Page 195 of Collared by the Vampire Prince

Victoria stares up at me, fear flickering across her face. This is plainly not the reaction she had hoped for. I brace one hand upon the table and lean close.

“Where?” I breathe.

“I don’t know.” Her eyes dart towards her friends. “The wolves keep these things secret.”

I straighten and turn away.

“Nathaniel—”

I am already striding across the dining hall.

I have to find her. Now.

The thought comes without reason or permission, sweeping aside everything else. I will find her. There is nowhere within the Academy she can go that I cannot reach.

I should let her make this choice. She is not my pet, my betrothed, or anything else I have the right to claim. She may carry on as she pleases, provided she survives the Academy and graduates—and stops interfering with my plans.

None of that slows my steps.

In the antechamber, I reach inward for the trace her blood left inside me, as I have dozens of times since first tasting it in the alleyway. It answers at once, catching somewhere deep beneath my ribs and pulling me towards her.

I break into a run.

Every vampire has some small gift. Mine is tracking through blood. It has proven extremely useful in locating Kira within the castle, allowing me to follow the connection between us whenever I need to find her. But it is not omniscience. I cannot simply sense where she is, and the connection itself would have faded had I not fed from her again.

The bond is more like an invisible leash drawn taut, the magic tugging me as it does now, out of one corridor and into the next, drawing me left. Then right. Then along the end of a passageway.

In open country, I might follow it and hold a steady direction. But within the castle’s twisting corridors, I never know which way it will turn me next. I cannot tell precisely where she is, nor whether she is near or far, or safe. Only that if I keep following the pull, it will eventually lead me to her.

When I find her—

My mind goes blank, my vision red.

I have no notion what I shall do when I find her—only that something primal is driving me towards her. By every sensible measure, a pack should make her safer. Instead, I picture twelve other males lining up for their turn with her. Will she kneel for them as she once knelt for me? Throw back her head beneath their hands, moaning as though they are finally giving her the touch she has been starved of?

The images turn my jealousy dark and feral. Then something worse occurs to me. What if they hurt her?

My collar has left her helpless. Unable to shift. Twelve alphas against one collared female, and I have no notion what they intend to do with her—or how rough they intend to be.

A savage hiss rips from my throat as I tear through the castle.

Mine.

She is mine.

Chapter 30

Kira

The attic over the service wing smells like a mill. Or how I imagine a mill must smell: grain dust, old timber and the faint sourness of mice. It is easy to imagine the castle has fallen away and I am trapped in some lonely mill surrounded by empty fields, far from anyone who might hear me scream. Wind whistles through narrow gaps beneath the eaves, stirring the candle flames until shadows wheel across the rafters.

Chelsea drops the latch behind us and instructs me to sit on one of the mattresses that have been arranged across the dusty floorboards. Crates and broken chairs crowd the sloping walls, and grain sacks are stacked beneath the rafters. There is no sign of the alphas yet.

I wrap my arms around myself. “Where are they?”

“Waiting downstairs. I said I would prepare you first.”

My stomach twists. “Prepare me?”