Page 9 of Blood Magic

“Sorry to hurt your feelings,” I told him. “I would have blanked my face, but I was busy trying not to throw up in my mouth.”

“Hmmm.” He rested back against his black pillows and pulled one of the girls closer. “I prefer blondes, but I must say, I’m quite intrigued by you—dark hair or not. Tell me, Ms. Silver, what would it take to get you into my bed?”

“I prefer guys who aren’t skinny, pale corpses, Axton, so honestly, the only way to get me into your bed is to kill me and put me there.”

His smile was slow. “I can do that.”

His power shimmered, and suddenly I was shaking as it drifted over my skin and settled like a piece of plastic wrap. It clung, and it took every bit of willpower I had not to stumble away tearing at my own flesh.

My wolf’s howl echoed, but deep inside where no one could hear it. No one but me. The bastard was trying to call my wolf. He was trying to force me to shift like he was my fucking alpha.

I didn’t know what he’d do if that happened. I only knew I wanted Jared—my real alpha. I wanted to scream for him, to send that howl down the connection between an alpha and his wolf, to know that he was coming for me.

But only for a few stunned seconds. I didn’t move the entire time the vampire master sent his power out to control me. I didn’t flinch. Part of that was because I was too shocked. I’d never felt the power of a vampire master before. It battered me.

Unfortunately for him, I’d been battered by the best. My father had taught me to be physically strong, and my ex-alpha had taught me to be mentally strong when he’d hobbled my wolf and forced into me the worst pain of my life.

I absorbed his power, gathered it into a nice, neat ball, and let my wolf play with it like a cat with a ball of yarn.

Axton had risen from his relining position and his nest of arms and watched me, eager and smiling. The blood he’d just consumed allowed him his erection, and his engorged cock stood out red and angry from his pale body.

“Come to me,” he whispered.

I laughed. “Fuck you.” I was fast—wolf fast—and I was strong. And I had a temper. Asshole had scared me, and that just made me mad. I leaped at him, balled up my left fist, and slammed it against his face. I put everything I had into that punch, and if he hadn’t been a vampire, I’d have killed him. But if he hadn’t been a vampire, the cross tat on my fist wouldn’t have affected him the way it did.

As it was, he exploded backward, scattering his feed bags and putting a crack in the heavy wooden headboard.

I felt that I’d gotten better, that I was more restrained and less…crazy since my first shift—my only shift, really, since I’d been too afraid that I might kill someone if I shifted again—but sometimes the rage inside me rose up and took control.

When that happened, I didn’t have good sense. I did things that came from pure instinct and emotion, and this was one of those things. I should never in a million years have walked into a vampire master’s house and kicked his ass.

That was why Jared hadn’t wanted me to see Frederick Axton. My alpha knew me. He knew what I was likely to do.

For a heartbeat, no one moved.

Then Axton’s guards jumped me, bearing me to the floor and weighing me down with their heavy bodies. They’d witnessed my strength, and they weren’t taking any chances.

The old woman had left her shadows and was tearing at her hair, screeching, “Kill it, master, or it will kill you. Kill it!”

Axton was suddenly crouching in front of me, his face smeared with blood, his nose broken, something monstrous in his eyes. “Shut up, Kaloni,” he roared. And when she silenced herself immediately, he calmed. “You left blood on my fangs, sweetheart. Let’s see what’s in there.” He slid his tongue out and circled it around his swollen, bloody lips. “She is only a stupid wolf,” he murmured finally, as though disappointed. “Stupid, stupid wolf.”

Fuck. My knuckles had scraped against his teeth, and he’d gotten my blood in his mouth. In his head. And he could taste my wolf.

Then he threw back his head and laughed, and I could feel the bodies of his guards trembling violently as they held me. “Let her go,” he yelled, finally, in between chuckles. “Get out of here, little wolf, so I can think about what I want to do with you.”

I struggled out from under the guards and ran, thinking maybe I was going to escape with my life. If I did, I knew it was only because the vampire master allowed it.