Page 47 of Claimed

She calls out to me through a door, which I shatter into slivers with the impact of my body, making it burst off the hinges and out of the frame.

Finally, I see my mate.

She is dressed most strangely. Her hair has been curled, and bows have been tied into it. She is wearing a pink puffy silk dress that makes her look like my grandmother’s toilet paper covers.

“It wasn’t locked, you know,” she says. “I just couldn’t move. He won’t let me.”

I run to her and wrap her up in my arms, feeling her body against mine with the greatest of relief. She is stiff against me, not because of her own reluctance, but because the damn vampire is still exerting influence, even now, with her in my arms.

“Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”

“I’m okay,” she assures me. “Now that you’re here, everything is okay. I told him this was ridiculous, but he insisted.”

“Who insisted?”

“I did.”

I turn with Anya in my arms to face the undead creature who stole her. He is standing in the doorway behind me, surrounded by the shattered frame in a way that only serves to accentuate his uncanny grooming. There is not a hair out of place on his head, not a speck of dust on his suit. He repels reality and substitutes his own cold self instead.

“It’s time we talked, animal,” he says. I want to kill him, but that would require putting Anya down, and I want her out of here more. I am going to take her somewhere they will never be able to reach her. I am going to…

“We have nothing to talk about. I am leaving.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Dom says. “This is a matter of my daughter, and your pack’s survival.”

“I don’t know anything about your daughter.”

“Of course you do. You’re holding her.”

The crazed undead lunatic thinks Anya is his daughter? That would explain why she has not been killed. It might be a delusion worth catering to.

“She’s my mate,” I remind him.

“In the eyes of the law, she’s nothing to you. She’s not married, is she? I see no ring on her finger. Were you going to do her the honor? Or did you intend to simply use her like an animal?”

Anya looks at the vampire, and then her eyes slide to me. There is a slight smirk on her lips, and she lifts her brow in what might be considered something of a challenge. She is playing along with the creature. I do not know why. It could be a survival instinct on her part, an attempt to ingratiate herself into the predator’s good graces.

“I had intended to wed, yes, but…”

“Then you must ask me for her hand.”

“Excuse me?”

The notion of asking a vampire for my own mate’s hand in marriage is ridiculous. She is my mate. I would kill every dead creature in the world for her.

“I have taken this female as my daughter,” Dom explains with a slight sigh that indicates his impatience with my stupidity. “I could have taken her as a pet. It is not uncommon for vampires to leash your kind, trot them about in ways designed to humiliate and hurt them. I have given your mate very special treatment.”

“You’ve dressed her like a doll.”

“She is a doll, isn’t she? She is pretty and delicate and she is precious. She needs to be protected,” Dom adds. “She needs to be someone in the world with absolute protection from vampire kind, doesn’t she?”

The vampire is offering Anya his protection the only way he knows how. It is strange, but vampires are weird. Their bodies are dead and their rituals are bizarre. They act according to overly strict sets of arbitrary rules, because they don’t know how to live the way real things do.

Aside from her ridiculous outfit, Anya truly does seem unharmed. She has obviously been fed, and I don’t think she has been beaten. But I will not know the full extent of the damage until I have her safe at home.

“What is the point of this, vampire?”

I do not know why I am bothering to ask. Those who have no hearts do not know love. They only know power. So this is a power game. All of this from the beginning has been about this creature’s need to dominate and control.

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