Axel
The crickets surrounding the woods and marsh near the vampire’s lair make so much noise my head wants to explode. Or maybe my head wants to detonate because my mate stands before me. Luna, her hair a glorious shade of purple, is trapped in a cage like a dog, teeth bared like I’m the one who put her there.
I’m going to tear the vampires’ limbs from their bodies with my bare teeth for this.
She must have been in her skin when the vamps took her, as now she stands there naked. It takes every ounce of willpower in me not to rip apart her cage and take her in my arms.
I don’t think she’d like that very much, though.
The enormity of my mistake hits me again. I insisted on severing our mate bond, and now I wish to hell I hadn’t done something do drastic, even to protect the pack. And yet, even though the elder destroyed the bond, turning the crescent moon on my arm into just another battle scar from my life, I can’t get Luna out of my mind. Thoughts of her haunt me like a banshee, wailing for the dead.
“Luna,” I say, staring at her through the bars of the cage they put her in. I can smell the burns on my hands from the silver, but I can’t let my wolf heal me right now. I have to stay in human form and convince her to come home.
“Get away from me,” Luna snarls.
“Luna,” I say again, the rest of the words I want to say clogged in my throat.
“Leave me alone.”
“I can’t do that, Luna,” I say quietly. “You’re in my bloodstream. You consume my every waking hour and haunt my dreams like a wraith every night.”
I step closer to the cage again, but she backs away, looking over her shoulder. When she turns back to face me, a look of anguish torments her features, and the nights’ shadows darken her expression. Without answering, she lifts her palms and studies them.
In the faint moonlight, I notice the blisters on her palms, and rage throbs in my temples. Those fucking vampires. She must have burned the shit out of her hands when she gripped the bars of the cage, too. I’d give anything to take her pain away right now.
“You’re coming home with me tonight,” I say firmly. “There’s no other choice.”
“Why should I?” she demands. “You broke me, Axel. You left me ruined.”
She sniffles, and my chest tightens until I can barely breathe. “I’m sorry. You know how fucking sorry I am.”
“You got no idea what it’s been like for me since you dragged me out of the swamp,” she says. “I didn’t want to be bonded with you or anybody. I didn’t know what it meant at all.
And then to have that bond erased…” Her voice cracks, sending a million glass splinters through my heart.
“I know,” I say miserably, because there’s nothing else I can say. Every word from her lips is the truth.
She crosses her arms defiantly over her tits, fuller now than when we found her half-starved in the swamp. “And then I find out you demolished my home in Bogbeast Waters.
You’re nothing but a liar and a betrayer. I’m not going anywhere with you.”
I swallow and continue. “I was wrong to sever the bond between us, Luna. I was trying to do my job, to look out for the pack’s safety and put them first. I didn’t think I had a choice.”
She casts her gaze at the ground.
“I should have been more patient and taught you everything you need to know,” I admit quietly. A man like me, an Alpha, doesn’t admit he’s wrong easily, but I can’t stand the thought of her hating me so much. She deserves the truth. “I should have treasured you as the most precious thing in the world, because that’s what you are. I’ll do anything to get you back. Anything in the world. Name it, and it’s yours.”
A shrewd expression forms on her face. I can almost see the chit she’s stored in some pocket in her mind, which she’ll bring out and use against me at a later date. “Anything?” she asks.
I swallow again and nod. “You’ll see-I’ve changed. Things will be good with us when I bring you home. I’ll make sure of it.”
“My home will never be with you,” she says in a voice so low I shouldn’t be able to hear it-but the intensity pouring through her words comes through as if shouted them into a megaphone.
Luna loathes me, pure and simple.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” I promise. With a sigh, I pivot and stride along the damp ground toward the vampire’s lair.
At the door, I lift my hand and hammer against the metal and wood. The sound seems to echo and dissipate, like swamp fog swirling around the trees.
“They’re not there,” Luna calls.
It’s the first thing she’s said to me in a civil tone since I arrived-I’ll take it as progress.
“Then I’ll find them,” I tell her.
Vampires stink like ash and death, so they shouldn’t be too difficult to track down. Just as I pivot to go on a blood-sucker hunt, a vehicle pulls into the driveway. It looks old and elegant, a 21st-century Bentley, and it gleams like polished silver in the faint moonlight.
Evan and Drake, two of the nastiest vampires in Jacksonville, emerge from the car, talking loudly and grinning like they’ve just scored crimson meals and hot pussy.
Evan rounds the bumper of his vehicle, still chatting with Drake. But then he stops, stares at me, and lets his eyes flash with red.
I return an equally assaulting glare. “I’ve come to get my woman.”
“Have you now?” Evan’s lips curve into a cold smile. “What makes you think we’re going to give her up?”
“You don’t like the taste of wolf, for one. She’s young and inexperienced. She’s of no use to your kind.”
His smile becomes a taunting grin as he saunters toward me. “You’re
here, so I guess the bitch has a use after all.”
I clench and unclench my fingers. “What do you want, blood-sucker?
Evan stops and stands before me with Drake by his side. “You know the answer already. We want territory. Give us Creebay Preserve, and we might have a deal.”
His request slugs me like a fist to the gut. Creebay Preserve is all the hunting ground the pack has left. Our pack fought for that land as Florida sank into the sea and every creature’s habitat shrunk. Creebay is a tiny fraction of the land we once hunted, but it’s all we could carve out for ourselves in the new world. The pack once commanded the hundreds of acres making up Bogbeast Waters, until the hurricanes and tornadoes claimed it as their own, making the swampland unfit to live. Only panthers and a few strange souls choose to live in Bogbeast, side by side with the swamp monsters, ogres, and alligators.
The two vampires move in on me, and though they have a few inches on me, I stand steady, unafraid. I could shift and rip their tonsils from their throats if I chose to. But killing them wouldn’t get Luna back-one wolf can take out a few vamps, but not a whole army of them, and I know there are more on the way.
“Creebay’s not an option,” I say. “It’s our hunting ground.”
“Then Luna is not an option for you,” Evan says with a shrug, pushing past me.
“Wait,” I say, trying to calm my raging heartbeat.
“Why should I?” Evan says, standing before his front door. He shoves his hand in his pocket and retrieves a few jangling keys.
I glance over at Luna, standing stock-still in the middle of that fucking cage with her arms hanging by her side, and my heart tears apart. “We have some other property in South Jacksonville, closer to the ocean. We haven’t done much with it because there’s no game for hunting, but I’ll consider giving you a piece of it. It’s called Dead Waters. It would be perfect for your clan.”
Evan barks out a laugh and turns to face me. “You’re a funny one. Dead Waters is called that because it’s dead. The land and all its occupants. Nothing can live there.”
“You don’t have a beating heart. Why should it matter?” I know I’m grasping at straws. Dead Waters is one of the foulest bogs on the planet, thanks to the disasters that left it uninhabitable.
“Let’s see,” Evan says, making a show of tapping his lip with his forefinger and directing his gaze skyward. “Do I want a piece of land where I’ll have to wade through four feet of water to get to my home in the treetops? Or do I want the Creebay Preserve with its lush forests and waterways and the perfect spot for a domicile worthy of my stature? Hmmm. I can’t decide.”
I glance at Luna again. Wet streaks glisten on her cheeks.
A flare of pain shoots through my chest. The only way we managed to secure Creebay was to sign treaties granting hunting rights to a few of the other supernaturals as long as they stay out of our way. What will happen if I give our territories to the vamps?
I turn back to Evan and Drake, who both stare at me with eyes like cold gunmetal.
Then, the fatal blow to my heart occurs-Luna shifts into her wolf form, throws back her head, and howls in anguish.
Evan grins widely. “Oh, this is rich. She’s got you by the short and curlies, Wolfie.”
“Shut up,” I snap. I work my lips between my teeth as I consider my options. “I can grant you ten acres in the north.”
Evan laughs coldly. “Ten acres? That’s hardly worth the toilet paper you wiped your ass with this morning.”
He pivots and fits his key in the lock.
“Okay, thirty acres,” I say as Luna continues to howl.
“One hundred, and you’ve got a deal,” Evan says, twisting open the door.
The entire preserve is only two-hundred acres. How can I possibly give the vampires half of our territory? “Fifty,” I counter.
“Seventy-five,” Evan says, still keeping his back to me.
My teeth grind together. Luna’s cries are like jagged metal twisting into my body. “Sixty,” I say, as the earth crumbles beneath my feet.
“You have a deal,” Evan says, tossing me the keys. “Unlock your bitch, and we’ll sign an agreement.”
As I rush for my mate, he calls after me. “We’ll assume ownership at once.”
I’m sure they will. I’ve got a shitload of explaining to do to my pack. But first, I have to convince Luna to come home, or I just gave away almost half our land for nothing.