AN: One of the few complaints I have against Kresley Cole is her interpretation of the Succubi/Incubi. She depicted them as weak "seed-eaters" with very little to offer the Lore in terms of straight bad-assery so in this fan-fiction I will be taking liberties in giving them a lot more powers. Maybe it is due to my love of Lost Girl's Bo that has made me so "meh" about Cole's last book's heroine but whatever the case is...things are gonna change! It also helps that my heroine is a hybrid. Hybrids have more fun anyway! Hope you like the changes as much as I do in writing them.
Exhausted, Lorelei opened the door bleary-eyed, dragging her purse by the strap behind her into the house and silently hating an energetic Sammi, who was happily chatting away behind her. She stopped using what little energy she had left to follow whatever gossip her best-friend/roommate was dishing out and thought only about crawling into her bed with a mixture of anticipation and fear. The anticipation was obvious to anyone who could look at her but the fear...that was due to something else entirely.
Sleep used to come so easily for her. Most of the time she would have these realistic dreams of being in other places with whatever celebrity she was crushing on at the moment and have her way with them. Being technical virgin in reality did not hinder her imagination in the least and it seemed like the heavier the sex dreams she had, the more refreshed she felt in the morning. It was a nice perk in an otherwise freaky existence for her but for the past week she was having none of her usual fare of bubble-baths with Ryan Gosling but disturbing dreams of a...for a lack of a better word...monster.
The room they were always in was dark and cold, with a dampness that could only come from a combination of stonework and underground that brought goosebumps to her flesh. The room had no windows, just stone on three sides with metal bars blocking access to a narrow hallway to her back. A jail? No, a dungeon, she decided after she heard an unmistakeable clinking of chains in a dark corner off to her right. Something was in the room with her, something that until that sound had made none and caused her to jerk her head towards it and see a pair of bright blue eyes staring back. Eyes that shone like there was a light behind them, and she would wake up in a cold sweat, shaking and afraid.
Having little experience with nightmares, her dreams having the tendency of being of the rated-X variety, she would then spend the rest of the night trying to pep talk her way back to sleep with varying degrees of success. Tonight however, she had little choice to do anything but to fall on her mattress, still in her uniform, and was out before she finished closing her eyes.
"Damn." Lorelei muttered under her breath when she once again found herself in the dungeon. Another weird thing about these dreams? She knew when she was having them. The cold immediately bringing goosebumps to her skin as her "uniform" – t-shirt and shorts – did little in the way of warmth as she thought longingly of her fleece Snuggie back at her apartment that was draped against her vanity's chair.
As usual the room was dark, her eyes able to see all but the back corners that were too dark for even her exceptional eyesight to see through. A ripped mattress was laid on the floor to one side, its sheets twisted into a heap in the middle, and a metal toilet and sink on the opposite side completed the spartan cell's furnishings, giving her nothing for her to use as a weapon. Taking a step back, she pressed her back against the cell's bars, her hands feeling for the door blindly. It would be locked but she looked for it anyway as she kept her eyes to the back right corner and waited.
She was here again. The beast took in her scent and let out a soft growl in appreciation. Raghnall had long ago let the wolf have the lead. A mix of the beast being to powerful to fully cage, and a lack of desire to do so kept him in this limbo which he enjoyed until recently. Until she started coming. Before, it was better to let his wolf have its head because it gave him the ability to not think, to live in the moment and not dwell on the pain of his past. About the death of his family, and coming home to see a group of Horde vampires drinking down his baby sister, her lifeless eyes and face frozen forever in pain.
His mother begged him to stay home, she never liked being without him when his father was away, but Anya had begged him to pay her a quick visit and he was more than eager for the company that only a wood nymph with two identical sisters could provide. Recently coming into his immortality, his libido was on overdrive, and his wolf damn near impossible to manage unless he was doing one of the three things it liked to do: eating, fighting, or fucking, the latter of the three the best way to keep it satisfied for longer.
He wanted to ask his king for advice on how to master the wolf but that would be too much like admitting a weakness, something the huge chip on his shoulder would not allow. As his father had told him more times to count, Alpha blood ran strong in their line, and with it they made the best warriors and defenders in their clan and king, an honor that he would never let be sullied by a weak pup.
So he went out, despite his mother's pleads and came home to a massacre. Upon witnessing his baby sister being feasted on, his dead smaller brothers and mother crumpled on the floor in a pile like garbage, his beast broke free, needing vengeance and received it by killing every single one of the vampires foolish enough not to trace away, ripping them into pieces with a speed and strength unmatched by any Lykae in history, mated or not. After all were dead at his feet it still was not enough, the pain was far too great, and he took off hunting down any and all vampires he could find.
This in itself would not have been a bad thing if it wasn't for his lack of discretion or his wolf's inability to-give-a-fuck who might be witnessing him tearing apart the bloodsuckers, one main incident involving him punting a vampire's head clear across a town and it landing in a human's horse cart on it's way to market, that being the last straw for his fellow Lykae who before turned a blind eye. They then sent out a party that trapped and brought him back home to Kinevane and into the dungeon reserved for the Lykae who went feral.
With nothing left to kill, maim, or destroy, Raghnall found himself in an unfortunate position where he had to think about his loss. Of how his father, after coming home to see his whole family wiped out, disappeared never to be seen again, presumed dead, for what Lykae could live without his mate? Unable to deal with the pain, he receded as far back from consciousness as he could go, where memories could not touch him and only the Instinct remained, and there he has stayed for years longer than could count.
Until now.