glinting in the slice of moonlight leaking in from the hanger’s cracked door. “He was the biggest fucking monster in this country, Princess. He was my own personal Lucifer. He ended my life, and unfortunately for our kind, that isn’t any kind of reprieve. So yeah, tearing open his untouched, sheltered, halfling daughter seems like a damn good way of getting back at him.”

Vincent’s menacing voice was so low and guttural it scraped over my skin like sandpaper. He looked so imposing, standing there with the slash of silver painting his muscular frame, lighting up his bloodied shirt, his smashed nose, his bulging, inky veins.

Vincent Feral was an absolute monster.

But the only thing about him that scared me was how much he made me crave the fire he set inside me whenever he looked at me likethat. It was like some animalistic instinct inside him was telling him to eat me, and the fact that he couldn’t because I was the princess pissed him off. My cheeks flared with heat as I glared up at him defiantly.

“Then why don’t you? Why don’t you ‘tear me open’ then if you’re so hard up for it? Why so adamant that I walk away from the coven if you actually want me to stay and be your new little toy, all in some sad attempt at getting back at my father?”

I hated how hard my heart pounded with him this close to me. By the arrogant lift of his mouth, the smug prick probably thought it was because I was scared of him, not because he was driving my lady bits crazy. Despite how much I hated to have him think I was afraid of him, it was better than him knowing the actual depths to which he was affecting me. Maybe if I just ignored all the messages my vagina was sending me, it would let go of the idea that Vincent Feral was at all a good idea.

“Because, like you, I have two sides, Princess. I have the side that wants to protect you from the monsters inside that house. Brutal males who would give anything to taste that virgin blood and your virgin pussy.” His expression hardened, blood-red eyes glinting in a way that made my breath hitch. “Myself among them.”

“I–I’m not like you,” I balked, throat thickening with an unknown emotion. “I don’t have two sides.”

“Bullshit. You’ve got the human side that wants to heed my warning and run away from here and never look back. Then there is your other side, the side that wants to be eaten.”

“I don’t want to be eaten, asshole.”

Vincent’s head tilted, and his lips stretched wide into a challenging smirk. His eyes were still blood-red, but his pupils had blown up, leaving a thin ring of crimson around obsidian disks, just like Corry’s had in the pharmacy restroom.

Vincent leaned close, his huge, muscular body draped over me, caging me against the Rolls-Royce. He brought his mouth to my ear, dark hair tickling my cheek and his breath feathering over the delicate skin of my throat.

“So you’re telling me, if I were to bite you right now…you’d say no?” He let the question hang in the air for a moment before pressing closer to me, brushing so slightly against me that I could feel the hardness of arousal against my thigh. His hands dropped to hover over my hips, barely touching me. “Or maybe you’d like me to tear you open on a different part of my body.”

His voice had dropped an octave, gravely and as deep as Hell.

My heart rate thundered, my head pounded. Then my damn heart monitor went off. I’d almost forgotten I still wore the stupid thing. Ripping it off my wrist, I flung it to the ground in a hiss of disgust, its existence a sour reminder of all the lies. I returned my attention to Vincent to see his eyes glittering in triumph.

“You’re a fucking asshole, Feral. You got your wish. I’m going to tell your Elders to all fuck off. Then I’m out of here forever. Are you happy?”

His head canted, an arrogant smirk on his lips. “Is that really what you plan on doing?”

“Why can’t you believe me?”

“Because I can scent how badly you want me. You want to stay. Maybe I made a mistake in telling you I’d claim you as mine if it was the only way to get the throne. It was supposed to scare you. Not turn you on.”

My entire body flushed with heat, and my gaze turned venomous, storming with hatred. Not just because I hated him. But because I hated that he was right. Being locked up in that room for years on end, I fantasized about a life of thrill and danger. And now, the promise of one loomed over me in the form of a dangerous, terrifyingly enticing monster. If books had taught me anything, it was normal for a locked-up princess to dream of a life with her knight in shining armor. But Vincent Feral wasn’t exactly a white knight, and this wasn’t a fairytale. If I made the decision to stay here, our tale would be a twisted one for sure.

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