Free Masquerade (Vampires Realm Romance Series Book 10) by F E Heaton

Vivek had been against the idea solely because Sophis wasn’t ready for such a leap in rank. She was still too young and too rash, and had proven that the other week.
    His chest tightened and he rubbed the spot over his heart to ease it. Coming around that city street corner to see Sophis fighting a vampire hunter alone, her squad watching on from a distance as though she had told them to stay out of the way, had been one of the most heart-stopping moments of his life. He had sensed the shooter on the rooftop, had spotted him bare seconds before he had fired on her, and her scream had chilled Vivek’s blood, freezing it in his veins. Instinct had seized control, a fierce need to protect her beating deep in his bones as he had sprinted across the distance between them. Everything had been a blur after that. There had been blood, the feel of flesh rending under his claws, the bitter taste of fury, and the sweet pleasure of pain. He had come to his senses to find himself almost a mile away from where he had started and with the shooter’s butchered corpse at his feet. He had left it there and run back to her, back to where she lay on bloodstained concrete sick from poison.
    That was the most heart-stopping moment he had ever experienced.
    It had robbed him of his strength, filling his mind with twisted flashbacks to that night ten years ago, causing her to flicker between looking as she had then, soaked in blood with a dagger protruding from her side, and as she had in the present moment.
    He had snarled his commands, needing to be alone with her, to be the one to tend to her and ensure she would live. He had needed to save her.
    Sophis touched his back again, shattering the memories clouding his heart and mind, and he looked over his shoulder at her. The sight of her in one piece, watching him in the darkness with curious eyes that he felt could see straight through him, soothed the raging beast within him and his focus slowly returned to the present. Her hand dropped to the spot on his back where Izabella had staked him and her look softened. Let her think that his mind was on that night ten years ago and his own close encounter with death. It was easier than trying to explain what was really going on in his mind and his heart.
    He eased up the rickety staircase to the first level of the dark building and then made his way across the patchy broken wooden floor to the crumbling brick wall that separated the building from the one where the hunters were.
    Vivek turned and pressed his back against the dusty wall. Sophis carefully crossed the room, stepping around the holes in the floor and the detritus left by whoever had previously occupied the building. She eyed the wall with distaste and placed her hand against it rather than leaning into it. Such a small area of contact would hinder her senses but he wasn’t about to get into an argument about the correct manner in which to use a structure as an amplifier.
    She mouthed the word ‘count’ at him.
    At least he thought it was ‘count’. In the darkness, it had looked like something distinctly ruder and with one less vowel.
    Vivek switched his focus from her to the neighbouring building. The brickwork muted the voices on the other side but he could pick out fragments of their conversations. There was no talk of the ball but several mentions of lords. He looked at Sophis.
    She leaned against the wall facing him, her ear close to it and her pale blue eyes on his. Silver threads danced over her form, his heightened vision revealing her in the darkness, tracing down her hair and over her shoulders, curving around her waist and hips, tempting him to track them with his gaze to places it shouldn’t go.
    He closed his eyes instead and focused on counting the number of hunters.
    His senses touched on everything in the adjoining building floor by floor and he either tallied it as living or discounted it as an object.
    Nine.
    That was a lot of vampire hunters.
    A dangerous amount if