บททั้งหมดของ Compilation Of Short Stories : บทที่ 21 - บทที่ 30

The silence of the old mansion was not an absence, but a thing, a velvet shroud that waited for the sun to drain away beyond the horizon. Anya always found the night shift the most intimate, a realm of darkness where day's proprieties opened out into shadow. Her new patient, however, was the secret at the heart of that realm. His file was a masterpiece of careful evasion, but his state was one she'd learned about in illicit medical texts and whispered legend. He was a vampire, and his needs were only just beginning to announce themselves.His name was Valerian, a name as ancient and commanding as the man. He did not rest on the antiseptic bed, but on a low dark-leather divan, his body a marble study of repose until the last flicker of sun had gone. Anya's breath always caught when he stirred. It was not a start, or a gasp, but an easy movement from statue to living flesh. His cognac-colored, older eyes would fly open, and the broad space would narrow, pulling energy into the vortex of

The tall ceiling of the big hall was loaded with dense air of pine smoke and cooked meat and raw, hostile smell of ruling wolves. It was a smell Akira used to know. Today, it was the smell of the enemy.Three years. Three years of building a new life, clawing her way to the top of an alien pack's hierarchy, for everything to be torn from her in such a humiliating way: standing in the lion's den as an ambassador, and not a supplicant. Her breasts rose in a metronome against her flesh, but her own face was a cold, sculpted mask. She would not give them anything.And then she saw him.Remus was standing on the other side of the corridor, head above the pack behind him, shoulders straining the black material of his fitted shirt. He was the very image of Alpha: strength, fury, and a heart-stoppingly cruel, brutally beautiful face that even now, after everything, sent a perilous spurt of heat straight to her core. His stormy blue eyes raked over the sea of delegates and fastened on her. T

The scent of the stranger's sweat and her own hunger was a thick, heavy perfume in the air, a pain of betrayal as sweet honey on her lip.Anya's head was thrown back, her spine curving into a sweet, agonized shape against the hard wood of the wall, her fingers tangled in the black, damp hair of the man whose mouth claimed hers. Rhys was his name, he was not her mate. And the primitive, filthy sound that wrenched from her own throat when his teeth raked her hard nipple was proof of a hunger unfed by her bonded alpha for far too long.Rhys's fingers moved between her legs, his fingers of skill slipping deep within her wet, hungry heat, his palm moving back and forth over her clit in a rhythm that made stars appear behind her closed eyes. She was on the brink, inches away from a shattering orgasm, the gasping guilts and wants and raw physical hunger all converging on a point of screaming pleasure.That was when the atmosphere in the room shifted.It was minute, a pressure drop prior to

The air in the lodge was thick with the scent of pine smoke, musk, and raw, untamed power. It was a smell that seeped into her pores, a primal perfume that announced her new reality far more effectively than any words could. Elara stood just inside the great wooden door, her heart not hammering in fear, but pounding with a fierce, anticipatory beat that echoed deep in her core. She was here. This was her beginning.Two pairs of eyes held her, their gaze a physical weight. One was the color of a winter storm, the other of dark earth; both were filled with a heat that promised to devour her. They were the pillars of the pack, the twin forces of authority and desire she was now bound to please. And the thrilling, terrifying truth was that she wanted to. More than anything.“Come closer, little mate.” The Alpha’s voice was a low rumble, like distant thunder promising a summer storm. He hadn’t moved from his chair by the great stone hearth, a throne of carved oak and wolf pelts. He was all

The air in the cramped apothecary back room was thick enough to taste, a cloying mix of dried feverfew, sharp ozone, and pure, undiluted hatred.Zara, the human clinic’s head physician, had her hands planted flat on the scarred wooden table, her knuckles white. Across from her, Ronan, the lead mender for the city’s shifter coven, leaned against a shelf of trembling crystal vials, a smirk playing on his lips that made her want to commit acts of profound violence.“Your so-called ‘holistic’ tinctures are poisoning my patients, Ronan,” she snarled, her voice low and venomous. “Another wolf-shifter collapsed in my clinic today. His system was flooded with enough wolfsbane to stop three hearts. I had to pump his stomach for an hour.”Ronan’s smirk didn’t falter. He pushed off the shelf, his tall frame seeming to fill the small space. “Perhaps if your kind understood that a shifter’s metabolism is not a human’s, you’d see it was a necessary purge. He came to me with silver toxicity. Your sc