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C
opyright
© 2016 by Bella Forrest

Cover design inspired by Sarah Hansen, Okay Creations LLC

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

The “New Generation” Names List

Arwen
: (daughter of Corrine and Ibrahim - witch)
Benedict
: (son of Rose and Caleb - human)
Brock:
(son of Kiev and Mona – half warlock)
Grace:
(daughter of Ben and River – half fae and half human)
Hazel:
(daughter of Rose and Caleb – human)
Heath:
(son of Jeriad and Sylvia – half dragon and half human)
Ruby:
(daughter of Claudia and Yuri – human)
Victoria:
(daughter of Vivienne and Xavier – human)

Bastien

I
woke
up to the feel of Victoria’s bare body pressed against mine—her scent tantalizing my senses, her gentle breathing. As consciousness trickled through me, I remembered what had happened. I had made Victoria mine.

Imagining waking up like this with Victoria every day filled me with joy I’d never thought I would have a taste of.

I glanced down at her beautiful sleeping face, her lips slightly parted. I claimed those lips, drawing her awake alongside me.

Her eyes blinked open. It took her a few seconds to focus… and then she was sharing my smile.

I was in such a daze, lost in my new mate, that it was only when she asked the time that reality came slamming back.

Oh, my.

Untwining from Victoria, I slid out of bed and hurried to the window. Judging by the position of the sun in the sky, hours had passed since we had first locked ourselves in here.

Yuraya.

My heart stopped beating as I remembered my cousin. Grabbing Victoria, I quickly pulled some clothes over her while wrapping a garment around my waist. Then I hurried with her to Yuraya’s cabin at the bottom of the boat. The last time I had entered it, she was still unconscious, I had been in such a hurry to complete my bonding with Victoria that I could not remember whether I had left the door ajar or closed. Now, it was closed.

Having no idea how much time had passed, I had to hope that Cecil had remained alert to continue feeding her the weed.

But as I stepped inside, it was clear he hadn’t.

The spot where Yuraya had been resting was empty. There was no trace of her anywhere in the room.

“Oh, no,” Victoria gasped, her grip around my arm tightening.

Where is she?

Feeling more afraid for Victoria than ever, I hurried up the staircase, keeping her behind me. Reaching the sunny deck, I glanced around cautiously.

Noticing nothing immediately suspicious, I tentatively called out, “Cecil?”

No answer.

Oh, fates, don’t let that woman have gotten to Cecil. No, no, no.

As we hurried to Cecil’s control cabin, I was expecting to see his body a mangled mess… but it wasn’t.

He was lying on the bench, taking a nap. Or rather, a deep sleep. He was snoring loudly.

I stared at him, then gripped his shoulders and shook him awake.

“Cecil!” I said, rousing the old man. “Yuraya! She’s gone!”

“Wh-What?” He rubbed his eyes.

“How long have you been sleeping?” I asked him.

“I-I don’t know,” he said slowly, his brows knotting. “I was so tired. Once we had gotten a fair distance away from The Dunes I felt unbearably sleepy. I had not slept properly in a long time.”

This was the absolute worst time that he could’ve picked to sleep, but I could hardly lay any blame on him.
I
should not have fallen asleep. But our bonding had been more exhausting than I had thought it might be. It had tired me out, body, mind and soul. Both Victoria and I couldn’t help but fall into slumber, losing consciousness before we had even realized it.

“So what now?” Victoria whispered.

Still holding her hand, I raced to the other end of the deck and glanced down at the balcony, just in case Yuraya might’ve been hiding there for some reason. She wasn’t.

Then we headed back down to the lower decks and searched every cabin thoroughly, fearing she might be playing a game of hide-and-seek.

She wasn’t.

She was nowhere on the boat.

She had just… vanished.

The most surprising thing about all of this was that Victoria was still alive. Or that I was, for that matter. Surely, after waking from her stupor, Yuraya would have searched the ship. She must’ve seen Victoria and me lying naked in each other’s arms. I could only imagine what that would have done to her.

She should have been seething. Ready to rip us both to shreds.

But she hadn’t. She had gone.

“What could’ve happened?” Victoria asked, gazing at me wide-eyed.

I exhaled a breath. “I don’t know,” I replied.

Though something told me we had definitely not seen the last of her…

Mona

T
here were
a lot of worse places Brock and I could have been stuck waiting in the supernatural dimension. The Woodlands was beautiful, and it was a land that was fairly familiar to me, due to my prior involvement with the black witches. It wasn’t difficult for Brock and me to locate fresh water and food to keep us going.

I also enjoyed the opportunity to have some quality time with my son. We were usually both so busy and often running in different directions, that time together was hard to come by. If only Kiev was here—then we could have called it a family outing. I guessed that he would be wrapped up in whatever the League’s latest misadventures were.

Not that my husband was a picnic kind of guy. His old age had made him a typical man in that sense. When he wanted to relax, he liked the convenient, familiar surroundings of home.

As Brock and I sat perched on a branch, eating a snack of fleshy pink fruits, our pleasant conversation was interrupted by a chorus of shrieking. Shrieking that chilled me to the bone. That sort of shrieking wasn’t something you heard from someone unless they were in severe pain, maybe even dying.

Dropping the fruit, Brock and I left the branch and hurtled in the direction of the noise. We soon realized that it was coming from Blackhall Mountain.

Arriving above the entrance, we found ourselves gazing down at a nightmarish scene. Giant black wolves were attacking a group of much smaller ones, who appeared to be trying to defend their lair.

Then I realized that they were not just attacking the Blackhalls… They were eating them.

“It’s the Mortclaws,” Brock said, his breath hitching. “
Now
do you believe that they are still cannibals?”

My voice caught in my throat. I had been reluctant to interfere with the Mortclaws until now because, first, their preference of wife for their son was a family affair, and second, I’d had no proof that they were still cannibals. But now that I saw this… abomination… I couldn’t simply stand still and watch.

“Hey!” I roared down. The first thing I wanted to do was grab their attention, distract them from biting into those poor wolves.

But it didn’t work. Only a few of them glanced up briefly before immediately stooping back down to their meals.

All right. If this is how you want to play things…

Mustering my power to my fingertips, I hovered down and began to freeze the Mortclaws one by one—attempting to catch them when their jaws were not closed around a victim. Brock assisted me, and once we had stunned every one of them—which included freezing their eyeballs—I looked to my son.

“You can help me now,” I told him. “Let’s line them all up at the edge of the woods.”

Brock was quick to assist. Soon, every one of the Mortclaws lay in frozen positions by the trees. Though their limbs were stiff and immobile, I had let them retain use of their mouths and voices. They exploited their ability to speak to the maximum as they hurled insults and threats at me.

These folks really did not take kindly to interruptions at dinnertime.

Brock and I hurried to assist the injured Blackhalls, healing as many as we could. But some, sadly, didn’t make it. They passed away before we could assist them.

Poor Bastien.
This was going to break his heart.

Assuming Victoria ever found him.

Once the Blackhalls were safely back inside their lair to recover from the trauma—their fallen taken in with them, presumably to hold some kind of funeral ceremony—Brock and I returned our attention to the monsters.

My son glanced at me, raising his brows. “So… what do we do with them now?” he asked.

I blew out.
That is a good question…

BOOK: A Shade of Vampire 32: A Day of Glory

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