Hunger Chronicles (Book 1): Life Bites by Tes Hilaire Read Free Book Online

worry about than what is going on a few states away. As long as things stay that way I have time to earn their trust.
    “I thought you weren’t up on your vampire research.” Not exactly an evasion, but not a direct answer.
    He shrugs. “I’ve seen my share of vampire movies. Hives, covens. I had a 50-50 shot.”
    “Hmm.” I take the mug, turning the hot ceramic around in my hand as I watch the dark liquid slosh against the stained rim. “Let’s just say my hive queen and I don’t see eye to eye.”
    “Want to expand on that?”
    I lift my gaze, meet up with the quiet intensity of his earth-brown eyes. Not a muscle in the rest of his body gives away the importance of the question he’s just asked, but I understand that this is a test I have to pass. And it can only be passed with truth. So be it.
    I set my untouched coffee down, leaning in close enough to be within striking distance of his throat. A lesser man would have flinched, or reacted by attacking the threat. John doesn’t. Not even a change in his heart rate.
    “You have no fear,” I say, purposely angling my head in a posed viper tilt.
    “You already said you weren’t going to bite me,” he says, his hot breath fanning across my temple. My heart-rate spikes. Not afraid, something else. Kind of like how I’d feel on the starters block during a relay race.
    Or how two gladiators might feel before a battle.
    I tip my head up, looking John straight in the eye as I let him see the intensity of my beast. It is right there, residing somewhere between the region of my stomach and my heart. Ours is a love-hate relationship, but I need it as much as it needs me. A girl doesn’t go from vegetarian to craving raw steak without giving that beast some leash. And right now mine is yanking at the lead.
    John is not the enemy, though, so I say, “A vampire doesn’t need to bite a man to break him. And that is exactly what my queen would do with the likes of you.”
    “And is that what your queen tried to do to you? Break you?”
    I shift back, taking a step away. John is watching me with a casual intensity that reminds me all too much of the queen I’ve fled. There is danger in that gaze: lethalness and cunning assessment.
    My earlier assessment was wrong. John is not the simple guy he pretends to be and I’ll be smart to watch my back.
    “No one breaks me,” I tell him, then start for the door on the east side of the mess hall that leads to my assigned room.
     

 
     
    5.
     
    No. No one breaks me. When the going gets tough, I run. I’d spent the rest of the day tossing and turning in my bed, replaying the conversation with John. I might be a kick-ass kind of chick when I am the big fish in the little pond, but put me in a larger pool of water and I turn back into the bookish teenager who fled from everything and anything. Queen bees with a disciplinary agenda, guys I can’t scare off…and a mess hall full of trigger-twitchy men: these are all situations that send me scurrying.
    Play nice. How in the world am I supposed to play nice with a bunch of men who’d rather see my head on a pike than talk to me? Roy and Herbie had had a busy day. By the time I woke up, everyone knew there was vampire amongst them, and none of them liked the situation. Thank God for John. The very guy I’d fled from last night had been the one to step forward and stop the impending violence in its tracks. Or at least slowed it long enough for me to sprint to my room and lock the door.
    I fume and curse as I pace across the seven by ten room—aka my cell—again. I came here to fight. To help save the very people who want to lynch me now. And here I am stuck in my room like a caged animal. John had sent me off with the assurance that he would call Commander Derwood and straighten things out. I guess the fact that there isn’t a mob banging down my door yet means John reached him, and that Marine has managed to contain the situation, but damn if the whole thing doesn’t