Page 42 of Claimed

It has no idea. Good.

I lift the gun and fire. The stake arcs across the room in the flash of an eye, striking the creature in the chest. The effect is instantaneous. The vampire drops, incapacitated. It lies on the floor, eyes staring up at me with a mixture of shock and something I am sure it has not experienced in a long time: fear.

To kill a vampire, you must stake it through the heart and remove the head. The back of my weapon contains a relatively sharp knife. Not too sharp. Not so sharp the dead thing does not suffer. These creatures are responsible for me feeling the greatest pain I have ever experienced in my life. I do not merely want to kill them. I want to hurt them. My worst and cruelest instincts have been activated by losing Anya. I will find her, and every day I do not find her, they will suffer violently.

One moment I am being condescended to by a beast who wants to feed on me, the next a pile of ash is forming on the floor where it was standing. It is almost anticlimactic.

“Anya!” I shout her name, though I already know she is not here. I would be able to scent her if she was. Her name burns through me. I feel the intensity of the loss all over again.

I wish I had never met that vampire. I wish I had never heard thewordvampire. I will erase their kind from the planet for what they have done to me and the one I love.

There is a brief tussle at the door as the pack stragglers finally catch up. They are not quite as fast. They are able to follow my lead, but not keep up with my pace.

“You found a vampire?”

The question comes just as I am restraining myself from pissing on its ashes.

“Yes,” I say. “I did.”

“Any intel about Anya we can action?”

“No.”

“Alexei?”

A new, deeper, but familiar voice interjects.

I turn to see my brother, Vlad. Vlad has been in St. Petersburg for several years now. He is thirteen months younger than I am, and brilliant in many respects. He left the pack several years ago in order to pursue economic opportunities. He is the last person I expected to see here. I didn’t know he was even aware of what is going on.

I notice that he is dressed in a tailored suit. An expensive watch of some kind flashes on his wrist. His hair is cut in the way rich, soft men’s hair is cut. He looks like he stepped out of a magazine. All this means that he has not taken his wolf form. He did not come to hunt. He must have come by vehicle. What the hell is he doing here?

“What are you doing here?”

He walks up to me and wraps me in an embrace. My bare skin meets the fine exterior of his suit. This is the hug of my brother. Blood of my blood. There has been very little to soothe me since Anya was taken, but his presence helps a little.

I have always been the older brother. I will always be the older brother, but Vlad has a certain serious nature that I appreciate in this moment. He will be a strong and forceful ally.

“I heard what happened, and I’m here to help,” he says. “Is that a harpoon?”

“It’s a vampoon,” I say. “Want to see how it works?”

His brows lift in surprise. “Maybe…”

I lift the weapon and shoot the vampire that was coming through the door behind him straight through the heart. It collapses backward, and I leap on it, removing the head with no small amount of effort.

When I turn around, Vlad and the others are looking at me with expressions ranging from admiration to horror. I am the worst and the best version of myself at this moment.

“We need to get you out of here. This is not doing anything to get Anya back.”

“I disagree. This is teaching them that there is a cost to taking my mate. I will kill every vampire I encounter until I get her back. It is that simple.”

“Or one of them kills you, Alexei.” Vlad scowls at me, then his eyes slide to the others, lower ranked members, those who need our guidance. He stops himself from saying whatever harsh words he feels I need to hear, and instead puts a hand on my shoulder. “We will get her back.”

I know there are those who think I am losing it. The alpha is supposed to be a calm, steady, dominant influence. The alpha is not supposed to be in the streets murdering those who are even tangentially related to a loss.

That is what my father would say if he was here, I’m sure. He would tell me to be stoic, to hide my pain. He would probably tell me to forget about Anya entirely, the same way he told meto forget Lilly. My tendency is to become attached to those who need protection, and to those who rely on me. I believe it makes me a good alpha, though my father always saw it as weakness.

But I am not stoic.

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