There is waking. That is all. I awaken and for the first time I feel no compulsion, no desire to feed or be fed. There is nothing demanding my consciousness except a delicious singing in my veins, a feeling like liquid sunlight trapped just beneath the surface of my skin. I can feel it—boiling in my blood—I can feel that he’s alive, somewhere. I know now, that there’s something more to life than humans and beasts; something worth fighting for, worth dying for…worth living for.

“You’ll never meet him,” Jarvis says from the foot of the bed and I let my eyes flutter open. A lazy smile spreads across my face as I stretch from the most restful sleep I have ever known.

“Mmmph,” I giggle, watching his eyes flare in the dim light as he studies me. “I had an awful dream,” I continue, still writhing in the afterglow. No longer able to restrain himself, Jarvis climbs up on the bed, stalking up on all fours before covering my body with his own.

“You’re mine,” he whispers, his velvety voice rough with desire as he presses his long, firm length against me. MINE! he repeats in my mind, his possessiveness ringing like a bell pealing unexpectedly through the night.

It doesn’t matter how often you say it, I whisper back, light as a feather dancing across his skin. I wrap my arms about his shoulders, crushing myself against his unyielding weight, we both know it isn’t true. I can tell Jarvis is becoming desperate, he’s using every trick at his disposal—eyes, voice, body, power—and it isn’t working. He knows it isn’t working, but he will not stop.

When a vampire chooses to seduce someone—not Enthrall, but seduce—it’s a very delicate dance. One requiring grace, caution and restraint. To walk the razor’s edge between what a person desires in their heart’s darkest depths, and what they will allow their conscious mind to acknowledge is a tricky thing, one that often goes awry. He’s trying to convince me to run toward him—not away from him as it may seem—and he wants me to wallow in his embrace until I lose the ‘self’ I thought I was and he can form me into what I want.

That’s why he’s allowed my outright rebellion, why he’s allowed me to continue to have my own thoughts without censoring them as he would have with any lesser vampire. It’s because, as I lay dreaming, he walked down the corridors of my mind—seen me struggle from the moment of the Unveiling until now—and realized that if he crushed my spirit I would become less than a Thrall. I would have no use to him.

And Jarvis intends to use me, make no mistake about that. We’d met once before, a long, long time ago, and he remembered what I could do once my power was awakened. In my secret dreams he’d walked unnoticed and seen who I have been and who I would be. To make me his creature, to wield my power for his own, would make Jarvis the undisputed ruler of all the vampire covens—more powerful than the Elements themselves—and that was his endgame. To tame me for this purpose, it might have worked, if I had not recognized his voice.

Give me what I want, he whispers through my mind in that hideously delightful voice of his, one I now remember from so long ago. Give yourself over to me and I will make the world kneel at your feet in awe. It would have been tempting, so tempting, to be desired by this powerful, beautiful, inhuman man. To listen as he told me that in all the world there was nothing more important to him, that he would stop at nothing to make me his.

It might have worked, if I was anyone other than that girl from so long ago, and the self that I had worked for so long to become.

“Jarvis,” I whisper, my throat breathy from disuse, “I want you to tell me what I am,” I grind myself mercilessly against his swollen flesh. I nip at the corners of his mouth and continue, “I want to hear my name on your lips,” and I can feel the instant he thinks he’s won. His elation surges through me, heady as strong drink and twice as intoxicating and I have to stop myself from laughing at the lies he’s told himself. Flooded with joy at my pretended capitulation, there is no thinking left to him as he whispers in that sin-dipped, velvet voice,

“Synnove…” but as the name escapes him he freezes as my arms band around him like steel vises. Jarvis tries to rear back, but only pulls me with him as I raise my mouth next to his ear and whisper,

“You didn’t find me soon enough this time…” my teeth elongating, it’s already too late for him as he starts to realize the true danger I pose and starts to struggle with me. Laughing, I add, “…not soon enough by half.”

“SOLAINE!!!” he shouts, trying to regain control even as my teeth plunge into his neck. With the first drop of blood on my tongue I grab his mind and drag it down, past the center of his being, and deep into the darkness that looks back and grins.