Free Take Me by T.A. Grey Page A

clothes, and riches. So much like Helena.
    Felicity Shaw was not like that. There was more to her. He saw that in the way her eyes spit fire at him last night and then today. No one dared to get angry with him aside from his closest friends and family. She didn’t fear him though.
    “Are you saying that you’re attracted to Ms. Shaw because you thought she was Julianna or because you simply are?”
    Dominic never backed down from how he felt. Once he made a decision he stuck to it. If he wanted something he got it. If he needed to tell someone pertinent information he did that too. He wasn’t about to change now. Direct worked best to those he was close to.
    “I’m attracted to her yes. As to your other question, while I did think she was Julianna yesterday, my attraction has nothing to do with the fact that I thought she was my bruid; and no I have not had ‘intimacies’ with Julianna Greenwich. She holds no favor over me.” At all.
    His mother gasped. “But she’s to be your bruid! ”
    “Not of my choice.” Even someone such as him had to bend sometimes, bend to the need of others and in this case, he needed a certain blue-blood socialite to help earn him the nomination for president. He would become the next president and representative for the vampires, but no one in the history of the council has ever become president without a blood bonded mate. Someone blue-blooded, rich, quiet, and who knew how to keep her place. Julianna Greenwich fit that bill to a T.
    None of this would have happened if his father hadn’t caught the rare vampire disease, arromunia. Dom had moved on. He was ready to move into his father’s steps and take over.
    If Dom hadn’t separated from Helena then none of this would be a problem. He was expected to have a bruid —a vampire mate to represent the women for the council. He could not run unmated and expect to win.
    After Felicity left the estate last night, he’d called his brother Grayson to look into her. Grayson owned a security company that specialized in protecting vampires and weres . Some people always had targets on their back and no one, not even the immortal could always escape a murder attempt. Grayson and his team did excellent work but something his brother excelled at was gathering intel.
    He looked into Felicity Shaw after she left last night and learned all about her. Her mother lived off an inheritance left to her by a dead husband. She took that money and squandered it badly—spending most of it on her very young and new “mate” who came from an even poorer background. According to Grayson, it looked like Felicity and her mother did not speak, and her father, a nameless figure, had never been in her life.
    It looked like Mrs. Shaw was robbing the cradle and had left her daughter behind to fend for herself some years ago. The report also showed that Felicity had been searching for a job for over a year. She lived in a lower-income neighborhood with a beat-up car that still wasn’t paid off and had outstanding bills and debts.
    The amount of debt she carried along with her previous paying jobs, according to what she’d told them during the interview didn’t add up. She would have to be a big spender to garner that kind of debt. Maybe even bigger than Helena. Just the thought brought a sour taste to his tongue. He didn’t want the passionate Felicity Shaw to have anything to do with his ex-bruid .
    “It may not be of your choice, Dominic but you must. The weres are pushing for the presidency which will give them majority control. Alpha were Zeke wishes to have control over everything. He wants to bring forth a law that will force men to seek their mates and claim them even from other packs. You know how dangerous that will be. He says their population is dying out. Rafe were Chief of the North, wishes to have were supremacy over the council. You know he’ll vote and push and maybe even lead us to war to get the vampires off the council so that Zeke can