In the beginning, she’d welcomed the times when these monsters would come, undo their chains from the wall, and take them to the bathroom. Now she dreaded those breaks as it felt like her legs would shatter whenever she walked. She couldn’t recall the last time she showered, and her stench filled her nostrils. She’d always been meticulous about her appearance and upkeep, but if it meant she didn’t have to move, Simone didn’t care if she ever showered again.
The chains of some of the other hunters imprisoned with her rattled as they shifted position, but she didn’t move. Moving only brought more misery. Instead, she remained huddled while her scorched skin felt like it would crack and fall off her body. Except her skin wasn’t burnt, it just felt that way. Her flesh was the same as always, or almost the same.
Before these Savages captured her, her skin had been that of a hunter, and now it belonged to a monster. A ravenous monster.
Her cramped stomach spasmed at the thought of feeding the beast, but what it required to fill it was no longer the food that sustained her for her entire life. Now only blood would suffice to ease this awful gnawing in her belly.
Without thinking, Simone went to bite her lip and whimpered when the fangs that descended days ago sliced her bottom lip for the hundredth time. She wasn’t sure if it really was a hundred times or not, but her mouth was so raw it sure felt that way. The taste of her blood made her stomach cramp tighter and did nothing to ease her endless hunger.
A hunter nearby started crying, and another barked at them to shut up. Those were hunters talking to each other that way. Hunters!
She’d never heard her kind speak to each other in such crass ways. Hunter society was one of politeness, respect, and propriety. Hunters did not exhibit such crude language and disrespect. Hunters did not tell each other to shut up.
But these hunters were turning on each other like a pack of rabid dogs. Her hunter family was spiraling into this pit of desolation with her, and it was breaking them. She wanted to cry for those who had perished in the raid that landed her here, and for the fellow hunters trapped in this nightmare with her, but she didn’t have enough fluid in her body to produce tears.
Simone’s thoughts drifted to her mother. She knew her mother wasn’t here, but was she somewhere safe, or did she die during the raid the Savages launched against the hunter stronghold?
They were questions she might never know the answers to as there was nothing she could do while chained in this place. Nothing she could do until she was free, but she had no idea how to get free.
In the beginning, some of the hunters tried to escape when they were unchained to use the bathroom, but their struggles never amounted to anything more than being bloodied by the gleeful Savages who beat them. Now no one had the strength to resist anything done to them.
Simone had tried to run once, but the ease with which they subdued her, as well as the hands grasping at her breasts while her captors unnecessarily groped her, humiliated her into submission. She hadn’t resisted again.
And besides, Simone had no idea where to go if she did get free, she’d simply needed to try. She would have hated herself if she didn’t, because she knew what these Savages planned for her and everyone else here. They were going to starve her and her fellow hunters until they were so mindless they didn’t care who they killed to get blood.
In the beginning, she was determined not to become one of them. Then that sick monster, Joseph, had some of his fellow bastards hold her down while he drank from her. The excruciating agony of the experience nearly drove her insane. Not only had he drained her until she teetered on the brink of death, but he’d forced his putrid blood down her throat afterward.
She recalled only anguish when he finished and the transition took over. All her bones had felt like they were breaking before fusing back together. Her muscles twisted and bent into something else. Yet somehow her body retained her Simone shape, but she wasn’t the same Simone.
Everything she’d always known was gone, and now there was only cold, anger, terror, and hunger. The rare times she slept, she dreamed about the blood they’d given her when she first woke from the brutal change her body endured. It was the only substance given to her since she awoke, but she recalled the sweetness of it on her tongue and the strength of it filling her.
She hated herself for it, but she’d greedily consumed every drop of that blood and been thirsty for more.
Things had been horrific so far, but they were only going to get worse. Once they set her free, Simone didn’t doubt that no matter how much she tried to resist, she would jump on the first human she came across and sink her fangs into their throat.
Even as she hated herself for the weakness, her heart raced with excitement at the thought of blood. If she could reach the vampire chained next to her, she would sink her fangs into his throat too, fellow hunter or not, it no longer mattered. The beat of the hearts surrounding her had become another form of endless torment as she listened to the blood pulsing through her neighbor’s body.
But they were chained in such a way that she couldn’t reach him, and they couldn’t get at each other. She had a feeling they’d be tearing one another apart otherwise. She quivered at the horrific image while she licked her upper lip over the blood such carnage would produce.
A small commotion amongst the others barely penetrated the blanket of depression and starvation enshrouding her. Footsteps thudded against the concrete floor, and it wasn’t until those closest to her scuttled further into the shadows, that she tried to lift her head. It felt like a fifty-pound weight was tied to her skull, but somehow, she got it upright.
When her vision blurred, she blinked at the approaching group of men coming down the long tunnel until she could finally see again. Her eyes drifted to the tall man in the center of the group. There was something oddly familiar about him…
She frowned as she tried to recall where she’d seen him before, but starvation made it difficult to process her memories. Then the man slowed as he approached her, and she realized he was naked.
She hadn’t believed it possible, given everything she’d been through since being taken by these monsters, but Simone blushed and diverted her eyes from him. However, in those few seconds, the image of his lithe, chiseled body was burned into her mind. It was the first time she’d ever seen a nude man.
“Hunters,” Killean sneered. Though he showed open disdain to the Savages holding him captive, fury churned in his gut as he gazed at his chained mate.
The word and the familiarity of the voice caused Simone to forget about her embarrassment and lift her head again. Curiosity tugged at her as she was struck by the whim to see more of him, but Simone kept her gaze off the naked man’s body and focused instead on his ruby-colored eyes.
Then like Moses parting the Red Sea, the fog clouding her memory pulled back. Killean!
The scent of ocean air drifted over her as she found herself standing back on the beach with this man before he kissed her. Simone almost felt alive again as she recalled the delicious heat of his lips on hers and the thrill of her first kiss.
She’d never experienced anything like the intensity of his kiss. It had been amazing until it ended. Then he’d looked at her like she was some disgusting form of slime before ordering her back to the hotel. She’d been so humiliated and angry, and she’d never wanted to see him again.