All Chapters of Marked By My Prey : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

“...is rather scrawny for a human…” A finger jabs my cheek. My eyelids threaten to twitch at the intrusion but I force them still. “...Are you certain she's a hunter?” The voice that wakes me is unfamiliar, too close, and dripping with contempt as they poke me again. I don't open my eyes. I keep my breathing slow, even, dragging my mind out of a heavy sleep. How many hours was I out for? The sunless gloom of this room makes it impossible to tell, but my body feels unnaturally rested. Too rested. Then the silence hits me. The agonizing fire of the bond is gone. The pain that had reduced me to a writhing mess has vanished completely, replaced by a strange, humming warmth deep beneath my neck. Because I drank from him. The realization twists my stomach. I gave in. I swallowed his blood and betrayed everything the Order taught me. I bought my life at the cost of my dignity. Disgust threatens to break my composure, but I force my muscles to stay lax, keeping my ey

The vampire in front of me is insane. “...Are you completely daft?” I stare at him for a long moment, waiting for his stoic face to crack into a laugh that never comes. “The gods? Trying to kill me? Me? That's the best lie you could come up with?” His eyes darken. “I am not ly—” “That's the stupidest thing you've said since kidnapping me.” I shake my head, taking a half-step back from the bed. “Do you even hear yourself? The gods. The actual gods. Odin, Hel, Loki, Freya—” “I know who the gods are.” “And you expect me to believe those gods want me dead?” "Whether you believe me or not changes nothing.” I frown as I cross my arms tightly across my chest. “What’s that supposed to mean?” “It means I didn't expect you to believe me,” he says, a trace of impatience finally slipping into his voice. “But I expected more from a hunter.” Silence. Heat floods my face. “Excuse me?” “You're a hunter,” he says evenly. “You were trained to observe. To gather information about what you don

I tear my gaze away from the cabinet and force myself to step back.No. This is getting ridiculous. It's this place. It has to be. Because the alternative…I shake my head.No. I refuse to even consider it.As I turn, a polished mirror across the archway catches my eye. The woman staring back at me looks… radiant. I don't hesitate as I march toward it.Up close, my skin is clearer than I remember, the dark circles usually beneath my eyes have all but vanished, and my cheeks and eyes are bright with color despite everything I've been through.I stare at my reflection.“...What?”I should look like death. I should look battered and exhausted, and not as though I've just returned from a week of restful sleep, but the image in front of me isn't an illusion. I look good. Wrongly good.My stomach twists. And the thought I didn't want to be true comes back. I am turning into a vam—The taste of bile floods my mouth. I squeeze my eyes shut until the urge to retch passes.No, I try to convin

How I know I've really fallen is that there are hundreds of vampires in a room and there's not a single weapon in my hand. If the Order were to see me like this… surrounded instead of fighting, breathing instead of killing... they'll call it a disgrace. They'll call me a failure. My nails bite into my palms. No one speaks after Glasses’ announcement. If they even hear him, they give no sign of it. Their eyes seem too busy processing the mark on my neck. And I find myself studying those gazes. Curious. Suspicious. Hungry. But above all... hateful. And I know that look. I've seen humans wear it whenever a vampire is dragged through the streets in chains. Glasses doesn't wait for the room to recover. He gives me a subtle, firm nudge and motions for me to follow. I consider refusing, wanting to see what will happen if I don't, but surrounded by hundreds of vampires, my stubbornness feels less like courage and more like stupidity. And I am anything but that. So my feet move before I

He isn't taking me back to his room. I come to realize it when he doesn't take the paths Glasses had taken me through earlier. The crimson carpet gives it away too, ending two passages ago. I keep waiting for him to set me down already. We're certainly far enough from the hall, this whole charade should end now. But he doesn't let me down. “Don’t you think it's time you dropped me already?” He doesn't even glance down. “No.” I narrow my eyes at him at the same time my stomach does that insidious thing again of twisting. Hel's gate. I hate this. I should try again to fight him off. I know I should. I turn my head away. But some small, disgusted part of me didn't want to face that pain again. We pass a line of servants carrying wooden crates toward a side stair, and something about them snags my attention before I can name why. I twist slightly to look. Their arms are full now—stacked high, awkward with weight—but I could swear that the same group walked past us empty-hande