Page 58 of Claimed

“You’ve never chosen any male. Be it instinct or infection, you’ve been puppeted by biology. You and Alexei are fated mates. There’s no element of choice in that. He did not have the choice to choose you. He had to. Just as you had to choose him. The only one of us who has ever made a decision was me. I chose you, Anya. After you ate my progeny, I could just as easily havedestroyed you. It would have been the proper and correct thing to do, after all. I alone made the decision to want you, to take you, to love you. Me. Not him.”

I stare at him and realize that he is right. There is no flaw in his argument. I have never chosen anything. I have never achieved anything. I have never done anything besides what was somehow preordained.

In this bickering, we have all forgotten something. I am not the only woman who has been loved in the passage. Vlad has been standing silent, too silent, and far too still since he came on this grisly scene. I do not think he has been able to process it. Seeing one’s mate dead and drained, left on the ground like a discarded snack packet has to be a sight that twists the mind until it snaps.

As his brain breaks, Vlad charges Dom. He lets out a roar of rage as it finally sinks in that the mate he had only just found has surrendered herself unto death in an effort to prevent a war. Elena is gone, and it is because nobody would listen to her. She was desperate enough to sacrifice herself to try to achieve what she believed in. And now her mate is trying to avenge her death.

It takes Dom less than a second to kill Vlad. He snaps his neck the way a farmer kills a chicken, without any malice or difficulty. Vlad’s body drops heavily into the embrace of his corpse mate, a terrible cruelty inflicted before my eyes.

There are now two bodies in the hall. This is going from bad to worse in a hurry. I do not think I can handle the toll that is being exacted all around me. It is all too terrible. It is awful. There is so much death, and it feels as though there has always been death when it comes to Alexei. Our every interaction has been marred by it.

I do not know how to react. I cannot begin to. Could not even if I wanted to. I am numb. The terribleness of what I have just seen will haunt me to the end of my days.

I look at Alexei. He has to fix this. Somehow, he has to make this right. But how? It seems entirely impossible to me. This situation is devolving into a deadly tit for tat that has no obvious end.

“You have killed my brother,” he says flatly. I have to wonder at his state of mind now, seeing what he is seeing, barely reacting to the most terrible of atrocities. “You have destroyed my most trusted advisor. You have infected my mate. And you have escaped the bonds I put upon you. You are going to regret this, vampire. Anya. Come. Here. Now.”

There’s something in Alexei’s tone that makes my body move. The sight of Dom killing has shattered his hold on me for the moment. For just a second I have the ability to escape the vampire’s grasp.

I rush to Alexei’s side, grip his arm, and look back at the dealer of death standing over those he has claimed.

“Why?” Alexei’s voice cracks ever so slightly as he trains his useless weapon on Dom. “Why has all of this happened this way?”

I take the question as being grief-ridden and rhetorical, but Dom decides to answer it.

“Two kopeks,” Dom says. “You gave me two kopeks. I give you two corpses. We are even.”

“Is that really what this is about? The coins?” Alexei sounds absolutely confused. I do not think he is able to understand whathe has just seen either. Death usually comes with more fanfare and drama. It is rarely visited in such a casual fashion.

“The older one gets, the less tolerable little slights are,” he says with a slight shrug. “Imagine what I will do to you for the indignity of having been chained up in ultraviolet prison. This is not over, Alexei. I have lived for generations and I will live generations more. My vengeance will be felt for hundreds of years to come. Run along. Go back upstairs, and get your soldiers out of my way. I am not in a merciful mood.”

Elena and Vlad are dead—destroyed as if they were nothing, because to Dom, they are nothing. They are not on his breeding list. Alexei and I are alive because we are part of his game.

“Not you,” Dom says as we start to move. He extends a hand and I feel myself being drawn back to him, almost as if he were a magnet and I a piece of iron. In very short order, I am back in his grasp, at his mercy.

I see an expression of pure determination establish itself on my handsome mate’s face.

“I’m not going without her,” Alexei says. “I’m never going to leave her. I may not have had any choice in being her mate, but I will choose to die for her on any given day. She’s not yours, Dom. She never will be.”

He pulls his gaze away from the vampire, and looks at me. I see less arrogance and anger now. Instead, I see regret.

“I am sorry, Anya,” Alexei says. “I should have told you. I have exposed you to evil beyond comprehension. I have failed to protect you. I thought my lie might do that, but it has only done damage.”

I am starting to feel very afraid.

And I am starting to lose my temper.

I am furious at Dom’s murders. I am angry because he has taken away my sense of having been chosen by Alexei. Every single part of my world has been infested and corrupted by him. Every time I see this creature, something terrible has either happened, or will soon happen. I know I cannot end him, but I can hurt him. Sometimes all a bee can do is sting. They do so even knowing it will be their end. They do it because they have decided it is the right course of action.

I have come to the same conclusion.

I turn in the vampire’s grasp, and I sink my teeth into his hand hard, taking my wolf form as I do, so my canines rip into the cold creature’s flesh. I take a literal chunk out of Dom. The foul, aged taste of it would be enough to make me retch if it were not for my fury.

He can kill me if he likes. I do not care what happens to me. Everything good has been taken from me time and time again. Every time I tried to step out, to be something other than what fate or some man determined for me, it has been ruined.

I am furious with Dom, with Alexei, with Elena, with Vlad, and with myself. We are all acting on terrible impulses, and though my action now is no different, I imagine it will satisfy my fury somehow.

“Feral thing,” Dom notes, not so much as a quaver in his voice. He looks down at me, and I feel his will once more inside me. He wants to direct me, to control me. He wants to make me his…

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