Lycan Princess Vampire Mate

The Mission

Lucian.

I stared at my blood-dripping fingers, the crimson certainly not mine but from the pathetic weakling gasping and choking on his own fading life force. His blood tasted foul, insignificant. I wondered how much of a useless cunt a man had to be for his blood to be that tasteless.

Hmm… but tonight wasn’t about feeding. It was about killing him.

My beast muttered and I agreed with him. Father’s instructions had been clear, delivered in that ageless voice that always promised violence beneath every syllable:

Infiltrate the Silver Moon Academy. The princess has been under numerous attacks, and it is likely she will be sent there. Your job is simple: seduce the princess, make her do your bidding, and the rest will fall in place for us.

I had given him a slow, sadistic smile and pressed a kiss to the ring of power on his finger, a gesture of loyalty he demanded even when he didn’t say it.

“I will do just that, Padre.”

Now, looking down at the stain this pathetic creature left on the world, I couldn’t have been more eager to fulfill Father’s wish. The werewolf and Lycan clans had always treated us like abominations, like unhinged beasts, pretending they weren’t tearing each other apart for scraps of power while their numbers withered. Hypocrites.

All that would end soon, it was time for vampires to take over.

The man released one final ragged gasp before his heart stuttered and died. A thought slid into my mind, perhaps I should make him one of us, turn him into a living corpse of service as a sign of goodwill for the mission.

No. That would make us predictable. And Father wanted subtlety until we gained leverage.

So I moved on to phase two. I searched every corner of his cramped apartment, rummaging through his closet, cupboards, cabinets, drawers, beneath the sagging bed frame, even behind the peeling wallpaper. The information I sought was a student roster, faculty access card, or any record linking him to the Academy’s restricted archives, something I could use to smoothly assume his identity. But there was nothing. Nothing useful at all.

I kicked the nightstand hard enough to splinter the wood.

“Don’t tell me I killed a man for nothing.”

No. It couldn’t be. A smirk tugged at my lips as I turned back to the corpse. Kneeling beside him, I grabbed his collar and studied the cheap brooch pinned to his shirt.

“You pathetic creature might not have what I’m looking for,” I murmured, “but you’re definitely my key to Silver Moon Academy.”

The brooch read: Joshua Thompson.

Perfect.

It would be easy to fool the school; a man like him had no life. No mate. No friends. No connections. He was the human, or wolfish embodiment of loneliness.

All I had to do was send the school an email claiming the old hag was transferring to another academy and had recommended a far more competent teacher to replace him. I tried to swallow down the pride in that line, but honestly, I was too damn good, too formidable to pretend modesty.

I took one last look at him before kicking his body aside and stepping over the part that refused to move. Even now, the lazy old hag couldn’t just die on the side.

When I stepped outside, the night air kissed my face, a group of vampires waited for me, my father’s chosen guards, loyal only to royal blood. They bowed as I approached, lowering their heads, hands folded across their chests in reverence. One even dropped to his knee, as was custom when a direct heir finished a kill.

“Take care of the trash,” I ordered, not sparing them another glance as I headed toward my car.

I drove off humming one of my favorite human songs. Father never understood my fascination with their music, their art, their fleeting brilliance before death claimed them. But that was his problem, not mine.

Two weeks after that night, I received the invitation for an interview. I already knew I’d get the job. The moment I stepped onto the campus grounds I could hear the heartbeats of those pathetic warm-blooded creatures. Their shame and desire oozed from their pores. They wanted me. All of them. I smelled their lust before their blood.

Idiots.

I supposed I couldn’t blame them fully. That was my gift, and curse as well. As a royal vampire, I sired anyone who came too close, even without biting them like lesser vampires had to.

The interview was short, mostly because the interviewer couldn’t form coherent thoughts with me sitting in front of her. Yes, I could hear her thoughts. All of them. That was one of the things that made navigating this mission disgustingly easy. It was then I realized why Father had chosen me specifically.

The meeting was a success. As expected.

Two weeks later, I returned to begin the mission in full.

I got news from one of my trusted men that the princess would be arriving that day, and I decided to time my arrival with hers. I packed my bags, slid into my car, and felt an unusual thrill rising within me.

‘Finally’ I muttered to myself, and my wolf growled in anticipation.

I was beyond certain the mission would be a swift one, until I saw her and my whole plan shattered. She was… mesmerizing. Not the ordinary, empty kind of beauty mortals fawned over. No. She radiated a rare regal aura for a wolf her age.

Her blonde hair was a perfect compliment to her fair skin, warm with an otherworldly glow that made even my cold blood stir. And her lips, those lips, did I crave them terribly. I felt her presence even before she looked my way, and when she eventually did, her eyes, those stunning ethereal blue eyes looked at me like she already knew exactly where to sink her claws. I despised how much that intrigued me.

I found myself walking toward her before I even formed the thought, but as soon as the realization hit me, I stopped. The reason she wanted me, the reason her pupils dilated, her breath hitched as she locked gaze with me, was much worse than accidental siring. She was my mate.

Yes. That part I had kept from Father. I knew what he would do with such information, how he would use her, chain her, drain her, weaponize the bond beyond recognition. I wanted to chart this path myself before involving my blood-lusting sire.

I didn’t know why, but from the first time I saw Liz on her eighteenth birthday, I knew something was wrong with me. Father had sent me to kill her that night. I had every advantage, speed, strength, precision. She had shifted for the first time some nights ago, that made her vulnerable and I never missed a kill.

But when I entered her room, her scent engulfed me, taking over my senses, her heartbeat called to mine. She looked at me with confusion, not terror, and instead of the urge to kill rising in me, something else did. A strange sense of possessiveness.

So, I wiped her memory of my presence, before I fled. Her wolf’s words had brushed against my mind, a whisper, a soft who are you? In response, my own instincts roared mate for the first time in my existence. That shouldn’t have been possible between species, and I intended to find out why it was afterwards.

I told Father the mission was unsuccessful, I lied, though I knew he suspected something. I never missed a kill. My prey only lived if I willed it, and in her case I did.

Yet what I felt now as she stared at me wasn’t pride or excitement. It was disgust. Pain. Disappointment. She wanted me just like everyone else, because she was forced to by the mating bond, not because she actually wanted me.

And that was somehow worse. So I walked past her, even though my cold heart stung at the look on her face. Rejection. It shouldn’t have mattered. Yet somehow, I felt it, a sharp tug beneath my ribs, as if the bond itself punished me for walking away.

During the rest of the day, her restlessness wrapped around me until it became difficult to think. Even while the Head teacher introduced me to the students, her agitation pulsed at the edge of my mind. And when my fabricated last name: Powers, was spoken aloud, I saw her eyes widen in shock.

Of course she found it strange.

Her last name was Powers too.

I had chosen it purely to amuse myself, just to watch her trip over her own confusion. My real last name was Knight, cliché for a vampire maybe, but it was a name that meant something in our world.

I was irritated that I could hear everyone’s thoughts except hers. Why couldn’t she speak to me the way she did that night, the first night I almost killed her?

Why was the bond selective?

Why wasn’t I allowed in?

I found myself struggling to focus in my own class. The only consolation was that the students were too busy drooling over me to notice my distraction. Every time Liz shifted in her seat across the room, my senses snapped to her. Her presence was a gravity I didn’t ask for and didn’t want.

Relief washed through me the moment she excused herself to go to the bathroom.That was the moment I was forced to use one of my more peculiar powers, despite the risk. The Haze.

A hallucination so seamless, the class would continue seeing me at the front, teaching, while I moved through the real world unseen. Lesser vampires could barely project shadows. Royals like me? We could rewrite a room’s reality long enough to get what we wanted.

Without giving it much thought, I slipped out of the classroom and followed Liz. The moment I stepped into the narrow bathroom hallway and stood close to her, her scent hit me hard again.

“You’d be the death of me,” I whispered.