Page 11 of Fangs

Mag’s face flushes. Red creeps up her neck. “I do not—”

“Oh, you do.” Jenny’s grin turns wicked. “Every time he walks into the room you stop breathing. Every time he looks at you—”

“Enough, Jenny.” Mag’s voice cuts sharp. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

But I see it. The way her eyes keep darting toward the dais. The way her fingers tighten on her glass.

She is falling for one of them.

One of the monsters.

How? How can she—

“You talk as if you’ve forgotten what you are.” My voice comes out dry and hard. The warning is for them and for myself. I can’t forget my place the way these girls clearly have. A bird too comfortable in a golden cage forgets the bars.

I realize too late that my voice has risen.

“We haven’t forgotten,” Mag says. “You’re just new. There are things you don’t understand yet.”

“Of course. Like what? What possible reason do you have to speak of those monsters as if they’re the boys you flirt with after church?”

“Sex,” Jenny cuts in, laughing.

The Masters

Aviolent hack tears from my throat, choking me hard enough to water my eyes.

Around the table, a ripple of muffled laughter breaks through the hush. We are being too loud, drawing lines we probably shouldn’t be crossing. Jenny’s palm delivers two rhythmic thuds against my back.

I gulp down a mouthful of water, my vision snapping upward to the dais. The four Masters remain sequestered in their own quiet world, completely unbothered by the girlish fuss and frantic giggling echoing off the stonework.

Not a correction. Not a single twitch of displeasure. Not an ounce of reprehension. They simply don’t care what cattle do before the slaughter.

Leaning in, I drop my voice to a ragged breath, turning toward Jenny because out of all of them, she at least wears a mask of awareness.

“Do they force us to sleep with them?”

“No. It’s quite the opposite.”

“What does that mean?” I press, the words barely scraping past my teeth.

Silence answers me.

I lift my chin, sweeping my gaze across the raised stone dais until my focus snags on the dark-haired Master. Lord Julian Cain.

He’s watching me with a terrifying intensity that makes every hair on my arms prickle.

No. He’s not watching me.

He’s watching Jenny.

And his expression is nakedly, ravenously hungry.

What the absolute hell is happening in this place?

My hand shoves my plate away, sliding the porcelain across the linen. I have never seen food so rich in my entire life, yet my appetite shrivels and dies in an instant.

“Where do we go after dinner?” I ask, fighting to anchor my voice against the panic fraying its edges.