They were summoned later that evening.

Feral walked with one arm around Tessa’s waist as she carried the baby. Talven, the captain of the knights who had rescued them on the plains, walked with them, but his manner was more stiff and formal than it had been yesterday. Feral slid him a sideways glance, easily picking up the fear and discomfort leeching from his pores. They were in the court and safe, so what did the elf have to fear?

His gaze shot to the men around them, all as closed-faced as Talven. The stench of fear rising from them all got stronger the closer they got to their destination. Wariness rolled up his spine, all his warrior’s instincts warning him they were in danger. But he couldn’t see where or from what… He just knew the shit was about to hit the fan, in a big way.

They reached the end of the corridor, the big double doors in front of them swinging open to allow their little group through into a palatial throne room. A palpable chill rolled over them as they walked and the atmosphere in the room went from one of safety to looming dread.

The door swung shut behind them, trapping them inside with a sonorous clang.

“Feral?” Tessa murmured as she edged closer.

A tiny prickle crawled over the back of his neck, and he dropped his arm from her waist, freeing his hands up to go for his blades if he needed to.

That was when he felt it. Something that shouldn’t have been here in the light and beauty of a place like this. Something that belonged in the shadows. Something that was hiding itself, like rot buried in an apple’s core.

There was another blood drinker here.

His senses on high alert, he scanned the room, eyes flitting from fae to fae, trying to isolate the source of the feeling. He might not be able to see through fae glamour as he’d previously thought, but some things just couldn’t be hidden from a vampire. The need for blood was one of them.

His eyes narrowed as he assessed the feeling. No, it wasn’t quite the same feeling he got around other kyn. That was more a pleasant buzz against his mind…an awareness.

This was harsher, more abrasive. Not awareness but more a warning like the feeling he got around Rogues, the extra unpleasant edge added by their taste for not just blood, but flesh as well. His face paled a little as he made the connection.

It wasn’t just the rogues that liked blood and flesh… so did demonkind.

“Well, I suppose I should thank you for bringing the brat to me. Finally,” a female voice broke the silence of the hall. A voice that would have been beautiful if not for the bitter note corrupting it. “However, you’ve caused me a lot of trouble so I don’t think I will.”

The speaker rounded one of the columns flanking the walls, her venomous eyes fixed on the three of them. She was tiny, a slender wisp of a woman, with an almost childlike aura about her. The expression on her face was very much adult though. Bitterness, lust and arrogance all combined into a look that was uncomfortable to view.

“God, no,” Tessa whispered as pixies emerged from the columns as well, fanning out behind their mistress. “It was you all along.”

Feral slid her a sideways glance, confused. “Who is it?”

“Ilia. She’s one of the Seven Sisters.”

Feral grunted. Everyone knew about the Seven Sisters. The seven princesses of the fae, they were almost as powerful as Queen Mab herself.

“Well, looks like the pixie bitch finally worked it out! Not the sharpest tool in the box are you, love?” Ilia commented scornfully. “Okay, I’m bored with this. Guards, seize them.”

Tessa screamed as the fae surrounded them on one side, swords drawn, and the pixies on the other, wielding switchblades and daggers that glinted menacingly. She moved closer to Feral, instinctively looking to him for protection even though she knew they were sunk.

A sense of disgust filled her. She was supposed to be a modern woman, yet at the first sign of trouble she was relying on a guy to look out for her. Her spine straightened as she shifted the baby more securely onto her hip. They were done for. There was no getting out of this one. Not just the two of them, against dozens.

“I could learn to hate fae as much as pixies at this rate,” Feral growled, his blades on his hands in the blink of an eye. He moved, easily sliding into a guard position as he eyed the grim-faced men surrounding them.

“Okay, which one of you wants to bleed out on the floor first?” he snarled. “More than enough for everyone, so if you’d like to form an orderly queue...” He lifted his hand and beckoned to the nearest pixie in a “bring it on” gesture.

The pixie spluttered with rage, his face flushing as he raised his arm and charged. Feral didn’t move, waiting until they could practically smell the guy’s breath. When he did move, it was in an explosion of speed.

Dropping to the floor, he swept a hard leg around at his opponent. The pixie hit the ground hard, the wind knocked out of him. Staying down, Feral rolled and used his body as a ramp to launch himself to his feet. His bladed knuckles buried themselves into the fallen pixie’s throat, shredding his windpipe beyond repair.

Tessa fought like a madwoman not to get separated from either Feral or the baby, lashing out with her free hand and feet as two knights made to grab her. She became a wildcat, slippery as an eel, her heart pounding as she used all the self-defense moves she could remember from a course a couple of years ago.

Shifting her weight, she drove an elbow into the ribs of the one behind her, stomping heavily on his foot at the same time. A satisfying “oomph” sounded behind her. Chainmail might look pretty and be effective against sharp pointy things, but when it came to determination and an expertly wielded elbow, it didn’t stop the wearer from getting winded.

Without thinking, she reached for the hand at her throat, slender fingers dancing over the thick ones digging painfully into her flesh. Wincing, she grasped the little finger firmly and ripped it upward and away from the others in a quick jerk.

It cracked, a sharp sound like a twig breaking underfoot that echoed in her ears. The sound was smoothed by a bellow of pain as he snatched his hands away from her. Wasting no time, Tess spun around and snapped her knee up to connect heavily with his groin. She might not be a martial arts expert, but there were some moves a woman just knew. A smile of satisfaction curved her lips as he crumpled to the floor, moaning.

Her triumph didn’t last long. Something sharp and cold kissed the side of her neck and she froze. Despite never having felt the sensation before, she knew the business edge of a sword rested against her skin.

The baby was ripped from her arms, crying as he reached out for her in terror. Hard hands closed over her upper arms and she was hauled, kicking and screaming, toward the woman who should have been their savior, but who had turned out to be the monster they were running from.

“Why?” Tessa asked, as Ilia sauntered around her, an oasis of calm next to the bloody fight being waged mere feet away.

The fae princess cocked an eyebrow, eyes glittering with malice. “Because I can. Because I’m fed up with all this fucking harm none, goody two-shoes crap. Why should I miss out because someone else says I shouldn’t do this, or that, or the other? What gives them the right to dictate what I can and can’t do?”

Walking behind Tessa, she wound a small hand around her throat.

“Okay, I’m really getting bored now.” She jerked Tessa’s chin up with a strength her frail body just shouldn’t have had. Her voice rose, carrying over the fight. “Enough, or she dies.”

* * *

The fight was on in earnest. Feral spun and whirled like a prima ballerina on crack as he fought off several opponents at once. There was nothing like several someones seriously trying to put an end to a guy’s life to sharpen his senses and heighten his reaction time; and Feral had trained on the best circuit there was. Fighting the rogues, a slow kyn warrior was a dead one. One as old as Feral had to be fast. There was no other way around it. He dodged and weaved with all that speed, using his sheer size and the amount of damage he could suck up to his advantage.

He fought with everything, not just the blades on his hands but with his whole body. A rolling, moving, whirling dervish, leaving violence in his wake. Elbows rammed into throats hard enough to crush larynxes, feet slammed into kneecaps hard enough to shatter them, or stomped on feet, fingers, or any other body part unfortunate enough to end up on the floor or within range.

But quite possibly the worse weapon he had were his fangs. Fully extended in his rage, they were a fearsome sight. Razor sharp and dripping with blood as he took chunks out of anything that came close enough.

He wasn’t going to win this, couldn’t win it. Despite the adrenaline of the fight surging through his veins, Feral could feel the exhaustion beating at him, leeching his strength. He needed to feed—and more than the random splashes of blood here and there when one of his opponents got too close to his fangs. Tiny tantalizing splashes of blood, fae blood, they practically hummed with power.

“Enough, or she dies.”

The room froze as Ilia’s voice cut through the mayhem. One moment, it was a writhing mass of violence, the next, a scene worthy of a medieval tapestry.

Feral turned and froze. Ilia had Tessa held captive in her arms, her small hands around the pixie woman’s throat and her lips hovering close to the pulse Feral could see beating frantically.

Every cell in his body froze as still as the death he could feel stalking the room. His gaze locked on the fae princess, on the small smile that played over her lips. He recognized the subtle warning…the silent message from one predator to another, something intended for him alone. Behave, or she would tear Tessa’s throat out. Bile rose along with his anger as he registered the excitement in her eyes at the impending kill.

No fae should have that kind of knowledge or dark need. It wasn’t natural. It was a curse his people lived with, put up with. Learned to control. It wasn’t something any of them chose, but something thrust on them at birth. And be it man, woman or child, every one of them would do anything to be free of it. That someone would seek it, revel in it, just sickened Feral on levels he hadn’t realized existed.

There was no way out of this. No way at all. He was on his own—in a place his fellow warriors would not come riding to the rescue, as they had when Vixen had been taken by the pixies. His lips quirked in amusement. The fact he didn’t look half as good in leathers as Vixen might have something to do with it.

His amusement faded as he spoke, his voice low and full of menace. “Harm her and you’d better make sure you put me down for good. Because I don’t care how long it takes, I’ll be coming for you.”

Her laugh, light and musical, flowed around the hall. It was a beautiful sound totally out of place with the ugly words that followed. “Did you really think I was going to let any of you live?” she smiled. “Come on, even a vampire thug like you had to have figured it out. At least I should hope you did, because honestly, sweetheart, your brains are about all you’ve got going for you.”

She shook her head. “Look at Talven for example. He’s lucky he’s got his looks, because, well, let’s just say his IQ isn’t the highest. I pity his children…the fae, as a race, get dumber and more like the humans every generation,” she spat. “Why do you think I’ve done what I have? Someone must step up and stop this descent into…averageness! And if it takes the flesh and blood of a half-breed brat, that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make. The rest of you…collateral damage.” She flicked her hand dismissively.

Behind Feral, Talven jerked slightly, the small movement registering in the kyn’s mind. So the loyal lapdog didn’t know about that little snippet, eh? That was interesting. How Feral was going to use that to his advantage, he had no idea. Not yet.

He watched Ilia with dead eyes. He had a stare that could give a rattlesnake a headache, and he was employing it at full strength now, the promise of her death in his eyes as he made a silent vow. Somehow, this bitch was going down. Permanently.

“Get him out of here,” she snapped, breaking eye contact first. “Take him to the pit of eternal despair.”

Feral couldn’t help it—he burst out laughing as the guards seized his arms, clamping heavy manacles around his wrists.

“Sheesh, the ‘pit of eternal despair’?” he mocked, as they dragged him toward the doors. “Can’t you guys come up with something a little more original? No wonder you’re dying out, a human toddler has more imagination.”

His mocking laughter echoed around the room as the doors closed with a resounding clang, leaving the woman he loved at the mercy of a monster.

“Tessa!”

It took two knights all their strength to get the struggling kyn halfway down the corridor. Even then, he was only waiting for a gap in their concentration to allow him to get the drop on them.

“You can’t do this! You can’t let her do this!”

He dug his heels in harder, stopping his guards’ forward momentum in its tracks. Feral was a big man, even for a vampire, and he was packed with hard-earned muscle. The sort of muscle a guy built up working for a living and, in Feral’s case, fighting violently. But he wasn’t fighting physically now. No, he was astute enough to know that his advantage lay in the verbal. They couldn’t put a manacle on his tongue.

“You do realize what she is, don’t you?” he carried on, his voice low in the corridor, punctuated by the grunt of effort from the guards and the shuffling of feet as he made them work for every inch. His gaze bored holes into the fae.

“She’s some sort of fae version of a rogue, Talven… you know she is. Worse than a rogue. She said flesh… she’s going to kill that baby and eat him.”

He watched his target for the tiniest flicker of emotion or reaction. He knew Talven wasn’t immune to the situation, he’d felt the guy start in surprise when Bitch Queen in there said she intended to sacrifice the baby. Desperation filled him—she could already have sacrificed him. He could already be too late. Tessa and the baby might already be dead.

He went for broke. “You ever seen a rogue victim, Talven? Ever seen how the rogues feed?” he asked, his voice strangely hypnotic in the silence of the corridor.

“They prefer their victims alive, you know. Apparently, the pain and terror of what’s happening to them adds flavor to the meat,” he explained nonchalantly, as though this were merely an academic discussion.

“They have to tourniquet their victims in some way, so they don’t bleed to death during the meal and lose all that lovely flavor. I’ll bet your ladylove in there is into bondage, isn’t she, Talven? Bit of titillation before she has a snack…does that do it for you as well? The idea of that baby wrapped up in bondage gear? Gear she’s used for something so corrupt and kinky?” Feral hammered away at what instinct told him was a chink in Talven’s mental armor. “Think about it, Talven. That little baby. Abused and tortured because some stupid bitch can’t handle the way her life turned out. Can you live with that?”

The fae sighed, his pace faltering as he lowered his head. The guards dragging Feral slowed, looking at their captain in surprise.

“Let him go,” Talven ordered, his voice a bare whisper in the corridor. He turned with a grim look on his face to find both guards looking at him warily.

“Oh, for god’s sake, you can’t tell me we can cover this up anymore!” he snapped, moving forward to undo the spelled manacles himself. “Go find the queen’s guard, hell the queen herself if you can, and bring them back here. NOW!”