So the students who did get his attention earned some cred. He knew he was considered the ultimate conquest here.

He’d just penetrated her soft skin with his fangs and started to suck, while pushing ice through the wound and pinching her clit, when he smelled something out of place and infinitely more interesting than his partner and her common blood.

His head snapped left, gaze directed at the wall, even as his attention focused well beyond the confines of his dwelling.

Something had entered Night Hill. Something that didn’t belong here.

A wolf.

Alexius grinned. At last, some action that wouldn’t bore him to tears.

Those wolves knew the rules. They weren’t allowed here, not without invitation. Which meant that he was going to be able to chase.

And maybe even bite something a little less bland than his current meal.

He withdrew his cock from its wet sheath, removed the condom he hadn’t really needed, and pulled up the pants he hadn’t removed. “Sorry, Laura.”

“Lise!” she replied angrily.

He had to laugh. The girl let an undead ancient she didn’t know bite her as he fucked her, but she had issues with his not knowing her name.

“Right. That’s it, Lisa.” Okay, so he was an asshole; the lack of concern was purposeful. He’d hate to let her think he cared, or that there would be a repeat. “I have an emergency. You can finish the job—I have toys in the bedside table. Then let yourself out.”

She’d better be gone by the time he was back.

Alexius rushed down the hill. The Helsings were set up on the upper tier, right under the De Villiers; the only other house towering over them was that of the Eirikrsons. The monsters born vampires were warned about instead of the boogeyman and the big bad wolf in their world.

By the time he reached the intruder, disappointment hit.

It was a wolf, all right. A hot, tanned, sculpted blonde in short cotton PJs and tank with spaceships on them. She was too pretty to hunt, even if she had broken the rules. Which she clearly hadn’t—there was a clause stating that wolves could come on the hill in case of emergency.

And the dull, ashen mouth-breather she was carrying at her side looked like an emergency.

Alexius swiftly appeared at the guy’s side, checking his pulse and scanning for anything amiss. Gosh, he stank. But Alexius couldn’t help himself. Attempting to heal, to put back together broken pieces, was his curse.

He tilted the guy’s head up to look right into his dilated, bloodshot pupils. “Compulsion spell. A strong one.”

Alexius frowned, letting go of the head. He glanced down at the boy’s sliced wrists, cut too deep, at an angle that suggested it had been self-inflicted.

The guy was beyond saving. He might actually already be dead, moving solely because of the spells binding him. Alexius sniffed him. Yep, definitely dead.

He stepped away from the creepy shuffling corpse with a grimace, walking back up the hill. Maybe the undergrad was still in his room. He unquestionably was going to need a distraction after touching a decaying corpse.

For all the wrong reasons.

“Hey!” the pretty blonde wolf called. “What do I do with him?”

Alexius didn’t spare her a second glance, for various reasons. The first one being that he couldn’t allow himself to be close to a girl as appealing as she right now. Particularly not a wolf.

To most, the stench of death would have been sickening, disgusting, wrong. In a way, it was. But mostly, Alexius found it arousing. Corpses made him think about hunting down prey, taking it, consuming it.

Fuck. He was so damn twisted.

“Nothing to do. You might as well drop him there. The cleaning crew will take care of him.”

It would hardly be the first corpse they took out of Night Hill.

“I can’t believe this.” The poor girl sounded outraged. “Aren’t you going to do anything?”

“I absolutely am. I’m going back to get a bite. Feel free to join me if you’d like.”

She growled low in her throat. A strangely enticing sound. Now, he couldn’t help glancing back behind his shoulder.

He grinned, lifting an eyebrow suggestively. “I take it that’s a no? Shame.”

The wolf would definitely have been more fun than Bottle-Blonde Lisa.

Alexius chuckled as a trail of insults followed him on his way back home.

He could hear and scent Levi and the others approaching at a speed the wolf wouldn’t have been able to detect. They’d take care of the corpse, and help the wolf out better than Alexius could in his state.

And Alexius could go back to taking care of nothing and no one except for his favorite person: Alexius.

Three Words

Watching the retreating figure, dumbfounded, Avani couldn’t believe her eyes—or ears for that matter. And she sure as fuck couldn’t believe her nose. The hot dude walking away from her and her five-foot-eleven, two-hundred-pound charge might be an absolute asshole, yet he smelled so damn good she wanted to lick chocolate sauce off his abs. Woodsy, with apple tart and pine tree; all her favorite things.

Right after she punched him in the face and got him to deal with the hexed guy she’d dragged all the way up this hill.

All her instincts told her to follow him, make him obey, but she stayed put. She could imagine that people didn’t easily make that guy do anything he didn’t want to.

Dammit. She really should have stayed away from vamp business.

After calling him every colorful name she could think of, including "twatwaffling cuntytart," she forced herself to breathe out to calm her racing pulse. She wasn’t sure her Zen practice helped much, but he was too far to hear her now anyway, so she concluded her tirade with, “Fine. Whatever.”

If he didn’t care about the huntsman puppet, there was no reason why she should. She let go of the zombie dude’s arm, shrugged, and started to walk down the hill just as a breeze of air passed in front of her.

The hairs on her arm stood to attention, and her body tensed, adopting a protective stance—a natural reaction for a wolf faced with outsiders, potential enemies. The next instant, six other vamps appeared.

She felt so terribly foolish watching them stand so close, their bright eyes fixed on her. They were clearly predators, and she was terribly outnumbered.

Even she recognized the two leading them. His damn highness Levi De Villier, the owner of Oldcrest, who let her pack stay here out of the goodness of his dark little vamp heart. Or something like that.

The pack couldn’t stand him. They needed his charity; that didn’t change the fact that they hated it.

And of course, his mate, the object of all the attention on their territory, Chloe Eirikrson.

Avani had met her a few months back, during her first week in the territory. She seemed nice. And naive. Or stupid. Which meant she was potentially an evil genius who wanted to appear all three? Jury was still out.

“Avani?” Chloe said.

She was surprised the girl recalled her name before remembering that vampires had freaky memories.

“Hey. I found that guy on the path, so I helped him up the hill. Your troll let me through.”

She’d seen the guardian of the Night Hill gates from afar before, but actually speaking to the colossal beast had been a little more intimidating than she’d liked to admit. She knew his kind was freakishly strong and a lot faster than they should be, given their imposing stature.

“Thank you, Avani,” said the damn fucking king of vamps.

Well, not literally. Levi didn’t hold a formal title. Nonetheless, he could have if he’d wanted to. And he was talking to her. Politely. Using her name, even.

Today was weird.

“I recognize the boy. He’s…”

“A huntsman,” Chloe supplied. “Easton Reeds, I think? He started school the same day as me. Bash would know more.”

“Mikar?” Levi said.

There must have been some sort of underlying order there because without requiring further prompting, a dark and handsome shadow disappeared in another fast breeze, running at full speed up the hill as though Levi had brandished a whip.

Chloe stepped forward tentatively and called softly, “Easton? How are you doing?”

No answer came from the huntsman; he kept mumbling, his gaze fixed unwaveringly ahead.

“What’s wrong with him?” she mused.

There was another unnatural gust as more vamps approached. Mikar was back, with another hot man and woman in tow.

Why were they all hot? Avani felt cheated. Pack members were gross. Okay, not all of them, but none looked anything like these vamps.

She wondered if going through surgery to look Photoshop-ready was a rite of passage before becoming immortal.

“Easton?” the man called, stepping toward the zombie huntsman, close to Chloe.

If he heard him, Easton didn’t react at all, still muttering his weird-ass spell-like chants, though his voice had become lower and more distorted.

It was starting to creep her out. Time to head back home—before she was missed. She’d have to sneak in and wash the scent of vamp off her, too.

“I think he might be…”

“Yeah, he’s dead,” Levi confirmed.

Ew. She’d carried a corpse up the hill? “Wait, what?” Avani scowled. She didn’t mind hunting down squirrels and eating them raw, but decaying huntsman creeps grossed her out.

“He’s been hexed so that his corpse could come to us. I guess that’s a message of some sort. Or a threat.”

Great. Now she had to wash off voodoo, vamp, and corpses.

“Did he say anything comprehensible?” a black vamp guy she didn’t recognize asked.

Avani shrugged. “No, he’s been muttering like this all the way. Something about a queen, having to speak to a master, and some nonsense about a blood link. Good luck making sense of that.”

“You speak Latin?” Levi was surprised, and she couldn’t take umbrage. Her pack wasn’t known for its scholars. They never attended school, and the lessons they taught the kids of the pack could be summed up by How To Kill That Thing 101. Some pack members had developed interests outside of hunting, but they were rare.