Forever Claimed. Rachel Lee

      “If I’m not with you every minute of the night, you might fall into danger again,” Luc said.

      The pulse in her throat, her scent, her lips, her eyes … everything about Dani woke his most atavistic primal needs and desires. Much as she despised vampires, she had no idea of the pleasures he could show her, the absolute heaven that lay between life and death.

      But he knew, and it made him both restless and dangerous. The need for action filled him, the only antidote to desire.

      The room was too small to truly escape. Worse, he could smell moments of desire passing through her, too. They came and went like waves on a shore, as she battled them down. What was it about her?

      Dear Reader,

      Forever Claimed provided me with an opportunity to take a different look at werewolves. I like taking different looks at things.

      Our heroine, Dani, is a werewolf who can’t shapeshift and has left her clan because she can’t stand being different. She was also raised with a deep loathing of vampires, so imagine her shock when she discovers her life was saved by a vampire named Luc.

      Against a backdrop of a war between vampires, Dani must choose a side. It is a sometimes painful journey, especially when she finds herself increasingly attracted to a vampire, one of her family’s eternal enemies.

      Dani’s journey of self-discovery leads her to some strange and dangerous places and finally to the one place she belongs, in the arms of a vampire.

      Enjoy!

       Rachel

      About the Author

      RACHEL LEE was hooked on writing by the age of twelve, and practiced her craft as she moved from place to place all over the United States. This New York Times bestselling author now resides in Florida and has the joy of writing full-time.

      Forever Claimed

      Rachel Lee

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

       Chapter 1

      He smelled blood on the night air. Little did he guess the danger it was about to lead him into.

      Luc St. Just sped through the dark city streets, moving shadow to shadow, too fast for human eyes to see. He didn’t want to be here. Indeed, he was returning to this place only because he felt he owed at least a small favor to Jude Messenger, a fellow vampire. Jude was one of very few vampires he counted as a friend.

      Which wasn’t saying much. For most of his two centuries as a vampire, Luc had grown truly close to only one other of his kind: Natasha. His lost lover, his claimed mate. When she had died, madness had overtaken him, and although with Jude’s help he’d achieved a measure of vengeance, the excruciating sense of loss and sorrow still remained.

      A claiming was supposed to be broken by vengeance, but apparently it hadn’t been. That left only his own death to release him. But for some reason he clung to his existence, however unwillingly. He hadn’t yet asked a vampire for mercy, although he had come close. So he was still here, and because some dregs of conscience prompted him, he was entering a city he had no desire to ever see again.

      He should be in Paris, the city of his heart. Or anywhere in Europe where life felt more comfortable than this new world with all its brashness and noise.

      But all those thoughts, thoughts that dogged his heels almost obsessively—a sign of a claiming—dropped into the background as he smelled blood on the air.

      He was a vampire, and there was no sweeter siren call than that of fresh blood. He lifted his head, sniffing the air, locating the direction from which the enticing scent came. The park. Someone had been injured badly.

      He could have just continued on his way, but the call was hard to resist, and his resistance was low these days. If nothing else, he could at least put some human out of misery. Or so he thought, trying to put a noble veneer on what was an irresistible instinct.

      Even he could see some bleak humor in his own rationalization.

      He slipped through the shadowy woods swiftly, the night as clear to him as day would have been to a human. A high, full moon deepened the shadows, allowing him to pass swiftly, invisible to human eyes, just another shadow among shadows. But for him, colors shone with jewellike brilliance.

      The night came alive to him in ways it never would for a mortal. The movement of every leaf, the insects crawling in the grass or nibbling on leaves, he could hear all that. Even the sound of water running up inside the trunks of trees reached him with a delightful syncopated rhythm. He heard a bird’s wings flutter then settle quickly.

      The night sang to him.

      He could hear the distant sound of a baby’s cry, a couple of people who argued blocks away and even the sound of someone’s private lovemaking.

      Once, he had soaked up these sounds with pleasure. No more, for he had lost his capacity for pleasure. Tonight he shoved them into the background as the call of blood dominated.

      He paused a few times, testing the air, smelling for humans. What he smelled gave him pause. As the delicious scent of fresh blood grew, so did another scent: the scent of his own kind.

      “Putain,” he said under his breath. He should clear out now. He had a message to deliver, and a face-down with some hungry vampires enjoying their meal would not serve him at all. But there was too much blood on the air, too much to be a simple feeding. What if those he had come to warn Jude about had already arrived?

      Even when not concerned, a vampire tended to be very quiet, but now he heightened his senses and moved with true stealth to avoid his own kind. Trees zipped past him. He stayed off the paved paths and tasted the air frequently. Both the scent of blood and vampires grew, but the blood strengthened more quickly. Whoever had done this thing, he judged they had moved on.

      He picked up his pace a bit, then saw the heat signature of a body lying on the ground amidst the trees. The sound of a too-rapid heartbeat reached him. The victim. He circled quickly, looking for others of his kind and soon detected they had moved on to the south.

      He and the food were alone.

      He crept toward her and what he saw appalled even him. He was no saint, despite his name, and indulged in willing mortal blood without compunction. But this was not a willing donation, and the savagery of the attack on the woman lying before him shrieked unnecessary violence. She must have put up one hell of a fight and paid for it with a torn and possibly broken body.

      Her heartbeat raced as her body fought to pump its diminishing blood supply to essential organs. She hovered on the brink of death, and he wondered why her attackers hadn’t finished her. It would have been so easy for them to just snap her neck.

      And what that said about the attackers offended him. There was no need to have been this violent or to have left the woman to die slowly. Like many hunters, he believed in clean kills. Vampires were not cats, to maul their prey. They had other ways of satisfying those urges, sexual and seductive ways that needn’t lead to this kind of mess.

      This group had left a message, writ clear on the woman’s body.

      He could have put an end to her suffering right then, but stayed himself. She might be just the proof he needed to convince Jude of the gravity and reality of the warning he carried.

      Just as he was bending toward her, he caught an unmistakable smell on the breeze. He straightened and whirled just in time to see another vampire seeping out of the shadows toward him.

      He considered, then said, “Is she yours?”