Chance Nightshade, daughter of the Melbourne City Alpha, will avenge her brother's murder at any cost. Even if it means working with a charming vampire prince.
Season 1 of Witchfire
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London didn't seem impressed. "That's an excellent idea, but there's one thing you've forgotten."
"What would that be?" I asked, growing frustrated. The whole of my mouth ached from pressure, the kind that forewarned fangs.
"I killed your brother," London reminded me, and I wanted to punch his pretty face. We'd moved past this, hadn't we? There were more important things at stake than my personal grievances! "And I'm here to die as recompense."
"Handing you over would destroy all chances of establishing peace between our races," I snapped, fangs erupting from my tender, swollen gums. A son for a son was a fanciful dream, one that I'd abandoned in favour of reality. Revenge would only beget further acts of revenge. "Don't be an idiot."
"I might be an idiot, but at least I'm not a hypocrite! Flashing fangs in a conversation about peace," London muttered, shaking his head in disapproval. "Can you control yourself at all? Or are you more mutt than human, as I suspect?"
The worst thing about that accusation was that it elicited a concentrated burst of gold. Hurt fissured the last of my resistance. The human in me wavered, and I collapsed to the floor, fingers clutching at the carpet threads in a last-ditch effort to regain control. It was useless, because London was correct: I was more mutt than human, more instinct than sense, less of a person than every other person on the planet. That was why my eyes were yellow. That was why the urge to dominate was so strong within me.
That was why I would always be alone in the ways that mattered most.
London knelt down to meet my eyes. All traces of his earlier cynicism had fled. "Chance, are you okay? Can I do anything for you?"
"Leave," I gasped. "Before I —"
A violent heat tore through me, rendering all human notion obsolete. My cells rearranged themselves with brutal efficiency, bones shattering, muscles shredding apart like overcooked chicken, only to knit back together in new and stronger patterns. A retching cry escaped my lips as the vertebrae in my back stretched to impossible proportions, broadening and lengthening, dragging bundles of raw, exposed nerves across a vaulting landscape of bone and tissue as it went. Skin became black pelt. Screams became howls. Existence was excruciating.
And then it wasn't.
The smell of cured hide and rain filled my nostrils. It wasn't the scent of another wolf, however, which piqued my interest. I opened my eyes and beheld an enclosed space bereft of life, filled with meaningless things.
"Chance Nightshade, this is the last time we'll repeat our instructions. Resume your human shape and explain the situation."
I whipped around at the string of sounds, ears flattening against back of my skull. There was a creature of some sort just beyond the wall. I growled at the thing I couldn't see, driven by an ancient instinct that insisted all creatures should fear and detest the unknown.
