No one on this planet had ever confused me as much as Nina did. The woman was an anomaly, one that I dearly wanted to figure out. What made her so volatile?

I’d never had a thrall before, but I’d observed them long enough to know that this wasn’t typical behavior.

Then again, why would anything be typical for me?

I smirked at that thought. Nothing ever was.

Likely, it was because I had yet to enthrall her.

I knew it was something I needed to do, for her security as much as my own. If she was enthralled, I’d know where she was and what she was feeling at all times. I wouldn’t have to worry about whether or not she was safe—like that damned situation in the hall just now. If I’d had her enthralled, I would have known that something was happening.

I wouldn’t have to rely on being in the right place at the right time.

The idea of not knowing if she was safe chafed at my soul in all the wrong places.

There was no reason for her safety to be such an important issue for me—she was a thrall, and not even one that I knew well—and yet her wellbeing was something I desired very strongly.

Yes, there were a lot of reasons for me to enthrall her, but one rather big item in the negative column.

Enthralling a person was a very intimate process, in my eyes. I’d have to feed from her, and she from me. To another vampire, that might not seem like such a big undertaking, but the idea of forcing her to allow me to feed from her was physically repulsive.

I couldn’t—wouldn’t—do it.

When the time came, I hoped she would welcome the process, but I wasn’t going to force her into such a thing.

I pushed aside those thoughts and continued down the hallway to my original goal—finding Alex.

Nina was safe in the suite. I didn’t need to worry about her right now, though I fully intended to seek her out later in the night to discuss this.

It took only a matter of minutes to reach Alex’s chamber, where he had assembled five of the men I considered to be closest to me. I felt the loss of Raoul like a sharp pang in my heart, just as I always had. His death had been years ago, and yet scarcely a day went by when I didn’t regret losing him.

If I’d just moved faster...

No, I couldn’t go down that road, not now. There would be plenty of time to beat myself up over that later.

“Gentlemen,” I said as I entered the room, greeting them with a small incline of my head.

“Your Highness.” Everyone but Alex greeted me with the honorific. He continued to stand there, smirking.

It took quite a bit of control not to return that look.

“Gray,” he said at last.

“Alex.” I walked fully into the room and shut the door behind me. “Where are we on finding the good general’s killer?”

Discomfort crossed their faces when I didn’t waste time with the normal pleasantries, but rather cut straight to the point. After the run-in with James, I was feeling a little on edge, and I wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible.

One of the men—Robert—shifted his weight from one foot to the other, looking down at the floor.

The other four were looking at him, clearly waiting for him to say something, but Alex was standing there with his arms crossed over his chest, looking at me with a raised eyebrow, clearly willing to wait the lot of them out.

“Well?”

“No closer, sir,” Robert said at last. Shame was written all over his features.

A heavy sigh escaped me. “Run over it again.”

Robert took a moment to prepare himself, then spoke. “The general was found in a brothel, but no one saw the killer. We compelled all the brothel workers when we questioned them, so there’s no doubt that they aren’t hiding the killer in question. Whoever it was, they got in and out without being seen by anyone.”

There was a note of admiration in Robert’s voice, and while normally I would have rebuked him for it, I shared the same sensation. Whoever had done this was quite skilled. It was no easy task to go unnoticed in such a busy household, and yet they’d managed it.

And left no trace behind.

How?

It was a puzzle I had to figure out.

“Let’s go, then. We’ll see if we can’t find the associates of this killer and get the information from them,” I said.

What I didn’t say was how we were going to acquire that information, but I didn’t need to. They knew we would utilize whatever methods were necessary.

The seven of us quickly divested ourselves of our formal attire and donned garments that would allow more freedom of movement.

A niggling feeling at the back of my mind told me I shouldn’t be going out like this. It wasn’t safe. Something could happen, and what would that mean for the rest of my people?

Death.

But it wasn’t like I could sit idly by and wait for my friends to do all the dirty work for me. I wasn’t that kind of King.

Pushing those thoughts to the back of my mind, I left the room with the other six trailing after me.

No one stopped us as we left the castle. No one would dare to question what the King was doing, save perhaps for my mother. Luckily, she wasn’t there to nag me about staying home and staying safe and finding a mate.

The thought of that conversation was enough to set my head to pounding. I truly couldn’t stand it.

We strode quietly but quickly across the grounds and through the gates, then a little more quickly down the streets. At last, we broke out into the blindingly fast run of our kind.

Nothing on Earth could compare to the feeling of exhilaration that overcame me when I was able to run like this, unencumbered. For a moment, I allowed myself to forget all the responsibilities that weighed on me. I gave myself over to the thrill of running, to the blood pumping through my veins, and reminded me that I was alive.

I wish I could share this with Nina...

The thought of her came unbidden to my mind, and it shocked me so much that I slowed down for a minute before forcing myself back to my usual speed.

I shouldn’t be thinking about Nina right now, not while I was on a hunt.

Why was she always on my mind like that? It wasn’t normal.

I’d never been so consumed by a woman before.

The seven of us tore through the city, flowing from one street to another, disrupting the evening strolls of the humans who were more confident about their place in the city.

Not everyone felt comfortable walking around at night. I knew that the majority of humans preferred to stay in their homes rather than risk the ire of a vampire on the streets.

It wasn’t like we jumped on them whenever we were given the opportunity. We fed on our thralls, our willing servants, rather than taking what wasn’t freely given.

And yet, the memory of what used to be would likely haunt the humans for several generations to come: the time before we had come to power and organized ourselves, when we had been separated from one another and it had been every vampire for himself.

Those days were long gone. Order had been instilled, and senseless violence was no longer tolerated.

But memories are a hard thing to eradicate.

So, most of the streets were empty, save for one or two humans scampering about.

The night wore on, and street after street turned up empty. We found no hunters. They couldn’t smell us coming; I was sure of that.

Except perhaps they could, if they were all wolves.

It had been wolves who had killed Raoul, but we hadn’t been able to find a pack in the city that could have been responsible for it, which wasn’t surprising. Until now, we’d thought the wolves had been eradicated.

But what if all the hunters were really wolves?

It would explain their ability to kill far exceeding what it should have been. It would explain why they were able to get away from us so easily.

My stomach turned over at the thought of facing a dual-species war again. Many lives would be lost if that were the case.

I pushed on, determined to find at least one of them, but as the night continued and each alley and street turned up empty, I was becoming more and more aggravated.

As if Alex could sense that, he moved in closer to me.

“It’s going to be OK,” he said.

“We’re not any closer to finding Graves’ killer, and now this...this ridiculous failure of a hunt,” I said, gnashing my teeth together though I was keeping my voice low. “I hate it.”

He was the only one I could trust with these thoughts. Yes, the other five were my most loyal men, but they weren’t close to me. They didn’t know my fears. They hadn’t known me well before the crown came to me.

Alex had always been, and would always be, there for me.

There were things that I couldn’t share with him, just as I was sure there were things he was reluctant to share with me, but that was the nature of our lives. The truth of our kind was, there was only one person in our world that we could share our whole selves with, and that was our mate.

I didn’t have one. Thus, Alex was the closest I could get to a person to share my thoughts with. The trust I put in him to not share these things with others was monumental.

Another alley held nothing for us, and my temper flared.

“Scatter,” Alex commanded the other five.

Without hesitation, they did as he said.

As soon as they were gone, I yanked a trash can from the ground and threw it across the alley, letting out a violent roar.

“This is bullshit, Alex!”

I threw another can, then another, and another, until they were all crumpled up at the other end of the alley. Still, I felt the rage inside me, the fury that there was nothing I could do about this situation.

How could the hunters evade us so well?

“Gray...” Alex laid a hand on my shoulder, squeezing gently.

I shrugged him off. “No, Alex. Don’t tell me that it’s all going to be OK, and that we’re going to find them. We have no leads. We can’t find a single hunter to get answers from.”

“But we will. We’ll keep coming out until we find one. We have everyone on high alert now. No one goes anywhere without at least two companions. There won’t be any more deaths, and we’ll find whoever was responsible for this one.”

Just as quickly as it had come on, my rage evaporated, and I was left with an aching emptiness inside me.

I shook my head. “I don’t see a solution here,” I said.

“We’ll find one.”