Page 44 of Hunted Mate
Karl cracks his neck, leaning his head to the side as he does, and fixing me with a sadistic grin. “Go ahead and try, little brother.”
I hear my father laugh, and in an instant I am transported back to a childhood I’ve done my best to forget. Orion always liked to pit his pups against one another. According to him, it was his way of ensuring we were as strong as possible. I think he just enjoyed watching us hurt each other.
Today, I’ll be showing Karl no mercy.
CHAPTER 9
Calista
The Library at New Orleans is the greatest repository of literature on the supernatural and paranormal in the world, so I am told, repeatedly, by a very proud librarian who has me by the hand as she leads me through the area of the house dedicated to books.
“I heard what happened to your research, and I am so sorry,” she says. “It must have been a terrible loss.”
“It was unpleasant,” I say, deciding to go for an understatement because right now I am surrounded by towering stacks of books that go all the way up to the ceiling in many places, and I am sure contain so much more information than anything I ever had in the basement.
I reach for a bookOrigin of the Vampire Species, and open the cover.
Before I can so much as read a single word, there is a light prick on the back of my neck. Barely a scratch. I swat at it, thinking some nasty fly has mistaken me for a meal.
Within seconds, I am fading to black.
I wake up in a cool white room, lying between crisp white sheets. My body aches and feels like it is on fire, but there are no flames. When I look down at myself, everything seems proper and familiar.
The scream I let out is one of fear and pain. It doesn’t sound like my voice. It sounds raw, like I’ve been screaming already, but I don’t remember it. What the fuck is going on?
“Be quiet,” an officious nurse says, bustling in. “You’re fine.”
“I don’t feel fine. Why am I here? What happened? Where’s Gray?”
“The doctor will answer all of your questions soon enough,” he says, taking my hand and putting a blood pressure cuff around my arm. I let him do it, because I assume medical care is better than not medical care, but it still doesn’t feel good. The hot sensation is starting to subside, and the aches are sort of working themselves out as they move.
“What happened to me?”
“The doctor. Will answer. Your questions,” the nurse repeats firmly, as if I’m inconveniencing him by asking anything, as if you’re just supposed to accept waking up in a weird bed that’s not yours.
“Where’s the doctor, then?”
“Coming soon.”
“What happened to nice nurses?” I mutter the question to myself.
“They’re gone,” he says. “They’re all gone, and we’re back. The nurses who inexplicably choose to be nurses even though we dislike people and would rather they actually die.”
“What?”
“Hm?” He looks at me with anobody will ever believe you if you tell them I said thatexpression.
I fall silent. Something is deeply wrong. I let the nurse take my vitals, and then he leaves the room.
I get up. Right away.
I don’t feel sick. I don’t seem to be injured. Those are two very concerning things given I seem to be in a hospital. Usually if you wake up in a place like this, you’re missing a bit of something, or something has gone really wrong in some way.
If anything, I feel better than I have in a long time. I feel strong. I feel incredibly fucking strong. And I feel relaxed, too. I’ve been stressed for a really long time, but that low-key anxiety that had started to feel like my personality isn’t there. I stretch, finding myself wearing a white hospital gown. I wonder what happened to my clothes. I wonder what happened in general. I don’t remember anything since getting to New Orleans. That’s suspicious.
I stretch again.
Biiiggg stretch.
