Sleepless Beauties: A Rejected Mates Paranormal Romance (The Vampires Vendetta Series Book 1) by A.K. Koonce (best books under 200 pages txt) 📕

And yet… I still can’t stop myself from biting back at her lashing words.

My head tilts down until our breaths kiss, but our lips simply hover with just enough room for our abhorrence to be felt pressing against each other.

“Prey...” Rival warns.

But he means nothing.

Just like she does.

“I don’t need a female,” I whisper vaguely. “As a matter of fact, I’m immortal. I could easily just wait another hundred years for the next bitch to take my mark.”

Her fierce gray eyes turn to slits as she glares up at me and the rejection I just fed her.

Fuck her.

And her smoldering mating mark.

Seventeen

Kira

I’m storming down the stairs before he can say another word to expose us. My pulse is an insane thumping in my ears that beats so loud my skull pounds from it.

“Fucking annoying vampires, their magical marks, and their extreme bullshit!” I hiss as I round the last step and find seven ominous coffins laid out like décor.

What stands out the most in this moment though, is the solid metal door just behind them. It frames the display of coffins. Someone really put thought into the black glossy metal, directly behind the fourth croft.

Someone’s in there? A man?

Someone with information?

I try to understand what Vuitton sent me here for, but I can’t imagine a single soul on this Earth who would have details on my sister’s death or the murders happening in this city. Yet I walk over to the center of the room anyway. A smooth metal plate is bolted in the middle. A soft worn spot reveals a lighter color in the center of the plate. Cold seeps into my fingertips as I settle my index finger onto the square and start to trace out a name I haven’t written in so long.

Kyra Vega

The sound of heavy iron grating is all that can be heard in the silence. Unseen gears shift. I watch, but nothing moves as far as I can see.

And then...

Everything goes quiet.

I pause, but I can’t stop my hand from lifting curiously to the cold surface. A pulse reverberates beneath my fingertips. Is it my own anticipation... or something else?

My palm makes full contact and I start to push hard. Power sparks to life in my veins. I shove harder, with both hands. I put my shoulder into it and I’m heaving by the time the door actually starts to swing open with my forceful steps inside.

Darkness blankets the room, but a blue electric light waves above the center of the closet-like space. It’s a cylinder that illuminates from the ceiling to the floor. The beam of color moves continuously, like an ocean drifting out over the endlessness of the Earth.

“Someone new!” A pleased voice calls out from the shadows. “You have her blood, but not her eyes,” an ominous voice says.

The voice circles the room in a terrifying way, and it’s only then that I notice the door behind me has somehow closed.

Without a sound.

“Excuse me?” I say politely, but with an authority I don’t actually possess.

“You entered the name Kyra Vega. I would have turned you away, but your blood matches hers. So please, by all means, introduce yourself. I so rarely get new visitors.” The voice is deep and warming now. Curious, but still powerful.

“I’d rather not,” I say, still clinging to my humility.

“I’d rather devour your soul than have a chat, and yet here we are.” Humor hums through his very creepy words.

“Who are you?” I ask instead.

Actual laughter, asinine amusement shakes through the room as well as the beam of light.

“You come into my confessional, and you have the mortal nerve to ask me who I am?”

I pause for a moment, but we seem isolated in here.

“You know I’m a human?”

“Incredibly, fragilely, deadly human.” His gravelly voice purrs against only one of those four words.

“But you’re not powerful enough to know my name.”

A quiet chuckle is his only reply.

“Why do you call this a confessional?”

I edge around the bright blue wave of light and try to peer beneath whatever veil he’s hiding under. Only washing colors of white and silver splay within the sapphire beam of light.

“Because that’s what Zavia created it to be.”

“She created you?”

That batshit crazy laughter cackles through my nerves once more.

“Hellfire, no!” He says like a snap of bones. “She summoned me. And then… she imprisoned me.”

Summoned.

“So you’re a demon?”

“You’re a demon, ‘Arry!” He mocks in a strange, high-pitched accent. “I’m a fucking Prince!”

Okay…

He is… an unstable asshole.

“Why did Zavia imprison you?”

“Tsk, tsk. Do not ask of others what you wouldn’t want others to inquire about you.”

…what?

“You can’t tell me things about Zavia?”

“I cannot provide you with anything other than advice for yourself.”

“You’re a demonic advisor?”

“Aren’t all advisors demonic?”

I blink into the light and wonder if he can see through to this side.

Why would Vuitton think that this psychotic demon could be helpful?

“You can tell me about myself. You can tell me all about Kyra Vega.”

A beat passes.

“Very bold of a human, to try fooling a whole den of vampires, I like that,” he whispers like a spider crawling over the dark wall. “But it’s much harder to deceive a prince of lies,” he adds quietly.

His voice sounds worn and broken.

How long has he been in here?

And how many people have used him like a thing rather than a conscious being?

“What’s your name?” I ask.

I wish I could see him.

“I cannot give you my name. To give my name would be to give up my soul after I’ve already lost everything else.”

My heart dips.

“I understand,” I say gently. “I don’t want to continue without… giving you value for your service to this council of vampires. You have value, and you should have a name.”

That scathing laughter rakes out once more. “Humans always try to be humane to things that don’t need it. I’m not like you, pretty human. I don’t need your validation, I have my own.”

“Okay.” My words come drily, so I won’t push that subject any further. “Tell me about the