“Easy,” Killean said when Arlo started to thrash again.
He’d inadvertently pulled back his control over Arlo while wrestling with this decision and asserted it again. He may be about to step over the threshold from vampire to Savage, but he wouldn’t inflict unnecessary suffering on another, at least not yet. Who knew what he would do after he killed, but for now, he would retain this piece of his barely there humanity.
Realizing he was going around in circles with himself and he couldn’t stand here all night, Killean pushed Arlo’s head to the side and sank his fangs into the man’s throat. Arlo remained unmoving and unaware of what Killean was doing as he eagerly consumed the blood until Arlo’s pulse weakened.
Stop!
Killean’s fangs almost retracted as he neared the line between what he was and what he would become. Then Simone’s eucalyptus scent, and the sweet taste of her lips, danced across his memory. His mate was trapped and being abused. This man’s life was nothing compared to hers.
And who are you to judge that?
I am no one. I stopped being someone when I was a child.
But for those few seconds, while he stood on the beach with Simone in his arms, he’d beensomeoneagain. For the first time since he was seven years old and his world fell apart, he’d felt as if he finally belonged somewhere, and that was withher.
No matter he despised her hunter blood, no matter he would never claim her as his mate, he couldn’t abandon her to Joseph.
Instead of stopping, Killean bit deeper and Arlo sagged against him. Arlo’s heart thudded, stopped, thudded again, and then gave one more limp beat before ceasing.
A moment of panic descended over Killean as he irrevocably stepped away from his old life and into this far more turbulent and uncertain one. Who and what would he become now?
He would return from this, but he didn’t kid himself into believing he could ever be the man he’d been before committing this act. This death of a human would forever change him, but what it would transform him into remained to be seen.
The panic vanished when power unlike anything he ever experienced rushed over Killean and the last of Arlo’s life filled him.
Gasping, Killean pulled back to stare into Arlo’s sightless blue eyes. Guilt tore at his insides as he released the man and let the body slump to the ground.
But despite the self-hatred and uncertainty battering his brain, he gathered Arlo’s body, disposed of it, and went in search of the next name on his list.
One victim would not be enough to make him a Savage.
Chapter Two
Chained to the wall,the cold concrete floor leached the heat from Simone’s body. She had no idea where she was, and she’d given up caring. The parts of her that weren’t freezing hurt so bad it felt like someone was taking a knife and slicing it across her vertebrae before leisurely flaying the skin from her bones.
In the beginning, she’d welcomed the times when these monsters would come, undo their chains from the wall, and take them to the bathroom. Now she dreaded those breaks as it felt like her legs would shatter whenever she walked. She couldn’t recall the last time she showered, and her stench filled her nostrils. She’d always been meticulous about her appearance and upkeep, but if it meant she didn’t have to move, Simone didn’t care if she ever showered again.
The chains of some of the other hunters imprisoned with her rattled as they shifted position, but she didn’t move. Moving only brought more misery. Instead, she remained huddled while her scorched skin felt like it would crack and fall off her body. Except her skin wasn’t burnt, it just felt that way. Her flesh was the same as always, or almost the same.
Before these Savages captured her, her skin had been that of a hunter, and now it belonged to a monster. Aravenousmonster.
Her cramped stomach spasmed at the thought of feeding the beast, but what it required to fill it was no longer the food that sustained her for her entire life. Now only blood would suffice to ease this awful gnawing in her belly.
Without thinking,Simone went to bite her lip and whimpered when the fangs that descended days ago sliced her bottom lip for the hundredth time. She wasn’t sure if it really was a hundred times or not, but her mouth was so raw it sure felt that way. The taste of her blood made her stomach cramp tighter and did nothing to ease her endless hunger.
A hunter nearby started crying, and another barked at them to shut up. Those were hunters talking to each other that way.Hunters!
She’d never heard her kind speak to each other in such crass ways. Hunter society was one of politeness, respect, and propriety. Hunters did not exhibit such crude language and disrespect. Hunters didnottell each other to shut up.
But these hunters were turning on each other like a pack of rabid dogs. Her hunter family was spiraling into this pit of desolation with her, and it was breaking them. She wanted to cry for those who had perished in the raid that landed her here, and for the fellow hunters trapped in this nightmare with her, but she didn’t have enough fluid in her body to produce tears.
Simone’s thoughts drifted to her mother. She knew her mother wasn’t here, but was she somewhere safe, or did she die during the raid the Savages launched against the hunter stronghold?
They were questions she might never know the answers to as there was nothing she could do while chained in this place. Nothing she could do until she was free, but she had no ideahowto get free.
In the beginning, some of the hunters tried to escape when they were unchained to use the bathroom, but their struggles never amounted to anything more than being bloodied by the gleeful Savages who beat them. Now no one had the strength to resist anything done to them.
Simone had tried to run once, but the ease with which they subdued her, as well as the hands grasping at her breasts while her captors unnecessarily groped her, humiliated her into submission. She hadn’t resisted again.
