Page 193 of Collared by the Vampire Prince

The thought turns sour. It is a struggle to picture Victoria’s face in any version of my future. In contrast, Kira’s requires no effort at all. She is on my mind constantly. I cannot complete a thought without her entering it, usually accompanied by some fresh reason to fear for her life. She has proven herself a liability with alarming speed.

First, she announced before half the Academy that I had fastened the collar around her throat. Thankfully, the resulting rumours could still be contained. I had confirmed nothing, and nothing had reached my father’s ears. At least, nothing he found interesting enough to mention when I attended court earlier this week.

Arken had looked up from his desk when I returned through the concealed portal, his spectacles low upon his nose. “How was court?”

I had scoffed at how casually he asked it. His eternal calm has always astonished me, as has his apparent fearlessness, as though my father had not spent years moulding him into something useful in the darkness of his dungeon.

Only my father would take one of his greatest noble opponents, grind the resistance from him, then entrust an entire institution to what remained. Only a man like Arken could survive it. Neither of us speaks of those years.

“Predictable,” I had drawled, standing by his desk adjusting my sleeves. “Did you know he is planning another ball?”

“Yes. For your thirtieth.”

“Oh no. That is months away. This one is next month. On Hallow’s Eve. And it’s a masquerade.”

“Halloween and a masquerade? Good grief.”

“Yes,” I said dryly. “Apparently, he’s in a festive mood. I expect your invitation will arrive soon.”

“I shall await it eagerly.”

“I’m sure.”

On the bright side, it will be a good opportunity to show Victoria off; cement that image in the court’s mind of a happy couple, and let any whispers about Kira fade to nothing.

Cold sweat had gathered beneath my collar as I stood before my father, waiting for him to mention Kira. Instead, he asked after Victoria, discussed troop movements and named several noblemen whose loyalty he had begun to doubt. When he asked whether I had heard any similar dissent within the Academy, I gave him Morrison’s name.

My father is as thorough as he is paranoid, which is why Morrison was immediately executed—all because I claimed to have overheard him criticising the Crown in the stables.

I lied, of course. Morrison is a loyalist through and through. However, I did catch him raping his squire in a rear stall, so I have shed no tears. I doubt his squire mourns him, either. Besides, Morrison’s death was quick. Executions usually are these days. My father is losing his touch.

To my relief, my father said nothing about an illegal wolf at the Capital Academy, nor the son who had supposedly claimed her. Only after I left the throne room did I allow myself to breathe. For now, Kira remains beneath his notice.

I did not lie when I told her the king could do far worse than kill her. He usually keeps the creatures he calls abominations alive, parading them before the court for sport whenever more civilised entertainments fail to amuse him.

When I found Kira in the witch’s cottage, I knew I could not leave her there. The Resistance is running out of rabbit holes in which to hide, and it was only a matter of time before somebody less merciful discovered her. All she had to do was listen to me and lie low. Some difficulties were to be expected, of course.

After a life on the run, I did not imagine her assimilation into the Academy would be easy. I did, however, expect it to be swift. Oh, how spectacularly wrong I was.

When she came to my rooms, she complicated my life in a far more dangerous way. An intimate, insidious and altogether intoxicating way. My body recalls the encounter with humiliating clarity: the hidden resentment in her eyes as she sank to her knees, the wet heat of her mouth, and the pleasure that drove every coherent thought from my head. And the taste of her— the dark copper of her blood, the molten sweetness of her cunt—I dream of it. Rise thinking of it. And it haunts my waking hours, keeping my balls aching and my mouth wet with saliva.

Even now, seated beside the woman I am supposed to marry, I picture finding Kira alone in the castle somewhere. I imagine pressing her against the nearest wall and kissing her until the anger in her eyes turns to desire. I imagine stripping away her uniform, spreading her thighs and sinking into her so slowly she feels every inch.

My cock hardens beneath the table.

This farce of a meal is doing nothing to distract me. I shall have to find somewhere private and take care of myself. I am not accustomed to this—my blood burning hot beneath my skin, a flush lingering beneath my collar. Every unguarded thought becomes a fantasy of touching her again. It is a peculiar form of torture, being unable to escape a woman who is nowhere near me.

Knowing she intended to manipulate me has done nothing to dull the memory. She had a dagger in her hand and an opportunity to use it, yet she lowered the blade and chose me instead.

She had stabbed me, somehow shed her collar, and tried to escape. That should have cured me of any tenderness I felt towards her. Instead came the assembly hall. Her audacious attempt to free a dead king. The tower. Those magnificent wings, and that terrifying leap.

She was magnificent, and so utterly brave as she took flight that she stripped me, briefly, of the conviction that the path I had chosen for her was the right one.

Had the night been calm, I have no doubt she would have soared away while I watched, powerless to stop her. The collar was gone. She had reached the open sky. She had won. Then the wind caught her injured wing and slammed her violently against the tower.

I can still see her striking the roof in my mind, still hear the loud thud, followed by the long creak of wet leather as she slid down the slate, her wings trapped beneath her as she fought for purchase. For one sickening moment, I told myself it could not be, that this was not happening, even as she disappeared over the edge.

I went after her in shoes made for polished court floors rather than rain-slicked rooftops, my feet sliding as I reached the roof’s lip and nearly pitched over. Then I dropped down, and it was a near thing that I did not follow her past the battlements.