Vampire Mate: BBW Paranormal Romance

VAMPIRE MATE

(BBW Paranormal Romance)

MATE series

By

Natalie Kristen

MATE series

ALPHA MATE

BEAR MATE

VAMPIRE MATE

Copyright
© 2014 Natalie Kristen

ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED

This
ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be
resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share
this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy
for each reader. If you are reading this book and did not purchase
it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please purchase your
own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

This
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are
used fictitiously or are the products of the author's imagination.
Any resemblance to actual locales, events, establishments or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

*****

Death
or demon?

A
fatal attack by a rogue werewolf leaves Charlene Cole pretty much
dead, but a demon lord offers to return her to life—as a blood
demoness. It is a chance for Charlene to return to her sister, her
only family, and she takes it.

But
if an offer is too good to be true, it probably is.

Glenn
Constantine, Master vampire on the Paranormal Affairs Council, has
never forgotten a sweet, curvy human he glimpsed a year ago. When he
encounters a newly Made blood demoness one night, he recognizes her
instantly. He has sworn never to take a blood demoness to his bed,
but how can he deny the fierce hunger and desire she awakens in him?

As
fate threatens to snatch her away from him once more, Glenn knows he
has to do everything possible, and attempt the impossible, to save
her.

He'd
lost her once.

Will
he now lose her forever?

*****

The darkness grew thicker,
denser, colder all around her. In the distance, Charlene thought she
heard footsteps and voices.

Someone was shouting above the
crackle of static, but the voice sounded so far away.

“
...a rogue wolf is on
the loose. Last seen at the corner of Rising Street. One dead.”
More shouts, this time louder and much nearer.

The same voice, but now there
was a distinct note of panic and perplexity. “Where...? What?
No, I saw her! She was just..here! Right here, I swear! What the
hell?”

Charlene tried to latch on to
that voice, tried to get her own voice to work, to call out and reach
out. But everything was fading away from her. The sounds, the
desperate voices, the faint scent of her own blood, her terror and
the memory of being attacked by a rogue werewolf.

The werewolf had attacked and
killed her, didn't it? She remembered walking home with her younger
sister, Charlotte, after a midnight movie, laughing and joking as
they cut through a dark, smoky alleyway. And then all the laughter
had stopped. A low animal growl filled the length of the alley as a
shadow moved behind them to block off their escape.

Charlene saw it first, and
what she saw made her lurch forward to put herself between her sister
and the monster, who was prowling towards them.

New Moon City was home to many
paranormals, since it was the only city that had the guts and
gumption to protect and police these beings, instead of persecuting
them. Charlene was used to seeing shifters about the city, but they
were usually in their human form, or fully in their shifted animal
forms. But the werewolf that was coming at them was neither human
nor animal. It seemed to be stuck in a half shift, unable to control
its human faculties and reign in its animal senses.

Even in her terror, Charlene
knew that they were facing a rogue werewolf. The shifter was no
longer able to control the beast in him, and the wolf was fast
overtaking and overpowering the human part of the shifter. The rogue
werewolf had given in to his beastly hunger and blood lust, and was a
serious danger to the civilians of New Moon City.

Swallowing a scream, Charlene
faced the hulking half-man, half-wolf monster coming at them, its
eyes red and glowing with hunger. They were trapped in the alley
with the monster. Glancing over her shoulder, Charlene knew that
they would never make it to the other end of the alley in time. If
they turned and ran, it would only awaken the predator's instinct to
chase the prey. With one pounce, the beast would be upon them.

No, running was not an option.

She would have to face the
monster, and beat it.

Charlene pushed Charlotte
behind her and raised her shaking fists. She would do everything in
her power to protect her little sister. Well, Charlotte was not so
little anymore. She was twenty-one and all grown up. She was even a
couple of inches taller than Charlene. She had grown into a lovely,
lively young woman and she had her whole life ahead of her.

As for Charlene, she had lived
eight years longer than Charlotte, which was long enough.
Twenty-nine years was a long time, especially when you spent most of
those years slogging and struggling to bring up a younger sister all
on your own. Charlotte had been just twelve when their mother ran
off, and their father had died a year later. Charlene had just
turned twenty-one then, and she had raised Charlotte as best she
could. And if she might say so herself, she had done a great job.
Her sister had grown up to be a happy, loving and strong young woman.

Charlene's life had been
tough, but her blood and sweat had been worthwhile.

Her life had not been in vain.
She would make sure that her death would not be in vain either.

Charlene knew that only one of
them had the chance of making it out of the alley alive. And
Charlotte, her beautiful baby sister, would be the one. She would
make sure of that.

As she hurled herself at the
monster, she heard herself scream, “Run, Charlotte, run!
Please, get out of here! Go!”

There wasn't time to do or say
anymore. Teeth, claws and evil red eyes flew towards her. The red
had flashed brighter, hotter, wetter and spattered all around her.
Not all the blood was hers though. She had felt the pride and
satisfaction of sinking her human teeth and nails into the monster's
thick neck and drawing blood. She might not have fangs and claws,
but if the rogue werewolf thought to dispose of her easily so that it
could go after her sister, it was sorely mistaken. She was not going
down without a fight. And she would keep the werewolf down with her
for as long as she could, so Charlotte could run.

Charlene held on as best she
could, biting and scratching. The rogue werewolf roared and reared
up, trying to shake her off. Charlene screeched at her sister to run
as she tried to dig her nails into the wolf's eyes. In pain and
fury, the creature bellowed and twisted round.

With a swipe of its hairy arm,
it flung her off its back and onto the hard ground.

There was a sickening crack.
The sound had sounded like a gunshot, sharp and deafening. It had
come from her. What had cracked? Was it her arm, her neck or her
skull?

But there was no pain, no
feeling at all. She felt numb all over, and for an instant, she
experienced a strange lightness of body and mind. Charlene tried to
shout, but the only sound she made was a gurgle.

And then her senses rushed
back, and she tasted blood. Blood was filling her mouth, her head,
her eyes. Blood was pouring into her eyes and oozing out of it,
making her last view of this world red and dark. She blinked hard,
seeing the glint of fangs and claws at the corner of her vision.

She knew. Even as she tried
to push herself up to face the monster one last time, she knew that
she would die. But Charlene didn't want the monster's savage,
snarling face to be the last thing she saw before she died. She
looked past the black fur and claws, and found her sister's pale face
in the shadows. A pure, innocent, beautiful face. It was like
looking into the face of an angel.

Charlene smiled. A last
tender smile for her baby sister.

I love you
, Charlene
tried to utter the words.

At that moment, the werewolf
pounced and she felt its razor-sharp teeth, like a dozen knives,
clamping down on her throat.

The pain was sudden but short.

She screamed, and it was over.

Everything was over.

Live!

That was the last word she had
mouthed to Charlotte, just before her eyes closed.

Live.

In the timeless, shapeless
moment, that word was the only thing clear and real to her. With her
last breath, she had commanded Charlotte to live.

Charlene took a sharp,
excruciating breath and gasped.
Live!

She took another ragged
breath.

Then another.

And another.

How could it be? She felt her
eyes snap open, even though she couldn't see anything in the pitch
darkness.

She was breathing, and
gasping, and her heart was beating so fast there was no doubt that it
was beating.

She was...alive?

She lived!

Or did she?

She could feel her hot,
wheezing breaths and hear her pounding heartbeats. If she was
breathing and her heart was beating, that meant that she wasn't dead.
Right?

Well not exactly. Charlene
knew that there were machines that could make your lungs breathe and
your heart beat for you, keeping your body alive even if the rest of
you were dead. Was that what was happening to her? Was her body
being kept alive by machines?

If so, she was not really
alive. Not really.

She was just—not dead.
Yet.

Charlene couldn't see anything
but she knew that her eyes were open. She could feel herself blink.
But where was she? She couldn't hear the beep and hum of machines,
and she didn't feel as if she was lying on a hospital bed. She felt
like she was standing up, standing in the middle of somewhere.

She took a step, and felt
solid ground beneath her feet.

Yup, she was standing up, and
she could walk.

So...where was she? She had a
feeling she wasn't in New Moon City anymore. Was she in heaven, in
hell, or in limbo?

And more importantly, what
was she?

Was she still a human being, a
spirit, an incorporeal entity, or just a nameless nothingness?

The shadows began to swirl
around her, faster and faster, spinning closer and closer to her,
imprisoning her in a cyclone of darkness. Charlene put a hand to her
mouth. She was beginning to feel dizzy and quite sick. It was
either motion sickness or claustrophobia. The darkness was
oppressive and imprisoning, and she didn't like it one bit here. She
wanted to get out of this place, if it was even a place.

Just as she was about to
scream in panic and frustration, the cyclone lifted and the darkness
parted to reveal a flickering flame. In a blink, the flame wobbled
and split to become twin flames. Charlene stopped flailing and
stared at the floating flames. She still couldn't see her
surroundings. All she could see were those two glowing flames, which
were coming nearer and nearer to her until they danced right in front
of her.

Charlene gasped. She saw
herself reflected in the dark heart of the flames. But was that
really her? She looked—like hell really. She looked more dead
than alive. In fact, there was no way she could even be alive in
that state. There was hardly anything left of her neck and face.
Her flesh had been bitten and clawed away to reveal the bone beneath,
and her skin was hanging in shreds from her mutilated body. There
were teeth and claw marks all over her. Parts of her had been
viciously gouged out, and she could make out some of her internal
organs through the strips of bloody flesh. Charlene staggered back,
her eyes almost popping right out of her skull, which unfortunately
she could see all too clearly. Most of her face had been ripped
away, and what was left of her skin had taken on a dead gray hue.
She raised her mangled hand to her mouth, backing away from the
taunting flames. She looked like something out of a bad zombie
movie.