Free The Hunger by Susan Squires

thoroughly masculine. “My name is Stephan Sincai. I will teach you who you are and how to go on. I will take the pain away,” he whispered into her hair .
    Beatrix knew she had found a refuge .
    Beatrix tossed under her coverlet. He wasn’t a refuge, of course. But what did she know at seventeen, homeless, killing for what she needed, wanted by no one? Except Stephan. The admonishment she made to Langley about first, unwise loves came back to her.
    Beatrix pulled the covers up, longing for the simplicity of sleep. How she had loved Stephan! He took her in, became her teacher, her mentor, and later, more. Beatrix once thought Stephan was an anchor—someone she could trust to always be there. Instead he had taught her the ultimate lesson of her kind; the lesson of impermanence.
    Her mind flitted over the centuries. They came and went, the men. She fought side by side with bloody Henry at Agincourt. Da Vinci taught her about the art that saved her. De Sade was interesting if only because he practiced so freely what she practiced not at all. But he actually hated women, even her, in the end. She had sought companionship but never a sexual connection. That was too dangerous after Asharti. Astronomers, painters, kings, emperors, philosophers, they all ran together. In the end they were not Stephan. So she sought meaning in causes. She had thrown herself into countless movements, at least until the factions rose and the quibbling over doctrine began. They all came to nothing. That left only art. Art organized the chaos and cut through to truth. Art had been her only solace for centuries. Except for the blood.
    The blood is the life . Stephan said their kind used it like a mantra, a shorthand for who they were. The symbiotic Companion in her blood gave her strength, powershumans thought were unnatural. But the Companion exacted a price—a life that could be eternal. To what end? Stephan was right. The blood was all the life there was, and suddenly that didn’t seem enough.
    CASTLE SINCAI, TRANSYLVANIAN ALPS , 1102
    “I have returned, kitten.”
    Beatrix leapt to her feet from the huge carved chair in front of the fireplace in the echoing hall of the main keep. Leaping flames sent sparks shooting up the maw of the great chimney. “Stephan!” She threw herself into his arms. “I thought you would never come.”
    “Now, child,” he murmured as he held her away from him. His hauberk was muddy from traveling, his long dark curls disheveled. A week’s growth of beard covered his strong jaw. He looked tired, but his dark eyes still burned with energy under his bold black brows. “A lady does not throw herself upon her returning lord. Have I taught you nothing?”
    Servants came, bowing, to take his cloak. Beatrix smoothed the rose brocade of her heavy dress over her breasts, and held out her arms to show the drape of the sleeves, tight over the shoulder, with cuffs that widened into points two feet in length. It was lined in the palest silk to match the silk that covered her head and draped under her chin. “See what the seamstresses have wrought, Stephan? Am I not beautiful?”
    “You are quite beautiful, my little one. And, I might add, hardly feral anymore.” He called to one of the servant women for mead. She hurried to do his bidding .
    Beatrix smiled. “I have learned all your lessons about the Rules, Stephan, no matter how boring. You promised when you returned we would learn more exciting things. Shall you teach me how to ride horses and fight with swords?”
    “Perhaps,” he said. “But first you must meet someone.” He turned and motioned toward the dark arch of stone that led to the great entrance hall. “Asharti, come meet your new sister.”
    From the shadows, a young woman peered, nervous, her eyes taking in the great plank table, the tapestries that lined the stone walls, the sconces that sent the smell of burning oil to join the wood smoke from the fire. She was beautiful in a way Beatrix had never