The Lycan Collapse (The Flux Age Book 2) Read Free Page B

main hall and most of the east wing had been completed. That meant Yasmin had access to both the central hub and a series of smaller rooms, one of which she had claimed as her own.
    Of late she had given up trying to function like a human being during the day, instead bunkering down in her extravagant four-poster bed. She had no idea where Tomas had found it, just it was one of the doktor’s gifts. He and the succubi had pledged themselves to her and despite the strangeness of having servants it felt inevitable. Her four underlings were happy to rest in the dark corners of the main hall during the day. Occasionally Tomas would disappear altogether, literally spending entire days underground. Yasmin couldn’t blame him in the slightest, often feeling the pull of the earth’s secret places by day.
    All in all, Yasmin commanded a crumbling ruin on top of a forgotten mountain in rural Romania. No - she didn’t quite feel like a queen.
    The succubi were warming to Yasmin day by day. At first they had shrank away from her, perhaps overwhelmed by her power. In the last few weeks Yasmin had felt a strengthening bond with the succubi, and had even begun sending them on various missions. The castle needed a complete overhaul, which meant acquiring furniture and art. The succubi had proven themselves adept at sourcing such items from the various mountain villages in the surrounding range. Yasmin had no problem with theft, sensing that many of the antiques she gained were once part of the castle’s estate in any case.
    As for the doktor, well, he was a curious man. In many ways Yasmin would be forever in his debt. She had been languishing in New York when he had set up the beacon that drew her here to eastern Europe. Things hadn’t gone so well with the Lycan Society and Yasmin was as heart broken as a young woman could be. She had fully expected to join lycan ranks only to be divined as something completely different. She’d always known deep down that she wasn’t a lycan, but had fallen in love with the lycans nonetheless. One in particular had captured her heart - Jack Foley. The less she thought about him the better. The bastard had turned his back on her as soon as it suited him to do so. Sure, he’d muttered something about hunting her down, but she no longer believed it. She couldn’t allow herself to believe it. The fact was she was a queen mother of the vampyra and he was a lycan werewolf. In what universe could they possibly have a future together? The problem was, the harder Yasmin tried to banish Jack Foley from her mind, the greater his grip on her heart. Despite everything, she felt safe with Jack. With him, she could just be Yasmin Silver. She didn’t need to be anything else. And now, they were on opposite sides of the world with trouble brewing on all sides. She wanted desperately to know if he was OK, but she couldn’t exactly pick up the phone and call him. What would he say? The thought of his disinterested voice at the other end of the line chilled her to the core. No, she had no choice but to make a new life for herself here in Romania. At least here the people seemed to understand who she was. The lycans seemed to recognize what she was, but they had no idea what to do with her. In the end, she was effectively banished from their Society. At least they’d left her future in her own hands.
    Which brought her to Tomas Verdano. To a man broken by circumstance and in need of a new purpose. A man who had lost his family to a psychopath in Berlin. A man who would walk the ends of the earth for her . As far as Yasmin could tell, there wasn’t anything sexual about Tomas’s devotion to her. It had more to do with the power structure of the vampyra. Yasmin was a queen and they both felt it. The succubi sensed it too, treating Yasmin with a detached reverence.
    Today, Yasmin stepped gingerly from her room as darkness enveloped the castle. The wind howled through the cracks in the wall that the Maramurians had