Eva hit out, her knuckles hitting Augustine’s nose with a satisfying crunch in exactly the same way her father taught her back in school. Her own fangs descended at the first scent of copper, her throat burning and stomach tightening as she fought the need to lick the blood that settled on her fist.
She hadn’t heard the door beside her open, or even notice when someone grabbed her in a bruising grip, a cool metal settling against her temple. All she cared about was the blood that coated Augustine’s front, her pulse a rhythmic beat inside her skull that overwhelmed everything else.
A weight knocked into the back of her knees, forcing her to the floor.
“Ah, now that's where you’re supposed to be,” Augustine said with little emotion, his brown eyes darkening as he carefully reset his nose with a gut-wrenching crack. He had stopped bleeding almost immediately after her knuckles had connected, but there was enough blood down his front that Eva’s fangs throbbed.
She moaned when he leaned forward to rub his blood on her lips, the sound strangled as soon as she realised the noise was coming from her.
“You’re so very young, and yet surprisingly stubborn,” Augustine growled, his fingers moving to grip her chin, angling her head. “You're going to be fun to break.”
Eva trembled, unable to look away as his pupils swallowed the brown of his irises.
“Now, you will call me Master.” Augustine’s grip tightened, his smile cruel before his fangs struck the side of her throat.
Chapter7
Kace
Kace tracked the trail of blood to the edge of The Bricks, the area notoriously rough compared to the adjacent boroughs. “You guys sense anything?”
Blood on the pavement wasn’t exactly uncommon, nor were the shattered hypodermic needles that glittered just beneath the wheel of a smashed up car. Back when Kace was a kid The Bricks was just a single housing estate, but the area had increased along with the mounting mob activity. Drugs were openly dealt in the streets, the area a playground for the city’s gangs.
Titus pulled at his shoulder length, supposed-to-be blonde hair, his voice quiet compared to his appearance. “I don’t feel anything.” He chewed on his bottom lip, twirling the silver ring that pierced through the centre. It matched the one in his left nostril.
“Me neither,” Jax said as he came up behind them, the harsh streetlights highlighting his scar. “But something isn’t right.”
A gust of wind carried a sharp cry, and they all turned towards the noise as one. Despite the late evening, the sound mingled with other shouts and calls. A mother called out for her children to return, while someone else screeched as a thug took off with a watch, hood concealing his face.
No one would stop for a cry, not when it was an everyday occurrence amongst the cacophony of hollers and sirens.
Kace was on edge when they moved forward, ignoring the hostile glares from the locals. There was no greenery, just broken concrete, brick and glass as the buildings became more derelict the further you stepped. It seemed that neither The Council nor the human equivalent cared about The Bricks. It was where Kace was born, where his parents grew up before they abandoned him to his paternal grandfather. All he knew about the people that created him was that he wasn’t planned or wanted. His mother had been a teenager who dropped out of school, and his dead-beat father had been a dealer. He had no interest in finding them after all these years, not caring whether they were still alive or dead.
Titus silently dodged the stone that some kid threw from a higher window. It skittered across the road, landing beside a bus stop, the surrounding frame shattered and covered in graffiti. Hexes were drawn in charcoal and chalk along the pavements, dangerous incantations if accidently triggered. While humans accounted for over half the overall population, Breed seemed to accumulate in cities, with London being one of the more popular places to settle in the northern hemisphere.
Titus tugged at his hair once more, some of the strands escaping from his messy bun. “Don’t ask,” he growled when he noticed both Kace and Jax staring.
“What did you do to Axel?” Kace asked, unable to stop the smirk curving his upper lip. Titus and Axel were cousins, and while they were brought up together, they constantly argued which resulted in childish pranks, including Titus’s impressive pink hair.
“Suits you,” Jax added with a straight face.
“Fuck off,” Titus replied, presenting his middle finger. “I look like candy floss.”
Kace couldn’t disagree, the pink both bright and somehow soft at the same time. It only highlighted Titus’s sharp cheekbones and delicately upturned eyes that he sometimes emphasised with smudged eyeliner.
“Didn’t you glue his favourite boots to the floor?” Jax continued, undeterred by Titus’s irritation.
“The ceiling,” Titus said with a sudden grin. “Took him hours to find them.”
Kace chuckled. “You’re lucky he hasn’t messed with your piercings.” He was the only guardian who wore body jewellery, the others not understanding when they all healed at an accelerated rate, their bodies rejecting the metal.
“What can he possibly do? They’re hard enough to keep in when my body regularly rejects them, not to mention the amount I’ve lost when I’ve shifted. Besides, I doubt he would want to mess with myotherpiercing.”
“We don’t need to hear about your co...” Kace began before something rippled across his chi, but it was gone in an instant. “Shit.”
Jax and Titus had both frozen at the same instant, their irises teasing silver. Kace couldn’t sense any Shadow-Veyn, yet his beast was prominent, searching as his awareness stretched.
“Seems the report was legit,” Jax said a few seconds later. “I’m guessing everyone felt that?”
