Bride (Ali Hazelwood) by Ali Hazelwood

            “I didn’t think Vampyres could be beautiful.” There’s nothing complimentary about his words. He’s neither hitting on me, nor attempting to creep me out. Just stating a simple fact, followed by another step toward me, and I’m suddenly very conscious that I’m at the end of a hallway. He stands between me and the exit.

            “Who are you?”

            “Max,” he says, but doesn’t elaborate. There is something absentminded, almost empty about him. Disoriented. Like he was going to take a swim in the lake but found himself here without planning on it. “I wonder if Lowe likes seeing you around. Because you’re so pretty,” he muses numbly.

            “I doubt it.” I want to put a door between myself and Max, but the only one I can reach is Lowe’s office—locked. I glance around for another escape route, but all I find is a giraffe painting of questionable quality.

            I might be overreacting.

            “Or maybe he hates you, because you force him to remember.”

            “Remember what?” This is unsettling. “I don’t want to startle you, but would you mind if I walked past—”

            “Remember what your people have taken from him. It’s almost as much as they’ve taken from me. And yet he’s making alliances with them like a common traitor. He married you, and said that you’re not to be harmed.” Max runs a hand over his dark hair, and then shakes his head in what looks like disbelief. He looks so deeply lost, I forget my unease and ask:

            “Are you okay?”

            His eyes sharpen. “How could I be okay?” He takes a step farther, nearly cornering me against the wall. The smell of his blood sweeps over me, hot, unpleasant. His heartbeat punches in my ears, booming, impossibly fast. “How could I be okay, when you’re here, in my Alpha’s home, after your people have hunted my relatives and mounted their embalmed heads to their walls.”

            The part of me who was once fourteen years old and almost stabbed by an anti-Vampyre activist posing as a gas inspector kicks in. “Then maybe we’re even, since your people have made wine out of the blood of mine and then mixed it with livestock feed.” I slide a hand into the pocket of my jeans, hoping for any weapon. A key, a toothpick, even some lint—nothing.

            Shit.

            “Tell me.” He moves closer. I force myself to stand my ground. “Your father is alive?”

            “As far as I know.”

            “Mine isn’t. Nor my older sister.” His green eyes are bright and glossy. “She was murdered when I was nine, while patrolling a border in the Northeast that the Vampyres sometimes cross just for fun. She died to protect me and other Were children, and . . .” The words stick in his throat. I feel a surge of compassion. My heart drops, heavy with certainty that he’s going to burst into tears.

            But I’m dead wrong, and I realize it too late.

            He races toward me in a sudden explosion of vicious energy. The impact of his body against mine briefly knocks the breath out of me—briefly. He’s a male Were, much stronger, but I’m used to people wanting to assassinate me, and when his hand clutches my wrist, hours of training spring into muscle memory. My knee hits his groin and he wails. I use the distraction to push him away, and it’s not easy, it hurts, but by the time I can breathe again, my forearm is pinning his throat to the wall, and our faces are only inches apart.

            I don’t want to hurt him. I’m not going to hurt him, even if he’s screaming abuse at me—“I will end you” and “Murderer” and “You leech.”

            So I peel back my lips, and show him my fangs.

            The rumble in his throat instantly dulls into a whimper. His eyes lower to the ground, and the tension in his muscles loosens. I take a deep breath, making sure that he’s not faking this, that he’s really calmed down and he won’t attack me the second I pull back, and—

            A pair of hands a million times stronger than Max’s yanks me away. What happens next is too blurry to parse, but a moment later, I’m the one sandwiched against the opposing wall. My back digs into the frame of the giraffe painting, and my front presses against something just as unyielding, but warm.

            What the fuck, I think, or maybe I say it out loud.

            I’m just not sure. Because when I open my eyes, all I can focus on is the way Lowe Moreland is staring down at me.