BOUND BY BLOOD:THE ALPHA VAMPIRE MATE

chapter three:the watching eyes

The crimson glow flickered again, brighter this time.

My pulse tripped. He was still here. Watching. Waiting.

Darius’s grip on my arm tightened.

“Who’s out there?” he snarled, eyes scanning the trees. His warriors shifted uneasily, their wolves bristling.

They could feel it too—the wrongness in the air.

I forced myself to look away from the glow.

“I don’t know,” I whispered.

My lie tasted like blood.

Darius stepped forward, baring his teeth at the darkness.

“Show yourself!” His voice cracked like a whip, echoing through the cursed forest.

The glow vanished. The shadows stilled.

For a heartbeat, the world held its breath.

Then, faintly—so faintly I thought I imagined it—Lucian’s voice slid across my mind.

Little wolf.

I jerked, sucking in air. He wasn’t speaking out loud. He was inside my head.

You told me to leave. I did. But I will not leave you unprotected.

I swallowed hard, heat and ice tangling in my veins.

Stop. Stop. Stop.

Darius’s nostrils flared again. “You’re hiding something,” he hissed. “I can smell it.”

I tore my arm free. “I’m not!”

But even as the words left my lips, the crimson glow pulsed once more—farther away now, like a heartbeat fading into the trees.

Darius snapped his head toward it. “Track it.”

Two warriors shifted, their wolves bounding into the forest.

“No!” The word burst out of me before I could stop it.

Darius’s gaze whipped back to me. “Why not?”

My heart raced. “It’s—dangerous. It’s cursed. You said it yourself.”

For a moment, his golden eyes studied mine. Something flickered there. Not just anger—suspicion.

He stepped closer, lowering his voice until only I could hear.

“What did you see, Selena?”

I opened my mouth, but no sound came.

Lucian’s whisper threaded through my skull again.

Do not speak my name.

I squeezed my eyes shut. My wolf whimpered.

When I opened them again, Darius’s face was inches from mine, golden eyes burning.

“You smell like frost,” he growled softly. “And blood.”

A shiver raked down my spine.

Did he know? Could he sense the bond pulsing under my skin?

Before I could answer, a sound like a thousand wings filled the air—soft but vast, like shadows moving.

The torches flickered out all at once. Darkness swallowed us whole.

Warriors snarled, claws sliding free.

Darius shifted halfway, his bones cracking, his eyes blazing brighter.

And in the blackness, just beyond the circle of wolves, two crimson eyes opened—huge, unblinking, not Lucian’s.

The ground trembled under my feet.

Something else was here.

Lucian’s voice cut through the void, sharp now, urgent.

Run, little wolf.