Saved Mate

by L. J. Red

  Saved Mate

  Bloodline Warriors: Shadow

  By L.J. Red

  Saved Mate

  Copyright © 2019 by L.J. Red

  Copyright © 2019 by L.J. Red

  First Electronic Publication: July 2019

  L.J. Red

  www.ljred.com

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission by the author, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not the be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organization is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  Contents

  Title Page

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Sneak Peek of Devoted Mate

  Also by L.J. Red

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  Chapter 1

  “Don’t!”

  Sparrow turned around. What was that? Sounded like someone shouting. She narrowed her eyes, standing still and listening intently. No, nothing. Maybe she’d imagined it? The hallway stretched out behind her, no one there. Tall windows ran along one side letting in the moonlight, striping the dark red walls with patches of light. On the other side heavy wooden doors closed off private rooms. She’d gotten turned around while exploring the Sanctuary and she wasn’t sure where she was exactly. Had the voice come from inside one of the rooms? Or maybe from outside? She took a step toward a window and looked down at the gardens below her, dark and shadowy. No one moving down there. She unhooked the window and pushed it open. The night air was sweet and warm. The beginning of summer. There was barely a sound filtering in from outside despite being in the city. The Sanctuary was a kind of haven, the long lawns and lines of trees shielding the vampires who lived here from the noise and bustle of Chicago. She could almost believe she was somewhere else.

  She must have imagined the noise, Sparrow decided, rolling her shoulders back and continuing down the hall. She thought the next corner would bring her to the stairs. If she got down to the ground floor, she’d be able to find the infirmary and maybe get back to her room before Dr. Patil noticed she’d slipped out for a walk. She didn’t want to see the doctor angry; the woman was surprisingly terrifying despite being one of the few humans here. Sparrow guessed you’d have to be to keep vampire patients in line.

  Sparrow slowed as she reached a door that was open a crack. Curiosity pulling at her, she pushed it open, peeking in. The room inside was a library, filled with oak paneled walls and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with an elegant gallery around the top and rolling ladders leaned up against the shelves. It was gorgeous, like a picture from a magazine. Sparrow couldn’t believe it was real. She felt like Belle in the Beast’s castle, discovering the library for the first time.

  No wonder the vampires rarely left their territories; they had everything they could want and centuries of wealth to back it up. Her chest ached with longing. She didn’t fit here. None of the Shadows, the elite warrior vampires of Chicago, had ever been forced to go without meals, or sleep out in the cold, shivering on a thin bed of cardboard boxes. Why would they? Most humans didn’t either. They lived normal lives, safe inside their houses. No, Sparrow was the weird one. Her and the other forgotten and unwanted vagrants of Chicago.

  She stepped back, her fingers clinging tightly against the wood of the door for a moment before letting go. None of this was for her. It was all temporary. She was only here because the Shadows had rescued her and the other captured victims from the factory where they had been held. This wasn’t her home and it never would be.

  She may be a vampire, but she wasn’t part of the Shadow Bloodline. She may not know much about vampires, but she knew that much. Roman, the sick bastard who had turned her, only to hand her over to HUNT to be tortured, wasn’t part of the Shadows; he had his own bloodline—Radiance—and whatever his plans were for Sparrow and the rescued vampires it wasn’t going to be good.

  That was why she was here. The Shadows were protecting her and the others, keeping them safe from Roman’s plans. That was all.

  For a second, she thought she saw a flash of pale white hair and a thin figure standing far back in the hallway, but when she spun to look at it there was nothing there. She trembled and pressed back against the wall. Fuck. It was happening again. Ever since the rescue, she’d been troubled by these strange flashes, fleeting sensations. Haunted by what had been done to her.

  Was she going crazy? Or was it just flashbacks, like Dr. Patil said might happen. Sparrow’s skin crawled. She didn’t know, didn’t know who to trust. She’d never been good with officials; hell, even trusting her doctor was hard work. Sparrow had spent all her life on the streets, relying on herself, looking out for herself. Over the years she’d kept an eye on some of the other street kids, made sure they had a place to sleep, first dibs on food, but as her friends had grown up and dispersed—some getting off the streets, some sinking deeper into the city’s underbelly—she’d learned the only person she could trust was herself. Dr. Patil might seem okay, but she worked for the vampires.

  Sparrow sighed, her tongue pressing at the sharp points of her fangs in her mouth. The other vampires, she corrected, since she was one now as well. That had to be why she was having visions, she thought, pushing away from the wall and continuing down the hall. It was trauma from what Roman and HUNT had done to her, that was all. She’d been kept hostage for weeks, and the experiments HUNT had done on her and the others had screwed up her vampire abilities. It would take time to recover, time to heal.

  Sparrow pushed her brown hair back from her face, pressing her fingertips into her scalp. Her brain felt like it was buzzing, all the memories stirred up. That was why she’d snuck off for a walk. It wasn’t easy to forget everything that had happened when all the fresh wounds were constantly being poked at, memories torn open by the lawyers picking over her every statement. Sparrow pressed her fingertips to her temples.

  Dana, who Sparrow had known back when she was just a human cop rather than a Shadow vampire, tried her best to shield Sparrow and the others from the legal machinery chewing its way through the case, but Sparrow and the nine remaining rescued vampires were the only witnesses to what HUNT had done. The torture they’d been put through. The torture that had kill
ed the other hostages. Sparrow’s chest tightened in memory. The twisted dead bodies collapsing to ash as HUNT tortured them to their deaths.

  Sparrow could deal with the memories, deal with the pain. It was worth it. She wanted to see the hunters securely behind bars. Her eyes flashed. They would pay for what they did to her, what they did to the others. No one would experience what she had. She never wanted anyone to suffer like that. Turned into a vampire against her will, just to be experimented on like some kind of vampire lab rat.

  If only they had caught Roman as well as the human hunters in the raid on the factory. But he had disappeared like smoke and air. No one knew where he was, or what he was planning. Ice ran down her spine. That wasn’t her problem, she thought resolutely. The Shadows would find him. All she had to do was testify in the trial. All she had to do was tear up her healing and tell everyone over and over again what had happened. All the way up to the rescue, to the moment the HUNT guards had turned their weapons on them, the moment she’d thought it was over and she was dead. The moment he had arrived.

  Jacob. Though she hadn’t known his name then. The vampire who had torn through the HUNT guards like they were nothing, blood spraying the walls. Pure violence, untamed, unstoppable. Sparrow shivered, feeling strange, her nerves alight. His piercing blue eyes had fastened on her and time had seemed to stand still. Her heart had kicked against her chest. Even now it still beat, and yet she was sure it had stopped after she had turned into a vampire.

  She could almost feel his eyes on her still. Every shadow seemed suspect. The back of her neck prickled. It made her feel on edge in a way she couldn’t explain, like her entire body was aware of his phantom gaze. Like she wanted him watching her.

  It wasn’t real, she thought. Just another made-up vision. Why would a vampire like that, a warrior, pay any attention to her? She wasn’t his concern. She wasn’t anyone’s concern. She was just Sparrow, a street kid grown up into a nothing person. An empty space, ignored, forgotten. Nothing special. Once the case was over, she’d be out of the Sanctuary and back on the streets; nothing would change. The only difference was that she would be a vampire, with abilities she didn’t understand, a legacy she didn’t want. She still felt the shivery achy feeling in her bones from what HUNT had done to her. She wondered if she would ever feel at home in her body ever again.

  Sparrow tried to ignore the miserable pit in her stomach as she reached the corner.

  “Please no—”

  That voice again. Sparrow tensed. She wasn’t imagining it. It was real, coming from around the corner. She picked up her pace. The windows on this side caught the moonlight fully, and with her vampire senses the hall seemed bathed in light. Still, it took her a moment to believe what she was seeing. A human servant, a vassal, was pressed up against the wall, a pile of dirty laundry scattered over the floor where he must have dropped it. And pressed against his front, pinning him to the wall, was a vampire. Not just any vampire. One of the rescued vampires, one like Sparrow, turned by Roman and experimented on by HUNT.

  The expression on his face was unlike anything Sparrow had seen before. His eyes were almost a solid white. His fangs were out and his expression was twisted in a rictus of pain and hunger. He looked wild and deranged. Sparrow slowed as a wave of foreign emotion washed through her. A flicker in the corner of her eye, white hair, pale skin, and then it hit. Hunger. The impact of it slammed right through her body, leaving her aching and shaky with need. She heard, loud like a drumbeat, the sound of the vassal’s heart, and her hunger sharpened to a point. His blood. It was all she wanted, to sink her teeth into his neck and drink him down.

  She crossed half the distance in an eyeblink, speed like she’d never known rushing through her limbs, carrying her forward. Wait. What was she doing? This wasn’t right. A voice in the back of her mind screamed in anger and beat against the inside of her skull. This hunger was too much, too strong. She wouldn’t be able to stop. She’d kill him. Her steps slowed and she dragged her feet in the carpet, catching at the edge of it and stumbling, falling sideways against the wall. The impact knocked her back from the precipice of hunger and sense returned into her mind, the white fog clearing. She felt drained, exhausted like she’d just finished a fight. What the fuck just happened to her? She raised her tired head and realized she had bigger problems. The other vampire was still in the throes of this strange hunger and was about to leap onto the terrified vassal.

  This time, a different kind of urgency went through Sparrow’s body and she forced herself to move with the same speed, this time not trying to kill the vassal but to protect him. Time seemed to slow. She sped down the hallway, the world around her blurring. The vampire’s fangs got closer and closer to the vassal’s neck. Two inches, one. Too far away, she wasn’t going to get to them in time. Fangs at his neck, pressing down. Blood. Too late. The vampire bit down hard and the vassal cried out in pain, his fingers scrabbling at the vampire’s grip. He couldn’t throw the vampire off him, he wasn’t strong enough, but Sparrow was. She slammed into them both and tore the other vampire away. Straining her muscles, her vampiric strength pushed to the limit as she struggled against a vampire who matched her blow to blow.

  She focused on tangling her limbs with his, keeping him down, grappling with him and rolling him away from the vassal. They slammed against the wall on the other side of the hallway, and over her shoulder Sparrow shouted for the vassal to run. At first nothing, then she heard him scramble away from the wall, quick footsteps as he ran. She couldn’t afford a moment of relief. The vampire underneath her snarled, his fangs, blood-coated, snapping close to her face. Then, rising up, he threw her off so hard she was thrown into the air and slammed against the far wall, the top of her head brushing the ceiling before she collapsed to the ground, barely getting her feet underneath her and landing awkwardly, one hand out to catch herself against the wall.

  The other vampire had turned to track the vassal’s receding form. He was going to go after him. Sparrow leaped just as he launched himself after the vassal, crashing him off course and slamming him against the wall again.

  “What are you doing?” she shouted at him, finally getting a clear enough look to see him, to recognize him. “Alex, what the fuck are you doing?” she said, her fangs appearing in her mouth from her rage. He didn’t seem to hear her. It was like all he was aware of was his hunger, snapping and snarling under her grip. Hell, Sparrow could still feel it tingling in her bones: the urge to go after the vassal, the desperate desire to bite down, to drink… No!

  She shook him, her nails growing into claws and digging into the meat of his shoulders. “Snap out of it!” she cried, unsure how much longer she could hold him. The pain seemed to finally get through to him but not in the way she wanted. He transferred his wild gaze away from the vassal onto Sparrow. The white of his eyes were vacant, whirling like a snowstorm, empty and cold, and Sparrow’s chest tightened in fear. He slammed his elbow into her face, cracking her head back and pushing her away. He swiped his nails out, sharp, and they caught her at her collarbone, digging in deep and scoring a painful line across the front of her chest. Sparrow cried out and stumbled back. Alex made a move to the side, trying to get around her. Sparrow forced her aching body to run forward, ignoring the pain in her chest and blocked the hallway, putting herself between the hunger-crazed vampire and the vassal escaping behind her. She didn’t know what was going on, why he was flipping out like this, but there was no way she was going to let an innocent human get hurt. Alex focused on her once more, his face still stretched out in a snarl, his eyes full of mad violence, and he launched himself at her.

  Chapter 2

  Jacob looked down at the dark Sanctuary gardens and tightened his grip on the balcony railing. Behind him, the notes and records on HUNT’s movements were spread over the table and stacked in boxes on the floor, all of it useless. HUNT, just like Roman, were lying low, licking their wounds and biding their time. The heavy iron railing creaked under Jacob’s grip. The lack o
f news was beyond frustrating; it was driving Jacob mad. Those bastards needed to pay for what they’d done: their sick partnership, stealing people off the streets, turning them into vampires and then using them in their experiments. All part of HUNT’s plan to craft the perfect anti-vampire weapon. Hunters were nothing new, but why Roman had agreed to turn his own fledglings over to be tortured Jacob couldn’t understand. What kind of leader would do that to their own bloodline? It made no sense. He had to be insane. And an insane vampire was the Shadow’s responsibility. They were the only law enforcement that existed in the supernatural world. Law keepers for centuries, it was their duty to find Roman and put him down before he could hurt anyone else.

  Jacob heard the metal under his hands scream, and he finally pulled his hands free, staring angrily down at the twisted metal. His emotions were all out of whack. Seeing what had been done to the rescued vampires, finding them in the factory, the blood and pain of the fight, it had brought back memories, old memories, a time before modern weaponry, before these modern cities had been built, when he had been a newly turned vampire with human family still living. The hunters of his time had found them, killed them. Blood on the ground. He needed to find a way to step back, to pack those emotions back up and regain his cold, iron will. Better to be ice, to be stone. Not to feel, not to care.

  The darkness within Jacob rippled and stretched, but would not pack itself back up. He felt hunger, need, a force of protective rage that had been born the night he entered HUNT’s factory and freed the vampires held there, one face standing out from the others. Soft brown eyes, flyaway brown hair, a fragile, petite figure. Sparrow. Once he had heard her name he couldn’t forget it. Sparrow, the woman who had started his heartbeat after it lay cold for hundreds of years. Why did she have this effect on him? Could it be what he suspected? What he hungered for? Could he have finally found his soulmate? Sparrow, the young homeless woman who had warned Dana and Brigit about HUNT’s activity before being kidnapped herself. The very reason they’d been able to track HUNT down. The vampire he couldn’t tear his eyes from whenever she was in the room. Living in the Sanctuary with her was becoming exquisite torture. His eyes sought her out at every mealtime, her presence alluring, distracting. He tracked her every moment, his ears listened out for her voice. He’d had to force himself to avoid her, to step back lest he lose himself in her completely. She was recovering, unwell. She didn’t need a hulking great vampire warrior looming over her. She was still traumatized from what HUNT had done to her, skittish and wary, and Lucian had asked all the warriors to give the rescued vampires a wide berth until they were further along in their recovery. Jacob had made do with cloaking himself in shadows and watching her until even that became too much torture for him to bear. Better to stay away. Surely, he would only bring back terrible memories for her. After all, the first moment they met he had been drenched in the blood of their enemies. He had burst into the room where the hostages were held, guns trained upon them, ready to shoot. His mind had blanked at the sight and he had ripped through them on a wave of rage. He’d torn the guards apart, blood spraying everywhere. He had been coated in it, like a demon from hell. No. Sparrow wouldn’t want to see him again. He had to stay away from her. He refused to be the reason her recovery was set back. She’d been through enough.