Page 1 of Hunted
Chapter 1
Josh
The dream always startedthe same way—more memory than imagination.She would never let me forget that night.
Cold marble.Her delicate, simperingly sweet face...that girlish smile giving way to the monster it concealed.My own hoarse screams.Her mouth on my neck as she stole everything from me, took my life and my free will.That flash of blinding pain before the hunger roared awake and swallowed everything I was.
I jerked upright in bed, breath sawing in and out, hissing through my newly acquired fangs.I didn’t strictlyneedsleep anymore, but sometimes it was a nice relief from being awake.Not this time, though.Sweat glued my shirt to my spine.The sheets tangled around my legs like restraints.My heartbeat felt heavy and too slow in my chest, compressed and wrong.
“Alone,” I panted out, pressing my hands over my chest.“You’re alone, Josh.Alone andalive.”No vampire queen chewed at my neck.No cold grave dirt was being sprinkled over me while some sorcerer muttered and cast black magic.I was alive—mostly.Safe and alone in my room.For now.
I tried to calm my breathing and tap into what my strange new enhanced senses told me.It was late.Or early, depending on your perspective.The guest wing of The Fox was silent.No voices in the hallway.No laughter.Just the soft, invisible hum of the wards against my newly paranormal aura, and the occasional distant creak of old wood settling, the sounds of the historic building that perched above this section of the basement.
Everyone else was likely still asleep.Someone was probably on guard duty, doing rounds or watching the cameras upstairs.But there were no traces of living creatures in my hallway.No heartbeats.No faintly rushing blood calling to me like a rare delicacy...
A glance at my phone showed me it was three a.m.
I looked around the room once more, able to see perfectly without turning on a light.The perks of my new condition.The room was still empty.The nightmare memory was just that.A nightmare.A memory.Nothing more.And yet...I knew I wasn’t entirely alone.I probably never would be again.
I listened harder with all my senses, waiting.
And...there it was.The whisper, curling at the back of my mind like ivy around a broken stone:“Still pretending to be human, my sweet, stubborn little slave?How quaint.”
Acacia’s voice was a passing thought, rather than a command, quieter now, but never gone.It was faint, like a bone-deep bruise that didn’t show on the surface, but never stopped aching.I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead and tried to breathe past the nausea that coiled in my stomach.She wasn’t focused on me right now.The feeling would pass.
“I’m not yours,” I whispered into the silent room.
The room didn’t argue.
Robin had ordered me to move out of the private wing of the inner sanctum deep below The Fox—and I’d agreed with her decision.My new room was in the small, out of the way hall where the rebel court occasionally entertained business associates that they didn’t fully trust.Sadavir had tried to put a positive spin on it.He said it was for my safety, so the others wouldn’t be tempted to get rid of me.Said it would help keep things calm if I wasn’t right up in their nest putting everyone on guard.But we all knew there was more to it than that.
I wasn’t being kept separate for my safety.I was being kept apart fortheirsafety.I was untrustworthy now.Unpredictable.A liability to the entire rebel court.
My current suite—a polite name for what was essentially a nice, comfy cage—sat at the far end of the guest wing.It was a place, as I understood it, that was usually reserved for messengers, uncertain allies, and diplomatic pests.Not for me.Not for someone who used to sit around the kitchen table with the others at dinner, or sprawl on the couch during movie night, or spar in the main gym, or fall asleep gently sandwiched between Ruya and Sadavir after they made love...
For one brief moment, I thought I had found my place in the world, once more.A new home where Sadavir and I didn’t have to live in fear.A family who might grow to love and cherish us.Now, I was a threat to that very peace.An involuntary spy.A ticking bomb no one could disarm.
Acacia might be watching through my eyes right this moment.Listening through my ears.Sifting through my thoughts for some golden nugget of information she could use against the rebel court to ensure they kept going along with her god-awful plan.Sometimes I could almost feel her smile just behind my lips.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed and hunched forward, hands in my hair, trying to catch my breath.My skin felt cold and clammy, like I hadn’t fed in weeks—which was a lie.I’d fed the night before last, under Sadavir’s watch, from a blood bag laced with things Yukio and Martina insisted should help somewhat suppress my hunger.
It hadn’t helped.It never helped.The hunger was always waiting.
It shouldn’t be this bad, according to Richard and Martina, and according to what I’d learned in my time overseeing the vampire queen’s menagerie.But something was making me into even more of a monster than expected.It was probably because of my link with Acacia and her constant check-ins and presence inside my mind.She was more prone to bloodlust and instability than the other vampires I had encountered.And I wouldn’t be surprised if that was trickling into me through our bond, poisoning me with her insanity.
It wasn’t me.It was her influence inside me.But it was hard to remember that logic when the self-doubt crept in.There was an emptiness inside me bigger than the hunger.A gnawing in my gut that told me I wasn’t who I thought I was, and maybe I never had been.
Maybe I was never the good person I had tired so hard to be.Maybe my beta nature, my urge to care for others, the pledge I’d made to serve Sadavir...maybe it was all just a lie hiding this darkness inside me.A darkness that the vampirism had not created, but had simply brought to light.Maybe I’d always been rotten inside, and I’d just been really good at hiding it until now.
I fought my dark, paranoid thoughts and viciously shoved down the hunger that made my mouth dry and my fangs ache.No.This wasn’t who I was.I wasn’t secretly some awful person.
She made me like this.And no matter how far I ran, no matter how many rituals, or counter-charms we tried, no matter how many hope-laced mantras I whispered to myself over the past few days, that truth stuck like a barbed hook in my chest.
Regardless of the reason, I was no longer me.
I used to be kind.I used to be proud to be a beta—steady, protective, gentle.The kind of person who held others together when the cruel world was too much, who held space, who healed, who listened with patience and gentleness and anticipated every need.Now, I was the kind of person they kept at arm’s length.Someone they had to watch their words around.Somone who could betray them or attack them at a moment’s notice.Someone who wanted to taste their hot life’s blood any chance I got, simply for the pleasure of it.
I crawled out of bed and made my way to the bathroom.The silly human stories about vampires not having reflections weren’t true.The only time a vampire didn’t have a reflection was if they used a spell or potion to achieve that effect.And that wasn’t really something most people found useful, in the day-to-day.I turned on the bathroom light out of stubbornness more than need.I could see just fine without it, but the color of the bulb cast a warmer glow on the room.It made my reflection seem at least alittle bitless cold and foreign
