Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 61523 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 308(@200wpm)___ 246(@250wpm)___ 205(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61523 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 308(@200wpm)___ 246(@250wpm)___ 205(@300wpm)
Unfortunately, this isn’t some human organization with incompetency issues and a quiet quitting epidemic. This is a group of highly attuned, highly sensitive, highly freaking gifted vampires who eat this kind of shit for breakfast. I know with every fiber of hatred I feel for this process that I’d be hunted down in no time at all and convinced to participate in ways that make this whole version of the shitshow seem like a walk in the park.
My mom and dad have spent way too many years waxing poetic about the power of the vampires and how intensely superior they are in practically every way for me to assume anything else. I’m no Lara Croft. My basic survival instincts and dependence on Wi-Fi would have me out of the game in a nanosecond.
No. I’m stuck here. Being sold to Vampire Island in New York—whether I damn well like it or not.
“Now, please, let’s get back to it,” my mother says, her relief obvious in the reappearance of her smile. “You need something that’ll make you stand out.”
“Got it.”
New objective: find something that makes me blend in as much as humanly possible.
Cal
Three blue-collar vampires and two human women in a cabin, and I’m the fifth wheel.
Rook has Kylie.
Kane has Blair.
Both of my brothers have found their fated mates. Meanwhile, I’m sitting at the kitchen table with a set of brake calipers pretending that counts as a personality.
I turn the metal over in my hands, cleaning parts that don’t actually need cleaning, while the rest of the room carries on behind me.
Blair and Kylie are curled together on the couch whispering about something that makes them both laugh. The sound fills the cabin in a way that still feels strange after the past few weeks—light, normal, and the kind of peace we haven’t had since this whole mess started.
Kane stands nearby, watching Blair like she’s the only thing in existence, their fated mate bond practically humming in the air. Across the room, Rook leans against the wall, pretending not to listen while his mate Kylie elbows Blair and whispers something that sends them both into another round of laughter.
Even my eldest—and very much grumpiest—brother Rook looks relaxed. Honestly, that in itself is a miracle. Between the three of us, we’ve stacked enough bodies to get the vampire elite hunting us.
All in the name of saving Kylie and Blair.
The elites thought my brothers’ fated mates were theirs to auction, claim, breed, and drain. Both of them are blood of the three—the most highly coveted human bloodlines by the vampire elite.
Obviously, we disagreed, and now the elite want us dead.
They already burned down our homes in Concordia. Destroyed my mechanic shop too. Every piece of the life we had before this mess is gone.
But they still haven’t found this cabin—the little slice of serenity residing deep in unexplored forest that we built with our own bare hands.
It’s our permanent home…for now. Or at least until we can figure out our next move.
Earlier today, I went with Kane and Blair so she could see her family in a quiet park outside Boston while I ran surveillance. If any of the elite’s gofers had been anywhere near that place, I would’ve smelled them.
Blair’s parents still think she’s in New York with an elite vampire named Damien Snow.
The only problem with that story is Damien Snow is currently dead. Kane handled that personally.
Nonetheless, that lie is being fed to Blair’s family by that slimefuck elite gofer Holland—the same bastard who tried to lure Kylie into the elites’ little viper nest and drugged Blair to deliver her to Damien’s penthouse.
Honestly, I’d love to rip Holland’s head off myself, but I’m pretty sure Kane and Rook would fight me for the privilege.
When Blair finished talking to her parents today, she made a choice to continue to keep them in the dark to protect them. Which means her family still believes she’s being courted by an elite.
They have no idea she’s hiding out in a cabin with three blue-collar vampires the elite want dead.
And somehow, despite everything, tonight actually feels calm.
Kane glances at Blair. She catches him staring and rolls her eyes like she’s already exhausted by his existence. But she also smiles too.
Of course Kane grins like a damn idiot. I swear, their version of foreplay is something I’ll never understand.
I shake my head and return my attention to the caliper in my hands, though most of my focus isn’t actually on the metal. Part of my brain stays locked on the outside world at all times—tracking distant engines on the highway miles away, the wind moving through the trees, the occasional rustle of animals in the woods. Super hearing—it’s my power—is great when you’re trying to stay alive, but it also means peace is mostly an illusion.
Still, for the first time since this whole mess started, my brothers actually look happy.