Prologue
“I understand that my cousin introduced you to a new addiction.”
Carter Sinclair sat in a leather chair, his pose relaxed, but tension hummed just beneath his skin. Inside, the beast he carried was snarling—more than ready to rip and tear into the bastards around him. But for the moment, Carter’s control held. For the moment. He lifted one brow. “Sorry…I don’t think we were properly introduced.” He waved a hand toward the goons who’d crowded near his chair—and then toward the asshole who’d spoken, the guy who sat behind the big, fancy desk, the guy with a smirk on his face. “Who the hell are you? And why did your guards grab me off the street?”
The jerk behind the desk—a big fellow with jet-black hair and cold, green eyes—blinked. “I’m Antoine Abandonato.” He announced the name dramatically, as if it should mean something, and actually, it did.
Because the Abandonato family—they were damn vampires. Born vampires. Some of the baddest of the bad. But Carter had known what the jerk was even before the big name reveal. When the goons had approached him, he’d caught the vamps’ scent, and he’d noticed more than one fang flashing in the room. He wasn’t particularly concerned about being in a room loaded with vamps. No, fear wasn’t entering the equation for him. They were the ones who should be afraid. And if they knew just how badly he was jonesing for vamp blood…
“My cousin Isabella mated with your pack leader.” Antoine rose and sauntered around the desk, moving closer to Carter. A huge mistake. Wrongly, the asshole probably assumed that Carter had been overpowered by the goons and brought in for this little one-on-one chat by force. The fellow didn’t get that Carter had known the vamps were tailing him—he’d been aware of them for days. And since he wanted something from them—something very, very important—he’d let the jerks bring him in without a fight.
“Isabella,” Carter repeated the name softly. Then he shrugged. And he smiled, flashing his own fangs. A werewolf’s fangs were, after all, much sharper and stronger than a vamp’s. “Never heard of her.”
Some of the arrogance slid from Antoine’s face. Except for the dark hair, he didn’t look much like Isabella. “I know she saved your life. You were mortally wounded defending her, and she gave you her blood.”
Carter squinted as if he were thinking about Antoine’s words. “No…” Carter announced slowly. “Don’t think that ever happened.”
Antoine moved in a fast lunge. One moment, he was standing beside the desk. In the next instant, he’d yanked Carter out of his chair. Antoine held Carter in the air, holding him by one hand, a hand that was locked around Carter’s neck.
Carter wasn’t sure…was he supposed to be impressed by that move? Because he wasn’t. Still, though, he didn’t fight, not yet.
“Don’t lie to me,” Antoine snarled. The vamp errand boys gathered in the room all tensed menacingly. “I know Isabella mated your pack leader, Griffin Romeo. I know you were injured fighting to protect her. And I know she gave you her blood.”
Antoine sure seemed to know an awful lot about werewolf business—and that wasn’t good. It meant someone in the pack had sold them out to the vamps.
“She wanted to save you,” Antoine continued grimly. “But in the heat of the moment, dear Isabella forgot one important point.” His smile stretched. “A werewolf can’t take vamp blood, not without becoming fucking addicted.”
And, just like that, the fun was over. Carter didn’t like the prick’s arrogance, and he damn well didn’t like the fact that Antoine knew his secret weakness. Carter’s claws burst from his fingertips and he shoved them deep into Antoine’s chest. Blood immediately soaked the vamp’s shirt, and he screamed in pain, dropping his hold on Carter’s neck.
The vamp guards lunged forward—
But in a flash, Carter had yanked Antoine in front of him. And now his claws were at Antoine’s throat. Carter glared at the vamp goons as he said, “Take another step toward me, and I’ll take his head. It will be thudding to the floor before you can so much as touch me.” That wasn’t an empty threat. Carter didn’t make empty threats.
One of the vamps licked his lips and—
“Stop!” Antoine shouted. “Don’t come any closer—actually—” His voice was wheezing. “Get the hell out.”
Carter let his claws sink into Antoine’s throat. More blood spilled. The scent of that blood was calling to Carter. Driving him to the brink of his control.
Don’t give in. Don’t…
“You heard the man,” Carter said, his words guttural. “Get the hell out.”
And they did. The big, bad vamps backed away at his order. Had the fools really thought they held the upper hand? At all? Wrong. He waited until the door slammed shut behind them, then Carter let out a low laugh. It wasn’t a fun sound. “Guess you’re wishing now that you’d never had me brought in.” He spun the jerk to face him, fully expecting to see fear on Antoine’s pompous face.
Instead, Antoine was smiling.
Hell. Smiling vamps were always bad.
Blood soaked Antoine’s shirt and trickled from his neck. “No,” Antoine said, and the guy was happy, judging by the glint in his eyes. “You’re exactly what I need.”
Now this was just getting weirder. “Are you insane?” He knew very little about Isabella’s family, so maybe there was lots of insanity in her family tree. If you lived as long as born vamps did, well, you probably had to go mad after a few centuries.
“No, I’m not insane. And I’m also not the one addicted to vamp blood.”
Carter growled.
“Easy,” Antoine murmured. “You and I…we can help each other.”
Carter was about to help himself to some blood. Why waste it all?
“Isabella…she was always too soft. Thinking it was wrong to hunt humans. She was so clueless.” Antoine sighed, as if in sympathy—or pity. “She also had a tendency to act without thinking things through. Take you, for example…”
Since the vamp wasn’t attacking, Carter slowly moved his hand away from the guy’s throat. For the moment.
“Isabella wanted to save you, so she gave you her blood. In the heat of the moment, she wasn’t thinking about the future—or about the fact that once you give a werewolf vamp blood…the werewolf craves that blood. Hell, it’s the whole reason our factions have been fighting for all these centuries. Werewolves get addicted to our blood, they crave it above everything else.”
The vamp was only telling part of the story. A very twisted part. Carter lifted his brows in mock surprise. “That’s why we’ve been fighting? Huh. And here I thought it was because you bastard vamps rounded up as many werewolves as you could find a few centuries back, and you held us prisoner as you tried to figure out which wolves could be mates for vampires. You know, so we could protect your sorry asses during the day.”
Antoine’s eyes narrowed. “That’s one version of events.”
What a dick—
Antoine rolled back his shoulders and adjusted his bloody shirt. “In both versions, we know that when a werewolf drinks the blood of any vamp who is not his mate, then the werewolf gets pushed to the brink of sanity. His body starts craving the blood—needing to drink vamp blood again and again—because power comes to the beast through that blood. The wolf in you wants that power, so he’s constantly pushing you now to get more vamp blood. To keep feeding on my kind.”
Sweat trickled down Carter’s temple.
“Isn’t that the reason you left Vegas?” Antoine pushed. “Because you started craving the blood of a vampire, and the only vampire close by…that was your pack leader’s mate, Isabella?”
Yes, that was why he’d left, but he sure wasn’t going to make that confession.
And Antoine obviously wasn’t in the mood to stop talking. “You left so that you could hunt vampires, so that you could drink from them, without your pack knowing just how far you’d fallen from grace.”
Carter locked his jaw.
“I can help you,” Antoine promised.
That was an option. Not one that Carter liked. Instead…“I can gorge myself on your blood right now.”
Tension crept into the room. Thick, heavy. The air around Carter seemed to chill.
“I don’t think you quite know who you are dealing with.” Antoine’s eyes were cold. For the first time, a faint accent had slid beneath his words. Italian.
“I don’t give a shit who I’m dealing with. I—”
“Unlimited vampire blood. I can give you that. I’ll make sure you have all the blood you need, and in return, I want you to do one job for me.”
Why does this feel like I’m about to sell my soul to the devil? “I could just kill you and the goons you have outside. I could hunt any vamp I want.”
“No, you couldn’t, because if you open that door and I’m not standing at your side, my men will put so many silver bullets in your body that you won’t be able to survive. You’ll be dead, and then I’ll just have to go out and find another werewolf to do the job I have waiting.”
Did those assholes really have silver bullets ready to use on him? Shit. Probably.
Antoine’s eyes gleamed. “It’s a simple job. You just go out, you use those powerful werewolf senses of yours—senses that I’ll make sure are heightened even more with a few donations of vamp blood—and you find my missing mate.”
What? Carter laughed. “You lost your girlfriend? That’s what this shit is about? You lost your girl—”
“Werewolves are the best trackers out there.” Antoine wasn’t laughing. “I need you to find my Lauren and bring her back. Time is of the fucking essence. You hunt her, you bring her to me, and I’ll make sure you have all the vamp blood you crave.”
Interesting. “How’d you lose your girl?” Then before Antoine could answer, Carter fired, “Better question…why’d she run from you?”
Antoine’s face tightened. “Lauren is new to the vamp world. She doesn’t understand the way things work. She ran because she was afraid, but I can’t let her stay out there unprotected. I have too many enemies. Too many who would use her, hurt her, in order to hurt me.”
He was supposed to buy that BS line? Like Antoine was all soft and good? That he cared about this missing woman?
“If you can return her to me within the week, I will give you anything you want,” Antoine told him. “Anything.”
Well, in that case…Carter ignored the twisting, burning fire in his gut—the craving that always filled him now because he was fucking frantic for more vamp blood—and he said, “I think we have a deal.”
Antoine’s smile would have chilled a lesser paranormal. “There’s just one more thing, wolf. You can never, fucking ever drink my Lauren’s blood.”
Carter stared at the vamp.
“Taste her,” Antoine continued darkly, “and I’ll make you wish for death.”
Carter simply smiled. “Promises, promises…”