Page 14 of Crave

The entry door tinkled, and I lifted my head up from its defeated position. It would take me a little while to get my shit together, and the town needed time to get used to me. Or hell, maybe they wouldn’t, and they’d train someone else up to be the town doctor. It was easy to forget I was immortal. I would always look like a twenty-three-year-old bush doctor who spent too much time swimming the Sydney beaches. I’d always have the bite mark on my thigh where the Great White took a nibble while I was swimming, but my turning had healed the wound without any lasting damage. I’d been lucky that my maker, Steve, had stumbled across me, washed up on the rocks off Domain Beach, and changed me.

Steve was absolutely fucking insane. The guy had spent too much time in the sun, and it’d baked something in his head. We might’ve been able to withstand the sun here in the States, but in Australia? There was no fucking ozone layer, so we burned like a crisp in the mid-afternoon glare. It was definitely not a place for vampires, who dwelled better in the darkness.

I’d moved here not long after I was able to control myself around humans, but Steve had stayed. He liked to go swimming in the ocean at night, punching sharks in the nose, or fighting them over bleeding prey. He explored the depths of the coral reef, free dived until the pressure forced him to emerge, and lived in a cave off the coastal cliffs.

For a time there between the 1860s and the 1920s, he’d lived exclusively off shark blood. He’d insisted it was better for us, since the red blood cells weren’t created by dirty bone marrow, but by specialist organs near their gonads and their esophagus.

Anyway, there’d been a downturn in shark attacks over those decades, because even sharks didn’t want sharp teeth near their gonads.

After that, surfing had come to Australia, and the Aussies took it up with force, me included. But it meant there were way too many people in the water, and no one was going to miss some guy who looked like he was trying to suck off a shark.

The scents in the waiting room finally permeated my senses. My fangs dropped and ached, which was an entirely inappropriate response. Manix tended to smell good, like a barbeque in the distance. But the two Manix in the waiting room? They smelled like perfectly cooked porterhouse steak after you’d been on a diet of bamboo for a month.

It couldn’t be an Omega thing, because Mischa hadn’t smelled like that. Maybe it was a mated, unbonded pair thing?

I bit back a groan, pasting a professional smile on my face as Quinn and Susannah Wilkie walked into my examination room. No, not Wilkie, apparently. I wondered if unmated Omega pairs took each other's names? Did they decide on one until they had an Alpha, or did they keep their own family names? A question for another time, that was for sure.

“Susannah, Quinn. Thank you for stopping by. Come on in. Or you can do your appointments separately, if that would make you more comfortable?” My eyes drifted to Quinn, the Omega masquerading as a Beta. He was handsome, but after a century of keeping the gene pool small and the male to female ratio being so skewed, the current generation of Manix were all oddly attractive. When your options were limited, sometimes something as mundane as the physical attractiveness of your partner mattered most.

Quinn had light brown hair that had a slight curl to it, so it was a little chaotic. He had that warm skin tone most of the Manix had, and eyes that bordered on aquamarine. His chin had a slight cleft in it, and his nose was slightly crooked, as if it had been broken and never set correctly. He was handsome; it was undeniable.

As the muted light from the skylight hit Susannah’s cheekbones and the freckles spread across them, I recognised that they both had a quiet kind of beauty. Not as flashy and cover model beautiful as some of the Omegas I’d interviewed since my arrival, but a quiet sort of intensity, like they were trying to hide their uniqueness under the radar. Which, if I was right, was exactly what they were doing.

“Let’s get the truth out in the open, and I’m sure we’ll get along like a house on fire.” I turned to Quinn. “You’re an Omega.” A furtive nod. “But everyone thinks you're a Beta?” Another nod. This was going to be slow going, then. “Even the Alpha General thinks you're a Beta? Your parents?” Courtland De Léon had senses almost as good as a vampire. If whatever Quinn was doing to keep his designation under wraps could fool him, it was probably something I should know about.

It was Susannah who answered. “Nobody knows. Except Quinn and me.”

“And now you,” Quinn added.

I nodded solemnly. I wanted them to know that I understood the gravity of their trust. “Everything you tell me is confidential, from everyone. Even the Alpha General.”

Quinn hoisted himself up onto the examination table. “It almost doesn’t matter anymore. I’m tired of hiding.”

Susannah’s head whipped toward him, her brow folded into a frown. “It's too soon. What if the Manix forgive and forget Wilkie’s betrayal, and they make you go back? You know if your parents found out they’d have you mated off to the next available Pack.”

“I’m not a kid anymore, Zanny. I can stand up to them.” Susannah snorted derisively, making Quinn bristle, but I could smell her fear beneath the bravado.

I lifted a hand to stop the argument. “There’s no need to rush into anything. Take your time to decide. But I think you should start from the very beginning.”

The tale they told me filled me with rage. Their former Pack Alpha was a dead man walking.

9

MERRICK

This was creepy. Logically, I knew that. Well, the man knew that. The Beast? He thought this was the best idea we’d had since last night. In fact, every night for the last nine days I’d sat in the front yard of a Legion General’s house.

I’d snuck out of my bed beside Murphy, leaving out the same note I’d placed on the dining table every night. But Murphy was a notoriously heavy sleeper—not a good thing for a soldier, but great when his lifelong partner was doing his best impression of a stalker. I didn’t trust Wilkie not to steal them back. If he tried, I wanted to be here to put him down permanently.

Hidden in the trees behind the house, I knew which room used to be Susannah’s, and given the soft light that glowed behind her curtains, it was still her room. We’d been nine the first time I’d snuck into her bedroom. It had been an innocent thing back then; we’d whispered ghost stories and eaten candy I’d managed to hide away from my brothers.

Those nights had just been us. Both Quinn and Murphy’s parents were strict, so they stood no chance of joining us, and at the time, I hadn’t minded. I’d always been exceptionally good at hiding my scent, which was the only reason I hadn’t been pounded by her brothers as I got older. I’d enjoyed it being a small moment for just Susannah and I in those darkened hours, when we’d whisper our greatest hopes, and I’d hold her in my arms as we talked about our greatest fears.

When we’d hit fifteen, and it was clear I was an Alpha and she was a Beta, things changed. The innocence of those nights disappeared, to be replaced by hormones and my first kiss. Well, my first kiss with a girl. Murphy had been my first everything else.

“I should be surprised you’re out here, but I’m really not.”

The soft, lilting voice behind me made my chest leap with happiness, like it did every single time I heard it. Closing my eyes, I breathed in her scent, taking in the feel of the air around us. Then I straightened my face, because she wasn’t ready for that expression.

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