Masters of the Hunt: Fated and Forbidden Read online

  Table of Contents

  Sacrifice Me, Season One by Sarra Cannon

  Vampires. Demons. Witches. When Franki walked into Venom, she knew it was going to be a night to remember. But she never expected to meet a man who would be impossible to forget.

  Heir of the Dog by Hailey Edwards

  A not-so-charming prince offers to fix all Thierry's problems…for a price. She can’t afford to tell him no, but with her luck, she might not survive saying yes

  Desert Hunt by Anna Lowe

  The new she-wolf in town may be strictly off-limits, but Zack just can’t keep away. Destiny says she’s his — but the pack’s ruling alpha says she belongs to another.

  Bait by Annie Nicholas

  Sent to Budapest by her slayer boss, Connie Bence’s mission is to bait the vampire Overlord into a trap.

  Prince in Leather by Holley Trent

  When The Fates meddle, the fairy prince must chose between his mother, his mission, and his mate.

  Call of the Dragon by Elianne Adams

  He’s found their queen, and just in time. All Drake has to do is bring her home, but his dragon wants more—it wants her.

  Pleasured by the Pack by Anne Marsh

  When the blue moon leads Cajun werewolves Dre and Landry Breaux to their fated mate, they’ll fight to keep her safe from the evils lurking in the Louisiana bayou—and to tempt her into taking a chance on two of the bayou’s sexiest bad boys.

  A House Divided (Astoran Asunder, Book 1) by Nicole Ciacchella

  Nine long years have passed since Cianne last saw Kila. But when a far-reaching conspiracy entangles them, they risk losing one another forever.

  Escaping Forever by Diana St. Gabriel

  After nearly 200 years, Matthew is tired of life, but his only chance for escape is death at the hands of his reincarnated love.

  Demon Chaser: Skin by Charlene Hartnady

  Vulnerable and afraid, Demon Chaser Gaby has lost her Demon. A delectable wolf is there to save her, with consequences that will change them both.

  Donor by Amber Ella Monroe

  Vampire-tracker Elaina can hide, but she can only run so far. When she is labeled a traitor to her organization, the countdown begins in the fight for her life.

  Savage Surrender by Ellis Leigh

  When the hunter becomes the hunted, one Dire Wolf will have to fight off an entire pack armed with a secret weapon in order to save not only his mission but his soul mate.

  Code Black by Tina Moss

  Gossip mag reporter Sera Benenati has snagged a career altering lead on a string of paranormal murders, but when the killers set their sights on her, she’ll need the help of a sexy shifter, special agent Talon Rede, to unmask the murderers before she becomes the next victim.

  The Vampire’s Kiss by Ramona Gray

  The Vampire’s Love by Ramona Gray

  Transported to an alternate earth, Abigail must learn to survive in the strange world and ignore her attraction to the gorgeous but dangerous vampire, Val.

  Tangled Web by Crista McHugh

  The deadliest assassin in the empire just got too close to her target…

  Earth's Requiem by Ann Gimpel

  Resilient, kickass, and determined, Aislinn walls herself off from anything that might make her feel again. Until a wolf picks her for a bondmate, and a Celtic god rises out of legend to claim her for his own.

  Masters of the Hunt: Fated and Forbidden

  Kneel before the Masters of the Hunt: Fated and Forbidden, a stunning collection featuring OVER 15 Paranormal Romance, Urban Fantasy, and Fantasy Romance Alpha Hunter Tales, featuring NYT, USA Today and National Bestselling Authors!

  From sprawling Gothic cityscapes and vivid fairy tale worlds, to ball-busting urban fantasy huntresses, to heart-stopping assassin bad boys, we've brought together a collection of authors who want to take you on an amazing, fantastical, and emotional journey. Steal an adventure with a swashbuckling dragon slayer. Hunt with the hounds. And fall in love (and lust) with the animal in every hunter.

  Anthology Includes: Slayers & Assassins, Alphas, Hunters & Huntresses, Guardians & Protectors, Marshals & Special Forces, Trackers & Scientists, Paranormal & Urban, Fantasy, Futuristic, Fairy Tales, Contemporary, New Adult, Romantic Suspense, Romantic Comedy, Sweet & Erotic Romance, Fated Mates & Forbidden Lovers, Witches, Wizards & Werewolves, Dragons, Demons & Devils, Magic, Ghosts, Billionaires and so much more!

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  Are you ready to join the hunt?

  Sacrifice Me, Season One

  By Sarra Cannon

  Heat rating: Sensual

  Paranormal Romance

  Sometimes the greatest sacrifice is refusing to become one...

  On her twenty-first birthday, Franki Smith receives a dozen black roses. Two handwritten words near the top of the note haunt her. "Little Bird." Her mother's nickname for her.

  Only, her mother disappeared without a trace exactly three years ago to the day.

  The dark gift leads Franki to the doorway of a strange and glamorous new world, where forbidden romance and dangerous truths await.

  Episode 1: The Demon

  Prologue

  When you are about to die, they say your life flashes before your eyes. Life's last gift. A single moment of clarity so you can see all the things you did wrong.

  Every bad decision.

  Every mistake.

  Every horrible word you said to someone when you really just wanted them to love you as much as you loved them.

  It’s easy to get lost in the regrets of our past, thinking that if we’d only chosen something different, we might have been able to save ourselves a hell of a lot of heartbreak.

  Only, the thing is, we should really be giving ourselves more credit for just surviving the best way we know how. It’s not like we made those bad decisions on purpose. Well, not most of the time, anyway.

  At any given moment, we’re all just doing the best we can to survive and make a place for ourselves in this shit-storm we call life.

  Looking back, it’s easy to forget just how broken we were when we made those bad decisions. And most importantly, it’s easy to overlook the fact that if we were really able to go back in time and change things, sure, we might avoid some of the worst heartaches of our lives, but at the same time, we also might not be standing here, right now, with the one person we love most in all the world.

  What if I'd never opened that invitation?

  What if I'd thrown the whole thing in the trash and gone about my life?

  What if I'd never stepped foot inside Venom?

  These questions flash through my mind in those last moments, but then all I can think is that one small change—one “better” decision—and I might have missed him altogether.

  So you know what? If I had the chance to go back and do it all over again, I wouldn’t change one painful, gut-wrenching, dangerous, terrifying moment of what I’ve been through over the past two weeks.

  Even knowing it meant the death of me, I’d go through it all over again, just for him.

  Chapter 1

  Little Bird

  Two Weeks Earlier

  “Happy Birthday, sleepy head.”

  I pulled my pillow over my head, trying to ignore my roommate, Katy, but I should have known better. She was not one to give up easily when she set her mind to something.


  “Get up,” she called in that sing-song morning voice I hated and loved at the same time. “I made you breakfast and everything.”

  I peered out from under the pillow, one eye open. “Chocolate chip pancakes?”

  She raised an eyebrow and tilted her head to the side. “Of course.”

  “With maple syrup?”

  “I even made a Starbucks run this morning and got you a Caramel Macchiato,” she said. “You’re all set to go into a sugar coma before your first class of the day.”

  I rolled over and grabbed her hand, bringing it up to my lips in a quick kiss. “I don’t deserve you,” I said.

  “You deserve so much better,” she said. Her mouth twisted into a frown, and I knew she was thinking about my mother.

  Katy had been my best friend for as long as I could remember and I knew that look. She was feeling guilty because on her twenty-first birthday, a month earlier, her mother had shown up in a limousine to take her for tapas at Mercat.

  My mother, on the other hand, was nowhere to be found. She disappeared on my eighteenth birthday, three years ago, without so much as a fuck-you.

  “Don’t give me your guilty face,” I said. “I don’t want pity pancakes.”

  She rolled her eyes. “These are not pity pancakes. They’re friendship, happy twenty-first birthday pancakes and they were made with love,” she said. She smacked my bare thigh. “Now get your ass out of bed before it gets cold.”

  I groaned and forced myself out from under the warm covers. Twenty-one. A major milestone in the lives of Americans everywhere, but I wasn’t any more excited about this birthday than any of the twenty that had come before. Not that I could remember every single one, but you get the point.

  I had already been drinking with a fake ID for the past two years, so the idea of going out to a bar didn’t excite me. And the idea of being one year older was more terrifying than anything else. One year older meant one year closer to graduating and having to figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life.

  But the smell of pancakes and coffee cheered me up.

  Katy had set up our breakfast for two on the small bar that separated our tiny living room from our even tinier kitchen. Beside my plate, there was also a long silver box with a dark red card on top.

  “What’s this?” I asked, eyeing her. We never exchanged gifts. Mostly because I could never afford it and she lived in constant guilt about being rich. “Katy, what did you do?”

  She shook her head and sat down, taking a bite of pancake. “It wasn’t me, I swear. Someone delivered them while I was out getting the coffee. They were waiting by the door when I got home,” she said. “Have you been seeing someone new?”

  This was such a ridiculous question that I didn’t even justify it with an answer. She should have known better.

  I was never seeing anyone new. Or old for that matter. I didn’t believe in relationships and no matter how many times Katy tried to set me up, nothing ever stuck.

  I stared at the box as I took my first bites of birthday pancakes. I couldn’t even think of one person who would have sent me flowers. I had no family. No close friends outside of Katy. I had never been in a serious relationship.

  And nothing good could come of birthday flowers from a stranger.

  “Aren’t you going to open it?” she asked.

  I eyed the silver box, a strange feeling fluttering in my stomach. “Eventually,” I mumbled, mouth half full. “Maybe.”

  She grabbed the card off the top and waved it in my face. “Just see who it’s from. Maybe you have a secret admirer.”

  I set my fork down and swallowed, hesitating. Part of me wanted to dump them, unopened, into the trash.

  But my curiosity got the better of me. I lifted the silver lid off the box. Inside, nestled in black tissue paper, were the strangest, most beautiful black roses. I'd never seen anything like them, but they were exactly my taste. Rare and dark.

  I bit my lip and shifted in my chair.

  My hand trembled as I took the red envelope from Katy and tore it open. The paper was heavy. Expensive and smooth to the touch.

  Inside, there was a short note written in large, swoopy black letters.

  Happy Birthday, Little Bird

  Don't you think it's time you learned to spread your wings?

  VENOM, Hubbard Street, Chicago

  My stomach twisted at those two handwritten words near the top of the card.

  Little Bird.

  It was what my mother had always called me.

  Chapter 2

  Catch-22

  I couldn't get my mind off those black roses. I walked around the whole day with the strangest feeling that someone was watching my every move.

  I had become so paranoid that I nearly made some freshman piss his pants in the hallway of the student center. I thought he was following me. Apparently, he was just lost.

  I didn't like the thought of someone sending me flowers and knowing my birthday and my mother's pet name for me. It had completely unnerved me, which I also hated because I figured that was probably the point of someone sending me black roses in the first place. By the time I met Katy for coffee after our last class of the day, I was a complete mess.

  “I know you don't want to hear this, but what if the roses are from your mom?” Her forehead wrinkled as she said it, as if she half expected me to haul off and punch her in the face for even suggesting it.

  The truth was, I had already considered that myself. Considered it and dismissed it. “She would never send me something so expensive,” I said. I pulled the note out of my backpack where I had stuck it inside my Economics book. “Black roses can't be cheap and did you feel this paper? No, someone spent some money on this. Definitely not my mother.”

  “What does this bottom part mean?” she asked. “What's Venom?”

  “I'm not sure, but Hubbard is just south of here. I think this is close to the House of Blues,” I said. “There are a lot of clubs and bars down there. Maybe Venom is a bar.”

  She started to speak, but I held my hand up, knowing what she was about to suggest.

  “Not a chance,” I said.

  “But—”

  “No.” I slid the card back inside my book and pulled out a copy of today's newspaper. “I've actually been thinking maybe I'll stay in tonight. I don't really have the money to go out, anyway. I need to find a new job. Do you want to order pizza or something instead?”

  I opened the paper and skimmed the help-wanted ads looking for something close to campus. I'd been working at a twenty-four hour diner a couple of blocks north of our dorm for the past six months, but I'd had the privilege of being fired two days earlier.

  It wasn't even my fault. One of my labs ran long and there was no way to sneak out without getting slammed with another absence. As much as I couldn't afford to lose my job, I definitely couldn't afford another absence in that class.

  I was barely hanging onto my grades as it was. I had to maintain at least a B average to keep my financial aid and just one month into the first semester of my Senior year, I was already at risk of getting a C in two classes.

  Of course, with my life, it was always a Catch-22. I was behind on my grades because I had to work nearly full-time to afford tuition and basics like, you know, food. But I was late for work because of class. Keeping things balanced was a nightmare and some days I felt more like a professional juggler than a college student. I resented people like Katy who didn't have to work at all. But I'd been making this work. Three long years of busting my ass to put myself through school all on my own. I wasn't about to watch it all go down the drain with less than a year left.

  I needed to find another job.

  “Pizza, are you kidding me?” she asked. “Seriously, what do you want to do? I told Jennifer and Ash I'd text them as soon as I knew where we were meeting up.”

  “I'm not going out,” I said, burying my head deeper in the paper. Usually I was the first one up for a good time, but those roses had left
me with a churning stomach. Besides, I was on the cusp of poverty.

  Katy slammed her hand down on my newspaper and stared at me until I lifted my eyes to hers. “You can look for a job tomorrow,” she said. When I reached for the paper, she pulled it farther out of my reach and stuffed it in her purse. “Please. Just for one night, let's go out and have some fun, okay? I need this.”

  I leaned back against my chair. “Well, as long as it's all about you,” I said. “That really takes the pressure off.”

  She rolled her eyes and downed the rest of her coffee. “You know what I meant,” she said. “We've all been looking forward to taking you out tonight. It's going to be fun, I promise. Just give me one night. Let's let go of the stress of jobs and school and guys and all that bullshit and just have fun, okay? You deserve it. You've been working so hard lately. It'll be good for you.”

  I sucked a deep breath in through my nose. I knew she was right. I really did need this. I was no fun when I was stressed and ever since the semester started, I'd been a big old ball of stress twenty-four-seven. Being without money and having no one to rely on sucked.

  “I don't have any money,” I said.

  “It's your birthday. We'll take care of everything. All you need to bring is you. Besides, you'll get a job. You always do.”

  I could see the sympathy in her eyes, but I also knew she didn't truly understand what I was going through. She'd never had to work a day in her life, and if she ever needed money, all she had to do was call her mom. She had no idea how lucky she really was.