Page 197 of Collared by the Vampire Prince

Mark rises slowly, his nose trailing along the hem before he lets my skirt fall.

Revulsion crawls over my skin at his words. He can smell that?

“Mark has a thing for virgins,” Chelsea says with unmistakable distaste. She looks as though she would rather be anywhere else.

So would I.

Mark gives me one of his lopsided grins. “What can I say? I like deflowering them. You will be my thirty-ninth.”

“Still aiming for fifty before graduation?” one of the alphas asks.

Mark laughs. “I am.”

As laughter spills around us, I swallow the bile rising in my throat.

When morning arrives, I will have an entire pack standing between me and anyone who tries to use me—including Nathaniel. I hope, rather than believe, it will be worth it.

Chelsea moves to stand near the door, and candlelight shimmers against her dark hair, her expression strangely remote.

“The initiation has three parts,” she says. “Submission to the leadership. Acceptance by the alphas. The oath.”

“And then I am one of you?”

“If you complete all three.”

The wind strengthens. Rafters creak overhead, and something small scrabbles behind the grain sacks.

Mark holds out his hand. “Kneel.”

I draw in a slow breath, hesitating for as long as I dare. I knew submission was required, yet this almost feels worse than kneeling in the carriage for Nathaniel. At least he had defeated me at my strongest, surviving my teeth long enough to capture me. However unwillingly, the Vampire Prince did something to earn my submission.

What has Mark done?

Nothing.

But I think of the magic wand. The last witch. The Poplarins’ secrets. That is why I came to the Poplarins—not for Mark, but for what being one of them might give me. The pack waits, and Chelsea clears her throat pointedly.

Slowly, I kneel upon the mattress. Dust puffs around my knees, and Mark reaches out and strokes my hair, his approval somehow more humiliating than the low chuckles circling the room.

“Do you come to the Poplarins of your own will?” Chelsea asks, voice ringing in the draughty attic.

My gaze catches on the door behind her. Then on the twelve alphas waiting to accept me. “I do.”

“Do you submit to the authority of Mark Poplarin and the alphas of his pack?”

The answer sticks behind my teeth. Mark’s fingers tighten in my hair before resuming their slow stroke.

“I do.”

“Do you accept that your body, strength and loyalty belong to the pack?”

For half a heartbeat, I see Nathaniel kneeling between my legs, his mouth glistening with my blood, and anger burns the image away.

“I do.”

Mark lowers himself before me. “Then let me welcome you.”

He kisses me. His mouth is warm and insistent, and when I fail to respond, his hand closes around the back of my neck and drags me harder against him. My lips part from the pressure, and his tongue immediately pushes inside, thick and wet, swiping over mine with far more saliva than I expected.