Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 145721 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145721 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
And she had just broken the Treaty.
“Bravo,” he said dangerously.
He clapped twice, slow and condescending. He didn’t even bother closing the window or locking it. He left it open to the frigid night air, and then he stepped casually, confidently forward.
“What a daring escape plan.”
Kierse came to all fours. Her popped shoulder protested. Her head spun. Possibly a concussion. Gen and Ethan were going to be furious. She used the couch to lift herself unsteadily to her feet. She swayed slightly, and blood trickled out of her nose. She hoped it wasn’t broken.
Then she tilted her chin up to look at him.
He just smirked. A lethally stunning killer. Now, in the light, she could see that his hair had a tinge of midnight blue. His eyes weren’t depthless dark orbs as she had believed. They were swirling gray, as temperamental as the weather and as fatal as standing in the ocean in the middle of a hurricane. He strode forward, slipping black-gloved hands into the pockets of his pitch-black suit.
She ran through the types of monsters, trying to place him. The main forms of monster were vampire, werewolf, mer, wraith, shifter, and goblin. Other manner of monsters remained but were far less common, such as nymph, phoenix, incubus/succubus, and troll. She felt none of that coldness of the vampires. Even from a distance, he was primordial fire. Werewolf was more likely considering the heat he was producing, but she had run with a wolf pack once, and he seemed ever the loner. Wraiths always gave off a slightly uncomfortable sensation of death, as if at any moment they were going to suck out your soul. He was too small for a troll. Too large for a nymph. No water nearby for the mer. A shifter, maybe?
“What is your name?” he asked as he stepped before her.
“None of your fucking business.”
“So, she does speak.” He reached forward with one hand as if he were going to assess her bloody nose, but she acted on instinct, deflecting the touch, and then leaned forward to throw a punch. The first worked. His eyes flashed in raw anger as she knocked his hand away from her face. Then he blocked her punch as if she had barely moved.
“That isn’t very nice,” he growled.
She didn’t care. She locked deep into that place within herself and moved like water. Settling into her center of gravity and using every ounce of her training to bob and weave as she tried to hit him. To find an edge to get away from him somehow.
But he hardly seemed to register her thrown punches or swept legs. He stepped and sidestepped. He dodged and countered. He moved with a grace developed from years and years even though he only looked about twenty-five, same as her.
After only a few minutes, she was huffing. A slow smirk stretched across his mouth. He was toying with her. He had no intention of letting her get a lick in edgewise. And then he stepped into her momentary blind spot and jabbed a hand into a trigger point at her shoulder. Her arm fell dead. She couldn’t pick it up.
He flipped her effortlessly and dropped her down onto her back, hard. All the air rushed out of her lungs in a big whoosh. Her head spun. She couldn’t move her arm. Her other arm throbbed from the joint displacement. She’d been training nearly her entire life, and he made her look like an amateur.
“Are you ready to behave?” he asked with that same insufferable smile.
She leaned over and spat a wad of blood onto the carpet in response.
His eyes swirled in warning. “That is an antique.”
She glared back at him. She was outmatched, but still, she couldn’t release her defiance. “Fuck you.”
He straightened, pointing to a large, velvet chair. “Sit there, answer my questions, and you will be released. I give my word.”
“And what is your word worth, monster?”
“Everything,” he said with a resonance that went straight through her bones.
Chapter Two
Kierse sat. What else could she do?
Monsters were real. He was a monster. He was well within his rights to kill her for invading his home. If he wanted to talk, then she’d talk. He wasn’t the first monster she had dealt with, and she was determined that he wouldn’t be her last, either.
Monster rights were still a new thing. It had only been three years since the war had ended and the Treaty had been signed. Before that, she never would have imagined that monsters and humans could come to an accord.
The war had started when Coraline LeMort was murdered in cold blood. She was a vampire visionary who led the charge on ending the feud between vampires and werewolves, and she’d had the support of her own army to back her words up. When a rogue werewolf publicly murdered her, it was the spark that lit the world on fire. Her death brought all of the monsters out of hiding and started the Monster War. Vampires and werewolves became even more divided, and the other monsters chose sides.