Page 15 of Forsaken By Night

No, but there were many times when he’d wished they had. “They took me back to MoonBound. Named me Lobo and kept me like a dog, even though I didn’t shift again. Not until I was an adult.” He hadn’t known he could. No one had told him about his past. All he knew was that they’d slaughtered his parents and then literally treated him like a dog, keeping him on a chain at night and forcing him to do all the shit work around the clan. It wasn’t until a staged battle for position among MoonBound’s young males that he’d shifted into his totem animal, a wolf.

“What happened when you shifted? Were you afraid?”

“Of shifting?” He shook his head. “I was more afraid of what they were going to do to me.” He closed his eyes, but the memory of being nearly beaten to death played out right there on the back of his eyelids. “It was Bear Roar’s son, Hunter, who talked his father out of killing me. Convinced him I’d be useful. Animals could go places vampires couldn’t, like into other clans’ territories, you know?”

A year later, Hunter had killed his father; and not long after that, Lobo had discovered that he could shift into people and not just animals.

“So what went wrong? Why are you not still with the clan?”

“Because as bad as they think shifting into an animal is, shifting into another vampire is far worse.”

“They kicked you out for that?”

“They could have killed me,” he said. “Most of the clan members wanted to.”

“Those bastards.” Brow furrowed with worry, she hurried back to him, taking his hand once again. God, she was warm. He hadn’t felt a female’s touch in so long—at least, not a female who wasn’t covered in fur. “So what can we do? We can’t just wait here for them.” Scowling, she nibbled on her lower lip. “Wait. You need blood, right? I remember reading somewhere that vampires heal faster when they drink blood.” She flipped her hair away from her slender throat. “Do it.”

There was no hesitation, reminding him once again how brave she’d always been. She’d once gotten between him and a cougar, had been ready to defend him to the death. Her loyalty and willingness to sacrifice herself had always humbled him, and nothing about that had changed.

“Please, Lobo, take it.”

His mouth watered and his fangs punched down, but even as the primal urge to draw her against him and sink his fangs into her rose up, his brain countered with a depressing dose of reality.

“I can’t.”

“Of course you can. I’ve seen you bite plenty of women.”

Was it his imagination, or did she sound a little—or a lot—jealous? It shouldn’t surprise him, given that, as a wolf, she’d barely tolerated the females he’d met for moon feedings. And if things started to get sexual, as most feedings did, her snarls had put a damper on the situation, fast. She’d been so aggressive that he’d even left her locked in his cabin once while he met with a MoonBound female. Hunter might hate him, but there were more females than males in the clan, so he looked the other way when it came to the bimonthly moon fevers.

Lobo had returned home to destroyed furniture, ripped bedding, and a chewed-up door. And when Tehya had smelled what he’d done with the female, she’d bitten him. Hard.

“I won’t take your blood, Tehya. There’s no time. You’re going to need your strength.”

“We’ll make time.” Reaching up, she yanked on her shirt collar, busting one of the buttons and exposing even more of her long, creamy neck and the shadowy hint of cleavage. “You need to heal.”

He inhaled deeply, seeking the same patience he’d always summoned when she gnawed on his shoes or hid his socks, but all he got now was the odor of rusting metal, mildew, and ancient layers of dust and rot. This piece-of-shit trailer smelled like the past, which was probably all he and Tehya had now. Even if Hunter didn’t kill him and lock Tehya in a dungeon for harming a pregnant clan member, they couldn’t be together. They were skinwalkers, shunned by most clans and banned from mating each other.

Wouldn’t want to increase the odds of spawning skinwalker offspring, obviously.

Bitterness soured his mouth. He rarely wasted time dwelling on the unfairness of his situation; he was what he was. But now, with his back up against a wall—or in this case, against a filthy mattress—all he could think about was how he’d been robbed of a future.

Of a pleasant future, anyway.

Damn, that pissed him off. The female of his dreams, literally, had finally come into his life; but even if he survived Hunter, Tehya still couldn’t be his because of some bullshit vampire law.

When have I ever obeyed any law?

True enough. He’d lived on the fringes of vampire society since he was born. Why the fuck should he conform now?

Because I’m about to die, and Tehya’s life is in my hands. Well, there was that.

“Lobo!” Still tugging her collar away from her throat with one hand, she used the other to push down on the towel covering his injury. Not hard, but enough to get his attention.“Drink.”

“You know,” he said lightly, hoping to distract her, “you used to nip me when I ignored you.”

She bared her teeth. “I still can.” Another button popped as she yanked on the shirt. “But you first.”

Fuck, that made him instantly, painfully hard. Every instinct screamed to take advantage of what she was offering, ancient instincts passed down from primitive ancestors whose only pleasures in life came from the acts of filling bellies with food and offspring. But in order to eat and mate, they had to stay alive.

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