Free The Fugitives, A Dystopian Vampire Novel: Book Four: The Superiors Series by Lena Hillbrand Page A

me.” He kept his head bent, her hand held in both of his.
    She looked around, wishing she hadn’t thrown the flashlight. “Holy sap crap, I forgive you, now get up. It’s not right for you to act like that to me.”
    He stood slowly and pulled her against his chest. Seeing him on his knees was awful and shocking, worse than when Byron had made her bend and kiss his feet and promise obedience. “I’ll never do anything like that again,” he said. “I swear to you, Cali. I am so sorry.”
    “It’s okay, it’s fine,” she said, struggling in his embrace. He always said there was something wrong with him, and she wondered if that’s what had gotten to him. Was he dying? He didn’t eat much, and even after he’d cleaned up and bathed, his skin had a greyer look than when she’d known him back home. He said he was okay, but maybe… If he was dying, she felt even worse about saying that to him, asking what was wrong with him.
    “Are you alright?” he asked, letting her go.
    “Yeah, I’m fine. Are you okay?”
    “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
    “I don’t know,” Cali said, looking behind him at the flashlight on the bed. “I didn’t… hurt your feelings, did I?”
    He smiled, but he didn’t look happy like before. “Of course not.”
    “And you’re not mad at me?”
    He smiled and touched her shoulder. “How could I be angry with you?”
    “I…you know. I violated your privacy?”
    “I’m not a very private sort.”
    Cali snorted. Maybe that was true for a Superior, but she’d never met a human half as private as Draven.
    “It’s nothing you haven’t seen before,” he said. “You’ve a human mate, and I’m just like a human man in that way. Everything they have and everything they do, that’s what I do. Only better.”
    “Okay, well, I’ve got to go to the outhouse.” Cali snatched the flashlight and fled, hiding her burning face on her way out of the bedroom. Apparently Draven didn’t realize that she’d wanted to know because she didn’t really know about any man, human or otherwise.
    True, she had a little experience with mating, but nothing she’d wanted. Nothing that let her explore and find out how everything worked. Her experiences were all filled with humiliation and frustration and failure, when she and her uninterested mate tried to make a baby for their master, or humiliation and fury and pain the few times her master had given up on her mate and brought in a breeder to do the job. She’d never touched a man’s down-there before. She’d been expected to be obedient and hold still while they tried to impregnate her.
    Now she’d touched one, at least through a pair of shorts. And she’d gotten to look, for a few seconds. Though different, it had been as humiliating as her previous experiences.
    Since they’d arrived at the house, she hadn’t gone outside except to use the outhouse. When she escaped the bedroom, she made her way there out of habit, though she didn’t really need to go. After she emerged, she looked into the mud hut in the backyard. Everything inside was clean and neat, and the door still worked. Back inside the stone house, she opened the cabinets and took out an armload of food and carried it out. She found some wool blankets in the closet with the human food, and she carried them out and spread them on the mattress. It was cold and bare in the house, but it was a house meant for her. She wasn’t a Superior, and she had no business sleeping in one’s bed.
    She found a ragged sapien shift in the closet with the other supplies. She pulled it over her head, deciding at the last minute to keep the shiny underwear set she’d found in the drawer and had worn since then. After returning to the sapien house, she set out some of the things. The day was grey and cold, and soon she was shivering so much that she had to go back into the stone house and put on the Superior pants and sweater she’d been wearing over the Superior underwear. She’d keep