Page 111 of Hunted

‘You do have a way with words, little hunter.’

‘I’m serious. There’s no, like… ritual sacrifice thing involved, is there?’

His expression shifts, some of the bite easing, though not the intensity. ‘No. On the contrary, my mate can look forward to a long and… immortal life.’

I’m glad I’m propped up because the shocks just keep coming, and a girl needs a minute.

‘Immortal?’ My voice sounds thin and strange. ‘She… Your mate will become immortal?’

‘Of course.’

Of course.

The casual certainty almost takes me out.

‘H-how?’ The stutter humiliates me, but he doesn’t comment. He’s watching me too closely, perhaps because for once he understands the question isn’t casual curiosity. The mechanics matter. The cost matters.

Valentin’s black gaze holds mine as his voice drops lower, less clipped.

‘There is a binding,’ he says. ‘Not a marriage in the human sense, though humans have borrowed fragments of the concept and dressed them in vows and jewellery. Ours is blood, breath, marrow, essence. It is consummated through exchange and transformation. My blood given. Her body altered. Her life extended beyond mortality.’

The words settle over my skin like cold silk.

Terrifying. But also beautiful.

I hate that.

‘It is not painless,’ he continues. ‘And it is not without risk. The body resists what it cannot comprehend before it learns to adapt. Fever. Convulsions, sometimes. Hallucinations. Hunger. Euphoria severe enough to resemble death if one is unprepared.’

Euphoria.

The word lands far too close to the memory of his mouth between my thighs, and I loathe my brain for making the connection.

‘So she might die,’ I say, dragging this back to hard edges.

‘A possibility.’ He says it with maddening calm, then adds, ‘But I do not believe the mate meant for me will be a weakling.’

Oh, the arrogance. The cold predator certainty that somehow offends and steadies me at once.

I blink at him. ‘You called her inconvenient yesterday.’

For the first time since I’ve known him, he looks almost… chagrined.

It flashes and is gone, replaced by vexation. At himself, maybe. At me for remembering and throwing it back.

Interesting.

I file that away for later, assuming I survive the next forty-eight hours and this conversation doesn’t end with me glamoured, kidnapped, tortured into confessing my darkest secret and accidentally agreeing to immortal vampire marriage before lunch.

‘You didn’t answer my question,’ I press, and my voice shakes a little on the last word. I hope he attributes it to Tezra. Grief. Anger. Anything but the screaming private terror beneath it. ‘Why is someone killing people so you don’t find your mate?’

His expression shutters.

One second I have a man on the edge of candour. The next I have Don Moretti, Vampire King and ruler of this city, all polished reserve and strategic omission.

He turns away. ‘There are always those who believe power should be disrupted when it consolidates. Those who covet what they cannot command and mistake interference for leverage.’

I stare at his back.