Chapter 5 Chapter 5

Draco's POV

By the time I come to my senses night has already fallen. I'm lying on dew-soaked grass, crickets chirping about me like they're auditioning to join a choir. For a moment I don't even know what I am doing here. Last thing I remember I was escaping rogue werewolves, seeking shelter in a harmless-looking cabin and now, only hours since then, it feels as if whoever deposited me here forgot that they meant to bury me or something.

I observe my surroundings. Beyond this clearing a dense intermingling of trees spreads out, nearly blotting out the moon, the house I stumbled on earlier sits in the distance, only a stone’s throw from my current position and the owner? Silhouetted against lit curtains as she moves about in the living room. I'm still struggling to understand where she got the nerve to throw me out. Aren't hosts supposed to be nice and sympathetic to drugged, possibly hurt strangers who are passed out on their bedroom floor?

Maybe she thought me dead, I reason.

No. If she did, I would have been taken farther away– the better to not implicate her.

Obviously, while she doesn't want me around her house she couldn't really be bothered with wasting the energy to get me somewhere farther than this. The effrontery.

Gone are the days where owners of weird cottages buried deep in the woods keep you cosy until you regain consciousness. There are no nice maidens of the forests anymore. This here is a gingerbread witch.

I rise to my feet and dust myself so angry I can barely think. My gaze goes to the house for a moment. Does the mortal who owns it realise the calibre of person she just threw out so disrespectfully– on the damn dirt floor for that matter? I don't think so.

I march for the front door.

Five long strides get me there. I don't even knock. I twist the handle, see that it doesn't budge then ram my shoulder into the plank. The frame shudders, dust dances around me like confetti and while the hinges creak it doesn't cooperate just yet. I'm still recovering from the drug from earlier– usually I can smash the door in with that same amount of force. I try again. The second time I throw my weight into the wood, it flies inward and I charge inside.

I'm about to snap, ask the human who the fuck she thinks she is when my gaze focuses and I see her– seated on the biggest couch in the room, a bowl of spaghetti in her hand– and I just… freeze.

Fuck.

Emerald eyes, coffee hair, the distinct awareness that if looks could kill she has already cremated me misting around her. Her brows are angled in a soft line, skin so spotless it should be a crime. And those lashes… Bloody hell. They could undo me.

Yet it's beyond the way she looks. There is a certain aura she carries. She hasn't said anything since I came in yet I know sitting before me is a woman who knows control. She is a stubborn one, that's for sure. It burns in the gold speckles in her irises. And the way she looks at me like I bore her already fucking incenses me. It excites me.

I want to be in her head and I don't even know her.

Right now she's looking at the door I barged in through a slightly annoyed look in her countenance, clearly awaiting an explanation for my rude entry.

In response, I clear my throat, wondering just what I planned to say earlier. Ah, yes. “Who the fuck do you think you are?"

She lets out a chuckle, amused. "I'm sorry, what?”

"You heard me. WHO THE FUCK. DO YOU THINK. YOU ARE?" I repeat. “How dare you treat me the way you did?"

She looks so unbothered I want to yell. "Apparently you haven't died of hypothermia yet,” she replies. “I was wondering when you would get up. You were disfiguring my lawn.”

I blink. “I was–"

“You can leave now," she announces, digging into her food with gusto. “You've overstayed your welcome."

"I think the fuck not,” I return, unsure why I am suddenly interested in bantering with this woman. I should be on my way by now, her image already forgotten like all the others but no, a part of me wants to stay, see how much I can push her. "Do you have any idea who I am? You fucking left me unconscious on the damn floor.”

"I most certainly did,” she answers. "And I know who you are. You're in the mob– precisely why I sent you out. Please take your problems far away."

“And what makes you think I'm mafia?"

"You had an fucking semiautomatic on you,” she returns. “An unregistered one. I frisked you.”

“You frisked me," I say, mock approvingly. "Pray tell, were there other parts of me you touched without my consent?”

She folds her arms across her chest. “Get the fuck out of my house."

“Make me."

She gets on her feet and heads in my direction, this sassy, stubborn as fuck woman. I wait to see what she will do but the closer she gets the more I realize I am starving.

It only occurs to me that it's been a few days since I last went hunting– since I fed– and something smells really divine in here. But my angry little host isn't cooking anything right now fuck knows where the delicious aroma is from. The woman is already before me, trying to pull me in the direction of the exit when I realize that what smells so fucking intoxicating is her blood…

But I've been off human blood for the last century, trained myself to not stoop that low. Only rogues and degenerates fed wantonly on daywalkers, earning dangerous consequences as a result.

I, on the other hand have never had an issue bending my urges to my will unlike low-tier vampires who took several decades to master surviving on only the blood of predators like the Alliance’s Treaty stipulates. Hunting yes, but leaving humans out of it. But fuck, this woman is going to take me straight to the gates of hell. How can the scent of one person's blood be so heady? What the fuck is this woman?