The Predator's Demand
1072 Words
The air in the dark, mahogany study instantly turned solid as ice. Kaelen’s chest heaved violently against the flattened, bruised palms that pressed into his monstrous pectorals, now stiff as granite beneath her touch. Kaelen’s vibrant, glowing violet-red eyes were pinned to her burning, amber ones; a warring, hostile clash between two disparate, predator bloodlines that never, under any circumstances, should have been joined by fate.
"Vampire," Kaelen rasped, a low vibration that would’ve surely threatened to rattle the stone structure of the study to its foundation if Sierra wasn't frozen beneath him.
The fleeting moment of pure shock on his undeniably gorgeous face instantly dissolved into pure, cold, lethal fury.
“You are a leeches spy.”
“No!”
Sierra gasped, her voice cracking against the immense, bruising pressure that crushed her wrists to the wooden surface of his desk.
Her bones felt as if they might snap, but the feral instinct to survive – a trait gifted to her by her other half – kicked into high gear.
“Alpha, please! I can explain.
I am not a spy!”
“Do not lie to me!”
Kaelen roared. The booming voice echoed throughout the silent manor like thunder, making the glass panes in the walls rattle on their frames.
His Alpha powers surged, erupting in their full might, crashing down on Sierra’s mind in a tsunami of potent, suffocating dominance that commanded her to grovel at his feet.
“You’ve been hiding on my territory for a decade! You are concealing your scent with witchcraft! My guards discovered these stolen travel documents stuffed in your room! Tell me, vampire, why I shouldn’t tear your throat out right now!”
Sierra’s breath caught, Kaelen’s psychic demand hammering against her skull like a heavy iron pestle.
Any wolf should have been begging for its life right about now. But her mixed, bloodied hybrid nature - her body cooled by vampire resilience, her will hardened by a defiant suppressed wolf - held steady against his dominance. She clenched her teeth hard, refusing to submit.
“Because I’m your mate!”
She screamed, tears of pure frustration springing to her eyes and tracing hot trails down her pale, near translucent skin. “The bond...
The bond is real, Kaelen!
If you kill me, you'll be destroying a piece of your soul!” Kaelen paused, his massive chest drawing tight. His amber eyes narrowed, his jaw clenching at the strike against his Alpha pride. Despite their grotesque reality, the stirring bond that was just beginning to grow between them pulsed, a golden cord of searing electricity connecting their hearts in the dark.
He detested the thrumming connection.
He loathed that his wolf longed to claim what he had hunted his entire life. He felt the nauseating fury emanating from Kaelen's scalding hot skin, but his allure was undeniable. Instead of releasing her wrists, he leaned closer.
His hard, granite jaw scraped against hers until the tips of his lips brushed against the delicate shell of her ear. “The Supreme Commander doesn’t mate with bloodsucking leeches,” he purred into her ear, his voice a low, venomous hiss that somehow sent a paradoxical thrill down her spine. “Vampires slaughtered my entire family when I was just a child.
If the Fates believe I will ever lie with such a monster, their minds have fractured, just as you have.”
“I am not a purebred vampire,” Sierra choked out, her grip on Kaelen’s chest weakening as the dizzying aroma of cedar and rain washed over her, clouding her judgment. “I am a hybrid. Half-wolf. I was abandoned in these lands as a pup.
I only wanted to survive, Kaelen.
I have never harmed anyone in your pack! I wash your warriors’ bloody clothes in the river. I live in filth.
I was going to leave this territory in two weeks and disappear forever!”
“Leave?”
Kaelen scoffed, the sound a chilling, guttural rasp that went straight to her bones.
Kaelen released her from the top half of the hold.
His hot, burning gaze trailed from her face down to the surface of his desk, where her stolen passport and small leather bag of cash lay in plain view between them. “You really thought you could run from me?” Kaelen hissed, letting go of her wrists. He instead wrapped a heavy hand around her waist, yanking her toward him until her hips were pressed against the sweat-slicked front of his pants.
“Even before I saw your eyes, your life was mine.
Now?”
Kaelen pinned her gaze back to his own, a dark, authoritative, unyielding furrow between his brow. “Now, little spy, you belong to me in an entirely different way.
You will tell me who sent you, you will tell me what your coven is plotting against me at the border, and you will give me the names of all the traitorous wolves who helped you hide from me for the past ten years.”
“Nobody has ever helped me!”
Sierra cried out, her violet eyes wide with the stark agony of an innocent, struggling against his immense, dominating physique.
“I used witchcraft, herbs...
I-” “Silence,” Kaelen’s voice cut through her, sharp and commanding. In an instant, Kaelen released her bound hands and hauled her thin body onto his broad, bare shoulder, swift as a violent storm. Sierra cried out in shock, her small fists battering his unyielding back, but to no avail. He then spun around and walked out of the darkened study and toward a narrow, iron door situated at the end of the long corridor.
He turned the heavy metal knob, shoving it inward, and stepped out onto a steep flight of stone stairs leading into the manor’s suffocating, claustrophobic darkness.
“Kaelen, please!”
Sierra pleaded, the long strands of her hair obscuring her eyes as they darted down toward the flickering, torch-lit steps spiraling into hell below. “Don’t put me in there!
Without my daily blocker dose… the hunger… it will take over!” “Good,” Kaelen grumbled over his shoulder, the large, calloused hand that had previously grasped her wrists now clamped over her hip like a vise, sealing her against him. “Then we will find out how much of a monster resides behind that innocent little face.”
- Writer
