Shadowbound by Dianne Sylvan Read Free Book Online

Jonathan had only one goal in mind.
    Placing the phone down carefully to avoid making noise, he kicked off his shoes and stretched out on the bed at Deven’s side. He drew the inert Prime into their favorite sleeping position—Jonathan forming a solid wall against Deven’s back, giving him the feeling of safety he craved—and kissed him on the ear, sighing . . . so much was changing. He knew the Elf would succeed; that much was easy to predict. But for how long?
    And at what cost?
    “Stay with me,” he said softly into Deven’s ear. “You stay with me, and I’ll stay with you, and . . .” He could hear the catch in his own voice, and fell silent for a while, just listening to Dev breathe.
    Holding his Prime tightly, as if he could hold on hard enough to keep the world from tearing everything apart, he closed his eyes and lay waiting for Deven to scream himself awake.

Two
    On the night of the new moon, the newborn son of the Goddess of Death killed a mortal without a single pang of remorse.
    The new moon before that, he had been wandering around a stranger in his own life, with only partial memory of his own transformation from an ordinary vampire into something more. He had been home, restored to his Queen, but only partway, until the night she joined him across the divide.
    The new moon before that, he had been murdered.
    The human wasn’t exactly what he’d been hoping to find, but the hunger that had been growing for the last two days had at last overridden sense and reason and he was grateful he’d maintained enough control to find a drug dealer—one who sold to high school children and extorted sex for meth from the girls.
    He would do.
    For two nights David had fought it, had denied it. Until waking up tonight he had held on to a slim and fading hope that it would go away. But deep down, he had known what was really happening. Just in the last twenty-four hours his new senses had all dulled, which seemed counterintuitive given that those senses were supposed to make them better hunters . . . but it wasn’t about that, this time. It was a warning.
    An order.
    Do what you were made to do. All of these gifts, all of your power, is meaningless unless you surrender to your nature. Do it . . . and everything will come back. The pain will fade. Do it.
    It wasn’t the first time he had heard that voice whispering in his mind—that voice like feathers across a moonlit sky. He couldn’t say for certain if the voice was his own subconscious or that of Someone Else, but really, even if there was a difference, it didn’t matter. Once he would have doubted it was real, but in the last few months he had lost the luxury of doubt.
    By the time he got into town that night his entire body felt like it was on fire from the inside—it was a vampire’s hunger times ten, coalescing into physical agony that nearly had him clawing at his skin.
    It would only get worse. He knew it would only get worse.
    He’d expected the human’s death to soothe the pain and calm the shaking, but he was unprepared for the blast wave of satisfaction, pleasure, and purpose that hit him as soon as the body hit the ground. Every cell burned, but now with power.
    In that moment nothing else mattered. The world fell away. He wanted to kneel down and kiss the dead man’s slack mouth to thank him for being such a reprehensible sack of shit . . . finally the man’s oily, poisoned life had shown the world its meaning.
    He didn’t kneel. Since taking the Signet he had knelt to no one . . . except to the being who had brought him back from death . . . which was how he’d ended up in this situation in the first place.
    He held his hand out over the body and made it disappear.
    No fuss, no muss.
    When he returned to the car, Harlan immediately noticed the complete 180-degree shift in his behavior—the Prime who had gone into the city to hunt was short-tempered and exhausted, with dark circles under his eyes, and couldn’t