Mated by Zoe Winters Read Free Book Online

parents. If only she hadn’t come to the party.
    She shuddered as his mouth moved close to her ear. “What’s more, you liked that. I can smell your reaction. Perhaps I’ll keep you alive with me for awhile, and we’ll see what other talents develop over time. Shall we?”
    He held a clawed hand out to her, and she put her hand into his. What else could she do?
    “By the way, my name is Sedrick.”
    The dream sped up, moving to the one destination it always ended at. The one place she could never escape. The coffin was large enough for two, maybe three people, lined in red satin, and made of solid steel. Not a drop of light could get inside.
    “Don’t worry,” Sedrick said, “You’ll probably live until nightfall. I don’t use much oxygen when I sleep.”
    The coffin was on a timer set for sunset. He snapped a glowing wristwatch around her wrist. She’d begged him to do anything else. Tie her up in the bedroom, anything. But he said he needed her with him.
    Every time the coffin locked shut she thought she’d never survive it. Almost twelve hours of darkness most days inside that box. And the last hour, so hard to breathe, counting down the seconds, watching the glowing digital numbers tick down. Running out of air, past the panic point, banging on the door. What if it didn’t open in time?
    Jane woke screaming, tangled on the floor in the bedsheets where she’d struggled through her dream trying to escape Sedrick. She looked wildly around. It took her a few minutes to realize where she was, to know she wasn’t back in the coffin with the sadistic vampire. The cave was silent. Could the wolf have slept through that?
    She turned on the light, her hand still shaking from the nightmare, and made her way out into the main room. His pillow and blanket were in a pile on the floor beside the sofa. Growing more frantic, she searched the rest of the den.
    Tears stung at the corners of her eyes. “No, No, No, No.” She paced back and forth in front of the sealed steel door. “No!” She couldn’t get the thought out of her head that it was just another larger coffin. What if Cole never came back? What if he got hurt or killed? She could die in here.
    She pressed buttons on the security keypad.
    “Incorrect code.”
    She kept trying.
    “Incorrect code.”
    “Incorrect code.”
    The recorded voice sounded so smug. She started to bang on the door.
    “Let me out of here!” The room was growing smaller, shrinking until it felt no larger than the coffin, as the air got heavier. “Please! Please let me out!”
     
    ***
     
    Cole’s muzzle was wet from a fresh kill. He stood, running his tongue around the side of his mouth to get the last drops of life. He nosed at the bear’s mauled remains, deciding he was finished. All the good parts were gone.
    As he moved through the woods away from the carcass, his senses were swamped with the most heavenly smell. The most forbidden smell.
    Human blood.
    As a man he could have resisted, but as the wolf, the scent was too intoxicating. He salivated as he moved nearer, then whined when he reached the source. There was a small pool of blood rapidly soaking into the ground.
    He dug into the dirt with his paws, pressing his nose against the scent, flicking his tongue out to get some of the precious liquid. But it was too late. He prowled around the spot, then finally growled and shifted back to his human form.
    He felt momentarily ashamed by how badly he’d wanted to lap up the leftovers from a human kill. Gaining control of himself, he knelt beside the blood-soaked earth, inhaled deeply, then got to his feet again.
    There was evidence of a struggle. Branches were bent. Piles of leaves were thrown about in haphazard fashion where feet had flailed and kicked. Furrows had been dug through the dirt by fingers clawing at the ground. He smelled blood on a nearby tree.
    He followed the fading trail of the human and wolf. The wolf had masked his scent, wearing a human-made pheromone