Thayne
I have to say; I ’d done a pretty excellent job with Gideon’s face during my rage. His right eye was swollen shut, and blood was running down from a cut above his left eye, making it even harder for him to see. His bottom lip was split from where his fangs had caught when I'd hit him in the jaw, snapping his mouth shut. Altogether I was pretty damn satisfied.
The moment I felt Sebastian’s glamour being removed, I stepped back, waiting for Gideon’s reaction. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Reese and Trent getting into position. If Gideon ran, there was no way he was getting out of this room alive. Not that he would be living for much longer anyway.
Moving his eyes to look above, he snarled. “You! You'll pay for this.” Whether he was talking to Sebastian or Eve, I did not know, but he wasn't going to get a chance of attacking either one of them because I was about to end this.
“What’s wrong, Gideon?” I challenged. He couldn’t out Eve without outing himself as a cheat. Not that anyone would believe him. Feeders were ancient history and very few even remembered the stories.
“You cheat!” he snapped, his eyes burning with rage. “Hiding behind that bastard’s magic.”
“I’ve hidden nothing… but you have. Tell us, Gideon. Tell us how you defeated Denton?” Circling, I made sure to keep my distance. Now was not the time to strike. “You know I still find it strange that no one here within the region witnessed it, or anyone out of the area in fact. So tell us, how did you manage to defeat Master Denton in a fair and legal fight?”
The more I talked, the more his anger grew. He was about ready to blow his top; he just needed a little push. “Unless you didn’t,” I stated as he remained silent. “Unless you snuck in here when no one else was around and killed him before he had a chance to defend himself!”
“It should have been me,” he roared suddenly, glaring up at the balcony above, his eyes burning with hatred. “I should have been on the Council. I should have lived the life of luxury amongst them, not you! You stole what was mine! I was only taking what I rightly deserved. You destroyed the Council and gave yourself the title of Master and no one questioned it, so I did the same.”
“And so you planned to kill me?” Sebastian said calmly.
“Yes. And I may have failed in my plans, but there will be others.” Of course there would. That was a reality Sebastian had lived with for centuries. Where there was great power, there was always someone wanting to tear it down.
Looking to Sebastian, I waited for his reply, but it seemed he had heard enough. Catching his slight nod, I moved fast, faster than I had allowed myself before and struck. He never even saw the punch coming; he was so focused on the man above. The hit rocked him back, sending his head snapping to the side as he stumbled. Not giving him a chance to recover, I aimed a fist at his jaw and followed it up with a hit to his side. I wasn’t pulling my punches anymore either. With every hit, I both felt and heard his bones breaking.
As he knelt on the blood-soaked floor, his eyes still burning with rage, never leaving those above, I made my final move. Grasping his head, using all my new-found strength, I twisted. There were only three ways in which to kill a vampire. Exposure to the sun – though it wasn’t an instantaneous thing like you see in the movies. Destroy the heart. Or my favourite, removal of the head.
As his neck snapped his body went limp, crashing to the floor. Holding my hand out, I waited to be passed the blade that I’d given Chad earlier that night, just in case things had worked in my favour. “Here you go… Master,” he smirked.
Ignoring his words, not really wanting to think about the consequences of what I was about to do, I closed my hand around the cold, silver blade. Wasting no time, I quickly brought it down upon Gideon’s exposed neck, severing his head from his body and sealing my fate.
It was done. As the crowd around me roared in approval, I glanced up, my eyes clashing with the only person in there whose opinion I cared about. I had killed in front of her. Would she hate me? Despise me? Be afraid of me? That was my greatest fear.
Stood beside her, his face full of approval, was Sebastian. The Master vampire had used his powers before and during the fight to hide his presence from all but me and a select few, only allowing the mass of power he held within loose once he was sure of his suspicions. Gideon had been after him; he was the end game in the bastard’s twisted mind.
Speaking to the crowd, he smiled. “I give you, Master Thayne!”
Master Thayne. What the fuck had I just gotten myself into?
I suddenly found myself in a mass of bodies, hands of congratulations pounding me again and again on my back.
“I knew you could do it.”
“You’ll make a great Master.”
I was grateful for their confidence in me, but right at that moment, I needed to make sure that the person I had done all this for – the main one, anyway – was okay with what she had just witnessed, and not freaking the fuck out. Luckily Reese and Chad seemed to realise the same thing and were parting the crowd to allow me passage. Not that I needed to go far. The moment my path through the crowd was clear, a body came flying at me, my arms opening upon instinct at the sight of her auburn hair.
Wrapping her arms and legs around me, Eve buried her face in my neck, her body shaking like mad. “It’s okay, sweetheart,” I soothed, rubbing my hand up and down her back as she sobbed in my arms. “Everything is okay.”
She wasn’t scared of me. There was no doubt in my mind that if she had been, she wouldn’t be in my arms now, but running as fast as she could in the opposite direction. But the fear and panic rolling off her still worried me.
“I was so scared, Thayne. You could have died. He could have killed you.”
“But he didn’t,” I said, moving her back to look at her face, though, keeping her within my arms. Tears glistened on her lashes, tracks running down her face. She was so beautiful. She took my breath away, so to speak. “You’re safe now. Never again will anyone use you for your blood, keep you prisoner, or think that they own you ever again.”
A small smile pulled at her lips before it spread across her face in a full beam of pure joy and love. “But you own me, Thayne. You own my heart, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Eve - 5 months later…
It was perfect. Everything had gone just as planned and the club looked like it was going to be a huge hit.
Tonight had been the grand re-opening of the newly named Blood and Velvet club. It had taken a lot of work, but the club was finally what I’d always dreamed it could be. The whole place had been given an uplift. The walls repainted, new flooring laid, and the bar – which was reasonably new but once again damaged – had been replaced. The apartment upstairs that had been my home/prison for the past few years had also been redone, along with the whole floor on which it sat.
“You like it?” I asked Reese as he stepped out of the door, a smile pulling at his lips.
After Thayne had taken over as Master, he’d begun to go over the problems that Gideon had never been bothered about sorting out, mainly the care and safety of the vampires under his power. Quite a few of the vamps that had come to the region since his takeover had been ones seeking sanctuary, a safe place to live. Unfortunately, Gideon’s idea of safe was an abandoned office building on the other side of town, far away from himself or any form of help.
With Thayne and I moving into the townhouse he’d taken me to the night of Vince’s attack, it only made sense to renovate the top floor of the club and create living space for those who needed it. Reese, Chad, Trent and Dean were the first to move in, along with a few younglings in their care. They’d spent the past few years doing their best to look after the younger vampires in the area, guiding them as best they could, but they needed a true Master to really do any good.
“It’s brilliant,” he beamed. “Though, it would have been perfect if I didn’t have to have the room next to Chad’s. You have no idea how much that guy snores.”
They’d all at some time or another over the past few weeks since construction began complained about who their new neighbours were going to be. If their complaints had been genuine and not just light-hearted ribbing, I might have listened. But I knew that no matter what these guys said, they loved each other as brothers.
Walking down the hall, I checked in on each of the new club residents, making sure everything was alright with the rooms and that they had everything they needed. In total, we’d managed to fit twelve bedrooms and one large communal living space with a small kitchen on the top floor. The chance of the kitchen ever being used was slim, but if any of the guys ever brought a human up – for whatever reasons – it might come in handy.
“Everything okay?” I asked an hour later as I entered Thayne’s office.
Well, our office. The argument we’d had about separate offices still put a smile on my face. With the club now in my name and me having complete control of it, it was important that I had somewhere to work and keep on top off all the paperwork Gideon never gave a damn about, but Thayne didn’t want me too far away. Both my old office and Gideon’s had been turned into storage, Thayne refusing to use either one of them after all the pain I had suffered and blood I had spilt in them.
Now, after many an argument, we had one large office space, with a divide that we could pull across if warranted. Not that Thayne would ever do that. A few high-end vampires had been a little miffed when forced to speak of sensitive matters with me in the room. Thayne though didn’t care and explained that he would only repeat everything to me later that night if I hadn’t been there in the first place.
I was his mate. He told me everything.
Pulling at his short hair, he sighed. “Why did I get myself into this?”
“Because you care too much for others just to sit around and watch them suffer.” He had a big heart… for a vampire assassin.
“I was crazy. Completely out of my mind. Do you know that even though she classes me as a friend, Sabrina continues to demand that all this useless paperwork is completed? She only created the damn stuff to piss Gideon off! I swear I can hear her laughter from here… and she’s on the other side of the fucking country.”
I had yet to meet Sebastian’s sister but was under no illusion that it wouldn’t be a memorable occasion when I did. I’d heard a lot of interesting things about that woman. “I'm sure she believes that it is important.”
“Important to get her revenge on my trying to kill her once.”
“Wait. When did you attempt to kill her?”
“Long story. I’ll tell it to you one day.” He smiled as he stood up and walked around the desk, pulling me into his arms and crushing his lips against my own. “Right now I just want to get my luscious mate home and back in my bed, where she belongs.”
“Belongs?”
“Yes, belongs – at least until I’ve had my fill of her luscious body. Though to be honest that will never happen. I will never get enough of this, of you. Which means that you’re stuck with me for a very long time. Forever in fact.”
“No complaints here.”
Sebastian had done his research on Feeders well, very well, and in the aftermath of the fight that had won Thayne his title, he’d told us everything he had discovered. There was a whole lot of information that I’d never known about my kind. Like the fact that as long as I fed another on a regular basis, willingly, I would not age. The chemicals in a vampire’s bite affected me differently than the average human. While they just got the pleasure of the bite and incredible strength, I got a whole lot more. I got the chance to live forever. But the only way it worked was if I didn’t fight it, didn’t fight the chemicals seeping into my body like I had done all my life. But with Thayne, that was no problem.
I trusted him. I loved him.
He was my world.
Have read the Fangless yet? Want to know more about the mysterious Sabrina? Then check out my debut series, available at Amazon now.
Other Books Available
By E.M Reders
Fangless Series
Fangless
Bloodless
Fearless
Elemental Born Series
EarthBorn
Flesh & Blood Series
Amber & Lochlann
Beth & Al
Chaetdorian Mates Series
Corr’s Forgiveness
Coming soon…
Torq’s Acceptance (Chaetdorian Mates #2)
AirBorn (Elemental Born #2)
A Message From The Author
Thank you so much for purchasing my book and I hope that you enjoyed meeting Eve, Thayne and the other vampires of the Blood and Velvet Club. Hopefully we can make a return journey there at some point.
Now we authors ask this a lot, but every review really does help. So please, if you could just take a minute of your time to revisit the site you purchased this ebook from and leave a review that would be fantastic. It doesn’t have to be long, a couple of words will do, but it really does help.
Thank you again.
E.M Reders